Hell Bent

by Cate Corvin

  With that she released me, leaving me shaking on the floor.

  I’d adapted to the force of her power when I was in close contact with her, my stomach no longer turning in nausea from the proximity, but the fear that she’d choose any moment to sink her claws right through me was an impossible fear to shake.

  I looked out towards the arena instead of dwelling on what she could’ve done to me. Irkallan guards had stormed onto the arena floor and were herding Lucifer away. He looked over his shoulder towards me, the hope I’d been told to abandon shining in his eyes.

  I wouldn’t abandon a single shred of it. My men were coming, and when they did, we’d tear this palace down on Ereshkigal’s head.

  I raised my chin as he vanished, just enough to remind myself who I was. I might be in a slave collar and kneeling on the floor, but I was still Lady Wrath in my heart. This was yet another ordeal.

  One I was determined to survive.

  Ereshkigal turned away from the arena, abruptly bored. “The manticore was too simple a creature for your son, lover. We must make these more entertaining.” Her eyes landed on me as she said it and a prickle of foreboding went down my spine.

  She swept away silently, leaving me alone with Satan.

  I couldn’t move until I was dismissed. She had eyes everywhere; even if I had to sit here for the next day, I wouldn’t move. I’d tasted her darkness and lashes too many times to risk it again.

  “Do you think he fights for love?”

  I swallowed hard and forced myself to meet Satan’s eyes. He looked at me like I was a curiosity, hunger and anger at war on his face.

  Oddly enough, there was a sliver of bright blue in the darkness of his eyes.

  “Yes, my King.” The words seemed to burn my tongue.

  He leaned in closer, dark hair spilling over his shoulders. “Of course he does. He’s my son; he will never stop fighting for what he wants.” The dark smile that curled his full lips made my stomach flip again in a sickening rush. “Just like me. Don’t think I’m done with you, songbird.”

  Satan reached out and brushed his long fingers over my forehead. When he brought them away, they were still wet with my blood.

  Sudden fear speared through me. The demon would taste Sarai’s blood, her essence running through me...

  He licked the blood off his fingers, slow and sensuous, never looking away from my eyes. “You and I are not done. Our song is a dark one; but you were born for darkness, weren’t you?”

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t; my throat was locked up tight.

  He didn’t seem to taste Sarai. It was such a small gesture, but such a monumental blessing. Maybe he’d had so much blood over the centuries he couldn’t differentiate the taste anymore.

  “Go away, Melisande, before I do something I regret. I would consume you whole right now if my lover wouldn’t cast me out for it.”

  I rose, my feet prickling as sensation came back into them. The hate burning in me was an inferno, devouring everything else.

  Before I disappeared, I spun to look at him. “You won’t win this. You had to steal a body to make her love you. If she saw what lived under that skin, she’d never look at you again.”

  Satan just smiled, his eyes glittering. “Who said I want her love?”

  2

  Tascius

  Bastards, the lot of you.

  I kept the thought sealed firmly inside my head. The Between was no place to start a fight.

  And with the tension sizzling between us, a fight was imminent.

  Azazel had gone as pale as snow, his jaw set so firmly he looked like his teeth might shatter. Haru’s arms were crossed over his chest, eyes narrowed into glittering amber slits. Belial was exhaling smoke and on the verge of bursting into flame.

  And Michael was leaning against a wall, taking another deep swig from his silver flask. He tipped it upwards and lowered it with a frown, tilting it over. A single amber drop plopped onto the floor. “Fuck me, who drank all my whiskey?”

  “You did,” Haru grated out. “You drank all the fucking whiskey.”

  Michael raised his eyebrows and tossed the empty flask aside. “I have no idea when that happened.”

  Azazel turned his back on them, smoke spilling off him in angry waves. “Shut up, all of you.”

  From the moment we’d walked through a door and realized Melisande was no longer behind us, I’d felt like someone had dropped an ice-cold boulder in the pit of my stomach.

  When, and where, had she turned away from us? Even looking back through the door didn’t offer any clues. That way was now blocked off, nothing but a white stone wall behind the door.

  My little friend, the best friend I’d ever had in my life, was somewhere in here all by herself. Rationally, I knew she would be perfectly fine if she kept her head clear. She was nothing if not bullheaded.

  But illogically, all I could picture was her walking into the wrong memory and being trapped there forever, or taking the same set of stairs over and over again and never finding the end.

  “Is there any way back at all?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  Azazel shook his head slowly. “No.”

  “Then we should stay here and wait.” I planted my feet firmly on the floor, ignoring the memory of a temple nymph gasping out her last breaths near my left knee. “She might circle around to us.”

  Azazel’s lips turned down. “We can’t just sit around and wait in the Between. That’s the easiest way to die here. This place will feed on you until you’re a part of it.”

  Anger bubbled up in my veins, the first time I’d ever genuinely wanted to smash my fist into my savior’s face. The idea of continuing through the Between without Melisande felt like pure betrayal, and yet… it was the only answer.

  I clenched my fists at my sides, feeling my nails dig into my palms. The pain cleared my head a little as Belial swept a hand through his hair and exhaled crimson sparks.

  “We go on,” he said. “She’ll know what to do, and we’ll meet her there.”

  I glared at him mutinously, even knowing he was right. “We need to go find her. What if she comes across a memory of Gabriel?”

  That was my worst fear— Melisande locked in a memory she’d never be able to walk away from, until the Between ate her away to nothing but dust. The only thing that would be left of her was her skeleton, watching the memory play out with empty sockets, until her bones were dust, too.

  Belial just leveled a steady look back at me. “Do you really believe our angry angel would allow herself to be trapped here? Come on, Tascius. You know better than that.”

  To my surprise, Michael clapped a solid hand on my shoulder. Despite having drained the flask, he was perfectly steady. “Let’s go. The longer we wait here, the more likely she’s going to be alone and waiting for us on the other side.”

  Azazel phased forms as easily as breathing, becoming a cloud of shadows with tiny sparks dancing in his heart as he slid away. “Follow me.” His voice was short and clipped, his anger barely contained.

  Before we continued, I glanced back at the open door and the impassable wall beyond.

  The memories of the Between grew more violent, dark and ancient, as we traversed. Every other step, I said the name of where I wanted to be: Irkalla, Irkalla, Irkalla.

  I was so determined to keep my thoughts on the one place she should be that I almost ran into Belial’s back an hour later.

  He knelt down in front of a corpse, his forearms balanced on his knees.

  “It’s only a memory,” Haru said, stepping around him, but he stumbled on the corpse’s legs and looked down in shock.

  Belial dragged his fingertips through the pool of blood on the floor, and they came away wet and scarlet. “A certain pissed off someone has been here.” His smile was both triumphant and tinged with worry.

  We all leaned over the corpse.

  “What the Hell was it?” I muttered. The Between was already consuming the body, which was a dull gray and
crumbling to pieces as we watched.

  Azazel sifted through the remnants and lifted a piece of armor that flaked away between his fingertips. “A Sin Eater. She was right— we were being followed.” He dropped the disintegrating armor and pushed something else out of the pile: a dark feather, no more than a bit of down the exact shade of ink.

  Belial chuckled, an incongruous sound in the hushed tension of this place. “Not anymore. She made sure of that.”

  He wiped his bloody fingertips on his pants and stood up, rolling his shoulders. “Let’s get going. She’s up there somewhere.”

  I picked up the tiny feather and tried to put it in my pocket like a charm that would lead me to her, but it crumbled into pieces between my fingertips. The Between had already destroyed it, this small fragment of the present.

  After the dead Sin Eater, all signs of Melisande’s passage vanished. Azazel led us through a silent field full of bright sunlight, and we climbed a ladder into a domed building that opened onto a darkened room.

  Azazel stopped dead in his tracks, his expression veiled.

  “What is it?” Haru’s grumble went silent as two memories walked in.

  It was the woman we’d seen earlier, the one Melisande had looked at with deep sadness written all over her face. I wasn’t sure she’d known her feelings were so transparent when she looked at the angel and the demon, the doomed lovers.

  Glittering veils were draped around the room, but they parted for the couple. Lailah’s white wings glowed like beacons in the darkness, but her light didn’t seem garish against Nakir’s night. If anything, she looked like she belonged there, a star in her own right.

  They stepped out onto the balcony, and Nakir ran his hand over her stomach, giving her an almost shy smile. A moment later they vanished like they’d never been there at all.

  “This way.” Azazel strode towards the balcony.

  Haru paused, his tails nervously waving behind him. “But there’s a door over there.” He pointed past the draped veils to a door of polished wood.

  Azazel just shook his head, so sure of himself it was impossible to argue. “This is the right way. They wouldn’t lead me astray.”

  When he jumped over the edge of the balcony into the open sky, I was right behind him.

  Haru didn’t argue, but he gave Azazel a sidelong glance when we landed in a cathedral hall. The stained glass cast brilliant scarlet, emerald, and sapphire patches of light over everyone, highlighting the empty pews.

  When Azazel threw open the cathedral doors, everyone paused.

  There were snow-capped mountains beyond, but unlike the previously clear doors, this one looked like it was covered with a thin layer of dark, molten glass. It dripped downwards in an endless waterfall, casting a gloomy filter over the view beyond.

  Something about the glass sent a chill down my spine. It looked like the exact opposite of the door we needed.

  But Azazel let out a small sigh full of relief. “This is it.”

  “She didn’t mention snow in her visions of Irkalla,” I said, squinting through the glass at the mountains beyond.

  “That’s not necessarily what we’ll see on the other side.” Azazel pressed his hand gently against the glass, letting it melt around his fingers. “This is the door we need.”

  A huge shape barreled between us. “Let’s stand here all day and talk about it,” Belial said sarcastically, and he pushed through the glass and vanished.

  Michael was right behind him with a shrug, and Haru followed.

  Azazel just looked at me with those ageless violet eyes. I remembered the same exact feeling the day I’d met him, when he’d looked down at my scarred back and gaunt cheeks, masking his pity for my sake.

  The last thing I’d wanted was his pity.

  “The only way is forward,” he said quietly. “As it was then, so it is now.”

  Of course he’d be having the same memory right now. I wondered what it was like from his point of view, what emotion he associated with the moment that had changed the trajectory of my life forever.

  “She might still be in here.” My voice was just as quiet, and I couldn’t keep the hitch out of it when I thought about Melisande possibly miles behind us, still struggling through the seemingly endless maze.

  “She might be. Or she might be out there, waiting for us to find her. You won’t be helping her by sitting here and letting the Between steal your life.” Azazel gestured to the glass. “Forward, Tascius. No looking back.”

  My wings trembled and I forced them to be still. Every breath felt like a weight on my chest, and I couldn’t shake the sense of betrayal.

  I pushed through the glass, which left a slick sensation on my skin, and my ears popped.

  The snow-capped mountains were gone. These mountains were twisted spires amid deep crevasses, brushed with drifts of ash.

  My next painful breath became a sigh of relief. Irkalla. We were finally on Irkallan soil.

  Azazel followed behind me as I stepped down to where Belial, Michael, and Haru had gathered. He was incorporeal again, drifting several feet above the ground.

  “No sign of her here,” Belial said, his voice tight.

  The door to the Between was gone, revealing nothing but more mountains behind us. Besides our own footsteps appearing seemingly out of nowhere, none of the ash had been disturbed.

  Azazel scanned the mountains, the white fires and lightning he always kept suppressed shining in the depths of his eyes. His frown grew deeper by the moment. “The day isn’t right.”

  “Nothing here is right,” Haru muttered, but he cast a curious gaze at him. “What do you mean?”

  Azazel took a deep breath and looked up at the sun. “We were in the Between for about eight hours. Out here, at least several days have passed.”

  Michael’s face was carefully blank. “What does that mean for your woman?”

  “It means she might have come out days before us.” I’d never heard Azazel so grim. “We search. If she emerged here that much earlier, her footsteps might be buried.”

  He tasted the air again and pointed us south. We spread out, Michael, Azazel, and me flying to cover more ground as Belial and Haru leaped over the mountains in their animal forms.

  It felt like hours had gone by before Belial’s roar echoed out over the range.

  We circled around and found him on a seemingly innocuous outcropping. He’d scraped away the ash with his enormous paws under a boulder, revealing fresh marks carved into the stone.

  We all looked at the marks in silence. All of us would have known them anywhere: a spiral, a star, a cross, and an eclipse.

  “She made it out,” Michael said. “There’s good news.”

  “But where is she?” Azazel whispered. He held his hand over the stone, not close enough to touch, and finally took his hand away. “I could open a gate in time and look, but it would drain me, and I won’t risk touching this ground.”

  “Why is that?” I asked stonily.

  He gave me an opaque look. “My homeland knows me. I’d rather it not dig its claws into me sooner than necessary.”

  Belial shook his mane, dislodging a cloud of ash. Haru sneezed, his ears going straight back, and then froze. His hand was still under his nose. “Look there.”

  The ash settled across the rocks. In several places it was slightly more raised, illuminating the outlines of faint indentations roughly the shape of a pair of small feet.

  Belial sniffed at it, huffed, and growled. He prowled over the outcropping, following the mountain line for another mile until the thick reek of rotting flesh was carried to us on the wind.

  “Here!” Michael shouted, wheeling in the sky overhead.

  I launched upwards, glad to give my wings a stretch and finally be on something resembling an actual trail.

  My relief was short-lived. The smell hit me in the face like a slap, the overpowering scent of decay almost thick enough to make my eyes water. Michael grimaced at me. “Leave it to Satan’s rotting corps
e to smell like a seven-day-old unwashed asshole.”

  I refrained from pointing out that his ass had been unwashed for an entire damn century.

  The crevasse beneath us stretched wide, but it took me a moment to comprehend what I was seeing.

  Only the faint gleam of the pale sun on scales made the mounds of rotting flesh comprehensible as having once been the Dragon himself, but the corpse was collapsing in on itself. As we watched, a seam split in the hide and belched out the gases of decomposition in a greenish cloud.

  Azazel curled through the air, stars falling from him and winking out in the abyss below. “She has to be here somewhere. There!”

  He shot off towards a wide ledge piled with ash, but there was a small cavern set behind it. Belial appeared over the entrance, sniffing along the rocks and spotting us at the same time.

  He jumped down onto the ledge, his impact sending up another cloud of dust, and shifted in place, becoming a man again. “No one’s here. It’s been abandoned for days.”

  Azazel still wasn’t risking touching so much as a single speck of soil, turning in place above the ground. He drifted into the cavern entrance and I followed on his heels, throwing off enough natural light that it lit the cavern all the way to the back.

  The scattered remains of a skeleton were strewn across the floor, alongside a cache of glass bottles and some stale bread.

  Azazel peered down at the skeleton, his fists clenched. “Jesiel. I always wondered where he’d died.” He reached out, and a small spark lit in the skeleton’s skull, quickly devouring the body whole.

  “Farewell, old friend.” He turned away from the smoldering pile, his nostrils flaring, and froze. “Belial. Don’t move.”

  Belial was still out on the ledge, scanning the horizon. Usually, he’d move just to piss off Azazel, but there was an edge in the Watcher’s tone that kept him right where he was.

  He looked down between his feet. Something golden gleamed beneath the piles of ash.

  As one, we converged on him. Belial looked down at the faint impression in the dust and carefully stepped to the side.