by Diem, J. C.
Eyes locking on the stubs of wings that poked over my shoulders, the prince sucked in a breath. “It would appear that you are becoming like me,” he mused. A gesture at his lackeys had them closing in to surround me. “Your reign of terror comes to an end now, Hellscourge. I am the last remaining Prince and I will not allow you to usurp my position.”
“Good luck with that,” I replied then leaped at the closest lord and lopped off his head. Spinning around, I deflected a stab from a captain and kicked him in the chest. He flew across the room and landed at his master’s feet. A disdainful look from the prince had his minion scrambling towards me again.
Battle lust surged inside me as I took on my foes. They were far more skilled in combat than the soldiers had been. I cut them down one by one until only half a dozen remained. They surrounded me in a tight circle and shot nervous glances at each other as they shuffled in closer. Instead of attacking me, they sliced their palms open then knelt in unison. Only when they pressed their bleeding hands to the flagstones did I realize they were marked with runes. I’d been neatly maneuvered into a trap without realizing it.
Crimson light flared as the spells were activated. A circle of fire erupted around me and shot high into the air. I had only a few inches of room to spare. Any movement resulted in my being singed by flame. If I tried to crouch down and scrape my blade across the runes to break them, I’d cook like a lobster inside my armor.
“Capturing you was far easier than I had anticipated,” the prince gloated as he rose to his feet. He’d lost nearly all of his minions, but that didn’t seem to bother him much. He’d have plenty more to call on. “It would appear that I will not need to use any of the other runes that I have painstakingly amassed over the centuries.”
The rune that I’d painted on my arm only seemed to work against certain types of spells. It did nothing to stop the ones that were penning me in. “What now?” I asked. “Are you going to break out a bag of marshmallows and roast them? If you bring a petrified log to sit on, we can exchange ghost stories around the camp fire.”
His brows drew down at my insolent tone. “Your impertinence will come to an end once I call on my Wraith Warriors and order them to finish you off.” Two shadowy figures appeared out of thin air, drawn from the nowhere lands. Identical to the other warriors who had tried to attack me in the past, they started towards me. Stopping just out of range of the fires, they lifted their swords and angled them upwards towards my unprotected face. Wrought of the same evil essence that they were made from, the blades passed through the fire and stopped millimeters away from me. “What are you waiting for?” the prince said in annoyance. “Kill her!”
“She has already been marked,” one of his warriors replied.
“How is it possible that you survived the touch of a Wraith Warrior’s blade?” the prince asked in bafflement. Shaking off his puzzlement, he called on his weapon. A spear that stood even taller than he was appeared in his hand. The head was over a foot long and had wicked barbs just below the blade to rend and tear his victims. “Never mind,” he said grumpily. “I will finish you myself.”
Trapped in the tiny space, my axe was useless and I was going to need both hands to defend myself from him anyway. Raising my arms up to cover my face, I managed to block his first strike. Knocked off balance, I stumbled back and had to bite back a shriek of pain when fire licked over my armor.
“What is the matter?” my nemesis gloated. “Is the fire too hot for you to handle?”
I was able to tolerate the heat of being near rivers of lava, but these flames were magical. Sweat beaded on my face and ran down my back to soak my hoodie. Catching a whiff of burnt hair, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to get out of this alone. It was time to call on the cavalry.
I sent out a call to my hounds and the crab beetle, but nothing happened. Apparently, when the prince had activated his runes to trap me, he’d also ensured that I couldn’t call on my servants for help. It seemed that no one was going to be able to rescue me this time. I was on my own and I was gravely outmatched.
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Chapter Thirty-Six
Panic began to spread through me as the prince circled, seeking openings in my defense. My armor was impenetrable and my flesh was safe from being sliced open. My hands, feet and head were the only exposed areas. With his superior strength, he could easily push me off balance and send me stumbling into the flames. Even a light brush was enough to cause me extreme agony. I’d be flash fried if I attempted to jump through the runes.
Chortling in glee, my adversary rammed his spear into my left foot. Cursing, I could do nothing except shuffle around and try to keep him in my sights. He sent his spear at my face and I caught the blade by reflex instead of letting it bounce off my arms. He yanked the spear backwards, pulling me towards him and slicing my palms open. I let go and put my hands up to shield my face. The fire seared the lacerations on my hands, cauterizing them. Now I smelled like burnt flesh as well as singed hair.
Dropping the barrier in my mind, I sent a thought to my legion. How the hell am I going to get out of this?
Morax directed his attention to Sy. Do you know a rune that will circumvent the fire?
She could use the water rune, but she does not have enough room to crouch down and draw it on the floor, the hellscribe replied. I’d never be able to draw a large enough one on myself for it to dampen the flames. Not while the prince was so close.
The spear clanged against my side and I stumbled against a flame again. Someone think of something or I’m going to cook, I shouted at them all.
Help may be at hand, Sam said. Everything inside me clenched to hear his voice in my head.
What are you talking about, Morax demanded.
Look, Sam replied as he stared through my eyes. Squinting through the bright flames, I saw small dark figures creeping into the room. We imps might be classed as the lowest of the low, but my kin are braver than anyone gives them credit for. I heard the pride in his voice as a horde of imps swarmed forward to overwhelm the remaining captains and lords. It seemed that the spell the prince had cast to trap me inside hasn’t prevented them from entering the palace. It was an oversight that I hoped was about to backfire on him horribly.
Realizing that there was a problem, the prince broke off his torment of me. Imps had picked up the fallen weapons of their oppressors and had used them to send the demons back to the first realm. Dozens of them had gathered to rescue me and they’d managed to overwhelm the six remaining demons.
Staring at the diminutive rebels in astonishment, the prince threw back his head and laughed. “How very amusing,” he chortled. “The vermin have risen and are attempting to overthrow me.” Overcome with mirth, he doubled over in helpless laughter.
An imp at the forefront of the group stared at him in hatred. My breath caught when I recognized Rashida. Screaming in defiance, she bolted across the floor and swung her borrowed sword at his head. It bounced off his horns harmlessly and his laughter choked off. Snatching her up by the throat, he straightened to his full height. Her feet dangled six feet in the air as she struggled to breathe. “You dare attack a Demon Prince?” he said in a low, dangerous voice.
“I dare,” she said defiantly and poisonous thorns sprouted over her entire body.
Roaring in pain, he dropped her and swung his spear. She scrambled backwards, but the blade chopped through her body, almost cutting her in half. Two of her friends hurried forward to grab her. They dragged her out of the way as my opponent went on a rampage.
Seeing my new friend bleeding and badly wounded, rage sprang to life. Imps couldn’t die, but demons had ways of making their lives a misery. He could dismember her then separate her body parts so they could never be reunited. She would spend the rest of her existence as a helpless cripple.
Allowing my anger to turn into wrath, I waited until I was bursting with it before I called on my dagger. Only the knowledge that I would heal gave me the mental strength to bust out of this prison. Bracing myself fo
r agony, I dropped to my knees. Flames immediately washed over my back and legs. Clenching my jaw to hold in my screams of agony, I scraped my blade across the edges of three of the runes. More pain washed over me as my hand and arm were bathed in flames. The fires immediately cut off when I broke the magical symbols, leaving a gap for me to step through.
Unaware that I was free, the prince pinned an imp to the ground with his cloven hoof and prepared to cut his head off. I sprinted over, grabbed him by a wing then spun in a circle. Aiming carefully, I let him go and watched him soar across the room. He let out a shout of alarm that changed to agony when he sailed through his own fiery prison.
Filled with wrath, my wounds and burns had already healed. The imps healed almost as fast as I did. Rashida moved through the crowd until she was standing at my side. She looked up at me and I sent her a nod of thanks for coming to my aid.
Glowering at us, the prince climbed to his feet. His wings were still smoking, but his burns had already faded. “I see that the mighty Hellscourge has become allied with imps,” he sneered. “You might as well have cockroaches on your side.”
“You and your kind will learn that we are not as useless as you believe us to be,” Rashida said defiantly. “We deserve to be treated with respect.”
He laughed, but his eyes were flat with rage. “You can be assured that you will get the treatment that you deserve once I am done with you.”
“You won’t be abusing anyone ever again,” I broke in before he could descend into a monologue. “You have incurred my wrath, Prince of the second realm. It is time for you to join your brothers in death.”
His face turned ashen at that pronouncement. It was always at this point that they suddenly realized that their death was imminent and unavoidable. Putting it into words brought the reality crashing down on them. It shattered their illusions that they were as immortal as they’d always believed themselves to be.
“So be it,” he snarled. “With my death, you will unleash untold mayhem on the planet that you strive so hard to keep safe.”
“I don’t see how killing the strongest demons can be a bad thing for humanity,” I countered as we circled each other. We both kept clear of the three runes that were still shooting flames high into the air.
“You know nothing about us, or what our purpose is,” he said with an evil chuckle. “But you will soon learn if you succeed in killing me.”
“Before you die, tell me where your piece of the object of power is.”
“You will never learn its location from me,” he said with a defiant sneer. “Only a few of my most trusted servants were aware of where I have sent it. You and your minions eradicated all but one of them.”
“I guess I’ll just have to trust Fate to lead me to it then,” I replied.
His forked tongue came out as he licked his lips nervously. He didn’t want to die, but he knew it was his destiny. He lunged at me and I knocked his spear away. He probably had other traps set up around the throne room, but I wasn’t going to give him a chance to activate them. Leaping at him, my blade cut through his armor and bit into his side.
Roaring in rage, he punched me in the face hard enough to send me flying. The imps surged forward before he could chase after me. One clambered up his back and rammed his sword into the prince’s throat from behind. Black blood sheeted down his exposed chest, covering the strange markings on his flesh. Using his wings, he scraped the imps off then reached back over his shoulder to draw the sword out of his throat. His wound healed, but he was rattled that an insignificant imp had managed to injure him.
Before he could spear the offending imp through the chest, I intercepted the blow and elbowed him in the face. He staggered back and I realized I was less than a foot shorter than him now. We were nearly matched in height and weight. He might have far greater battle experience than I did, but I had my wrath to fuel me.
₪₪₪
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Unleashing a barrage of blows on the prince, I forced him backwards towards the searing flames. Realizing what my intention was, two imps darted around him. When he was only a few yards away from the trap, they knelt behind him. Tripping over them, he went down. I chopped his hand off to make him drop his spear then cut the other hand off as well.
I pinned him to the ground with my boot on his exposed chest. Wincing away from the heat that was only two feet away his head, he snarled up at me. “Go ahead and kill me,” he spat. “You will doom humanity to annihilation!”
“I’m not dooming them, I’m saving them from you and your kind,” I replied. Leaning down, I grabbed hold of his right wing and held it into the flame. He screamed shrilly as the leathery membrane caught fire. “Where is your piece of the object?” I asked.
“I will never tell you!” he vowed.
He stayed true to his word even when I burned his other wing to a crisp. His screams ratcheted up a few notches when I dragged his limp form closer and shoved his head into the fire. Even after his face melted and his screams became gibberish, he still refused to tell me what I wanted to know.
Dragging him back out again, I prepared to end his life, but he had one more thing to say.
“I heard a rumor that Lord Vepar has a new pet,” he rasped slyly. It was hard to understand him at first, but his words became clearer as he began to heal. “It is said that she is very content now that she has broken him in to her liking. What was his name again?” he said in a falsely musing voice. “Oh, yes. He is Nathanael, an angel formerly of the Seraphim order, I believe. He has fallen low indeed if he is now warming a Demon Lord’s bed.”
My breath caught in my throat and everything stilled inside me. An image of Nathan in bed with Vepar rose in my mind and I couldn’t banish it. Anger unlike anything I’d previously felt overwhelmed me. A small part of me was aware that I was unleashing a rain of punches on the prince. Then I was lost in a red haze of sheer rage.
Eventually, I realized that my enemy was dead and that I was beating his corpse to a pulp. Nathan was as soiled as my blood-stained hands. The man I’d loved had given himself to a demon. He was beyond redemption now and would forever be sullied.
If Nathan had truly loved me, he would never have taken my choices away. By stealing my soul, he’d condemned me to become evil. The three angels inside me weren’t enough to balance the scales. It was inevitable that I would become an abomination, so what was the point of fighting it any longer? I might as well embrace the malevolence that had been rising inside me ever since I’d ingested my first demon.
Sinking to my knees, I bowed my head and succumbed to the darkness.
Almost immediately, a wave of dizziness passed over me. My entire body tingled from my head to my toes. It felt like an electrical current was running through my veins. I could feel myself growing and the horns on my head extending. My wings snapped out behind me and grew to a span of fifteen feet each. My feet changed to cloven hooves and would no longer be a weakness. At a thought, armored gloves covered my hands and a helmet appeared to shield my head and neck. Only my eyes and mouth were exposed. Unlike the princes, my armor didn’t have a section exposing my chest. I would never again have any vulnerabilities that my enemies could exploit.
I climbed to my feet and saw that I was now as tall as the prince that I’d just beaten to death with my bare hands. It was easy to ignore the distant clamoring that was going on inside my mind from the legion. There was no turning back for me now. I’d become the very thing that I’d despised; a Demon Princess. I was a monster and nothing would ever be able to change that.
Hearing the hushed whispers of the imps, I turned to survey them. They cowered away from my armored face. “Hellscourge?” Rashida said timidly. “Are you well?”
“Sure,” I replied. My voice sounded hollow. “I’ve never been better.”
“Are you going to kill the Hellmaster now?”
“Nope.” I wasn’t going to be Fate’s puppet any longer. I’d trusted her to keep me safe and she’d failed me
miserably. I’d lost everyone I cared about and I was now their enemy. There was nothing left for me on Earth. Humanity could burn for all I cared.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
Instead of answering her, I turned on my heel and walked away. “Don’t follow me,” I said without turning when I heard their footsteps coming after me. “It’s dangerous to be around me after I kill a Prince. The Hellmaster is going to punish me somehow. You don’t want to be caught up in that.”
They came to a halt and I continued on down the hallway until I reached the front doors. The rune was still in effect and I couldn’t open them. Making my left glove disappear, I pricked my finger and drew the unlocking spell and activated it. Once it flared to life, I tested the handle again and this time the door opened.
The nags were still lined up neatly, waiting for their deceased owners to return, but the nightmares were gone. They’d left the carriages of their former lords behind. They would be claimed by the next demons who would ascend to that rank. The nightmares would remain in the shadowlands until a new lord had need of them.
Striding past the carriages, I headed down the cobbled road and left the palace grounds. I had no doubt that the Hellmaster would unleash some kind of disaster on me soon. Hearing a caw come from above, I realized his spy was watching me. I looked up to see the raven sitting on the roof of a mansion. The entire second tier was made of the larger, stately homes that belonged solely to lords.
Ignoring the undead bird, I continued my trek to nowhere. Hearing a gushing sound, I looked back over my shoulder to see a wall of water sweeping towards me. Sneering that the Hellmaster was using a flood to punish me again, I wondered where the clouds and rain were this time. My contempt dried up when I saw what the liquid was doing to the buildings and the road. It ate through the stone like it was cotton candy. I realized it wasn’t water at all. It was a flood of acid.
