Hell Bent

by Cate Corvin

  “I don’t fear you or the dead one.” Satan let out a soft laugh.

  “Then tell me how. You want to make bargains again? Fine. Help me with this one thing, and I’ll give you a chance to prove how repentant you are.”

  From the bed, Tascius watched me with hollows under his eyes. Lucifer mouthed, what are they saying?

  I held up a finger, my brow creased as I focused on the words.

  How much had transpired between Melisande and her mortal enemy already?

  “I’ve already proven it. I took the infection Ereshkigal implanted in you out of your body. I had my son released from the Ivory. I haven’t laid a finger on your succubus friend, or even looked at her directly.”

  “Small things.” Melisande made a derisive noise. “And none of them done out of the kindness of your heart. Everything you’ve done has been to serve you and your own interests.”

  “Ah, so the small things aren’t good enough for you anymore. I see. You would prefer a grand gesture before you so much as look at anyone you consider beneath you. The angels trained you well.”

  Melisande snarled, a low and vicious sound. “You’re the last person who should talk.”

  There was another long pause, and I considered opening the door and interrupting them.

  But Satan spoke again. “This arguing is beneath us. I can’t tell you how to complete the transmutation; that is on you to figure out. I don’t have every answer. But we share an enemy, and we are allies here.”

  “I suppose we are.” Melisande’s voice was tight.

  “So let us make a compact here and now: we put the past aside until the Queen is dead. I will do no harm to you or your own.”

  “Agreed.”

  There was the soft sound of skin on skin, hands shaking and parting, and then retreating footsteps. I backed away from the door moments before Melisande opened it, storming in with a scowl.

  “Which one of you was eavesdropping?” she demanded.

  “Me.” I collapsed in a chair that creaked under my weight. “That’s a dangerous liaison to make.”

  She strode across the room to Tascius, placing her hand on his shoulder. “It is,” she admitted with a sigh. “But a necessary one. Once the Queen is dead, he would be able to remove this if her death isn’t the key.”

  She reached up and touched the jeweled ebonite collar that had left red, chafed marks on her skin, then sat on the bed between Tascius and Lucifer and looked at us all.

  “We’re almost all here,” she said, her eyes going distant. “Even Azazel, though he is far away right now. I can’t help but wonder what the point of it all was.”

  I shrugged. She was the only one among us who had ever actually seen the Chain. “I don’t believe in destiny. I believe in making things happen.”

  She gave me a faint smile. “Maybe your destiny is to make things happen. Once you’ve seen how everything connects, it’s impossible to ignore it. But… why would destiny bring us all here at once?”

  Lucifer looked up. He’d been staring at the floor, his eyes dark. “Because without everything and everyone you love in peril, you wouldn’t be able to complete the final step of the transmutation. The Chain brought you here to forge you into something else and fill the missing links.”

  Melisande gave him a blank look. “But one person wasn’t enough? Two weren’t enough? Losing just one of you would end me.”

  “No, it wouldn’t.” Tascius put an arm around her, his face pulling tight from the pain of the movement. “When I killed Gabriel, the person who had abandoned me and my mother… that was the last burden off my soul. It was the moment of giving up everything: answers, reconciliation, anything from him at all. I felt the power flow into me as soon as I accepted that.”

  Melisande stared up at him. “I wouldn’t sacrifice any of you to complete this. If that’s what I need to do to finish it, then I’ll remain as I am.”

  Lucifer’s silver eyes met mine.

  I wouldn’t tell her, and neither would he.

  “Forget it,” Lucifer said harshly. “We don’t need another power. My father will help us— for now. The moment Ereshkigal is dead, we’ll leave. Haru will find a route out of here, and we’ll bring Vyra and Michael. He can rule Kur alone. Being the sole power is the only thing he’s ever craved.”

  “True.” Melisande’s hand tightened on Tascius’s arm. “I don’t trust him for a moment, no matter what we agree to. But Azazel seems to be so far away. I know he’s fighting to get out, but what if he can’t destroy her?”

  It was Lucifer who shook his head. “He was already on his way to becoming a new Prime, Melisande. He started his life as a god of night and death, and went even further in his studies, into different, ancient worlds. This is his ordeal. He knew it the moment he started that fight with Ereshkigal. They’re vying to fill the same role in the universe—the same link in the Chain— and eventually, only one is going to be able to exist.”

  “I thought he was going to die,” she said softly. “I’m still afraid of that possibility. But if he takes her role, wouldn’t he become like her?”

  “No.” Lucifer squeezed her hand. “Not while he has you to keep whatever is left of his humanity. Maybe the Chain wanted him here, too. Ereshkigal has lost any semblance of what she once was: she lives to consume everything. There is no balance to her existence. If Azazel takes her place, he becomes the balance between death and peace. Not endless hunger. Not a ruler of pain and suffering.”

  Melisande nodded slowly, her brow creased as she thought it over. “Satan told me something that was much the same. That her inherent nature was unbalanced and consumed by one side.”

  There was a veiled look in her eyes as she spoke, and I knew she was leaving out quite a bit of that conversation.

  “He warned me about it,” she said. “To not let my hate overcome my capacity for love, or I’d be no better than her.”

  I’d heard enough.

  “You would never become like that,” I told her. “Not while you have us to keep you grounded. Now let’s let this kid sleep and come up with ways to get out of here.”

  She looked up at Tascius, who was still pale, his glow muted. “Right. Tascius, take my bed.” She nudged Lucifer aside, and kissed the archangel’s forehead.

  She would never know how much pain he was in. I could see it written in every line of his body. He might look whole, but the damage was invisible.

  I hoped his mind would pull through, for her sake if nothing else.

  “So. Haru will find a secondary route out,” she said, pacing in front of the small window. “At the very least, he and Vyra need to leave. It was brave of them to come, but there’s no reason to risk their lives.”

  “If need be, I can hold off my father for as long as possible.” Lucifer looked out the window with a flat-eyed gaze. The look of someone who had already accepted he might never leave.

  “I’ll take her as far outside the city as I can and come back for you,” I promised.

  Melisande’s lips were set with flat refusal, but she had no place to talk. She could no longer fly. “If I can find a way around sacrificing anyone for the transmutation, then I’ll fight with you.”

  I didn’t bother to look at Lucifer this time. The transmutation couldn’t happen. We wouldn’t allow it.

  Tascius had come too close to the truth. The moment of change required releasing all burdens from the soul.

  In her case, the moment of giving everything up: the family that she’d found that loved her more than anything. The moment of accepting that she was willing to actually die for them, the final, true death.

  The Chain had wanted us all here so she would have to see us at that moment and make an honest choice.

  It was her sacrifice that was required, not ours.

  25

  Melisande

  I slept fitfully, the same scene playing in my dream over and over.

  Inanna stabbed me in the chest, her six wings spread wide, her face growing angrier w
ith every iteration.

  By the time my eyes snapped open, she was snarling in fury, driving the knife through my heart with such rage that she broke the blade off inside my chest.

  And worse, when she was furious, she wore my face.

  The first thing I realized was that it was a dream. I wasn’t coated in my own sticky blood, and my arm was draped over Tascius’s gently rising and falling chest.

  The second thing was that Satan was leaning over us.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” I snarled, sitting bolt upright and leaning over Tascius.

  Satan’s fingers had been on his throat. Touching Tascius while he was sleeping and vulnerable, still weakened by the constant regeneration of carrying my Spear.

  He drew away, raising both hands in a gesture of calm. “I was making sure he was still alive.”

  “Don’t ever touch him again.” I climbed over Tascius and jumped out of the bed, jabbing a finger in Satan’s chest. Pure fury boiled in my veins, threatening to explode.

  I knew I was only furious because he’d terrified me. Even with Nergal’s face instead of the scarecrow of insects he used to wear, waking up to find him leaning over me was the emotional equivalent of being dropped into ice water.

  “So defensive,” he said, his eyes narrowed. “And here I thought we’d agreed we were friends.”

  “Friends and allies are very different things, and hovering over us while we sleep is weird and alarming no matter how you cut it.”

  Satan just shrugged, turning away. “I was trying to do you a favor.”

  My heart was still beating overtime against my ribs. It was like waking up from a nightmare to another nightmare, but he was my ally, no matter how much I hated it.

  “He’ll be fine.” I forced myself to stay calm. “I’m the one who cares for them.”

  “Well, now that we’ve established that he is in fact perfectly fine, your presence is requested by the Queen.” Satan slipped through my door. “I think you’ll enjoy the show.”

  The show? I gazed after him after he disappeared, and realized both Lucifer and Belial were gone.

  If she’d noticed or cared that Tascius was missing from her cell and her own people were dead, there would’ve been guards surrounding me when I woke instead of Satan. Instead, there was nothing but an eerie sort of silence in the palace around me.

  I quickly washed up and pulled on a clean silk dress, gently tugging it over the rough marks on my shoulder blades, and ran a brush through my hair.

  Then I kissed Tascius and closed the door quietly when I left, hoping he’d be somewhat back to his usual self when I returned.

  I was barely down the hall when I ran into Lucifer and Belial.

  “Haru found nothing,” Belial said flatly. “There were some other paths, but they could lead deeper into the Underworld. I didn’t like the smell of them.”

  “Good morning to you, too,” I grumbled, still trying to shake off the nerves Satan had given me. “So the only way out is through the upper gate. That’s something, at least.”

  “We can’t cross the gate with the ebonite bonds, but the minute she dies… it’s worth a shot,” Lucifer added.

  “Well, we might not need to worry about that for much longer.” I told them of how I’d woken up, and what Satan had said about a ‘show’.

  They accompanied me to the upper levels of the palace.

  “I don’t like how quiet it is, either,” Belial said. There were hardly any guards, and those who were around were twitchy and nervous. “Smells like there might be blood in the air today.”

  A shiver of power went through the palace, and Lucifer frowned. “That was Michael.”

  I pushed ahead of them, on the verge of breaking into a run, and skidded into the doorway of the dining hall.

  It was empty. A full table had been set, but it had been scattered across the floor in a violent rage. I stepped in a puddle of wine from a spilled glass that had shattered, narrowly missing cutting my foot on a large shard.

  “This must be the show he was talking about. Lucifer, can you feel where Michael is?”

  He frowned, looking up. “Next level.”

  We found a spiraling staircase that led us upwards into halls covered in dense, dark red carpet. I crept along silently until I heard a low, keening moan.

  Someone was sobbing their heart out like they were dying.

  One of the doors set in the hall was cracked open. I peered in, Lucifer and Belial above me.

  A fire was crackling in an enormous fireplace, sending up sparks of green and blue. Michael sat in a chair, his arms and ankles bound with ebonite chains, wings crushed uncomfortably behind him. “Lady, I’m not really the guy you want to pour your heart out to.”

  Ereshkigal was on the floor, her face buried in her hands. She was the one sobbing, and when she took her hands away from her face, they were wet with tears.

  Black tears, pooling in the lines of her wrinkled palms like ink.

  How odd, that her hair was still so dark and shiny, but her hands were spotted with age like a crone’s… like she was halfway between her two forms, moving in neither direction.

  Like she’d stopped completely.

  “They all lied to me,” she said, her voice thick with tears. “But you, Michael, have never lied, not in all the long years I’ve known you.”

  “I tried to kill you once,” he told her. “Remember that? It doesn’t exactly make us best friends.”

  I once again had the sense of being too young for the world. Satan was right—I’d lived the life of a mayfly so far.

  Everyone around me had all known each other in different incarnations, in different times. I was the only newcomer here.

  “And yet here you are,” she said, reaching up to pat his knee.

  “Against my will.”

  “My sister will not stop until she’s taken everything I love,” Ereshkigal continued, as though she hadn’t heard him at all. “Once wasn’t enough for her. Now I must endure the humiliation twice. Who am I, Michael? What have I become?” She looked down at her wrinkled hands, and fresh tears spilled onto them.

  I caught sight of a pale figure lurking in the background: Vyra. She wore the pretty dress of a slave, a thin collar around her throat.

  But she didn’t look afraid. She held out a glass of wine to Ereshkigal, who took it without looking up into the succubus’s cold, calculating gaze.

  The ebonite hairpin she’d used to pick the lock on Michael’s cage was stuck through her twined-up mass of hair, the sharp end glimmering.

  Ereshkigal drained the glass in one swallow and tossed the cup aside, leaving Vyra to retrieve it.

  The sound of footsteps caught my attention. Lucifer and Belial stiffened, and I looked away from the crack in the door.

  Satan strolled down the hall towards us, his hands in his pockets. He smirked widely. “Are you enjoying it? The breach is too wide for her to mend. Her mind shatters, piece by piece.”

  I shook my head, determined not to alert Ereshkigal to our presence, but Satan walked right past me and pushed the door open.

  Ereshkigal turned, her eyes wide. Her face seemed to hang off her skull, her eye sockets deep and bruised, mottled patches of rotting flesh creeping up on her cheeks.

  “You,” she hissed, rising to her feet with an effort. “The liar himself.”

  Satan plucked the glass and wine bottle out of Vyra’s hands. She’d frozen in place as soon as he entered the room, a marble statue of fear.

  He poured himself a glass. “I never claimed to be anything else.”

  Ereshkigal’s eyes dropped to me, standing outside the door. Her mouth dropped open in a snarl, revealing the gaps of missing teeth among the rest of her fangs.

  “Come in, Melisande.” A drop of wine clung to Satan’s lower lip, glimmering like a ruby. “Perhaps she should hear the truth from both of us.”

  “The truth?” I asked, my legs feeling wooden.

  He was the one doing this, tipping Eresh
kigal over the edge. Making it easier for Azazel to destroy her from the inside out.

  I needed to play his game, weaken her power. I stepped into the room, my palms suddenly clammy. “Yes, tell her the truth.”

  With the way Ereshkigal was backlit by the fire, hunched over, she looked like a crone of death come to life, barely more than a walking corpse.

  I admitted to myself that I was more afraid of her now than ever before. She might be fragile, on the verge of giving in to Azazel, but she was still a cornered animal. Still dangerous.

  Satan licked the drop of wine off his lip, staring down at Ereshkigal as he did it. It was a slow, sensuous motion, and her eyes followed it with hunger.

  “I’ve always loved Inanna,” he told her. “Then and now. And I would rather see you dead than spend another moment with her out of my sight.”

  Was it Satan or Nergal talking… or had the two of them become each other, Nergal’s unending love for the dying goddess fusing with Satan’s cruelty and lust?

  Ereshkigal’s hands clenched, her nails cutting deep grooves in her own palms. She seemed as frozen as I felt. “Lies,” she whispered.

  “No. The truth, for once,” Satan said.

  He moved so quickly I wasn’t prepared for what he did next. Satan shoved Belial away from me and grabbed me by the shoulders, pulling me in close.

  He leaned down and kissed me, the taste of wine and shadows filling my mouth. It was a bitter taste that almost made me gag.

  I planted my hands on his chest and tried to shove him off me, tried to turn my face away, but he was too strong.

  He pulled me in closer, his hands so tight they left bruises that healed as fast as they appeared.

  Inanna’s golden power reached out to me, slipping past my lowered defenses. She sent me a single image: Tammuz kissing her, biting down on her tongue and drawing blood. A possessive bite to mark his property.

  I couldn’t let him do that, or I’d lose my own mind.