Desperately searching her mind for something, anything, that might hurt the phantom, Kata sucked in a startled breath as the air suddenly began to thicken with the force of her words. Her curse was not only working, but it was growing with an intensity she’d never been able to conjure before.
Obviously a perk of being in hell, she wryly accepted, taking a hasty step backwards as the phantom began to pulse, almost as if it were being inflated from the inside. Then, with a scream that nearly deafened Kata, the creature exploded.
There was just no other way to describe it.
One minute it was a hovering mass of black mist, and the next, tiny shreds of an oily substance were dripping off the nearby stalagmites.
She barely had time to admire the stunning results of her curse when Uriel was scooping her off her feet and tossing her over his shoulder.
“Hey . . .” Her head bounced against the hard muscles of his back as he leaped over pools of boiling lava and hurried toward the side of the cavern. “Stop. Put me down.”
He ignored her protests, ducking through a hidden opening into another cavern. This one similar to the previous one, but with enough differences to comfort her with the thought they weren’t going in endless circles.
Not that she had much of a chance to admire the passing scenery.
Uriel charged from one cavern to the next, not halting until she began to pummel his back with small fists. Swaying upside down was making her queasy.
“Dammit, I told you to put me down,” she rasped.
Muttering his opinion of women who didn’t have the sense of a Flandra demon, Uriel set her onto a path that ran between two sheer cliffs. Kata refused to peer over the edge. She didn’t want to know if there was a bottom far below. Or what might be lurking down there.
Things were bad enough.
Uriel seemed to agree.
“Satisfied?” he demanded, his gaze never straying from her pale face.
She licked her dry lips. “Maybe we should split up.”