He leapt onto the table, his spidery legs chittering on the wood, sending plates and cutlery flying as he rushed me.
One of his legs lunged at me, the barbed carapace sharp enough to run me through. I grabbed it and wrenched it around until there was a sickening crunch, followed by a howl of pain.
I thought about using it as a weapon, but I tossed it aside and resorted to stabbing him in the eye too, burying the cheese knife into one of his many spidery eye sockets.
Seeing that Baal was seconds from going down, Mammon jumped out of his chair and went for his hammer. I shot at it with a blast of fiery blue magic, sending the war hammer flying out of his reach. It only bought me a few extra moments, but when one was locked in hand-to-hand combat with the demon Lord of Wrath, a few seconds was plenty.
I wrenched the knife from his eye with a spray of blood and fluid. No steel inside this body, just blood and bone.
Perfect.
Another screech. Some of his many legs, or at least the ones still attached, slammed into me and sent me skidding back on the table, plates and food clattering to the ground in a great havoc that had the goblins outside clamoring to get through the doors.
Skidding to a halt on the table, my attention locked on one of the few things that hadn’t been knocked off the table in the chaos.
An iron candelabra with half-burnt candle sticks, their flames still flickering.
Unlike Mammon, Baal was an experienced warlord and warrior. Still, he was cocky, too used to winning.
With me on my back, he made the assumption that I’d lost. The spider demon lunged at me again, another of his sharp carapace legs slamming toward my head—the easiest way to kill a demon lord—but he was too slow, and without Sloth to slow time for him, he had no chance of winning this.
I grabbed the candelabra and slammed the base into the small hole I’d already made in his head. It slid through like hot metal through butter.
It was almost too easy. I laughed at the shocked expression that would be frozen on his head forever before his body slumped on top of mine, lifeless. The Lord of Wrath was dead.
I dumped his body off the table and leapt to my feet, finding Mammon standing in front of the hearth, his great hammer held at the ready.
“All this for what?” he growled out, following my movements by shifting his hammer in my direction. “Has the Lord of Bones and Rot nothing better to do than obsess over an insignificant hunk of meat with a heartbeat?”
With a swipe of my tongue, I wiped a bit of Baal’s blood from my bony face, grimacing at the bitter taste. “No, Mammon. All this for a chance at a life I don’t fucking loathe.”
“Life?Life?What business does the Lord of Death have with life?” the fire demon mocked, his armor clanging as he started to close the distance between us with his heavy-footed strides.
“I’m the God of Life and Death. I may not breathe life into bones,” I said, positioning myself to lunge at Mammon, “but I decide who lives and dies, and you… you’re going to die.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Rayven
Icy terror flooded meas I stared at Belial’s visage. His storm-gray eyes, the ones I'd lost myself in countless times, watched me through the holes in his mask, an evil glint nearly making them glow.
I felt sick, my stomach twisting into knots at the sight of him.
“No, no, no. You’re not him.” It was the only thing I could say as I stared at Belial’s likeness. It looked so much like him, the same way Belphegor had portrayed Asmodeus, but I knew it wasn’t real.
Belial wore a black, lantern-sleeved shirt and tight black pants that hugged his impressive bulge perfectly. Everything about him was familiar, aside from his scent. The smell of sweet, ripe strawberries was missing, replaced by Belphegor'sperfume-soaked skin. The illusion was otherwise uncanny, with the exception of bronze charms decorating his antlers instead of silver ones.
I focused on those inconsistencies, reminding myself it wasn’t real; Belial wasn’t really here.
“Rayven,” he said, the low, familiar rumble of his voice making my stomach flutter.
I squeezed my eyes closed and shook my head. “No. Fuck you. You’re not him.”
“Don’t be like that, little human,” Belphegor said, tsking his tongue. “Aren’t you excited to see me? You should be dripping with arousal to see the demon you’ve been pining for standing before you, just a touch away.”
I felt his eyes slither down the length of my naked body, which was still stretched out on the St. Andrews Cross, completely exposed to him.
“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?”
