Damned if I do (the Damned Trilogy Book 1)

by Elizabeth Stevens

  I was busy marvelling at that fact when I was distracted by the sweet soft skin of her back. Keen to push my luck to the very edge of its boundaries, I walked forward and placed my hands on her waist, dipping my head to breath her in.

  “Drake…?” she said slowly. It was a warning and a question.

  “Wren?” I replied, running my nose up to her hair.

  I could feel her body humming under my touch and I was burning to touch her more. But I could also feel her uncertainty. I didn’t need to read her mind to know she wasn’t ready. It was in the way she tensed almost imperceptibly. It was in the way she held the blanket against her tighter.

  It ate at me to think that was putting me off from going after what I wanted. But what else was I going to do? The men in my family basically invented taking advantage of women because of who we were. Anything I knew would baffle my old man I’d do. And if that meant waiting until Wren was ready, then that’s what I was going to do. Every afterlife be damned.

  I felt her take a deep breath and relax. She turned to look at me and gave me the smallest smile. It was an apology. I wasn’t going to have her apologetic. I wanted her fierce and confidant. I wanted the Wren I knew she was.

  “I need to get back,” I said softly.

  I was trying to respect her boundaries, but I couldn’t help pressing a small kiss to her shoulder before I moved away. I left her standing there, refusing to turn back to look at her no matter how much I was tempted for one last glimpse.

  “That was quick,” Ignacio grunted.

  “Shut it,” I snapped.

  Kyle would have run away from my tone. Truman probably would have said something droll about how well it was going with Wren. But Ignacio was a hellspawn after my own heart. If there was anything he understood, it was anger and annoyance and he relished any opportunity for us to wallow in it. So, he trailed along behind me while I got on with my work.

  He came with me to the Torture Grounds, where we looked over the mass torture of the souls drowning in their own guilt and self-doubt. We went to some of the personal hells where I was in a bad enough mood that I took over a couple of times because the demon in charge wasn’t skinning the soul quite slowly and agonisingly enough.

  “See, Perdix?” I asked the fourth one. “You’ve got to do it slowly. Then, when they’re getting numb to it,” I flicked the knife expertly and the soul screamed, “twist and drive it in nice and deep.”

  Perdix was hovering at my shoulder. “I see, sir. Thank you.”

  I handed him back the knife and flicked most of the blood off my hands. “Go on, let me see you do it properly.”

  Perdix nodded and took my place at the soul.

  “Thanks so much, Drake,” the soul said. “It’s so hard to get good help these days.”

  “Remind me again why you’re here?” I asked, rhetorically.

  The soul chuckled self-consciously. “Right. Yes. Good point. All I meant was it’s a shame it’s so busy down here nowadays. Back when your father could do it all him–” He finished on a shriek and I nodded to Perdix.

  “Brilliant timing.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  I oversaw Perdix for a few more moments before I headed out to do some more of my rounds, Ignacio still at my heels. We went through the Surrounded in Gambolling Puppies sector, the Watching the Whole Twilight Franchise area, the Firefly Being Cancelled Over and Over division, the Christmas Fruit Pies Being in Stores in October zone, and finally made our way back to a few more of the personal hells.

  “Hey, Drake,” Rene said when I got to him.

  “You’ve kept to your torment lately. Well done.”

  “Well, you know.” He shrugged. “I said I’d behave. What have we got on the roster today?”

  “Let me nibble,” Ignacio muttered, licking his lips as he shuffled towards Rene.

  Rene laughed nervously. “I mean, sure. We could go with eaten alive. Why not? It’s been a while.”

  I sighed. “It just takes so long. And a guy’s got places to be. What do you say we chuck you on the rack for a bit?”

  “Maybe over an open flame?”

  I nodded. “Nice touch.”

  We got him settled and I started winding up the rack.

  “How is it going with Serenity?” Rene asked between screams.

  “Good. I think. I hope. She’s starting to warm up to me.”

  “Oh, hey. That’s great. You need any more lines?”

  I shook my head. “Nah, thanks, man. You know she smiled at me when I tried one on her today.”

  “No way?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I wasn’t even trying for something that worked. I’m just so horny. You know?”

  “I do know. Millenia without sex will do that to a guy.”

  “I mean, I’m Lucifer’s son, for fuck’s sake. I’m a prince of Hell, part angel, with the sex drive to match, for Grandad’s sake. I just have zero idea how I’m supposed to get her to sleep with me already.”

  “Aw, sounds like she’s special, Drake.”

  I shrugged. “Yeah, I don’t know about that.”

  “Less romance, more torture,” Ignacio growled, his arms crossed.

  “Let me talk while I work,” I told him. “Helps me concentrate.”

  Ignacio stabbed me in the foot with a pike. I wasn’t going to ask where he got it.

  “Ow!” I snapped.

  “Pain always helps.”

  I hated to admit it, but he was right. Pain focused my mind to the task at hand and had the added benefit of motivating me to inflict a lot of pain on someone else.

  So, I barely thought about Wren for the rest of my day. When I got back to our room, I found an interesting surprise.

  Wren and Kyle were lying in the middle of the floor, their eyes closed. Kyle had a smile on his face. Truman was sitting on a chair, polishing a pair of Oxfords I refused to wear.

  “What are you doing?” I asked them.

  “I’m carping le diem,” Wren said without opening her eyes.

  I knew Latin, even bastardised. I was interested to know what she thought it meant, though. “You’re what?”

  “I’m seizing the day.”

  “By lying on the floor?”

  “Yes.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not even going to ask,” I muttered as I walked to the wardrobe and pulled off my shirt.

  “It hums,” Kyle sighed happily.

  I turned back to look at them and saw Wren smiling at him fondly.

  “What hums?” I asked him.

  Wren spread her arms out like she was playing at snow angels. “The whole place.”

  I frowned. “What whole place?”

  “Hell.”

  “Hell hums?”

  Wren propped herself up on her elbows and looked at me. “You’re the prince of hell. How have you not noticed?”

  How the Heaven had she?

  I turned away from her to try to calm the force of my heartbeat. It was one thing to be attracted to her body. It was another to find her personality attractive. Because there was something very attractive about the wonder in her voice and her eyes, like, if I let myself, I could get back some of the magic I’d lost through her eyes.

  “You should try it sometime,” Wren said.

  I snuck a look back at her and saw she was lying down with her eyes closed again.

  “I get enough of Hell without…lying on the floor.”

  “Come on. It’s amazing. There’s this…pulsating rhythm. It’s like I can feel it in my soul.”

  I smirked as I pulled on a clean shirt. “If you want a pulsating rhythm you can feel in your soul, I have just the thing…”

  She propped herself up on her elbows again, but she was smiling. “I’ll make you a deal–”

  “A deal with the devil’s son?” I interrupted cheekily. “Naughty.”

  Her smile grew. “A deal with my husband. You come and feel the pulsating rhyt
hm,” I had a lot of naughty thoughts, but her tone of voice intended that, “of your home and I’ll consider reconsidering consummating our marriage.”

  It wasn’t the deal that had me tempted to agree, it wasn’t what I might get out of it, it was about the fact she was open to suggesting such a deal in the first place. As stupid as lying on the floor to feel Hell hum seemed, I was very close to planning on doing it just for her.

  “Sir, you might want to remove your trousers as well,” Truman said and Wren and I both looked to him for an explanation. Truman looked down and I followed his gaze. “It seems we were a touch enthusiastic with the torture today, sir.”

  I tried not to look at Wren for her reaction, but I did. And she was looking at me quizzically but not overly judgmentally. “There was a lot of incompetence going around today,” I muttered as I pulled my jeans off. Thank Grandad for powers and getting to wear whatever I wanted whenever I wanted.

  “And you had to show them…personally?” Truman asked.

  I grabbed a pair of trackpants to make Wren more comfortable. “Yes.”

  “Working off some frustrations, sir?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did it work, sir?”

  “No,” I hissed. “Isn’t there anything else you could be doing now?”

  “Feel the hum!” Kyle squeaked, sounding totally blissed out – which was kind of ironic given we were in Hell.

  “Thank you, I should clean the blood out of these.” Truman picked up my clothes and trotted out with them.

  Could he have just incinerated them for fun and then I’d get new ones? Yes. But Truman liked to do things the human way, said it calmed him and made him feel useful in a world full of too much ease. I had to say, as much as I liked calling whatever I wanted into existence, it added a touch of humanity to my day that I yearned for.

  “Come on, Drake.” Wren patted the floor next to her. “Come and share the pulsating rhythm with me.”

  My smirk was back. “Pretty daring words, there.”

  She smirked in response. “Get over here.”

  I sighed and dragged myself to her, dropping down onto the floor.

  “Okay, lie down on your back.”

  “You like it on top, then?” I joked as I did as she asked.

  She nudged me companionably and lay back down next to me. “See?”

  “See what?”

  “Close your eyes and…feel the hum.”

  I did close my eyes, but I rolled them heavily first for good measure. I took a deep breath and let myself relax into the floor and…

  “I’ll be saved,” I breathed.

  “See?” Wren laughed. “You feel it?”

  “It’s… Hell hums,” I marvelled.

  And it did. There was this steady… Wren had put it near perfectly. There was a steady, pulsating rhythm. It was like a heartbeat, but deeper in your bones, your very soul. It felt connecting and, for a place that was literally damned, it felt wholesome. But then that could have been because I was born to the place. Which would explain my connection to it, but…

  Wren’s hand slid into mine.

  I opened my eyes and turned my head to look at her. She was still lying there with her eyes closed and a gentle smile on her face.

  If my birth explained my connection to Hell, and it could explain Kyle’s, what explained Wren’s? And what explained my connection to her?

  Wren

  After making some headway with my relationship with Drake, such as it was, I decided that ten days confined to our room was enough. I woke up and decided that I was going to ask the boys to take me exploring.

  Drake was still asleep, so I took a moment to watch him. He looked almost peaceful asleep. All his hate and anger had melted away and left him settled. Although, maybe I was just seeing him differently after the other night. Hearing about what he got up to when he was ‘working’ had been fairly awful, but it had also given me hope that he could open up to me, and it would make my stay in Hell far more palatable if we at least got along.

  I thought I could see a little bit of the old Drake underneath all that darkness. Not that I could really remember him that well. It was more like fragments of who I thought he used to be, reactions to things I thought he should have that he didn’t, things he said that sounded wrong and right at the same time.

  When Kyle snuffled in his sleep – at my feet at the end of the big bed – I smiled and slipped out as carefully as I could. Ignacio snorted roughly, spreadeagled on my chair. And Truman was tucked up neatly under a blanket on the couch.

  Just as my feet hit the floor, Drake’s hand shot out and wrapped around my wrist. My heart thundered in my chest at the suddenness of it and I took a deep breath.

  “Where are you going?” he rasped, sounding half-asleep still.

  “I was going to shower and get dressed,” I said quietly.

  Drake blinked. “What time is it?”

  It hadn’t taken me long to work out that time was a loose construct in Hell, but they still seemed to run on some sort of internal – or, infernal maybe? – clock. I was sort of getting the hang of it.

  “Late enough to be getting up. Early enough I was trying not to wake you.”

  His arm relaxed, but he still held my wrist and he looked blearily up at me. I saw red glowing eyes poking out from beneath his thick lashes. “But everything’s okay?” he asked. His voice was rough and husky and I told myself it didn’t do anything for me.

  “Yes. Why?”

  His grip on my wrist slowly relaxed until he was lying back on the bed again. “I just worried,” he said with a yawn. “Something felt…portenty.”

  “Portenty?” I whispered, not wanting to wake the devilbums.

  He nodded as he snuggled back against the pillows. “Happens. Portents,” he said lazily. “I know something bad’s gonna to happen. Always does. You’re fine?”

  I nodded. “I’m fine, Drake.”

  “Good. Come back to bed, then,” he mumbled, patting the bed next to him absently.

  The simple and easy way he said that tugged on my heart. As if it could be that simple. As if we could be like a real couple. As if I wasn’t technically-but-not-really just eighteen and in no way ready to be a wife. As if he wasn’t the son of the devil and I was a human. Because putting aside everything else, how would that even work long-term?

  “I’m getting ahead of myself,” I murmured as I slowly slid out of the bed.

  But Drake must have gone back to sleep because he didn’t stir.

  I tip-toed to the bathroom and closed the door, finding myself with the most privacy I’d had in a good few days. Kyle was adorable and Truman was helpful, but a little alone time was just what the demon ordered.

  I took my time in the shower, savouring the warm water despite the fact I felt like I’d been living in a sauna.

  And I totally hadn’t packed appropriately for the weather. I didn’t know what I thought Hell was going to be like, but I’d managed to pack all the sorts of things I’d usually be wearing at home in the late Spring. Suffice to say, I was overdressed most of the time and too scared of what I might be given if I asked for anything more suitable.

  When I snuck back into the room, Truman was the only other one awake. He was folding his blanket up and nodded to me as I went to the wardrobe.

  “Do you need something, ma’am?” Truman asked as I was rifling through the wardrobe for something not so hot.

  I bit my lip as I thought about it. This could go all sorts of wrong, but I couldn’t keep wearing jeans in Hell.

  “If I ask for a dress, what am I going to end up with?”

  Truman seemed to think about that for a moment. “What would you like?”

  I shrugged. “Nothing fancy, nothing revealing. Just something nice to wear in this heat.”

  Truman nodded and rubbed his claws together. Suddenly, my towel was in his claws and I was wearing a simple spaghetti strap dress with a flared skirt tha
t went to my knees. I looked down at it, swishing the skirt as a matter of course. It was soft against my skin, nice and breathable.

  “Perfect. Thank you.”

  Truman nodded. “I can arrange for similar items to be available for you if you wish?”

  “That would be great, thanks,” I replied as I pulled my shoes on.

  “Of course, ma’am. Are you studying today? Did you need another book? Or are you still going on yesterday’s?”

  “Actually…” I started, then looked at Drake as he shouted unintelligibly.

  He didn’t do anything more than roll onto his back – the sheets down around his waist giving me a lot to perve on – so I assumed he was still asleep.

  “Is he…okay?” I asked Truman.

  “Eternal torture will scar a man, ma’am. He is as okay as anyone can be down here. Now, you were saying?”

  I licked my lip and decided to let it go. That seemed kind of horrible, but Drake’s mental state wasn’t really my business. “I was thinking you could show me around today?”

  “Around…Hell, ma’am?”

  I nodded. “Yes. Is that not…allowed?”

  “Oh no, ma’am. You have free rein in Hell, as it were. I just wonder about the sense in leaving the…safety of your room?”

  I nodded, sub-consciously swishing my skirt again. “I get that. But if I’m going to be here for a while, then I should probably get to know the place. I can’t spend eternity in this one room.”

  “I assure you, ma’am, if you really wanted to, you easily could.”

  I smiled at him. “Nevertheless, would you mind showing me around?”

  Truman breathed out. “No. Of course not, ma’am. I am here to serve. Did you have anywhere particular in mind?”

  I shook my head. “I have no idea what there is. Give me the tourist experience.”

  Truman nodded. “Indeed, ma’am. Would you like to be going now?”

  “Just let me leave a note for Drake and then we can get going.”

  “Capital idea, ma’am.”

  By the time I was done with my note, Kyle was awake and insisting to come with us. So, the three of us crept out of the room, closing the door behind us quietly.

  “Where we going?” Kyle asked, yawning and stretching.