as though she was falling from his grasp, too - knowing full well he'd jettison her somewhere she'd never been in the pit, and wouldn't know how to get out.
Then just as suddenly as the underground earthquake began, a swarm of vicious Harpies came up from the wide fissure that opened in the floor. They rushed at her, screeching, causing Fallon Nuit to foolishly attempt to come between them and her as she butchered the little beasts with her blade.
"Call them off, Lilith!" Nuit shouted as gook from Damali's swings splattered him.
"I didn't send them," Lilith screeched over the din. "My husband did! Something's wrong!" Oh shit. Damali's mind screamed for an out as she gripped her Isis like it was a baseball bat and swung wildly, decapitating ugly little fanged faces from squishy demon bodies. Soon to be overrun, she had only one option left, the one she was saving for the Vampire Council as soon as the odds were even - but the best laid plans sometimes never stood a chance.
Fumbling as she hurried, Damali dug a hand into her jeans, pulled out the last grenade, and lobbed it over into the abyss to hit Level Seven's sentries. The moment the orb of Light
went over the edge, Harpies screamed and dove after it. Lilith flew at her with a blade poised at her heart, and Se bastian whirled on her with black lightning charges from be
hind that temporarily stunned her.
"She had to defend herself - your Harpies made her fight! She is a Neteru, it is her nature, Lilith," Nuit shouted in a standoff with Lilith, blade drawn. "Harm her, Sebastian, and know that - "
"Did you see what she threw into the Ultimate Darkness's lair?" Lilith whispered, staring at Fallon Nuit like he was insane.
"You can fuck her when she's dead, my friend, after you make a blood sacrifice of her -
but if you do not address this breach, you may find yourself unable to enjoy it if she lives." Sebastian turned to Lilith for approval and then slowly drew away. "Oh... noooo ..."
"What?" Lilith screeched, spinning to look at Sebastian. Damali flipped up, took a fighter's stance, and kept her eyes on the pit and the three vampires before her.
"They reversed the spell! Take cover!"
Huge, monster-sized tentacles vomited up from the floors, its various-sized limbs undulating with messenger demons and Harpies in their grasp. Damali began running toward the door as the long ropes of spell lashed out, twin ing around thrones, wall torches, and the table as Lilith, Nuit, and Sebastian tried to escape each grab. Funnel clouds of transporter demons in the vaulted ceiling drew vertical tendrils to shoot up and snatch the teeming mass of mating bats down into the fissure in the floor. Black charges from an infuriated Nuit chased Damali across the floor like machine-gun spray. But a bolt of blue-white energy resembling C-4 blew council doors off the hinges, followed by a battle-ax lodged in Lilith's throne hurled by Eve. Dodging a charge from Sebastian, Damali flipped to corner his escape to the antechamber, shattering his blade in two. Nzinga and Eve had Lilith's attention tem porarily hemmed in while Penthesileia ripped through Fallen Nuit's Armani suit at the chest with a machete. However, the battle temporarily ceased when a black-fire-snorting, golden minotaur the height of a six-story building climbed out of the fissure, exploding the floor and walls, and quaking the vaulted ceiling to start an avalanche. It still had souls twisting in its jagged, blackened teeth like white maggots as it rose with a roar and leapt into the center of what had been Vampire Council Chambers. The great beast spun and pawed the earth with castiron, razor-sharp cloven hooves, its spaded tail a bullwhip against the cavern walls. Cornered, the Neteru Queens were backed onto the nar row crag that had once separated the Vampire Council Chambers from the rest of the portals, with the Sea of Per petual Agony's bubbling, lava surface separating the divides. The furious Vampire Council members were nearly hidden by the massive girth of the huge beast that suddenly lowered its head with black, gleaming horns pointed at the Queens and charged. One mind - all four Queens moved as swift mirror images of one another. Damali's blade replicated into the hands of her Queen sisters. Penthesileia quickly thrust her blade into the cavern dirt, reached over her shoulder and drew an Amazon bow and arrow, and fired with a silver energy