For once, her timing is perfect.
Hades scowls, clutching the grimoire to her chest. It’s covered in my blood, and Hades’s hands are stained with it. “Whatever you have planned, it won’t work.”
I nod. “Actually, you’re right. What I had planned won’t work. I was going to con a demon into destroying the codex, but they’ve all gone and taken their hellfire with them. So unless Rook volunteers…Oh, wait.” I tilt my head, staring at my hands as though I’m just seeing them for the first time.
I am now well and truly a demon. I have the claws and the voice. And apparently the horns.
But I also have the nonphysical attributes: demonic magic. Specifically, hellfire.
I’m going to be honest: I have no clue how to do this. There wasno instruction manual, no welcome packet, no pamphlet calledSo, Now You’re a Demon. But as soon as I think it, as soon as the desire for the flames rises within me, black mist begins to swirl around my hand. I feel the power build inside me, different than the resurrection magic. That felt like it was an extension of me, something as natural as singing or dancing. This feels like it’s being pulled from me, like I’m gnawing off my arm to free myself from a trap.
“No,” Hades growls. “You’ll never get your brother back if you destroy the book!”
I smirk. “It’s a codex, bitch.”
Flames burst from my open palm, and I thrust my hand toward Hades, as though I’m pushing her away. A stream of hellfire shoots toward her, and before she has time to react, the book is consumed by it.
Hades drops the grimoire to the stone, screaming in anger as the crackling flames begin to spread out from the ashes of the codex. She, herself, seems resistant to the fire as she steps over it and through and charges toward me.
I step to meet her, my hand flying out to catch the staff of her bident. She’s stronger than me, but I’ve been in my body my whole life. She’s only occupied hers for a couple days.
I push back and cluck my tongue. “Oh, Hades, Hades, Hades.” I say her name three times as the spell instructs. I’m hit with an overwhelming aroma of decay, withered leaves, cypress, and the chill of the grave as Tolliver douses Hades with the potion of banishment, now complete with the hair Crowlene grabbed. Hades gasps. Behind her, I see Ezra has hold of the bone again and CJ is holding Rook back.
I start chanting. “Audite me, spiritus vitae plenus.”
“NO!” Hades roars, pushing back against me, both of us grappling with the bident, but I now have an unnatural strength flowing through me.
“Relinque lumen, redi ad umbras.”
“Stop it!” Hades snaps. Something like lightning crackles up the weapon.
“Magicae fluit per medullam profundam.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” she says. “You’re not sending my soul to Tartarus. I can come back.”
I just smile, pulling the bident and her closer, slipping the tower obol into her pocket.
“Dormite nunc in somno aeternum.”
Hades’s hand releases the weapon, and she’s pulled down to her knees by an invisible force, a string running through her heart, dragging her to the core of the earth.
“Audite me, spiritus vitae plenus,
Relinque lumen, redi ad umbras.
Magicae fluit per medullam profundam,
Dormite nunc in somno aeternum.”
Like with the resurrection spell, I’m consumed by the power. But unlike the resurrection spell, I’m filled not with light but with darkness. I’m lifted into the air, hovering over Rook’s mansion as stygian beams shooting from my eyes, my extremities, including now, I guess, my horns. Hades’s cries fill my ears, and something about her fear feeds me, nourishes me.
“Audite me, spiritus vitae plenus,
Relinque lumen, redi ad umbras.
Magicae fluit per medullam profundam,
Dormite nunc in somno aeternum.”
