straight-arrow self-help babble. No clues. No codes. Just sensible advice for sensible people, which leaves me out in the cold. I throw the book across the room. For all I know, Aelita brought it down so Mason could use it to mess with my brain.
I need a drink. Many drinks. And I need them now.
I kick over the chair as I get up, knocking over the table and sending the lamp flying.
There’s something on a shelf that had been hidden behind the table. On a bottom shelf all the way at the back of the magic section is an old book whose cover is the same shade of yellow as
It’s musty and a little mildewed and the leather binding cracks when I touch it. The lettering and illustration of a kid on the front looks Victorian. Gold lettering reads
I stand up and clip it into place.
Nothing happens. Zero. Zip. Nada. I didn’t think I was going to roll around the floor growling like Lyle Talbot sprouting Wolf Man whiskers but I was hoping for something. I’m so jacked up on adrenaline that all traces of exhaustion are gone, but that’s still a letdown when you expect to feel like the second most powerful being in the universe.
Then something hits me like a baseball bat to the kidneys. My guts knot up and my body temperature shoots up a hundred degrees. Darkness spills out of me, rolling onto the floor and spreading like black Hellion blood. I’m spewing darkness from every pore of my body. The darkness isn’t solid. It’s a cold dead void like a drop into a bottomless pit. Things curl up from the nothingness, icy and sharp, like freezing rattlesnakes. Suddenly I’m a supercharged nitro-burning Hell beast with teeth the size of the Rockies and hands the size of Texas. If I bend down, I can lift all of Creation onto my back.
And then, like a supersonic orgasm, the feeling is gone. There’s nothing left and I’m back on the floor gasping for air.
What the hell just happened? Does this mean I had Lucifer’s power for a second but my human body couldn’t contain it? Or did it just feel like it passed into me?
There are voices. They don’t come through clearly. Whispers of Hellions all around me in the palace. Even though I can’t hear individual words, the meaning still filters through. Most words are nothing. Empty compliments or straight-up information. Other things hang in the air. Faint wisps of vapor like steam coming off hot coffee. They’re veiled threats and lies. The half-truths, evasions, and bullshit that’s the blood in the arteries of this place. They float in through the walls like a ghost mist.
Okay. Right. This is new. It’s not much more than a trick from one of those shitty amaze-your-friends-and-half-wit- relatives magic kits you buy off late-night TV but it’s something. Maybe the superhero stuff will kick back in later. I like the darkness thing that just happened. I hope I didn’t blow all my power in one big death-dive money shot. Maybe being Lucifer isn’t about power but just being more aware of your Luciferness. That would be a hell of a letdown. I swear on every pointy little Hellion head if I start to grow bat wings and a tail, I’m going to cut them off and feed them to Samael
