“But you’re Azura,” Sera said. “You couldn’t go there anyway.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t dream of what Illysia is like, of the perfection of it?” His voice shook. “I was fine knowing that I had no hope of ever seeing Illysia until I was banished from the Mortal Realms and everything ceased to matter. Do you have any idea what it has been like with them?” His eyes jerked over his shoulder in Dekaias’s direction. “I am not a demon.” Spit flew from the corner of his mouth. “But with Fyre, I could. Not just return to the Mortal Realms, but finally to Illysia.”
“You’ll die. The wards—”
“The wards are ineffective against Daeva.”
Sera stared at him, a bit shaken by his disclosure. “You’ll never succeed, you know,” she said. “Whatever you’re plotting, the other gods will stop you.”
His laugh started low, derisive. “That’s why I needed Ra’al and his minions. He is as covetous as anyone and lusts for power. The other Demon Lords fear him and will follow him with the right incentive. With his army at my fingertips, once I open the portal to the Mortal Realms, those very same gods you think will stop me will suddenly find their hands very full protecting the cherished mortal lives they hold in such high esteem.”
“But why would Ra’al help you?”
“Who wouldn’t want to usher in hell on Earth with a front row seat?” Azrath said. “He gets the Mortal Realms, and I—”
“—get Illysia,” Sera breathed. Azrath nodded. “But the Trimurtas—”
“—are broken.” He peered into her eyes searchingly. “Come now, Lakshmi. Surely you remember somewhere deep within you how the power of the Trimurtas works? It’s the power of three, a triangle within a circle. If the triangle breaks, the circle breaks.”
He tapped her gently on the forehead, and Sera felt herself shiver. She knew he was right. Without Dev, Illysia would fall. If the Light Realms fell, the Mortal Realms would follow. The gods would not be able to protect the Mortal Realms and Illysia if both were defenseless.
“You and I both know that Illysia has never been breached,” she said.
Azrath grinned a thin smile. “It is possible. As Azura, the minute I set foot in Illysia, all the wards will fall, and Azura will no longer be forbidden. There will be nothing to stop us from returning to the rightful realm of our birth.”
“I will never allow it.”
“You won’t have a choice. You will open the portal when the time comes.” His face grew cold. “We are gods, too.”
“You chose to become Azura! To seek material comforts in your lust for power. You went against everything Illysia stands for,” Sera said. “If you do this, Azrath, you condemn us all.”
Azrath’s eyes were like shards of ice. “As I’ve been condemned?”
“This isn’t the way to seek forgiveness!”
His laugh was bleak. “I’m afraid it’s far too late for that. The minute I took that mortal avatara of the Protector, it put everything in motion. It was the beginning of the end. There’s no going back now. You know as well as I do that they will never forgive an attack on the Trimurtas.”
“I would die before having any part in this.”
His voice was so quiet she barely heard him. “You will have no choice. Before you had nothing to lose, and now you do. They were always your Achilles heel, the mortals, only this time your choices are intertwined with whether the ones you love live or die.”
Sera felt a chill seep into her bones. Could she sacrifice Nate? Her parents? Everyone she knew? Dekaias made a loud sound, clearly aggravated by their tête-à-tête. He stomped toward them, and Sera blinked at the malice on his face.
“Father is here,” he announced.
Sera turned to see a doll-like teenager standing in a jewel-colored green dress. Her golden ringlets bounced with each step she took. “Hello again, Serjana,” the girl said, and Sera realized that it was Ra’al. She read Sera’s expression easily. “Azrath likes to think of me as a child. It appeals to his protective instincts.” She burst into tinkling laughter, and Sera fought the urge to clap her hands over her ears.
Two other Demon Lords followed Ra’al into the room. The first was a beast and a voluptuous woman wrapped in one body, a tangle of arms and legs and barely-covered body parts. A single blue eye stared at her from the woman’s face as a slovenly tongue slipped from between black lips in a leering motion. It was Belphegar, the Demon Lord of Excess and Excrement.
Sera forced her attention to the second Demon Lord and felt bile crawl up her throat. The Demon Lord of the fifth, Wyndigu. Clothed in a black robe, he looked as she imagined Death would, just without the scimitar. Strips of stringy discolored flesh hung from exposed bone, and she could just see the glow of red eyes where its sockets lay deep inside the dark hood of its robe.
Ra’al smiled. “Lord Belphegar and Lord Wyndigu are here to witness the coronation of my son, soon to be the new Demon Lord of the seventh. Then we will ascend to the Mortal Realm. To the New World.” She clapped her tiny shell-pink palms together in delirious glee.
“Kyle doesn’t want that,” Sera blurted. Four pairs of demon eyes swiveled toward her. Azrath still seemed preoccupied with the mirror, chanting something under his breath. She saw a familiar blue tinge shimmer in the air around it.
Ra’al laughed. “Then why is he on his way here with the Trimurtas slave as we speak? My son is nothing if not obedient. Mordas ensures his duty.” She glanced at Dekaias, her pink cheeks flushed, and walked to embrace him. “My other son, Dekaias, has been very patient and is longing to meet his new plaything as I have promised him.”
Sera realized that Ra’al meant Dev. She couldn’t imagine what Dekaias would have in store for him. But Kyle would never bring Dev to them, would he? Or had she been wrong all along? In that moment, Sera realized that she knew nothing at all about Kyle, about this stranger he’d become the minute they’d stepped foot into Xibalba. Maybe what they said was true—Xibalba did claim its own. If that were true, then she was utterly alone.
“Azrath,” she urged quietly. “Please, it’s not too late. Don’t do this.” She moved as close as she dared without provoking him. “Please.”
He turned to stare at her, and it was at that second that Sera realized that Azrath’s clear silver eyes were the same color as hers. Only they were dead, empty. Sera swallowed the lump in her throat, raising her hand toward his, and slid her fingers into his despite the involuntary sense of revulsion at the touch. “Please, Uncle.”
Azrath gripped her fingers tightly, pulling her to him as if to embrace her. Off balance, Sera tipped forward. He jerked her wrist roughly, a sneer slashing open his face as he slammed the palm of her hand into a sigil etched into the top of the mirror’s frame.
Its entire surface shimmered blue as the portal swirled open, the pain searing into Sera’s hand and reverberating deep along her veins. She gasped and fell to the floor.
“What have you done?” she whispered.
“The portal between the realms has been reopened,” Azrath said calmly, “thanks to you.”
“Azrath, don’t do this.”
His laugh was chilling. “My first visit will be to my dear brother. And I will end that betrayal that began seventeen years ago. Then I will feed your mother to Belphegar, piece by piece.”
Belphegar made smacking noises with his thick lips and rubbed the arms of the woman with whom he stood in permanent lascivious embrace.
Sera recoiled from the sting of Azrath’s words, as helpless tears sprung to her eyes. She jumped to her feet, feeling her weapons extending from her hands. She needed to destroy the portal. The room fell silent. She saw the other two Demon Lords staring at her, mesmerized by the bloodlike hellfyre they’d never seen.
“What about your brother?” Azrath said coldly.
“You mean this brother?” said a clear voice behind them. Kyle stood there, cradling Nate in his arms. Sera stared at him warily.
“Well done, Kalias!” Ra’al said,
clapping. Kyle’s eyes narrowed as recognition set in. “Come now, don’t be shy,” Ra’al continued, jeering. “You’ve completed your part, brought us the boy. Come, Son.”
Sera could feel Kyle’s eyes impaling her. She met them, shocked by the murky darkness she saw there. His face was dead, emotionless. Hot tears of denial stung her eyes. It wasn’t Kyle.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that Dekaias had cornered them. Nate lay on the floor behind them as Kyle swung his blade wildly in Dekaias’s direction. Kyle was fighting him!
Sera searched the room desperately for Ra’al and Azrath, but they had disappeared. Belphegar stood near the portal, his face triumphant. Sera spread her wings, cleaving through the demons to get to Belphegar.
But she was too late.
His bulk slid through the portal. The demons now towered over Kyle and Nate. She screamed as one of the demons touched the blond cap of Nate’s hair.
“Kyle!” she shouted, desperate. “Nate.”
Kyle twisted past Dekaias and swung down to collect Nate, throwing him over his shoulder as if he weighed nothing. He began to carve a path toward her and the portal. Wyndigu snarled, and Sera knew that they had only seconds. Kyle’s face was tortured—the darkness she’d seen before was ever present in his eyes. But he’d kept his promise about Nate, and that had to count for something.
Sera drew a sigil over the one at the top of the mirror, watching as the blue circle grew smaller and smaller. Sera kissed Nate’s forehead, fastening her mother’s rune to his neck, and turned back to Kyle, doubt exploding inside of her. She could sense that something about him was different. Darkness hovered around him. But once more, As they reached her, Sera had no choice. She had to destroy the portal before any more Demon Lords could follow the others, which meant that she needed his help to get Nate to safety. She gritted her teeth.
“Take Nate and go. Remember your promise to keep him safe. Hurry, it’s closing!”
“What about you?”
“I’ll come through later, after this one is destroyed for good. I have to be sure.” Sera watched silently as Kyle stepped through with Nate, their bodies half disappearing, then spun around as a thought jerked into her head. She started, glancing into the mess behind them, her eyes searching. “Wait, where’s Dev, Kyle?”
But she already knew.
Her eyes dipped to Mordas, catching the bright red blood staining its blade, knowing that demon blood wasn’t red like mortal blood. Sera felt the world disappear from beneath her as if all the breath—her very life—was leaching out of her body. Her eyes shot to Kyle’s and shrank back from the emptiness of them. He didn’t even try to hide his guilt.
“What did you do?” she whispered. “Where’s Dev, Kyle?”
“He’s dead. He—”
She could only stare at him in horrified silence as the rest of his body—and his words—slid through the portal. Then it winked shut and all hell descended.
KALIYURA
Hell on earth. The apocalypse. The end of the world.
The portal winked shut behind her, nothing but a whisper on the wind as Sera dragged herself through, looking at the charred forest around her with glazed eyes. All she could hear were Kyle’s last words that Dev was dead.
Breathe, she told herself. You have to breathe.
But all she wanted to do was stop breathing, to not have to feel what this sense of loss was like, what this indescribable pain inside her chest was—the relentless ache of it.
Dev is dead.
A blast of something sour rocketed past her head, startling her, and for the first time, she fully took in her surroundings. A battle of epic proportions waged despite the eerie silence in the flattened glade. She was standing in a sort of clearing that had been completely demolished. In the distance, through the thick cloak of trees, bright white flashes darted across the night sky, and the smell of burnt flesh hung thick in the air.
“Sera!” a voice cried. Her mother was in full battle armor and so bright to look at that Sera blinked in spite of her own immortal eyes. Sophia held the largest spear Sera had ever seen. “Get down!”
Sera rolled to the ground just as a bolt from Sophia’s spear shot past her head into the body of something black and large. The demon fizzled to ash as the deifyre spread through its body. Sera jumped to her feet.
“Mom! What’s going on? Where’s Nate? What happened?”
“They’re everywhere, the demons,” Sophia said. She looked as if they’d been fighting for weeks. And then it hit Sera—time in Xibalba was different from time in the Mortal Realms. What had been hours to her there had actually been days on Earth.
“How?” Sera gasped.
Sophia grabbed Sera’s arm and pulled her into a thick grove of trees. Her voice was a hurried whisper. “Azrath came through a portal three days ago. We expected him but not the others. They were so fast, summoning demons quicker than we were able to get rid of them.”
“Nate—”
“He’s safe with your father. He and Kyle came through a half a day later. Then the portal exploded. Was that you?”
Sera nodded as relief flooded her. Nate was safe with her father, and that was the one thing that mattered. “Mom, where is Azrath?”
Sophia shook her head. “He portaled out. He broke the wards binding his exile the minute he came through that first portal. He has all his powers back now. You were right about the Fyre. The deifyre in his blood voided the sigils.”
“He plans to go to Illysia.”
Her mother’s eyes widened. “The other Sanrak, except for Micah and me, are still there to protect the Trimurtas and also some of the younger Yoddha. Azrath will have a fight on his hands if he does try to breach the shores of Illysia.”
Sera felt pain stab deep inside of her stomach at the mention of the Trimurtas. “There’s something else,” she said. “We lost Dev.”
“What do you mean you lost him?”
Before Sera could respond, the trees around them were shattered by the blast of something that reeked of sulfur and rotten eggs. An immense demon plodded into view.
“Find Azrath,” Sophia said to her daughter, spinning her spear. “I’ll take care of this.”
Sera turned and raced from the glade. She unfurled her energy as she ran and flung herself above the cover of the trees, the night air cold against her cheeks. Sparks flew beneath the dark blanket below her as gods battled demons, fighting to keep them from getting to where humanity began on the edges of the huge wood. The reservoir covered the deepest abyss, one so deep that the water ran hot near its bottom. It would be the perfect place for what Azrath was planning. Sera flew faster.
The thin crescent of moon glittered on the lake’s surface. A jet of something red crossed into Sera’s peripheral and she banked severely as a gigantic flying raptor demon flew at her, jaws open and screeching with impossible speed.
She held the deifyre in her hands, closing her eyes for a second as she shaped the weapon, releasing the crossbow just as the hot breath of the beast reached her face. The deifyre arrows ripped into its wings and slid into its throat, rippling outward until it was nothing but glowing ash in the air. Sera spun through it and headed down toward the lake. Three more flying demons attacked her, but she dispatched of them easily with the crossbow. As she drew closer to the water’s surface, the smell of death was heavy in the air—the death of gods and demons alike. It sickened her.
Sera could see Azrath now, suspended above the lake, his own black and gray deifyre spread around him like a shield. He held something—someone—in his arms. A wide smile broke across his face as he saw her approach. She hovered just above him, but still couldn’t see who he held.
“I see you got your deifyre back,” she shouted to him.
“It’s funny what a little determination can do, isn’t it?” He flexed, his energy curling up and outward, almost like a fountain of water. “I did miss it.” His smile turned sly. “I wonder if it’ll change color in Illysia.”
&n
bsp; “What you did was a disgrace.” She flew lower. “I will never let you breach Illysia.”
Azrath turned then, displaying Maeve’s limp body. Her eyes were glazed. At Sera’s look, he shrugged. “She was strong, but no match for me after all. Still, the pets will enjoy her.” He glanced down and Sera followed his gaze.
Beneath them, the surface of the lake spun into a terrible boiling whirlpool. Sera could feel the heat even from where she was a hundred feet above it. “Azrath, do not do this.”
“You are really starting to sound like a broken record,” he said and dropped the body right into the maw of the vortex. Sera swore she saw huge black shadows twisting underneath the clear surface of the water. Maeve tried feebly to summon her deifyre, but Azrath had stripped her raw. She fell like a rock.
Sera notched the crossbow, meeting Maeve’s eyes. Her finger trembled on the trigger. Maeve nodded once and Sera released the arrow, watching as it cleaved straight though the warrior goddess. She disappeared in a shower of red and gold sparks.
“Way to ruin a good show,” Azrath said dryly.
“You are despicable. You’ll never get away with this. I won’t let you.” Sera shaped the crossbow into the two long swords she favored. “We end this now, Uncle!” she snarled.
Azrath nodded toward the shoreline. “Anytime, darling, but aren’t you a little worried about them?” He smirked at her hesitation. “My part’s done to open the doors to the Dark Realms for good. All we need is the sacrifice or, as Ra’al calls it, the coronation.”
“What?”
“His son, Kalias. The sacrifice. The blood of the innocent and the blood of the demon. The way between the realms will be forever open.” He laughed.
“KaliYura,” Sera breathed. “That’s what he meant by Kyle’s coronation?”
Alpha Goddess Page 28
