“Oh, I need to get myself one of those,” Dantalion says between fits of laughter, wiping a finger beneath his eye to flick away a tear. “Where did you find it, brother?”
“That’s enough Dantalion,” Kincaid hisses, pulling me to his side. “You’ve had your fun. I think it’s time you took your leave.”
All traces of laughter leave the other demon lord’s face. As he quiets, so does the room. Dancers pause and gape. The band ceases playing.
In their eyes, I see a wild excitement. A thirst to witness bloodshed.
In place of Dantalion’s easy smile comes a sneer strong enough to make the blood curdle and clot in my veins.
His blue eyes darken until they’re black from edge to edge.
“I think I’ll decide when I’m ready to take my leave, brother.”
Dantalion straightens his jacket and lifts his chin. He waves an arm toward the band and shouts, “Music!” before he rips a Diablim woman dressed in gold from her startled partner and begins to dance once more.
“He asked me things,” I say as Kincaid slowly walks me back to the edge of the room. “And I couldn’t stop myself from answering him.”
“Dantalion has a power over one’s deepest secrets and desires. He draws them out like blood from a wound. And, if you hadn’t noticed, he can also take on the face of any he chooses. Though he’s quite fond of using mine.”
He says that last part with a sourness puckering his mouth, and when I do not reply, he looks down on me with a tenderness I didn’t know he possessed.
Kincaid brushes a stray hair back from my cheek, and his gaze hardens. “I think it’s time for us to leave.”
27
The sea of courtiers parts for us as we make our exit. Only one rushes to catch up. Tori. She pouts as we walk along beside the food-laden tables. “You just arrived,” she whines. “And the only other person who’ll speak to me is Tristane, and you know how I loathe that angelic bastard.”
“He’s here?”
“Of course, he is. With that awful wench he brought the last time. Isolde.”
“When you say angelic, do you mean Nephilim?” I ask, trying to crane my neck to see back into the grand ballroom, trying to spot a glowy aura like Artemis’. Some of the Diablim have a faint light around them if I let my eyes go a little unfocused but none shine like Artemis.
“Isolde, yes. But the douche canoe Tristane is all angel, baby. Pretty as you please but with a temper like a bloody hellhound.”
“Watch yourself,” Kincaid whispers harshly to Tori, pausing in his quick steps to face her. “You shouldn’t say such things. You know why he’s here. Why he comes. He could have you tossed into the pit in the blink of an eye, Tori. Don’t be so cocky.”
Tori’s violet eyes narrow as she smirks. “Good thing I’ve got a get-out-of-Hell-free-card, am I right?”
Kincaid rolls his eyes.
“Goodnight, Tori.”
“Fine! Ruin all my fun.”
She waves at me as Kincaid pulls us back into a quick walk down the star-dappled black carpet and toward the already waiting gangstermobile idling at the end.
I’m surprised the door isn’t pried from its hinges when Kincaid wrenches it open and corrals me into the backseat. I wince when my backside connects with something solid on the seat and squirm to get Kincaid’s hooked staff out from under me.
A scream echoes from within the Midnight Court, and all heads swivel to find the source. Kincaid stills outside the door.
“What was th—”
Kincaid hushes me, and I go silent and still, straining to hear what he’s hearing.
All conversation from the few Diablim milling about the open air outside the court ceases. It makes it easier to hear when the scream comes again, this time joined by several others.
I think I hear Tori among them.
“Kincaid?” I urge, my heart in my throat. “What’s going on?”
His teeth bared and horns curling out from his skull, Kincaid snatches the hooked staff from my fingertips and turns his burning gaze to me for the briefest second.
“Stay here,” he commands and then slams the door, sealing off the bulk of the hair-raising sounds as I watch him move in a blur of black back inside.
The crush of bodies rushing to follow him back in blots him out until I can’t see him at all anymore.
My hands are cold and slick with clammy sweat as I fumble with the door handle until I’ve spilled back onto the black carpet. The chill in the air feels icier than it did only a minute before, and I hike up the hem of my dress to keep from tripping and kick off the obnoxious shoes.
My circlet falls askew as I shoulder through the crush of Diablim angling for a better view of the ballroom.
I hear them whisper. Hear them shout.
“What’s happening to him?” They cry.
“Someone help him!”
But they are mere background noise to the rush of blood in my ears and the song of adrenaline spurring my heart to racing.
“Paige!” Tori’s voice breaks through the din, and I find her violet eyes just as she reaches me, her hands clasping mine.
“What’s happening?” I demand, trying to see over the last few heads blocking my view of the main chamber.
They part enough for me to see within just as Tori says, “It’s Dantalion.”
The golden-haired lord is on his knees at the center of the great hall. The courtiers have given him a wide berth—they ring the walls, watching in horror and awe as he clutches his chest, a pained growl passing through his bared teeth.
Kincaid kneels at his side, shouting something I can’t hear over all the whispering, shouting voices. His staff, glowing a faint blue beneath the black casing, is discarded beside Dantalion.
“What’s happening to him?”
Tori shakes her head. “I don’t know,” she tells me. “He was fine one minute and then he just…just dropped.”
An agonizing howl peals from Dantalion’s lips. His black eyes bulge as Kincaid shakes him.
“Poison?” I hear someone ask behind me and another Diablim replies with a sneer.
“Poison? You really think a lord of Hell can be undone with poison? Are you daft?”
But that is exactly what it looks like. My stomach turns at the paleness of his flesh. The red veins spidering out from his eyes like creeping vines over his face. The froth on his lips.
Until it all stops.
Time stops.
The room holds a collective breath as Dantalion croaks his last. The instant his face goes slack, he bursts into a billow of dark smoke and dissipates into the air.
Gone.
Just…gone.
Kincaid is left clutching empty air as the courtiers look on with wide eyes and even wider mouths.
“Impossible,” one says while several others demand to know where Dantalion has gone. I’m not listening to them, though, not really. My gaze remains fixed on the spot where Dantalion had just been because they shout and scream that he’s gone, and he was, for a second.
Now, Dantalion stands in horror before Kincaid, his sapphire eyes looking down where he was a second before. He stares at his hands as though the lines in his palms hold all the secrets of the universe, and then, as though he can feel my eyes on him, he lifts his head and stares straight into me.