Lucifer Reborn

by Dante King

  Christina’s voice echoed down her corridor, distorted almost beyond recognition: “I can’t find her! She’s not here!”

  “She’s not here, either!” Mareth growled.

  Oni remained silent. Shit, no luck there, either, I thought.

  The ruin I’d left of Karl’s head had already begun reforming. The process moved faster this time, either because I’d done less damage than the last time I’d killed him or Karl just had more mastery of the subspace around him. I let out a frustrated growl and turned to the cell door, intent on tearing the fucking thing apart the way I’d done a few minutes ago. Killing Karl wasn’t going to work long term—but maybe if I locked him in this cell, we could disable him long enough to grab Maddie and escape.

  It wasn’t much of a plan. But we’d wandered in here without a clue that we were stepping into Karl’s world, and now we were stuck. I wasn’t leaving without Maddie, and none of my friends were having any luck finding her. Which meant I’d probably need to get out of this cell and track her down myself.

  Two quick finger snaps filled my palms with new flames. I concentrated on them, increasing their heat until the fire dancing across my fingers went white, then blue. Pressing my palms to the lock, I groaned from the heat as the bars of the cell went white-hot. Slowly the steel turned a deep, demonic red, giving gently inward as the lock began to melt…

  A pair of arms wrapped around my neck from behind. “You should never turn your back on an opponent!” Karl hissed, his body fully re-formed. “That’ll be the last mistake you ever make, human!”

  Karl’s fingers dug into my throat. My wings beat against him, tendrils grabbing for his mouth and his eyes, but he was too tenacious. He hung on like a bull rider clinging to a bucking bronco, like no amount of temporary pain was going to stop him. As I watched, struggling to get free, a tendril ripped off a chunk of his scalp and splashed it against the wall. He just laughed.

  The edges of my vision began to dim. I turned and slammed him against the wall, desperate to dislodge Karl, but he locked his legs around my chest and used his core muscles to hold on tight. If Mareth or Christina were around, they could rip him off me, but I’d sent them down the hallways in search of Maddie. I was trapped.

  “Nighty night,” Karl whispered through gritted teeth. “By the time your friends make it back to check in, you’ll already be dead, Luke. You should have taken my offer while you had the chance…”

  The tendrils gripping at Karl’s ears dissolved. I felt my wings retract like it was happening to someone else, the sensation of the cell around me strangely muted. Each of my eyelids felt like it weighed about a half-ton, and suddenly I could hardly remain on my feet.

  He’s going to choke me out, I thought, panic cutting through the haze. He won’t stop until I’m fucking dead…!

  I did the only thing I could think of. With the last of my strength, I heaved my now-human body at the scorching-hot door of the cell.

  Pain flared up my arms. The lock bent, weakened from the terrible heat of my fireballs, then snapped. The cell door sprang open, and both of us fell out into the hallway. Karl’s hands left my throat as he tumbled, landing in a heap on the slick stone floor.

  I fell to my hands and knees, gasping. For long, long moments I struggled to rise, feeling desperately for my demonic powers. I had to charge back up, kill Karl again so that he couldn’t hurt my friends—

  Suddenly my head was underwater. Karl had come up and shoved my face into the channel of water running down the center of the hallway. Foul green fluid filled my mouth and eyes as I fought, trying to get my head out of the rush. I could hear Karl saying things far above me, but it was like straining to hear conversation from the bottom of a well.

  I managed to flip onto my back. This did nothing to get me out of the water, as Karl pushed me down even harder, but it did let me raise my hands to his face. Somehow, even after seeing me do the trick multiple times, he still saw me as an unarmed human.

  I grabbed his face and snapped my fingers. His head caught fire, and I was free.

  I sat up, spitting a mouthful of disgusting sewer water all over the floor. Karl backed away, clawing at his face with agonized cries, in too much pain to do the smart thing and stick his face in the water. Flames lapped at his golden blonde hair, singing it right down to the roots. He batted at himself over and over again, wriggling back and forth like a fish out of water as he tried to quell the flame.

  In an instant, I was above him. The tendrils refused to come when I called, but my wings unfurled from my back. Outside of the cell, in the intersection of the sewer paths, they could reach their full, magnificent grandeur. Their silhouette covered Karl as he clutched the burned ruin of his face, trying to shrug off the pain and attack.

  “I’ll kill you as many times as this takes,” I growled, my voice distorting as my full demonic strength rushed in. “Or we can make this easy, Karl. Give me Maddie, and my friends and I will leave you to lick your wounds…”

  Karl stared up at me, despair in his eyes. I thought he was going to do just that: give in, hand over ‘the human’ and cut his losses. He lay in a pile of blackened gore, torn by dozens of demonic wounds. Even with the healing ability given to him by the subspace, this had to be hurting him. It was an unpleasant experience to be sure.

  “We’ll fight on the leaderboards,” I added, giving him an out with some dignity. “The way true demons should. There’s no reason for us to scrap like this, Karl. Let’s both do our best, and show the Academy who is the better demon.”

  His eyes narrowed at the assumed insult. “You think because Lucifer gave you a pat on the head and a demon girl to fuck, you’re a match for me? You don’t deserve to be the Archlord, Luke. This Academy will eat you alive!”

  “Then why don’t you let it?” I countered, spreading my arms. “You’re losing, Karl. I know I can’t kill you, but every death makes you look a little weaker. You want the rest of the school to know you couldn’t take down a single human in a realm where you make the rules?”

  “Fuck you,” Karl spat.

  I kicked him in the chest, my face contorted in a snarl. “Give me Maddie!”

  Karl rocked back on his elbows, sizing me up. “Fucking humans,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Too distracted by the girl on the end of your dick to see the big picture. You care more about that mewling twat then you do Lucifer’s favor—”

  My knee came down on his throat. With considerable surprise, I realized I could just pin him like this—he wouldn’t be able to rise. I’d weakened him enough to keep him down on the ground while Mareth, Oni, and Christina hunted for Maddie.

  “I give a fuck about what’s mine,” I growled, twisting my knee a bit. “Lucifer understands that, asshole. That’s why he chose me in the first place…”

  A rumble carried down the third branch of the hallway. Unlike Christina and Mareth, I hadn’t heard a word yet from Oni. When he finally spoke, my heart leapt into my throat.

  “Master! I have found your little human!”

  “Maddie,” I gasped, half-rising into a crouch. “Get her to the exit—”

  A fist slammed into my face. Karl used my moment of surprise to shift his weight beneath me, freeing his throat. I fell to the side, the smooth stones of the sewer smacking me between the shoulder blades.

  Fuck! That hurt!

  “Sorry, Luke,” Karl growled, rising to his feet beside me. He moved unsteadily, as if I’d beaten his sense of balance right out of him. He took a staggering step away, then another, grasping out for the wall to remain upright. “Can’t let you have that girl. I might not be able to hang your head over my mantle today, that’s for damn sure, but I can bag me a cute little human instead…”

  No!

  Karl reached out, the air between his outstretched palms shimmering. Whatever magic he’d charged up, he was going to tear Maddie to pieces, the same way all those demons who’d tried to get into my trunk had wanted to do. The sound of footsteps thudded through the corridor as
Oni charged into the intersection, Maddie cradled like a baby in his massive arms.

  “Oni!” I roared, springing to my feet in a surge of strength. “Look out!”

  Lightning flashed from Karl’s fingers. I slammed into him a moment later, knocking him off his feet, but the damage was done. Oni had rounded the corner and walked right into Karl’s spell.

  The world slowed down as I raced across the stones, stepping over the channel in the center of the floor. Smoke rose from Oni’s clothing, obscuring my view of Maddie. Was she hurt? Had she been burnt to a crisp?

  As I approached, I realized the runes on Oni’s arms had begun to glow. It was those symbols the lightning had struck, leaving deep welts across the massive demon’s skin. But Maddie, tucked in between his arms, had been unhurt. Though Oni looked like he’d spent a few too many hours in a tanning bed.

  “Holy shit, Oni, thank you,” I gasped.

  “No thanks are necessary, Master,” the big man rumbled. “I merely protected what was yours.”

  On cue, Christina and Mareth emerged from their respective paths. Christina’s face lit up at the sight of Maddie, and tears spilled down Mareth’s crimson cheeks. We’d done it. Maddie was free. All we had to do was get out of here, and the fight was won.

  “Thank fuck,” Christina growled, brushing a touseled lock of Maddie’s hair away from her forehead. The poor waitress had her face buried in Oni’s chest, clinging to him like a piece of driftwood after a shipwreck. I couldn’t blame her—none of this likely made the slightest bit of sense to the poor girl. She must have felt like she’d been dropped into...well, into Hell.

  Our reunion was cut short by the sound of cackling, maniacal laughter.

  Karl stood at the end of the hallway, drawing power around himself. “Well done,” the demon growled, grasping hold of the nearest wall. “But none of you are leaving. I’m not finished playing with you yet!”

  Shit, I thought. He’s back up. Again.

  “Oni, sprint for the exit!” I clapped the hulking demon on the shoulder, like someone ordering a horse to gallop. “Get Maddie out of here. Christina, Mareth—you cover him. I’ll take the rear and hold Karl back. I’ve already proven I can kill him as many times as I have to…”

  “Um, Master?” Oni’s voice came from somewhere behind me. “I do not think I can sprint to this ‘exit’ as you’ve requested…”

  I turned. The walls melted around Oni, the environment itself reconfiguring to Karl’s wishes. He molded it, the same way I’d carved an apartment out of my subspace—only he’d had a hell of a lot more practice at it than I had. A shimmer spread across the walls, every surface on which we stood growing as watery as the sewer channel running through the dungeon.

  “Hold onto something!” I screamed. “Find the exit!”

  Karl’s voice came from everywhere at once. “There is no exit!” the demon screamed, his voice pitched with triumph. “This is my world, bitches! I control the horizontal and the vertical! Do not adjust your set!”

  Christina stumbled against me, then jumped into the air as the ground beneath us erupted into a fractal mass of spikes. They spread across the floor, covering walls which melted like butter. Stalactites hung from the ceiling, spewing jets of liquid fire as the prison around us began to collapse.

  Christina held me aloft. Mareth did the same with Maddie, cradling her as the succubus flapped her wings to stay above the spikes. Oni wasn’t so lucky. The big man broke wall after wall, his sides pierced by razor-sharp needles.

  “I’m so sorry, Luke,” Christina sobbed, looking at the devastation all around her. “We shouldn’t have come here. This was such a mistake…”

  “Fuck that!” I growled. “Bring me toward Karl! Then you grab Oni and get the fuck out of here!”

  Christina’s eyebrows drew together. “How?” she asked, looking around the Salvador Dali nightmare Karl had just turned his subspace into. “You heard Karl—he shut the only exit. There’s no way out of here!”

  “He’s lying,” I said. “His subspace is registered to the dormitories, just like mine. Which means there’s an exit that synchronized to local Academy time!” In order to snap Christina out of it, I did the one thing certain to recenter her—I gave her a hearty slap on her firm, round ass. “We just have to find it!”

  She giggled. “Shit, you’re right!” She gauged the distance between us and Karl. The demon had carved a plateau out of the melting landscape, almost like the sparring islands in the Wrath Arena. “You sure you can beat him one more time?”

  “It’s like shooting fish in a barrel,” I told her. “Only the fish like to say stupid shit before they get shot!”

  With a laugh, Christina launched me. My wings unfurled, covering the rest of the distance as the world fell away beneath us. What had been a simple dungeon was now a grand, open pit filled with lava. Only a few boulders made of glitched chunks from the former dungeon—a cell door here, a sewer line there—remained, giving Oni and Mareth something to perch on.

  I landed on the largest plateau, slamming Karl to the ground. We rolled, stopping inches from a hot plume of lava. Heat rolled over my skin, nearly baking me in my robes.

  “You just don’t give up, do you?” Karl sputtered, struggling to rise. “I’ll just have to collapse this entire subspace, then! Crush you like a bug - AAAAHHHHH!”

  I grabbed his neck and twisted, shoving him face first into the lava. It was the same move he’d done to me when this was still a sewer, only back then I’d gotten a faceful of gross water. This burnt Karl’s features clean off. His body twitched spasmodically as the pain infiltrated his body, the front of his neck and chest bursting into flames from the heat.

  “You’ll do no such thing,” I said, trusting he still had the means to hear me. “I wonder how long it would take you to reform yourself if I burnt you down to cinders, Karl? Bet that would keep you down a hell of a long time compared to a tendril in the brain…”

  As if summoned by the words, my demonic tendrils reformed. I scooped Karl up with them, tipping him upside down and hanging him over the lava. The tendrils wrapped around him until he was completely immobilized, then I hung him on a crag of rock overlooking the plateau. The top of his head was mere inches away from the churning surface of the lava. His head caught flame, burnt to a crisp, then reformed—only to touch the lava again and burn anew.

  “Luke!” Christina’s voice called to me. I looked, and saw our group arrayed on the far side of the chamber. Between two of the melted monuments that had once been wings of the prison, an arch stood made of much sterner stuff. Beneath it was a simple wooden door, the kind of thing you could pass every day for a week and never think much about.

  The exit, I thought. Got to be…

  I took off like a fucking rocket, soaring through the subspace. All around us, the last few structures collapsed into lava, melting away like a dropped scoop of ice cream. The tendrils around Karl’s body held him over the churning maelstrom of death, the only thing keeping his body whole.

  I landed next to the portal and planted a kiss on Christina’s lips. “You found it,” I growled, giving her ass a squeeze. “Good girl.”

  “Hey, I helped too!” Mareth cried. “Squeeze my butt, too!”

  “Later,” I said with a laugh. “After we get out of here. And give Oni some medical attention.”

  “Luke!” Karl’s voice echoed across the subspace. “Well done! You are truly a formidable opponent! I look forward to competing with you—”

  Christina blew a lock of blonde hair out of her face and pivoted on a heel. “Eat shit, asshole!” she yelled, tossing a nail-shard with the accuracy of a sniper rifle. It cut through the tendril suspending Karl, sending the entire mass he’d been tied up in falling to the lava below. Karl shrieked in mingled pain and horror as he sank into the sizzling lava, struggling to free himself from his bonds as his body burned.

  “I hate that guy,” Christina said with a giggle. “Can we please go home now?”

  We cou
ld. We stepped through the portal and out of Karl’s subspace, back into the hallway of the Infernal Academy’s dormitories.

  Home at last.

  Chapter 28

  As we stepped into the hallway outside of Karl’s suite, we found a nasty surprise waiting for us. Both of the security demons I’d dispatched on the way in had fully regenerated, their bloodied bodies reformed and waiting for us on the other side.

  Normally they would have been no trouble to dispatch—but after fighting Karl any number of times inside of his subspace, my demonic powers were tapped out for the moment. Both demons advanced, their faces contorted into expressions of monstrous hunger as they caught sight of Maddie in Oni’s arms. One look at her and they ignored me entirely—they didn’t even notice Christina and Mareth as they pushed past, so intent were they on consuming an innocent young mortal. Bringing Maddie into the Academy was like dangling raw meat in front of starving dogs—and I needed to do something about that as soon as possible.

  The first demon lunged for Maddie, its claws extending—only for a black shard to blossom between its eyes. Turning their backs on Christina and Mareth was a major mistake. More jet-black knives flashed from Christina’s fingers, hitting their targets with incredible accuracy. Mareth’s claws did the rest, carving the distracted demons apart before they had time to tear their gazes away from Maddie.

  “Nice job,” I said, looking over the two corpses of Karl’s security demons. Neither of them had managed to lay a finger on Oni, much less on Maddie. I made a mental note to remind myself of this later—I could do a hell of a lot of damage on all my own, but relying on my team made us even more powerful.

  “We need to get Maddie out of here,” Mareth said, staring at the woman in Oni’s arms. “This is just going to keep happening as long as we’re in the Academy. Right now, half the demons on this floor are going into a frenzy and don’t even know why.”

  “I’ve got an idea,” I said, thinking fast. “Everybody take my hand.”