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Faster than I can move or even breathe, the demon snake strikes. I scream, shattering the silence as twin points of searing pain burrow into my flesh.
Lucifer leaps over me and I fall back against the bed. The snake releases me, twisting around to strike at Lucifer, but it misses. Lucifer has it by the back of its head, struggling to hold on as it thrashes around him, trying to wrap around him like some kind of constrictor. Maybe it is. Maybe, in Hell, snakes can be both constrictors and venomous. It’s wrapped around his chest now, squeezing while it struggles to break free of Lucifer’s grasp.
There’s a solid stone bust of some prestigious demon on the dresser, and Lucifer grabs it, smashing the snake’s head into a bloody, viscous, venomous puddle on the floor. The body is still tightening around him and thrashing in his grip. His talons come out, severing the pulp of its head from the rest of its body. It still takes a few seconds for the snake’s deadly rings to fall limply to the floor, no more harmful than a pool noodle.
But the harm has been done.
The wounds on my chest are still burning, deeper and deeper into my flesh. Lucifer looks at me and his eyes fill with fear. I want to make a joke or tell him “thank you” or something—anything to make that look go away. But I can’t speak. I can’t move. Darkness creeps around my vision.
“Sophia!” His hands are on me, at least I think.I’m floating.“Sophia, stay with me. Come on, please. Just hold on for a minute, we can fix this. You’ll be all right. Sophia?Sophia!”
Darkness, silent as the grave, overtakes me.
Chapter10
Lucifer
She’slethargic in my arms, her skin already ashen and clammy. That snake is a weapon, its kind bred by only the extremely skilled or insane. Very few still exist in the wild, their nests are hunted and destroyed every year before the young emerge from their eggs. Their powerful venom is too dangerous to be permitted to exist freely, uncontrolled and uncontained.
That doesn’t stop people from keeping them as pets, insurance, or vengeance.
Fear for her life fills my being, making the transition to my demon form natural and fluid. She needs help immediately or she will die, and that help won’t be found in the palace. Three running steps and one long jump, and I’m out the window, gliding over the maze of open walls and covered pavilions that make up my father’s palace.
I catch my bearings and bank slightly to the right. Over the inner wall, over the cluttered rooftops of town, beyond the outer wall I fly, cradling her lifeless body against my chest. She’s barely breathing.
Hold on, Sophia, just a while longer.
Straining and streamlining, I move faster through the night. In the distance, jagged mountains scrape at the sky. Civilization, or what passes for it here falls away far behind me. The rugged, unforgiving terrain grows wilder with every passing second. No one comes out here unless they have to. No one lives out here, either—except the Alchemist.
Healers of all kinds find themselves at the center of conflicts more often than not, as pawns and hostages. Those who are also skilled in self-defense, combat, and negotiation are pressed into my father’s service. Then there’s the Alchemist; no one knows his true name. That is how he has managed to slip through every loophole, legal or magical, and he doesn’t barter his skills. He prefers to live a quiet life, out here in the wilderness, studying his potions and perfecting his magic. Some discoveries, he’s willing to sell to other healers—all of them at once so as not to interfere with the balance of power—but others he keeps to himself.
Like the anti-venom for elapythe bites.
I nearly fly over his fortress, constructed as it is among the natural crevices of the stony foothills. I drop from the sky as I catch the thin tell-tale trail of smoke drifting from a rusted, dust-encrusted pipe protruding from a flat bit of stone. As I come closer, the flat stone resolves itself to be a series of shingles sloped over a small lean-to, hewn from the thin shale lying all around, crafted together so neatly it’s nearly invisible from the sky.
I march for the door, cataloging my surroundings as I move. Thickly populated herb gardens fill the channels and crags that run away from the small valley. Water trickles lazily from a cliff side spring near the front of the house, and shadows in the natural walls indicate deep tunnels and passages.
Lots of exits, and few opportunities to corner or to be cornered. Surprise is the only surefire method of confrontation in this place.
I’d like to say that’s why I smash through the door hard enough to rip it off its topmost hinge, but fear is driving me, and Sophia’s heartbeat is weakening. Inside, a fire burns in the fireplace and the Alchemist sits at his wooden table, a spoonful of his supper frozen halfway to his mouth.
“Help her,” I order.
His big, bat-like ears quiver in fear as he slowly lowers his spoon into his bowl. With one spindly, delicate hand he gestures at a cot which sits against the wall on the other side of the room.
“Set her there,” he says, sounding more bored than anything else.
I do as he says, brushing her hair back from her face. She’s a shadow, gray and immaterial, and barely clinging to life. The Alchemist approaches, the top of his ears barely reach the middle of my chest and the massive spheres of his eyes take up most of his face. A diamond-shaped sensory scale in the center of his forehead glows slightly as he bends over Sophia. Inhaling through his sharp, curved beak, fear forgotten, he begins his examination.
“What species?” he queries after a puzzled moment.
“Human,” I bite out.
“Elapythe… human. Oh, dear,” he laments absentmindedly.
“Help her.”
“Young human. Maybe strong enough—”
