Legacy
an excerpt

Another night, another cave. Sarah was getting used to the routine, as depressing and frightening as that was. Unfortunately, though, she was too tired to use magic to give herself a little pillow of air. She had long ago realized that Simon was keeping her hungry so that her magic didn’t work as well as it should have.
But as exhausted as she was, Sarah couldn’t fall asleep. She was thinking too much about those iron gates they’d visited earlier. They reminded her of the time she and Rainbow had gone to that haunted house for Halloween. They’d been confronted by high iron bars, with the goblins and zombies trying to reach them through the bars. It had scared the daylights out of Sarah, even at age fourteen when she knew that zombies and goblins didn’t exist.
On the other hand, maybe those zombies and goblins really did exist. After all, she had never guessed that a goddess had really existed, or that a god would impersonate Satan. None of Rainbow’s training had prepared her for any of this.
Her heart sank. Poor Rainbow, torn apart by those dogs. Why couldn’t she have just disappeared in a puff of smoke, or maybe melted like the Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz? Why had it been so painful, so graphic? Why did everything here have to be so damn traumatic?
She rolled around on the ground again, plucking a few stones out from under her as she did so. That was when she heard Simon stand up.
Immediately, she rolled around to face him. In the yellow glow of the electricity keeping the cave opening off-limits, Simon had stood up and was limping around on his side of the cave, holding onto the wall as he did so.
“What are you doing?” Sarah asked him.
He turned to face her, a scowl already brewing. “Mind your own business. Go back to sleep.”
“I can’t sleep. I’m too hungry to sleep. If you’re going to keep me in here like a bear at the zoo, do you mind getting me some food?”
“Yes, I do mind,” he shot back. “Turn around again.”
Sarah sat up defiantly. “Why? What are you doing?” she countered.
“Don’t worry about it, Princess,” he said snidely. “Lie back down and go back to sleep.”
“Well, I wasn’t sleeping to begin with. And I can’t sleep when I’m hungry, so no, I won’t mind my own business.”
Simon shook his head and kept inching along the cave wall, feeling it with his hands. Sarah thought he looked like a blind man trying to feel his way farther into the cave.
“What are you looking for?” she asked, standing up and stretching her legs. “Is there a secret treasure in here?”
“No,” he snapped. “Sit down before I break both of your legs.”
Still standing, Sarah debated for a second what she should do. She knew his magic was stronger than hers, and she knew he wouldn’t hesitate to use it, just as he hadn’t hesitated to use it earlier. And anyway, her magic wouldn’t even work to make her comfortable. There was no way she could out-magic him.
“I said, sit down.” Simon shot a spark of black electric magic her way, causing her to fall flat on her face. “Ooooh,” he said derisively. “I hope you don’t get your pretty little face scratched up.”
Sarah spat the dirt out of her mouth and glared at him. “You’re an asshole.”
“Well, I am a demon after all.” He shot another spark her way, forcing her face into the dirt once more, and turned back to the wall of the cave. “Ah-ha!”
Sarah shook her face out of the dirt and watched as he flipped open a tiny square of dirt from the wall. There was a keypad and a blinking red light. “What’s that?” she asked.
“Shut up, Princess.”
“Are you blowing us up?”
“No, I’m getting us into Hell. Or, I should say, I’m getting myself there. You’ll be there only for a short time.”
“Doesn’t Satan have the combination?”
“No. He doesn’t even know this is here.”
“He must be stupid.”
Simon let out a cackle of irony. “Really? Like daughter, like father, I suppose.” A third shot of electricity hit her forehead, and Sarah’s face smashed into the dirt for a third time.
Daughter. Daughter. Satan’s daughter? Her?