Page 15 of The Misfit Mage and His Devilish Desires (Diabolic Romance #3)

Wally

“Wait…you wanna make a baby with me?” I asked with what must’ve been the most dumbfounded expression in the history of expressions.

My jaw had fallen slack with shock. My eyes were wide yet locked in on Lilith. Literally zoomed in on her with the power of my essence in the same way I’d done when observing the distant details of Hell. She sprawled across the edge of her bed, posing a proposition to merge our essence while also…well, posing seductively.

“This isn’t real.”

“It’s quite real, Walter,” Lilith cooed. “Naturally, I’d want your offspring. It’s a fascination of mine to see the wonderful Diabolic diversity different devils bring when our essence collides.”

“Could you clarify what you mean by mating?” I asked as my throat tightened. “Like actually pushing our bodies together in a… Well, you know how people push their bodies together. Or actually, maybe you don’t. Do Diabolics do sex? Bez does. He’s really good at it. But he might’ve learned that from mortals. See, we’ve got some cool stuff. And Mora does it, too. A lot, based on the way Kell discusses it. But again, she might’ve picked that up from people. Hmmm.” I swallowed the lump building in my throat from the million other random words about sex threatening to spill out into this very awkward conversation.

“Devils do, in fact, have sex when merging essence.” Lilith shifted her position, letting her legs dangle on the edge of the bed. “I adapted it for mergers—a bit of pleasure for the process, an intriguing absurdity that lesser things require. The requirements for procreation are such a foreign concept.”

“Oh?”

“When I wish for life, I simply will it.” Lilith waved a hand. Essence pooled at her fingertips, curdling inward and transforming into a tiny glowing yellow light that exploded with black tar. Energy coiled around the light, adding a golden hue beneath the sheen blackness of the blob.

Black flames hissed; black lightning sparked; the two elements raged around Lilith’s wrist, sizzling when they popped against the atmosphere. The blob itself bellowed and cried and released echoing wails.

“Is that a baby…” I stared at the instantaneous life Lilith brought into this world with a single motion. “The essence has changed.”

“Of course.” Lilith blew on the blob of energy, soothing the screech and carrying it upward to the ceiling, which opened like an automatic door.

“How?”

“I took a single drop of my being and birthed awareness out of the nothingness still lingering in Hell.”

“Whoa.” I watched the blob fade into the distance as it floated toward the night sky of twinkling stars. Stars Bez had said embodied all the baby demons of Hell. “You just made a child in an instant.”

“I made a demon, yes.” Lilith chuckled. “Easy enough after a few trillion.”

“I guess that would make Diabolics parthenogenesis—which is asexual reproduction.” I nodded. “We have lots of species who reproduce this way. Lower beings and all.”

Lilith squinted, then smiled, then let her face fall flat in a way that left me flustered and frightened and fumbling to think of what to say and what not to say.

“Devils would use this parthenogenesis,” Lilith added. “Demons don’t have the ability to multiply their essence into a new sentient form of consciousness.”

“Oh.” I grimaced. I suppose I had said Diabolics, which was an umbrella term for devils and demons and all things essence-related. “But intercourse isn’t actually a requirement for you? Devils don’t need the act—well, I suppose no one needs the act now thanks to the advancements of science—but with the way your essence and magics work, the physical isn’t required.”

“It most certainly is. There is a primal push and pull mixed with passion as our essence collides. The merger requires we be fully synchronized, enthralled, bonded on the deepest of levels.” Lilith leapt forward in a blur, standing behind me instantly. “This should be a benefit, as your species is quite conditioned to coupling in such forms.”

“Um…well, I don’t know if I’m ready for a child.” I stepped back from Lilith, not that any distance would offer me space. Her energy radiated throughout the room, adding a perfume of her presence. “I should probably wait until I have a better understanding of my essence, my devil-hood-ness-ity stuff.”

“No, that will not do.” Lilith strutted toward me. “I’ve allowed devils time to contemplate arrangements only for them to perish into the pits of Oblivion before sharing their seed.”

“Oh. Um, well, I’ve escaped Oblivion before, so that’s good news.” I gave a strained smile. Not that I had any interest in returning.

“Once. I haven’t lived this long by gambling. No, we’ll do this now,” Lilith insisted sharply as if her words had ended the conversation. “Beelzebub’s essence is one I craved to cultivate for far too long. Seeing the wonders it’s done when mixed with your mortal flesh, I can only imagine the glory our union will bring.”

“I see.” So this wasn’t even about me. She wanted to recapture some claim she sought to have over Beelzebub, the most dangerous devil of them all.

I took a deep breath and tried to remember I was a devil here, too. Lilith wasn’t threatening me, and she wasn’t looking for missteps; she was making a proposition. A flattering one that I needed to delicately yet assertively pass on. Why did the mere idea of rejecting a devil make my stomach twist into a million knots? That and the horror of having a child.

“It’s a big commitment,” I muttered. Fuck. Of course I muttered. Guess I needed to just dive right into this polite rejection. “Eighteen years. For mortals. Our standard child-rearing commitment stuff. Well, longer, really. If you’re a good parent. Not that I’m planning on being bad. But inexperience is the worst when aiming for success. Probably. In my case. In most of my cases. Gah, Diabolic lifespans are basically forever, so that’s an even bigger commitment. Yeah. Lots to learn as a devil myself. I’d probably want a few hundred centuries under my belt before committing to taking care of a child. Or a few hundred years. No, actually, a few hundred centuries sounds right for me. Maybe then kids would be cool. Like one or two. Not a trillion or so like you. But you make it work. Very well.”

“I’ll tend to the child. Within a few centuries, it’ll blossom quite well.” Lilith telekinetically drew me closer. “Let us commence.”

“This isn’t gonna work for me.” I flailed momentarily, feeling my essence pluck at the air like the strings of a harp, and as such, I broke Lilith’s grip over me. “You’re very beautiful, but there are so many reasons I can’t do this. For one, performance. As much as I can admire your attributes, it’s not something that works for me intimately.”

Lilith cocked her head.

“It’s nothing about you.” I gave her a tight smile. “I just can’t, um…you know. Or not. Bez and Mora seem very fluid in all things gender and attraction, but that’s only a pool of two Diabolics, which isn’t much to go on. But Corson also seems like he would be open to just about…but then there’s Orias. Also, several demons I met in this villa. They seemed open but mostly with eating people. Diabolics really are hungry.”

Lilith lowered her head and raised her black eyes to meet mine, a wicked gleam in her smile. “We’re insatiable.”

I gulped.

“But I understand you’re explaining your attraction is solely toward the male form.”

“Yes,” I said with a heavy sigh of relief. Maybe I wouldn’t need to drop the other reasons this coupling wouldn’t work.

“I can see the appeal. Their bodies are fun in all their limited ways.” Lilith extended her arms, flaunting herself as her image changed. Not in the way a glamour shifted the air ever so slightly to cast an illusion. No. Her body mass changed, swelled, grew, and expanded as her feminine shape crumpled away, now replaced by a masculine body equal in stature and shape to Bez’s.

In fact, upon closer inspection, her facial features shifted ever so to look less like a male version of the face she’d shown me and more like Bez’s with the sharper jawline and the high cheekbones. Her complexion remained a deep purple, but the scales smoothed out. Her shoulder and biceps flexed in the same flirty, flaunty way Bez would.

“Wow. You just shape-shifted, like, everything.” I eyed her muscular frame, tearing at the seams of her fitted dress.

A dress she burned away with a flick of her hand, changing the ashes into a new outfit that barely covered her. Bez’s outfit. From the warrior’s skirt to the identical set of gauntlets he’d picked as accessories. Everything about this body was meant to emulate Bez, down to the definition of her abs. Her. Hers.

“Question.” I grimaced. “You’ve taken on a more masculine form, but are you still—”

“I’m still the God Queen Emperess of Hell, this and any other I lay siege upon,” she spoke with a deep, surly voice but held a light lilt underneath. There was command and certainty entwined in the echo of her words.

“Glad we cleared that up.” I meekly went to step around her, inch my way closer to the door, which I was beginning to realize didn’t exist in this design.

Of course not. She’d magically transported us here.

“As intriguing as I find this—and flattered by the whole altering your form for aesthetic reasons—the intercourse part isn’t gonna work for me,” I flatly said, biting back a dozen tangents on the lack of preparation I had for parenthood or the fact I didn’t see parenthood in my future. “Plus, while the childbirth factor seems quite quick, there’s an eternal commitment.”

“Quick?” Lilith cocked her head; her curled ram horns framed her face in the same way they did Bez’s. “The intercourse alone could last months.”

“Months?” My jaw dropped. “But wait. You just…” I pointed to the sealed ceiling, gesturing to the demon she created in literal seconds.

“I have eons of experience,” she explained. “Since you don’t know anything about untangling your essence from your being, colliding it with the empty around yourself, shaping consciousness from the ether, or merging your entity with another’s.”

“I know plenty about merging my entity with someone else’s,” I muttered.

“Do not worry, though. I will fuck my seed into you, and you will spill your essence into me. A drop. A pure, undiluted piece of power meant to merge with my entity.”

“No,” I said. No edge or concern in my tone. As a devil, I had to hold myself on equal footing with Lilith. She brought me here as an equal. Even if the idea sent trembles through my entire body.

“No?” Lilith’s face crinkled with disgust like the word had clung to her tongue with a bad taste. “Fine. If you wish to carry the demon to term, I can renovate this portion of my domain during your stay. A devil-merged Diabolic is usually at least a century. The essence is quite fickle about merging, so you’ll need to stay close.”

“I can’t get pregnant.”

“You are a devil. You can do whatever you will. If your feeble mortal body says otherwise, then change it.” Lilith flexed her muscles, displaying her broad, firm chest. “Bodies are such limiting things. Do not allow one so simple in its construction to control you, my dear.”

“Okay, let me clarify. I’m not getting pregnant. I’m not having a baby. Not your baby. Not anyone’s baby.” My essence swelled in my chest, making my words breathy and fuming with fury. “And I’m not sleeping with you. I’m with Bez.”

“You would reject me for a demon pet?” Lilith hissed like the mere idea itself carried poison.

The air around us turned hot and dry, scorching my skin like I’d fallen into a desert.

“You would reject my proposition, my offering, my essence, after all I have done?” Lilith’s voice shifted, and the masculine form withered away as a more feminine serpentine form wriggled side to side. “I have granted you an audience with all my glory. I have given you a Devil’s Banquet in your honor. You, Walter Alden, a no-name devil, an abomination birthed not of the nothingness in the universe but of some second-rate pathetic realm barely functioning on the one planet in your vast dimension of unexplored territory.”

Lilith’s body blurred, rattling so quickly in place her image was difficult to take in. This wasn’t her true form, but it was the closest I’d seen by far. Similar to a gorgon with a humanoid upper half and a tail body. But her arms split apart and spread into thin-fleshed wings that spanned the length of the room. Her jaw cracked, and out spilled a hundred tendrils, each whipping around with gnarled teeth and hungry mouths.

“I have been nothing but accommodating.” Lilith raged, each mouth speaking the words in an echoed, repetitive loop. Or I assumed they spoke the same words as her many-mouthed tendrils spoke a different language from my world.

Had she taken the time to learn every single language, both mortal and Mythic, before inviting me here?

“I should kill you where you stand.”

“But you won’t.” I clenched my fists, channeling essence and puffing my chest with so much bravado I might actually get myself killed for arrogance. “You speak as if I’m weak, but we both know you’re hesitant. Much like myself. My limits, my potential, are unknown factors.”

“That so?” she hissed a hundred thousand times over that every dialect of my world reverberated throughout this shrinking room.

Literally shrinking. Lilith drew it in and forced us closer and closer without even moving.

My essence sprang from my pores defensively, coating my hands and feet in claws.

“Please.” Lilith’s voices knocked me back, the sheer force of the sound. “I could end you with a thought.”

She slithered across the room, turning away from me, revealing the long, jagged spikes lining from her neck to the tip of her tail.

“Killing you offers me nothing, though.” With a flap of her winged arms, Lilith tore open the wall. “However, taking the filth of your muck and offering it to your better… That will provide me what I’ve always craved.”

The tendrils shrieked with such a fury the entire world trembled. And I did mean the entirety of her dimension. I felt it in the quake of nearby demons, in the essence of those who were broken to pieces and transformed into scenery, in the quake of the stars above, and from the burning of the key Lilith had gifted me. A key which would open her door to Hell and send me home. But I felt her door fling wide open the moment she screeched.

“What’ve you done?”

“I’ve invited a new devil to attend,” she hissed. “Beelzebub has spent enough time locked away from the universe. I wonder how grateful he’ll feel when I restore him with his missing essence.”

She unleashed Beelzebub? The devil who’d tormented Bez for as long as he’d lived. The devil who’d waged wars against every other devil for the sport. The devil who currently sought the return of his long-missing piece of essence.

Essence which currently coursed through my being.