Endless Knight (Darkling Mage 9)

Sibilant, stuttering noises left her lips, words stranger still than anything I’d ever heard Carver use in his incantations, a language that instinctively sounded as if it was built on hate, and deceit, and pain. I winced and flinched as Belphegor kept speaking the infernal tongue, every small syllable resonating with something inside me that told me it was evil, and wrong, yet powerful. Ancient and enormously powerful.

I was right. The ocean kept on rising under Poseidon’s command – but now it was boiling, too. His eyes went huge with surprise as he looked down into the waters, his skin already turning red from the immense heat. As bubbles frothed and roiled to the surface, forced there by the power of Belphegor’s horrible prayer, Poseidon threw his head back and screamed.

The flash of lightning was sudden, as was the crack of thunder that followed. It struck Poseidon’s trident at its tip, setting his entire body ablaze in a pillar of blinding electricity. Then, just as quickly as the lightning came, it was gone – along with Poseidon.

“Oh,” Belphegor said. “Oops. What was that about?”

I cocked an eyebrow. “Wait. What? You boiled the sea. Didn’t you summon that lightning bolt, too?”

She raised her hands, shrugging. “That wasn’t me.”

It felt like my entire body had been plunged into a tub of ice. Dread and sweat poured out of me in buckets. I knew where that lightning came from.

“Listen,” Belphegor said, laying one delicate, bronzed hand on Carver’s shoulder. He glared at her, and at the streaks of suntan lotion she left on his suit. “Sorry about all that stuff earlier, swatting you out of the fight and what not. It would have gotten you into more trouble with Poseidon if you’d fired any shots. At least this way, he’s only pissed at me. Right?”

I looked from her to the empty ocean, then up to the clouds, then back. “You do realize that you’ve drawn someone else’s attention, right?”

Belphegor blinked at me. “Sorry. I don’t follow.”

I threw my hands up. “One of Poseidon’s brothers? Lives on top of a mountain, likes to throw lightning bolts? That was an emergency rescue.”

She chuckled. “Oh, you mean Zeus? Is that what that lightning was about?”

Gil pushed his fingers into his eyelids, massaging his eyeballs. Carver cursed to himself in what might have been Arabic. Asher stared at the sky, his skin raw from being dragged through sand. “We’re dead, aren’t we?” he said to no one in particular.

“Ugh,” Belphegor said. “Listen. That spell I used made me burn like a million calories. That’s more than I’ve used in the past decade. You’d think I’d get some thanks for saving your butts, but whatever. Not my problem. Anyway, the sword. Duskfang. Are we still on or what?”

Carver’s hands were curled into tight balls, shaking, but his voice was even as he spoke. “What have we got to lose now?” he said through clenched teeth.

“Sweet. Okay, cool. What I want in return is a favor.” She cocked her hip, rubbing her chin as she cast her gaze over us. “From you.”

Mason stared at her in quiet bafflement.

&nbs

p; “Absolutely not,” Carver snarled.

“What? What! I’m not going to hurt him. Don’t be so annoying. Just, I’ll have a favor to ask, something for the future.” I could see Belphegor’s eyes rolling from behind her sunglasses. She raised one hand, then placed the other over her heart. “I swear I’m not going to put him in harm’s way. Sloth’s honor.”

Well, we all knew what that really amounted to, I thought. But I said nothing.

“I’ll do it,” Mason blurted out.

Carver could have exploded right out of his skin. “Gods above and below, Mason, I – ”

“I know what I’m doing,” Mason blustered back. “I’m not an idiot. I know exactly what she is. We’ve lost enough time here. We need to keep moving, figure out the next blade.”

Belphegor patted him on the shoulder. “You see? Smart boy. Exactly why I asked him specifically. Now all of you get the hell off the island. It’s still my day off. I want to catch more of these sweet rays.”

I knew I shouldn’t have said anything else, but I just had to. “Isn’t – isn’t every day your day off? Prince of sloth, I mean.”

“Very funny,” Belphegor said, lounging back down on her recliner, putting on her sunglasses, then pulling her huge hat down over her head. “Now get the hell off the island.”

Belphegor snapped her fingers. As her demon magics whisked us away, I heard the very last thing she said.

“Ugh. So annoying.”

Chapter 13