Magic - Chapter 64
Inky blackness collapsed all around me. My eyes generally adjusted to the darkness quickly, but the blackness in this place was unyielding.
This is the second book in The Godsverse Chronicles, a portal fantasy series with mythological roots and action-adventure tendencies. You can search through all my work on my website.
Ollie wasn't looking for trouble, but after she saved the Antichrist from being slaughtered, it came for her.
Ollie lived by one rule. Never get involved with anyone for any reason; humans, demons, fae folk, it didn't matter. They were all trouble. Keeping her distance was how she survived in the criminal underworld for so long.
Keep your head down and don't piss anyone off. That was her motto, especially since her clients all had access to powerful dark magic.
She thought she had a flawless system for keeping her nose clean, so how did she wind up in a stolen car, with a demon spawn in her back seat, driving away from her ex-lover and a gang of demons ready to skin her alive?
That's a good question.
And why did she agree to help save the demon's life so she didn't get sacrificed to open the gates of Hell?
An even better question.
She had one rule. One stupid rule. And tonight...it goes right down the toilet.
Now, the only way for Ollie to get her life back is to save the girl, prevent the Apocalypse, and track down the people who betrayed her.
They will pay. Oh yes, they will all pay.
Inky blackness collapsed all around me. My eyes generally adjusted to the darkness quickly, but the blackness in this place was unyielding. Something whooshed behind me. It didn’t feel like the wind. It felt like something, or someone, swiped against the back of my leg.
I turned to look, but it was no use. I couldn’t see anything. I tried to turn back, but when I whipped around, I lost my sense of where I was going.
“Think, Ollie,” I said.
“Yes, Ollie,” a voice grumbled in the darkness. “Think.”
A laugh echoed all around me.
“Who did that?” I growled. “Show yourself.”
The darkness broke in front of me, and the smoky image of my mother stood in the light. “I’m so disappointed in you.”
“You have to know I don’t care about her at this point,” I said, looking around. “I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but I have been immune to my mother for a long time.”
“You can lie to yourself, Oleander,” Mom said. “But I know that you still hurt because of me. I can feel it inside of you. I never loved you.”
I shook my head. “That’s not true. She didn’t know how to show it, but she loved me.” I felt wetness on my face, and I realized I was crying. “I wish you didn’t because it would make it so much easier to hate you. The worst part about you is that you loved me. It made you even more sadistic.”
The smoke morphed into Blezor’s face. His eyes were white with death. “Just like you treated me, with contempt.”
“I never loved you, Blezor. I told you that. I was very clear. I was mean to you. I manipulated you. I never loved you, so it’s not the same thing.”
“You killed me!”
“No, a demon killed you!” I laughed. “This is not real. None of this is real.”
“You have so little empathy for your fellow beings. Is that because Daddy didn’t love you?” The smoke transformed into my father. “Is it because I didn’t love you?”
I scratched my chin. “This is pathetic now. Honestly, I don’t know what game you are playing, but let me out of here. I am not a plaything, and I’m getting pissed off now.”
There were murmurs all around me. Whatever was toying with me wasn’t one being, it was many—maybe hundreds.
“What manner of creature are you?” I asked. “I know many that live in the darkness. Most are friendly, or at least not malicious. Do you want something from me? Memories? Pain? Joy? Hate? Love? Whatever it is, just take it from me so I can get going.”
“You…offer it…freely…”
I nodded. “I do if you promise not to take more than you need, and you let me go afterward.”
“Or, we could leave you here…yes, leave you…and feast for longer…more fun.”
“I have been around long enough to know that I’m not a fun hang. Tell me I’m not already irritating to you. You can’t, can you? Seriously, if you want me to stay around and we can play this dance forever, I can’t stop you, but I will never stop being this annoying.”
There was a moment of silence, and then I felt a cold gust of wind smash against me—no, not against me, into me. It wound its way through my arms and legs, up to my heart, and finally into my brain.
I felt a surge of pain in my skull, and I dropped to the ground. Every good memory in my life flashed before me—dancing, hanging out with Phil, meeting Anjelica—all of it—I watched all of it and then felt them drain from me, all at once, and then the gust of wind shot out of me, and left me on the ground, crying and sobbing.
“Across the grotto, down the stairs, left along the dungeon, and then up, through the dining room and into the throne room, and you will find what you seek.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw a pinprick of light and crawled toward it. I followed it until I found myself in a dilapidated grotto. The grass was burnt brown, and the gazebo in the center was falling apart, its white paint chipped, and wood rotted through. Weeds cracked through the stone flooring, and I followed the crack until I found the door on the other side, just like the voice had said.
I stood, gathered what strength I had left, and followed the steps beyond the door. The wear on the castle continued through the corridor toward the dungeon. The cracks in the floor splintered up the walls and the ceiling. I imagined that at some point, the groans of prisoners echoed through the pristine halls, but now, there was only silence. Several doors were flung wide open, hanging off their hinges as I walked through them. Those that were closed had rusted shut.
Next to a room filled with corroded and discarded tools of torture, a set of stairs led me to what would have been an elaborate and ornate hallway once but had fallen into as much disrepair as the rest of the castle. Dust and muck coated the blue walls, and the paintings on them had so much grime caked on them it was hard to make out the art underneath.
Following the hallway as it moved left and then right, I passed a dining room that hadn’t been used in ages, and finally, I pushed open a door, and the hallway broke into a throne room.
“Hello,” I heard a voice coo next to me. I turned to see a ratty demon, potbellied, sitting atop a throne of skulls. “Why, isn’t this interesting. Have you come to bargain with the Devil?”
It was Lucifer.
This is the second book in The Godsverse Chronicles, a portal fantasy series with mythological roots and action-adventure tendencies. You can search through all my work on my website.