I was beginning to understand why Gem cared about Torrent. He would fight for what he believed in.
I straightened, testing my balance. “She gave you more power? You’re a prince, correct?”
He sighed. “That was the first thing she did. She gave me power and then blocked Kar’ak. But it’s not like the ascension we went through. This…” He looked at his hands. “This is a lot worse and a hundred times better. I mean, I couldn’t control an ocean before, but now… now I could. It’s damn tempting and dangerous. If Kar’ak…”
“I’ll deal with Kar’ak. Your new power means we both have substantial reserves. We are princes of a new Court, her Court, but that doesn’t mean we have to fall in behind her.” I tucked my wings in close and rolled my shoulders, working out the curious tremors. “You don’t think the old Court fell in line with the king, do you? We just have to find her weakness. She’ll have one. She’s the veil. The veil is made up of all the elements.”
“Sure. But whatever you throw at her, she’ll absorb. She’s where our elements come from.”
Something he had said earlier sparked a new thought. “The veil… the demon-killing wand…”
“A what now?”
“In the netherworld, there’s a blade the princes at the height of their power can summon. It’s not really a sword, but a figment of a demon’s mind made real by the veil. When wielded, it strips elements from demons. We—the original Dark Court—used it to tear chaos from the first demon queen and kill her.”
Torrent, jaw slack, asked, “A magic sword?” He laughed dryly. “You got a unicorn hiding in your wings too, Pride?”
Had he always been this irritating? The elemental blade was no laughing matter. The blade had killed thousand of demons and sundered many princes from their power.
“I really don’t know what Gem sees in you.” That knocked the grin off his face. “She’s here, in LA. If you would stop flouncing around this house at her whim, you could see her again.”
His glower made it clear I’d hit a nerve. “Gem’s in LA?”
“Yes. She asked after you.”
He scratched his neck and drew in a deep breath. “Is she safe?”
“She’s Gem.”
I couldn’t know his thoughts without deliberately prying into his princely mind, but I could guess. They had been more than just close.
“You’ve seen what this god-demon is.” Torrent lifted his gaze, all humor gone. “How can we defeat something like her?”
“We need to find out more about her, what she wants, what she needs. If she is demon, she will have critical flaws. We all have them. Pride, for example. Our weaknesses are our names.”
He nodded firmly. “Does she even have a name?”
“All higher demons have names. We need to discover hers.”
“And what if she’s not demon? What if she really is a god?”
“The bigger they are, the harder they fall. She will have a weakness.”
I left the room and strode down the hall. It didn’t matter what we called her. She was far too powerful for me to deal with alone. “We need backup, the kind that’s hard to kill, and lots of it. We need to fight fire with fire.”
Keep the fire from my door. I was about to invite it in.
“Backup?” Torrent jogged to catch up. “From where?”
The destination I had in mind was a long way from here, yet not far at all.
The sparse entrance hall loomed, the door closed.
“You’re not thinking…?” He trailed off, the implications stealing the rest of his sentence. “How long has it been?”
“Too long and not long enough.” I opened the door but didn’t step through. Outside, warm air stirred nearby palm trees. Where I was headed, the air could kill.
I was ready to go home.
I had to go back, beyond the veil, back to the demon world I’d left behind. A smile crept comfortably onto my lips.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Torrent said.
“I always know what I’m doing,” I replied, distracted by the pull of the weakening veil. I was a prince again. The worlds were my playgrounds, and no demon could bar me from them.
“Do you even know what’s left on the other side of the veil?”
I stepped outside onto the dirt path. Air flowed down my feathers, teasing my wings open. “I know there will be nothing left here if we can’t stop her.” Turning to face Torrent, I met his concerned and somewhat curious expression. “Do what you can to discover her weaknesses.”
He nodded. “If she has any.”
The veil pulsed. Mentally, I reached out and flexed muscles I hadn’t used in years. “I’ll be back soon.”
He crossed his arms. “She’ll know you went through…”
It was a risk. Every step against her was a risk. She could snuff me out with a click of her fingers or make me into something else entirely, turn me into a lesser. My feathers quivered at the thought. “Then use your talents to distract her.”
He snorted. “Your faith in getting me killed is inspiring.”
I stepped back. The veil’s presence rippled and twitched, devastatingly tempting. Only princes and half-bloods had the control to step through. Once I did, there would be no undoing it. Whatever lay on the other side would not welcome me. The princes of the Dark Court were just as likely to flock to the veil demon as they were to stop her. But I could reason with Baal, the king—if he didn’t kill me on sight.
I lifted my hand and swept my claws in an arc, calling on the control and poise that made me worthy of my name. The fabric of two worlds parted, flickering and dancing, spilling light over me. It pushed against me, trying to scratch me off like an irritating parasite, but I had the opening under my control.
“Say hello to Hell for me,” Torrent said.
I stepped through.
Chapter 20
The netherworld air rushed in to reduce me into something unworthy. It licked over my wings and lapped at my skin. Air poured down my throat like syrup. It had been so long that I almost stumbled at the sensory imbalance, but I quickly regained my composure. This was normal.
The sky bled its purple and black clouds across a midnight canvas sky. I blinked, adjusting my sight to the hues.
The hole in the veil crackled closed behind me, leaving me standing on the landscape of a desolate world. A scorched valley spread in front of me. A lesser demon snuffled through the undergrowth nearby. It stumbled upon my elemental touch, yelped, and bounded off, crashing through the bushes.
I am Pride. I spread my wings. And I’m home.
Dissolving into air, I swept over valleys and plains, surveying all that remained. Savage cracks had pulled the land apart. Seas I’d once swam in had dried, leaving basins of dust. Silent lightning flashed in the distance behind a ridge of jagged hills. Scorch marks blackened the earth. A valley of tree stumps projected from the ground. The netherworld had always been on the verge of tearing itself apart. Now it was a slowly rotting carcass. The chaos that had always saturated the air since my brethren and I had slaughtered the queen was absent. Once again, the elements were under control.
A fortress butted out of a hillside. Massive battlements had been hewn from the black rock, shaped by the greatest earth elemental the netherworld had ever known, the king, Baal. The structure dug deeper into the earth than the façade suggested. The last time I’d seen it, the walls had been crawling with lessers summoned by the breakdown of chaos.
Circling on the warm air currents, I saw how the center of the fortress had been sealed and shaped into a dome of rock. I probed its seams with air and found only one weak spot. A prison. The queen would be inside. But it wasn’t her I was looking for. Chaos couldn’t be reasoned with. Control, on the other hand…
There were hundreds of demons slinking behind stone walls. As air, my phantom touch whispered over those milling around the courtyards, chilling their flesh. I ventured in through arched windows, mapping the best way to the Court’s cham
ber. Lessers perched on ledges, and some scurried around the halls. Their numbers comprised most of the signs of life, but I sensed the throb of considerable power deeper inside the fortress. The king was home.
It occurred to me, as I flew silently and invisibly through the fortress halls, that I was a prince, but not of this Court. I hadn’t ascended by traditional means. That made me an outsider. Baal would be within his rights to attack. This homecoming could get interesting.
As I streamed closer, the throne room doors hung open, elemental symbols flickering inside their construction. I eased inside and assessed the demons crowded around the vast banquet table. A Court, but not of princes. I had arrived during a discussion of sorts. High demons had gathered to petition their king to reinstate a Dark Court. Two thrones sat empty. I hovered above and behind them, no more than a whisper.
Baal’s formidable presence dominated his end of the table. Human history spoke of winged monsters, calling them dragons. Baal’s scaled wings, long tail, and blazing eyes were certainly the source of those tales.
But there was another demon here. One I had no wish to see unless it was to strip the skin from his bones as he had done to me with fire. He wasn’t at the table with the others. He was tucked away beside the wall, almost entirely cloaked in shadows. Contained fire flickered in his black eyes.
Mammon.
Baal looked up. His head swiveled, and his reptilian eyes narrowed on me.
The demons around the table fell silent.
Time to make my entrance. I settled my ghostly self on the dais and made the most of reshaping myself from the air they all breathed, adding a few unnecessary flourishes. A swirl here, a flick of feathers there. Naturally, once solid, I spread my wings, embracing the room. Read my glorious wings and weep.
A warning snarl rippled across Baal’s lips.
“Hello, darlings,” I purred in British English. How delightful it was to see them recoil. Oh, to see the horror on their demon faces and hear their collective growls. Some even bowed their horned heads. How I had missed this.
“Pride.” Mammon strode out of the shadows, lava veins throbbing. He reached into the air and pulled a shimmering blade from the veil—the elemental blade. He couldn’t mean to—
Baal stepped in, blocking Mammon. They shared the visual equivalent of locking horns before Mammon pulled back. His heat lingered on me long after his glare had gone. The blade vanished from his hand, and the Prince of Greed stalked back into his shadows, eyes aglow. Old feuds still burned hot between us.
I retracted my wings and ruffled my feathers. “It seems your Court is lacking in numbers, Baal.”
The king’s gaze trawled across my form and lingered on my wings. I am built anew. His sharp mind would be asking how and why. Where had my power come from? Was I a threat? My warning had been clear without spilling a drop of blood—yet. I was unlikely to get away without a fight, but I preferred to avoid it for as long as possible.
“Leave,” Baal ordered his flight. His deep voice resonated through the air, lacing it with control. Of the higher demons gathered, only Mammon had the balls to deny the king’s order. The others filed out. Mammon didn’t move. He stayed in the shadows, a pillar of everything I despised about my kin.
“Mammon?” Baal urged. It was a curious display—for the king to ask Mammon to leave instead of ordering him. They had always been close. Mammon had hidden the king in the human realm right after the original queen’s death—the very same realm Mammon had barred me from. Baal had stayed disguised as human for many years, living a normal life. It was that life I hoped would give me leverage in my petition for help.
The air grew heavy with Mammon’s heat. He made sure to drag out his defiance before skulking out the door.
In his absence, the room instantly cooled.
“Pride,” Baal grumbled. “You are restored.”
“You have questions. I will answer those I can. But know I did not come to fight.” I stepped off the dais and joined the watchful Baal at the long table. Elemental glyphs swam beneath the table’s surface. In the netherworld, glyphs existed in the same way the veil did. They responded to power, moving to equalize the elements to avoid any one element becoming too powerful. As I pressed my fingers to the tabletop, the glyphs fled, sinking into unknown depths. For the first time in as long as I could recall, the table was blank.
Baal’s intake of breath said it all. “It is not possible.”
He pressed his massive clawed hands against the surface. Next to mine, his clawed hands were the type to crush skulls. Mine were too, but with finesse. The glyphs didn’t return.
“How?” He looked at me with suspicion. Only the king could control the glyphs. They were his language, created by him to control the elements. And I had chased them away. I hadn’t done it deliberately, but he didn’t need to know that. If I could vanquish the king’s language within his fortress walls, what else could I do? Oh yes, I could see the concern in his eyes.
How did I approach this? Threaten him or entice him? Terrify or anger him? Demons didn’t respond to threats the same way humans did. If they couldn’t tear it to shreds, they usually bowed to it instead. What if I was about to hand the veil demon a demon king?
When I took too long to answer, Baal asked, “The veil is closed. None have been able to open it. And yet here you are, Pride, as if by magic, wielding unknown power. How have you returned?”
I lifted my fingers off the table. “In all your years, did you ever wonder if there was more to the elements?”
“More? Be clear with your words, Pride.”
How much of the human male remained in this demon? Centuries in the netherworld eclipsed a few decades in the human realm. Did he even remember his human life? Would he care?
“The City of Angels has fallen,” I told him. “The humans need your help before the rest of their world falls too.”
Chapter 21
Baal listened, asking few questions, while I explained how events had escalated from swarming lessers to a nameless all-powerful demon remaking a city with her hands. By the time I finished, the light outside the throne room windows had turned from mauve to orange.
“And your wings? I witnessed Mammon burn you. How did you come to be so… you again?”
“There were various attempts to create a new Court, but this?” I flicked my claws over my shoulder. “She restored me and more. The power she wields outshines yours.”
His expression—always difficult to read behind his scales—flickered. “Why?”
“We don’t know.”
“We?”
“Kar’ak is there, although somewhat altered. He now answers to the name of Torrent.”
“Prince Leviathan’s son? His father killed him—”
“Some might argue what Leviathan did to his son was worse.”
The king moved around the table, eyeing it and me carefully. “And this demon… she is all the elements?” He trailed a claw along the table’s surface. The glyphs still hadn’t returned.
“She is the veil.”
“How do you know for certain?”
I chuckled. “You would not ask that had you met her.”
“And yet you are here, scheming to bring her down, when she has given you everything you desired for so long. You are in your prime again. You could rival any here at my Court, perhaps even me.” He gestured at the plain table. “So why do you plot against her?”
“It’s the demon thing to do.”
“Pride.” He laughed, and the sound crept in and around my power, soothing, teasing, trying to work its way into my thoughts and know my mind. The king was not without his mental gifts. His voice could soothe and smother and make lesser minds pliable to his will. “Of all the princes, you always spoke the truth. I found it refreshing. Others, less so. Do not lie to me.”
“There are humans there. Humans I… care for. Their world is worth preserving, lest it become a ruin like ours. They have lifted themselves out of the mud and evolved into creat
ures with dreams and ambitions. They deserve their freedom.”
“Yet it was their foolishness and greed that brought this catastrophe upon them.”
“I do not proclaim them to be perfect. Evolution is not a straight line. There are false starts and mistakes. We stopped evolving long ago. We could learn much from them.” From any other demon, these words would be heresy. But I was hoping Baal remembered. “But only if they survive.”
“Perhaps this mistake should be their undoing? Why should I intervene and risk the wrath of this force of nature upon me and my realm?”
“It’s the right thing to do.”
“The right thing?” Baal laughed again, and it curled the tips of my wings. “You remind me of someone. She would have said the same.” He approached a window looking over the battlements. “You are the least demon-like demon I know, Pride. But you are much changed. I do not trust easily.”
“Changed, but for the better.”
Baal’s crocodilian lips turned into a curve resembling a smile or a snarl. “Leave me while I consider your words.”
As soon as I left the table, glyphs bobbed back to the surface. Baal noticed and acknowledged the implications with a nod.
Had I done enough? If I failed here, billions of lives could be lost. What would earth become with a demon goddess as its creator? Hesitating in the doorway, I turned and caught Baal’s eye.
“I don’t know why she hasn’t asserted herself on this side of the veil. Perhaps she isn’t aware the netherworld exists, or perhaps she’s preparing to attack while we discuss what we should do, or perhaps she already knows this land is dead. You mentioned how I could challenge you, Baal. Know I will not stand by while the entire human race and their world are destroyed and remade into something more netherworldly.” My claws creaked against the doorframe. “I will not let that come to pass.”
“Are you threatening me, Pride?” the King of Hell growled.
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