Chapter 28:
– Amara Black –
I laid it all out for Lucifer. Every detail. The five massacre sites forming a pentagram across the globe. The possessed Justice League members getting possessed. Trigon's children orchestrating the whole thing. Raven as the key to a portal that would crack open reality itself. The thirty-six hour window before the summoning ritual dragged her there whether she wanted to go or not.
By the time I finished, my throat was dry and my pulse thudded in my temples.
I sat back against Lucifer's obscenely expensive leather couch, crossed my legs, and waited. The jeans hugged my thighs tight enough that the motion drew Mazikeen's gaze for a split second before she looked away.
Lucifer stood at the penthouse bar with his back to us, swirling whiskey in a crystal tumbler. He hadn't interrupted me once during the entire explanation, which was either a very good sign or a very bad one.
The couch dipped beside me.
Maze settled into the cushion close enough that her bare thigh pressed flush against mine, warm skin against denim. She didn't ask permission. She didn't even glance at me to check if the proximity was welcome. She just sat there like she owned the space and I happened to be in it.
"Didn't expect you to get tangled up with the hero crowd," Maze said. Her voice carried that low, rough edge I remembered from Gotham, but there was something lighter in it now. Playful. Testing the waters. "Beautiful succubus demoness running around saving the world. That's not exactly on brand."
I kept my expression neutral.
The anger from what Lucifer had done with Mordred's soul still sat in my chest like a coal that refused to cool, but I couldn't afford to let it show. Not when I needed something from the man standing six feet away pretending to contemplate his drink. So I swallowed the bitterness and gave Maze a thin smile that didn't reach my eyes.
"People surprise you."
"Mmm." Maze shifted, turning her body toward me, one arm draped across the back of the couch behind my shoulders. Her dark eyes traveled down my neck, across my body, lingered on the low neckline of my tank top where the curve of my breasts pressed against black fabric. "You look amazing, by the way. Like, genuinely incredible. Last time I saw you, you were amazing of course. Now you're..." She made a sound in her throat, appreciative and shameless. "Something else entirely."
Before I could respond, she leaned forward. Not toward my face. Lower. Her nose dipped into the space between my breasts and she inhaled, slow and deep, like she was sampling a rare wine.
Is she sniffing me!? "Maze, what the f—"
She pulled back with a dramatic pout, her full lips pushing out in genuine disappointment. "You're not a virgin anymore?"
My cheeks burned so fast I thought my succubus blood might actually combust. "That is absolutely none of your business!"
"Nnh, don't be like that." She licked her lips, a deliberate pass of her tongue across the lower one that lingered at the corner of her mouth. Her eyes locked onto mine with an intensity that made my stomach flip. "Honestly? It's better this way. Means I don't have to worry about breaking you whenever we finally fuck."
"You are being incredibly forward," I said, pressing my back harder against the couch to put even an inch of distance between us, "and wildly presumptuous."
Maze's hand came up and cupped my cheek. The touch was unexpectedly tender, her calloused thumb brushing along my cheekbone with a gentleness that contradicted everything else about her. She tilted her head and studied my face with open fascination, watching the blush spread down my neck like it was the most entertaining thing she'd seen all week.
"Look at that," she murmured. "So easy to make you blush. You know why that is, right?"
I didn't answer, but something in my expression must have given away my confusion because her smile widened.
"I'm a higher tier demon than you, Amara. Your succubus blood recognizes it instinctively. It's why your pulse is hammering right now. Why your skin gets hot when I touch you." Her thumb traced down to the corner of my jaw. "It's why part of you wants to submit every time I get close."
The worst part was that it almost made sense. I could feel it, this irritating pull in my chest, some deep and primal thing that had nothing to do with rational thought. My succubus side didn't care that I was angry with her. It didn't care about Mordred or Lucifer's games or any of it. It just recognized a more powerful demon and wanted to roll over and bare its throat. Which pissed me off even more.
"That doesn't mean I'm going to—mmph!"
Maze closed the distance between us so fast I didn't even see her move. Her mouth sealed over mine and her hand slid from my cheek to the back of my neck, fingers threading into my hair, pulling me in. Her tongue pushed past my lips and found mine, and she sucked on it with a wet, obscene pull that sent a jolt straight down my spine and between my thighs.
"Mmnnh..." The sound escaped me before I could stop it, vibrating against her mouth. My hands gripped the couch cushion on either side of my legs because I didn't trust what they'd do if I let them move. Maze tasted like whiskey and something darker, something ancient and wild that my demon blood responded to with a full-body shudder.
"Ahem." Lucifer's voice cut through the haze like a bucket of cold water. Maze broke the kiss with an audible pop and turned toward him, looking thoroughly put out. He stood at the bar with his tumbler raised, one eyebrow arched, grinning like a man watching his favorite television program. "Far be it from me to interrupt what was clearly developing into a riveting second act, but I believe the young lady did come here for something other than being mauled on my furniture."
Maze wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and shot him a look that could have stripped paint. "Your timing has always been shit."
"My timing is impeccable. That's the problem." He turned to me, and the amusement in his expression softened into something more complicated. He set the tumbler down on the bar top and straightened his cufflinks, staring out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the glittering sprawl of Los Angeles below. "I've never been a hero," he said. The words came out slowly, like he was tasting each one for the first time. "That's not my role. Never has been. I'm the villain in every story humanity has ever told about me, and most of the time I've been perfectly content with the casting." He paused. One finger tapped the bar top. "But this is my world too, isn't it? My club. My city. My ridiculous, beautiful, infuriating little planet full of humans who can't stop making messes."
He turned back to face me. The charm was still there in the set of his jaw and the devil's grin at the corner of his mouth, but underneath it I saw something I hadn't expected. Responsibility settling across his shoulders like a coat he'd spent millennia refusing to wear.
"If the so-called heroes have well and truly buggered it up and gotten themselves mind-controlled by some interdimensional tyrant, then I suppose it falls to me to fix things." He picked up his glass again and raised it in a mock toast. "I wonder if Dad would be proud... Probably not. He'd find some way to make it about himself. He always does…"
He drained the whiskey in one swallow.
My heart kicked up. Lucifer Morningstar, the actual Devil, the Lightbringer, the most powerful being I had ever stood in the same room with, had just agreed to help us fight Trigon.
I opened my mouth to thank him, but Maze beat me to it. She was already on her feet, cracking her knuckles with a feral grin splitting her scarred face.
"So," she said, looking between Lucifer and me with barely contained glee. "Who do I get to stab!?" she asked for the second time.
"Ideally Trigon himself," I said. "Worst case scenario…" I added at the end, trialing off slightly.
Lucifer and Maze exchanged a look.
It lasted maybe two seconds, but an entire conversation passed between them in that glance. Something old, something shared, the kind of silent communication that only came from centuries of partnership. They both smirked at the same time, the exact same angle, the exact same knowing curl of the lips, and a cold little thrill ran up my spine because whatever they'd just agreed on, I was fairly certain I wasn't going to like it.
Maze sat back down beside me, closer than before. Her hand settled on my inner thigh, fingers curling against the denim. "That kind of task requires some payment."
I looked down at her hand, then back up at her face. "You owe me," I said flatly. "Both of you. For what happened with Mordred."
"Yes," Lucifer conceded, leaning against the bar with his arms folded. His expression was easy but his eyes were sharp. "But taking on Trigon is dangerous even for me. The scales aren't quite balanced when you factor in the possibility of a multidimensional demon lord tearing my already damaged wings off."
I clenched my jaw. "What do you want?"
Maze leaned in. Her lips pressed against my cheek, lingering at the very corner of my mouth, close enough that I felt the wet warmth of her breath ghost across my lips. She pulled back just far enough to meet my eyes. "I want you to forgive us," she said. "Fully. For everything."
The simplicity of it caught me off guard.
I stared at her face. Her expression wasn't teasing anymore. There was something real underneath the confidence, something that almost looked like it mattered to her whether I said yes.
Forgiveness wasn't something that came easy to me. It never had been, even before the System hardcoded [Simmering Fury] into my soul. Every grudge I carried like an ember that refused to go out. Dumbledore. James. Lily. The list grew longer and nothing ever fell off it. Letting go felt like losing. Like surrendering a piece of armor I couldn't afford to shed.
But I needed them.
And underneath the anger, buried so deep I almost didn't want to acknowledge it, was the fact that the mysterious goth girl had fixed the Mordred situation. The soul was extracted from my stomach. The guilt was gone. What remained was pride and stubbornness more than genuine pain.
"Fine," I gritted out through clenched teeth. "You two are totally forgiven. Happy?" And as those words came out of my mouth, I felt a strange phenomenon—like admitting it out loud made it manifest in reality. The anger I had felt did diminish quite a bit after I spoke.
"Very happy," Maze said, and her smile returned with interest, sharp and hungry and satisfied all at once. "Now we just need to officially seal the deal."
I narrowed my eyes. "How do we do that?"
"The old way, of course." She leaned in and kissed me again. This one was different from the first. The first had been a raid, an ambush designed to overwhelm. This was slower. Deliberate. Her lips moved against mine with a kind of practiced patience that made my toes curl inside my boots. She tasted my lower lip first, then my upper, then slid her tongue along the seam between them until I opened for her. The kiss deepened into something wet and thorough and devastating, and I could feel the intention behind it, could feel it wasn't just desire but something binding, something contractual woven through the press of her mouth.
Of course this is how it goes, I thought, even as my eyes fluttered shut and a pout formed against her lips. Of course the demonic pact requires making out. Of course.
Maze's hands slid up from my thigh to my chest. Her palms cupped both my breasts over the thin black tank top and squeezed, firm and possessive, her fingers finding my nipples through the fabric and pressing until they stiffened under her touch.
"Mmmnh..." The moan slipped out of me, swallowed by her mouth. Maze made a sound in response, low and guttural and territorial, a noise that vibrated through her chest and into mine. Then she pulled her lips away with a slow, wet drag and licked them clean, watching me through half-lidded eyes.
I sat there breathing harder than I wanted to, my lips swollen and tingling, my nipples aching where her thumbs still rested against them.
"What was the first kiss supposed to be for," I asked flatly, "if you were just going to kiss me again?"
"My enjoyment, of course." Her grin was pure sin, unapologetic and devastating. "I'm still a demon, after all."
Then something clicked in my chest. Not metaphorically. An actual physical sensation, like a lock turning behind my sternum, something slotting into place that hadn't existed a moment before. A thread of connection snapped taut between me and Mazikeen, invisible but undeniable, pulsing with a warmth that settled into my bones and stayed there.
"And there it is," Lucifer said from across the room, raising his refilled glass. "The pact is complete. Congratulations, Amara. Your first ever demonic pact. Ah—they grow up so fast..." he said dramatically.
I blinked, pressing my hand to my sternum where the sensation still thrummed. I hadn't even known I could do that. The whole process had happened without my conscious input, as if some dormant part of my succubus blood had recognized the ritual and handled the paperwork while the rest of me was busy getting groped.
That was definitely something I needed to discuss with Morgana later.
I stood up from the couch and straightened my tank top where Maze's hands had rumpled it, tugging the hem back down over the waistband of my jeans. Between my legs, my clit pulsed with a persistent, aching throb that my Sin of Lust was doing its absolute best to turn into a five-alarm emergency. Every nerve ending Maze had touched was still lit up and begging for more, my pussy clenching around nothing, slick soaking into the fabric of my underwear.
I ignored it. I'd forgiven them, and I'd sealed the pact for their help, but I was not going to be that easy.
Maze could look at me with those dark hungry eyes all she wanted. She could lick her lips and press her thighs against mine and kiss me until my brain melted out of my ears. I was still walking out of this penthouse on my own two feet with my clothes on.
Probably.
…Dick declared he was not happy with this plan.
It was hours later and I stood on a rooftop in Central City with Nightwing on my left and Kara on my right, the midday sun beating down on all three of us. The city sprawled out below in a grid of glass and concrete, ordinary people going about their ordinary lives completely unaware that the fastest man alive was somewhere down there being puppeted by a demon who wanted to end the world.
Batman's plan was methodical, sequential, and annoyingly logical. Free the possessed League members one at a time. Start with Flash and ideally Superman, because those two represented the most dangerous assets in Trigon's stolen arsenal. But between the two, Flash had to come first. A mind-controlled Kryptonian was terrifying, but a mind-controlled speedster was unpredictable in ways that made tactical planning nearly impossible. Every second he stayed under Trigon's control was a second he could vibrate through walls, cross continents, and dismantle any operation before it started.
We had found out that the demon riding Barry Allen's body was Lust. The same Lust that Kara had decapitated at supersonic speed on the cruise ship. Apparently losing his head was more of an inconvenience than a death sentence when your father was an interdimensional archdemon with enough power to stitch his children back together. He had regenerated fast, almost certainly with Trigon's direct help, and now he was wearing the Scarlet Speedster like a new suit.
The plan was mine. I would seduce him, lure him somewhere enclosed where his speed couldn't save him, and hold him long enough for Constantine to perform the exorcism.
Simple. Clean. Playing directly to my strengths as a succubus. Except Constantine wasn't here—of course he wasn't. That meant the plan had to be adjusted for just the three of us to pull this off.
Dick hated it.
I gave him a sultry wink that sent a flush crawling up from his collar to his cheekbones. "What's wrong with the plan? You don't trust me?"
"I trust you," he said, jaw tight. "I don't trust the plan."
Kara pressed herself against my right side, her arms wrapping around my bicep and pulling it snug against the soft swell of her breasts. The warmth of her Kryptonian body soaked through my sleeve. "Stop teasing him. We're both not totally on board with this, especially after what happened last time."
Last time, Lust's aura had hit every woman in the room like a freight train of supernatural arousal. Even Morgana had struggled. Even Kara, with her alien physiology and iron-willed Kansas upbringing, had been left visibly wet and shaking. The memory of it still made my skin crawl, that violation of having desire forced into my body from the outside, overriding consent and choice with raw demonic compulsion.
I leaned over and planted a soft kiss on Kara's cheek, lingering just long enough to feel her smile form against my lips. Then I turned and did the same to Dick, catching the corner of his mouth, feeling his breath hitch.
"I'll be fine," I said against his skin. "Last time I wasn't expecting his gross powers. This time he won't be expecting my ambush. He won't even get to use them before he's fucked over…"
I pulled away from both of them and reached for the familiar tingle of my Metamorphmagus ability. The shift rolled through me like a warm wave starting at my scalp and cascading downward. My hair lengthened and lightened, raven black bleeding into spun gold until long blonde waves tumbled past my shoulders. My eyes itched as the pigment shifted, emerald green brightening to vivid icy blue. My bone structure stayed the same, my curves stayed the same, my body stayed devastating in the tight jeans and low-cut top I had picked specifically for this operation. I was still sexy as fuck. I just looked like a completely different woman now, one who bore a passing resemblance to the Kryptonian standing beside me.
Kara tilted her head and studied me with an expression caught somewhere between fascination and something warmer. "Is it weird that I kind of want to kiss myself?"
Dick just snorted. "Good luck," he said, all business again even with the pink still lingering on his ears. "Last time anyone spotted the possessed Flash he was in this section of town goofing off and doing a poor job of pretending to be a hero to keep up appearances."
I cracked my neck and rolled my shoulders, settling into the blonde disguise like a second skin. Somewhere down in those streets, a demon wearing a hero's face was about to have the worst day of his borrowed life.
"Keep your comms open," I said, already walking toward the roof's edge. "And try not to be too jealous when you hear how good I am at this."
Dick's sigh followed me over the side.
– Lust/Flash –
The women of Central City loved the Flash.
Six of them crowded around him on the sidewalk outside a coffee shop, giggling and touching his arms and telling him how brave and strong and wonderful he was. One redhead with freckles kept squeezing his bicep through the suit. A brunette in a sundress leaned in close enough that her perfume hit his nostrils in a thick, sweet wave.
Lust soaked it up like sunlight.
Behind the mask, Barry Allen's face smiled a smile that didn't belong to him. Deep inside the prison of his own skull, the real Flash hammered against walls of demonic willpower, screaming and clawing and fighting for even a sliver of control over his own body. His efforts were pathetic. Admirable in a sad, human sort of way, but pathetic. Lust had worn stronger hosts than this and broken them in half the time. The speedster's willpower was impressive by mortal standards, but mortal standards meant nothing to a son of Trigon.
"You're like, the best hero ever," the redhead cooed, pressing her chest against his arm.
"I really, really am," Lust agreed with Barry's mouth.
Two of the girls exchanged glances and one of them, a leggy blonde in a crop top, bit her lip and suggested that maybe the Flash wanted to grab drinks somewhere private. Her friend nodded eagerly, adding that her apartment was only two blocks away and her roommate was out of town.
The real Barry Allen surged against his cage with renewed desperation. Stop. Don't you dare. Don't you fucking dare touch them.
Lust ignored him with the ease of someone swatting a fly. The boring little speedster would never have taken these women up on their offer. He would have stammered and blushed and made some excuse about needing to patrol, then gone home to his girlfriend and his tedious, monogamous existence. But Barry Allen wasn't driving anymore. Lust was in control, and he fully intended to enjoy every last morsel of pleasure this doomed world had to offer before his father Trigon swallowed it whole and devoured every screaming soul on the planet.
He opened his mouth to accept the blonde's invitation.
"Excuse me? Flash?"
The voice came from behind him and something happened that Lust couldn't explain. His heart, Barry's heart, slammed against his ribs so hard it actually hurt. A jolt of raw, electric attraction ripped through his borrowed nervous system like a current, involuntary and overwhelming in a way that made him catch his breath.
He turned around.
She was one of the most beautiful mortal women he had ever seen. Long blonde hair cascaded past her shoulders in waves that caught the midday sun and turned it into honey and gold. Her eyes were bright crystalline blue beneath dark lashes. Her face was flawless, symmetrical perfection that belonged on a painting or a statue, full lips and high cheekbones and a jawline that could make angels weep. Her body was obscene in the best possible way, generous breasts straining against a fitted top, a narrow waist flaring into wide hips and thick thighs wrapped in denim so tight it left absolutely nothing to imagination.
She smiled, and Lust's borrowed cock twitched in the suit.
She was talking. Introducing herself. Something about her name being Claire, or Clara, or whatever. Lust was barely listening, too busy cataloguing the way her tits shifted when she gestured, the way her throat moved when she swallowed nervously. She was saying something about the Flash saving her life weeks ago and how she had always wanted to thank him personally.
Lust licked his lips with Barry Allen's tongue. "I always appreciate an adoring fan," he said, letting his eyes drag down her body with zero subtlety. "And I can think of a couple ways you could pay me back."
Behind him, the other women huffed with visible jealousy. The redhead crossed her arms and the blonde in the crop top scoffed under her breath. None of them held a candle to this beauty and every single one of them knew it.
Stop, Barry screamed inside the darkness. She's an innocent person. Leave her alone. STOP.
Lust shoved him deeper into the black.
The blonde goddess tucked a strand of golden hair behind her ear and glanced down, a shy pink blush spreading across her cheeks. She mentioned that she was currently working at an ice rink a few blocks from here. Her shift had just ended and the place was completely empty. Nobody would be there for hours. She said all of this while looking up at him through her lashes with an expression of bashful invitation that made Lust's stolen cock throb against the friction of the suit.
A grin spread across Barry Allen's face. Wide and hungry and nothing like the wholesome smile Central City had grown to love.
Now that he thought about it, he had never had sex on ice before. In all his millennia of existence, across countless worlds and hosts and bodies, he had fucked on stone altars and silk sheets and blood-soaked battlefields and the still-warm corpses of conquered enemies. But never on ice.
As the literal embodiment of Lust, that was a travesty he couldn't wait to correct.
"Lead the way, gorgeous," he said, offering Barry Allen's arm with a gentleman's flourish that the real Flash would have been proud of if it weren't being used to escort an innocent woman into the arms of a demon.
She took it. Her fingers were warm against his sleeve. She smelled like vanilla and something underneath it, something darker and sweeter that Lust couldn't quite identify but that made his pupils dilate with raw want.
They walked together down the street toward the ice rink, and the son of Trigon didn't notice the way her shy smile sharpened at the edges when he wasn't looking.
They walked through the main entrance of the ice rink and into the wide corridor that led past the front desk and the rental counter. The lights were dimmed to half power, casting long shadows across the rubber matting. Rows of skates hung on pegs behind the counter, and the air carried that distinct cold bite that bled out from the rink beyond the glass partition doors.
Lust had his arm around her waist before they made it ten steps inside. His fingers settled on the curve of her hip, thumb pressing into the strip of bare skin between her jeans and the hem of her top. She didn't flinch. She didn't pull away or give him one of those tiresome nervous laughs that mortal women used when they wanted to seem flattered but were actually repulsed. She just walked beside him and let his hand sit exactly where he put it.
"You know," Lust said with Barry's voice pitched low and smooth, "most people who want to thank a hero just send a card. Maybe some flowers. You're bringing me to an empty building. I like where your head's at, Claire."
She glanced sideways at him and the corner of her mouth lifted. "Maybe I wanted to be more personal about it."
"Personal." He let the word roll around on his tongue. His fingers tightened on her hip, pulling her closer so her body brushed against his with each step. "I can do personal. I can do very, very personal."
They passed through the glass doors and the temperature dropped sharply. The rink stretched out before them, a wide oval of smooth white ice gleaming under the overhead fluorescents. Empty bleachers rose on either side in metal rows. The Zamboni sat parked in its bay at the far end like a sleeping animal. Their footsteps echoed in the cavernous space, the only sound besides the low mechanical hum of the cooling system.
"So tell me, Claire," he said, steering them along the rubber walkway that bordered the ice. His hand slid from her hip to the small of her back, fingertips tracing lazy patterns against her spine. "What exactly does a gorgeous woman like you do when she's not working at an ice rink and tracking down superheroes?"
"Wouldn't you like to know."
"I would. I really would." He stopped walking and turned to face her, letting Barry's eyes drag from her face down to her chest and stay there for a count of three before climbing back up. Shameless. Deliberate. "I'd also like to know what's under that top, but I figured I'd start with the polite questions first."
She laughed and it made Lust's borrowed blood run hotter. Most mortal women crumbled under this kind of directness. They either folded with embarrassment or puffed up with indignation. This one just stood there with her perfect tits and her golden hair and laughed like she'd heard worse from better.
He loved it.
"You're pretty bold for a superhero," she said, tilting her head. "Don't you have a reputation to protect?"
"Reputations are boring." He stepped closer. Close enough that the tips of her breasts nearly grazed the lightning bolt on his chest. Close enough to smell that vanilla scent rolling off her skin and the darker thing beneath it that he still couldn't name. "I'd rather have fun."
"Fun," she repeated, and the way her tongue pressed against the back of her teeth on the word sent a visible shiver through Lust's host body.
"Lots of fun. Loud fun. The kind of fun that would get us banned from this building if anyone was around to hear it." He brought his mouth close to her ear, lips nearly touching the shell of it. "I want to bend you over those bleachers and make you scream my name until your voice gives out. Then I want to do it again on the ice. Then I want to find out what other flat surfaces this place has."
Her fingers rose to the top button of her shirt. She popped it open with a slow, deliberate twist, the fabric parting just enough to reveal the swell of her cleavage pressing together in soft, full curves that caught the cold fluorescent light. Lust's throat tightened. He actually gulped, the sound loud enough to echo off the rink walls, and the involuntary reaction irritated him. He was the embodiment of carnal desire. He had watched civilizations drown in their own depravity at his command. A pair of tits should not have made him swallow like a nervous teenager at prom.
But those were not ordinary tits.
She stepped backward onto the ice. Her boots touched the surface and she glided out with an easy, casual grace, one foot sliding in front of the other like she'd been born on frozen water. She stopped a few feet out and turned to face him, blonde hair swaying across her shoulders, that teasing smile pulling at her lips. "Well? What are you waiting for?"
Lust stepped onto the ice.
His right foot shot out from under him immediately. His left knee buckled sideways and his arms windmilled in a way that was deeply, profoundly undignified for a being of his stature. He caught himself at the last second, one hand slapping down against the ice while his legs splayed in two different directions.
What the hell?
He forced himself upright and tried another step. His ankle wobbled. His foot slid three inches further than he intended and the momentum nearly sent him face first into the rink. The Flash's body, the fastest body on the planet, a body that could vibrate through solid matter and run across the surface of the ocean, could apparently not stand on frozen water without flailing like a newborn giraffe.
Why was this idiot's coordination so catastrophically bad on ice?
Lust rifled through Barry Allen's surface memories and found the answer almost immediately. The speedster had never ice skated in his life. Not once. His superspeed relied on friction and traction to function, and smooth ice provided neither. Without the Speed Force compensating for his footwork, Barry Allen had the balance and coordination of a drunk toddler on a greased floor.
Deep inside his prison, Barry let out a sound that might have been a laugh.
Whatever. It didn't matter. Lust forced Barry's legs into something resembling stability, planting each foot flat and shuffling forward in short, graceless slides that made the rubber soles of the suit squeak against the surface. His arms stayed out at his sides for balance. The cool air bit at his exposed jaw beneath the cowl. Each step was an exercise in humiliation, the kind of slow, uncoordinated shuffle that would have made any witness question whether the Flash had suffered a recent head injury.
But the woman was out there in the center of the rink, waiting for him with her shirt half unbuttoned and her blue eyes sparkling with invitation. That strip of exposed cleavage rose and fell with each breath she took, her breasts pushed together by the remaining buttons in a way that looked almost engineered to destroy rational thought.
Lust shuffled faster, his feet scraping and sliding beneath him, his eyes locked on the gorgeous blonde standing in the middle of all that empty white ice. He was going to ravish her right there on the frozen surface. He was going to peel that shirt the rest of the way open and press her bare back against the cold and make her writhe and moan and beg until the sounds bounced off every wall in this empty building.
He was maybe fifteen feet away from her now. Ten. The distance closed with agonizing slowness, each shuffling step threatening to dump him on his ass, but he kept his eyes forward and his focus sharp and his borrowed cock straining against the suit.
She watched him approach with her head tilted and her arms folded loosely beneath her chest, pushing her breasts up even further. Patient. Amused. Like she had all the time in the world.
And that's when something slammed into the back of his skull.
The impact came from above, a full-body collision that drove him chest-first into the ice with a heavy, meaty thwack.
His chin bounced off the frozen surface and his teeth clacked together hard enough to send a bolt of pain through his jaw. He skidded forward on his stomach, the friction of the suit squealing against the rink as he spun in a graceless half-rotation and came to a stop face down with his arms splayed out like a starfish.
"What the fuck!" he shouted, the words muffled against the ice as he clawed at the slippery surface trying to get his hands and knees under him. His palms slid out twice before he managed to push himself up enough to raise his head.
Supergirl floated six feet off the ice directly in front of him. Arms crossed. Cape drifting behind her in a nonexistent breeze. That insufferably cocky grin plastered across her perfect face. The same blonde Kryptonian bitch who had grabbed his head on the cruise ship and ripped it clean off his neck at supersonic speed, the last thing he'd seen before darkness that time being his own headless body tumbling away below him.
"Hey there, Lust." She wiggled her fingers in a little wave. "Miss me?"
He snarled and scrambled to get his feet under him, but the ice betrayed him again. His left foot kicked out sideways and he dropped back onto one knee, catching himself with both hands. Behind him he heard the soft creak of boots on ice and whipped his head around.
The gorgeous blonde was gone.
In her place stood a woman with long silky black hair cascading past her shoulders and vivid bright green eyes that glowed with barely contained amusement. The same face. The same impossible body. The same full lips now curved into a smirk that held absolutely zero innocence. The cheap shirt she'd been unbuttoning hung open over her cleavage and she didn't bother closing it as her features finished settling back into their true arrangement.
The succubus. That fucking succubus again!
"Claire sends her regards," Amara Black said playfully.
Lust's fist cracked against the ice hard enough to send a spiderweb of fractures racing outward from his knuckles. Rage boiled up through his chest so hot it nearly choked him. He had followed her like a dog following a dangled steak. He had shuffled across this goddamn ice like a crippled moron because a pretty girl showed him a hint of cleavage. He was a son of Trigon. He was Lust incarnate, the corruption of desire made flesh, and he had fallen for the oldest trick in the book because a succubus half his age batted her eyelashes and popped open a button.
"Seriously?" he spat through Barry Allen's clenched teeth, finally hauling himself upright on wobbling legs. "How did I fall for such an obvious fucking trap?"
Amara shrugged one shoulder. "You're the embodiment of Lust. Thinking with your dick is kind of your whole thing."
Supergirl snorted above them, and the sound bounced off every wall in the empty rink.
– Amara –
I was grinning so hard my cheeks ached.
That had been much easier than I suspected. All those hours of planning, all of Dick's worried pacing and Kara's nervous hand-wringing about what could go wrong, and in the end the embodiment of Lust had been undone by an unbuttoned shirt and a fake name. I hadn't even needed to use my Lewd Touch. I hadn't needed any magic at all. Just a pretty face, some push-uped cleavage, and the knowledge that a demon named after sexual desire would follow his cock straight into an ambush without stopping to ask a single critical question.
Sirius would have laughed himself sick.
Lust stood in the center of the rink on shaking legs, Barry Allen's body vibrating with fury, his feet sliding and catching on the ice every time he tried to plant himself in a fighting stance. The Flash's suit crackled with residual Speed Force energy but none of it mattered here. Ice was ice. No traction meant no speed, and no speed meant the fastest man alive was just a man in a red suit who couldn't stand up straight.
The sound of rubber soles scraping against ice reached me from behind. I turned my head and watched Nightwing sliding toward me with careful, deliberate steps, his balance infinitely better than Lust's had been but still far from graceful.
His jaw was set in that hard line I'd come to recognize as Dick Grayson pretending he wasn't feeling something intensely.
He reached me and his arm came up around my shoulders without a word. His gloved fingers curled over my upper arm and tucked me firmly against his side, his chest warm and solid through the suit as he angled his body just slightly between me and the demon still struggling to stay upright on the ice.
He didn't say anything. Didn't need to. The grip on my shoulder said it all. He'd stood on that rooftop with his comms open and listened to every word of my performance. Every breathy laugh, every flirtatious deflection, every purr of "Claire's" voice as she led the embodiment of sexual desire across a building by his erection.
Dick had heard all of it and said nothing and done his job and waited for the signal. He was jealous. Even knowing it was an act. That was adorable.
I leaned into his side and let my weight settle against him, tilting my head so my hair brushed his jaw. His fingers tightened on my arm by a fraction. Barely perceptible. Completely involuntary.
"Missed you down here," I murmured, just loud enough for him to catch.
His thumb traced a single slow circle against my shoulder. "Didn't look like it... " he grumbled, still a bit jealous.
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from grinning.
Nightwing squared his shoulders and leveled his gaze at the demon struggling to keep his footing on the ice. "Vacate the Flash's body," he said. His voice carried that authoritative edge he'd learned from Batman, the one that turned a suggestion into a command and a command into something that felt inevitable. "Go back to Hell where you belong. This is your one chance to do it the easy way."
Kara dropped lower until she hovered just a few feet above the rink surface, her boots dangling over the ice, her eyes beginning to glow with the faintest trace of red. "He's right. You're fucked and you know it. You can't use his speed on ice, you can't outrun me in the air, and you definitely can't outfight all three of us at once. It's over."
Lust's face twisted into something ugly behind the Flash's cowl. His lips peeled back from Barry Allen's teeth in a snarl that no human mouth was supposed to make, the muscles of his jaw pulling too wide, tendons standing out along his neck like cables. The rink lights flickered once as a wave of demonic energy pulsed outward from his body, thick and cloying and smelling of burnt copper.
"Go back to Hell?" He laughed, and the sound came out in two registers at once. Barry Allen's tenor layered underneath something older and deeper and rotten, a voice that had whispered in the ears of emperors and saints and watched them all crumble. "You think you've won because you tricked me onto some frozen floor? You think a little ice is enough to cage a son of Trigon?"
He planted his feet wider, his knees bending, his whole body dropping into a lower center of gravity. His legs still trembled with the effort of staying upright but the fury burning in his eyes had overridden whatever embarrassment remained.
"I'm not going anywhere," he spat. "And I am not going down without a fight. So come on then, little hero. Come on, succubus. Come and take me if you can." His fists clenched at his sides and the Speed Force crackled across his knuckles in jagged arcs of golden lightning, popping and snapping against the cold air. Unstable. Unpredictable. The power of the fastest man alive channeled through the rage of an ancient demon with nothing left to lose.
"I was kind of hoping you'd say that," I admitted, twirling my wand between my fingers. "Because I didn't get to hurt you myself last time. Kara got the kill shot on the cruise ship while I was stuck dealing with your gross aura. I've been thinking about what I'd do if I got a second chance ever since."
Lust straightened up on the ice, his wobbling legs momentarily forgotten as a sneer twisted across Barry Allen's stolen face. "You won't do shit. You wouldn't dare hurt the body of one of your precious heroes. That's the problem with you people. You care too much about the meat suit I'm wearing to actually do anything to me."
I grinned.
It was the kind of grin that made Dick shift uncomfortably beside me. I felt more than saw Kara's confident hovering falter just slightly above us, her cape going still for a beat too long.
"You'd be surprised," I said, "what kind of injuries the Flash can survive. Healing factor, remember? Accelerated cellular regeneration. He can recover from compound fractures in minutes. Third degree burns in maybe half an hour. I'm pretty sure he once regrew most of his skin after a chemical explosion." I tilted my head and let my eyes drift down to the Flash's kneecaps with open, thoughtful consideration. "I'm sure he'll forgive me."
I loved the way the color drained from the Flash's face. Loved how Lust's bravado cracked like cheap plaster as Barry Allen's eyes went wide and the demon behind them realized for the first time that the succubus standing in front of him wasn't bluffing. That she wasn't bound by the same squeamish heroic code that kept the people around her pulling their punches. That she had burned men alive in dumpsters for less than what Lust had done, and the only thing standing between him and a world of creative agony was however long it took her to pick a spell.
"So," I said softly, raising my wand. "Shall we begin?" I pointed it at the center of Barry Allen's chest. "Crucio."
The curse erupted from the tip of my soul-bound wand in a bolt of crackling red light that screamed across the ice like a living thing, hungry and vicious and singing with dark intent. It carved a scorching trail through the cold air, the rink lights flickering and popping in its wake as raw dark magic flooded the enclosed space.
Lust's eyes blew wide. Even on ice, even without traction, the Flash's body moved. His torso wrenched sideways in a desperate, flailing twist that sent him skidding on one heel. The curse missed his chest by inches and punched into the boards behind him with a deafening crack, splintering the plexiglass into a web of fractured shards that rained down across the ice in glittering pieces.
Lust stumbled and caught himself, arms pinwheeling, his stolen face white with fear.
That looked good on him.
I was already adjusting my aim for a follow-up when Dick's hand closed around my wrist. Just firm enough to make me pause.
"Amara." His voice was carefully measured in that way it got when he was choosing his words like a man navigating an emotional minefield. "Maybe we're going a bit overboard with that particular spell…?"
I glanced sideways at him. His jaw was tight and his masked eyes were fixed on the smoking crater in the plexiglass where the curse had landed. He knew what the Cruciatus did. An Unforgivable Curse that attacked every pain receptor in the human body simultaneously. Illegal in the wizarding world. Punishable by life imprisonment.
And I had just fired it at a hero's body as an opening move.
"He'd have been fine," I said. "The Flash recovers fast… Didn't you hear my whole dramatic villainess monologue just now?"
"That's not really the point…" he sighed but I saw him crack a smile.
A blur of red and blue streaked across my peripheral vision. Kara came in low and fast, skimming the ice surface like a guided missile. She caught Lust square in the ribs with an open-palmed strike that lifted Barry Allen's body clean off the rink. The crack of impact echoed through the empty building like a gunshot.
Lust sailed backward across the ice, bouncing once, twice, three times, his limbs flailing in every direction before he slammed spine-first into the far boards hard enough to buckle the metal framing.
He groaned. Tried to push himself up. Got one knee under him.
I flicked my wand in a lazy downward arc. "Locomotor Wibbly." The Jelly-Legs Curse hit him mid-rise.
Both of the Flash's legs turned to rubber instantly, the muscles going slack and boneless beneath the suit. Lust's eyes bulged as the limbs he was counting on to stand simply refused to cooperate, folding and wobbling beneath him like overcooked pasta. "Oh, you fucking bitch!" he snarled, his voice cracking between Barry's tenor and that deeper demonic register as he crashed back onto his ass. His legs splayed out in front of him, twitching and flopping uselessly against the ice. He grabbed at his own thighs, trying to force them rigid through sheer willpower.
They just wiggled.
Dick was already moving. He slid across the ice with a controlled grace that spoke to years of acrobatic training, his boots finding purchase where the Flash's couldn't. He pulled the shock baton from his belt in one smooth motion and thumbed it to maximum. Blue-white electricity arced between the prongs with an angry crackle. "Sorry, Barry," he said.
Then he jammed it into Lust's chest.
The scream that tore out of Barry Allen's throat was inhuman. His back arched off the ice, every muscle in his stolen body locking rigid as fifty thousand volts ripped through the Flash's nervous system. Lightning crackled across the surface of his suit, the Speed Force reacting to the electrical assault with chaotic bursts of golden energy that danced and popped like fireworks. The smell of ozone and scorched rubber filled the rink.
Dick pulled the baton away.
Lust collapsed flat on the ice, chest heaving, smoke curling from the blackened lightning bolt emblem on his suit. His fingers twitched spasmodically against the frozen surface. But his eyes were still burning with defiance. "Never," he wheezed, spitting blood onto the ice. Barry Allen's blood, bright red against all that white. "Never giving up this body. You'll have to kill the speedster to get rid of me, and we both know you won't d—"
"Sorry, Barry," Kara said from above. The same words Dick just used.
She dropped straight down. One hand seized the Flash's right ankle and wrenched it sideways with precisely calibrated Kryptonian force. The snap was wet and immediate, the sound of bone breaking cleanly through ligament and tendon.
The ankle folded at an angle that ankles were never designed to fold.
Lust howled. The sound ripped through the rink at two octaves, the demon's ancient shriek layered over Barry Allen's very human scream of agony. His hands clawed at the ice, nails scraping white grooves into the surface. His broken foot dangled at a grotesque angle, already beginning to swell inside the boot of the suit.
"Damn," Dick muttered, studying the thrashing demon with clinical frustration. "Still not working."
"Never," Lust gasped out between ragged, agonized breaths. His stolen chest heaved. Tears streamed from Barry Allen's eyes but the hatred behind them was all demon. "Never... giving... up..."
Dick glanced at me.
I was already holding my wand at my side, thumb running along the dark wood, feeling the familiar hum of power thrumming through the soul-bound core. I raised one eyebrow at him. He held my gaze for a long moment, something warring behind his mask. Then his shoulders dropped by a fraction of an inch and he exhaled through his nose.
He nodded. One small, reluctant, barely perceptible nod. That was all I needed. I stepped forward, the ice solid beneath my boots, and leveled my wand at the broken, twitching body of the Flash.
I grinned.
"Crucio."
The curse hit him dead center and the screaming started in earnest.
Black mist started pouring out of Barry Allen's mouth. The mist writhed and twisted with a life of its own, tendrils reaching outward, grasping blindly for an escape route as Lust's essence was ripped free from the host body he'd been clinging to so desperately.
I released the Cruciatus. The red light died at the tip of my wand and the rink fell silent except for Barry's broken gasping and the wet crackling of his ankle still knitting itself together on the ice.
But the mist didn't escape.
It should have. Every instinct told me that demonic essence freed from a host would scatter, dissipate, flee back to whatever hellish dimension spawned it. That's what happened on the cruise ship when Kara took his head off. The body crumbled to ash and Lust's spirit slithered away to regenerate at Daddy's feet.
Not this time.
The black mist surged upward and then curved sharply, bending in midair like iron filings yanked by a magnet. It spiraled inward toward my outstretched wand, every tendril of oily darkness funneling into a tight vortex that streamed directly into the tip of my soul-bound wand with a sound like air being sucked through a narrow pipe.
"What..." I whispered, staring at my own hand.
Lust screamed. The demon's true voice ripped free from the mist in a shriek of pure fury and confusion that rattled the overhead lights and sent hairline fractures spider-webbing across every remaining pane of plexiglass in the rink. It was a sound of absolute terror, the wail of something ancient and powerful realizing it was being consumed by something it didn't understand.
"NO! WHAT IS THIS? WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME? RELEASE ME! RELEASE M—"
The last tendril of black mist whipped through the air and vanished into the tip of my wand with a final, wet snap. The screaming cut off like someone had thrown a switch. Silence crashed back into the rink so hard my ears rang.
My wand pulsed once in my grip. A deep, thrumming vibration that traveled up through my fingers and into my wrist and settled somewhere behind my sternum. The wood felt warmer than before. Heavier. Like something new had taken up residence inside its core and was still settling in, still adjusting to its new cage.
Then the screen appeared.
A translucent black notification materialized directly in front of my eyes, visible only to me, the familiar System interface that I still wasn't entirely used to despite everything.
CONGRATULATIONS! You have vanquished your first Demon with your Soul-Bound Wand!
Your wand has absorbed the essence of LUST into its core.
Your wand has been upgraded: STICK OF LUST AND DEATH
CONGRATULATIONS on acquiring 2 out of 3 Deathly Hallows! Just one more to go!
I blinked at the wall of text floating in my vision. My brain tried to process all of it at once and promptly stalled out like an engine fed too much fuel. My wand had eaten a demon. My wand was now called the Stick of Lust and Death, which sounded like something a fourteen year old edgelord would name their character's weapon in a fantasy RPG. And apparently my soul-bound wand counted as a Deathly Hallow, which meant that between it and the Invisibility Cloak sitting in my inventory, I was two thirds of the way to collecting all three.
"What the fuck," I mumbled.
Footsteps scraped across the ice behind me. Dick slid to a stop at my side and put a hand on my shoulder, his masked eyes scanning my face with obvious concern.
"Amara? You okay? You're just standing there staring at nothing."
I blinked again and the notification dissolved. The rink came back into focus around me, cold air biting my cheeks, the smell of ozone and burnt rubber hanging thick in the enclosed space.
"It's nothing," I said, shaking my head once and tucking my wand into my back pocket. The wood was still warm against my skin. Still thrumming with that new, deeper resonance that hadn't been there ten minutes ago. "I'm fine. Just processing."
Dick didn't look convinced but he let it go, which was one of the things I genuinely appreciated about him. He knew when not to push.
Across the rink, Kara was kneeling on the ice beside Barry Allen. She had his head cradled in her lap, one hand supporting the back of his neck while the other pressed gently against his chest. His eyes were open and blinking rapidly, darting around the rink with the frantic, disoriented look of someone waking from a nightmare they couldn't fully remember but knew had been terrible.
"It's okay, Barry," Kara said softly. "It's me. It's Supergirl. You're safe now. He's gone."
"I... I couldn't stop him," Barry choked out. His voice was raw and cracked and entirely his own, no demonic layering, no ancient undertone. Just a man who sounded like he'd been screaming for days. "I could see everything he was doing. Everything he said. I tried to fight but I couldn't... oh God, those women on the street, did I... did he..."
"He didn't hurt anyone," Kara assured him quickly. "We got to you in time."
Barry's face crumpled with relief and horror in equal measure. His hands were shaking badly enough that the golden lightning still crackling faintly across his knuckles looked like a strobe light. His ankle had mostly healed but he made no attempt to stand, just lay there on the ice in Kara's lap looking hollowed out and broken and very, very human.
I watched them from across the rink and felt my wand pulse again in my back pocket, warm and satisfied, the trapped essence of a dead demon settling into its new permanent home.
One down.
A tremendous clatter erupted from the bleachers behind us. I spun with my wand already half-raised and found a man stumbling down the metal steps like he'd been shoved from the top row. Blond hair sticking up at angles that suggested he'd either been in a fight or sleeping in a gutter, a rumpled beige trench coat flapping around his legs, and a silver flask clutched in one hand like it was the only thing keeping him tethered to the mortal plane.
He tripped on the second-to-last step. His boot caught the edge and his whole body pitched forward with a graceless lurch that sent his free arm pinwheeling for balance he was never going to find.
"Bollocks!" he shouted as his knee cracked against the metal bench hard enough to ring through the empty rink like a gong.
Yep. He is drunk…
He righted himself with the exaggerated caution of a man who knew the floor was actively conspiring against him, took a long swig from the flask, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and squinted out at the four of us standing on the ice like we were a hallucination he was trying to decide whether or not to engage with.
"Right then," John Constantine announced, shoving the flask into his coat pocket and stepping onto the ice with the confidence of someone who had never once in his life considered the concept of friction. "I'm here to help you lot vanquish the dem—"
Both feet went out from under him simultaneously. His legs split in opposite directions and he hit the rink flat on his face with a meaty slap that echoed off every surface in the building. The flask skittered out of his pocket and spun across the ice in a lazy circle, leaving a trail of dark liquid in its wake.
"...Fuck me," he groaned into the frozen surface, his voice muffled against the ice. He lifted his head just enough to peer around the rink with bleary, bloodshot eyes, taking in the shattered plexiglass, the buckled boards, the scorch marks, and the notable absence of any demon. "We really should have thought of a better place to ambush the bastard. This ice is a bloody deathtrap."
"Uh, hey, Constantine." Barry Allen's voice drifted awkwardly across the rink from where he still sat on the ice with his head in Kara's lap. The speedster raised one shaking hand in a weak wave, glanced at me, then looked back at the sprawled exorcist with an expression that was equal parts gratitude and secondhand embarrassment. "Thanks for coming, but you're kind of... late. The demon's already gone."
Constantine blinked at Barry. Blinked at me. Blinked at the wand I was tucking back into my pocket.
"Already gone," he repeated flatly. "...Really?"
I folded my arms beneath my chest and let a smug, satisfied smile spread across my face. The kind of smile that I knew from experience made people want to either kiss me or punch me, depending on their disposition. "Already gone," I confirmed. Then I wrinkled my nose as a wave of stale whiskey and cigarette smoke rolled off him and hit my enhanced senses like a slap. "And where exactly have you been, drunky? You were supposed to be part of this plan. You were supposed to be on that rooftop with us three hours ago. When you didn't show, we figured you were either busy or dead."
Dick slid up beside me with his arms crossed and his jaw set in that particular way that meant he was disappointed but too professional to yell about it. His masked eyes tracked Constantine's prone form on the ice with the cold, evaluating stare of someone mentally crossing a name off the reliable allies list.
I'm surprised he was even on the list in the first place…
Kara's expression was worse. She looked down at Constantine from where she knelt with Barry and her lips pressed together in a thin line that radiated the specific flavor of letdown that only came from genuinely expecting better from someone. The kind of quiet disappointment that hit harder than anger ever could. Apparently the legendary John Constantine, master of the dark arts and Earth's foremost demonologist, had been too busy getting shitfaced to show up for the mission that the fate of the world was currently riding on.
Constantine rolled onto his back on the ice and stared up at the fluorescent lights with the philosophical resignation of a man who had long ago stopped being embarrassed by his own failures. "Meh." He waved a dismissive hand at the ceiling. "All's well that ends well and all that shite." He patted the ice around him until his fingers found the flask, scooped it up, and took another pull before struggling to sit upright. His boots squeaked uselessly against the frozen surface as he tried and failed to stand, eventually settling for a seated position with his legs splayed out in front of him. "Right, well. Sounds like you've got this handled. I'm off. Call me when the final battle happens."
He said this while sitting on his ass on the ice in a puddle of his own spilled whiskey, unable to stand up.
I watched him scoot himself toward the rink wall on his backside like the world's most pathetic toboggan and privately doubted that John Constantine would show up to the final battle either.
Not sober, at least.
Barry Allen finally rose to his feet. His ankle had knitted itself back together with the Flash's accelerated healing, the swelling already fading, the joint rotating smoothly when he tested his weight on it. He was still pale and his hands still trembled faintly at his sides, but his eyes were clear and focused and entirely his own.
He looked at me with an expression I hadn't expected. Not the wary distrust I'd gotten used to seeing on the faces of heroes who knew my reputation. Just simple, honest gratitude from a man who had been trapped inside his own body and set free.
"Thanks for saving me," he said. His voice was still hoarse but steady. "All of you. I mean it." He rolled his healed ankle once more and straightened up to his full height, the golden lightning of the Speed Force beginning to crackle softly across his suit again as his connection to it stabilized. "So. What's the plan?" He paused, then added with a visible shudder that ran from his shoulders down to his fingertips, "Also, that magic you used on me? Hurt a lot."
"I'm not sorry," I said without a shred of shame or hesitation.
Barry stared at me. I stared back. My expression didn't waver.
Kara cleared her throat from beside Barry and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. "She's sorry. She really is. She just has trouble expressing it." She gave him that warm, earnest Supergirl smile that made puppies and small children trust her on sight.
I turned on Kara with a look of exaggerated betrayal, mouth falling open, hand pressed flat against my chest like she'd just stabbed me through the heart.
How dare my girlfriend try to make friends with heroes on my behalf. The audacity. The sheer Kryptonian audacity.
Kara caught my expression and her smile widened into something distinctly unapologetic.
I dropped the theatrics and turned back to Barry, shifting into business mode. "First things first. We're heading back to our safehouse to regroup. Raven, Starfire, Batman, Robin, and Superboy are all there waiting." I watched his eyebrows climb at the roster and kept going before he could ask questions. "And then we're going to hand you a piece of very sharp kryptonite and you're going to run it straight into the possessed Superman's chest while the rest of us dogpile him."
Barry's eyes slid away from me and landed on Nightwing with the desperate, searching look of a man hoping someone would tell him he'd misheard the plan.
Nightwing nodded.
Barry's shoulders sagged and he ran both hands through his sweat-damp hair, staring at the ice between his boots. "That's the most Batman-ish plan I've ever heard," he grumbled, shaking his head slowly. Then something shifted in his expression. The exhaustion didn't disappear but it settled into something harder, something determined, and a tight grin pulled at the corner of his mouth. "Well, I'm fast enough. At the very least." Golden lightning crackled across his knuckles and up his forearms as the Speed Force hummed to life around him, brighter and steadier than before. "It's about time Superman finally learns who's top dog when it comes to speed."
"Also we've teamed up with the devil…" I added with a bit of afterthought.
The Flash almost slipped again on the ice. "Wait?! WHAT!?"
XXX
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