“With pleasure.” Her voice wobbled, and I felt another pang in my chest. I’d pushed Penny at danger a time or two, but always with the awareness that she had a line—one I shouldn’t cross. Something told me this trip had finally shoved her over.
I’d have to make amends later, though—more demons were coming around from behind, trying to trap us. I could feel their magic pulsing.
“What’s the story, Darius?” I called back.
“Work on the front. We have the back.”
Penny blasted fire from beside me, catching my arm in the crossfire. At least it wasn’t my eyebrows.
I joined with more hellfire, ripping it through the heads and bodies of the demons on the left. A wicked spell let loose, Emery joining the fray.
“Fuck it,” I ground out. I might be royalty, but I still hated walking into battle. There was nothing for it but to charge.
I picked up the pace, running now, closing the distance. I stopped the hellfire as we circled the last corner before the entrance. The breath whooshed out of me.
The place was packed.
The larger creatures blocked the way, but I could see the smaller variety behind them, and another demon in a wrinkled suit. Power pulsed, hard and hot, from their crew. It shoved me, tossing me backward into Penny and Emery, before hardening into a wall.
“How’s that rear?” I called, working at that magic, applying fire to rip it apart. It wasn’t as intricate as some of my father’s creations, but these demons were obviously more powerful than the ones we’d just roasted and toasted, and their block was robust, since they were all working together, constantly rebuilding the wall as I tried to tear it down.
“All dead,” Cahal called up.
It isn’t a continuous stream of enemy from back here, Darius thought. We’ve dispatched them. There is likely nowhere to escape to in that direction. We must leave this way, or not at all.
“Oh, we’re leaving.” I rolled my neck and took a second, studying what was in front of me, like I might any spell. “It’s really not so different,” I mused, tracing the magic with my eyes, feeling it, noticing the complexities of the construction. “I have to break it down all at once, like tearing off a Band-Aid, and then attack before they can get their bearings.”
“What can we do?” Emery asked. His arm brushed mine, and a zing of magic worked through me. It reminded me of taking down that massive spell at the Mages’ Guild when we somehow merged our power and were able to tag-team a robust spell to bring it down.
The pyramid of power…
I put out my hands. Emery’s rough fingers wrapped around my right wrist. Penny’s hand filled my other hand. Usually I would shrug it off and tell her to grab me in a not-so-friend-friend place, but, well, if she wanted to hold hands, I owed her that.
Plus of a lot of dead things.
Electricity rolled across me, and our magic swelled, filling the space and beyond.
“Wow, you boosted your power,” Emery said as he pushed up to analyze the spell.
I punched holes through weak parts of the construction, spurting fire through them, while Penny and Emery worked on a spell. She bent to look at a section, and Emery let go of my wrist to hook his arm through mine and waggle his fingers. In a moment, I felt their magic join together, and then it joined mine as I continued to poke holes in all the weak areas.
“Thank you, you vile little creature, for bequeathing me your magic…” Penny muttered, and I knew she was talking about the Red Cap that she’d stolen the godly magic from. The demons’ air wall blackened from the middle, the damage working outward like spiderwebbing glass. A hole developed and started growing.
I pushed the fire through faster, my own secret sauce aiding the dual-mages’ combined efforts—the three of us tearing the wall down.
Emery flinched beside me.
“What?” I asked.
“Something’s…coming. My…” He paused again.
“His premonition.” Penny’s breathing came faster.
“A large demon with black wings, followed by a black dragon…” Emery said. “I keep getting it, over and over. It isn’t immediate death, but—”
“My father. Shit. He’s coming.” I glanced back for Cahal. His eyes were flat and hard.
Go, he thought. You cannot get caught.
“How’s your pain tolerance?” I asked through gritted teeth, working faster, feeling the enemy trying to rebuild. They were building a new wall of air down the way, too, knowing they only had to delay us, not stop us.
“I look like a cue ball, how do you think?” Penny asked. “We have something that helps.”
“Great.” I shook them off and pushed forward, the edges of the fraying wall catching me but not hurting. It was my magic; of course it wouldn’t hurt.
Penny grunted. No one else made a sound.
I reached the first line of demons like a falling star, anger exploding out of me in bursts of complex, incredibly powerful magic. I slashed and struck, summoning fire from the ground and reaching into ten of the weaker demons and grabbing control.
Kill… I commanded them, turning them on one another, their swords swinging, arms and chunks of flesh flying. Blood spattered me and a demon crashed to the ground on the right, Penny’s spell taking half its face off. Large bodies fell on the left, Emery’s fighting having always been wicked.
Darius pushed up beside me as I used air to shove the demons in front of us into a funnel, letting us fight a dozen at a time instead of the whole host. His swampy, whitish vampire form hissed, and he burst into action, ripping and tearing with his claws and magic. He lunged forward and tore into a demon’s neck, drinking while he was there, and then picked it up and threw it ahead of us.
Penny exploded it in midair.
“Good grief, Penny, he was already dying,” I said, working my hellfire in bursts, needing to keep firm control over my energy. I couldn’t fade like I had at the elves’ castle. This time, I had to make it through to the end. We all did.
“And now he is decorating our enemy, isn’t he?” she said.
“I think I just got lady wood,” I said with a grin as I activated my air sword and skewered a demon. I blasted fire down the way and held the air funnel, fighting against those trying to tear it down.
Ten more demons turned against their peers, aiding Darius’s rip-and-tear-fest to my right. Spells were lobbed over us, vicious and deadly, leaving ribbons of flesh by the time we got closer.
There are still too many, Cahal said.
“I got another premonition,” Emery yelled. “Whatever is going to happen is going down soon.”
“Dang it,” I spat out, pushing harder, faster.
Another pulse of air shoved against mine, this one the strongest I’d felt. Had to be the sect leader—the conspector. They’d pack the most punch.
“Take the others,” I said, veering that way. I’d need to take the head honcho out to give us a fighting chance.
A wave of inhuman shouts and yelling filled the hall, followed by a chorus of hissing. A demon body flew high. Then another, blood gushing out and raining down on those below.
“More vampires,” Penny said. “Ja…” The name was spoken on a sigh of relief. She clearly thought Ja wouldn’t betray us. She was almost certainly correct. Hopefully.
I kept my focus, pushing to the right, toward that pulse of power I’d felt. I released my hold on the remaining demons around Darius, stunned now and easy pickin’s for him. I grabbed a few other demons, keeping the effort small to save strength, and directed them at that pulse. I caught sight of it, a female form in a man’s wrinkled suit, on a little dais, overlooking the shifting, seething crowd.
“What is the deal with the wrinkled suits?” I asked as I closed the distance, shoving demons out of my way with a swell of magic, then lighting them on fire and letting them burn.
The leader’s beady eyes flicked and shifted until they landed on me. It didn’t make any sign that it knew me. Or show any emotion at all, a
ctually. It stared, blank-faced, with a pug nose much too close to its eyes and a hairline starting where its eyebrows should be.
“You didn’t get that quite right,” I said, pointing as I approached, creating a channel of fire around me.
“Your highness.” It bent slightly.
I clucked my tongue. “It’s your heinous, actually, and that wasn’t much of a bow.”
I paused as the demons I controlled battled around me, through the flame, dying as they killed to create a little bubble around the leader. I motioned to the demon, knowing I needed to hurry, but stopping in front of it all the same. There would be survivors, and I wanted them to know who they were dealing with here. If I ever came back to the Underworld, it was important for them to know that I wasn’t just some human off the street—I belonged here. I had the power to prove it.
“Bow,” I demanded, and let the demons go around me. They staggered through the flame, faltering and falling.
It tensed, I could see. Its power pulsed higher as it prepared to act.
I squinted a little, tilted my head, grinned, and thought to myself, Are you sure? I wanted to see if he’d read the cues.
Nothing in its demeanor changed. Its expression didn’t shift. Its body didn’t move. All the same, I knew it suddenly doubted whether it could stand against me.
“Bow,” I said like I was chomping on glass, speaking its language, something that came naturally when down here. I didn’t add the ending to that command, but we both knew it all the same. “Or die.”
Slowly, as though an old granny was winding its crank, it bent toward me, spine curling. Fire raged around us. A pasty-white vampire ran by, splattered in black blood, crimson dripping from its fangs.
“Good,” I said when the leader’s head was closer to the floor than the ceiling. “Do not trouble yourself about your efforts here. I know you think you are acting in my father’s best interest. I will let you make it up to me at another time. Kill one of my friends, however, and I will pull your insides out through your mouth.”
I gripped its middle in a tight fist of magic, knowing it would be much too strong for me to fully control but wanting to give it a jolt all the same. I let fire shimmy the air around it. Then I knocked it off its dais and turned. It would know my strength, it’d know I had both types of magic, and any question of my lineage would be put to rest. Why this mattered, when I might never come back here, I did not know, but Lucifer had taught me more than magic. He’d taught me to hold my own with underlings, or die when I turned my back. For better or worse, I was the heir, and I felt the need to own my place in this savage sect.
I shoved a wall of demons back, starting to feel fatigue. A spell ballooned to my right, and I knew the natural dual-mages were also fading. It wasn’t as strong or vicious as what they would normally put together under dire circumstances.
“Hurry, let’s get out of here,” I yelled as I ran toward the door, covering my people in magic and raising fire all around them.
Emery grabbed Penny and yanked her after me. Darius ran a moment later, in his monster form and covered in goo. More vampires joined us, Cahal amongst them. He’d traded up for a larger sword, and he swung it like it was an extension of his body.
Another pasty-white vampire—Ja—filed in at my side, sparing a moment to rip the middle out of a smaller demon. Without missing a step, her monster feet turned into human feet and she changed into a petite woman form…with vicious claws.
“Will your whole party take to the dragons?” she asked on the run.
I magically shoved demons out of the way as Penny and Emery fired off spells, toppling bodies. Fire rose behind us, as hot as I could make it given my dwindling energy. We made it outside as a dragon roar tried to freeze me up before the effect slid off—Archion, soaring overhead. Emery staggered, Darius bumping into him, but Penny shoved them both.
“Fight it—it’s just magic. Here, look.” She conjured a spell before the roar subsided and threw it wide, blanketing the throng of demons in front of us, trying to hurl spears up at the dragons like idiots. The spell hit them hard, their already slowed bodies turning to lead and stopping completely.
Sparkling white scales caught my eye as Saphira dove and unleashed a white-hot lick of fire. It rolled over a group of demons, as near to hellfire as non-hellfire could get. It seared those in its path, sending everyone running out of the way. She beat her large wings to lift higher into the sky before she trumpeted, her bowel-shaking roar filling the air.
“Wow,” Penny said on a release of breath, staring up at the dragon with wide, adoring eyes.
“I so called it,” I murmured, not quite sure how I was going to get everyone loaded up. To Ja I said, “Yes, we’ll double up on the dragons. We’ll go out the way we came in. You should take another exit, though, straight to the Edges. Lucifer is coming. We’ll tear down the containment spell, but he might be hot on our heels.”
“Noted. We’ll work out the particulars on the other side.” She meant about who owed whom. She put a hand to my shoulder, her eyes serious. “Get out of here alive, heir. Get to the Brink. There is no other option.”
She morphed into her other form and sped away, her people with her.
I shepherded the others to the side of the building, away from the panicked crowd trying to fight three dragons. No one else came out of the building after us. The conspector had clearly thought better about killing one of my people and going up against three powerful dragons. Wise.
Archion, I thought with everything I had. But he was across what had turned into a battlefield, cleaning up the perimeter with bursts of flame.
“Stay here,” I told Darius, sweeping my gaze to Cahal.
“No.” Penny reached forward to grab me, her eyes wild. “No! Not this time. If we go anywhere, we go together. I’m not leaving you alone in danger.”
I didn’t have time to argue, and it would be funny to give her what she wanted. I’d say I’d be going to hell but…it seemed I was already there.
“Suit yourself.” I yanked her toward me, and up we went, hovering over the battlefield to my dragon.
“Not what I meant,” she yelled, looking down as we lifted farther and farther off the ground. “Why aren’t the other demons hovering?”
“Did you just call me a demon?”
“If the shoe fits, you know what I mean?”
I laughed, thinking Archion’s name again. “They don’t have enough power, I imagine. Or don’t want to actually get eaten by the dragons. I’m not sure why they’re even fighting.”
Coppelia dove to my right before snapping out her wings and watching us. She was off a moment later, toward Archion. He gained altitude after a burst of fire before he got the message.
A spot of black on the horizon caught my attention. I squinted into the growing light of the day, trying to make it out. A black blob against the bluish sky. Was it a trick of my eyes, or had Daddy Dearest finally caught on?
“We need to make shapes,” I said softly as Archion sped toward me. A spear flew past him.
“Why? What is it?” Penny asked, following my gaze. She didn’t squint, which meant her strictly human eyes couldn’t make out what I was looking at. That was good news, at least. We had some time. Not much, but some.
Archion swooped down below us, and I let go of the hover.
“Holy fart bags,” Penny shouted before landing behind me on Archion’s back.
“Really? After all this, you still can’t swear?” I asked, thinking, We need to drop Penny on Saphira’s back. Then we have to grab the others and go. Lucifer is coming.
Archion wasted no time, his wings beating mightily.
“I have sworn—oh, have I sworn. But I have to regain some sort of decorum and hope Darius doesn’t tell you what else I have done.”
My smile was wicked, and then laughter boomed out of me as I shoved her off the dragon. Saphira was there in an instant, sliding under Penny, who grabbed on and repositioned herself as though they’d practic
ed that move a million times. I felt Archion’s surprise.
Yeah, right? I thought as he turned toward the guys, waiting for us with weapons out. I mean, I knew she would be a good dragon for Penny, but that was almost a smoother move than with us.
Beginner’s luck, he thought.
I laughed again as he reached the others and turned, blasting out billowing flames at a group of less-than-smart demon holdouts. Saphira and Coppelia joined, clearing a big space to give us time. Cahal leapt up onto Coppelia immediately, and Emery and Darius stared up at us for a moment.
“Emery with Penny and Darius with me, obviously. Let’s go!” I waved them on.
Emery paused, his eyes going distant. Crap, he was having another vision.
“Go, go, go!” I hollered.
Emery started running, looking at the sky. Darius was beside Archion in a moment as Cahal and Coppelia lifted into the air.
I have no clothes, he said, looking at Archion’s scales. He was worried about skidding his bells and tackle against rough scales. It was a fair assessment.
I had a sort of sports bra on, a strip around my breasts and upper back, as close as the demons could get to what I’d wanted, so I ripped off my shirt and laid it behind me before I lifted him up. Not like my chest being nude would have stopped me. Glancing back, seeing Emery had already climbed up behind Penny, I told Archion, We’re ready.
Darius’s arms came around me, his skin sliding against my bare sides and stomach. A delicious shiver coursed through me, but Archion lifted into the sky with brawn and power, regaining my focus.
Like we planned? Archion asked.
Yes. Same path out as we practiced, but continue on this time.
We led the way, overtaking Coppelia, as I looked behind us. My heart stopped in my throat.
It was absolutely a black blob in the sky. A big black blob in the hazy shape of a dragon heading our way. Near it, flying on its own, was another winged creature. Lucifer.
Just like in Emery’s vision.
Not to pressure you, but hurry! I thought.
Darius turned, looking behind us, and then back. We have time.
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