by Tara Fuller
My reasons for keeping Gwen safe had nothing to do with Balthazar.
I wanted her safe for me.
Even now, the demons we passed on the street stopped, sniffing the air. Her purity was a siren’s call, drawing them in with the mouthwatering promise of peace. If one of them got a taste of the Heaven in her veins, there would be no stopping them. I’d die all over again to protect her, but in the end…they’d win.
That thought was the only thing driving me as I navigated us through the dirty streets, deeper into the heart of the city, where the lust clubs drew in demons, and insanity washed away the road to escape. And unfortunately, the only place I knew of in Hell where I might be able to barter for a safe spot to stay.
Ahead, the crowd grew more restless. The familiar glow of Desire spilled out onto the street, painting the cobblestones red. Memories of pain lanced through me. Wrenching. Cutting. Burning. Sweat dripped into my eyes, and I pulled the hem of my shirt up to wipe it away.
“What is this place?” Gwen asked.
“A lust club,” I said. “But more importantly, a place to get off the radar.”
A woman with slick, pale skin and long black hair leaned against the crumbling brick wall outside the club. She grinned at us, teeth gray, lips crimson and raw.
“I’ve always wanted to taste a reaper,” she said, voice like sandpaper. “You don’t mind sharing, do you, pretty?”
She pushed off the wall, a predatory gleam in her black eyes. I pulled Gwen against my side and kept moving.
“What is she?” Gwen shivered, staring over her shoulder at the creature licking her lips with want.
“A succubus,” I said, stopping at the wide steel door that pulsed with a violent beat. “She’s looking to feed. There are going to be a lot of them here.”
“Feed?” She blinked up at me, confused and innocent. Way too freaking innocent. Jesus, I was not in the mood to give a crash course in sex to an angel. Especially an angel I’d had my hands all over just hours ago with not-so-innocent intentions. My gaze drifted over her glowing skin, her soft lips. I had no business touching her, looking at her. There was no doubt about it. I belonged in Hell.
I sucked in a deep breath and grabbed her shoulders, steeling myself for what I was about to expose her to. “Sex, Gwen. She feeds on a soul through sex. Kissing. Touching. There is going to be some of that going on in here, so…just keep your head down.”
Her cheeks flushed but she nodded. Stunned into silence, maybe? Good. I wasn’t in the mood to explain mechanics. If Balthazar didn’t annihilate me for bringing his only daughter to Hell on this suicide mission, he would after he found out I’d allowed her to witness this. He might have said he wanted this for her, to teach her some kind of misguided lesson, but I’d seen the truth and warning in his eyes. He’d agreed to this only because he didn’t think she’d make it past the shadow lands. I pushed open the doors, and a sickening mixture of moans and screams and music bled out into the night.
Inside, the smell was overwhelming, coppery and foul like blood. Demons and imps sat huddled around tables, slinging back glasses of…well, chances were I didn’t want to know. Bodies fought for space on the cramped dance floor. Succubi writhed and rubbed to the beat of a hypnotic tune, luring the human souls that watched, slack-jawed, from the edge of the room.
The room seemed to settle into a dangerous calm as we entered, and at least a dozen sets of eyes followed our progress.
“Why are they all looking at me like that?”
“Because most of them have never seen anything like you,” I said. “Put on all the black leather you want, Red, but you’ll never be able to cover up what you are.”
“And what am I?”
My gaze coasted over the soft curve of her cheek, the slender arch of her neck. She was beautiful, a warm sunrise in a world that had only ever known a cold, unforgiving night. To think I’d even tried to hide what she was from the filth here showed how foolish I really was. There was no hiding the goodness in Gwen.
“Pure,” I finally said, tearing my gaze from her. I had to stop looking at her like that. I had to stop wanting to touch her. I had to stop… I just had to stop. Giving in to that desire wasn’t going to do either of us any good.
“Then maybe I should do something to make them think I’m not,” she said, voice small and unsure.
I laughed. “Like what? Murder someone? News flash. Everyone here is already dead, sweetheart.”
“I don’t know,” she said, looking around. “What about that?”
She gestured to a man and succubus on the dance floor. Lips locked together, dancing so close you couldn’t tell where he ended and she began. A group of pain demons closed in on them, waiting for her to deplete and release the drained soul. They’d drag him away and finish him off once she’d had her fill. That was the real dance here.
Feed. Punish. Pain. Repeat.
As much as the thought of having Gwen pressed against me like that scared the shit out of me, she was right. We needed to blend in. I grabbed her around the waist and pulled her against me, telling myself I was only acting. That I didn’t care. She gasped and her hands landed on my chest. She was stiff in my arms, staring at my throat. A table of demons pushed their drinks aside to watch us with suspicious, glowing eyes.
“Gonna need to come a little closer than that, Red,” I whispered against her hair. “Are you a succubus or an angel? Quick survival tip…you want to be the succubus.”
She inched forward and buried her face in my neck, releasing a shaky breath against my jaw. Her mouth pressed against the serpent tattoo on my neck, and I could feel the brand of ink writhe, basking in the pleasure of her purity. My heart kicked a painful rhythm against my ribs. Without permission, my hands slid down to her hips. She felt so warm under my palms, perfectly clumsy, trying to find a rhythm to match mine. I’d never really danced before, but in a place like this, I figured there was no right way. Not when everything was so wrong. Gwen peeked out from under my jaw, looking at the others dancing.
“Should we…kiss?” she asked. “L-like them?”
I stopped swaying and forced my hands to loosen their grip on her hips. My blood felt too hot, my body tense and unfamiliar. My gaze dropped to her mouth, and my mind went places it had no business going.
I wanted to kiss her.
I’d never wanted to kiss anyone. Almighty knows that’s all it would take to soil her. One touch from my lips and she’d never be the same. I couldn’t do that to her. I wouldn’t.
“Your father would find a way to bring me back to life just so he could kill me all over again if I touched you like that,” I said.
“Don’t use my father as an excuse,” she said, sounding embarrassed. “If you don’t want to, just say so.”
“Have you ever kissed anyone?”
The tip of her nose grazed my throat as she shook her head. “No.”
“You don’t want your first kiss to be like that, Red. Not here. Not like this. Not…not with me.”
“Have you ever kissed anyone?”
I grimaced at the flood of indecent, horrific memories burning their way to the forefront of my mind. The creatures here didn’t care about consent. They touched, they took, they ruined. There had been a time when I’d been too weak to fight them. I shook off the nauseating feeling that came with those flashbacks and shifted the conversation to safer territory.
“When I was alive, there wasn’t ever time for kissing. My father died when I was young. After that, there was only time for work. And after they took my mother, my sisters…there was only time for my vendetta.”
“What about after?” she said. “You haven’t ever kissed anyone like that? Down here?”
I closed my eyes, jaw clenched tight, trying to forget all over again. “Not by choice.”
“I’m sorry,” she finally whispered.
“For what?”
“I’m sorry my father can’t see how good you are,” she said. “I’m sorry he sends you to this p
lace. You deserve so much more.”
I hesitantly looked down to meet her gaze. The kindness and wonder there made my throat burn, made my heart slam against my ribs hard enough to leave a bruise. No one had ever looked at me like that. Not in life. Not in death. She placed a hand over my heart as if she was happy just to feel it beat.
A blood-curdling scream shattered the moment between us, and Gwen tensed in my arms, her body bowing against mine as if she were in pain. The crowd erupted, fueled by the fresh round of torture being administered behind the bar. Shadow demons slipped out of the corners, hissing and fighting for the flesh the demon in front was tossing into the crowd.
“I don’t like this place. W-we should leave,” Gwen whispered, trembling. “Now.”
“Not until I find a safe place for you.”
“I don’t want a safe place,” she whispered. “I just want to find Tyler, and I want to get out of here.”
“The furnace could blow again at any minute.” I lowered my voice and looked around to make sure no one was listening. “If I don’t have you somewhere safe, you’re going to burn, Red. Not just burn. You’ll melt. And it will be the worst moment of your existence. If I let that happen to you, it will be the worst moment of my existence. So I need you to trust me right now. Okay?”
Her face paled and she nodded, gripping my hand. “Okay.”
Smoothing back the damp hair clinging to the side of her face, I took a deep breath, knowing it was time to move. “Okay.”
I did a quick scan of the room, finding that most of the eyes on us had strayed to more interesting prey. Pulling away from Gwen’s soothing warmth, I guided her toward the bar where a demon stood, watching us, machete in hand. He was a monstrous heap of mismatched body parts, stitched together into a terrifying imitation of a human. A growl reverberated from his wide chest, and someone whimpered at his feet behind the bar. Rok. Son of a bitch. It had to be him working the bar tonight.
Fire lit his eyes as he slid his filmy white gaze over Gwen. He licked his lips and motioned for us to come closer.
“Selling?” His voice was low and loud, rolling across the bar like an avalanche as it rattled empty glasses. I pushed Gwen behind me, out of his line of sight, and he frowned.
“No,” I said, sliding my blade out and setting it on the bar between us. “Buying.”
“You owe me a soul, reaper,” he growled. “Last time I checked you were in the business of delivering.”
“The next one I bring down is all yours, handsome,” I said. “But this one is off-limits.”
His nostrils flared, and he scratched his chin with the bloody blade in his fist, clearly not happy that the little slice of Heaven I’d waltzed in with was off the menu.
“Fine. What can I get you?” he finally asked. “Leg? Arm? I think there is an ear left on this one.”
“Oh, God…no!” A deep voice screamed from behind the bar. “Not again. Please, not again.”
Rok chuckled and raised his machete as the soul dissolved into sobs. Gwen whimpered into my back, balling my shirt into her fists. She was feeling his fear. His pain. What would she feel when his limbs were being hacked off two feet from where she stood?
“No!” I put my palm out and his cold gaze narrowed on me. “I mean…that’s not why I’m here. I need a room. Off the grid.”
He looked at the soul beneath him and shrugged, tossing his machete onto the bar. I kept one eye on the bloodstained blade, knowing if he decided to turn on us, it would be the first thing he’d reach for. If he did that, he’d be serving his own limbs on the menu tonight.
“Why do you need a room?” He eyed me skeptically. “I’ve never known a reaper to extend their stay around here voluntarily.”
“I had some vacation time,” I said drily. “Heard Hell was lovely this time of year. Do you have a room or not?”
His lip curled, exposing rotting, jagged teeth. “It’s going to cost you, reaper.”
“I figured as much. Don’t suppose you’re taking cash these days? Visa? American Express?”
He chuckled. The sound sent chills down my spine. “You know what I want.”
Of course I did. He was a pain demon. Making souls scream was the only kind of currency that mattered to him. Making a reaper scream? Now, that was as good as gold to someone like Rok.
I gritted my teeth. “I’ll give you an hour. And no blades this time.”
Sixty minutes of whatever torture Gigantor could come up with was worth never having to see Gwen in flames.
He nodded, wiping the blood from his knife with his thumb and tasting it. “Which one of you? I’ll need payment up front.”
A sick feeling bubbled up my throat, but I swallowed it back down. “Me. She gets the room. And protection while we…settle this.”
“Deal.” He grabbed the machete from the bar and before I could stop him, he brought it down and sliced through flesh and bone. The soul below him let out a low gurgle that didn’t sound human and went silent. Gwen’s nails dug into my back, and she groaned.
“I’ve got a room upstairs. Nobody will bother you there. Two nights. Anything more and I’m going to want payment from her.”
He pointed his blade at Gwen. A muscle in my jaw twitched as I ran my thumb over the sharp edge of my scythe. Gwen stopped breathing, her lips stilled against the slope of my shoulder.
“That won’t be a problem,” I said through gritted teeth.
Gwen flinched as he tore a leg from the soul below him and tossed the limb on the bar. Immediately a group of creatures crawled out of the shadows to tear into the discarded flesh. Across the bar, glasses began to rattle, and the earth rumbled beneath our feet.
“You might want to get her to the room.” His mouth split into a horrific grin. “Sounds like the furnace isn’t far off. Wouldn’t want to char her pretty skin. What a waste that would be. They never do come back the same…”
“I want to walk her up,” I said. “I’ll come back down for payment.”
“Fourth room on the right.” He tossed a key over the bar. “You don’t come back down, then I come up. And then I’ll take you both.”
The metal key singed my skin as I caught it, branding me. I grabbed Gwen and headed toward the stairs he indicated. The hall was dark except for a fluorescent-like light flickering overhead. I hesitated at the bottom of the staircase, listening for the telltale sound of screaming. When I didn’t hear any, I started up the steps. I’d been in places like this before, hollowed-out imitations of high-rises and cheap motels. And what they created was the world flipped inside out. Dark and grimy and wrong.
At the top of the stairs, singed red carpet stretched down a dark hall. Muted light peeked through the cracks in the steel walls where the studs had popped loose under the heat. The building had been constructed to keep the flames out, but there was no escaping the heat when the furnace turned Hell into a broiler.
The floor was silent, and as far as I could tell, unoccupied. I looked back at Gwen and held a finger to my lips. You couldn’t trust anything here, let alone silence. She swallowed thickly and nodded.
I passed three doors and stopped at a fourth, shoving the key into the rusty lock and pushing the door open. In the middle of the room sat a big bed, worn from the heat. A small window was cracked, allowing nightmarish sounds of the city below to fill the space. The fresh ash coating the floor was undisturbed. I took a chance and pulled Gwen in behind me, then eased the door shut. I scanned the room for something, anything I could use to barricade the door. The last thing I needed was some demon looking for a fix to bust in and find her here alone while I was being beaten to a pulp downstairs. I walked over to a rusted dresser and shoved it toward the door, kicking ash into the air that stung my nose and lungs. I coughed into my shoulder and secured the dresser in place.
I could endure a lot. It had been the way I’d lived. It had been the way I died. But I couldn’t stay like this much longer, here, in this skin, with this girl. I turned around and slid down against the dres
ser until I was sitting in a pile of ash on the floor. I looked up at Gwen. She was perched on the edge of the bed, trembling, watching me with undisguised fear in her eyes.
“What did you agree to give him for this room?” she asked.
I stood and brushed the ash from my pants, refusing to meet her gaze. She didn’t want this answer. Giving it to her wasn’t going to help anything. “Don’t let anyone in. Do you hear me?”
I walked into the bathroom and thanked God when I spotted the dirty ceramic tub in the center of the room. Gwen hovered in the doorway, watching me. Waiting. I twisted the knobs and watched the tub begin to fill with cloudy, cold water.
“Easton,” she demanded. Hearing her demand anything sounded odd. “Answer me.”
Ignoring her, I brushed past her and found a broken shard of glass on the floor. I stomped on it, then picked up the pieces and set them on the dresser. “Listen for it to rattle. When it you feel the vibration, you get in the tub. Under the water. For as long as it takes. The walls should keep the flames at bay, but the heat will be too much out in the open. Understand?”
Her eyes went wide. She looked so worn-down and afraid. When she didn’t answer, I grabbed her shoulders and gave her a shake.
“Tell me you understand, Gwen.”
“I-I understand.”
“Good.” Before I could talk myself out of it, I leaned down and pressed my lips to her forehead. I lingered there, and her shaky hands came up to rest against my chest. I should have pushed her away. Instead, I soaked in the feel of her, hating that I was starting to need this. My needing anyone was a dangerous thing. It wasn’t how I operated. “Don’t forget.”