by Cate Corvin
A pair of feathered wings dragged behind. As I watched, the graying feathers suddenly became glossy black, and they rose behind her shoulder blades.
The skeleton filled out and she was beautiful again, her onyx gaze fixed on Satan.
This close to her, only steps away, her power was overwhelming. It took all my concentration just to draw breath into my lungs, which felt like they were shriveling in my chest.
“Beloved,” she said, holding out her arms to Satan. “Lover of mine.”
He released my ropes and stepped forward, meeting her in a kiss.
The moment his lips touched her skin, her beauty faded and she became a skeleton again, her wings sagging downwards.
I wanted to fall to my knees in front of all that power, but my legs were locked stiff, holding me upright.
I couldn’t move an inch, shaking in place, as Satan kissed the skeleton.
He released her and she turned to look down at us, her beauty shifting back into place. Watching her continual shift from youth to old age was almost dizzying.
I caught the faintest hint of revulsion on Satan’s face. In another time I would’ve wanted to smile at his disgust, but now it was impossible. Not with the dark goddess right there in front of me, her power vibrating through my chest.
He deserved to be caught in a skeleton’s arms forever, never giving him what he wanted the most.
Several of the Irkallan guards strode down the steps and dropped something on the ground with a heavy thud, bowing to Ereshkigal over the form.
It was Lucifer. My lungs contracted as I turned my head just enough to see him. He was unconscious, but blessedly alive.
Alive, and pale, with red streaks still emanating from the wounds. They’d climbed around his shoulder and were slowly working up his neck and down his torso, almost as sickening to see as the soul-bonds.
“Your son.” Ereshkigal looked down at him with depthless eyes. “How handsome. He’s so close to death I can almost taste it.”
As soon as she finished speaking her tongue flicked the air, like she really could taste the sickness running through Lucifer’s veins.
Every part of me wanted to run to him as she strode closer, her silk skirts swishing around her clawed feet, but I refused to move. If I gave away the slightest sign of weakness, they would have the perfect Achilles’ heel for me.
She bent down and picked him up by the shoulders, her long black nails denting his skin and threatening to draw blood.
My stomach rolled again as she cocked her head, and her tongue flicked against his cheek.
If I could move, if I wasn’t bound, I would’ve cut that tongue right out of her mouth. Lucifer wasn’t going to die. He couldn’t, not while I was still alive and ready to fight.
I needed my men to come for us. Where are you?
Please God, let it be soon.
Ereshkigal let Lucifer drop back to the ground. I carefully kept my eyes fixated ahead, praying she wouldn’t see me. It was easier to look at the bodies and cages than it was to look at her.
I wondered if my fate was waiting for me in one of those cages. Satan’s little songbird, ready to scream whenever he pleased.
One of the bodies on the wall caught my eye. It was ancient, long desiccated, but a little residual power remained inside it. That power called out to me, begging me to look.
Tangles of long golden hair still hung from the body’s skull. The woman had been naked when she’d been placed on the hook, her skin somehow turned to leather in death, except for the open, dried-out wound over her chest.
A creeping chill ran down my spine. It was impossible to fight the shiver.
The call of the dead woman’s power didn’t feel unfriendly. It felt despairing, desperate, hopeless.
I wondered if this was her sister Inanna, who’d been stripped in humiliation before she was allowed to enter Kur.
There was a cage on the opposite wall. An old demon was trapped inside it, still alive, staring plaintively at the body. He was utterly ancient, his eyes almost glazed over, but he gazed at the corpse like it was the sun.
Where are you?
My prayers went unheeded. Nobody was coming for us. Lucifer would be hung on the wall, and I would be put in a cage, forever staring at him and praying for a break in the darkness.
I drew in a shuddering breath and held it, terrified that Ereshkigal had heard me. Satan was at her side, wearing her husband’s skin, but his eyes were on me, malicious and greedy.
My stomach flipped again as Ereshkigal’s dark eyes followed his, landed on me, and lit up.
No. That was the last thing I wanted.
“Oh, look at her.” Even her voice was beautiful. “Just like Inanna. You did this for me?”
She pressed her hands against her heart and looked at Satan, shifting from beauty to skeleton and back again as she drew closer.
A look of panic crossed Satan’s face, but he quickly schooled it into submission, looking at the Queen of the Dead with perfect adoration. “She’s just a little pet that’s been a thorn in my side for so long… I thought she might like a taste of endless night.”
Ereshkigal gave him a sharp look, but her full lips stretched wide. Two pairs of pointed fangs pressed into the lower one, drawing blood that she lapped up before it spilled down her chin.
“She’ll have it at my hands.”
Ereshkigal reached out, and I closed my eyes, hoping that if I died now, it would be quick and merciful… but I knew there was no mercy in this place.
Long claws stroked through my hair, sending sand and ash drifting to the floor.
“A little pet.”
The claws trailed through the feathers of my wings.
“A little bird.”
I felt her lips against my ear, warm against my icy skin, and the sharp jab of a skeleton chin against my shoulder.
“So like Inanna. You almost look the same… not as beautiful, but there’s something about you.”
I usually prided myself on my ability to look back in the face of my impending death and talk back.
Now, I was just terrified, shaking to the core. She was so powerful that being this close to her was painful, the drumbeats echoing in my head and threatening to shatter my skull apart.
She was genuinely a goddess, one of the Prime powers.
How could one lowly angel possibly escape something like that?
Ereshkigal circled me until she reached my front again. She trailed her fingers over my collar bone, down to the upside-down cross on my chest. “This mark ties you to his son. Yes?”
I kept still, afraid to speak. One of Ereshkigal’s claws jabbed the soft underside of my chin, forcing my face up.
“I asked you a question, lovely little bird.”
Looking into her eyes was like staring into a void like Azazel’s, but there were no stars. There was an infinite nothing inside her.
“Yes.” I rasped the word, almost choking on my tongue to get the word out.
Ereshkigal stroked my hair again, smoothing it like I was a doll. “You brought her for me, didn’t you, lover? It’s the least you could’ve given me after what I gave you.” As though sensing Satan’s reticence, she turned to look at him, her eyes glazing over a misty white as she became old again. “My own husband’s body. The body of a king.”
A muscle ticked in Satan’s jaw, but he kept his eyes on Ereshkigal. “I brought her for you,” he said, but the malice that burned behind his eyes wasn’t just for me anymore.
No matter what she gave him, he’d hate anyone who took what he wanted.
Ereshkigal’s hair suddenly became dark and glossy. Her wings, so similar to mine, brushed me gently as she passed.
“Let’s find this pretty bird a cage,” she called.
Perfectly on cue, several Irkallan demons rushed to obey her orders, cranking a pulley.
A cage descended from the ceiling as my stomach sank.
It was a perfect bird cage of ebonite, with thin wire bars I would just be
able to wrap my hands around.
A cage to watch my life end from.
One of the demons descended and opened the cage door, looking at me expectantly.
I remembered Azazel telling me I was nothing but a bird, a frightened little sparrow. That I wasn’t worthy of being called an angel again.
My knees stiffened. I dug my heels into the floor, refusing to move. I wasn’t going into that cage of my own accord.
Ereshkigal sighed. “Just like her.”
Tendrils of pure shadow crept out from her skin, wrapping around me and squeezing so hard the breath was pushed out of my lungs.
All I could think of was keeping my shield around Sarai as she tightened her grip, the blood pressure pounding in my skull and threatening to burst.
The shadow tendrils tossed me into the cage. I threw out of my hands, preventing my face from being smashed against a bar and breaking my nose, but my shoulder made a crunching sound that was followed by a jabbing pain.
The demon threw the cage door shut behind me. I whirled around, red-faced and gasping for breath, and tried to shake it loose, but the demon just shook his head.
The door didn’t open. I had a feeling the ebonite had been made with the essence of being unbreakable.
With a jolt, the cage shuddered and rose several feet off the floor, ascending until I was level with Ereshkigal’s face.
Satan looked at me behind her back, envy gleaming in his eyes.
“I’ll keep your lover alive,” she told me gently. “I understand how it feels.”
The Queen of the Dead drifted back to Lucifer, her shadow tendrils scooping him off the floor and holding his unconscious body aloft.
She pressed a clawed hand over his chest, her fingers spread wide.
I watched with amazement and trepidation as the red streaks of blood poisoning receded and the wounds began to heal, leaving pale scars behind. She couldn’t be doing this out of the kindness of her heart.
I’d looked into her eyes, right into her soul. There was no kindness in that void.
The cage rose another few feet. I gripped the bars, trying to keep myself upright through the pain.
Where are you?
They had to feel me. Surely they felt me through the bond, and yet… there was nothing on the other end.
“There.” Ereshkigal took her hand away as faint color slowly bloomed on Lucifer’s bloodless skin. “He lives.”
She looked up at me as her shadows lowered him to the floor again. “I think he’ll make wonderful entertainment for us.” The Queen smiled at Satan adoringly. If there were any feelings inside her, it was only love for him and his evil. “He’ll fight for you, and that’s how you’ll know he loves you. If he lives.”
What kind of sick, twisted version of love was that?
I glanced at Inanna’s body again. Had she been forced to watch and fight for the poor ancient demon she’d come here for?
There were so many bodies on that wall. One of them looked vaguely familiar- enormous leathery wings pinned wide, but even in death, he was still covered with a haze of shadows, rippling off his corpse like veils of night.
The Queen followed my gaze. She stepped closer to Satan, raking her claws through his hair now. He set his jaw, snaking a hand around her waist as she withered again. Ereshkigal leaned her head against his shoulder, her wrinkled lips pouched outwards.
“Ah, my ungrateful son. You won’t disappoint me like he did, will you? He was such a lovely man, such beautiful darkness inside him… but he always wanted to fly free from his cage.”
I silently shook my head.
I was never going to leave this place. I felt it in my bones.
“Good little bird.” She looked down at Lucifer, whose eyelids were fluttering. “You’ll both bring me so much joy. Dis is a newborn child, nothing compared to the rituals of Kur.”
Ereshkigal held out a hand, gesturing to the wide window overlooking her city.
“My arenas are waiting for you, and you’ll sing for me while he bleeds and proves his love.”
Satan glared at me. I felt the heat of his gaze, the anger and rage, and it was nothing compared to the endless emptiness of the power inside the Queen.
Where are you? Where are you?
He silently promised me that I’d suffer for daring to defy him. For driving him out of his home.
I met his eyes squarely, summoning the last of my defiance. Before I died, I’d make sure I brought him with me.
“In fact…” Ereshkigal’s clawed feet rasped on the floor as she moved. Dry gray hair became thick and glossy again, spilling to the floor behind her. “I think I’d like to hear you sing now.”
Shadows rose from her, rising up to the cage overhead. They formed barbed tendrils that hooked into my skin, seeking out my wounds and drawing fresh blood.
The pain was everything. Blinding. I barely understood that I was screaming, begging her to stop.
And then there was the void of blessed unconsciousness, opening to swallow me whole.
Where are you?
The End
To be Continued in Hell Bent
About the Author
Hello reader!
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Cate loves all things passionate and paranormal, from sexy, hunky warlocks in haunted houses to shredded shifters under the full moon! She lives in the South with her family and pets, and loves every kind of coffee, horror and fantasy movies, and cats. Reading is her favorite hobby when she’s not writing.
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For more books by Cate Corvin, check out the links below!
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