by Dante King
Holofernes hit me in the chest. The force of it sent me sprawling on the ground, freeing his black sword from my pitchfork. In a flash, the living statue lifted the blade over his head with both hands, intending to pin me to the earth like a butterfly with it and finish the fight.
Had he been fighting the old Luke, who only had the Angel of Darkness on his side, it would have been over for sure. But I had even more power on my side than before. I was the Beast, baby—and the Beast never goes down that easy.
As Holofernes did his downward stab, I dropped the pitchfork. I saw his red eyes widen with shock as I relinquished my weapon, making his attack sure to kill. For an instant, hesitation showed in his ageless eyes—then the corruption spurred him on.
I grabbed his blade with both hands. The sword cut deep into my palms, spilling hot blood across my robes. I screamed with the pain as flames lapped over my skin, healing the wounds an instant after Holofernes made them.
He couldn’t free the blade. He could hurt me all he wanted, but unless I let go, he couldn’t have his weapon back.
The knowledge flickered deep in the back of Holofernes’s eyes.
A cruel smirk rose to his face as he moved the sword back and forth, like someone trying to saw through a tree. He severed bones and tendons, leaving my grip gripless until the flames restored it. He tried to tug the sword away a half-dozen times, then went mad and thrust as hard as he could toward my chest.
Neither attack worked.
Try as he might, the Angel of Vengeance could not get his sword out of my grasp—not as long as I held on tight, allowing him to cut through my hands while healing it away with my magic.
A rumble came from that ancient, corrupted throat. “Die,” Holofernes growled, twisting the knife to be as cruel as humanly possible. Or inhumanly, in this case.
“It’s me,” I grunted instead, hanging on for both our lives. “It’s Luke! I should have saved you when Judyth betrayed you, Holofernes. But it’s not too late to fix the mistake! We can take Queen Titania down, together! If you’ll just let me help you…”
Holofernes’s great, ponderous head looked down at me. His mouth worked soundlessly as he looked at the pitchfork laying next to me in the dirt—the weapon of Lucifer himself, the Lord of Hell.
Slowly, with a progress that was almost agonizing, the red in his eyes began to fade.
“Judyth,” the Angel of Vengeance rumbled, like tectonic plates slamming together. “Traitor…”
“That’s right! She is! She’s a traitor!”
One of Holofernes’s hands left his sword. I’m getting through to him, I realized. I can do this. I can save him, turn him from a liability into an asset. I can use him to defeat Judyth and the rest of the Angels…
For that one moment, as Holofernes began to bend, it looked so easy.
Then Godfrey and Mareth opened fire.
“No!” I roared, but it was too late.
The big railgun on top of the hovercraft erupted with a spray of bullets, piercing the quiet Fae night with a cacophony of chaos. Most went over both of our heads, but a handful of the faster-than-sound projectiles slammed directly into Holofernes’s face, cracking the Angel of Vengeance’s supernatural armor.
I heard cheers from somewhere behind me and glanced over my shoulder.
Mareth stood on top of Godfrey, looking like a Valkyrie in a schoolgirl’s outfit as she held onto the railgun with both hands. Her triumphant screams echoed across the valley as she pumped thousands of bullets at the pissed off angel.
“Get off my man, you fucking asshole!” Mareth’s lithe body rattled like a marble in a tin can as the railgun rattled off more bullets. The succubus clung to the barrel for dear life, throwing herself into an almost suicidal charge to save me from what she thought was my execution.
It would have been touching if it wasn’t also fucking up all my plans.
Holofernes dealt a swift kick to my midsection, forcing my hands off his sword. The Angel of Vengeance was no longer trying to kill me—he wanted to get away as quickly as possible, to escape the swarm of angry hornets burrowing through his stone skin. The red glow reappeared in his eyes as he flew toward the treeline, leaving me and my wounded hands behind.
“Come back!” I commanded, trying my damndest to stop the Angel of Vengeance before he got too far away. “Damn it, Mareth, cease fire! Cease fire!”
The railgun’s chattering ended. Godfrey slowed to a stop next to me, Mareth peering down from the hovercraft’s roof. The succubus wore an expression of concern that gradually faded along with the cuts in my hands.
“He was about to kill you,” Mareth said, as if it were self-evident. “He had you down on the ground, Luke! Fuck, he was trying to cut right through your wrists…”
“I calculated the probabilities that you were in mortal danger, Master, and decided to take action.” Godfrey sounded more chastened than my succubus girlfriend, but not by much. “Had we not intervened, the possibility of you taking sufficient damage to remove you from combat was too great. If you’re not capable of facing down Queen Titania at the Day of Judgement, all will be lost.”
It made a brutal kind of sense.
Sighing, I sat up in the dirt and brushed off my robes.
“I was so close to getting through to him,” I muttered, watching the treeline as if the Angel of Vengeance might reappear at any moment. “He’s still in there, somewhere. Underneath whatever Queen Titania did to him…”
“Then we will undoubtedly face him again,” Godfrey chirped. “The Angel of Vengeance will be present in one form or another at the Day of Judgement. To think otherwise would be foolish.”
“Yeah,” I grunted, rising to my feet. “I just wish I could be sure he was on our side.”
A fighter like that would be one hell of an asset while facing down Queen Titania’s army. There weren’t many men who could turn the tide of a battle all by themselves, but I’d seen Holofernes’s fury. I felt bad for whoever wound up on the wrong side of his blade.
My pitchfork lay in the dirt. Despite being dropped, the weapon looked as clean as if it had been oiled only minutes before—and always would. As I touched it, a flow of power surged through my veins, soothing away the last remnants of my wounds.
Mareth nibbled her bottom lip. “Every time you use that thing, I feel like I’m going to soak my panties,” the succubus purred.
“You don’t wear panties.”
“I know! I should!” A lascivious grin spread across the succubus’s face. “So I could get them all wet for you, Master.”
I rolled my eyes. Mareth had a way of taking my mind off my troubles, no matter how deep the shit we’d gotten ourselves into might be. That was for damn certain.
“Let’s get back to camp,” I growled, accepting the succubus’s hand as I climbed into the hovercraft. “Siobhan and the others are going to be wondering where the hell we’ve run off to. I’d hate to miss the Day of Judgement.”
“Small chance of that happening,” Mareth giggled. “Let’s go!”
As the hovercraft sped through the Fae Realm, I took a last look back at the treeline. For a moment, I fancied I could spy a pair of glowing red eyes through the trees—but it could have been my imagination. Had I gotten through to Holofernes, at all? Or would the Angel of Vengeance go right for my throat next time?
You’ll find out soon enough, Luke, I told myself as I settled into the driver’s seat. Let’s go rally the fucking troops.
It was time to prepare for war.
Chapter 20
I barely recognized Siobhan’s camp.
While Godfrey, Mareth, and I had been busy securing Lilith’s help and acquiring my pitchfork, the future Queen of the Seelie Fae hadn’t been laying around idle, either.
What had been a disorganized group of various fantastic creatures clustered around a crumbling castle had transformed into a war camp.
Soldiers drilled in neat rows up and down the plain, methodically and precisely arranged by their mistres
s, Siobhan.
The camp looked as ready as could be.
Was I?
Mareth’s hand between my legs was all the answer I needed. “Holy shit,” the succubus murmured, leaning over from the passenger seat the way she’d been doing the whole trip back. “You’ve got an army, Luke!”
“I do,” I said, the words filling me with pleasure. “Now I’m going to use it.”
Cheers erupted from the crowd as Godfrey floated over the camp. The King of the Fae had returned, and any anxiety his subjects had that he wouldn’t come back was now soothed. Wait until they see the pitchfork, I thought.
Some clever member of Siobhan’s council had cleared a space near the castle for Godfrey, almost like a landing pad for a helicopter. We touched down without incident, and Mareth took the opportunity to touch up her makeup in the passenger’s side mirror. I, on the other hand, had business to focus on.
A crowd had already begun to form around the hovertank. My harem pushed to the front of it, shoving elves and fairies out of their way in a rush to be the first to greet me upon my return. When I stepped out of Godfrey, the pitchfork strapped to my back, the entire crowd gasped.
“I have returned,” I announced, pulling the pitchfork free. I lifted it over my head, grinning as those strange negative flames danced around its triple tines. No one who looked at it could deny what it meant. The next time they looked at Lilith, they’d see the same fire lapping at her inverted halo.
I didn’t need a crown to be the King of the Fae. All I needed was my weapon.
A figure appeared at the front of the group. It was Siobhan, dressed in skintight leather armor like a sexy cosplay of one of the elves from Lord of the Rings. She strode in front of her people, smiling from ear to ear, then dropped to her knees before me, lowering her head full of shimmering red hair. Her act of submission was the pebble that started the avalanche—within moments, every soldier in the camp was doing the same.
“My King,” Siobhan purred, amplifying her voice with magic so that everyone could hear it. “I have prepared my army in your absence. Your subjects ache for the benevolent touch of your discipline.” A tremor of lust passed through the Fae, her eyes flashing with wickedness. “As do I.”
Suddenly I was painfully, achingly aware of the fact that I hadn’t officially bound Siobhan to me yet. I’d spoken the Queen of the Seelie Fae’s true name, making her my possession, but she wouldn’t officially be one of my future Queens of Hell until I made her scream my name all over my cock.
Seeing her in that outfit, I was looking forward to it.
I wanted to peel those leathers off her with my fucking teeth.
“Oh my Satan,” Christina groaned. The blonde could no longer remain still. She sprang from her kneeling position, running her hands all over my pitchfork like she wanted to hump it. “Is that the pitchfork, Luke!? Tell me it is, baby—tell me you’ve got all that power now…”
A smirk rose to my face. “Lilith gave it to me,” I told the demon girl. “After she gave me all of her holes, of course.”
To the Fae army, this wasn’t news—just the King taking another conquest. To my harem, however, this revelation was earth shattering.
“Oh shit,” Christina whimpered, taking a full step backward. “You bound Lucifer’s ex-wife? Fuck, you really aren’t afraid of anything, are you—”
“She’s forbidden to speak that name now,” I told Christina with a smug look. “And yes, she’s my creature. Body and soul. You ought to see her halo.”
Christina’s gaze traveled past me to where Mareth stood, leaning against the side of the hovertank with a grin like a fox guarding the henhouse.
“And you were there too,” Christina murmured, no doubt picturing exactly what a demoness-succubus double blowjob would look like. “Oh fuck, that’s so hawt…”
Maddie stepped in between Christina and I, giving me a battle hero’s welcome as she threw her arms around me. “I, for one, am glad you finally bound Lilith,” the angel purred, her smile traveling from me to Christina and then to Mareth. “She’ll probably be a lot nicer now that she has a place where she can relax instead of having to plot against people all of the time. Does this mean you’ve finally made up with her, Mareth?”
The succubus cocked an eyebrow. “Something like that,” she said, crossing her arms beneath her breasts. “But don’t get it twisted. She begged us to join the harem, not the other way around. I would’ve been perfectly fine without her…”
“She is necessary,” a smooth voice said. That was Eiko, who looked even more gorgeous than usual in a long silver robe that hugged her curves the way a good sweater would. “The Headmistress of the Infernal Academy must be at your side when you begin the Day of Judgement, Luke. Otherwise, the forces of the Unseelie will triumph, and all will be lost.”
I turned my attention to the raven-haired instructor, pulling my three other babes closer as I did so. “Oh, so the gift of prophecy has come back to you?” I asked, cocking an eyebrow.
Eiko shook her head. “No,” she said with a little giggle. “I just know she’s a badass bitch, and you’re going to need her to kill a lot of people if we’re going to survive this battle.”
Fair enough.
“Where’s Raquelle?” I asked, glancing over the heads of the still-kneeling crowd.
I wasn’t worried that the renegade angel would defect or anything like that—with her bound to me, she literally couldn’t even conceive of a life without me and my harem at her side. But more than just about anyone else in the group, Raquelle had ambition—which might have led her to leave us behind and try some risky move to bring Titania down.
“She is here, isn’t she?” I asked.
As if she’d just been waiting for me to ask about her, a figure plunged from the sky.
Raquelle fell like an Olympic diver, her brilliant black-and-white wings wrapped around her lithe, coltish body. Those wings were normally her most striking feature, the first thing an observer noticed about her—but on this day, as first light broke over the horizon, what my eyes focused on was the pint-sized pixie whose tits Raquelle was using as handlebars.
Poppy, the most recent addition to my harem before I claimed Lilith, hopped out of Raquelle’s grip as the angel touched down, landing in a heap at my feet.
“Master!” both girls chorused as one.
“Well shit,” I grunted, looking around me. Other than Lilith herself, the gang was all here. “You do know how to make an entrance, don’t you, girls?”
Giggles surrounded me. My harem knew they were being bad—and they loved it.
With another sigh, I hefted the pitchfork over my head. Disciplining them would do no good. Spanking them just got them even hotter. Speaking of hot…
Dark flames wrapped around the tines of my pitchfork, sending a pillar of pure fire into the morning sky. The crowd that had been on their knees dropped to their bellies, in fright at this awesome display of power.
The wan Fae sun had just begun to peek over the horizon, and half the sky remained dark. Through the thin cover of clouds, the twinkling lights of stars could still be seen.
Morning stars. Like Lucifer himself. And now, like me.
“Rise,” I commanded my army. “There is nothing to fear. These flames are part of me. They will shield you, protect you, guide you in your war against Titania. Today, the Fae Realm will stand united, breaking the rule of the Dark Queen ever more! Today, your chosen monarch, Siobhan, will bind herself to me for all eternity—and take her throne as your leader!”
Okay, so it was a little over the top. I sounded more than a little bit like a comic book villain—but could you really blame me?
I was literally holding Satan’s pitchfork. Not to mention while surrounded by a bunch of gorgeous demon and angel babes who wanted the next Lord of Hell’s dick inside them.
The army rose to their feet, erupting in cheers.
I stretched out a hand toward Siobhan, and was gratified when she rose and took her place nex
t to me. The leader of the Seelie resistance had been a fierce woman the first time I met her. No doubt her fierceness remained on the battlefield—but under my gaze, she bloomed like a flower. Siobhan knew how to play her role. Next to me, she looked like a princess ready to receive her tiara.
Only we all knew this coronation would involve no jewelry. This was deeper, darker, more primal. Her very flesh would become mine.
“Titania’s army awaits, my King,” Siobhan said, gesturing toward the northern horizon. “Our scouts have received reports all night that the Dark Queen is on the move. She heads to our position now, flanked by an entire legion of angels.”
The Celestial Academy, I thought, my stomach sinking.
Judyth must have gone there first, cleared the place out. It made me glad I’d turned Eiko when I did—otherwise, the busty Divinations teacher would be part of Queen Titania’s army.
I thought of all the angels I’d met during my time there, from the instructors to guys like Gordon who just wanted to spar. None of them had a choice in the matter. Titania ruled her army with an iron fist, and with Judyth under her control, the Celestial Realm practically belonged to her.
Speaking of which, I thought, where the hell is my back-up?
I didn’t want to face down Titania alone. Eiko might have been kidding around when she said that without Lilith the battle was doomed to be lost, but throwing myself alone into combat against the combined might of the Unseelie Fae and the Celestial Academy was an unsavory proposition, to say the least. I needed my alma mater behind me. I needed Lilith.
She hadn’t cut and run, had she? Damn it, it would be like her to do that. I’d bound her, but if there was any being in the universe capable of finding a loophole to allow her to slip my power, it would be Lilith. She had contingency plans for her contingency plans.
Siobhan seemed to realize the same thing. Worry lined her ageless face as she looked up at me, noting the expression on my face. She matched it with a smile, giving me the guileless look of someone meeting their favorite movie star for the first time.
