Page 81 of Magic Unchained

The purple light had morphed into heavy iron chains. Their ends pierced Loki’s body and strung him up, spread-eagle style.

Lucifer waved a hand impatiently, and the fabric sealed, leaving Loki in the dungeon.

We’d underestimated Lucifer. I’d thought his primary power was hellfire. I hadn’t factored in that he’d been a formidable archangel before his fall, and he had also stolen another extremely powerful archangel’s power—my mother’s.

That was why he had the two-toned hellfire that was way more powerful than Loki’s and mine.

“Let him go, you monster,” I snarled. “He’s your son!”

“You think I care that he’s my blood?” he said, his voice dripping with contempt for me. “Thinking like a weakling defines you as a weakling.”

I smirked. “Yet you fail time and time again to break this weakling. What say you of that, dude?”

“Don’t call me dude,” he snapped. “And for all the grief you’ve caused me, I’ll kill your precious mates in front of you, and then I’ll take you. Your whore mother humiliated me, and I’ll violate you in every way before I send your pieces back to her.”

He didn’t even want to use me to crack open heaven’s door anymore. The devil had lost faith in me. Great. I was way more trouble than I was worth for most people. He wasn’t dumb. I’d give him that.

“Spoken like a cunt,” I said.

He roared. The room trembled at the devil’s power. Everyone who had lesser power seemed to want to bend their knees. More rocks plummeted from the ceiling; the place was breaking apart.

I ducked a rock hurtling over my head as the devil’s purple light slammed into me again in waves, and this time, his two-toned hellfire and something else joined the mix.

I summoned my shield in a panic, and it came, but my opponent’s power punctured through my crimson cocoon, dispersed it, and slithered up my body like an invader. The purple light bound me like chains, just as it had gotten Loki. Only the chains on me were tenfold more potent and nastier.

It paralyzed me.

I heard Héctor’s roars of fear and fury as he tried to pull away from his own battle to reach me.

“Go! Go! Guard my Cookie,” Axel shouted. “I’ll hold this motherfucker.”

“No, don’t come for me!” I yelled at them in desperation.

Héctor and Zak peeled off the line the four demigods held against Ares and zoomed toward me, leaving Paxton and Axel vulnerable. The four of them needed to band together to keep the God of War at bay, but they’d chosen me over their own safety after they saw me lose my shit.

Zak tossed his lightning, which wasn’t half as potent as when he was on Earth’s surface, at Lucifer and lunged at the devil with his blazing sword.

“You won’t touch my woman!” roared the sky demigod.

Héctor sent his death light to me to wrestle away the chains of purple light that bound my every inch but to no avail. He then murmured an ancient Olympian chant.

Zak and Lucifer locked in battle.

A black whirlwind reeled around Lucifer, and when the wind was gone, the devil had transformed into a nine-foot-tall monstrous being with vast red wings, great sharp horns, bladed claws, and long fangs.

His eyes blazed red fire and his mouth shot out hellfire at Zak.

Zak, who had many wounds already from fighting Ares, rammed into Lucifer—steel, lightning, and himself.

When they broke apart, Lucifer was missing a horn, and Zak fell backward, his chest cut open.

I screamed in horror and wrath. I was losing a mate right in front of my eyes. I couldn’t bear it.

“No! No!” I screamed again.

The devil was in his mutant form of both an archangel and a devil. He was too powerful. I had to lead the fucker away from my mates.

In my desperation, I tore myself from the protection of Héctor’s wings and death light and teleported out of the room.

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