He pushed Vyra onto the ground next to me. She still clutched the scythe like a lifeline, swinging it wildly at Lucifer’s legs, but he easily stepped on the blade and kicked it aside, all without looking at us. He was focused on Satan’s essence, now enveloping the demon on the ground. The sleeping Prince groaned but didn’t move.
Vyra jerked the scythe back towards herself, inching away from Lucifer.
Now was the time.
I gripped Vyra’s arm hard, looking meaningfully into her eyes. She nodded, her lips set in a thin line, still clumsily clutching the scythe.
She didn’t know I wouldn’t be coming with her.
I gripped the amulet so hard the edges cut into my burned palm and threw us backwards into the chasm.
The wind caught us as Vyra followed my example and spread her wings, stopping us from smashing into the rocks below. “Fly into the portal!” I shouted.
I lifted the amulet to my lips and spoke, my back prickling, expecting an attack at any second. “A’kaza sothoth Dis!”
It blazed bright white, and I threw it ahead of us as far as I could.
The portal opened in the middle of the chasm, the white light becoming a pool of darkness, hints of rainbow colors swirling into its depths.
“Vyra, go!” I raced towards it with her, urging her on.
Vyra’s wings beat the air, the scythe flashing as she pulled just ahead of me. She burst through the portal, vanishing in a flash of blinding light.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
Lucifer’s silky voice was much too close. I veered away from the portal, climbing upwards even though I knew Vyra would be waiting for me to follow, her hopes in vain.
It didn’t matter. She was safe in Dis now.
Two more seconds passed, and the portal swirled shut before vanishing completely.
“Clearly I’m not going anywhere without you,” I called to Lucifer. I wheeled around overhead, and found him just below, watching me with amusement.
“Your loyalty is admirable, if misplaced.” He crooked a finger in a come-on. “I think I like it.”
Maybe he needed a push in the right direction. “You love it when we’re together. You gave me this.”
I pulled down the edge of my collar, showing him the upside-down cross. His eyes lightened for a second as he looked at it, like a memory had pushed its way through the bonds around his mind…
“I would never do such a thing, but my Father might like a taste of you. He’ll need to take his new body for a ride, after all.” His leering grin made me sick to my stomach.
“Who did he eat this time?” I asked. Lucifer was drifting closer, slowly but surely. If I lowered my guard for even a second, he’d be on me like a cat on a mouse. I put several more yards between us, ever conscious that my best weapon, my one chance out of here, was on the ledge below, and Lucifer was between me and it.
“The former king of Kur. The Queen was tired of her lover.” Lucifer flew to the left, climbing to my height. He was driving me back down towards the ledge, trying to distract me with his talk. Luckily, it was precisely where I wanted to go. “She’d prefer Satan, but in a prettier body. Poor Nergal… so handsome, but as stimulating as a sack of bricks.”
I couldn’t imagine tossing aside one of my mates to be possessed by another, using a beautiful body like it was nothing but an empty vessel. “I would never do that to you.”
Lucifer dropped lower, and so did I. The shelf was so close, and Satan was still working himself into the still-living tissue of poor Nergal’s body.
If I could get to the Spear, I could still kill him and break the soul-bond.
“I wouldn’t do it to you, either.” For a moment I thought the old Lucifer had broken through, but his eyes went dead. “It’d be the easy way out for you. I’d rather have you suffer.”
I swallowed hard, even though I was nowhere near tears. I knew it wasn’t Lucifer speaking, but it still hurt, those words coming from his mouth.
“You’re the one suffering right now, not me.”
His face was lined with anger, but I remembered my dream all too clearly. In his moment of clarity, he’d asked Vyra to take a chance. To kill him if she could.
He’d known what he was like this, and he’d preferred death to living as a slave.