Page 19 (1/2)

In HellLevel Seven

Dead Harpies, ranite floor, victims of the Beast's wrath and involuntary black blood donations The s, sulfur-ridden flesh filled the air and the sound of agonized wails was clotted by the sizzling ainst the dank cavern bottom

Lilith worked feverishly to staunch the dangerous flow of blood that gushed froe, sueny to consume in order to keep their prized patient hydrated

Another blast rocked the cavern and a winded Lilith looked up from the task as her patient howled in pain

"Keep working!" her husband commanded and then looked up His nostrils flared with blue-black fire and the clatter of his hooves echoed in the chae "If you lose him due to your ineptitude, you die!"

Lilith cautiously continued to excavate the eerie, glohite light out of the heir's side The brilliance of the white light e There was no way to stare at it directly, and even touching inches near it could permanently injure her limbs What she could never make her husband understand was that if she placed her s, both she and their progeny would die and it would have been all for naught

This was delicate surgery, but in his state of ic He couldn't touch the injury; she couldn't touch the injury Only a black lohite e on the heir's skin like a rapid cancer The light lesion was also ians beneath it, which meant she had to cut wide and deep and quickly The patient couldn't be anesthetized, for she needed his fury-will to help keep his dark life force going However, the pain fro him into shock

Tears of frustration stung her eyes Part of the chrysalis had been daed The heir had been born too soon He was fully forans had yet to harden His exoskeleton had only recently been absorbed and covered with his hus were new, hadn't hardened, nor had his wing bones turned to steel-hardness yet His spaded tail wasn't even retractable at this point, and it flailed about piteously, trying to push her away as the source of his agony

Their poor baby was still night-blind, his eyes had yet to adapt to coh for the underground sulfur and heat His heartbeat had yet to die There was so much that had to be corrected before it had been time Damn the Neterus!

Vital blood supply veins in the placenta that had been connected to the roof of the birthing cave, which were needed to wash the heir's systeht toxin that conta labored in the subterranean air He needed fresh, earth-plane oxygen in his fragile, living-species lungs The chrysalis would have given him that, too

Ruefully, Lilith looked at their gasping, struggling patient and the partial chrysalis skin that still covered his face That was the only thing they could quickly iive hi the onslaught Beads of black sweat rolled down her face as she leaned over his body Another blast rocked the cavern, causing stalactites to coerous subterranean avalanche

Lilith's and her husband's eyesrocks She was certain that for the first tiht in Heaven before being cast down, a lack of surety burned in his bottomless black eyes He turned away fro the his future and protecting his current e his realms

"Go, fight," she said as calmly as possible She stared at hi for hiood as dead to us, anyway"

"Your life for his," her husband said between his teeth inDananu , beginning to pull away fro rocks to be sucked dry by the few re placenta-attached veins

"It was going to be that in any regard, so why fear leaving aze narrowed, for once all fear had fled her

"At this point I trust no one," he said, seething"As if I ever did And were it not for your lax security measures they would have never-"

"Hold it," shesaid, her voice strong and not wavering Rare truth burned in herfloor, unafraid "They followedyour black energy trail, notthebested the Devil in his own game "They were able to do that because you underestiue,sound that caused her husband to whirl on her "You need me, even if you punish me later for my insolence-so be it But as the only entity in all of Hell that will tell you the truth, and not just what you want to hear in the midst of a crisis, I implore you to consider e"

When he walked away froh her body, filling her with renewed power, even if it was potentially short-lived