Kara grunted. She wanted him to shut up.
“What I mean to say is that angels and demons are practically the same. We are all spawn from the same supernatural creators. We are all built the same way, and we all have the same abilities and desires. Mortals worship the angels, and the angels want that. We want it too, is that so wrong? Of course not. Why shouldn’t we be worshiped alongside the angels? We are just a different kind of angel, if you will, a better kind. A stronger kind. And you’re one of us.”
“Join us,” said the demon lord.
He was so close now that he must be kneeling beside her.
“Join me, Kara. I’ll take care of you. You’ll be worshiped by my side for all eternity. You and I are equals. We can rule them all, my darling.”
Kara felt a cold finger brush her cheek.
“You are even more beautiful now than any creature in all the worlds,” he crooned.
His hand was in her hair now and slowly making its slippery way to her wings.
“Embrace the darkness. Don’t fight it, my darling.”
Kara didn’t even flinch as his fingers continued to inspect her body. She was numb. Her soul was numb, and she didn’t care. She could only see the oracle’s terrified face.
It would have been better if her father, Asmodeus, had killed her that night in the cemetery. Better to have suffered her true death there. Her body didn’t feel like it was hers anymore. Her light was nearly extinguished, and she sensed that the darkness of her transformation was almost complete. She didn’t fight it anymore. She let it come.
She guessed that she wasn’t reacting the way that the demon lord had anticipated because after a moment, he removed his hand, and she heard him pacing over the damp stones.
Were they in a cave?
The pacing stopped.
“If I let you out, promise you’ll behave?” purred the demon lord.
Kara slowly lifted her chin, straining to hear anything familiar that might help her pinpoint her location.
“I hate having you locked up in here. Your place is by my side. We will rule the Netherworld together.”
Salthazar paced around again.
“I want you to see. I want you to see and hear those lying angels as they squirm and beg for their lives. Together we will tear their souls apart.”
Kara’s head felt heavy. She felt drained and tired.
What was this idiot mumbling about? Why couldn’t he just shut up and kill her already? “Get her up,” commanded Salthazar. “And remove the blindfold. I want her to see everything.”
Kara was about to argue that he should leave it on, but the bonds that tied her feet were cut, and the blindfold was pulled off her face.
She blinked the black spots from her eyes as Salthazar lifted her to her feet and steadied her. She was surprised to find that she could actually stand. Her wings were still bound with rope.
As her vision cleared, she took in her surroundings. Black, glimmering walls surrounded her in a space the size of her small bedroom. But this was no bedroom—it was a prison cell in a cave or dungeon. She was a bird with clipped wings, and she would never to fly again. She accepted her fate. It would all be over soon enough.
Salthazar was only accompanied by two higher demons. They didn’t seem to regard her as much of a threat to them anymore.
She looked down. Her hands were caked with black demon blood, but there was also golden blood mixed in with it. It was smeared over her hands and fingers. She still had the oracle’s blood on her. She resisted the urge to cry.
The two higher demons held her firmly by her arms.
Why was it so hot?
“Forgive me, my darling, but I cannot remove the bonds around your hands,” said Salthazar. “Not yet. But soon, I promise. I suspect that you still have remnants of angel deep inside you. But once you are fully converted, you will join me in battle. You will be magnificent to watch. You will be perfection.”
Kara wrinkled her nose at the reek of his strong, musky cologne. It was almost like he was trying to mask the stink of rot and death that demons naturally exude. It wasn’t working. It only accentuated the smell even more.
What was his problem? Was he trying to seduce her with his perfume?
He stood so close to her that she wondered if she smelled like a demon now, too. His black eyes rolled over her ever so slowly. Handsome as he was, his eyes were still unsettling and unnatural. She looked away.
“The dark gods have asked for you,” said Salthazar,
He straightened his shoulders proudly. “So, naturally, I have to keep you bound for now. I can’t risk you doing anything foolish and embarrassing me. But they’ll come off, once you’ve proven yourself worthy to be a child of darkness.”
She wished he would stop talking.
“I know you can’t see it now. You can’t imagine what it would be like to have limitless power.”
Salthazar’s voice rose with excitement as his lust for power revealed itself. He reminded Kara of her father.
“But you will, and you will embrace it.”
“Why do they want to see me?” Her voice was a whisper.
She stared at the blood on her hands, and her knees buckled at the shame. But the higher demons pulled her back up and shook her awake as though she had fallen asleep.
Salthazar made for the door of her cell.
“Don’t parents yearn to see their young? The dark gods have waited long enough. We’ve wasted enough time with your beauty sleep. When you are fully recovered, and your mind is focused, you will take your rightful place and fight alongside your true family.”
Kara squirmed at the word. She had already lost one member of her family. She would carry the weight of his death forever.
The demon lord’s black eyes sparkled in delight.
“Enjoy your last moments as an angel, my darling, because they won’t last. Soon you will feast your eyes on the new world where we will reign as king and queen. It has already begun.”
Kara had no idea what he was mumbling about, but she felt obligated to ask.
“What has?”
Salthazar halted outside the cell. He turned with a sly smile on his face and said excitedly, “The war of the worlds.”
Chapter 16
The Archfiends
The higher demons dragged Kara through dim corridors carved into the same black rock as her cell. Smoky torches on the walls of these great gloomy caves were the only source of light, and Kara peered through the smoke to try and figure out where she was. They climbed higher and higher through a confusing network of tunnels, and the smell of death clung to her skin like a mist. She could almost taste it in her mouth.
Kara kept her face blank as she asked, “What is this place?”
“Mexico,” said Salthazar brightly.
He walked a few paces in front of her. “At the root of the Popocatépetl volcano. But don’t worry, it’s not active…well, not right now anyway.”
So she had made it to Mexico after all. Now she understood why it was so hot. Demons or not, Kara was pretty sure that they weren’t immune to scorching lava. If this was some sort of demon safe house, it wasn’t exactly safe. But she had to give Salthazar points for originality. Then again, he had mentioned earlier that he was taking her to see the archfiends, so maybe this wasn’t exactly a hideout. Maybe it was the archfiends’ lair.
“How did I get here?” she grunted after a moment. If this was the archfiends lair, she didn’t want to see it or be in it. They should have left her in her cell.
Salthazar watched her for a moment. She hated the desire in his black eyes. It made her feel dirty. He seemed convinced that they would be together in the future. She still wanted to claw his eyes out.
Kara saw a smile on his lips.
“You have more of us in you than you think. Things are changing for you, Kara. Your fiend essence, or whatever you want to call it, allowed you to move through rifts with us. Your body no longer needs to replenish itself outside the veils.
It’s stronger. You’re stronger.”
He paused. “You’ll see. It gets better.”
The higher demons on each side of her laughed. She glanced at them all, one after the other, and was disturbed by the dark shadows that danced on their identical faces as they smiled at her. They were enjoying this a little too much.
Kara didn’t want to know what got better. Just the thought of becoming more demon, or whatever she was, than angel made her feel like her soul was being ripped away from her body—she was losing her true self. The suffocating darkness was devouring her soul. It was that fear she had struggled with since the very beginning of her training with the legion. She had been marked since the very beginning.
But she deserved what she got. All of it.
Thousands of red and yellow eyes watched her from the shadows as she trudged along behind Salthazar. Normally, she would have been apprehensive, but now she didn’t care. Ghoulish creatures with corrupted bodies covered with sores stalked along the edges of the tunnel beside her, hissing and cursing her in an ancient language.
A wall shimmered to her left, and a great horned demon with purple, scaly skin and two pairs of arms walked through the rift on hooves the size of car wheels. His four white-milky eyes settled on Kara. His maw opened as he growled at her, but one look from Salthazar and the creature retreated into the shadows.
All along the tunnels more and more rifts rippled open and spit out creatures with dripping maws and twisted, pulsing bodies. It was like an underworld train station.
Some of the creatures were the size of elephants. Others were smaller. Gray dwarf creatures appeared from puffs of black smoke and hurried down the tunnels. Imps. She’d never forget what they had done to Peter. She shook her head so she wouldn’t dwell on her friends and forced herself to focus on the lower demons. They all moved with quiet purpose as they marched together in lines and disappeared down various tunnels.
As they climbed, she couldn’t tell if these tunnels were natural or manmade, but she could feel the rumbling under her feet increase. Eventually the reverberation was coming from everywhere at once. And over the sound of the tremors and the tread of their feet, Kara could hear muffled sounds from above. It sounded like the clatter of steel against steel.
The reek of sulfur had burned her nose when she was in her cell, but as they climbed higher, the sulfur became more bearable. But the echoes of clashing steel grew stronger.
After what felt like hours of climbing, the gloom thinned, and Kara could see a wall of soft yellow light at the end of the tunnel. Kara followed Salthazar into the light.
At first, the bright light was so intense she had to cover her eyes with her hands. But as she blinked, her eyes gradually adjusted.
She stood near a platform on the lip of a ravine that led down to a vast desert hundreds of feet below. Thousands of higher demons, shadow demons, clowns demons, hound demons, imps and other devilings and creatures she’d never seen before crowded the cliffs around her.
Near the edge of the platform on a raised stone dais, seven archfiends sat on seven black marble thrones. They looked out over the desert below from their ledge where the mountain opened up to a clouded gray sky.
The sounds of battle raged from somewhere down below the ledge, but the platform was still, and the archfiends sat and watched.
When Kara had imagined them, she had assumed they would be big, menacing humanoid monsters. She wasn’t prepared at all for what she saw.
There were four males and three females, and they all wore crowns made of black diamond. They radiated dark power.
Even in the soft light, they were cloaked in shadow. Black veins pulsed under their gray-colored skin, and their long black tresses hung over their chests. The females wore metal armor around their chests, but the males’ muscular torsos were bare. They wore golden loops in their ears. Long necklaces hung from their necks, and too many rings glimmered on their fingers. They were kingly and terrifying.
But the thing that disturbed Kara the most was that they all had wings just like hers. She couldn’t miss them. Their giant leathery black wings were like the wings of dragons.
Their thrones faced out from the mountain’s ledge, and the archfiends were fixated on something down below. But before she could see what they were looking at, the higher demons dragged her toward the center of the platform.
The male archfiend in the middle differed from all the rest. He was nearly a head taller than the other males, and he clutched a globe in his hands. Kara could see that the globe represented the mortal world.
Slowly, the archfiends turned their heads and watched her with great interest as she made her way across the platform. The higher demons’ grips tightened around her arms as they steadied her, and she stood facing the archfiends.
“My lords and ladies,” Salthazar groveled before the archfiends.
“My gods and goddesses.”
Kara clenched her jaw and rolled her eyes. He was pathetic. Didn’t demons have any pride?
The archfiends watched Salthazar with faces as expressionless as stone masks.
Kara took the opportunity to look around. Half a dozen men and women stood to the left and right of the thrones. They looked like bodyguards, although Kara had the feeling that the archfiends didn’t need them. The bodyguards had unsettling large yellow eyes with slit-like irises, like cats. Their black veins shone under their paper-white skin like tattoos, and they wore long black cloaks. Kara could see the strong bodies they hid beneath. Their features were perfect.
One of them in particular caused a shudder to pass through her. She recognized him at once.
He was tall and thin, and he smiled at her with a mouthful of black needle-like teeth.
It was the same man who had injected her with the syringe when she had run through the woods in search of David. It had been his needle that had started her mutation.
She cringed when she realized that all the archfiends were glaring at her.
“Kneel before your gods,” growled the archfiend in the middle.
Kara immediately took him to be their commander. His voice thundered and cracked, and she felt it resonate inside her core. But she met his stare and wouldn’t look away. It was stupid, she knew, but right now she didn’t care.
Shouting erupted from below the ledge where the archfiend had been watching. They were screams, and they definitely weren’t the screams of demons.
She turned to look, but Salthazar backhanded her.
“Lord Beelzebub told you to kneel,” ordered Salthazar.
Her cheek seared in pain, but she wouldn’t kneel. She stood her ground and challenged them to make her kneel.
Beelzebub looked furious, but Kara didn’t alter her stone-cold expression.
Salthazar cursed, and then he kicked her feet from under her. Kara went down hard in a tangle of her limbs and wings.
“Bow to your new masters, darling,” hissed Salthazar.
Then he added, very low, so that only she could her, “Because if you don’t, we’re both dead.”
Kara didn’t care about the demon lord or these giant scary archfiends. She stood up stubbornly, her chin high in defiance, and said, “I don’t kneel to demons.”
The archfiends shouted and pounded their fists on their thrones. They bared their black pointy teeth in feral snarls. The shadows around their thrones darkened until the entire mountain went dark, and the air burned hot and smelled of sulfur.
Beelzebub raised his hand.
“You insult us gravely,” said the archfiend. “We are your gods. We created you! And you dare to insult us? Is this how you repay those who have given you more power than any other worldly creature?”
It all made sense now. These were the creatures behind her mutation. They were the ones who had destroyed her spirit. She would never thank them for what they had done to her. They had destroyed her.
Kara stood with her chin in the air.
The archfiend examined her face and her wings. A frown materi
alized on his pale brow.
“You should have been fully changed by now.”
“Glad to disappoint you—”
One of the high demons punched her in the stomach.
She groaned and then straightened very slowly. She made a mental note to kill the demon once her bonds were free.
“Something is slowing the process down,” said the dark god. “Perhaps we overlooked something. Perhaps it’ll just take a little longer until you become—”
“A demon like them?”
Kara directed her bound hands at the creatures standing next to the thrones.
“I’d rather you’d kill me right now. You have your escorts and your bodyguards. You don’t need me.”
She could see that Salthazar looked frightened, but she couldn’t tell whether it was fear for her, or fear for himself.
“If my lord will permit me,” said the demon creature that she’d recognized from the woods.
Beelzebub gave a slight nod, and the creature turned to Kara.
“We,” he raised his arms to indicate that he meant the other beings next to him, “are not demons, girl. We’re much more complex and stronger than mere demons. We outrank them. We are superior to all lesser creatures. We are fiends.”
Salthazar’s expression darkened.
Kara shrugged. “Demons…fiends…I don’t care. To me, you’re all the same. Evil.”
She glared at the fiend who had injected her.
“But you…you’re the worst.” She tried to free her wings, but they were held tight. “You did this to me.”
“I’m called Betaazu—”
“There are a few names I’d like to call you.”
Betaazu didn’t flinch. His face was as blank as the stone floor. He made a move toward her, but he halted at the archfiends’ glare.
“Wait,” said Beelzebub, “she might still be useful in her angel body. Let’s not spoil her just yet. I’m curious.”
Seals Page 14
