Chapter 30
The air rippledwith heat as Vozgan flew above a valley riddled with rivers and pits of spitting lava. Mae clung grimly to the dragon’s back, her senses on high alert. Tension rolled off Nikolai, Vlad, and Cortes in thick waves where they sat silently behind her. Even Hellreaver and Brimstone had gone quiet, as if they too sensed the strangeness around them.
Azazel and Alicia studied the terrain closely, their sharp gazes sweeping the landscape for signs of Barquiel.
They’d felt the demon’s energy signature soon after they’d emerged from the underwater tunnel that had brought them to a part of Hell Deep few knew the existence of.
“There!” Nikolai barked a moment later.
Mae’s head snapped around.
He was indicating an area to the far left of the cavern, some quarter of a mile from a mountain pass that would take them out of the valley.
Vozgan cast a worried look at the sorcerer over his shoulder. “There’s nothing there but rock.”
Nikolai frowned. “And I’m telling you Ran Soyun’s magic is strongest in that direction. There must be some kind of barrier that’s hiding what’s really there.”
Mae and Azazel exchanged a startled look. They incanted the spell as one.
“NEGATE!”
Vozgan made a startled sound. The wall of the cavern wavered like a mirage under the crimson magic that crashed into it. Mae’s pulse quickened when it disappeared. Alicia swore at the sight of the hidden vale and dark peak beyond.
The dragon banked and made rapidly for the distant mountain.
“I can sense Barquiel’s army!” the Reaper queen ground out a moment later.
Mae narrowed her eyes. She too could feel the ghouls and devils somewhere up ahead. Sulfur clouds obscured her vision when the dragon flew over a cluster of lava pits. The mountain loomed out of the yellow clouds, a solid black wall of rock that grew until it filled her sight.
Vozgan rose sharply, belly skimming the cliffside and wings beating powerfully to overcome the downdrafts dragging at his body. Mae’s stomach lurched.
White magic raised the hairs on her nape when the dragon shot past a breach in the rock face.
“Stop!” she and Nikolai yelled at the same time.
Vozgan pulled up abruptly, causing Vlad and Cortes to curse.
“There!” Mae pointed beneath them, her heart racing. “That opening!”
She glanced at Nikolai. He swallowed and nodded.
Azazel’s anxious gaze remained locked on the crevice while the dragon hovered down next to it.
Vozgan studied the slit-like passage with a dubious expression. “I won’t get through that.”
“Then we’ll have to go alone from here,” Azazel said in a strained voice.
His face was tight with a mixture of apprehension, anticipation, and bone-deep longing.
Mae’s chest tightened, the same emotions coursing through her from Na Ri. Hellreaver and Brimstone whined.
Vozgan sagged. “Drat. I was looking forward to a good fight.” His voice dropped to a low mumble. “And maybe a snack or two.”
“Told you so,” Cortes muttered darkly to Vlad and Nikolai.
Azazel smiled faintly and patted the dragon’s neck. “There might still be some fighting left for you to do, my young friend.”
Vozgan brightened.
Mae invoked Levitate and erected Contain around herself, Nikolai, Vlad, Cortes, and their familiars. They followed Azazel and Alicia inside the chasm.
“Good luck!” Vozgan called out anxiously in their wake.
Acrid fumes danced around Contain as they navigated the narrow corridor, the walls at times brushing against the solid barrier of magic. The outlook opened out some two hundred feet later.
A cliff rose at the end of a gully lit by the glow of dozens of bubbling firepits. Mae’s breath caught.
She could feel Ran Soyun’s magic pulsing from it. From the way Azazel and Nikolai tensed, so could they.
“There’s a cave at the bottom of that bluff,” the sorcerer said with a jerk of his head. “Barquiel erected barriers to hide the entrance. It leads to Ran Soyun’s prison.”
Alicia’s eyes shrank to slits. She accelerated, her scythe extending into its deadliest form.
“Wait!” Azazel warned. He scanned the shadowy cliffs rising around them. “You don’t know what traps he may have?—!”
Demonic energy saturated the air without warning.
Alicia grunted, black lightning striking her flank. She twisted and deflected the next deadly bolt with her scythe, the jagged hole in her robe fluttering around the wound the attack had inflicted.
Mae’s heart pounded in her throat as her gaze found the demon standing on a ridge high up to their right. Hellreaver growled and transformed.
Barquiel glared at them. The broadsword in his hand was different from the one she had last seen him wield, its serrated blades resembling Hellreaver’s teeth. Black lightning crackled on the weapon and sparked inside the dark clouds swirling above his head.
Mae clenched her jaw. “I’d hoped he could only do that on Earth.”
Brimstone shifted into his nine-tailed demon form, Contain enlarging to accommodate him. “It is a power that transcends dimensions, my witch.”
“Brimstone is right.” Azazel frowned at Barquiel. “It has been a long time, my friend.”
“Friend?!” Barquiel spat. “Don’t make me laugh! You stole the woman I loved from under my nose!” His pupils flared crimson with loathing. “You are nothing but a traitor!”
Fury hardened Mae’s stomach.
Azazel’s face darkened. “She was never yours to claim.”
Mae blinked at the formidable aura of demonic energy and magic that detonated around her father and shook the gully. A rift opened beside Azazel. The demon extracted a dark spear crackling with crimson magic from within it.
“Ran Soyun and I trusted you, Barquiel,” Azazel said in a hard voice. He spun the spear slickly in his hands before adopting a battle stance Mae was certain he had taken thousands of times before. “We trusted that you would watch our backs when Davor first made his intentions clear. But you betrayed us.” His eyes flashed with anger as he glanced at her. “And you hurt our daughters.” He snapped his wings and rose, his voice dropping to a low growl. “I hope you’re ready for the ass-kicking coming your way, old friend!”
Barquiel dove from the bluff on an enraged snarl.
The sound their weapons made when they clashed arms had Mae’s ears ringing and the others flinching. She stared wide-eyed at the near invisible battle taking place above them, the echoes of the clash reverberating loudly against the cliffs.
It was only thanks to her powers that she could make out the two demons’ figures where they blurred in midair, sword and spear sparking as metal met metal.
They’re so fast!
Alicia regrouped with them. “Come, let’s get to that cave while your father has him distracted!”
They headed swiftly through the sulfurous clouds toward the cliff, Barquiel roaring angrily as Azazel blocked his path again and again.
Dark shapes loomed out of the shadows when they dropped to the ground some hundred feet from the bluff. Brimstone’s lips curled back on an unholy sound. Hellreaver snapped his teeth, his blades thick with crimson and black static.
Mae ended Contain and narrowed her eyes at the ghouls and devils standing in their path. She called forth Devour, the spheres hissing and rotating furiously as they formed above her palms, the crimson light they emitted reflecting in the monsters’ pupils.
White magic brightened Nikolai and Alastair’s eyes. Cortes unleashed his sword and whip, Popo’s wings blazing with the golden light of their Arcane Magic. Tarang growled as Vlad manifested a thick aura of incubus energy from their cores.
Alicia flinched. Her head snapped up, her orbits blooming scarlet. She stared blindly at the distant ceiling.
Fresh tension knotted Mae’s shoulders at her glazed expression. “What’s wrong?”
The Reaper queen was silent for a moment.
“My Reapers tell me there is a sudden harvest of souls happening on Earth,” she mumbled.
She shuddered and blinked, awareness returning to her face. The look she gave Mae curdled her blood.
“Vedran is in New York,” Alicia said with a haunted expression. “He has Davor Lazar’s soul.”