Hell Hath No Fury (Razing Hell Book 3)

by Cate Corvin

  Then I saw what I was so desperately searching for, high overhead.

  Tascius and Lucifer, light and dark, each full of a radiant light that didn’t belong to Hell. I blinked away tears from their brilliance. Looking at them was like looking into the sun.

  And there was still the offputting sensation that something was wrong with Tascius. He had the white and silver tones of an archangel, the darkness and smoke around him burned away to nothing.

  Lucifer hefted a spear over his shoulder, heavenly fire rippling along its length. His light was warmer than Tascius’s, gold next to the silver, sunlight to moonlight.

  I released the tip of the pyramid and shot upwards, gripping the Sword so hard it felt like it’d been fused to my hand.

  “Lucifer!” I shouted, but both of them had seen me before I’d even spoken. Lucifer’s eyes widened as Tascius’s narrowed. Lucifer was relatively untouched, but my Nephilim was already streaked with blood, his exposed skin slashed up.

  “You weren’t supposed to be here,” the Morningstar started to say, but he caught sight of the Sword in my hand, the flames dancing around my fingers. Relief battled with chagrin in his gaze.

  “I need to be here,” I snapped, drawing level with them but not daring to look too close. If they were blinding from below, being this close was like trying to fly into the sun. “Bring your father out so I can kill him.”

  I didn’t tell them how nervous it made me that I felt almost nothing through the marks. It was like a wall had been built between me and them; on the other side of that wall there was nothing but pure power and cold judgment.

  “Stay out of the way, Melisande.” Hearing the ringing tones of an archangel’s voice come from Tascius was like a knife to the heart.

  When I’d given him wings, what had I made? And Adranos looked different now that he’d killed a Prince he was linked to by blood…

  “This was the plan,” I said, looking down into the abyss. Leviathan’s Witches were steadily eating away at the cold fire, and it had dwindled away to nothing more than an ember. If I squinted hard enough, I could just make out the tips of spires that were all too familiar. Satan’s palace was slowly being unearthed. “I have the Sword; I’m ready to do this.”

  Lucifer’s wings spread wide and he rose another several yards. “I’m breaking through the last of it. Get over the Circles. Tascius, take her.”

  He sounded a thousand years distant. I considered fighting back, but without that barrier gone, we wouldn’t have a clear line on Satan’s heart.

  I felt a hand touch my shoulder and flew away with Tascius, hovering over the edge of the Ninth Circle. Warmth spiraled through the mark on my wrist, easing the ache in my fingers after gripping the Sword so hard for so long.

  But when I looked into Tascius’s face, the changes hadn’t stopped. He was still himself, but the metallic blue in his eyes was more pronounced than ever.

  “Let him do this, little friend.” He nodded to Lucifer, who was still climbing into the sky.

  I was so relieved that he still sounded like himself. Planning this war seemed to have started a chain effect of changes, and it terrified me that I couldn’t see where they were going.

  I squinted up at Lucifer, just able to make out his form beneath the light he threw off. The blazing tip of the spear, the dark spirals of his tattoos against golden skin.

  Then he plunged, lighting up like a meteor.

  The Witches pushed a last burst of energy into their net, consuming everything that was left of the cold fire as Lucifer hurtled downwards, spear raised. All of Dis seemed to hold its collective breath as the Morningstar plunged into the abyss and struck the barrier with everything he had.

  A sharp crack rang out over the city, followed by a deep rumble that grew in volume until the demons below clapped their hands over their ears, some shrieking as blood dribbled out between their fingers.

  The real explosion came after. I barely threw up my magical shield before it hit and still dropped several feet in the air from the force of the shockwaves, my heart skipping several beats and chest reverberating.

  When the last shock passed, leaving a hollow ringing in my ears, I felt wetness across my mouth.

  I reached up and touched my mouth, and took my fingers away. Fresh blood was painted across my fingertips. My nose was bleeding.

  I flicked away the blood and wiped my face on my sleeve, paying no mind to the fresh gush of blood. “Did he make it?” I breathed.

  The abyss was no longer lit with cold fire. The Witches’ net was gone, and they were all sprawled around the edge of the Ninth Circle, thrown backwards from the force of Lucifer’s strike.

  Smoke coiled from the depths of the pit, but it wasn’t the sort of smoke that came from fire. It was dense, oily, seeming almost like shadows come alive. As it spilled upwards over the rim of the lowest Circle, it began to stretch out, blindly creeping over bodies and living warriors alike.

  They almost stampeded to get away from the touch of that smoke. The Witches who were still conscious raised magical barriers between the smoke and the hordes of demons behind them, but even from up here, I saw their magic flicker and buckle.

  Even the touch of Satan’s shadows was enough to overpower their shields.

  The smoke stirred, and a searing pain went through the mark on my chest.

  I clapped a hand to it, gritting my teeth against a cry of agony. It burned like nothing I’d ever felt before, feeling like it had seared right through my skin to the bone beneath.

  “What is it?” Tascius asked, pulling my hand away. He shifted his hands to grab me as my wings gave out, keeping me from falling out of the sky.

  “It burns,” I gasped, clenching my hands. “It’s burning!”

  “There’s nothing there, Melisande,” he said desperately. “Just Lucifer’s mark.”

  I dragged in a rattling breath, my lungs constricted from the pain. My connection to Lucifer was muted as the pain grew, blinding me.

  Then his emotions screamed through the bond: shock, rage, regret.

  The pain went dead instantly, along with my connection to Lucifer. I gasped in deep gulps of air, wings shaking, and felt for him as my terror grew.

  There was absolutely nothing. The connection was dead. The mark might as well have been placed on my skin with ink and nothing more.

  “Tascius,” I whispered, my hand shaking as I lowered it. “I think Lucifer’s…”

  I couldn’t bring myself to finish my sentence. He couldn’t be dead. I didn’t accept that as a possibility.

  But Tascius was looking far below. “Melisande, look…”

  The smoke was agitated and swirling from the Pit, flashes of scarlet light illuminating a vague form.

  A titanic form, crawling up from the depths of the Abyss.

  “Satan,” I whispered as an enormous clawed hand gripped the edge of the Ninth Circle. Each talon was larger than a Prince, one of them piercing a Witch right through the chest.

  As the first of the Dragon’s heads reared above the smoke, something else shot upwards alongside them, still gripping a spear that was blackened with the explosion of heavenly light that it had channeled, his dark tattoos now a brilliant, bloody crimson. Relief ripped through me like a tidal wave.

  Lucifer Morningstar was alive.

  30

  Melisande

  He didn’t leave his father’s side as Satan ascended the abyss.

  “Why is he with him?” I demanded. The Sword hung heavy in my hand, waves of power pulsing as it sensed its mortal enemy nearby. It wanted to be used against him, practically vibrating in my grasp. White light spilled off the blade and lashed out at empty air.

  Satan rose above the smoke, a stench of decay rolling over the Circles and reaching us in the sky. I took shallow breaths, my stomach turning at the corpse-stench that accompanied the Dragon out of the Pit.

  He was exactly as I’d dreamed; the green of decay, scales tinged with rusty red at the edges, and parts of him had bee
n eaten away in patches to reveal the gleam of white bone beneath his hide.

  His heads writhed, some lashing out at easy prey and gulping demons down whole.

  Tascius shook his head, hefting a spear. “Melisande, stay the fuck away from Lucifer. This wasn’t part of the plan.”

  Lucifer’s newly-crimson tattoos seemed to throb when I looked at them too close. He watched impassively as one of the Dragon’s enormous heads swayed in front of him like they were communicating, then his own head slowly turned to look up at us.

  His quicksilver eyes were as flat and dead as a painting. There was no recognition in them, nothing of the Lucifer I knew. They moved over my face then down to the Sword in my hand.

  “Melisande, move!” Tascius shouted, thrusting himself between me and the Morningstar as Lucifer shot towards us, spear raised.

  It was almost beyond my comprehension that Lucifer would actually attack us. I felt like I was numb, flying backwards to avoid the first strike that Tascius blocked for me.

  Satan let out a barking laugh from three of his heads and heaved himself upwards, obsidian cracking under his claws. Enormous wings burst free from his back, splattering blood and flesh over the Ninth Circle as they broke free. They were red, the veins lacing through them pulsing with dark blood, dwarfing the city with their size.

  Still caught in the shock of Lucifer turning on us, flying away from Tascius on his command, I almost came face to face with one of the weaving heads.

  I ducked aside, narrowly avoiding the needle-teeth snapping closed around me. The sharp clack of teeth closing chased my heels, and when I turned to swoop away, Satan tilted his head, peering at me with one enormous eye.

  It was full of endless amusement and insanity. A forked tongue flickered out, and the head continued to rise as the Dragon emerged.

  He crushed countless demons as he trampled through the Ninth and Eighth Circles, spreading his still-wet wings to rise. The smoke swirled around Dis in a storm, a tornado over the city, but the heart of the storm wasn’t an eye of calm.

  I heard Tascius shout, and heat sizzled past me, singing the tips of my feathers. Lucifer had broken through, and he was bearing down on me, lifting another spear to throw.

  Feeling sick, unable to raise my Sword against him, I darted away, flying hard for the other side of the city. I wanted to turn, to plead and beg for him to remember me, but with the mark between us dead I knew there was no point.

  Lucifer was no longer mine. If I stopped, there would be no reasoning, only death at his hands.

  Whatever Satan had done to him, I was determined to make the Dragon pay.

  “Come back, angel,” Lucifer called, laughter in his voice. He sounded like himself, but the cold, dead tones were nothing like him at all. It was an empty mockery of the Lucifer I knew. “I have a gift for you. You wanted to interfere, so here: I’ll end it all for you. Nothing more to worry about.”

  I bypassed sadness and went straight to pure wrath. Rage boiled in my veins and the Sword of Light responded, leaving streaks of rainbow light in the air behind me.

  I didn’t want to kill him. I wouldn’t do it. But if I had to take him out of the game long enough to get the real Lucifer back, I would.

  I just had no idea how to do that. Fighting him with the Sword might lead to his death.

  One of Satan’s enormous wings lifted in the air and I just barely raised myself in time to glide over it, feeling the displacement of air beneath me from the sheer volume of his size. He could rain down destruction with one wingbeat.

  I gritted my teeth and rounded the edge of Dis, expecting Lucifer to still be hot on my heels.

  But when I whirled and turned, raising a magical shield along with the Sword to block any attacks, I was alone.

  One of the Dragon’s heads watched me from below, his long neck slowly unfurling as he stalked me. I darted away again, desperately looking for Tascius’s moonglow gleam in the storm of shadows around us.

  Red lightning flickered, and the Dragon’s entirety was illuminated as he stood on the Ninth Circle’s shelf. He stood on his scaly hind legs, so enormous he almost looked like he was moving in slow motion.

  His wings spread wide, the leathery bones straining, and I braced myself for the coming storm.

  They beat once, twice, three times. The wind screamed in my ears as it whirled into a storm, ripping at my hair and clothes, trying to yank me right out of the air.

  It succeeded. I caught a glimpse of Tascius tumbling away as I went flying, spinning head over heels, ripping through clouds of smoke on my way down.

  I hit something hard with my shoulder and stretched my wings, breaking my fall and gliding to the top of a building. The electric lights flickered wildly and I landed hard, stumbling and going down.

  I curled up on myself as I was swept nearly to the edge, clutching two things for dear life: the Sword of Light, and the shield centered around my abdomen.

  When the wind calmed enough to yank my hair out of my eyes, stiff with blood from my freshly-bleeding nose, I looked up.

  The Dragon was airborne, cutting through the swirling storm overhead.

  He was escaping, and his chest was exposed. His vulnerable heart.

  I had no sense of anyone through my marks but confusion and determination. Buildings were crumbling and shattering all over Dis; flames that had nearly died out had roared to life again. Demons were scattered everywhere, many broken by the concussive force of the Dragon’s emergence.

  Here was my chance, and I was all alone to face it.

  I wiped my nose and got to my feet, my muscles trembling with exertion. The Sword’s power reached out to me, seeping through my veins and cradling in my chest. It was ready.

  I launched after the Dragon, chasing it down with a desperation I hadn’t known I possessed. Everything in the universe centered on accomplishing this one thing.

  I swooped around the barbed, whipping tail to his front, preferring to take my chances with his claws to the blasts of his wings. One ill-timed flap would send me plummeting straight back into Dis.

  His lower belly was scaled as well, but pale as death, gleaming like bone. I climbed past his folded hind legs and curled claws, my eyes focused on the one spot that mattered: the thin and pulsing skin over his heart.

  It was so close, yet seemed like miles away. Ignoring the ache and strain of my wings, the tug of the back muscle that threatened to pop and cripple me again, I bore upwards with everything I had, the Sword brightening to become a supernova in my hand.

  All of Satan’s heads stretched upwards as he pushed himself into the sky, not seeing death coming for his heart.

  I raised the Sword, letting the fire rip through me as I exploded towards his heart, and swung with perfect precision.

  Blinding light ripped through my eyes as the Sword struck something, but it didn’t feel like the soft give of flesh.

  I blinked away the spots of light and looked into quicksilver eyes.

  “Not so fast, angel,” Lucifer whispered. He gripped his spear with both hands, the Sword’s blade buried in it and trembling from the aftershock of the blow. The crimson tattoos on his skin pulsed and blurred, branching out to cover him like a web.

  “Lucifer, no,” I gasped, ripping the Sword away and beating my wings. I soared above him, desperately chasing after Satan’s heart, knowing my chance was gone as long as Satan held his son in thrall.

  I was close enough to strike, the Sword pulsing in my hand like a star. With a last desperate swing, I drew back my arm, ignoring the rush of an approaching attack behind me.

  A sharp crack filled the air, followed by pain that rushed through me on a more physical level than the destruction of the mate mark had. It was the blinding, crippling agony of a bone snapping, my wing folding in on itself.

  I flapped desperately and the pain became blinding. The sky seemed to recede, and I realized I was falling, no longer able to fly.

  Satan was escaping. I put every last drop of strength into throwin
g the Sword, aiming straight for Satan’s heart, and the light of the Sword went out as soon as it left my hand.

  It flew towards him straight as an arrow, but Lucifer bolted from the sky before it reached the Dragon, bringing down his blackened spear in the middle of the blade with an explosion of his heavenly fire.

  The lightless Sword exploded, fracturing into a hundred pieces that tumbled back down to Dis.

  I fell alongside them, flipping head over heels, caught in the tempestuous wind and unable to save myself. As I fell, I saw something that made my heart squeeze tight in my chest: a tiny, pale figure caught in the Dragon’s hind claws as he flew away.

  He had Vyra, and I hadn’t even seen her.

  I struggled to spread my wings and stop my fall, but the pain of my broken wing ripped through me, freezing my lungs, making every muscle bunch up tight as a wire.

  I’d failed. This was the end for both of us.

  The shadows in the sky formed a whirlpool punctuated by red lightning, and the Dragon raced upwards, vanishing into it with Lucifer by his side. The whirlpool dissipated almost instantly, a portal snapping shut to prevent us from following.

  I spun again, facing the Pit as I plunged towards it. The driving wind pulled tears from my eyes, whipped my own blood across my face to streak my cheeks, but all I could focus on was the darkness of the growing abyss.

  It yawed beneath me, lightless and beckoning, promising a swift but painful death when I hit the towers at the bottom.

  Several sensations registered dimly as I plummeted, tearing through the marks on my palm, wrist, and spine. Horror and desperation. They knew I was going to die.

  I could see the towers below. I plunged beneath the rim of the Ninth Circle like a comet, hitting total darkness, the stench of death, the obsidian floor that welcomed my broken body.

  My eyes squeezed shut as I raced for death, but the thing I hit wasn’t the hard stone I was expecting.

  I was weightless, formless. I opened my eyes and saw nothing but stars, growing and dying around me like fireflies. They were in my outstretched hands, which I peered right through to see the floor of Satan’s palace only ten feet below me.