Drake of Tanith (Chosen Soul) (24 page)

Another guard went tumbling through the darkened skies and hit the ground to break into various grisly chunks that skittered across the dust.

Beautiful
, came Asmodeus’s voice. A millisecond later, Raven felt his presence, this time very real and solid, and she turned in the air, expecting to come face to face with the lord of Nisse. But the only one there was another guard. Without thinking, she released a bolt of her power. This time, the air hardened, narrowed into a spear-like shape, and slammed into her opponent with unforgiving force.

The ice spear shot through his chest and exited the other side, spraying ice and blood in a trail behind him. He faltered, his wings flapped one last time, and he too went dropping toward the ground.

Sickness swelled inside of Raven, stirring itself in with the fury that was fueling her magic. She closed her eyes, unwilling or unable to watch this third display of death. Laughter rumbled through her, nauseating her further, and still, she could do nothing to assuage her anger.

A guard came up behind her, and because of her distraction, took her by surprise. Raven felt an arm go around her waist as his other arm slid around her neck. He yanked her backward, crushing her wings against his chest, and blinding rage exploded behind Raven’s eyes along with the pain. She cried out with the agony and rage, and raked her claws along both of his forearms. The guard bellowed in his own pain and loosed his grip just enough that she could slid one of her hands between them.

As she did, she sent another pulse of her magic through her palm and into his body. The cold rushed down her arm, swelled in her hand, and infused his stomach before a second bellow of pain erupted from his throat. He released her and retreated, but blue veins of ice were already spreading across his midsection and into his chest – his arms – his legs. He quieted, his red eyes widening and then going blue, as the magic made its way up his neck and into his head.

Raven covered her mouth with her hand and squeezed her eyes shut just as she knew he would fall. She felt well and truly sick then. Bile rose in her throat and misery danced around her soul.

She felt him again, in that moment, so real and solid this time that she at once understood the deception of the feeling she’d had before. Raven swallowed hard, forced the sickness back into the pit of her stomach, and slowly turned.

“What will you do now, princess?” he asked her.

Raven looked from Asmodeus to the ground they were suddenly standing on. She had no idea how it had happened; it was just him and his immense power. But now, instead of floating in the air a thousand feet up, they were alone, standing on a plane of red desert sand, the two of them and nothing else for as far as the eye could see.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

Raven felt exhausted. Her anger was gone. Her fury had evaporated. She looked down and saw that she’d reverted to her human form. She had nothing left; the wrath that had ridden her moments before had taken the last of her strength with it. With plummeting hope, Raven sent her mental feelers out for any remaining scraps of magic, but came back empty handed. Nothing.

Asmodeus cocked his handsome head to one side and asked, “That’s unfortunate,” he said, clearly either reading her mind or not needing to. “How will you find my son now, Raven? How will you warn him away from me? What exactly do you plan to do?”

Raven would have felt like crying if she hadn’t been completely dry in that moment. She could sense that even her shield was down, but by some grace of luck or the mocking magic of the man before her, she was not being assailed by the heat. She shook her head and eyed him with nothing short of abhorrent contempt. “If we weren’t here already, I would tell you to go to Hell.”

Asmodeus threw back his head and laughed, genuinely amused by something, though Raven had no idea what. At this point, she was positively miserable. She could only watch him as his boots parted the dust and he closed the distance between them.

“Your will is bracing, Raven. Revitalizing. When Drake becomes king, I may just keep you for myself.”

“Over my dead body!” came a third voice, this one blessedly familiar and absolutely welcome.

Raven spun as Drake appeared out of nowhere and rushed past her like a shadowy blur. He and his father embraced in swirling, tumbling duo of hand to hand combat, and despite the odds, Raven allowed herself to feel hope for the briefest of moments.

Asmodeus immediately had the upper hand, however.

He turned, some indescribable magic happened, and he was straddling Drake, his hand around Tanith’s neck, squeezing the life from his veins. “No, Drake,” Asmodeus hissed, his face two inches from his son’s. “Over
mine
.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Loki looked down at his body with something akin to disgust. “I can barely keep my eyes open in this.”

Grolsch glanced over at him, turned his lip up a bit, and looked away once more. “Indeed,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re a walking bloody bonfire is what you are.”

The spell had worked, in a manner of sorts. He’d wanted to be able to carve a tunnel underground, and that, he’d accomplished. However, as a result of the magic-twisting properties of Nisse and his utter lack of Abaddonian blood, he was now lit up like the full moon.

On the up side, they didn’t need a lantern.

“What’s down here, anyway?” he asked. They were underground, beneath the ninth circle of Hell. The gods only knew what kind of scum they might run into. He didn’t even want to think about it except that thinking about it would help him to be prepared when they ran into it.

“Honestly?” Grolsch asked as he gripped his mighty sword with a nervous grip and peered dead ahead, to that point where the light from Loki’s glowing body met the darkness of what was to come. “I’ve asked Tanith the same thing.”

That made sense too. Loki fell silent. So far, they’d traveled a little over half a mile by his reasoning, and they would be under the castle’s foundation fairly soon. Then he would need another spell to get them back above ground. The problem was, he was already feeling pretty drained. The effects of Abaddon and the energy he’d already used up so far were having a weakening effect upon him. With a sinking feeling, Loki realized that a month ago, this would have been the time he’d have called upon Haledon for his help.

But this wasn’t a month ago, and Haledon was the sun god – and he and Grolsch were underground in Hell anyway. Haledon had no place here, and even if he had… Loki wasn’t so sure he would have listened.

“Up ahead, priest,” Grolsch suddenly said as he placed his large hand on Loki’s chest. Loki looked dead ahead, toward the darkness. The shadows broke there, where beams had been driven into the ground to make way for a castle’s foundations.

“We’re here,” Loki said.

“Now get us back above ground,” Grolsch said. Then he squared his own massive shoulders and stuck out his big, green jaw. “And get ready for a brawl.”

But before Loki could begin concentrating on the words to a spell that would send them once more out of the ground, that very ground began to tremble.

Grolsch froze beside him, and Loki’s hand went out to find purchase on the wall beside him. But that wall shook. Above them, pebbles broke free and skittered to the ground.

“Get us out of here!” Grolsch bellowed as ten feet in front of them, the ground buckled.

Loki cried out when the surface beneath his boots suddenly angled itself sharply and he went sliding. More dust and debris cascaded from the tunnel’s ceiling, obscuring his vision. He scrambled as his boots slid across the ground, trying to find purchase.

He couldn’t think. The words to bring to life whatever magic he needed to rectify this were eluding him. Grolsch made a harsh sound of pain as the rock wall beside him shot inward, slamming into him to knock him into the opposite wall.

Loki’s eyes widened. Through the dust, he could see the walls steadily moving now, sliding toward each other with slow, inexorable foreboding. The tunnels were collapsing on them. They were going to die down here, beneath the ground under the castle in Nisse. Loki had once served the sun god, had been host to his avatar. He’d fought the death mage and taken on the blue robes. He’d even survived The Hunt. Only to die in a tunnel under Hell. It positively did not get any lower than that.

Something cracked around them, an insane sound like a bomb going off, and another piece of the tunnel fell from its place and tumbled deafeningly to the ground, barely missing Grolsch’s off-kilter body.

“Priest!” Grolsch cried out, desperation clear in his gravelly voice.

There’s a lot of power in a name, priest. When the time comes, just make sure you call out the right one.

Loki closed his eyes, let his gut make his decisions for him, and called out a name.

*****

Malphas watched through the scrying pool. Around him stood half a dozen scryers, their combined power providing the images that now played out before him across the water’s smooth surface.

The world as he knew it had been turned on its head over the last few days. The things he’d learned and seen were more essential, more life-altering than anything Malphas had experienced in his very, very long life.

The plan to send Darken after his daughter was moot. Darken was Asmodeus’s son. So was Drake of Tanith. Adonides was dead. Asmodeus was vying for position of Death God – a proposition which frightened so many entities, even the gods had taken it upon themselves to try to stop him. They were the reason behind the assassinations in Abaddon.

And the attempted assassination of Raven Grey, Princess Winter – his only child.

And now….

Now Malphas watched through a make-shift window into another plane, another circle of Hell. The ninth. No devil could enter Nisse without an invitation, not even Malphas. So the mighty ruler of Caina was left to his own devices in the icy trappings of his fortress, stranded and separated from his daughter who continued to fight, not only for her freedom, but for the very human values she so strongly believed in.

*****

Drake’s eyes flashed red, his body began to morph, and fangs erupted in his mouth.

No Drake – over mine.

“As you wish!” he growled. There was more adrenaline than blood running through his veins at this point.

Moments ago, Drake had stepped through the portal to find himself exiting a mere half a mile from his father’s fortress – and just in time to see Raven make her glass-shattering escape. With a single word, he’d gone invisible, inaudible, and untraceable. It was something he’d been able to do for nearly his entire life and though he didn’t often use the ability, it did at times help immensely in his line of work.

Everything had happened fast after that. He’d made it to their side just as Asmodeus had transported himself and Raven to another location within Nisse.

And now here he was, caught in his father’s grip – and he could smell Raven’s blood on Asmodeus’s breath.

It was all he could focus on. It consumed his thoughts, his mind, his will. The Lord of the Nines had once again taken something that didn’t belong to him. And this time, Drake would see his own soul permanently trapped in Hell if that’s what it took to exact revenge.

With a tidal wave of rage-induced strength, Drake shoved forward. His wings erupted from his back, magic fueled him forward, and in the space of a heartbeat, he and Asmodeus were airborne, the two of them caught in one another’s grips. His eyes never left his father’s.

She’s mine
, his mind hissed like a brand on wet flesh. Asmodeus smiled, flashing fangs of his own. All around them, their magic clashed, hot on hot, fire on fire, fury on cunning, charismatic evil.

Prove it
, Asmodeus told him. Red lightning cascaded through the sky beside them, coming out of nowhere and heading into nothing. The sound rocked the ash-choked air and sent the ground below them into tremors. A flash of worry went through Drake for Raven’s sake.

Oh, I won’t let anything happen to her
, taunted Asmodeus.
I have plans for her
.

Drake shifted, managed to free up his hand, and took his father by the throat to spin with him as a roar of rage escaped his throat. Lightning struck again, cracking the atmosphere into shards of red and gray glass. Below, the ground buckled and red rock broke through Nisse’s surface to climb into the sky.

The ozone shattered around them as Drake spun into one of these red rock walls and slammed his father’s body into its surface. The flames at the centers of Asmodeus’s eyes sparked into roaring fires and thunder exploded around them. Drake’s ears were ringing, but his gaze was steady.

Do it, Drake. If you don’t, I’ll take her myself as soon as I’ve finished with you.
His low, powerful laughter rolled over Drake, around him, and through him. It left a trail of almost sickening hunger behind it – a hunger for Raven, a hunger for power. For blood. Asmodeus grinned, and Drake looked into the face of his worst fear.
I’ll take her until she bleeds
, the voice continued to taunt.
And then I’ll drink her nearly dry.

Asmodeus struck then, his magic and his speed so sudden, so strong, Drake honestly couldn’t tell exactly what was happening. Suddenly they were spinning once more through the air, and then Drake’s strong back was slamming into the same stone he’d been holding his father up against seconds earlier. Pain erupted behind his eyes, red and raw. It shot through his spinal cord, down his legs, and wrapped around his chest. The stone behind him cracked and crumbled, and Asmodeus pressed him into the debris with relentless strength. “I won’t kill her, of course,” he said as he leaned in and speared Drake with those terrible eyes. “That would be such a waste.”