THE witch child hit the rocks and Satana threw a blanket of gravel over her, even as she manifested her own perfect spell, dropping it over the Midnight Suns like a sopping blanket. The girl’s blood-magic staff had vanished when she’d knocked it loose, but Satana wasn’t worried, the little witch was frozen; it was costly power-wise, but so worth it. Her enemies were at her mercy.
Zarathos immediately swooped in and blasted the old Blood witch with lightning, but Satana’s glamour protected itself and his lightshow skipped off like a flat rock on water, blowing up a tree to the south. Flaming splinters flew.
“Only watch, Dark Lord, and see how they dance for you,” Satana said. She lifted a handful of rocks from the piles of them and started throwing, flipping them into the crater with a thought.
Together, they watched the “heroes” fight imaginary soldiers as the Triumvirate’s real army took up positions around the pit, Satana’s soulless dressed in camouflage she’d designed herself to match the dull colors of Transia’s rocks and trees. Fenn had been able to procure weapons—Glox, he called them—and her soldiers looked handsome and lethal. They wouldn’t fire until Satana commanded, and she was having too much fun to interrupt. She’d wasted hours transporting Fenn’s things around and planting his bombs in the chamber, making a deal with the fire-demons on Zarathos’s behalf, widening her channels to home. The stupid Suns had showed up early, too. She hadn’t had time to set up more than one good spell.
But this one is sooo good.
The vampire and the Ghost Rider were a special joy to behold. The vampire moved like a bat, fast and fluttering, his stylish coat whipping against the ground. He ducked and jumped with the precision of a ballet dancer. The Ghost Rider was a lean mean machine, shoulder-rolling and chain-flinging, the Spirit of Vengeance riding with abandon and lethal power. Magik was fine, Satana supposed, very athletic, but she didn’t look so bright slashing and kicking at the air. The old witch was eating through layers of design, but the beauty of Satana’s spell was that it filled in its own holes. Satana chucked a rock at her, and Zarathos laughed when blood dripped from the old woman’s wound.
Like a merry-go-round. Just as she’d intended, the Suns were stuck on a ride that wouldn’t let go. Satana had drenched the rocks in dimensional magic, and drew from them now to feed the complicated web of deceit, pushing the fighters closer together. The rock creatures would turn to soldiers, then demons, each dumb hero convinced they were fighting alone, and Satana had a lockout on portals. None of them would escape.
Zarathos laughed again when Magik tripped over the frozen witch. He preferred to break things, but had to enjoy getting a flush of energy from his enemies’ confusion and distress.
Fenn’s voice trembled up through the well of the vault. “Just a few more minutes!”
Satana grinned and threw another rock at Magik.
* * *
THE ugly feel of Satana’s spell cloaked Magik’s senses. The ground stank of her, like brimstone and synthetic roses, entrails and cheap sparkling wine. The Suns were hidden, and glamours rose from the soil and stalked her.
Magik slashed a portal and it wouldn’t open, the slice sealing behind her blade. She spoke a line of revelation and it died in the tainted ether. She was alarmed when one of the stone monsters slammed into her armored shoulder—they were more than illusion—but she slashed at it and her sword touched nothing, kicked another and her boot passed through air.
Even as she opened her mouth to call for Nico, she felt Caretaker seeking the young witch, calling for her. Nico was close but something was wrong. She would have dispelled the glamour otherwise.
Magik focused on the girl’s signature, the sharp pulse of her energy, and thought she caught a glimmer, buried in the demonic miasma. She moved toward it—and tripped on the air, stumbling. Another of the semi-solid apparitions hit her. Magik swung her sword at the creature to no effect. She searched for the glimmer again.
There. The sense of Nico was on the ground where she’d tripped, where there were only a few stones.
Magik crouched and put out her hand, touched loose rock, invisible, and pushed her awareness through. Nico was frozen by Satana’s dimensional magic, and Magik forced a crack, shouting with her whole self for the witch to wake, lending the girl awareness by her dwindling energies. Cut off from dimensional power, Nico was their best chance.
* * *
NICO heard Magik, a distant cry in the dark, and grabbed on. Her thoughts stumbled but she knew she was alive, awake, stuck. Stress flushed her; she couldn’t move, couldn’t see, but she had awareness of her body at least, the Staff of One back inside her, sharp rocks digging into her back and side. Her uterus clenched, and she felt the Staff tingle in her marrow. She was bleeding.
Nico concentrated, making her need manifest, and felt the Staff rise out of her body. Her fingers were numb but she felt the Staff touch them, sliding against her palm. She formed a word in her mind, wrapped it in anxiety and force, investing her entire will into shouting it.
Espresso!
The staff’s energy shot through her, defined her form. Nico was back in her body and wide awake.
Nico leapt into the air, shedding rocks, aiming her fury at the demons that floated just east of the empty pit, aiming it at the trashy demoness who just now noticed that she was in trouble. Her eyes went wide, and she reached for the hulking Zarathos.
“Eat it!” Nico screamed, with her whole heart, and Satana’s black power was blasted from the rocks and soil, leached out and lifted into a swarm of pulsing atoms that arrowed back into their creator and pummeled the brute Zarathos at her side.
Satana shrieked, overloaded, and was knocked into the trees south of the pit. The staff kept the torrent going, hammering her with the power that she’d created. Without form, without will, the dark energy was only force, and it smacked that trash down and shook her good. Zarathos roared, shielding himself from the onslaught with a wave of one meaty hand.
The Suns appeared suddenly in the open pit, surrounded by men in camo holding big semi-automatics. The soldiers weren’t shooting but had their guns pointed at the Suns.
Soulless.
Zarathos’s giant, fanged lower jaw dropped open like it was unhinged, impossibly wide, and he exhaled. A swarm of chittering locusts poured from his black throat, a seemingly endless stream of whirring, flying insects. They spread out like a fan. In a second, the pit was thick with them, and they went after the Suns, trying to sting or bite—but Caretaker brushed them aside with a wave of her hand, sent them in a cloud toward the melted, smoking rock of the ridge to the east.
Magik cut a portal and floated up on the wave of power that poured out. She flung her hands at Zarathos and a burst of brilliant, pale-blue light shut his mouth and turned him sideways. She hit him again, while Caretaker began a powerful spell of binding.
Ghost Rider and Blade attacked the soldiers, Ghost Rider taking out a half dozen with a flick of his wrist, a bladed chain slapping across their chests, knocking them off their feet. Blade had his sword out and was hamstringing more of them, slashing weapons to the ground, whirling around them like they were standing still. There were a few shots fired but not on purpose, the soulless waiting on a command that Satana wasn’t giving. The succubus was still wrapped in a cloud of pulsing darkness.
Nico could feel the seal on the vault underground, still holding, but it wouldn’t be long. The air was different. It was—
Zarathos bellowed and a tidal wave of black energy crashed over the Suns, the ground under their feet rising, wrenched from its stasis by raw force. Caretaker shouted in a language Nico had never heard before as the world flipped, spun, the sky disappearing. Nico hugged the Staff and ducked as explosion after explosion ripped through the air, as tons of rocks slammed down and buried her.
* * *
SATANA had been slapped from the air by the young witch. Magik and the old Blood resisted Zarathos’s attacks, Limbo’s Mistress daring to strike him with her not inconsiderable power, the hag dispelling his locusts. The Ghost Rider and the vampire went after Satana’s useless soldiers.
Enough. He was Zarathos, a god, and he was finished with these games.
He opened the sky and absorbed the force of every storm, every charged atom, and channeled the turbulence, speaking the words of power that were his due. He broke the earth deep, just over the vessel’s chamber, overwhelming the hag’s stasis by brute force. He lifted and turned the massive sheaf of collapsing rock upside down, then slammed it back to the earth on top of the meddlesome Suns. They were crushed, along with most of the worthless empty men.
Much of the vault’s chamber collapsed, and the stones rumbled and shook as Fenn’s bombs discharged deep underground. Zarathos reached for the space he’d secured around the vault and found the Triumvirate’s mortal huddled there, faithfully waiting for the seal to break, to claim his pitiful vengeance.
Zarathos gouged a path to the vault, tossing the tons of rock and clay aside. His ascension was at hand.