Page 83 of Witch Queen

Mae narrowed her eyes. She too could feel the ghouls and devils somewhere up ahead. Sulfur clouds obscured her vision when the dragon flew over a cluster of lava pits. The mountain loomed out of the yellow clouds, a solid black wall of rock that grew until it filled her sight.

Vozgan rose sharply, belly skimming the cliffside and wings beating powerfully to overcome the downdrafts dragging at his body. Mae’s stomach lurched.

White magic raised the hairs on her nape when the dragon shot past a breach in the rock face.

“Stop!” she and Nikolai yelled at the same time.

Vozgan pulled up abruptly, causing Vlad and Cortes to curse.

“There!” Mae pointed beneath them, her heart racing. “That opening!”

She glanced at Nikolai. He swallowed and nodded.

Azazel’s anxious gaze remained locked on the crevice while the dragon hovered down next to it.

Vozgan studied the slit-like passage with a dubious expression. “I won’t get through that.”

“Then we’ll have to go alone from here,” Azazel said in a strained voice.

His face was tight with a mixture of apprehension, anticipation, and bone-deep longing.

Mae’s chest tightened, the same emotions coursing through her from Na Ri. Hellreaver and Brimstone whined.

Vozgan sagged. “Drat. I was looking forward to a good fight.” His voice dropped to a low mumble. “And maybe a snack or two.”

“Told you so,” Cortes muttered darkly to Vlad and Nikolai.

Azazel smiled faintly and patted the dragon’s neck. “There might still be some fighting left for you to do, my young friend.”

Vozgan brightened.

Mae invokedLevitateand erectedContainaround herself, Nikolai, Vlad, Cortes, and their familiars. They followed Azazel and Alicia inside the chasm.

“Good luck!” Vozgan called out anxiously in their wake.

Acrid fumes danced aroundContainas they navigated the narrow corridor, the walls at times brushing against the solid barrier of magic. The outlook opened out some two hundred feet later.

A cliff rose at the end of a gully lit by the glow of dozens of bubbling firepits. Mae’s breath caught.

She could feel Ran Soyun’s magic pulsing from it. From the way Azazel and Nikolai tensed, so could they.

“There’s a cave at the bottom of that bluff,” the sorcerer said with a jerk of his head. “Barquiel erected barriers to hide the entrance. It leads to Ran Soyun’s prison.”

Alicia’s eyes shrank to slits. She accelerated, her scythe extending into its deadliest form.

“Wait!” Azazel warned. He scanned the shadowy cliffs rising around them. “You don’t know what traps he may have?—!”

Demonic energy saturated the air without warning.

Alicia grunted, black lightning striking her flank. She twisted and deflected the next deadly bolt with her scythe, the jagged hole in her robe fluttering around the wound the attack had inflicted.

Mae’s heart pounded in her throat as her gaze found the demon standing on a ridge high up to their right. Hellreaver growled and transformed.

Barquiel glared at them. The broadsword in his hand was different from the one she had last seen him wield, its serrated blades resembling Hellreaver’s teeth. Black lightning crackled on the weapon and sparked inside the dark clouds swirling above his head.

Mae clenched her jaw. “I’d hoped he could only do that on Earth.”

Brimstone shifted into his nine-tailed demon form,Containenlarging to accommodate him. “It is a power that transcends dimensions, my witch.”

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