Hell Bent

by Cate Corvin

  His eyes were on me as they ascended to the throne room. I clenched my hands in my lap, putting every drop of willpower into staying where I was.

  I love you, I mouthed.

  A smile crossed his face in a flash, even with his lips cut, and he wiped the expression away as soon as Ereshkigal rose to her feet.

  “Such beautiful carnage,” she purred, circling him. “Join us at the victor’s table.”

  She swept away, but Lucifer paused as I rose to my feet, taking up the cup and bottle. He didn’t move an inch until Satan joined him, and I followed in their wake down another serpentine hallway.

  I dared to reach out and touch his wings. It was a quick stroke, a brush of fingers through feathers, but I saw his shoulders tense and relax.

  Satan led him to the door of Ereshkigal’s dining hall. An ebony table that could seat a hundred spanned the length of the hall, looked over by sphinx statues. It had already been laid out with polished gold cutlery and steaming trays of food: roasted meat, berries glittering with sugar crystals, cups of wine and a deep emerald tea.

  My stomach growled and I willed it into silence. I was fed well enough, all things considered, albeit plainer food. Just enough to keep me alive and Sarai healthy, but I wasn’t above stealing when I thought I could get away with it.

  Satan turned to Lucifer. “You will continue to win. Please her at all costs.”

  With that, he disappeared into the dining hall.

  I was close enough to Lucifer to inhale deeply and smell him under the blood and sweat, a smell like the sun, warm and enveloping.

  Without a single word, he spun around and pushed me back into the darkness of the hall. The glass and bottle in my arm clattered alarmingly, but Lucifer bent down and kissed me hard.

  I wanted to relax into him so badly, but I kept myself upright, opening my mouth and sliding my tongue over his, letting him know without words how much I loved him. The low sound he made sent a shiver through me.

  He pulled away only seconds later. His eyes were burning with desire, but he turned away, obediently following them. We all had a part to play, and any deviation would be madness.

  Against my will, I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. I erased the evidence of his blood but not the swollen redness of my lips.

  Ereshkigal was striding around the table when I entered silently, placing her cup at the head of the table and refilling it. The soft gurgle of the wine filled the empty space and bounced off the walls, it was so silent in here.

  “It’s rare that I’m so impressed,” the Queen said, her hips swaying as she moved towards Lucifer. He gave her a dead-eyed look. “I could see you in the raiment of Irkalla. You would be such an addition to my collection—a crown jewel in this city’s crown. The fallen light of dawn himself, a star blazing in the dark...”

  She reached out, placing her lacquered talons on his bloody chest just beneath his slave collar. My own chest squeezed tightly, like a hand had reached inside me and clamped around my heart.

  I could see it now. Ereshkigal could do no wrong in her own city; Satan wouldn’t stop her if she meant to take Lucifer for herself.

  I’d have to feel that through the bond. I’d have to feel Lucifer’s feelings when she inevitably fucked him, and live with it forever. And even worse, so would he. He would be the one living the experience of being defiled and degraded.

  Our bond might even be broken by it.

  She ran her hand over him, letting it drift down over the rippled muscles of his abdomen, seductively tracing a swirling black tattoo with one claw.

  “I could give you so much,” she whispered. “I could make you a king. Better to reign than to serve, isn’t that so?”

  Her hand drifted lower, and she hooked her fingers in the band of his pants, tugging ever so slightly. Lucifer began to pull away, his fists clenched impotently, but his eyes flicked over her shoulder. To me.

  The Queen turned to gloat, smiling as she began to pull his pants down lower, revealing the bloodied V of muscle at the base of his stomach.

  I wasn’t aware of moving, or of the shatter of breaking glass when I dropped the bottle.

  I picked up a golden knife from the Queen’s setting, drew my arm back, and threw it with flawless precision.

  It stopped dead in the air, only centimeters from one of her shining obsidian eyes. A tendril of her darkness had caught it by the blade.

  Everyone was completely silent, frozen in place. Lucifer’s eyes were full of horror, but Satan… anger battled with desire on his face.

  Ereshkigal blinked. “Perhaps you are less a songbird, and more a bird of prey.”

  The tendril released the knife, which clattered to the floor, and then whipped outwards and hit my already-cut face.

  A fresh explosion of pain rattled my skull. I gripped the back of the chair to keep myself from falling backwards, pressing a hand to the stinging pain on my cheek.

  “Haven’t I treated you well enough? Perhaps you need a little time alone to consider the debt of gratitude you owe me.”

  She slapped me again, raising a thick red welt on my bare arm.

  “Get out of my sight. Take her to the Ivory.”

  The ivory? The word made no sense in my muddled head, but hands were picking me up and leading me out of the room.

  I blinked tears of pain away. The Irkallan guards had me by the elbows, but we were only halfway down the hall when a barked command stopped them.

  I turned in place, looking back at Satan’s stormy face.

  Then he smiled, a look tinged with such deep rage I almost stumbled back.

  “I’ll bring her to the Ivory,” he said, and the guardians bowed, leaving me alone with them. I wanted to shriek for them to come back, not to leave me alone with him, but then they were gone, ever obedient to the false king.

  Satan took my elbow, an almost gentle touch, but the look he cast me as he led me along kept me quiet.

  “It was stupid and reckless to risk your life, but I know you more than you believe. What is love but ownership of what’s yours?” he asked me. “Don’t tell me I don’t understand after that little display of possessiveness. You would kill Ereshkigal in cold blood to own my son again. We are but two sides of the same coin.”

  “I’m nothing like you,” I mumbled, but he said nothing in response.

  He didn’t need to.

  4

  Melisande

  The Ivory was an enormous skull, fashioned into a prison.

  I blinked at it, almost unable to fathom that something that big had once walked the lands of Hell, even though I’d already seen remains in the Irkallan desert and the memories of giants in the Between.

  Whatever it had been, it’d once been a god.

  The skull was half-buried in the ebonite walls, with black bars set in eye sockets that were otherwise large enough that Belial could’ve easily jumped through one in his lion form.

  The rest of the skeleton was invisible behind the ebonite, but a hallway carved along the body clearly showed that there were more cells built into its remains.

  An Irkallan guardian was stationed near the massive jaw that had been made into a cell door. He drew the jaw back with a creaking sound that scraped over my eardrums, and waited patiently as Satan pulled me towards the gaping maw until the King dismissed him with a wave of his hand.

  As soon as the guardian had vanished, Satan’s grip on my upper arm tightened. “Think about it,” he whispered in my ear.

  I stared back at him. There was nothing he could say to convince me that we were anything alike; I killed because I had to. I killed when my life or the lives of people I loved were threatened; I didn’t wreak havoc and destruction for my own entertainment.

  But… was that really true?

  I’d taken joy in Belial’s arena, in being matched against enemies who might outshine me.

  I loved the feeling of a sword or spear in my hand, the adrenaline rush of plunging into combat and not knowing if I was going to walk away
from the encounter.

  I’d carved a swath of wrath across the Seventh Circle and delighted in every minute of it.

  The blue splotch in Satan’s eye almost seemed to glow down here in the darkness, like he was reading my thoughts and laughing at them.

  I wrenched my arm out his grip and stepped willingly through the giant jaws. Anything to get away from him.

  The interior of the Ivory was smooth and white, just as its name implied. The jaws creaked shut and Satan slowly and deliberately drew the ebonite lock shut.

  He appeared at the barred window. “When you’re tired of lying to yourself, I’ll be waiting with open arms.”

  I sat down gingerly on the lowest point of the hollow skull and turned my face away from the window. After several moments, I heard the faint tread of his footsteps down the hall.

  He would never understand. He wasn’t capable of that level of compassion.

  Finally alone, I looked around the Ivory, taking in the ancient faults in the skull that zigzagged up over the ceiling, and the empty hole where the vertebrae would be. The spinal column was still there, but off-kilter, like it had twisted to the side. There was a hollow opening large enough for me to crawl through.

  I shifted a bit closer and took a breath, but didn’t catch any smell besides ancient bone. There shouldn’t have been any demons hiding in the hollow space, but who knew what the Hell kind of horrors Ereshkigal kept in here for her prisoners?

  As I watched, a tiny demon no larger than a lemon hopped onto a spur of bone and looked at me, chittering softly. A cluster of eyes took up half of its face, but when it split in half and hissed at me, showing off hundreds of short but razor-sharp fangs, I discovered that the demon was mostly mouth.

  I narrowed my eyes and raised my fingers, summoning a tiny speck of dark fire, and flicked it at the demon. The flame scorched its dark hide, sending up a curl of smoke.

  It screeched and darted back into the hollow, leaving a distinctly charred scent behind.

  The guardian had returned, the edge of his shoulder just visible through the eye socket window. He let out a laugh when he heard the thing shrieking. “Good luck. They eat while you’re asleep, and they’re drawn to the smell of blood. Sometimes we get prisoners who wake up without limbs they went to sleep with.”

  My lip curled. I was practically painted in blood. Nothing more than a walking buffet.

  I leaned back against the smooth curve of the skull and closed my eyes. Since pouring all of my healing magic into keeping Lucifer alive in the Irkallan mountains, it’d been mostly burned out, leaving nothing but a faint, pale flame in my chest.

  It was stronger now, but I couldn’t risk using it all. If Ereshkigal suddenly decided she wanted to wear my skin as a belt, I’d need strong reserves.

  I chose to heal myself enough to just scab over the holes in my leg and the cut on my cheek. They still hurt, but it was a dull throb instead of a stinging agony, and I wouldn’t leak any more blood if I was careful.

  As for sleeping… I knew I wasn’t going to get any sleep in the Ivory. I kept my eyelids cracked as I rested. The little mouth-demon came back with five of his friends, and sat nestled in the hollow, watching and waiting.

  Several long hours passed, and every odd once in a while I made myself get up and move around, to keep myself from actually falling asleep.

  I was nodding off again when a scuffle from the hallway brought me back to full wakefulness.

  “Keep your hands down!” one of the guards barked. The sharp crash of armor being slammed into a wall echoed into the skull, and I jumped up and crossed to the window, watching through the eye socket.

  Eight guards surrounded Lucifer, dragging him down the hall with his arms jerked behind his back. He met my eyes for a second and kept struggling, slamming into another guard and sweeping the feet of another.

  If he hadn’t looked like he’d just been run through a meat grinder, I had no doubt he would’ve taken them down with ease. But deep slashes ran across him, crossing his face, his chest…

  I bit my lower lip hard, stopping myself from shouting something.

  They wrestled him past the skull and down the hall. A brilliant flash of light illuminated the corridor for me, temporarily painting it in vivid color before the light vanished again.

  The distinct sound of a door being slammed shut, locked, and barred traveled to me.

  Lucifer was in the Ivory as well.

  I dropped down below the level of the eye socket and pressed myself against the bone, listening intently.

  “What’d the angelspawn do?” my guard asked. “I thought the Queen was planning on adding him to her bedpost.” The jealousy in his voice was obvious.

  The one who answered him dropped his voice. I had to strain to hear him.

  “The slave tried to stick a dagger in her eye, and the idiot pretty boy tried to follow it up with a few more tricks. The collar held tight, but the Queen didn’t take well to him laughing at her.”

  Despite myself, a smile spread across my face. I could only imagine how much it had pissed off Ereshkigal to have him laughing at her after she’d tried to seduce him.

  Within seconds the smile slid away. He’d paid for the moment of her humiliation with his blood and pain.

  The guards left, and mine resumed his post. I remained crouched, running through my options.

  If I could make it through the hollow in the spine, I could find Lucifer.

  As quietly as I could, I crept back to the center of the skull and carefully sheared away a strip of my skirt with a fingertip of dark fire. It was easy enough to pick at one of the scabs on my legs and smear fresh blood on the skull floor next to the tangle of bloody silk.

  Maybe he wouldn’t buy the ruse of my death to the mouth-demons, but then he’d have to be the one to brave the Ivory and the hungry little bastards next.

  I padded over to the opening and summoned cords of dark fire in my fingertips. The little demons scattered.

  It was a tight fit. With the column of massive vertebrae on my left and rough ebonite on the right, I had to tuck my wings against my back as tightly as they’d go, and even then, I felt sharp bits snagging at my wings and dress.

  I pushed through into darkness, only pausing to fry any mouth-demons who came sniffing too close.

  Eventually I felt the hollow widen and open on a larger space. Faint light illuminated the curving bones overhead and the windowless door; it was otherwise completely black.

  The source of the light was Lucifer, sprawled across the floor in a puddle of his own blood, and twenty of the little demons gathering around him.

  “Fuck off!” I hissed, climbing out of the spinal hollow and into the rib cage, whipping at them with dark fire.

  They scattered, squeaking indignantly at me as I dropped to my knees at Lucifer’s side.

  One of them opened its mouth and I shoved a sharp jab of fire down its throat without a second thought. It had Lucifer’s blood on its teeth, the little bastard.

  The rest of them took in the smoking remains of their friend, then vanished, dragging the corpse with it. I heard the soft sounds of crunching as I bent over my mate.

  His breath was shallow, his light nearly gone out. My hands hovered over his chest, but there was nowhere to put my hands that wouldn’t be touching an open cut.

  I steeled myself and summoned the healing fire, poking it into him in drops, healing only what was necessary. The bites the mouth-demons had left healed over cleanly, but the slashes Ereshkigal had inflicted on him were still pink and raw when I was done.

  It was the best I could do with what I had.

  “Lucifer?” I whispered. I shifted closer, running my fingers through his golden hair and easing out the knots in it. Then I touched the planes of his face, tracing his strong nose, the soft curve of his full upper lip, the sharp cheekbones.

  If there was a chance I would never walk out of here, I wanted to have every inch of him memorized.

  I allowed myself to car
ess the line of his throat to the swirling black tattoos on his chest, and over the disfiguring scar.

  The first time I’d opened up to him, on the roof of Blackchapel, I’d thought he’d done these to himself. That every inked line was a deliberate affront to what the angels considered their temple, a work of rebellious, Hellish art.

  He’d told me he no longer suffered. Now I knew it had been a lie to make me feel better.

  “I promise I’ll kill the bitch. I promise I’ll get you out of here,” I told him in the dark, and his eyelids flickered.

  They opened slowly, the silver pale as mist. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” he said, his voice rough, but he was smiling a little.

  I smiled back, grinning widely. “You know me. I never make a promise I can’t keep.”

  He held his arms out and I leaned into the embrace, resting my head carefully on his shoulder and trying to keep my weight off his torso.

  His wings were soft beneath us. If I closed my eyes, it was almost easy to imagine we were back at home in the Nightside, lying in bed under a sky full of stars.

  “I missed you.” His whisper sounded so raw, so open and painful, that I had to squeeze my eyes shut tight for a moment. He sounded the way I’d felt while he was gone.

  But the chain connecting us, mate mark to heart, was glowing brightly when I opened them.

  This was the one time I might get to be alone with Lucifer, possibly ever again. I wasn’t going to waste it.

  I didn’t answer, just raised my head and kissed him. He shifted under me, grabbing my hips and pulling me over to straddle him, uncaring of his remaining injuries.

  My pulse shot up when he traced the edge of my lower lip with his tongue and sucked it between his teeth, gently biting down before releasing it. Lucifer’s hands ran over my shoulders, stroking down my back before he squeezed my hips again and pulled me closer, grinding me against him.

  His cock was already hard, pressing urgently against me.

  The Hell with it. I would memorize his face and have him again. He was mine, and Ereshkigal would never be able to break that bond between us.