I believed her, but I wasn’t planning on staying much longer.
Vorkol leaned forward. “But it doesn’t have to be this way. Tell me what I want, and it all goes away.”
I stood my ground. “I’ve already told you. We fought. I won.”
Her eyes settled on Logan, and I didn’t like what I saw there. “You know,” Vorkol mused, leaning against an arm of her throne-like chair. “Maybe I’ll let you fight in the pit and take him instead.” She ran an eye over Logan. Her smile widened at what she saw on my face. “Yes. Perhaps I’ll have different plans for him. He is... quite lovely to look at. Isn’t he? I can tell, just by looking into his eyes. I know he’s a passionate lover. Isn’t he?”
Oh, hell no. This was not happening.
“I’m not for sale,” growled Logan, pulling the words right out of my mouth.
Vorkol’s smile was feline with lots of teeth. “Everything’s for sale.”
I’d had enough. “It hurts. Doesn’t it?”
The Greater demon lifted her brows. “What does?”
“To be rejected.” Now it was my turn to smile. “You can’t have everything. And it’s killing you.”
Vorkol’s face contorted with pride and anger. “You are mistaken. I have everything I want. Everything I desire.”
“You don’t,” I said flatly. “You don’t know how I killed Vargal.” I watched the twitch of her smile, the furrowing of her delicate brows. “And it’s killing you. Isn’t it? Because you knew he was keeping secrets from you. You knew something was up with him, but you didn’t know what. He didn’t want you to know. Isn’t that right?”
Vorkol forced a laugh, her expression one of warning. “You are clearly delusional.”
“Sam, what are you doing?” cautioned Logan.
But once the words were flowing, I couldn’t stop. “Did you know he was trying to raise a god? Oh. Look at your face. Damn. You didn’t know. Did you? Well, he was. All so the god would give him power.”
Vorkol’s face twisted in disbelief as she bared her teeth and said, “You’ll say anything to save your soul, you pathetic little witch.”
“It’s the truth,” I said, my voice rising at her visible discomfort. “And you had no idea what he was doing behind your back. That’s freaking priceless. If I were to guess, I’d say he was tired of living in your shadow. Vargal wanted power of his own. He wanted more than yours. And knowing him a little—since we shared a few battles—I would also go ahead and say that if he had succeeded, he would have killed you.”
“That’s just great, Sam,” grumbled Logan, but I barely heard him.
Vorkol’s features twisted into a scowl. The realization of my words hitting her showed in the stiffness of her posture and the tension along her expression. She believed me.
It was a small victory, but I enjoyed every moment of it.
Suck it, Cleopatra.
Vorkol leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs at the knee. “If you’re inclined to play games, little bird, I suppose I must oblige.”
She snapped her fingers. The steel doors across from us burst open, and through them charged a horde of shuffling, twitching humans of every shape and size—at least a dozen of them.
But when they neared I could see their empty eyes staring in hollow, dead faces.
Zombies.
“Fuck me,” I grumbled.
“Right back at ya,” echoed Logan.
Great. I had as much love for zombies as I did a tick. And if you’d imagined zombies as in the Hollywood versions, you’d be right. They nailed it.
Zombies were nothing more than soulless human meat suits, risen from the dead by powerful demonic magic or necromancy magic and forced to obey their master, or whomever created them. Vorkol would get my vote. They existed to kill and to eat flesh, any flesh, to maintain their decomposing bodies.
I hated zombies.
A collective cheer went up from the assembled demons, and then they began applauding enthusiastically. Seemed like the demons loved them. No surprise there.
The zombies advanced, chanting and moaning mindless gibberish, for very few of them had functioning mouths. Their decayed legs thrust forward in a steady, slow rhythm that had bile rising in the back of my throat. The grisly sound of bone on bone and the rustle of decomposed flesh replaced the assembled demons’ chatter.
“Here we go,” said Logan, Faris’s small pocket knife gripped firmly in his hand.
My heart thumped as I pulled the energy from my blood sigils. “Have you ever killed a zombie?”
Logan flashed me a smile that would have gotten me into trouble if we weren’t in the Netherworld about to fight a horde of zombies. “Only in video games.” He crouched down in an attack stance, the dagger brandished before him.
“Get the brain,” I told him. Yeah. Hollywood had that right too. You could burn them too, but a shot to the brain usually did it.
However, the zombie virus was all Hollywood. You didn’t turn into a zombie if you were bitten, but they did have a mean bite, equipped with everlasting strength. They could rip you apart, and started to munch on your flesh while you were still alive. Yeah. I hated zombies.
The frenzied gurgle-moaning rose in volume. The stench of carrion followed, so intense my eyes watered and I could hardly breathe. I shook off the feeling and focused.
My pulse skyrocketed as the first wave of zombies hit. Damn, they were nasty.
The nearest zombie, a black female, with its lower jaw and parts of its forehead missing, saw me and charged. Feet planted, I channeled my magic, but Logan got there first.
With a burst of speed, he twisted around the zombie, got behind it, and sank his knife right into top of the zombie’s head. He pushed the knife down into its brain with a soft thud. The zombie twitched once but then was still. Grimacing, Logan yanked the blade from its head, sending a spatter of dark blood onto his face. The zombie collapsed to the ground in a pile of rotten flesh and cloth.
I had to admit, the angel-born had moves. But I wasn’t here to stand and watch his handsome dance of death. I had some killing to do.
A flicker of movement appeared in my line of sight.
My turn.
A male zombie came at me, its arms flailing wildly and striking blindly with heavy sweeps of its arms. Its eyes flashed with hunger.
Channeling the blood sigils, and praying they would work, I let the energy wake in me and shouted, “Feurantis!”
A pulse of energy lit through me, burning, as the fire sigil on my arm flashed with an orange light. My blood kindled the spell fully. My teeth clenched at the scorching pain as the blood magic soared through my veins.
A ball of fire rose from my palm, and then I flung it at the oncoming zombie. It hit it right in the chest. The zombie screamed and fell to its knees, writhing madly. With a final screech, it stopped thrashing and was still.
My ears rang and I staggered, feeling drained. My vision blurred and I blinked as I strained to see clearly, the pain of using my blood magic hitting hard. My limbs were stiff, and I felt as though I’d been hit by a bus. This was not good.
It had worked. But it also hurt like hell and had cost me dearly.
My vision cleared just as another zombie rushed toward me, a thrashing stick-figure with ribbons of rotten flesh. Naked, it was an angry-looking monster. Its mouth was open, sporting two rows of jagged, brown-coated teeth.