Cast in Hellfire: An Urban Fantasy Romance (The Mage Craft Series Book 2)

by SM Reine

  His name again.

  It was like she knew him.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  She flowed around him with the scent of brimstone. “You should ask who you are, not who I am. In the grand scheme, I am nothing.”

  “You know what happened to me in Genesis. You have answers.”

  “You wouldn’t be satisfied to know them. You’ll live in despair when you know the truth, lost in darkness deeper than any other within the Nether Worlds.” Her bony fingers slid down his shoulders, her left horn brushing his hair as she bent closer to whisper in his ear. “You don’t need to know the truth. You don’t need the Canope. Leave and be satisfied knowing ignorance is best.”

  But then Marion would never have her memories back. She wouldn’t be whole again.

  “Would that be terrible?” Nyx asked, swimming behind him to whisper in the opposite ear. Her breath was the heat of a forge lit by magma.

  Seth didn’t think he’d spoken aloud. She was reading his thoughts in some way.

  A powerful demon. Too powerful to trust.

  He couldn’t help but wonder, though. He’d been wondering it ever since they’d left Dana McIntyre’s condo.

  Would it be terrible to leave Marion without her memories?

  He shook his head. “I need the Canope. It wouldn’t be fair to leave her like this. She isn’t herself.” He turned to survey Nyx. Up close, he could see himself reflected in the gems in her skull.

  Seth didn’t fear her in the slightest.

  In fact, strange feelings were stirring deep in his gut that resembled affection.

  “I’m going to take Charity and the Canope to the Winter Court. It’s a Middle World in eternal darkness,” he said. “You might be able to survive there, if you wanted me to free you from Sheol.”

  She recoiled an inch. Even without facial muscles, he could tell she was surprised. “You think I need to be freed?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “Sometimes I think I do.” Her bony fingers traced a line down his cheek. “You’ve always been too kind a heart for the soul you’ve been given.”

  “You keep talking like you know me.”

  “But I do,” Nyx said. “Surely you must wonder what became of us in the eternity of Genesis.”

  “Genesis was a moment.” Seth knew she would argue with him, so he didn’t give her the opportunity. “Come with me to the Winter Court.”

  Nyx seemed to consider the option. At least, it took her a long time to say, “No. It’s too late, and I’m too old, for that to happen. But I’ll show you to your friend. May she have the sense to avoid the Canope that you do not.”

  She turned and drifted away.

  Seth followed.

  The halls of Duat’s temple weren’t tall by sidhe standards, but compared to the rest of Sheol’s structures, they towered. Seth’s footfalls echoed throughout the rafters even though Nyx didn’t make a sound. She had no feet to strike against the ground.

  He practically bored holes into Nyx’s back staring at her, trying to figure out how he could have known her.

  Seth wasn’t missing memories like Marion. He wasn’t.

  He’d been born to a werewolf hunter twenty-some years before Genesis. He’d grown up learning his father’s business. Killed a couple werewolves before he started needing to shave. Dedicated his teen years to his werewolf girlfriend’s ranch, and then gone to college for a pre-med degree.

  There were no gaps in those memories, nor were there in the painful years that had followed his return from college. That was when Abel and Rylie had fallen in love, after all.

  And then he had died.

  Every memory since his return after Genesis was intact, too—painfully so. Seth didn’t forget things the way he used to. He had no trouble recalling the most inane details of medical school and job-hunting while pretending to be Lucas Flynn.

  Nyx was nowhere in those memories.

  The only blank spot in his mind was that year between the Breaking and Genesis. But nothing had happened then. He’d been dead.

  And Genesis had been only a moment.

  Nyx led Seth to a door in the hallway. The arching frame had stone horns at its peak. “He’s put her in here,” she said, slithering backward to allow Seth to push the door open.

  Inside, he found a spacious but empty room of stone. The walls were covered in murals depicting the Hounds.

  Seth stopped inside the door. The only creature inside that room was tall, lanky, demonic-looking—a hideous thing facing the windows.

  It turned at the sound of him. Though the features were frightening, he knew them, just as he knew the glasses that were tucked into the neck of the revenant’s shirt.

  That was no demon.

  “Charity,” Seth said.

  “Oh gods, Seth.” Charity fell onto him, embracing him so tightly that he could barely breathe. It was nothing to do with revenant strength and everything to do with his relief at finding her whole. He’d expected to find her on a meat hook by that point.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, holding her at arm’s length to study her vampiric form. “Did he hurt you?”

  She shook her head over and over again. It was strange to see such a nervous gesture from such a monstrous creature. “I don’t think he ever planned on it. You shouldn’t have come for me.”

  “I couldn’t leave you here,” Seth said. “Get the glamour on and let’s go.”

  Charity’s monstrous face fell. “Put the glamour on? Why?”

  She looked so crestfallen that he instantly felt guilty. “I mean…we’re going to the Winter Court the instant we’ve got our hands on the Canope. You’re not subtle like this.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to be subtle anymore,” Charity said.

  Seth had seen her like this before, and there had still been no bracing himself for her appearance. People who didn’t expect it would most likely scream and run. That was what everyone had done after seeing her outside of the United Nations, after all. She hadn’t even had to attack to cause a stampede in the crowd.

  Even so, the Winter Court would be better equipped to deal with it than the mundane world.

  “Okay, it’s fine,” Seth said. “We’ll talk about this later. Let’s go.”

  “There isn’t anything to talk about,” Charity said.

  That was up for debate, but a debate he didn’t want to deal with at the moment. He pulled her toward the door.

  Charity stopped when she saw Nyx.

  Seth rubbed Charity’s arm comfortingly. “It’s okay. She’s on our side—kind of. She wants me to get you out of here.”

  Nyx remained floating silently in the hallway, watching them expectantly.

  “But?” Charity asked without taking another step to the door.

  “She doesn’t want me to have the Canope,” Seth said. “And she’s hoping you’ll agree with her.”

  “The Canope is a trap,” Nyx finally said.

  “Yeah,” Charity said, “it is.”

  Which was when the trap sprung.

  “Look at what we’ve got here.” Arawn emerged from the opposite side of the room, sauntering out of the shadows. He had changed into a corset cinching his body tight from underarms to hips, which Seth imagined must have been holding his shredded body together. He dragged a long leather train behind him, walking on boots with six-inch platforms. “You weren’t going to leave me, were you, Charity?”

  Seth pushed the revenant behind his back. “We don’t have to fight, Arawn. I’m happy to leave peacefully.”

  “You don’t leave at all,” Arawn said. “Not with her. She’s mine.” The demon surveyed Seth with opaque eyes. “You still haven’t gone for the Canope. Why not? It’s not far.”

  “I brought him to save his friend.” Nyx slid in from the hallway.

  What little good humor had been in Arawn’s face vanished when he saw her. “Are you such a miserable, petty asshole that you have to fight me every step of the way?” He turned to Charity. “An
d you—I thought we were getting somewhere.”

  It was weird for Seth to have a revenant even taller than he was trying to cower behind his back. “You kidnapped me,” Charity said.

  The demon lord’s face spasmed. “But…”

  Rage came over him like starlight after nightfall. Arawn’s switchblade appeared in his hand.

  He hurled himself at Seth.

  Nyx billowed through the room, blocking both Seth and Charity from Arawn’s attack. Through her semitransparent body, Seth saw Arawn’s arm, knife and all, get caught in her ribs.

  “You won’t hurt him,” Nyx said.

  “Watch me,” Arawn said.

  He wrenched his arm free and stabbed again. Nyx evaded the blow a second time, wrapping herself around Arawn so that he was consumed in shadow.

  Seth was tempted to leave while they were distracted. But Nyx registered actual pain when Arawn stabbed her. She wasn’t merely an incorporeal puff of smoke. She was a demon who had been nothing but kind to Seth, and she was struggling.

  But the two Lords of Sheol were only growing in power. For the first time, Seth glimpsed the true depth of Arawn’s abilities. He’d hidden them fighting Konig to humor the sidhe rules, but against Nyx, after such a long grudge, he held nothing back.

  White flame crashed against shadow. Arawn’s presence erupted from his body, and it quickly became even more massive than Nyx’s. Seth recognized the shape of it: the long, spindly legs, the arching neck, the red-tipped ears. At his core, Arawn was the biggest of the Hounds, and his maw was filled with endless teeth.

  The entire temple shivered. Obsidian groaned. Distant bells chimed discordantly, making the floor roll underneath Seth’s feet. He staggered and almost fell.

  “You won’t control me ever again!” Arawn roared through a mouth bigger than the temple, bigger than the universe.

  His jaw yawned wider, exposing the tunnel to his stomach. He bowed over Nyx.

  And he began to swallow.

  Seth struggled to reach Nyx’s side. He didn’t know what he could do—he didn’t think his guns would work against Arawn any more than they had worked against the Hounds. But he had to do something. Anything.

  Nyx’s hollow eyes met Seth’s through the ghost of Arawn’s Hound form.

  “Don’t,” she said. Despite Arawn’s growling, which was so loud that it drowned out even the bells, Seth heard her voice clearly. It was as though she spoke from within him. “Leave without the Canope.”

  Those were her final words.

  She stopped struggling.

  Arawn’s mouth snapped shut on Nyx.

  In a blink, the giant Hound vanished, and Arawn stood in the center of an empty room. He looked like a man once more.

  Arawn lifted his black eyes slowly to Charity and Seth, wiping the blood off of his bottom lip with the back of his hand. “So,” Arawn said, “what were we talking about before Nyx interrupted us?”

  17

  The Canope was a ceramic jar so nondescript that Seth wouldn’t have looked at it twice were it not the most mundane-looking thing in the Temple of Duat. Statues of long-legged dogs were posed on either side of it, staring at the jar with blank-eyed wonder. The air around the Canope buzzed enough to make the wall beyond seem blurry.

  The pedestal was the crowning feature of the hypostyle hall, filled by stylized columns fashioned like trees, mountains, and clouds as imagined by a tormented artist. The reliefs on the walls depicted wailing demons. Everything was jagged and black—except for that jar.

  Death is Death, Nyx had said.

  Seth could easily imagine some kind of death god ruling from that temple.

  The Canope was an obvious mismatch, not only in visual styling, but also in its energy. Seth could smell a faint hint of burning oak and lavender. It was Marion’s distinctive scent.

  What the jar held was clearly ethereal in origin, not infernal.

  “Is this what you wanted?” Arawn asked, wandering along the edge of the room with visible amusement.

  He’d readily led them to the innermost sanctum of the temple. Nyx’s body had barely begun to cool when Arawn had happily shown Seth and Charity the path.

  “This is such a trap,” Charity muttered from behind Seth.

  Seth didn’t need to be told so many times. It was true.

  That didn’t change one damn thing about the situation.

  “I’m going to take it,” Seth said.

  Arawn yawned. “Oh no, please don’t.”

  Seth mounted the stairs leading toward the altar. The air became thicker as he drew closer, as though the Canope were pushing back at him, begging him in the voice of Nyx not to touch it.

  It was a trap. He knew it was a trap, and he still pushed through, reaching his hands toward the jar.

  “Don’t,” Charity whimpered from behind him.

  The jar was a hundred miles away yet only inches from his fingertips.

  The temple faded and Marion’s memories swirled around Seth. Everything she had forgotten flashed like fireworks as wispy knowledge flitted through his mind. He understood magic on a level that he had never understood before—on a level no witch but Marion could.

  For a few seconds, Seth thought he might even understand French.

  He pushed through the torrent of memory and kept pushing until his fingertips brushed hardened clay. It was heavy—so very heavy, heavier than anything else he’d tried to move before, as though it were affixed to that exact point in the universe and couldn’t be broken free.

  But Seth hadn’t come that far to be stopped.

  He wrapped his hands around the body of the jar and pulled.

  The universe shifted like it had every time he’d touched Marion’s skin.

  Destiny smashed through Duat. He felt it in every atom of his bones and every hair on his body.

  Time was changing. Every single world was changing.

  Seth hugged the jar to his chest as he fell, tumbling through eons of existence. He saw the garden that Marion had talked about—the one with the big trees and the blue light. He saw a brown-skinned boy with curly hair and a friendly smile. He saw Marion knocking on doors, and he saw those doors opening to reveal worlds Seth hadn’t been able to imagine until that moment.

  He fell. He kept falling.

  There was no bottom.

  He saw the time that Marion had gotten shot in the ribs with an arrow by one of Konig’s guards. He felt her excitement at the wound. Her exhilaration.

  He saw Marion soaring through the clouds, riding an ultra-light airplane that glittered with magic, and her laugh of joy swelled within Seth’s chest.

  All of the faces that Marion had seen in her life sparked on the edges of Seth’s vision, too. Family members, like Dana and Nori. Politicians who had been subjected to Marion’s teenage whims. Friends from the werewolf sanctuary.

  And the Alpha, Rylie Gresham.

  Even in Marion’s memories, Rylie was a shy, radiant woman. But there was mistrust in her eyes, which Rylie had never once directed toward Seth.

  Rylie didn’t like Marion. And Marion had known that.

  It was no secret to Marion that she was widely loathed.

  Seth kept falling down the stairs, but he never let go of the Canope, even when it heated to a thousand degrees within his arms and shook so hard that he thought his bones would break.

  If the jar shattered, Marion would be lost—all of her memories and the answers that went along with them.

  But holding on to it was a struggle. Her magic was endless. She was so much more powerful than he ever could’ve dreamed.

  It was easy to see why everyone hated her. That much power had made her a god on Earth, without any of the wisdom one would hope a god to possess. As a mage, Marion had the ability to reach out and change anything that she wanted.

  And she had.

  She had influenced elections, ordered world leaders to do her bidding, made a sidhe prince fall in love with her.

  It was all in the Canope. Every l
ast instant of it.

  After a hundred years, Seth slammed into the floor at Arawn’s feet.

  Joy filled the demon’s face. Even his black eyes didn’t seem to be quite as flat as they’d been until that moment. “Here comes the sun,” he said softly.

  Seth frowned up at him, confused. “What?”

  Dogs howled.

  Their cries drifted through the temple, echoing off of the walls and rattling throughout Seth’s mind.

  “The Hounds are coming,” Arawn said, backing away. “They’re tied to the Canope. You stole it, and they’ll want you dead.” He was almost giddy, his words closer to song than speech. “You’re almost dead, and then…they’ll take me. They’ll let me go to Earth.”

  “What have you done?” Charity asked.

  Arawn extended his hand toward her. “I’ve cleared my path to sunlight. Join me.”

  She shook her head slowly as the yipping of the Hounds grew.

  They were coming for Seth. He needed to run.

  Seth staggered to his feet, and Arawn stood back to let him get up. The Lord of Sheol didn’t need to attack. A white dog had appeared at the entrance to the hallway, and its eyes were fixed on the Canope within Seth’s arm.

  Seth grabbed Charity. “Run!”

  They bolted out the back door of the temple. Seth didn’t drop his grip on the revenant’s elbow. He clung to her and focused on Earth, on sunlight and rain and actual, living grass that was touched by the brush of time, and he tried to teleport.

  But nothing happened.

  He still couldn’t leave Sheol.

  “What are you doing?” Charity cried desperately. “We need to leave!”

  “I’m trying!”

  Seth refocused. If they couldn’t get all the way back to Earth with the Canope, then he could at least teleport to the hive, where the Hounds wouldn’t be able to reach them.

  Reality twisted around them.

  They disappeared from the temple’s hallway and reappeared a few feet down.

  He couldn’t leave Duat.

  By the time Seth realized what had happened, the Hounds had appeared at the doorway, only a dozen feet behind them. There were six of them now that he could see.

  Charity all but yanked Seth off of his feet. “Don’t stop!”