Alpha Goddess

by Amalie Howard

  “Why do you trust him even though he was an Azura Lord?” Kyle asked Micah.

  Micah smiled. “Now can you understand why he said those things to you? About deciding who you are? Samsar chose who he wanted to become, despite what he was—for love. So, yes, I trust him. Completely.”

  “But why?”

  “Because his heart is pure.” Micah’s smile tightened. Pain slashed briefly across his face. “And because … Sophia loves him. Sanrak work in pairs. We were a pair. She chose to come here. To him.”

  Kyle shot him a speculative look. “You don’t look old enough to be anyone’s pair.”

  “Sanrak age differently from people, Kyle. I can shade myself to be older but I enjoy this form, the innocence of this age. I am several thousand years old, and Sophia is even older than I am. Samsar was as old as she before he turned human. And Sera is young still, in human years, just sixteen. But she will age as her mother does, with a very long life ahead of her.”

  Kyle frowned. “Won’t Sam die eventually?”

  “Yes. Sophia will shade herself to match his natural aging, and then she will return to Illysia. To me.”

  “And Sera?” Kyle’s voice was a whisper.

  Micah’s brow furrowed, his face troubled. “Of all our paths, hers is the most shadowed. I do not have a good answer for you. Only Sera can decide where her path will go.” He turned back to the wall. “Come over here, Azura, and make yourself useful.”

  Kyle walked to where Micah stood, frowning. “You called me Azura. Aren’t I a Child of Man?”

  “You are both, but for now, I need some Azura blood to reopen this portal.” Micah pulled a silver knife from a sheath against his side and pressed the tip into Kyle’s index finger. A drop of blood formed against the tip. “Retrace the markings of the portal,” Micah ordered him.

  Kyle placed his finger against the wall. “It’s not going to work, I don’t know how—”

  Suddenly his hand jerked as his fingers followed a swirling circular path. His blood stood crimson against the white wall, and he watched, mesmerized, until his finger stopped moving. The markings glowed orange, and he felt the tip of his finger and then his forearm pushing into the wall, which had become the consistency of a marshmallow. A hand pulled him roughly backward.

  “Enough,” Micah whispered. “You’ve done it. The portal is open.”

  “But how? I’ve never—”

  “Azura blood is also very powerful, especially within this realm. If the portal was meant for you as you’ve said, then it would allow you to recreate it.”

  “So, are we going to go after her?”

  “No. You are the only one with a connection to this portal. If I lose you, I lose Sera, and I can’t risk that. For now, we wait.”

  “But—”

  Micah shot a grim look his way. “Sera’s a smart girl. She’ll find a way to the portal, and then we can bring her back.”

  “What if she doesn’t come back, Micah?”

  “Then we’ll both go, I promise.”

  They sat in silence for a few minutes, the eerie sigil glowing against the wall. Kyle prayed silently that Sera would return to the portal if she had the chance. He glanced at Micah. The boy’s eyes were closed, his face unlined, perfect. He seemed so young, pure. Lost in thought, Kyle jumped at the sound of Micah’s voice.

  “People often do that, you know. Underestimate me because of how I look.”

  “What? I wasn’t.”

  “It’s OK. I get it a lot.”

  “How old can Sanrak get?” Kyle asked. “I didn’t think you actually aged.”

  “We don’t. Years to us are meaningless. It’s just time. We can choose to live forever, but most of us choose to return to Brahman, the one Supreme Being. That has always been our way.”

  The portal glowed red for an instant and then a black shape slithered through. Micah jumped to his feet. The snake like demon hissed and reared its head just as a golden arrow whittled through it, exploding it to black dust. The light of Micah’s bow dulled and disappeared as Kyle stared at him with wide eyes. The portal’s brightness faded back to its muted glow.

  “That’s the only problem with keeping a portal to the Dark Realms open. The demons.” Micah sat back down. “Don’t worry, Kyle. I’ll keep you safe.”

  “I’m not worried about me!” Kyle’s voice was shrill. “What about her? What if there are more of those things where she is? How’ll she defend herself? Can she wield deifyre in Xibalba?”

  “I don’t know,” Micah said grimly. “It has never been done before, because we are weakened by the lack of life in the Dark Realms. Our power would go toward sustaining us, not toward our weapons. But Sera is different. Who knows what she may be able to do?”

  Kyle sighed. “I hope you’re right, really I do. But what if you’re not?”

  “Pray that I am.”

  WHAT LIES BENEATH

  Sera collapsed to the ground, gasping for breath. Entering the portal had made her bones feel liquid. She raised her head slowly and looked around, squinting in the muted darkness. Bits of sharp gravel cut into the skin of her limbs, and she could sense the jagged edges of a rock inches above her head. A thin filter of red-tinged light from a narrow tunnel illuminated some kind of low cave with barely enough space for her to move. She turned carefully, wincing as a piece of sharp rock nicked her elbow.

  The ground beneath her felt damp. She didn’t even want to think about where the wetness—water? urine? worse?—came from. A nest-like structure made of twigs and some kind of fleshy substance lay to her left next to a discarded carcass with partly rotting meat still on the bone. On cue, a rank stench filled her nostrils and she gagged.

  The portal had brought her to the nekomata’s lair, she realized. Which meant that she had to be in one of the hell dimensions.

  I’m in Xibalba.

  “Keep it together, Sera,” she whispered to herself as her breathing quickened.

  Her right palm stung. She rubbed her thumb against it and felt a strange tingle, which was odd, as it was her left palm that usually felt this way. She stared at her fingers, remembering that her hand had become a deadly weapon.

  Deifyre.

  Sera stifled the urge to make the sword reappear. Even if she could, she was pretty sure that wielding deifyre in hell would attract more attention than she wanted. Twisting backward, she felt against the wall for any sign that the portal was still there. But there was nothing except rough rock beneath her fingers. She had to find another way out.

  To do that, though, she’d have to find a disguise, some kind of shade that would protect her. But she’d never done any kind of shade before. Could she even do it? She needed something that had the mark of Xibalba on it. Nearly gagging, she inched closer to the nekomata’s nest but stopped short as a severed eyeball leered glassily back at her. Bile scalded the back of her tongue.

  Sera scrambled backward, and then inspiration struck. Scraping her fingers against her jeans where she’d smeared what had remained of the dead nekomata, she focused on the feel of the demon just before she had killed it and rubbed her thumb against her forefingers. Focusing, Sera drew the remaining essence of the demon into herself, coating her entire aura in it. The shade felt clammy against her, ugly, as if she’d wiped the scum off the underside of a garbage bin and rubbed it into her skin. She had no idea if it was going to work, but it was better than nothing. If the nekomata were any indication of the kind of demons in Xibalba, she needed to give herself any kind of advantage, even if she had to feel like one of them for a while.

  Ignoring the queasy hollowness in her belly, she crawled slowly out of the lair and emerged into another cave, which opened into a long hallway. She peered down at what looked like an underground subway tunnel lit by the same eerie blood-like light. Tentatively she walked along it, staying close to one side. Fear gripped her as two dark shapes made their way in her direction. As they got closer, she realized they were human—a man and a woman. They looked relaxed and happ
y, which confused her. The woman’s eyes met hers briefly, and for an instant, Sera saw a flash of sickening terror before it was replaced by the blissful stare from before. She shrank back against the wall but the pair barely acknowledged her as they swept past. Sera stared at their retreating backs, belatedly noticing the mass of tiny creatures that looked like leeches covering every inch of exposed skin—feeding on them. She looked away quickly.

  Nothing is normal here, she told herself. Make no mistake, this is Xibalba. Everything that you read about is real.

  She pushed forward. A lizard-like creature snaked past her, skittering away at the sight of her. Sera expelled a shaky breath. At least the shade seemed to be working. The nekomata must have been a powerful demon. Two more demons rushed by in much the same way as the first, although this time one of them did an awkward bow. She pulled her lips back from her teeth in a snarl and they sped away.

  Sera kept walking, not sure what she was looking for, until she heard the sound of voices up ahead. Sera rounded a curved entryway and instantly found herself face-to-face with a girl who could have been her twin, with long dark hair and a sallow complexion. The twin of my human self, Sera amended. She’d see me as the nekomata.

  “Aziz, you have returned already?” the girl said. “Father will be pleased.”

  As she spoke, Sera saw that she wasn’t really a girl at all. Her face was humanlike but covered in fine scales. Her black hair was more like long matted fur, curling down her neck and back. Sera pulled the shade tighter against her and retraced her steps to the door without answering.

  “Aziz, wait.” The girl yawned and Sera saw multiple rows of shark-like teeth along her bottom jaw before she turned her glittery yellow eyes back in her direction. “Father wants to see you as soon as he is done with Azrath.”

  Sera halted in her tracks. Azrath is here? “Where?” she hissed, the guttural sound the same as she’d heard the nekomata utter.

  Her right palm stung again and Sera stared down at it, confused. The scar was now a raised, raw welt. It itched as though fire ants had just bitten her. Distracted, she rubbed it against her side. The girl’s head cocked to one side, curious.

  “What’s the matter, Aziz? You don’t look well. Did you find the boy?”

  Did the demon mean Kyle? The girl was looking at her pointedly. “Yessss,” Sera answered.

  “Good,” she said just as a boy of about fourteen wandered into the room. “Father is in the red room.” The girl’s smile grew into a delighted grin. “Just in time! I’m starving!” she exclaimed.

  Sera almost stumbled in her haste to exit the room. The last thing she saw was the boy climbing on to the couch next to the demon-girl, whose lips had pulled back from her face in a horrible leer. The bottom half of her jaw dislocated from its top and her mouth hinged open into an impossibly wide fang-filled abyss.

  Sera rushed past another empty chamber and then turned down a long hallway leading to a darkened room. Several shapes slid past her in the dark but she ignored them, focusing on the two bodies toward the far end of the chamber. The walls of the room glowed like lava and Sera understood why the girl had called it the red room. She was sure the metallic, gritty smell coming from the walls was blood. Sera eased around the side, careful not to touch the walls, and slid through a doorway, hoping that it would take her closer to the figures without her having to be inside the room with them. The last thing she wanted was to underestimate the Demon Lord of this dimension.

  She crept closer to the voices, trying to make the shade as seamless as possible against her, until she was right behind where the two creatures sat.

  “Azrath,” the smaller of the two said in a high-pitched voice. “Where is the boy? Have you found him? If this plan of yours is to succeed, the boy is crucial. He is the key.”

  “I know. The Ifrit are close.”

  “And the portal?”

  “It is almost done.”

  Were they talking about Kyle? Sera wondered. The girl-demon had asked her whether she’d found the boy, and the real nekomata had obviously wanted Kyle to go with it. But why did they want Kyle? She thought back to how quickly his wound had healed—how he’d admitted he wasn’t human—and shivered.

  Suddenly Azrath stood and walked just beyond the doorway where Sera was hidden. She couldn’t help but stare. His features were perfect—his hair a glistening gold against his snow-white skin. He looked beautiful and terrible all at once.

  “I shall take my leave. I will be back just before the portal is complete,” Azrath said. “Be ready to fulfill your part of the bargain.”

  “I will,” the other voice agreed.

  A small form came into view and Sera smothered a gasp. The child couldn’t have been more than four years old, with perfect golden brown ringlets and a peaches-and-cream complexion. Sera knew beyond any doubt that the thing wasn’t a child at all.

  It was a Demon Lord.

  It didn’t look like any of the demons she had read about, and then she realized why as breath rushed out of her. There was one Demon Lord that had no form—it took the form of whatever one trusted the most. Ra’al, she thought.

  She was in the seventh dimension! The lowest and worst of all Xibalba.

  In that moment, Sera knew that if she didn’t get out of there when Azrath did, it would be the end of her.

  The child turned its face up to Azrath who bent to kiss its cheek. Sera wondered at Ra’al’s choice of form with Azrath. As if he could read her thoughts, Azarth said to the child, “Perhaps next time you can take the form of something a little older.”

  The child grinned. “But then you wouldn’t trust me, would you?”

  “I already don’t trust you,” Azrath said smoothly, “but it may make for some more … entertaining discussion, don’t you think?”

  “Come now, Azrath. I have little time for these games. When we have played this out, you and I will have all the time in the world for entertainment. Now, go and finish the portal. One of my daughters sends word that I have pressing business to attend to.”

  Sera cringed back against the wall, knowing exactly what the pressing business was. The girl-demon must have told Ra’al that Aziz had returned. She had barely started inching out of her hiding place when Azrath strode into the room. He shot her a dismissive look and walked away, swinging his fingers around in an intricate design. A fiery portal appeared and he disappeared through it without a backward glance.

  Sera moved to follow him but froze as a swell of cold settled about her.

  “Ah, Aziz, just the demon I want to see,” the child called with a tinkling laugh from the doorway. “Alis said you had returned.”

  Sera had never felt such dizzying fear. She suspected that it would only be seconds before Ra’al would see right through the shade. What had worked against the lesser demons would certainly be no contest to him. In his dimension, she guessed that he would have the power to unveil anything.

  She glanced in desperation at the portal, which had already started to fade, and darted toward it.

  “Aziz!” something terrible screamed.

  She had almost reached the portal before a howl of rage crashed into her back like something solid. Lifeless fingers reached for her mind, cold and horrible, ripping her shade apart like tissue. In blind desperation, Sera reached toward the marking and turned as something sharp dug into her right leg—taloned dead fingers gripped her foot.

  She wasn’t going to make it! Searing pain shot up her leg as she wrenched her foot away, straining for the portal at the same time. Just as Azrath’s portal sucked her through it, she glanced into the demon’s face and almost cried at the face staring back at her, one that she’d never expected to see.

  Dev’s face.

  The Demon Lord shrieked with thwarted fury as the portal closed. And then Sera was gasping for breath, convulsions rocking through her body as the portal spat her out on the other side into a wooded clearing. She stood woozily and looked around, prepared for the worst, but she was alone
.

  Sera collected herself, for a second wondering how Dev of all people was the person she trusted the most. She’d have thought it would have been her mother or her father. Or even Kyle. A vision of Dev’s golden brown eyes filled her mind and she shoved it away. She’d dwell on it when she was in a less precarious situation. Right now she needed to figure out where she was, and whether she was safe.

  She couldn’t tell whether she was in Xibalba or the Mortal Realm or somewhere else entirely. The landscape was gray and empty. The sky was dark and the trees bare. Even the ground cover was little more than brown, deadened brush. It was a colorless world completely devoid of any sign of life.

  Sera sighed. At least she’d escaped Ra’al. She didn’t want to imagine what he would have done to her had she not been able to follow Azrath through the portal. She turned around to see where she could go and felt dust blowing at her ankles. She squinted against the dappled light and saw the air shimmer just as a bluish circle formed between the trees where the portal had just been.

  Another portal.

  The blue light intensified until it was electric. Sera jumped behind a bush just as two bodies emerged from the glowing blue disk.

  “Seriously, I don’t even know why Jude trusts him! He is not Ifrit,” one of the boys sneered.

  Sera recognized them immediately. Marcus and Damien. What were they doing with Azrath? And how was it that they were able to travel through the portal? What was an Ifrit?

  “Lord Azrath trusts Kyle, and that should be good enough for you, Damien,” Marcus said. “Don’t go being a hothead. Jude said we just need to deliver the Fyre and head back to his place. Look, I’ll take this to Lord Azrath. Stay here until I get back.” Marcus walked off without another word.

  Damien stared after him, his face black, and Sera groaned inwardly. Her legs were starting to cramp but there was no way she could move without drawing Damien’s attention. She inched her foot to the right, grimacing with relief. She peered through the bushes and could no longer see Damien. She strained her ears but couldn’t hear anything either.