The Night Everything Fell Apart (The Nephilim Book 1)(77)
The world went black.
***
“Let. Me. Go.”
Cybele’s pockets were empty. Her touchstone was missing. She didn’t know where she’d lost it. She only knew that without it, she had no hope of casting an illusion or making herself fade from Dusek’s awareness. Abandoning the possibility of a magical defense, she grabbed her knife out of her boot.
Dusek merely snatched it away. “You won’t need this, my dear.” Her knife disappeared into a fold in his cape.
“Fuck you.” She fought with everything she had left, biting, scratching, kicking. She jabbed her elbow into his gut, slammed the heel of her boot into his knee. Dusek’s hellfire re-appeared. She cried out in pain as they lashed her arms to her torso.
His arm, clamped across her chest, kept her body melded to his. When she glanced down, at his hand, the face on the odd ring snapped its eyes open. Twin streams of dirty gold fire shot out, striking painfully on the underside of her chin. Cybele hissed in a breath. The ring grinned and winked at her then closed its eyes. A shudder of revulsion passed through her.
Dusek’s tongue licked around the shell of her ear. Cybele struggled, angling her head away from the disgusting sensation. His lips pursued her, whispering wetly. “Useless to struggle. I have you safe now. I don’t know how you managed to cast off my hellfire the first time, but rest assured, my sweet. It will not happen again.”
Her captor hauled her into a maze of rocky passages. Sulfurous mist followed in their wake. Cybele gagged. The ground shook. An ominous crack sounded. A network of fissures opened in the tunnel walls. Rock spalled and fell. Dear ancestors in Oblivion. Maybe Dusek wasn’t her first concern. She might die under an avalanche of stone long before the Alchemist dragged her into the light of day.
Arthur. He’d been battling the golden archangel when Dusek hauled her into the tunnel. She had to get back to the main cave, back to Arthur, before the hill above it collapsed. But Dusek’s grip was like iron.
And the rock below their feet was crumbling. Clouds of steam, tainted by the scent of brimstone, billowed up from below. Licks of flame snapped at their feet.
“It begins.” The Alchemist’s voice was triumphant. He backed to the edge of the passage, under an overhanging rock. Stone fell like rain outside the sheltered nook. His arm tightened, pressing Cybele’s spine snugly against his bare chest. A hard, round object pressed into her back between her shoulder blades. Dark, suffocating wings brushed her shoulders.
“Watch, my darling. Watch what I have wrought.”
Fire snapped and crackled. Misshapen, rattailed creatures, their membranous batwings whirring, rode the flames up from the deep. Reaching the level of the tunnel, some jumped off to roam about the passageway. Others continued upward. They gathered under the cave ceiling, battering the rock with their wings. The gauzy light of the celestial seal became visible amid the crumbling stone.
“Are they not glorious?”
Cybele swallowed. “What...what are they?”
“Hellfiend demons,” he said. “Creatures of pure malice, created by the vengeful souls of the eternally damned. The fiends have been prevented from passing into the upper world for centuries, blocked by the power of Merlin’s staff and Raphael’s seal. Now, at long last, they are free.”
Cybele’s mind raced. “You wanted this. You planned it. That’s why you lured Arthur to the cave.”
“You are no fool,” Dusek said. “I approve, my dear.”
“But...how could you have known what was behind the seal? And the staff?”
His tongue snaked into her ear. She felt his penis harden against her butt. She shivered with revulsion.
“I know because I have seen it,” he whispered. “In the memory of my ancestor.”
“Impossible. You aren’t of Merlin’s line.”
“That old fool? I would be ashamed to carry his blood in my veins. Have you not puzzled it out yet? Merlin died in this cave. And so did Nimue, at the Druid bastard’s hand. She is the one of whom I speak.”
Of course. Cybele had been blind not to see it. “Nimue wasn’t a witch. She was a Nephil.”
“A Nephil and Alchemist. A daughter of Azazel. She opened a path to Hell in this very cave. Her mistake was in not killing Merlin before the demons rose.”
He turned her to face him. A flash of reflected light caught Cybele’s gaze. An odd, swirling silver disc, swinging on a chain about the Alchemist’s neck. It looked soft and liquid, but it couldn’t be. Earlier, she’d felt the pendant digging into her back.
Dusek’s voice rising above the din of the shrieking hellfiends. “Merlin received his punishment. Trapped by his own guilt and by Raphael’s seal, he died a slow, despairing death. And all for naught. Today, Nimue’s vision is finally realized.” His arm swept the cave. “Are they not glorious creatures?”
They were hideous. Ugly and stinking, their shrieks were like hot needles poking through Cybele’s eardrums. Clouds of sulfur followed them, burning her throat with every breath. Dusek’s arm, pressing on her ribcage, didn’t help.
She felt him searching with his free hand in the red lining of his cape. He pulled an object from a hidden pocket. “Now,” he said, “I will see Nimue’s fiends launched into the world.”
With a flick of his wrist, he released the object from his hand. A golden ball, held aloft by two glittering incandescent feathers. It hovered for a moment, swaying gently on its whirring wings. A wave of Dusek’s hand sent it darting off toward the cave ceiling.