Lucifer's Odyssey Read online

  ***

  Azazel was losing consciousness again past the third security checkpoint, and Lucifer shouldered him once more. Stanley Smith’s credentials were useless when his partner couldn’t support his own weight, so there was no point in the masquerade anymore. Brute force would have to win out.

  Lucifer’s wings broke through the skin on his back and wrapped themselves around his body. Whenever a guard looked at him for too long, the tendrils lashed out and silenced any chance of alarm. But human bodies were too fragile, and most of the wounds inflicted were fatal. He tossed their bodies behind buildings along the way and continued to pull his longtime friend over the launch pad.

  He was careful to use the ground and tower to ascend to the shuttle door and not the pair of solid rocket boosters that probably couldn’t take the pressure of his wings. He looked back at the control tower and waited for Sariel to open the door.

  “Hey idiot!” someone called from a hundred feet below.

  Lucifer looked down to see his brother’s wings bursting through his security guard outfit.

  “I’ve already set the timers for the SRB and main engines and removed the SRB lock pins. What are you waiting for?”

  “I don’t have a key!”

  Sariel’s wings pushed him up to Lucifer’s height, and the look on his brother’s expression was less than approving. Sariel pushed the white button beside the door, and the cockpit opened. Lucifer put his hand in front of Sariel’s face.

  “I don’t want to hear it,” Lucifer said.

  “We have about two and a half minutes before the SRBs ignite. We need to get this door closed, jettison the air just in case it’s part of what kills our kind when we try to escape the stratosphere, and get ready for 2.8 million pounds of thrust.”

  “Child’s play.”

  “Exactly.”

  Lucifer placed Azazel into the second row of seats before climbing into the pilot’s chair.

  “You know the controls?” Sariel asked.

  “I’ve been studying this thing for decades,” Lucifer replied. “I’ve always wanted to fly one.”

  Sariel shrugged as he placed a hand on a lever above the copilot chair. “Any last words before the air is sucked out?”

  “Nope.”

  “Fine, I guess that leaves me to say something historic. For your information, she only had two nipples. I checked.”

  Sariel pulled the lever just as Lucifer was trying to say “What?”

  The chair vibrated slowly at first, but as the shuttle’s main engines kicked in, Lucifer’s body began oscillating wildly in place. He grabbed the armrests, set his brow, and looked out the windows as the clouds greeted him. The shuttle would hit the stratosphere within a minute, but he forgot to start counting. When the solid rocket boosters separated, they would be at around 150,000 feet and well into the stratosphere.

  When he felt the separation jolt, he looked to the left to watch the SRB fall away. They were in the stratosphere. If Batarel was right, then they were almost safe, but there was no reason to break out of the shuttle just yet. Might as well see themselves into the blackness first.

  The blue atmosphere became darker and darker as the deep void of space closed in on the shuttle. Lucifer chuckled silently without air as he felt a sense of elation drown all of his fears away. He turned toward Sariel and found his brother smiling too.

  At about ten million feet from the Earth, Sariel gave the OK sign to proceed with exiting the spacecraft. Lucifer only needed to be told once. With two of his wings, he grasped Azazel and dragged him into the weightlessness of the cockpit. With his other six wings, he punched the cockpit door into space. Grasping the doorway, he pulled himself into the void and let out a triumphant, but silent scream. Lucifer had escaped his long internment.

  He only had seconds to appreciate the monumental occasion, as Azazel floated by and broke him from his self-revelry. He turned to Sariel, nodded, and pointed into the nothingness around him. It was time for Sariel’s vortex transport.

  Sariel closed his eyes as frost began to form around his face. His purple wings deployed just as a red maelstrom opened in front of them. Lucifer moved beside it, but saw no trace of the funnel inside other than the opening. Other dimensions were out of Lucifer’s comfort zone, but Azazel was counting on him. He had no idea where Order’s boundaries were, and it wasn’t safe for him to let his bodyguard die here.

  They entered the vortex and felt an immediate pull toward the other end. Chaos. Home. Lucifer imagined the homecoming he would receive. The parades. The sex with females who had millions of years of experience in knowing just what it meant to pleasure someone. The constantly changing landscapes and shapeshifting creatures. Breathing in the sulfuric air around Alurabum once more.

  Most of all, he was looking forward to embracing his father Ostat and mother Olivia. After two hundred thousand years of deprivation, Lucifer longed for the simple things. He just hoped he could get back in time to stop Jehovah from destroying everything he had ever loved.