Page 91 of Demon Demands

“You have to stop demanding control.”

Her feral growl rolled through my mind like a tidal wave. “If anyone touches our fae, I’m going to kill them brutally and with great pleasure. No one harms my treasures and lives.”

I shrugged even though she couldn’t see me. I knew she could feel the motion. “Agreed. We need to be on the same page for this battle, though. You can’t take over and kick me out of the driver's seat. But we can share control. You can handle the violence, and I’ll cover the logistics. If I say go right, then you move us right.”

“Fine. As long as we’re not keeping anymore strays, I have no issues sharing control with you.”

“I know, I know.” I huffed aloud. “I have a plan. How fast can we—”

She cut me off, our shared voice sounding more conniving than I’d ever heard. “Mmm, fast enough for that to work.”

I locked my mind up tight as I headed back into the dining room, giving everyone a once-over while I prepared myself.

“You guys find Vaughn,” I instructed Stone before turning to Lucy and Papi. “I’ll distract Satan. I feel like Lil probably has a plan for him.”

“If we separate—” Papi started.

“No,” I interrupted, more stern than I’d meant to be. “There are too many to spread out. Let my guys find my fae. Y’all need to stay near each other while you start cutting their numbers down.”

Dolyn squinted his eyes at me, studying me too closely. “What are you planning?”

Jack grew rigid when I handed him my twin obsidian daggers. Shaking his head, he pushed them back at me. “You’re not a kamikaze, Lo. Don’t be that reckless.”

“It’ll work, Jack,” I assured him, a sad smile playing across my lips as I shoved his hands away from me. “I’ve done it before, I can do it again. I need you to hang onto those and my chains until I come get them from you. I’m going to take this one and attach a single blade to it.”

“Are you—” Dad began to question me but stopped when I nodded my head.

“Yeah, I have a plan B, too. But that’ll require all of you being close to Palmer, so don’t stray too far from each other.”

“O,” Lil hesitantly called. “I need a drop of Satan’s blood. If you cut him, can you magically get the blood to me somehow, or would I need to be close to you?”

“I think I can manage that,” I muttered to Lil, shrugging my shoulders. “It can’t be that hard to do, right?” I directed the question to my mage.

Palmer’s brows lifted to his hairline as he stared at me. If I had to guess, I’d say that he was stunned that I didn’t know how to do something. Shocking, I know.

He recovered after a moment and rubbed at the facial hair on his jawline as he thought of the best way to explain the magic. “Instead of focusin’ on bringin’ an object ta myself, I focus on the place I want ta send it. Kinda like doin’ it the opposite way, just reverse the spell.”

I gave him a stiff nod, my impatience making me jumpy. We needed to get to Vaughn. “It’s been too long. We've got to go.”

I placed my hands on Stone and Papi’s arms, taking them straight to Vaughn through the Void. My fae’s panic visibly eased when he realized that I’d returned.

He was at the back of the crowd, thankfully, and he’d erected quite the set of ice horns on the top of his head.

Despite the situation we were in, I couldn’t fight the tilting of my lips. Stone fisted his hand, biting at his index finger, and Papi cleared his throat delicately, lifting a questioning eyebrow.

I leaned in to whisper in Vaughn’s ear, “Those are almost as impressive as—”

“Focus, Sloane,” Papi growled at me.

“Right. Go get the others, Papi. Stone needs to stay with Vaughn,” I whispered, surveying the crowd before us. Smiling tensely at the three of them, I wiggled my fingers as I stepped back into the Void.

Popping out of the Void in the front of the horde, I glanced around the flat desert area that Satan and Hannibal had called their recruits to.

This position would keep the people I cared about away from the attack that I was about to provoke and make it easy for me to be spotted. The demons near me backed away as I spun in a circle, recognizing the Devil among them.

And I let my rage manifest within me.

When there was about ten feet of space between me and the demon recruits, I rolled my shoulders back and cupped my hands around my mouth as I screamed, “Satan!”