Vermin that had nested in her hair squeaked at the violation of their feast. "They took Dante's head, Lilith! His head by an Isis, which means that even I cannot raise him from the Sea of Perpetual Agony!"
She wailed from the excruciating pain and dissolved into sobs without tears, her will to survive fractured by the ongoing abuse. His litany had been a month long refrain with each tail lash. Every time a cloven hoof gashed her skin and peeled it away from bone and muscle she'd beseeched him with all the guile within her, but to no avail. He slashed the smoldering air around them, and her skin began to tear in shreds again, turning her wails into shrieks of agony. The beast would not be appeared this time.. In her mind she begged for him to turn her body over to the Harpies, anything but more of his torture.
"The Harpies shall not have you, for you have taken my greatest source of torture pleasure from me--Dante!"
She covered her head with a remaining arm and immediately felt it rip from her body; the dull thud of flesh striking the wall simultaneously with the convulsions that jerked her limbless torso. "Husband, please. I swear to you--"
"That you had been fucking my firstborn son for years was of no consequence to me. I enjoyed watching. That you would try to create another through a stolen half-vampire, half-Neteru embryo, I found delightful, sensually ruthless.... I wanted to see what it would become; the experiment was intriguing. I loved how you sent a spiritual attachment to become a parasite within the male Neteru of this era, Lilith. But you failed. He prayed to warrior angels, even with your black smoke seizing his nervous system, which means you are weak! Your attempts to change history were fruitless."
"That's why I did it, my love... for you," she whispered, begging on a strangled swallow and choking on her own black blood. "Anything for you, everything for you, my all. I knew you would cherish the child, since nothing like it had ever been created. It was a gift, surprise for you, darling. Please let me make it up to you, my dark essence, please.... Just please stop the torture. I'll do anything; just command it so." "You were always my most treacherous and favorite, Lilith. How could you betray me with such a loss? Had you not set the strategy in motion, Dante would still exist." His anger seethed forth and, baring his hooked teeth, he bent down to snatch her by her throat and then held her above his head with one talon. He watched her blood drizzle down his massive curved horns to splatter his arm.
"Just give me a chance to right this error in judgment. . ." Her voice broke off into sobs and gave way to wails of utter dismay coated by terror.
He flung her to the ground like a rag, his huge, leathery wings extending to cover her in complete shadow. "But I so enjoyed watching Dante's empire grow in the darkness.... So enjoyed torturing his existence with the possibilities of what he could have been, but was not. I loved watching him chase after the Neterus through the centuries, hoping to break his banishment to the sunlight, and wishing that he'd be able to procreate his kind through insemination, rather than the bite. His suffering and longing comforted me, Lilith, in a way that you can never fathom. And, now, he is no more!"
Her husband's horrific roar fused with a screeching wail that bottomed out and shook all that was around them, piercing her eardrums until they bled the gray matter of her brain. Huge rocks and stalagmites detached from the walls and came crashing down with his cloven hoof to snap her spine.
"I will stomp you for this inequity until I make a blackened puddle! Then I will drink your foul essence and spew you into flames that will lick you for eternity." His voice dropped to a frightening whisper. "Lilith, do I not always demand justice... that I be given my due? What is a son worth, do you know?"
"I'm the only one left who has interacted with the Neteru males to know their weaknesses and vulnerabilities!" she shrieked, forestalling his next blow.
He paused and stared at her for long tense seconds. "Talk to me," he said, his tone deadly.
"I was Adam's first wife."
There was silence, and her mind scrambled to make her case within milliseconds.