by Cate Corvin
That didn’t mean much; he could be above them, and he was fast as Hell when he attacked, but I couldn’t sit here while I had time.
The shelf I stood on ended on a chasm, but it was empty. There was no rotting Dragon corpse at the bottom, and I turned back the other way, climbing over several ridges and occasionally daring to fly over impassable rocks. After each short flight, I’d crouch and wait, anticipating a comet smashing into me, but it never came.
The sun overhead never moved. I felt like I was trapped in the same few seconds of time, constantly ducking down when I came upon sudden ridges, ever careful to keep the Spear’s light from blazing out into the dreary sky.
Then I heard a voice from over the next ridge. A voice so familiar it was like music to my ears, even though it was hard and cold.
My mate’s voice.
26
Melisande
“You heard his orders.”
I slid behind a new boulder, burying the Spear’s head in a pile of ash. The ground dropped off only feet in front of me, a ten-foot plunge to another broad ledge.
Two figures walked out onto the shelf overlooking yet another endless chasm, their backs to me. I took a deep but silent breath, tasting a hint of rot in the air, but the wind was carrying the smell away from me.
The Dragon’s corpse was down there. I was sure of it.
Lucifer’s dark wings framed his chiseled body, tattoos a brilliant crimson. Despite the angry red of the soul-bond, he was here, in person, only feet away. I wanted to fly down and touch him so badly the longing actually ached like a physical sensation.
He looked down at the white-haired figure at his side.
Vyra was wrapped in a dark robe, looking smaller than ever. “Please don’t leave me here with him. Please, Lucifer.”
He just looked at her coldly. “It’ll be done soon enough. Make your peace with it.”
What the Hell were they talking about?
“He’ll hurt me. You know he will.” Vyra tugged her robes tightly around herself, as if it would shield her from whatever Satan had planned. “Lucifer, what would Melisande think?”
He stopped, turning back to look at her. I quickly dropped down face-first, getting a mouthful of ash in the process, but I was sure he hadn’t seen me.
“Melisande?” His voice was tentative, the faint recognition in it stabbing me in the heart. Even with the soul-bond consuming his mind, my name still had some effect on him.
“Your mate. She loves you, Lucifer, and if she knew what you were going to do… she’d be so ashamed of you.”
There was the sound of flesh hitting flesh, and I flinched as Vyra cried out.
“I don’t know a Melisande.” Lucifer spat the words at her. She’d laid it on too thick, and any recognition in his voice was gone. “This isn’t a fucking democracy, succubus. There’s no choice in the matter. You’re just meat for our King. Now get back in there and make yourself presentable for him. They’re bringing the new one now.”
I frantically crawled under the edge of the boulder as the sound of wings rustling overtook their voices. A moment later, Lucifer shot into the sky, his shadow rippling over the mountains.
I barely breathed, slowly counting to a hundred in my head before I dared to move again.
Vyra was still standing on the shelf, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs. I remained cushioned under piles of ash, but Lucifer didn’t come back. No light ripped through my back and tore me apart.
She wasn’t turning around to return to the cave. I was going to have to reveal myself, because this was the only chance I might get.
I scrambled up onto my feet and dropped down silently, catching a breath of wind. “Vyra-”
She shrieked like a siren, and I clamped my free hand firmly over her mouth. Her eyes were wide as saucers over my filthy hand, tears cutting tracks through the dirt on her cheeks and pooling on my fingers.
“It’s really me,” I whispered. “I’m here.”
I slowly took my hand away from her mouth, letting her take several sobbing breaths. She crashed into me like a landslide, her arms sliding out from the robes to wrap around me and squeeze tightly.
I allowed her to remain there until her sobs were stifled, although precious minutes were passing.
“You’re really here, you’re here, you’re here,” she chanted under her breath, then stiffened in my grasp. “You have to go. You can’t be here!”
Vyra looked up at me wildly, her hair a tangled halo around her head.
“I’m taking you with me.” I gripped her hand. “We’re going. Now.”
Vyra clasped her hands around mine, squeezing hard. I had to yank the Spear away so she wouldn’t accidentally touch it and be immolated on the spot. “He’s changing bodies, Melisande. He left the Dragon, and he’s trying to get a greater demon body. You’ve got to go tell the others. I think Lucifer is bringing him a Prince this time-”
“We already know.” I tried to tug her along, but she seemed frozen in place. “Azazel’s been watching. Vyra, please, let’s go now. This is the only chance we have.”
Lucifer would definitely see my tracks, if he hadn’t already. Every second counted, and yet she seemed so traumatized, like she couldn’t comprehend that help was here right now and ready to go.
I tugged on her again, and she nodded. “Right. We have to go. We’re going.”
She took a step forward, and I reached under my collar and yanked out the amulet Azazel had given me. “I have a portal-”
A comet plunged out of the sky, crashed into the shelf, and sent us flying backwards, away from each other. I kept my grip on the Spear, but almost lost the amulet. Only the string kept it from flying out of my hand and vanishing into the heaped ashes.
Lucifer’s quicksilver eyes gleamed as he looked at me, straightening up from his crouch. “You again.”
He hefted a body off his shoulder and dropped it on the ground. It was just like the Princes: beautiful, with long black hair and bronzed skin.
Then I realized it wasn’t a corpse. The body was still breathing.
“Come get him, Father,” Lucifer called, but he never looked away from me. The smile that stretched across his lips was like nothing I’d ever seen on his face. “I was hoping I’d get a second chance at you.”
His wings spread out again, the black feathers gleaming like an oil spill. I had a split second to make my choice before he charged.
I couldn’t bury the Spear in him. No matter what he’d done, I would save him too, or die trying.
I jerked the Spear aside and released it as Lucifer exploded towards me, planting his palms in my chest.
I flew through the air, my breath erupting in a harsh burst, and skidded to a halt only feet from the edge of the chasm. My lungs felt like they’d been hit by a train as I struggled to draw in a breath. Lucifer was between me and the Spear now. “Don’t you know me?”
“Why would I care?” Lucifer’s head tilted to the side, like the question genuinely confused him.
Vyra crouched fifteen feet away from us, digging under a drift of ashes. With a cry of victory, she lifted a scythe and got to her feet, knocking her cloak aside as her own wings spread out.
The cry became a short, shrill scream. She tried to take flight like a panicked bird, but Lucifer was at her side in an instant, gripping her by the shoulders and dragging her over to me.
I saw what had made her panic, and almost felt like screaming myself.
It was exactly like the waking dream I’d had of Lucifer.
A dying demon crawled over the rocks towards us, and even as we watched, it seemed to come apart at the seams like a broken rag doll, spilling to the ground in rotting pieces.
A pitch black, humanoid thing climbed out of the body and crawled over the ground toward the unconscious greater demon, leaving an oily slick in its wake, flies buzzing around its tar-like mass.
The head rose when it saw us, those eyeless sockets seeming to focus right on me, but the allure of the
body in front of it was apparently too great to resist.
I felt Satan’s power spilling out of his essence, raw and unfiltered by his form. Bile rose in my throat, and I gagged, curling up on myself. My bones ached from the power coming off him.
Lucifer laughed. “Too much for you?”
He pushed Vyra onto the ground next to me. She still clutched the scythe like a lifeline, swinging it wildly at Lucifer’s legs, but he easily stepped on the blade and kicked it aside, all without looking at us. He was focused on Satan’s essence, now enveloping the demon on the ground. The sleeping Prince groaned but didn’t move.
Vyra jerked the scythe back towards herself, inching away from Lucifer.
Now was the time.
I gripped Vyra’s arm hard, looking meaningfully into her eyes. She nodded, her lips set in a thin line, still clumsily clutching the scythe.
She didn’t know I wouldn’t be coming with her.
I gripped the amulet so hard the edges cut into my burned palm and threw us backwards into the chasm.
The wind caught us as Vyra followed my example and spread her wings, stopping us from smashing into the rocks below. “Fly into the portal!” I shouted.
I lifted the amulet to my lips and spoke, my back prickling, expecting an attack at any second. “A’kaza sothoth Dis!”
It blazed bright white, and I threw it ahead of us as far as I could.
The portal opened in the middle of the chasm, the white light becoming a pool of darkness, hints of rainbow colors swirling into its depths.
“Vyra, go!” I raced towards it with her, urging her on.
Vyra’s wings beat the air, the scythe flashing as she pulled just ahead of me. She burst through the portal, vanishing in a flash of blinding light.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
Lucifer’s silky voice was much too close. I veered away from the portal, climbing upwards even though I knew Vyra would be waiting for me to follow, her hopes in vain.
It didn’t matter. She was safe in Dis now.
Two more seconds passed, and the portal swirled shut before vanishing completely.
“Clearly I’m not going anywhere without you,” I called to Lucifer. I wheeled around overhead, and found him just below, watching me with amusement.
“Your loyalty is admirable, if misplaced.” He crooked a finger in a come-on. “I think I like it.”
Maybe he needed a push in the right direction. “You love it when we’re together. You gave me this.”
I pulled down the edge of my collar, showing him the upside-down cross. His eyes lightened for a second as he looked at it, like a memory had pushed its way through the bonds around his mind…
“I would never do such a thing, but my Father might like a taste of you. He’ll need to take his new body for a ride, after all.” His leering grin made me sick to my stomach.
“Who did he eat this time?” I asked. Lucifer was drifting closer, slowly but surely. If I lowered my guard for even a second, he’d be on me like a cat on a mouse. I put several more yards between us, ever conscious that my best weapon, my one chance out of here, was on the ledge below, and Lucifer was between me and it.
“The former king of Kur. The Queen was tired of her lover.” Lucifer flew to the left, climbing to my height. He was driving me back down towards the ledge, trying to distract me with his talk. Luckily, it was precisely where I wanted to go. “She’d prefer Satan, but in a prettier body. Poor Nergal… so handsome, but as stimulating as a sack of bricks.”
I couldn’t imagine tossing aside one of my mates to be possessed by another, using a beautiful body like it was nothing but an empty vessel. “I would never do that to you.”
Lucifer dropped lower, and so did I. The shelf was so close, and Satan was still working himself into the still-living tissue of poor Nergal’s body.
If I could get to the Spear, I could still kill him and break the soul-bond.
“I wouldn’t do it to you, either.” For a moment I thought the old Lucifer had broken through, but his eyes went dead. “It’d be the easy way out for you. I’d rather have you suffer.”
I swallowed hard, even though I was nowhere near tears. I knew it wasn’t Lucifer speaking, but it still hurt, those words coming from his mouth.
“You’re the one suffering right now, not me.”
His face was lined with anger, but I remembered my dream all too clearly. In his moment of clarity, he’d asked Vyra to take a chance. To kill him if she could.
He’d known what he was like this, and he’d preferred death to living as a slave.
If I couldn’t erase the soul-bond, could I live with knowing I’d condemned him to a fate he’d fallen from Heaven to escape? Would he rather be killed by the Spear than live with no hope?
I dropped lower. My boots brushed the top of a mound of ashes. “You’re a slave, Lucifer. Nothing but a mindless puppet, living under someone else’s thumb. Why don’t you get down and lick the ground at his feet, since you like being his dog so much?”
If love couldn’t get through to him, maybe his pride and anger would.
He looked down at me, dead silent.
Then he crashed downwards, and his hands wrapped around my throat.
27
Melisande
We went tumbling to the ledge, Lucifer straddling me, his wings spread wide to block out the gray sun.
I jammed my elbow into the crook of his, loosening his grip.
But he wasn’t trying to kill me. He wasn’t squeezing tightly enough to cut off my air.
Lucifer smiled when he saw my quizzical look. “Oh, I don’t want you dead yet. Not when we have so much fun ahead of us.”
Anger flared deep inside me, despite the desperate urge to save him. “Why do this? None of this is you.”
I pulled on the mate mark between us, searching for him on the other end of that gleaming little link of Chain, but there was nothing at all even though he was only inches from my face. Trying to get through to him was like repeatedly running into an impassable wall.
A harsh rasping noise caught his attention. He went deathly still, even with his hands still around my neck and pinning me to the ground. Only his head turned to watch as Nergal began shaking on the ground, his limbs flopping.
Satan’s essence had completely filled the demon king’s body. Rough puffs of air blew from his lungs as Satan began adapting to the shell.
And once he did… he’d be so much smarter and slyer than before, no matter what Lucifer said about Nergal’s original intelligence.
I needed the Spear before he could rise, but the Spear was buried under the ash.
I reached outwards, searching blindly with my fingertips and praying I’d feel the heat of a fresh burn.
Lucifer slapped one of my hands away and shifted his knees, pinning my arms in place. “Don’t get ideas.”
“That’s the problem with me,” I gasped, dragging in air as his fingers temporarily tightened. “So many ideas, so little time.”
A glint of humor shone in his silver eyes. “All the damn time.”
Hope and horror twined through me. Was that him?
But the humor faded, and he shook his head like he was shaking off flies, his brow creasing. Streaks of light pulsed through his crimson tattoos.
Satan might’ve been distracted, but the soul-bond was still in full effect, and he was clinging hard to keep Lucifer under his sway.
I remembered what Azazel had said about soul-bonds… it was hard and painful, but they could be weakened until the original binder was dead.
All I needed to do was cut through them, even if it meant hurting Lucifer. He’d rather deal with the pain than be a mindless slave.
My eyes traced the crimson swirls over his body, up his muscular shoulders and over his torso, until I found a point where several of them converged right over his heart.
That’s where I would strike him as soon as I got the chance.
I realized he was staring back at me, his h
andsome face still carved in a deep frown. “What are you staring at?” he asked abruptly. “What’s going in that pretty little head of yours?”
I needed him off of me. My arm was pinned too tightly to reach the only knife that would cut deep enough to disrupt the soul-bond. Not flesh deep, but magically deep, cutting away the ties between them.
It was time for a new tactic. “You’re so beautiful,” I said, my voice toneless. I let my head fall back into a pile of ash, no longer resisting. “Maybe I was wrong.”
His head tilted as he looked over my face, examining every single feature like he could find the one little tic giving away my lie. “Wrong about what?”
“I think… this is you.” I carefully pulled on my dark fire, keeping it under my skin and forming a shield around my abdomen. The shield would have to be constant, and I’d need to keep as much magic in reserve as possible. “I just didn’t see it before.”
Lucifer was so painfully still, his expression impossible to read.
He leaned forward, bending down until our lips were only inches apart. There was a painful throb in my chest when I realized my muscles were automatically tensed to rise up and kiss him, but I wouldn’t kiss him when he was like this. He might look the same, but the idea of it was like betraying the real Lucifer.
“How stupid do you think I am?” he whispered.
I gazed up into those mercurial eyes, so flat and empty, and moved my fingers barely a centimeter at a time. He never looked away from me, a current of genuine frustration on his face.
“Well, when you’re like this, being your father’s mouthpiece… pretty fucking stupid, I have to admit.”
I gripped the hilt of the ebonite dagger and ripped it out of my belt, bringing my knee up at the same time and slamming into him right where it counted.
Lucifer rolled off me with a curse, but his hand snapped out and he grabbed my left arm, squeezing so tightly my bones ached.
I let the momentum of his roll carry me sideways. His weight pulled me up onto him and I lashed out with all my strength, anticipating that he’d be quick enough to stop me.