Well, almost normal.
The magical circle around Morgal still pulsed with a steady red light. I still struggled to grasp the point of this ritual. What had Horne hoped to accomplish here? The demon might be dead, but after everything he’d done, Horne’s soul was most assuredly doomed to an eternity in Hell regardless.
The cry of absolute horror that followed was my first clue. This time, the pitiful scream hadn’t originated from the demon but from Desmond Horne. The old man was on his knees, mirroring Morgal’s expression of defeat. The circle around the altar shone with the same muted crimson energy as the circle ringing the demon.
“No, it can’t be. This is impossible!” Horne cried in despair.
Had Horne’s spell misfired? Had he spent the lives of all his children for nothing? I still struggled to make sense of the old man’s intentions and the nature of his crazy ritual. If Skulick had been here, he would have figured it out.
Desmond Horne stared in abject horror at the demon’s slumped body and then his own limbs, his wild-eyed gaze darting back and forth at a frantic tempo.
“What have you done, mortal?” he asked, his voice cracking.
The demon’s head lifted then, and it began to laugh.
I finally grasped what had happened here, what Desmond Horne had been after all along. The old bastard had indeed achieved his goal.
As Morgal stumbled erect, triumphant laughter bursting from the hideous maw rimmed with razor-sharp teeth, I knew. And so did the pitiful old man trapped inside the magical circle surrounding the altar.
Except, of course, that the old man was no longer Desmond Horne.
Somehow, he had managed to switch bodies with the demon.
Morgal’s soul was now trapped inside the frail, sagging anatomy of a seventy-year-old man while Desmond Horne controlled the demon’s mighty form.
Neither Hell nor Earth would never be the same again.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
SINCE THE BEGINNING of time, men had dreamt of becoming gods.
To someone like Desmond Horne, turning into a demon was the next best thing.
The demon aimed its terrifying gaze at me. The wings unfurled as it took an unsteady step, Horne’s soul still learning how to operate the monstrous anatomy.
He was getting the hang of it fast.
“Do you finally understand?” the Horne demon said. “Has your pathetic little brain caught up?”
I understand that you’re a madman, I thought, still incapable of forming words.
“If you lose, you’re a madman. If you win, you’re a visionary genius,” the Horne demon retorted in response to my thoughts.
And he can read minds. That’s just fantastic.
“I will make you pay for this, Horne!” Morgal screamed inside Horne’s body.
The Horne demon turned toward his former self. “Choose your words carefully, Morgal. You know how sensitive human nerve endings are to pain.”
“My master will never let you get away with this!” Morgal said, rage mixing with mounting panic. “Hell will see through this deception and the Prince of Darkness will punish you for your boldness.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” Horne conceded. “But I don’t intend to deceive anyone. Hell will know what I’ve accomplished. The Prince of Darkness won’t shed any tears over a demon foolish enough to be tricked by a human. Especially when I hand them Raven’s soul on a platter.”
It made a sick kind of sense. Desmond Horne would buy his way into Hell’s aristocracy using my soul as his currency. His plan was so audacious that it just might work.
From the furious expression on Morgal’s wrinkled features, the demon had come to the same conclusion. His fury drove him to try stepping out of the magical circle. Energy sizzled, and he bounced back as if he had run into a concrete wall. The demon collapsed, out for the count.
“I can’t image what poor Morgal must be going through,” the Horne Demon said. “To trade such power for my old, broken body…it must be like being buried alive in a coffin made of flesh and bone.”
The Horne demon regarded me and the paralysis lifted slightly. I could feel my face again, and my lips immediately formed words.
“How long…were you…planning this?” I said, still struggling to form words. My tongue felt sluggish, and my mouth was painfully dry.
“Since my sweet, loyal Celeste was born,” he said.
Since you had my parents murdered, I mentally added.
“Twenty-one years ago, I was secretly using my cult to expand my business operations. My followers would infiltrate the companies of my greatest competitors, causing them to thrive or fail on my orders. Your father and his partner knew something was up and were closing in on my operation. I was at a crucial phase. My power and influence were growing, but a couple of idealistic do-gooders could’ve ruined it all.”