Lucifer Reborn by Dante King (ebook reader play store .txt) 📕

gloom. Finally! I sprinted forward, reaching for them, only to slam into something hard and cold. The figure did the same—reaching at me, only to slump over and slide to their knees. Had they been just as caught off-guard as I’d been?

A moment later, I realized my mistake. I was still alone—staring at myself in a mirror. The whole hall was covered in mirrors, every available surface enclosed in shiny, reflective glass. Tiny reflected Luke faces stared back at me, blinking as I blinked at them.

Laughter echoed down the hall. I cocked my head, trying to discern its direction. It seemed to be happening both in front of and behind me, from both places at once.

“Gluttony,” I growled, picking a direction and heading that way. “Then Wrath. Only Smoke and Mirrors isn’t a deadly sin, is it? So what the fuck is this…?”

The laughter grew louder the further I walked into the smoke. With a start, I realized I’d lost track of which direction I’d come from: I couldn’t have found my way back to the Wrath School if my life depended on it. Which, I now knew, it just might.

Surely, they wouldn’t leave me in here, would they? I couldn’t be trapped forever in this strange realm?

As I passed the next set of mirrors, I saw a familiar face: Christina’s. She stood to the side, her face pressed against a nearby pane of glass. No, wait—she was inside the glass, staring at me.

Only now did I realize she was in human form, not demonic. This wasn’t Christina, was it?

“Where am I?” I asked, hoping that whatever this was, it would help me. It did look just like Christina after all.

The reflection looked me up and down, chuckling. “It’s been a long time, Luke,” she said. “How did you end up running your own business? Back in college, you seemed like such a…”

I’d seen all this before. We’d had this conversation. “A slacker,” I grunted. “Yeah, that’s what I used to be—”

The reflection giggled. “—a loser,” she finished, something malicious entering her eyes. “You couldn’t have gotten a date with me if you were the last man on campus. You just had to sit there and seethe like a little loser…”

My eyebrows shot to my hairline. “Come again?”

“Other people have what you want,” the reflection purred, wrapping a lock of blonde hair around its finger. “The money. The power. The status, and the pretty girl on their arm so everyone else knows they have it, too. Don’t you want it, Luke? Don’t you just want it so bad you can fucking taste it…!”

I shook my head. “Whatever you think this is, it isn’t working,” I said, the beginnings of a smirk tugging at my lips. “I’m already having sex with you, Christina. Why would I be jealous...wait a second! I know what you are!”

“I’m what you can’t have,” the fake Christina growled, her tone going vicious. “All the things dangled in front of your face that you can never, ever touch—”

“Exactly,” I shot back, the smoke settling around me. “This is the Envy School, isn’t it? Which must make you one of their top students…”

The false Christina looked like I’d punched her in the stomach. Her expression collapsed—then she stepped right out of the mirror, flickering into the form of an obscenely beautiful demoness. She only stayed that way for a moment before transforming again, taking the form of a white stag with a twelve-point spread. Then a floating sword, a swarm of bats...every step brought a new form.

“Uh, hello?” I asked, reaching out a hand. “What’s up with you—?”

“There you are!”

A hand came down on my shoulder. I turned, the last of the smoke sinking to the floor, just in time to see Xora standing behind me. A worried expression filled the rusalka’s face. Christina and Mareth were just behind her —evidently, we’d been together the whole time.

“You have to be careful here,” Xora chided me. “There are some powerful demons practicing their tricks in this School. It’s—”

“Envy, yeah,” I said, jerking a thumb at the transforming demon. “I got that. That demon sure tried to make me jealous as hell.”

Mareth looked gobsmacked. “What did she do?”

“Transformed into Christina,” I said, with a lustful gaze at the real woman. “And told me some things I didn’t like.”

A low, knowing chuckle left Xora’s throat. “They like to do that. They say they’ve ‘turned you green’ if they provoke an actual reaction out of you. You know, green with envy and all that?”

“She failed,” I grunted, wrapping an arm around Christina’s waist. “Because I don’t envy anyone at all. I’ve got everything I need, right here.”

Christina, I thought. Mareth. Maddie. Nice little group I’m forming here, isn’t it?

Xora shook her head, watching the demoness make her way through the smoky, mirror-filled hall. “She’s been studying so hard, she doesn’t even notice she’s casting a mimicry spell with every other step,” she muttered. “It’s a surprise that one managed to latch onto you at all.” She shook herself, as if she were in danger of breaking apart as well. “I hope she didn’t say anything too disturbing, Luke.”

“Not at all.”

Xora nodded. “Envy School students,” she said, waving away some smoke, “specialize in getting inside of their targets’s heads. They master mimicry, glamors, illusion magic, that sort of thing.”

“Smoke and mirrors,” I agreed, gesturing to the decoration.

“Exactly. Very useful for those demons who are enlisted by mortal forces.”

I reached out, steadying myself against a mirror. It left a smear from my fingertips, which some janitorial demon would no doubt have to clean up. “Mortals? I wasn’t aware ordinary humans could command demons?”

“Not command,” Xora said coldly. “And not ordinary humans. Mediums, spirit-catchers, psychics. The real kinds, that is —not the kinds with commercials on TV. When they do their