The Eighth

by Wytovich, Stephanie

  “Oh but they did!” said Greed. “We got exactly what we wanted.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “You,” they said.

  Paimon paced back and forth until the snow turned the ground to mud.

  “So now what? I go and kill my family and you all get a good laugh?”

  Wrath approached him, but Paimon shrugged him off. “It’s not like that.”

  “Well it fucking seems so,” said Paimon. “I laid down my Death so I could help her. And you said I could handle it how I wanted to.”

  “That I did,” said Wrath.

  “Well, I don’t want to kill her,” said Paimon. Yet even as he said it, the words vibrated on his tongue, enticing him to take them back. Part of him did want to kill her.

  “Fine, don’t kill her,” said Wrath. “Let her be the Devil’s whore.”

  Lust laughed.

  “Take it back,” said Paimon.

  “Open your eyes,” said Sloth. “It’s time to wake up and see the big picture. The Devil’s plotting. He’s using her and the child against you. Against us.”

  “But they’re nothing. They’re mortals,” he said. “What could they possibly offer him?”

  The group looked at one another and Wrath nodded a confirmation. “Paimon, Rhea is a Prophet.”

  “No,” said Paimon. “She’s not. Prophet’s don’t choose Hell.”

  “She is, just not in the way we’re used to,” said Pride. “The girl has the gift of sight. She sees sin.”

  “More specifically, the sinners,” said Greed.

  Paimon’s heart fell. “And if the Devil has her, he can pick out stronger souls. Continue to grow his army.”

  “So you see the problem,” said Wrath. “As the Devil gets stronger, we get weaker. And what is Hell without the sins?”

  Paimon smiled.

  “If we want a Hell run by sin instead of a puppeteer, then we have to work together,” said Greed. “And I want that version of Hell. I want it bad.”

  For centuries Paimon had blamed himself for everything. He let guilt consume him and wear him down, constantly punishing himself for his sins when he should have been rejoicing in them. The Devil had taken that from him. From all of them.

  Hell shouldn’t be about punishment.

  It should be about celebration.

  And damn it, it’s time for me to start enjoying this.

  “Tell me what I have to do,” said Paimon.

  Wrath took him in his arms and held him close. The sin smelled like copper and brimstone. Blood and fire. A baptism of death.

  “First, you must choose,” he said.

  In that moment Paimon thought of Arazel, of everything she represented. He closed his eyes and smelled cherries and tasted flames. He wanted her by his side, wanted her as his lover, his partner, his wife. He knew she was the only person he could turn to, the only woman that would have his back when the world fell to ash.

  “I made a promise to a friend,” said Paimon.

  “Oh yes, little red,” said Lust. “She looked like a tasty piece of ass.”

  “She prayed to you once. Said you answered.”

  “Yeah, but she couldn’t handle me.”

  “But she tried, didn’t she?”

  “What are you getting at, brother?”

  “You know her scent. You can find her. If I pick you, if I choose you, will you help me bring her back?”

  Lust licked her lips and twirled a lock of hair around her finger. Her face changed then. It morphed into a vision of beauty with eyes as green as two glistening emeralds and hair as black as the Devil’s heart. The sores on her flesh disappeared and were replaced by ivory skin, pristine and flawless, as white as the snow that collected on her robe. She wore temptation well.

  “And why would I care if you picked me?”

  Paimon thought for a moment. It’s a long shot, but what do I have to lose?

  “Because I’ll let you have him. And I know you want him.”

  “You don’t know anything.”

  “I know he picked Arazel because she was the closest thing to you. Why else would he pick her over the thousands of other whores in Hell?” he said. “He wanted to punish you. And she was his playing card to call you out.”

  “You’re going to regret those words.”

  “Then it’s a good thing that regret is what I know best.”

  Lust took his hand in hers and pulled him close. “Little red in exchange for the Devil. Now there’s a fuck I’m not willing to pass up,” she said.

  Paimon slipped one had around her waist and dipped her to the ground. Her black hair trailed the snow and she laughed. Her giggle turned snowflakes into ice.

  “Deal.”

  Chapter 45

  Paimon and Lust walked next to each other, but they couldn’t have been more different. She swung her arms like a little girl as she skipped through the snow, her hair sashaying in black strands that looked like whips hitting against her cheeks. It was hard to believe that the woman next to him—the one that giggled and batted her eyelids, saying things like ‘pretty please’ with her smile, was the deadliest sin of all.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Out,” she said.

  “And how exactly do leave The Void?”

  Lust stopped and turned to him. She tilted her head and flashed him a smile. “The same way we got in of course.” Then she laughed again and took off into the snow.

  The longer they walked, the more it snowed. Paimon squinted as snowflakes blew against his face. His lips dried, puckered like raisins. He tried to lick them back to life but his tongue became dry and sat useless in his mouth. Paimon pulled his cloak tighter, shivering as Lust took hers off and danced naked in the snow.

  Her body defined perfection and would have made Venus spread her legs without a second thought. Paimon grew hard as she twirled in the velveteen flurries. Each crystal stuck to her hair and flesh as if carefully placed by a sculptor’s hand, a winter nymph blossoming in the snow angels she stopped to create.

  She motioned for him to join her.

  Paimon turned his face against the wind and walked over to her, his hands trembling as he pulled his hood tighter around his face.

  “You know, we’re family now, so you really should take care of that thing between your legs.”

  Blood rushed to his face and Paimon could actually feel himself blush. “Sorry.”

  “It’s all right,” she said. “I’m used to it. You should see when it happens to Greed.” She laughed, but it sounded forced. Her eyes went sad, a mossy green rather than the brilliant electric from before.

  “I’m sorry,” Paimon said again. “Really, I am.” He bent down and picked up her cloak. “Why don’t you get dressed?”

  “No use hiding what I am,” she said, throwing her arms up in surrender. “My body defines me, imprisons me. But I’m okay with it.”

  “Well, at least you’re easy on the eyes.”

  She chuckled. “Ha! Ever the charmer, aren’t you?”

  “A handful of women would beg to differ with you.”

  “Is that why you killed them?” Lust rose and snow fell off her in cuts of diamonds. She took the cloak and hung it over her shoulders. “Not that I’m judging.”

  Paimon didn’t know what to say. He’d never really considered that the reason he’d killed those women, including his wife, was because he hadn’t been desirable enough for them. But it was true. He didn’t kill them because he was angry with them. He killed them because they didn’t want him like he wanted them.

  “Yeah, I guess it is,’ he said.

  “Interesting,” she said. “We’re a better match than I thought.”

  Paimon stared at the ground as he followed her. This new realization about his past didn’t sit well with him. It was like a bad piece of meat lodged in his stomach, souring as it began to mold.

  “Don’t beat yourself up over it. We’ve all been there,” she said. “Shit, how do you think I got here?”
A boil bubbled beneath the skin of her cheek as sores multiplied on her lips. She raised her hand to her cheek and touched the disease. “And trust me, it’s a bitch keeping up with the glamour.” She reached behind her and covered her face with robe’s hood.

  “How did you get here?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “We have time.”

  Lust kicked at the snow as she walked, sending white puffs in front of her. “The Devil and I go way back. He found me writing in a vineyard one night, plotting to kill Naboth—”

  “Naboth? The king?”

  “Yes.”

  “So that must make you—”

  “The only and only, darling,” she said with a bow. “The true queen of Israel.”

  Paimon couldn’t believe it. Jezebel, the harlot, the idolater, right in front of him. One of the worst women in scripture. Her story was infamous in the circles, and everyone in Hell knew her name…

  “Including that cherub,” he said. Paimon thought back to the creature that latched itself to his back during his ferry ride with Charon. “It wasn’t saying ‘just a bell.’ It was saying ‘Jezebel.’ Poor thing was trying to warn me, wasn’t it?”

  “You can pick your jaw up now,” she said.

  “But scripture says you’re in Hell.”

  “I was, for a little while,” she said. “The Devil created me first, and then the rest of the sins bred out of his possession over me. Wrath may have created The Void, but I created Wrath.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Paimon. “The Devil’s incapable of love.”

  Lust smiled. “That’s where I come in.”

  A blinding light enveloped their surroundings.

  A high-pitched sound rang through the air, bringing them to their knees.

  “What the?”

  It had stopped snowing, and grass suddenly crunched under their feet. A tall building stood in the distance and the screams of a dozen souls cut through in the air. Paimon searched them, but found them unfamiliar. None of them were Rhea’s.

  “What’s that ahead?” Paimon said, squinting.

  “The hospital.”

  Regret dug its claws into Paimon’s heart and he winced. Part of him wondered if he’d ever get used to the bottomless ache he felt every time he thought of Rhea. Not to mention what would soon become of her life.

  Lust put her hand over Paimon’s heart. Her green eyes flashed in the blackness from her hood, and she smiled. “It won’t go away, brother,” she said. “And you’ll never get used to it.”

  “Never?”

  “No,” she said. “It’s why we’re deadly.” She turned to face the building and sighed. “We can’t control what we are. That’s why you have to embrace it.”

  Paimon nodded, unsure that he would ever get used to it. How could he? The pain was too much and it wore heavy on his newly beating heart.

  The two of them walked in silence for the rest of the way, passing through nothing but dense fog until a succession of stone stairs built up before them, crawling out of the ground like the undead at feeding time. They’d passed no buildings and no people, yet there they were at the hospital, as if it had been there waiting for them all this time.

  Lust grabbed Paimon’s hand and looked him dead in the eye.

  “Let me tell you something,” she said. “I don’t want you to get your hopes up. Things aren’t going to change when we walk in there. The Devil can be charming, can be anything a girl wants or needs. If Rhea’s already committed herself, she won’t leave his side.”

  “You left,” he said.

  Lust took down her hood then, leaned in and whispered in his ear. “Yes, but I didn’t have a choice.”

  Chapter 46

  Lust opened the front door of the hospital and Paimon was immediately taken back by the smell of death and decay. Paint peeled off the walls in chunks of white and fell off the ceilings like dandruff. Exit signs hung limp from the ceiling and fluorescent lights flickered in the hallway, beckoning them forward.

  “Shall we?” said Lust.

  They walked down the corridors, hallways that echoed like hollow jars in the wind. Paimon took in the scratched lines on the walls, the abandoned desks covered in ash and computers that sparked and smoked. Blood stained the floor and pooled near the doorways in dark crimson puddles. Brimstone tainted the air and Paimon could taste Passover on his tongue.

  Baby’s breath and rain.

  “What do you feel?” said Lust as she ran her fingers against the wall. “I don’t sense the Devil here. Can you find Rhea?”

  Paimon stopped and closed his eyes, but he couldn’t find her. Rhea wasn’t in the hospital, even if her energy was.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “There’s something, but it’s not strong.”

  “Where’s it coming from?”

  He concentrated and explored through the hospital’s layout in his mind. The faintest scent of her blood caught his attention, three floors up, somewhere on the left? He couldn’t tell. A new stench muddied his focus.

  “Let’s move upstairs. Third floor.”

  “All right.”

  They were pushed to the stairs as the elevators sparked and hissed, their doors closed and dead on each floor. It wasn’t long before the scent of copper and mutilation—a musky smell that soured the air—filled the stairwell.

  “We’re close,” Paimon said.

  At the top of the third floor, Lust pushed open the exit door—slowly, carefully—and peeked through the crack she created.

  “Shit.”

  Paimon moved in beside her. “What’s wrong?”

  He pushed her away and barreled past her, into the corridor.

  There were bodies everywhere: propped against the walls, piled against the windows. A massacre? No. A feeding. They’d killed everyone, doctors, nurses, patients.

  “Fuck.”

  “Lucifer?” she said.

  “And the others.”

  Paimon and Lust walked down the third-floor corridor. The smell was rancid and sucker punched their chests. No matter how many times I’ve smelled mutilation, I never get used to it. The hallway was long; on both sides, every door hung off its hinges, as if waving, inviting them to come in. Paimon glanced inside one of the rooms and instantly regretted it. Patients, all dismembered and dissected in their beds, met his stare.

  Sweet sin.

  “We’re too late,” he said.

  The silence was overwhelming.

  Lust pushed past him and staggered down the hall. She covered her nose and mouth with her hand, but when she reached the last room on the right, she stopped and held up her other hand.

  “Stay there.”

  “Why, what did you find?”

  “I said stay there.”

  Anger rushed Paimon’s chest, his hands clenching into fists. He closed his eyes and breathed deep, tasting the aroma of flower and rain on his tongue. Rhea. Paimon tore down the hallway, refusing Lust’s warning. When he met her at the room’s window, he screamed.

  Lust turned from him as he beat on the door.

  No. No. No.

  Black blood stained the bed sheets and the heart monitor flanking the bedside signaled a red from the flatline. Rhea’s sister lay on the floor at the foot of the bed, her blond hair matted in blood. Her right arm was broken. A shard of bone poked out near her elbow like a white flag signaling defeat. She must have tried to get away. Bite marks—dozens of them—decorated her neck. Her head lolled to one side.

  But where was Rhea?

  “She’s gone,” said Lust. “And so is the child. He’s taken them back to Hell. You were right. We’re too late.”

  “No, it’s not possible,” said Paimon as he tore open Rhea’s locked door.

  He searched the room for her: looked under the bed, checked the bathroom, but all he found were footprints, both large and small, smudged on the tiled floor in long, red smears. They lead to the window and vanished on the ledge in a thick, drawn-out impasto of crimson and black. On the win
dow ledge was a box. A box Paimon knew all too well.

  “Please, no…” Paimon said as he walked toward it, arms outstretched.

  Lust trailed after him as Paimon walked past the bed, past the bodies, without fear, concern, or emotion. He couldn’t take his eyes off the package, the carefully wrapped parting gift, draped in twine and tied in a bow. There was a drop of blood on the nametag across a scribbled name. Rhea Harmon.

  “What is it?” said Lust.

  The box I never opened.

  Paimon’s heart quickened much like the first time he held the box all those days ago when it showed up giftwrapped at his cell door. He picked it up off the ledge and stared at it before unwrapping the bow. The twine fell apart in his hands and crumbled dust. Lust put her hand on his shoulder but he shrugged it off.

  “Paimon—”

  “Stop.”

  He lifted the lid on the box and let it fall to the ground. He didn’t hear it hit the floor, didn’t feel it brush against his leg. All he could see was what the box held. The file that he was supposed to have read, the notes about the soul he had been scheduled to claim.

  Everything inside had Aiden’s name on it.

  There were medical files, scrapes of paper with possible conception dates, and gestation charts that dated back to the night Paimon left for collection. The names of everyone in the hospital were listed in a notebook, and a full profile on Dr. Gainston, complete with picture and academic history, was wedged between the pages. He’d planned everything. Knew everything. Caden and Jayme’s high school graduation pictures were also there. The psychiatric files on Rhea’s mother were there, as well as the suicide note her father had left the night he shot himself. There was more, still. Paimon’s hands continued shaking the more he read until he dropped the box altogether. The realization was too much to process. Blank and speechless, he simply stared out the window.

  He was never supposed to claim Rhea.

  She had only been the host.

  It was Aiden the Devil had wanted all along.

  “Paimon?” said Lust. “Are you okay?”

  Paimon felt her hand on his shoulder, but he heard nothing. It was as if an avalanche had buried him, and he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t hear, couldn’t see. There were no words, no emotions, no thoughts.