Up in Smoke - Katie MacAlister [14]
The demons, most of which were in human form, refused to allow me through their throng until I elbowed them, poked them, or in a few cases, whapped them upside the head with my spiked necklace wrapped around my hand. Almost all of them were bigger than me, which made for slow going until I had the bright idea of shoving the larger Sally in front of me and letting her do the hard work.
“My hair!” she squawked when I shoved her at a clump of level-five demons in dirty black leather jackets with “Satins Minyuns” scrawled in blood across their respective backs. “My dress!”
“Just pretend they’re a bunch of Microsoft yuppies, and give them your standard motivational speech. That ought to make them cringe and cower.”
The look she shot me confirmed my suspicion that she would fit right in with this place, but I didn’t have long to dwell on her rightness with things demonic before she managed to beat her way through the demons to the raised stone dais where Magoth stood chatting with a smallish, ordinary-looking man. Gabriel, Drake, and the rest of the dragons stood just beyond them. I tried to keep my gaze averted from Gabriel’s, rather hoping to miss his expression upon first seeing me in my nearly nonexistent ensemble, but it was asking too much of my aching heart.
I caught the first expression of joy in his silver eyes before a form of indignation flashed in their depths as I cleared the crowd and moved toward Magoth. That was soon followed by sheer rage, but luckily, that faded and was replaced by a slight deepening of the indentations on his cheeks that marked his dimples.
I relaxed a smidgen, relieved that I wasn’t going to have to intervene in a battle between Gabriel and Magoth, and gave the former a small smile to let him know I appreciated him seeing the humor of the situation.
“There she is!” Magoth said, springing at me. “How delightful you look almost wearing that outfit. My lord Bael, I should like to present for your approval my consort, the sweet and deliciously nubile May, a doppelganger who has been bound to me since the moment of her creation, and one who, I am delighted to say, has served my many and varied personal needs to my utmost satisfaction.”
I thought about telling Magoth to knock it off, that Gabriel was going to see through such obvious tactics, but the presence of the premier prince of Abaddon kept my tongue behind my teeth. Bael gave me a thorough once-over as I made a little bow, but unlike Magoth’s, his visual examination was not the least bit sexual. Power sparked off him in a palpable corona, leaving me with a sick feeling in my stomach as he seemed to strip away my facade and look deep into my soul. It was a nerve-shattering experience, but I drew comfort from the fact that Gabriel was there, and managed to keep from cowering before Bael.
He dismissed me with a gesture that indicated he was less than impressed. “Let the ceremony proceed. I have more important things to do than watch you preen.”
Magoth didn’t like that, but as the lowest of all the demon lords, he knew better than to lip off. He simply nodded and held his hand out for me, his eyes on Gabriel as he paraded me around the perimeter of the dais. “Fellow demon lords, members of my legions, and minions of all sorts, today at long last I take a consort. Behold the sweet and succulent May Northcott, servant and doppelganger, whom I bestow with not only the pleasures to be found in my body, but all rights and honors due me. Venisti remanebis donec denuo compeltus sis, decus et tutamen, dulce et utile.”
I kept my lips from curling in a grimace at his words. The Latin Magoth spoke was a phrase I’d seen in the Doctrine of Unending Conscious and was loosely translated as “From whence