Bloodline World Seven Book Bundle: 7 Books from the Bloodline Awakened Series and Scarlet Dragon Saga

by J. P. Rice

  Falling into a bottomless pit in the furthest depths of hell seemed like it had been scripted by an untalented screenwriter. It was almost too comical. When faced with death, my mind went blank. I was about to die in hell and spend the rest of my days down here.

  As we plunged into darkness, I heard a faint flapping sound start to build up speed. We stopped dropping like a rock and hovered for a few moments. The wing beats now sounded powerful and close. I imagined some winged creature sent by the Morrigan had flown under the hell hound in an attempt to save us. Perhaps a giant crow or raven?

  We began to rise, and as light started to pour into the pit, my eyes widened in wonderment. Two obsidian-colored wings had somehow sprouted from the sides of the hell hound. How hadn’t I felt that? The wings moved with such ease that they didn’t interrupt the hound’s body movements.

  As we flew toward the surface, I realized the Gods had been having fun with me, not revealing why the animal had been dubbed Darkwing. We flew out of the opening and landed on the other side of the fissure. Kobayashi turned around, met my eyes and took off in the opposite direction, fighting against the conditions.

  Darkwing retracted her wings and they disappeared, leaving only a little bump on each side of her body. A shadow hellhound with wings, huh? I could get used to a partner like this. The hound took off after the sorcerer and I firmed my grip around her neck, so I didn’t fall off.

  The powerful animal charged ahead, quickly closing in on Kobayashi. I leaned off to the side as we neared the sorcerer. Hanging onto Darkwing with my left arm, I reached out with the other one, setting up a good old-fashioned clothesline. Within moments, my extended arm crashed into Kobayashi’s back.

  I hit him with my forearm first and grabbed hold of his robe as I started falling off the hound. As I hung on to the fabric, Darkwing rushed ahead, completely unseating me. My momentum carried me and the sorcerer forward and we tumbled into a heap on the nasty ground.

  I rolled on top of Kobayashi and lunged for his neck with my right hand while I held down his arms with my knees. I grabbed his throat with one hand and used the other to dig into my robes and find the talisman. Reaching into a fold in the robes, I felt the straw object and yanked it out.

  One of two things needed to happen. Kobayashi had to reverse the spell orally or I had to stuff it back into his mouth. The problem with the former was that he would be saying it in Japanese, so I had no way to verify if he’d really broken the curse.

  I shoved the talisman near his face, but Kobayashi turned his head away, mouth clamped shut. As I continued choking him, he thrashed around, trying to throw me off. Without magic, I should have a nice upper hand in the strength department.

  We wrestled around for another few minutes, but I couldn’t jam the little doll into his mouth. How could I get him to open his mouth?

  I moved my hand from his neck to his underarm and started tickling the sorcerer. It probably looked like a move The Three Stooges would approve of, but I needed him to open his mouth. Maybe a bout of laughter could make that happen.

  The stone-faced bastard didn’t even giggle. As I moved my hand back to his throat, Kobayashi wiggled around, pulling his arm out from underneath my knee. A blurry object appeared out of my peripheral vision and clocked me in the nose.

  My eyes watered, and Kobayashi bucked around, trying to get loose. I heard a strange suctioning sound like a toilet plunger in action. Two seconds later, a rain of sludge, blood and rancid body parts covered Kobayashi and me.

  I maneuvered myself to pin down Kobayashi’s arms again and resumed my chokehold. Fighting off the urge to puke and squeezing the talisman in my palm, I punched the sorcerer in the nose three times. Hoping he would scream in pain, I planned to follow up by jamming the talisman into his mouth.

  I hit him a few more times in the face, but the bastard’s lips never parted. He gagged as I continued to choke him, but killing him wouldn’t help. I needed the curse to be taken away.

  Running out of strength and covered in shit in the deepest circle of hell wasn’t completely out of the ordinary for me. Perhaps the setting was different, but these types of things seemed to happen pretty regularly in my life. My hand cramped up and I couldn’t tell how much pressure I was putting on the sorcerer’s neck. My hand had locked in place.

  “Ra, ra, ra, ra, ra.”

  I caught a flash of black fur coming from my right and pushed the talisman from my palm to my fingertips. With lightning speed, Darkwing closed in on us and opened her mouth. Trying to keep one eye on Kobayashi’s mouth and the other one on the incoming hellhound proved difficult and I started to go cross-eyed.

  I diverted all my attention back to Kobayashi’s mouth and waited for the sound. With a nasty growl, Darkwing sank her teeth into Kobayashi. The sorcerer yelped in pain, creating the opportunity I was waiting for. With his mouth open and screaming, I stuffed the talisman back into the place where it had come from.

  Kobayashi tried to spit it out, but I held my palm over his mouth, preventing the action. Darkwing ran off and I thought it was all over until Kobayashi’s jaw snapped closed. He chomped down on the area of skin between my thumb and forefinger.

  I ripped my hand back in reaction and pulled a chunk of skin away. Screaming in pain, I dropped three right-handed punches on Kobayashi’s cheek, right under his eye. The third punch caused Kobayashi’s eyes to roll around until they finally closed.

  As I jumped up in excitement at having eliminated the curse on my future children, I realized I still needed to get to Cerberus to complete my mission. I started to jog through the nasty environment, but my feet kept getting stuck in the muck.

  Frustrated and tired, I was ready to give up. As if she were reading my mind, Darkwing appeared again, running past me and stopping right in front of me. She leaned down again to allow me to get onto her back. I took a few unsteady steps and reached the animal.

  I hooked my leg over the beast and secured my arms around her neck. Before I was fully comfortable, Darkwing took off. I slid off to the right, almost falling off the hellhound and crashing into the disgusting ground.

  Using my left forearm, I held onto the dog’s shoulder and pulled myself back atop the animal. My body bobbed up and down with Darkwing’s movements as we stormed toward the circular path of the circles of hell. The hound raced right up to the entrance of the marshy land and stopped abruptly.

  I fell head over heels in midair and landed on my back on the stone rotunda. Jumping up, I turned to thank Darkwing, but the shadow hellhound had disappeared. Without Lucifer in sight, I walked down the spiral and was relieved to find that the door was still open.

  I went through the door and was surprised to find that it was pitch black. The final circle. Holding my arms out, it felt like I was still on the same circular track as before.

  “Ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff.” The barking echoed off the walls and chilled my nerves. Could somebody light a fucking match or something? If I had the use of my magic, I would just conjure up a fireball to help me see. Without my magic, I was at the mercy of the elements.

  My fingers slid free of the walls on either side and it got hotter as I continued forward in the darkness. I extended my hands in front of me so I wouldn’t run into anything. A blast of fire appeared ahead of me and I stepped back in reaction.

  The momentary flash lit up the room long enough for me to check it out. It was a square, empty stone room with a wooden door built into the wall in front of me. My heart raced as I walked in the dark toward the door.

  Another plume of flames shot out of the walls and disappeared quickly. I caught sight of Cerberus and his six red eyes. The image was burned into my mind as I took a few steps back to prepare for the epic brawl.

  Chapter 8

  The three-headed dog came up to my chest and had a thick body like a wine barrel. He stood on all fours and had a three, long reptilian tails that were curled around his back leg. The beast had a black coat of hair that carried a purple shine. The fangs in h
is open mouths looked like little pyramids and the ears on top of his heads stood at attention. The dog wore a leather collar mounted with silver spikes around each neck.

  “Ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff.” The barking echoed off the walls and I determined that it was coming from my left. As I shifted my feet to meet the sounds, another blast of flames burst out of the wall for a moment.

  The slobbering Cerberus was already in mid-air, leaping at me. The room went pitch again as I shuffled my feet to the right. I felt Cerberus’s moist, warm coat brush past my left arm as he narrowly missed me. The dog barked again. This time in an angrier tone.

  As soon as I made my one-eighty turn to face Cerberus, something solid blasted me in the chest, knocking me back. I nearly went down but maintained my balance by putting my right palm on the stone floor and pushing myself back up. Another blast of light came as Cerberus was closing in on me and lowering his heads to use as a battering ram.

  The room went dark again and before I could jump aside, the top of Cerberus’s middle head smashed into my sternum and launched me backward. As though that wasn’t enough, through my blurry vision and guided by another blast of fire, I noticed that another sizable animal had entered the stone dueling yard.

  Before I had time to think about the other beast in the room, a fierce pain rattled around my calf. Another shot of momentary light showed that Cerberus’s right head (my right) had sunk his nasty yellowing fangs into my flesh.

  As a natural reaction, I lashed out and punched the animal on the nose a few times, but he didn’t budge or loosen his killer grip on my leg. The dog jerked his jaw from left to right, sliding my body across the floor like a mop.

  “Ra, ra, ra, ra, ra.”

  Another flash of fire illuminated a big obsidian beast lunging at me. Fuckin’ fantastic. The majestic animal veered away at the last second and bit into a very compromised area of Cerberus. As Darkwing chomped down on Cerberus’s testicles, the beast stopped biting me to focus on the bigger problem.

  With Darkwing diverting Cerberus’s attention, another plume of fire gave me exactly what I needed—a close view of Cerberus’s heads. As the flames died out, my hand sprang forward at the closest head. My hand clutched onto the long, fanglike incisor and gave it a good yank. No movement whatsoever. His severe overbite made it so I could clutch onto his tooth without him being able to bite me.

  Cerberus continued to moan in pain as Darkwing snapped her neck around mercilessly. I pulled harder, but the damn thing wouldn’t budge. Realizing the hell hound wouldn’t be able to maintain that grip forever, I panicked without my magic. I thought about how easy it used to be to just call on some strength from the Dagda.

  Suddenly, my muscles bulged, and I dragged Cerberus toward me by just his tooth as Darkwing tugged in the other direction. With this newfound strength, I twisted my hand around, trying to loosen the tooth. I felt it give way and shuffled my feet backward, dragging the immense beast along the stone floor.

  Having control of the tooth gave me control of all three of his heads. I pulled and tugged but I still couldn’t rip the damn thing out. Another plume of light showed that Darkwing was losing her grip as Cerberus kicked at her with his hind legs. Just as the light died out, I saw something that looked like a whip lash out at me.

  A firm, heavy object blasted my right cheek, right below my eye. Instant stars. Fighting away the ringing pain and spots in my vision, I realized it was his serpent’s tail. Maintaining my grip, I called on more strength from the Dagda. I leaned back and pulled the enormous guard dog of hell across the stone floor. How did I get this much strength without magic?

  Ripping and pulling, I felt the roots loosening. Another flamethrower-like shot of fire sprang from the wall. Darkwing’s gaping jaws were closing in on Cerberus’s hind leg. The guard dog yelped in agony and I yanked back on the fang with all my strength. The tooth’s roots finally gave up and I fell backwards.

  With fang in hand, I hit a soft spot on the wall. As I realized it was only a sheet covering a hole in the wall, I was already on my back, sliding down a smooth incline with my prize in my hand. I wondered if I was in the laundry chute as I continued to fall further into the depths of hell.

  Chapter 9

  A ray of light appeared, and the slide ended abruptly. Tumbling through the air, my back made contact with the ground first, landing on something soft but not very forgiving. My body folded up into an accordion and then straightened back out.

  As I rolled around on the mattress and shook the cobwebs loose, I heard a group of people laughing. I jumped up, attempted to dust myself off and raised my head. Holy shit.

  I stared in awe at Hades, the Morrigan, the Grim Reaper, Osiris and Ereshkigal. The Gods were sitting at a round table, but they had all turned and were facing me. They appeared to be playing the game Gut because they all had a playing card pressed against their foreheads.

  Hades spoke in a gruff voice, “He’s not dead. But Cerberus never loses. What are you covered in?” He took a big sniff of the stale air. “Is that feces?” Hades was dressed like Hugh Hefner in a burgundy bathrobe with a monogrammed H over his heart. A long black pipe with smoke billowing out of it hung from his pasty lips. The pale man had icy blue eyes with just tiny pin pricks of pupils. Quite intimidating.

  Soaked in shit, I didn’t have any excuse or remedy and just lowered my head in shame. I heard a loud bark from behind and a heavy object clobbered me in the back, taking us both to the ground. Oh no. Was Cerberus on the hunt for round two? In front of all the Gods and Goddesses of Death or the Underworld? That seemed cruel.

  I felt a warm tongue trace along my stubbly cheek and pulled my face away. Jumping up, I rounded to face the beast. Relief poured through my veins when I saw the huge dog only had one head. Darkwing.

  Hades stood up and threw his card on the green felt table. “No dogs allowed. And she’s covered in shit too. Take that beast out now and hose the stink off this young man.”

  I thought he was talking to me, but his assistant sprang into action and guided Darkwing out of the room. The tall man in a pinstriped suit let me into a small shower stall. He opened a door that had been crafted into the wall outside the stall and pulled out a hose nozzle. The hot water bordered on boiling as I hopped around trying not to get burnt.

  Hades’ assistant sprayed me clean, leaving my body bright red. Suddenly, a door slid shut, trapping me in the dark. I pounded on the door, wondering what the hell was going on. Powerful wind bursts erupted from all sides, and it dawned on me that this was the drying station too. The jet blasts continued for about a minute and stopped as the door slid open and light rushed in.

  I stepped out clean from the shit bath earlier and in a nice dry golden robe. Feeling refreshed, I almost forgot I was in the depths of hell. The assistant ran back over to the bar and started fixing drinks.

  Curiosity forced my legs to start moving toward the table and find out what they were doing. They were playing poker, but I couldn’t figure out what they were playing for.

  The chips looked like little virtual touchscreens the size of baseball cards. Some had flashing lights and they all had a glowing outline of various colors. I kept moving closer because the Gods weren’t even acknowledging me anymore. They were focused on the game at hand.

  The Morrigan shuffled the deck of cards and said, “Follow the Queen. Ante up.”

  Everyone threw a few chips into the pot in the middle of the table.

  Dressed in tight black leather pants and a purple Pussy Riot T-shirt, the Morrigan leaned up out of her seat to deal the cards. I noticed a chip sticking out of her back pocket. In neon green across the top was the name, Micheal Anthony Merlino. Was she planning on playing with this?

  I yanked it out of her back pocket and before I could look at anything else on the card, the Morrigan jumped out of her seat, spun in mid-air, landed on her feet right in front of me, and slapped me across the face. I felt it in the marrow of my soul.

  I tasted salty blood and checke
d my teeth. The Morrigan’s eyes widened in anger. “How dare you touch that? That is not for a mere mortal like you.”

  I held it up to show her. “Not for me? It has my name on it.”

  She shook her head, her wild black hair moving from side to side. “Don’t piss me off or I will throw it into the pot right now.”

  “I’m not trying to start a fight. I just wanted to look at it. And what are you all doing down here?” I asked.

  The Morrigan looked around the table at her fellow dark deities and announced, “Drink break. I’ll deal in five minutes.”

  Hades called his assistant over and the suited man started taking more drink orders for the table. The Grim Reaper held his arms out at his sides. “Where’s my Rum Runner, Tarone?”

  The assistant’s pale face went flush. “So sorry about that, Cassius. I’ll have that right out.”

  I didn’t know the Grim Reaper’s name was Cassius. Garbed in a black hooded cloak, he wasn’t just a skeleton as most pictures would indicate. He was skeletal, but pale skin with a light blue tint covered his hands and face. He reached into the cloak and pulled out a glass vial with a gray powder in it.

  He held it in the air and looked around. “Who’s down for having some fun?”

  Most of the other deities shook their heads or waved him off. Cassius said, “Fine. I’ll have all the fun myself.” He checked a watch on his left wrist and I wondered what time it had been set to. The Grim Reaper dumped out some of the chunky powder and broke it up with one of the soul cards.

  I watched in fascination until the Grim Reaper looked up at me. “If you want to bang a line, just say so. You don’t have to stare at me drooling like that.

  “No. I’m good. Just wondering what that is.”

  “How do you know you don’t want it then? And it’s angel dust, Holmes.”

  “Not to sound like a knowitall, but isn’t angel dust supposed to be bright white, hence the name?”