Chapter 26:
– Amara –
Congratulations on surviving getting impaled by an Anti-magic weapon! Your enhanced healing has been upgraded to the Perk: [High Speed Regeneration!] Wounds that would kill normal people will now heal for you in seconds—however—this healing is not unlimited and will draw on your magical reserves. You will also feel all pain amplified and accelerated as the wounds close.
Consciousness returned to me. The first thing I registered was softness, but definitely not the silk sheets of Black Manor. This was something else entirely. Hospital-grade cotton, pulled tight and clinical, smelling faintly of antiseptic.
Where the hell am I?
My eyelids felt like they'd been glued shut. I forced them open anyway, wincing against a flood of pale coastal light pouring through floor-to-ceiling windows I absolutely did not recognize. The ceiling was low, painted a soft grey-blue. Simple furniture. A nightstand with a glass of water and what appeared to be a half-eaten bag of cheese puffs.
Not exactly Morgana's aesthetic.
I tried to sit up and immediately regretted it. Pain lanced through my abdomen, radiating from a spot just below my ribs where Failsafe's blade had buried itself in my stomach.
And then, an instant later, I felt the pain completely fade away and my magical reserves dipped just a tiny bit.
My hand shot to the wound instinctively, fingers pressing against smooth skin through a thin oversized cotton shirt that wasn't mine. The skin beneath was tender and newly healed.
Right. The robot. The anti-magic blade. Morgana's stolen weapon punched straight through me like I was made of wet paper. Did Raven heal me up and now I just got an overpowered healing Perk on top of that?
I remembered Raven's four glowing eyes, the shadows that had swallowed the entire chamber, terrifying fury in Rachel's voice when she'd told a six-foot-four murder robot she was going to teach it what despair felt like.
That was the single hottest thing I've ever witnessed in my life and I was actively bleeding out at the time.
I was still cataloguing my surroundings, still pulling the threads of memory together, when the door exploded inward. Not literally. But it might as well have been literal given the sheer velocity of the blonde blur that launched itself across the room.
"You're awake! Oh my God, oh my God, you're awake!"
Kara hit me like a heat-seeking missile made of sunshine, golden hair, and zero regard for the injuries of others. Kara landed directly on top of me. My succubus instincts purred, because a beautiful young blonde woman was straddling me and the Sin of Lust had absolutely no concept of appropriate timing.
"Hi there, Kara," I wheezed, half laughing and half wincing.
"Hi!?" Kara's voice cracked. She shook my shoulders gently. "Do you have any idea how scared I was? I was fighting a possessed Wonder Woman and then she ran away so I rushed into the secret base to help and I saw you bleeding out and Raven leaning over you trying to heal a giant hole in your stomach!" She sucked in a shaky breath, her lower lip trembling. "I was so freaking worried about you, Amara! We just became an item, so you don't get to do that! You don't get to just throw yourself at a robot with a magic-killing sword and then pass out for... for however long you were out, and make me sit in this stupid safehouse eating cheese puffs and staring at your stupid beautiful face waiting for you to wake up!"
"How long was I out?" I asked.
"Almost two full days!"
I blinked. Two days. That was longer than I'd expected.
Kara was still sitting on top of me, radiating warmth like a small sun. There were faint circles under her eyes that had no business being on a Kryptonian face. She looked like she hadn't left this room for the full two days.
She stayed. She sat here the entire time, eating cheese puffs and waiting for me to open my eyes.
I grinned. My succubus instincts responded by flooding my awareness with exactly how good Kara smelled this close, how warm her thighs were against my hips.
But I was still me. And there was a beautiful girl on top of me, and she'd apparently been worried sick for two days, and the Sin of Lust wasn't the only part of me that wanted to pull Kara closer.
So I did.
My arms came up around Kara's waist, one hand sliding down the curve of her lower back while the other settled firmly on the generous swell of Kara's ass, fingers squeezing through the thin and very short skirt that made everyone love Kara's costume. Kara's body was ridiculous. Alien genetics had sculpted an ass that would make actual sculptures weep with inadequacy.
"Eep!" The sound Kara made was not a word. Her entire face went nuclear red in the span of a single heartbeat, the blush racing down her neck and vanishing beneath her costume.
The Kryptonian launched herself backward so fast that she created a small pressure wave that ruffled my hair and sent the bag of cheese puffs tumbling off the nightstand. One second she was warm and solid on my lap. The next she was pressed flat against the far wall, hovering three inches off the ground, both hands clamped over her backside as if protecting it from further assault.
"You, you can't just... I was having a moment!" Kara sputtered. "I was being emotionally vulnerable and worried and you just... you grabbed my...!"
I pouted. The expression was entirely calculated and devastatingly effective, my full lower lip pushing out, emerald eyes going wide and wounded, the whole performance weaponized by a face that had been supernaturally designed to make people want to give me whatever I wanted. "Come back," I said, patting the empty space on the bed. "I was comfortable."
"Absolutely not! Not until you promise to keep your hands in... in appropriate... zones!"
"I thought your ass was an appropriate zone. We made out in my mansion. And then we kissed in front of two traumatized teenagers. I think we're past polite boundaries."
Kara opened her mouth. A strangled noise escaped that sounded like Kryptonian profanity might, if such a thing existed. She slowly descended until her feet touched the floor, still pressing her back against the wall, and pointed one accusatory finger in my direction. "You are a menace."
"I'm a succubus. It's literally in the job description."
"That is not an excuse and you know it!"
I was still laughing when I realized we had an audience. I turned my head and found three familiar figures arranged across the space, most of them trying very hard to pretend they hadn't just watched that entire exchange.
Dick Grayson leaned against the window frame to my left, arms folded across a broad chest that strained the fabric of a simple black t-shirt. His dark hair was tousled, and he wore the specific expression of a man who wanted to be amused but was fighting it because he was supposed to be the mature one. The fight was not going well. The corner of his mouth kept twitching.
Raven sat in an armchair in the far corner, legs tucked beneath her, drowning in an oversized charcoal hoodie that hung past her fingertips. The Veil Chain bracelet glimmered on her left wrist, its crescent moon charm catching the light. Her violet eyes were fixed on me with an intensity that bypassed casual and went straight to something deeper, something hungry and relieved and carefully guarded all at once. Her grey-tinged skin carried the faintest purple blush along her cheekbones.
And Starfire was cross-legged on the floor beside my bed, her impossibly long legs folded beneath her.
She was beaming.
"That was wonderful," Kori announced, clapping her hands together once. "The groping was an excellent display of physical affection. When a warrior wakes from injury, it is tradition for their lovers to grasp their body firmly to confirm all appendages remain functional. You were performing a cultural service, Amara."
"See?" I gestured toward Starfire. "Kori gets it."
"Kori does not get to be your cultural alibi!" Kara hissed from the wall, her blush somehow intensifying.
Dick cleared his throat. The twitch at the corner of his mouth had graduated into something that was dangerously close to a full smile, and he was clearly exerting Olympic-level effort to wrestle it back into place. "Glad to see you're feeling better, Amara."
"Better is relative. I feel like someone shoved a sword through my stomach." I paused. "Oh wait. Someone did…"
"You scared the hell out of us." The humor left Dick's voice as quickly as it had arrived. His eyes held mine, steady and serious, and I could see the shadow of something ugly behind them. He'd watched me collapse. He'd watched Raven scream. He'd been thrown into server racks by a robot that moved like his father and hit like a freight train, and then he'd had to lie there, bleeding and useless, while the woman he was falling for bled out on the concrete. "Don't do that again."
"Noted. Next time a murder robot throws an anti-magic sword at me, I'll simply dodge."
"That would be the preferred outcome, yes…" he finished with a sigh.
My attention drifted back to Raven, who hadn't spoken yet. The empath sat coiled in her armchair with her fingers running absently over the crescent moon charm on her bracelet. Her eyes kept meeting mine and then flicking away, and every time they flicked away.I knew why she was nervous, because we all saw her with four crimson eyes when she went full demon on that evil robot's metallic ass…
"Raven…" I started.
The empath's eyes snapped to mine.
"...Watching you go full demon and tear that robot apart with your shadows while screaming about making it feel despair?" I let the grin spread slow and wicked across my face. "That was the single sexiest thing I have ever seen in my entire life."
"I, you, that's not... I wasn't trying to be..." Raven stammered, pulling the hoodie's collar up over her nose as if the fabric could somehow hide the visible meltdown happening across her entire face. "I lost control. That's not sexy, that's dangerous. My powers could have killed everyone in that room."
"And yet they didn't. You were magnificent." I tilted my head. "Your eyes were glowing red and your shadows had a robot the size of a refrigerator pinned to the ceiling, and the only thing I could think before I passed out was 'God, she's beautiful when she's angry.'"
"Nnnh," said Raven, which was not a word in any language but communicated volumes.
Dick reached over and patted Raven's shoulder with the ease of someone who'd spent years navigating the specific minefield of Rachel Roth's emotional landscape. "See? Nobody's afraid of you."
"I'm afraid you'll never use that face in the bedroom for some fun kinky roleplay," I offered helpfully.
"I will teleport you into the ocean," Raven said from behind her hoodie.
"I'd survive. I'm very buoyant." I cupped my own breasts for emphasis, and Kara made another strangled noise from the wall. I shifted against the pillows. I looked at the four of them, these strange, beautiful people who had pulled up chairs and eaten cheese puffs and apparently refused to leave while I slept for two days. "So," I said, letting my gaze sweep the room again with more focus. This was definitely not Gotham. "Is anyone going to tell me where the hell I am, or do I have to guess? Because this doesn't look like any of our places, and the ocean sounds are either a very convincing white noise machine or we're not in Kansas anymore."
"We are also not in Gotham," Kori added brightly, apparently determined to be helpful.
"Thank you, Kori. That narrows it down to most of the planet."
Dick pushed off the window frame. "You're in a safehouse on the coast of Metropolis. It's one of Batman's off-the-books locations. No official records, no League database entry."
"Batman's safehouse," I repeated slowly. "I'm in Bruce Wayne's spare apartment…" And of course it's a beach house. Excellent taste! "How is he doing? Did we get the demon out of him?"
And wasn't that a weird sentence?
"Yes, it was forced out when Failsafe almost killed him. He's fine now." Dick's jaw tightened before he paused. "Bruce is here, actually. He and Morgana are in the main room down the hall."
My brain stalled.
"I'm sorry," I said carefully, "I think the blood loss might have affected my hearing. Did you just tell me that Batman and Morgana le Fay are in the next room? Together? Like, in the same physical space?"
"They've been strategizing together about how to stop the possessed league without freaking out the rest of the world," Dick said, and the way he said it suggested he'd been asking himself the same incredulous question for a while now. "Bruce made tea. Morgana insulted the tea. Bruce made different tea. Morgana insulted that tea slightly less. They've been... productive, apparently."
Morgana and Bruce Wayne, planning together. Trigon's ritual is progressing, the Justice League is compromised, and the two most paranoid strategists on opposite sides of the moral spectrum decided to sit down over bad tea and save the world.
I didn't know whether to be terrified or impressed.
"Is the world ending?" I asked. "Because that's the only scenario I can think of where those two would voluntarily share a room."
"Potentially, yes," Raven said quietly, pulling the hoodie down from her nose. "If my demonic siblings get their hands on me… It will be very bad."
The warmth of the room seemed to dim. Yeah, I knew from my [Cursed Knowledge] that Raven could be used to open a portal to literal "space hell" where Trigon and his legions would be unleashed on the people of Earth. And without the Justice League to stop him, it was going to be up to—pretty much us I suspected.
"Then I guess it's a good thing I woke up," I said quietly. I held Raven's gaze until the empath's shoulders loosened by a fraction. "Because I'm not letting anything happen to you Raven!"
The weight of my words hung in the air for a beat before the room erupted.
"Nothing is going to happen to you, Rachel." Dick crossed the room, and stopped in front of her. He dropped a hand onto Raven's shoulder. "We've faced impossible odds before. This isn't any different."
Kara flexed her deceptively strong arms. "I punched Wonder Woman in the face for you, Raven. And I would do it again. Gladly. She hits like a truck, but I hit like a bigger truck, and nobody is dragging you anywhere!"
"I would also like to express that I will destroy anyone who attempts to harm you," Kori announced brightly. "You are my friend, Raven."
Raven's lips pressed together hard. Her fingers clenched around the crescent moon charm on her Veil Chain, knuckles going pale, and for a terrible moment I thought she might cry. But Raven was Raven, which meant instead of crying she pulled the hoodie up over her nose again and mumbled something that might have been "you're all insufferable" in a voice that cracked just enough to betray her completely.
I let the moment breathe. Then I swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood up.
Every pair of eyes in the room dropped approximately eighteen inches. The oversized black t-shirt I'd been sleeping in belonged to Dick. I knew this because it smelled like him. The shirt hung to mid-thigh on my smaller body, loose through the shoulders, the neckline scooped low enough to expose one smooth shoulder and the upper swell of my breasts. Beneath it, I was wearing absolutely nothing and enjoyed all the expressions everyone gave me.
Good to know the near-death experience hasn't diminished the effect I have on these people.
"I'm going to go talk to Morgana," I announced, stretching my arms above my head with a motion that pulled the hem of Dick's shirt high enough to make the Kryptonian squeak again. "She needs to know I'm awake and she needs to know I'm okay." I padded barefoot toward the door, pausing just long enough to glance back over my shoulder. "Also, for the record? Whoever undressed me and put me in Dick's shirt while I was unconscious... excellent choice. Very comfortable. Ten out of ten."
"That was me," Kori said. "I selected Dick's shirt specifically because it smelled like him and I theorized the familiar scent of a romantic partner would aid your recovery. I also considered using Raven's hoodie, but she was already wearing it and refused to remove it because she was, quote, 'not getting naked just so Amara can smell me while she's in a coma, Kori, what is wrong with you.'"
"I hate everyone in this room," Raven said from inside her hoodie cocoon.
"You love us," I called from the doorway.
"That is also unfortunately true…" she admitted and it was adorable.
The hallway outside the bedroom was narrow and institutional, the kind of aggressively boring architecture that screamed "government contractor with zero imagination."
Classic Bruce Wayne safe house energy. The man could afford to buy a small country but decorated his secret hideouts like a dentist's waiting room.
My bare feet made soft padding sounds against the cool tile floor as I walked, Dick's oversized black t-shirt swishing against my thighs with every step. The fabric was soft from dozens of washes, worn thin enough that I could feel the coastal breeze from somewhere drifting across my skin beneath it. Every few steps, the shirt's neckline would slide further off one shoulder, exposing the smooth curve of skin from my neck to the upper swell of my breast. I didn't bother fixing it. What was the point?
I almost died two days ago. If I want to walk around Batman's secret beach house wearing nothing but my maybe-boyfriend's shirt, I think I've earned that right.
Then I heard them.
Two voices. One I would have recognized from the bottom of a volcano. The other belonged to a man who dressed up as a bat to punch criminals in the face and somehow made the entire world take him seriously for it.
They were not having a pleasant conversation.
"...and I'm telling you, Wayne, that sentimentality will get every single person in this building killed." Morgana's voice carried the particular edge she reserved for people she considered dangerously stupid. It was the same tone she used when Astoria accidentally set the training room curtains on fire for the third time in one session, except colder. Far colder. "You are asking me and my apprentice to engage possessed members of the most powerful superhero team on this planet while fighting with one hand tied behind our backs."
I rounded the corner into the kitchen and stopped in the doorway, leaning my shoulder against the frame.
The kitchen was surprisingly domestic for a secret superhero bunker. Two cups of tea sat on the counter between the occupants, both apparently untouched and long since cooled. A third cup sat shattered in the sink, its dark liquid staining the basin, which told me everything I needed to know about how productively this conversation had been going.
Morgana stood on one side of the breakfast bar with her arms folded beneath her chest.
God, I missed her.
Batman occupied the opposite side of the counter. Although, he wasn't wearing a mask currently—so that made him Bruce instead? I wasn't sure how the multiple personality thing worked to be honest. He looked like a man who'd recently been used as a punching bag by a demonic version of himself, which, to be fair, was exactly what had happened.
Neither of them had noticed me yet.
"The Justice League members are victims in this scenario," Bruce said, and his voice was low and measured in that deliberate way that told me he'd already said this particular sentence multiple times and was running out of patience with repeating it. "They didn't choose to be possessed. They're being used as weapons against their will. Killing them punishes the victims instead of the perpetrator!"
"How noble." Morgana's lips curved into something too sharp to be called a smile. "How principled. How absolutely, catastrophically naive." She uncrossed her arms and placed both palms flat on the marble countertop, leaning forward until the space between them shrank to almost nothing. "Let me paint you a picture, Wayne, since you seem determined to cling to your moral high ground even as the world burns around you. Your Superman, possessed and unrestrained, could crack this planet in half. Your Wonder Woman is an immortal warrior blessed by gods who has killed more enemies across her centuries of life than you have saved across yours. Your Flash can vibrate through solid matter and phase his hand into someone's chest cavity before they register he's moved. Your Green Lantern's ring is powered by willpower, which means a demon fueling it with rage and malice transforms it into one of the most dangerous weapons in existence." She straightened. "That is what you are asking us to fight without lethal force. You are asking my apprentice, who was impaled two days ago by YOUR OWN CONTINGENCY ROBOT, to face the most powerful beings on this planet while pulling her punches."
Bruce's jaw tightened. A muscle jumped near his temple. "Zatanna can reverse the possession. Constantine has experience with demonic influence of this magnitude. We have options that don't involve body counts."
Bruce's expression didn't change, but something behind his eyes shifted. A crack in the foundation. Not agreement exactly, but the recognition that the woman standing across from him had already done the homework he was still avoiding.
"If you want my help," Morgana continued, her voice dropping to the particular register she used when she was finished negotiating and was now simply informing you of how things were going to be, "and more importantly, if you want my apprentice's help, then you need to understand something fundamental about how we operate. We do not hold back. We do not pull punches. We do not handicap ourselves to preserve the comfort of our enemies, regardless of whether those enemies are being piloted by demons or acting of their own free will. If one of your precious League members charges at Amara with killing intent, she will respond with killing intent. That is not negotiable!"
"I think she should decide for herself. And I said no killing." Bruce's voice hadn't risen a single decibel, but somehow it filled the kitchen. "I didn't say no force. There's a difference."
That was when I decided to announce my presence.
"You know," I said from the doorway, letting my voice carry with the lazy confidence of someone who absolutely had not been eavesdropping for the last five minutes, "most people argue about whose turn it is to do the dishes. You two have somehow made arguing about acceptable murder thresholds sound like a custody negotiation."
Both heads turned toward me simultaneously.
Morgana's reaction was instantaneous and visceral. Every trace of cold political calculation vanished from her facet. Her emerald eyes, identical to mine, widened with something raw and unguarded that she would have murdered anyone else for witnessing.
"Amara." My name in her voice, the way she said it, like it was the only word that mattered.
She crossed the kitchen in four long strides and her arms were around me before I could draw my next breath. The embrace was fierce and tight and slightly too rough, her fingers digging into my back through Dick's thin shirt, her face pressed into the curve of my neck. She held me like she was trying to physically verify that I was solid.
I felt her inhale shakily against my throat. Then again. Steadier. "Don't you ever," Morgana whispered directly into my ear, her breath warm and uneven, "do something that reckless again. I raised you better than that."
"Technically, you've been raising me for less than a few months. The recklessness was pre-installed."
I wrapped my arms around Morgana and held her just as tightly, pressing my cheek against the silk of her blouse, breathing in the scent that was uniquely hers, dark magic and old parchment and something floral she'd never admit to wearing. My eyes stung. I blinked the sensation away before it could turn into anything embarrassing."I'm okay," I murmured against her shoulder. "I'm here. I'm not going anywhere."
Morgana pulled back just far enough to look at me properly, her hands moving to my face, thumbs brushing across my cheekbones with a tenderness that would have shocked anyone who'd only ever seen the fearsome witch the history books described. "Whose shirt is that?"
Of course that was her first question.
"Dick's," I said shamelessly.
Morgana's left eye twitched. Just once. Very slightly. But I caught it because I had spent months learning to read every microscopic shift in this woman's expressions.
"Of course it is," she said, her tone perfectly neutral in a way that was the opposite of neutral.
Bruce Wayne watched this entire reunion from his stool with the expression of a man mentally filing away every detail for future analysis while simultaneously wishing he were anywhere else. He cleared his throat quietly. "I should go check on the others," he said, and I realized that was possibly the most tactful thing I'd ever heard Batman say. He stood from the stool carefully, his sling-bound arm held close to his body, and made his way toward the door. He paused beside me as he passed, his dark eyes meeting mine with an unreadable look. "Good to see you on your feet."
The moment he was gone, Morgana's composure cracked by exactly one additional degree. She cupped my face again, tilting it left, then right, examining me the way she examined rare magical artifacts that might explode if handled incorrectly.
"Two days," she said. "You were unconscious for two days, Amara. Do you understand what that was like for me? I sat in that horrendously decorated room with that insufferably rigid man and his wretched tea for forty-seven hours, unable to do anything except plan and argue and wait, because the one person in this world I cannot bear to lose was lying in a bed down the hall with a hole in her stomach."
"I know," I said softly. "I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize. It makes me feel as though you're admitting fault, which implies you believe you might do it again."
"I mean, statistically speaking, I probably will do something equally reckless at some poi—"
"Amara."
"Right. Never again..."
Morgana exhaled through her nose. Then she leaned forward and pressed her lips to my forehead, lingering there for several seconds, and the kiss was so gentle and so unlike the voracious, commanding woman who usually shoved me against walls and claimed what she wanted that my chest physically ached.
"I love you," she murmured against my skin. "Don't make me say it twice in one day. My reputation can only absorb so many blows."
"I love you too, Morgana…"
She straightened, composing herself with visible effort, pulling the mantle of the legendary dark witch back over her shoulders like armor.
"Now then," she said briskly, adjusting the collar of her blouse. "If you're finished nearly dying, we have rather a lot to discuss. The Trigon situation has accelerated considerably while you were taking your little nap, and..."
That was when the sound of raised voices echoed from somewhere deeper in the safehouse.
Morgana glanced toward the hallway with a sigh. "Ah, yes. The children are also here. I wanted them to stay out of this like I sent Bellatrix and the Greengrass sisters away for a few days, but Batman insisted that the "young heroes" be a part of our dangerous upcoming venture to stop and interdimensional arch demon from destroying our world without the public finding out that their favorite heroes have all been possessed…"
"Children?" I asked.
"Wayne's rude blood offspring and the half-Kryptonian boy of superman. They arrived yesterday evening after your little girlfriend confirmed the safehouse location."
We followed the sounds down another stretch of boring grey hallway, past a utility closet and what appeared to be a small armory with a reinforced door, until we reached what had to be the safehouse's main living area.
"We're not scared of anything!" Damian Wayne declared from beside the window. His katana was propped against the wall within arm's reach, because of course it was. Damian Wayne did not go anywhere without a blade nearby, including, I suspected, the bathroom. "I've trained for this scenario since I was old enough to hold a weapon."
Which, knowing Talia al Ghul, was probably around three.
"Exactly!" Jonathan Kent stood beside Damian, vibrating with barely contained energy in a way that was distinctly Kryptonian, his feet hovering about half an inch off the floor without him seeming to notice. He was a lanky kid, all long limbs and farm-boy earnestness, with dark hair that fell across his forehead and his father's blue eyes burning with the kind of righteous determination that apparently came standard with the House of El genome. "We're going to free my Dad and then we're going to kick these evil alien demons' asses so hard they'll feel it in whatever dimension they crawled out of!"
"Hell yeah! You tell 'em, sweetheart!" That voice came from the sectional sofa, and it belonged to someone I hadn't expected to find in a secret superhero safe house.
But I guess she would be here too considering her underage son was involved and her husband was possessed recently.
Lois Lane sat at the center of the couch with one leg crossed over the other, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees and a fierce grin plastered across her face that suggested she was ready to personally storm whatever demonic stronghold was holding her husband hostage armed with nothing but a reporter's notebook and sheer audacity. She wore a simple white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled to her forearms, dark jeans, and practical boots, her dark hair pulled back in a messy ponytail that had clearly been thrown together with function over form in mind. A press badge dangled from a lanyard around her neck, which struck me as absurd given the circumstances but was also somehow the most Lois Lane detail imaginable.
Clark Kent's wife. The most famous investigative journalist on the planet, the woman who walked into war zones and alien invasions with the same casual confidence most people brought to a grocery run.
Even from across the room, I could see why Superman had married her. Lois Lane was gorgeous. She was just naturally, aggressively attractive. Sharp dark eyes that missed absolutely nothing. High cheekbones. Full lips. A body that her simple clothes did very little to hide, with curves that filled out the white button-down in ways that made the fabric strain across her chest every time she leaned forward, which she did often because Lois Lane was apparently incapable of sitting still.
She's what, late thirties? Early forties? And she looks like that? No wonder Superman put a ring on it. I would too.
Down, girl. That's Superman's wife. Even I have limits.
...Okay, I don't actually have limits. But I have survival instincts, and those instincts are currently screaming that ogling the wife of a man who can hear heartbeats from orbit is perhaps not the wisest course of action, even if he is currently possessed by a demon.
Lois was still riding the momentum of Jonathan's declaration, bouncing slightly on the couch cushion with an energy that explained where her son got his inability to hold still. "That's exactly the kind of attitude we need right now. None of this moping around and hand-wringing about how powerful they are. Your father would be proud, Jon. And when we get him back, because we are getting him back, I'm going to give him such a lecture about letting himself get possessed that he'll wish the demon had killed him!"
"Mom," Jonathan groaned, in the universal tone of a teenager who loved his mother deeply but wished she would stop being so mom—like in front of other people...
"What? I'm being supportive! This is what support looks like!" Lois spread her arms wide, nearly hitting her son in the face—not that it would hurt him. "I didn't survive Lex Luthor, Brainiac, Doomsday, three alien invasions, and one very memorable incident involving a giant robot gorilla just to let some interdimensional daddy-issues demon steal my husband!"
I already love this woman…
My [Cursed Knowledge] had given me a general impression of Lois Lane from other versions of this universe, but experiencing her in person was something else entirely. The comics and movies hadn't done her justice.
Also, and I cannot stress this enough, she's an absolute MILF and the fact that my brain went there within thirty seconds of seeing her tells me the Sin of Lust really does not have a filter.
Morgana leaned close to my ear. "The journalist arrived six hours ago. She drove here herself after the Kryptonian girl contacted her. She's been interrogating Wayne about tactical options ever since and he's been answering her questions, which tells me she's either the most persuasive woman on this planet or Batman is losing his edge."
"Or both," I whispered back.
"Or both," Morgana conceded.
I decided it was time to stop lurking in doorways. I stepped into the room, and the movement drew every eye in the space toward me in rapid succession, a chain reaction of recognition, surprise, and in Damian's case, immediate territorial hostility.
"Hello, everyone! Yes, I'm not dead. Aren't you glad, Damien!?" I announced, raising one hand in a lazy wave.
Damian's eyes narrowed to slits and then he sighed. "Black…"
"Mini-Batman," I replied warmly. "Still carrying the katana everywhere, I see. Do you sleep with it?"
"That is classified information."
"That's a yes…" I teased.
Lois was studying me with the particular intensity of a woman who had spent her entire career assessing people in seconds. Her eyes moved from my face to my bare legs to the oversized men's shirt hanging off one shoulder and back up again, and I watched the calculations happen in real time behind her gaze.
"So," Lois said, uncrossing her legs and leaning forward with both elbows on her knees, her chin resting on her interlaced fingers, "you're the girl who's been turning the superhero community inside out with nothing but sex appeal..."
"Amara Black." I extended my hand. "Witch, succubus, occasional arsonist, full-time menace. It's nice to finally meet the woman whose journalism actually made me believe there are still good reporters in the world."
Lois took my hand and shook it with a grip that was firm and confident and just slightly too tight. "Lois Lane. Reporter, mother of a half-Kryptonian teenager, wife of the most powerful man on the planet who's currently being used as a puppet by demonic forces, and recently the woman who drove ninety miles an hour across three state lines because my sister-in-law called and said the world was ending and I don't believe in sitting on the sidelines!"
"I think I'm in love with you already."
"Get in line, sweetheart," Lois fired back without missing a beat.
"...Alright," I said, dropping onto the arm of the sectional sofa with one leg folded beneath me, Dick's oversized shirt riding up my thigh in a way I pretended not to notice and everyone else pretended not to stare at. "Somebody walk me through the situation. I've been unconscious for two days, which means I'm working with whatever I knew before a robot shoved a sword through my intestines. What's the plan? Because I'm assuming we have one, given that the two most paranoid people on opposite sides of the moral spectrum have apparently been drinking bad tea and arguing for forty-seven hours straight."
Bruce had reappeared in the doorway behind us, his sling-bound arm held close to his ribs, and he moved with the careful economy of a man whose body had been through hell recently but whose mind refused to acknowledge it. He crossed the room without a sound, which was genuinely unsettling for a man his size, and positioned himself beside the kitchen counter where a spread of documents, tablets, and hand-drawn diagrams covered every available surface. Some of the handwriting was precise and angular in black ink, clearly Bruce's. Others were written in an elegant, looping script that shimmered faintly with residual enchantment, and those were unmistakably Morgana's.
"The possessed League members have established a perimeter around a location in the Nevada desert," Bruce began. He tapped a tablet and a holographic map flickered to life above the counter. A red circle pulsed over a stretch of empty desert roughly sixty miles northwest of Las Vegas. "Five simultaneous massacres forming a pentagram across the globe." The holographic map zoomed out, and five red dots appeared across the globe, connected by faint lines that formed a perfect five-pointed star when viewed from above.
"Each massacre site has been converted into a sustained magical anchor point," Morgana continued, picking up the thread seamlessly. "The death energy from thousands of terrified souls is being channeled through these five points into a central convergence location." She gestured at the red circle in Nevada. "That is where the final ritual will take place. That is where they intend to use Raven as the key to tear open a permanent doorway between Earth and Trigon's dimension."
Raven had followed us from the bedroom. She stood in the doorway with her arms wrapped around herself, the oversized hoodie swallowing her body, and when Morgana said her name in connection with the ritual, I watched something shutter behind those violet eyes.
Raven then added more information I was not ready to hear.
"The worst part is I can't hide forever…" Raven said with a grimace. "Soon enough, they will have finished a second ritual, one that can summon me from anywhere on the planet. Whether I go to them, or they drag me there against my will, it will all turn out the same…" she said with a look of sadness.
"How long do we have?" I asked.
"We estimate roughly thirty-six hours from now. Give or take." Morgana said.
Thirty-six hours and my demonic girlfriend is going to get abducted again…
Unless we attack them first! Which I correctly assumed would be the obvious plan.
"The plan," Bruce said, "is sequential engagement. We identify and isolate each possessed League member individually, separate them from the group, and use a combination of magical exorcism and physical restraint to force the possessing entities out. We take them one at a time. We don't engage the group."
"Zatanna and Constantine are standing by," Dick added from behind me. He'd trailed us from the bedroom along with Kara and Kori, and now the entire safehouse population was converging in this one room like a very stressed, very attractive solar system collapsing into a single point. "They've been working on an exorcism ritual specifically designed for Trigon's brand of possession. It requires physical contact and about ninety seconds of uninterrupted casting to complete."
"Ninety seconds," I repeated slowly, letting the number sit in the air. Ninety seconds of holding down a possessed Superman or Wonder Woman while two magic users chanted at them. Ninety seconds during which the target would be fighting back with everything they had, fueled by demonic rage and completely freed from the moral restraints that normally kept them from turning people into fine red paste. "You want us to pin down the most powerful beings on the planet for a minute and a half each while they're actively trying to kill us?"
"Yes," Bruce said simply.
"Just making sure I understood the assignment…"
Morgana let out a sound that was too elegant to be called a scoff but carried the exact same energy. She started moving back and forth. "The moment we engage the first target and succeed in freeing them, every remaining possessed member will know we're coming." She stopped pacing and turned to face the room.
Bruce met her gaze without flinching. "Which is why speed and coordination matter. If we execute the first extraction cleanly and quickly enough, we can move to the second target before the others have time to reorganize."
"And if we can't?" Morgana pressed. "If the first extraction takes longer than expected? If the possessed League member is stronger than our estimates? If Constantine fumbles his incantation because a demon-fueled Superman is bearing down on him at Mach twelve?"
I leaned back on the sofa arm and pressed my fingers against my newly healed stomach. She's right. This plan is held together with optimism and duct tape. One thing goes wrong, one target takes too long, and we're fighting the entire League at once in the middle of a demonic ritual. We need more firepower.
I thought about our roster. Me, Morgana, Dick, Raven, Kara, Kori, Bruce with one functional arm, Damian and Jonathan who were teenagers regardless of how skilled they were, Zatanna and Constantine—I hadn't met either of them and therefore didn't trust or rely on them—who both needed to be protected during the exorcism rather than fighting, and Lois who was a baseline human with a reporter's notebook and an attitude problem.
It wasn't enough.
We need heavy hitters. People who can go toe-to-toe with the League's power levels and not get vaporized in the first three seconds. People who don't give a shit about conventional rules of engagement.
And that was when a crazy thought hit me…
My expression must have changed, because Morgana's eyes locked onto me immediately. "Amara," she said carefully. "I know that look. That is the look you get right before you suggest something that makes me want to lock you in a room for your own protection."
"How do you feel about me calling in a favor?" I asked.
"That depends entirely on who owes it to you."
I took a slow breath. The anger was right there, simmering steadily beneath my ribs where it always lived, stoked by the [Simmering Fury] that turned every grudge into a permanent resident of my emotional landscape. What Lucifer had done to me, the trial with Mordred, the impossible choice he'd forced, the casual cruelty of it disguised as a test of character. I hadn't forgotten. I hadn't forgiven. My perk made sure of that. But I also wasn't stupid. And being angry at someone didn't mean they couldn't be useful.
"What if," I said, measuring each word like a chemist handling volatile compounds, "I could get the Devil to help us?"
Lois Lane blinked. She uncrossed her legs and leaned forward on the couch, both eyebrows climbing toward her hairline. "I'm sorry," Lois said. "Did you just say the Devil?" She looked around the room as if expecting someone to laugh or correct the statement. Nobody did. "The Devil. As in, the actual, biblical, fire-and-brimstone, ruler-of-Hell, fallen-angel Devil? That Devil?"
"Lucifer Morningstar," I confirmed. "He runs a nightclub in Los Angeles called Lux. He's tall, British accent, unfairly handsome, has a thing for expensive whiskey, and he owes me for pulling some truly heinous bullshit that I am still furious about..."
Morgana scoffed in my direction. I never told her what he did to me, and never will, she just knows that he did something really bad and that was enough for her to hate him and Mazikeen.
Lois stared at me for a solid three seconds. Then she turned to Bruce. "Is she being serious?"
Bruce's expression didn't change, which was itself a kind of answer. "Lucifer Morningstar is a known entity. The League has a file on him. He's classified as an Omega-level threat with reality-altering capabilities who has chosen to spend the last several decades operating a piano bar and sleeping with a large portion of the female population of Southern California."
"So yes," Lois said flatly. "The Devil is real, he lives in LA, and he runs a nightclub. And he is a man whore?" She pressed both palms against her temples and closed her eyes for a moment. "You know what? Fine. Sure. Why not? My husband is possessed by a demon, my son can bench-press a building, my sister-in-law is dating a witch-succubus who just proposed recruiting Satan to fight the apocalypse, and I drove here at ninety miles an hour because a phone call told me the world was ending. At this point, the Devil owning a nightclub barely cracks my top ten for the week."
The planning had taken another two hours after my Lucifer suggestion. Bruce had integrated the possibility into his sequential engagement strategy with the clinical efficiency of a man who could incorporate literal divine intervention into a tactical flowchart without blinking. Morgana had argued about positioning. Dick had raised concerns about civilian evacuation corridors. Raven had provided increasingly grim details about the kinds of demonic entities we'd be facing beyond the possessed League members, lesser servants of Trigon who would be guarding the ritual site and would not go down easily.
By the end of it, we had something resembling a plan.
Lois was the first to move when the silence stretched past its breaking point. She stood from the couch with the decisive energy of a woman who had spent her entire career knowing exactly when a room needed to be cleared, and placed both hands on Jonathan's shoulders. The kid was still buzzing with nervous energy.
"Alright, boys," Lois said briskly, steering Jonathan toward the hallway with one hand while snapping her fingers at Damian with the other. "You two are coming with me. Jon, you need to eat something that isn't vending machine garbage. And Damian, I'm not your mom but you should eat too."
"...You are correct. My body needs 3000 calories a day to maintain peak combat efficiency," Damian said stiffly, which was his version of agreeing. He collected his katana from the wall, sliding the blade into the sheath across his back.
"That's the spirit," Lois said cheerfully, already marching both boys through the doorway. She paused and glanced back over her shoulder at me. The look she gave me was complicated. "Get some air, Amara. You look like you need it…" Then she was gone.
I glanced at Raven. She hadn't moved from the doorway where she'd been standing for most of the planning session. But it was her expression that caught me. Or rather, the absence of one. Raven's face was carefully, deliberately blank in the way it only got when she was feeling too much and compensating by feeling nothing at all. Except her eyes. Her eyes were wet. Not crying, not quite, but the shimmer was there, gathering along her lower lashes.
She's been carrying this since before I woke up. The knowledge that she's the key to everything, that her body is the lock Trigon's children need to open, that thirty-six hours from now she'll either be free or she'll be the doorway through which the world ends. And I just told a room full of people that I would call the actual Devil himself to keep that from happening.
Raven's lips parted. She drew a breath that shook just slightly on the inhale. Instead, she pressed her fingers against the crescent moon charm on her bracelet and whispered, so quietly I almost missed it, "Thank you, Amara."
Two words. That was all she could manage before her voice would have broken and she knew it and I knew it and we both pretended we didn't.
I opened my mouth to respond, to tell her she didn't need to thank me, that I would burn the world down twice over before I let anything happen to her, that she was mine and I protected what was MINE and nothing in any dimension was going to change that!
But Kara got there first. The Kryptonian had been standing near the window during the final stretch of planning. Now she crossed the room with three quick strides and stopped beside Raven with the kind of gentle determination that only Kara could make look natural. She didn't say anything. She just placed her hand on Raven's back and rubbed in slow circles. "Come on," Kara said softly. "Let's go get you some water and maybe something to eat. You've been running on caffeine and anxiety for two days." She wrapped her arm around Raven's shoulders and guided her toward the hallway, and just before they disappeared around the corner, Kara looked back at me. She smiled. Small and private and meant only for me. I've got her. Go take care of yourself. I'll be here when you come back.
Then they were gone too, and the room got a little quieter and a little emptier.
Morgana scoffed. She uncrossed her arms, turned on her heel, and strode out of the room with the rigid posture of a woman who was furious and did not intend to discuss it!
I didn't follow her.
I knew that walk. That walk meant she needed to be alone with her own thoughts for a while. She wasn't angry at me. She was angry at the situation. Angry that I'd been hurt, angry that she hadn't been there to prevent it, angry that the best plan we had involved me fighting possessed gods and calling in a favor from a being she despised.
Give her a few hours. She'll come find me when she's ready.
I turned my head toward where Bruce had been standing by the kitchen counter—and found nothing but empty space.
Gone. Without a sound. Of course he was…
Dick and Kori were the only two people left in the room with me.
Both of them were smiling at me. Dick's was quieter, tender and knowing. Kori's was more free and radiant.
"Sooooo," I said, letting the word stretch as I looked between the two of them. I needed to move. I needed air. I needed to feel something other than fear and rage for a few hours before everything went to hell.
I pushed off the arm of the sofa and padded toward them. Dick's shirt started sliding off my shoulder again. "We have a few hours before we need to start making calls and moving pieces into position. And unless I'm mistaken, we are currently sitting in a secret beach house on the coast of Metropolis."
I stopped in front of the windows and looked past Dick's shoulder to the view beyond. It was stunning. A private stretch of white sand curved away from the safehouse toward the endless blue ocean.
"How's the water?" I asked, looking between Dick and Kori with a grin that was already curving toward something dangerous. "Because I don't have a swimsuit on me, but I don't mind skinny dipping..."
Dick's arms unfolded from his chest. He opened his mouth, closed it, and I watched a flush climb the back of his neck and creep toward his ears. The great Nightwing, trained by Batman, seasoned veteran of a thousand life-threatening missions, reduced to speechlessness by the mental image of me naked in the ocean. His blue eyes dropped involuntarily to my bare legs and then snapped back to my face with the speed of a man who'd been caught and knew it.
"The water," he said, and his voice had gone half an octave lower in a way that he was clearly trying to pretend hadn't happened, "is probably cold."
"I don't mind cold," I said sweetly. "I'm sure I can find ways to keep myself active and warm…"
Kori shot to her feet. Her green eyes were practically glowing, and the smile on her face had evolved from radiant to incandescent. "Oh, this is a wonderful idea!" Kori clasped her hands together in front of her chest with enough force to create a small shockwave that ruffled the papers on the counter. "The water cleanses not only the body but the spirit, and the shared vulnerability of nudity promotes trust and emotional intimacy between warriors before battle!" She was already reaching for the hem of her purple tank top. "I have been hoping someone would suggest this!"
"Kori, wait, maybe we should..." Dick started.
Kori pulled her top off over her head in one fluid motion.
I'd seen a lot of beautiful naked bodies since my transformation into Amara Black. Morgana's gorgeous pale form that mirrored my own perfectly. Raven's otherworldly grey-pale curves. Daphne and Astoria's aristocratic English-rose loveliness.
But Starfire's body operated on a completely different visual impact. Her breasts were large, full, and impossibly gravity-defying, with dark burnt-orange nipples that stood firm against the sudden exposure to air. Her waist tapered dramatically before swelling into wide hips and powerful thighs built for both flight and combat, every muscle defined beneath golden-orange skin that seemed to generate its own light. Her stomach was taut and toned, with the subtle definition of alien musculature that moved like living sculpture when she breathed. She was taller than both Dick and me, which meant looking at her required tilting your head back slightly, an angle that did absolutely criminal things to the view.
Kori noticed us staring and tilted her head with genuine confusion. "Is something wrong? I thought we were removing our clothing."
"We are," I said firmly, before Dick could find enough blood flow to his brain to construct a counterargument. I reached down and grabbed the hem of Dick's black t-shirt, the one I'd been wearing as a makeshift nightgown, and pulled it up and over my head in one smooth motion.
XXX