Then something hit me with the weight of a door bashing against my whole body. Flung back, my breath exploded out of me when I smashed into a wall. Rocks and dirt fell around me; my teeth knocked together so violently I was certain they’d shattered, but I managed to keep my knife.
Revulsion swept me when one of the rattles on a smaller tail ran over my face. Another tail slithered up and down my arm while the tip of another ran over my outer thigh. I thrust my knife into the ouro. The blade caught in the thick snakeskin before giving way beneath the weight of my body.
The skin felt a foot thick, too thick for my blade to get too far into the ouro, but it had to have hurt the serpent as one of the tails started thumping the side of my face. A rattle beat on my head and another one hit my arm with enough force to bruise the bone.
“Son of a bitch!” I gasped and tore my knife free.
I swung the knife at one of the tails and embedded it in the bottom of it. As I sawed back and forth, more rattles went off and beat me. I didn’t stop, not until I succeeded in severing the tail.
Hot liquid gushed over my face. I recoiled from the blood pumping forth as another tail bashed into my arm and the ouro thrashed to the side. I didn’t know if I was the one causing the ouro to writhe in pain, if it was Corson, or if it was a combination of the two of us. Either way, I wasn’t about to stop slicing it apart.
My palms slipped on the handle of the knife as I gripped it in both hands, lifted it over my head, and drove it down. The snake hissed, and another tail pummeled my head.
Chapter Twelve
Corson
My talons slid over the back of the ouro as I felt it throw its head up. Something crashed and I guessed the sound was that of the ouro driving its nose into the ceiling when debris rained down on me. Stones pelted my skin with so much force that some of them broke in half before tumbling away. I held onto the creature, refusing to let it flee from me again. It would only continue to stalk us if it escaped now, waiting for us to become too exhausted to fight.
The hoods on the sides of the ouroboros’s head opened with a swish before they battered back against my chest. Not being able to see the thing was infuriating, but I felt my way over it as I worked to destroy it.
Wren’s gun fired in brief flashes that revealed where she was as she dashed around the tunnel. The bullets hit the ouro with a thud; the creature hissed and lunged forward as I dug deeper into it. I sliced it from the top of its head, down its neck.
Wren’s shots ceased. The ouro flung up the back half of its body, bashing it off the ceiling. My head bounced off the rocks above me, and a chunk of my hair tore out as the ouro tried to batter me off it. I ducked before the serpent could smash my brains out and slid to the side.
My talons sliced across the ouro’s neck and throat as I swung down. The ouro reared back; more debris fell when it rose again to attempt burrowing its way out of there. When it failed to knock me free, its head twisted in such a way that I knew it was trying to sink its poisonous fangs into me.
Wren groaned, and rock shattered. Renewed fury surged through me. I’d tear this thing apart piece by piece; I’d make it pay in the most excruciating ways possible for harming her. The scent of the ouro’s blood filled my nostrils, fueling my bloodlust.
I pulled my other hand back and drove my talons into its throat. The ouro released a choking sound that did nothing to ease my wrath over whatever it had done to Wren. As I worked to destroy the ouro, I strained to hear anything from Wren, but I didn’t perceive any sounds from her.
She has to be alive; she has to be!
I bared my teeth at the possibility she wasn’t and pulled my hand back again. I swung my fist forward to batter the ouro with my talons. I was determined to end this so I could get to her. I had to touch her again and know she was okay.
I pummeled the ouro until I tore away enough flesh to maneuver into its throat and grasp its tongue. When I yanked the ouro’s tongue backward, the snake recoiled as I tore its tongue out and sliced it off. The ouro released a strange screaming hiss before its body exploded with movement and it reared upward again.
The deafening cacophony of rattles bounced off the tunnel walls. The ouro tried to thrash me off but only succeeded in raining down more rubble on us. I scrambled up the side of the snake, my talons digging through scales and corded muscle as I worked myself around its back and down to its throat. It continued to twist in attempt to sink its fangs into me or knock me off as it rose up, but it couldn’t shake me off.
Sliding back down the other side of it, I worked around in a circle that cut deeper and deeper into the ouro. I clung to the snake as it surged upward again. The ouro hit the ceiling with a hard thud. More debris rained down as the ouro made another attempt to break further through the earth overhead, but beneath me its movements had become sluggish as I continued to slice at it.
Its flesh gave way with a wet tearing sound before its head tipped forward at an unnatural angle. I scrambled to get out of the way before it could pin me against its chest when its head drooped forward, and all the rattles ceased. I hacked my way through the remaining sinew of the ouro’s neck until its head hit the ground with a thump.
Still holding onto its headless neck, I felt the body hurl upward once more before becoming rigid against me. The ouro’s neck remained in the air for a second then it went limp. I rode the ouro to the ground where it flopped up once more before going still. Kneeling on the ouro, I strained to hear anything from Wren, but the tunnel had become quiet once more.
“Wren?” I demanded, my heart thudding as I waited for a reply.
My shoulders heaved as I retracted my talons to run a hand through my blood-soaked hair before leaping to my feet. Blood adhered my shirt to my chest and dripped down my flesh as it fell from my hands. I had no idea what I would do if she didn’t respond to me, but I did know anything that got in my way after this would regret it.
“Wren!” I whispered. “Where are you?”
Silence met my question.
Wren
The small tails beating against my arms stood up straight against my sides. All the rattles went off at once before ceasing abruptly and going limp as the snake sagged. The heavy weight of the ouro pinned me to the wall.
I didn’t know what had happened, but I remained unmoving as I waited for the tails to renew their attack on me.
“Wren!” I heard a note of panic in Corson’s voice from somewhere in the tunnel.
Panicked for me? I refused to acknowledge the little thrill of happiness that came with the question.
“Wren, where are you?” he demanded.
“He…”
I spit away the ouro blood I hadn’t realized was on my lips. Lifting my arm, I ran it across my mouth to wipe the blood away. I only succeeded in smearing more of it over my face as ouro goo also splattered my forearm. Fine, whatever, snake blood in the mouth was not the worst thing to ever happen to me.
“Here,” I said and cringed at the acrid taste filling my mouth.
“Are you okay?” His voice was closer than it had been.
“Peachy keen,” I muttered and shoved uselessly against the dead weight holding me prisoner.
My hands stilled on the snake. That phrase had been something my mother used to say to me. Never before had I uttered those words, but they’d just fallen from my lips with ease.
No, my mother hadn’t said that. She’d said something different, or something more. My mind spun as I tried to recall what that more had been. Past and present lurched together disconcertingly. I never delved into the past, never tried to remember, but now I felt memories sliding forth to take over my mind. The scent of baking cookies rose up to replace the stench of ouro death.
Peachy keen, jellybean! That’s what she’d said to me!
The words floating across my mind held the faintest hint of her Scottish accent. She’d come to the U.S. as a child, and had lost most of her accent over the years, but occasionally Scottish undertones would slip back in
to her speech. She’d always been laughing as she’d uttered that saying to me, and I could hear her laughter once more. It had been so long since I’d recalled those words and her laugh, but now they reverberated in my head.
My mother hadn’t just laughed; she’d embraced the laugh. I’d never heard anyone laugh like her. Whenever she laughed, people smiled, and I had smiled too. It used to make me happy just to be in the presence of someone who embraced life with the open abandon my mother had.
I tried to shut the door on the memory, but it remained stubbornly open to let more memories spill free.
No! The word blasted angrily across my mind. I didn’t have the time to deal with the past while this snake trapped me! I pushed against the unbudging ouro. I tried to pry my feet from under it, but they remained stuck.
No matter how I struggled to rid myself of the snake and my mother’s laugh, they both refused to let me go. I’d barely spared my mom more than a second’s thought in years, but now it was as if her death had occurred only yesterday. The scabs on my heart peeled away, leaving me raw.
It took another minute, but I finally succeeded in tucking my mother right back into the box I kept her in, and I pried my feet out from under the ouroboros. Propping one hand against the wall and the other on the ouro’s supple scales, I lifted myself up. My shaking arms gave way, and I slumped against the wall with my legs sprawled out across the snake.
I couldn’t stop myself from smiling when I realized I finally had a chance to sit.
A crunch sounded in front of me. I lashed out with my foot and came up against something solid.
“Dammit, Wren,” Corson hissed, and I realized I’d kicked him in the shin.
“Sorry,” I muttered. “Next time warn a person.”
“Yes, let me do that and give away my location.”
“Do you think there’s still something in here with us?” I frantically looked around at nothing.
“I’m not taking any chances, and the jinn most likely heard your gunfire. We have to get away from here. Are you injured?”
“No. Are you?”
“My wounds are already healing.”
“Oh, yeah.”
Not only were demons stronger, faster, and immortal, with enhanced senses, they could also regenerate their body parts, heal with incredible speed, and didn’t get diseases or even catch a cold. The only thing that killed them was decapitation. It hadn’t taken us long to figure that out in the Wilds, and we’d adapted to aim for the head on all our enemies.
“Is it really dead?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“We can carry its head out as a trophy if you’d like?”
“I don’t have a wall to hang it on, so I’m perfectly fine with leaving it behind.”
He chuckled, and his hand touched my arm. “That’s what I figured. Let me help you up.”
“I don’t need help.”
His hand fell away. “Of course you don’t.”
Was that a note of sadness in his voice? That couldn’t be possible. He enjoyed flirting with me, and he would take me to his bed if I agreed to it, but he didn’t care about anything else when it came to me. Then I recalled his lips against mine, the brief taste of his skin on my tongue. The remembrance of it was sharp enough to shove aside the sour taste of ouro blood lingering in my mouth.
I pulled my hand away when I realized I’d lifted it to my lips. Yes, we’d kind of kissed, but what difference did that make? He’d probably kissed thousands of women in however many years he’d been alive, and I’d kissed men before. But none of those men made my heart race, my palms sweat, and my stomach flutter like Corson did.
Ugh, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was leaving before any more crappy things could arrive to try killing us. Bracing my hand against the wall, I pushed myself up. “How do we get out of here?” I whispered.
“I have no idea,” Corson replied.
My heart sank. “We’re lost?”
“Unless you can recall how to get out?”
I shook my head and then almost stomped my foot in frustration when I recalled he couldn’t see me.
“No, I can’t.” I hated that the words came out as a croak, but as bad as being hunted by the ouro was, realizing we had no idea how to get out of this maze it created was worse. “Are there any more of these things?”
“No.”
“Being lost in here is at the top of my shit list, but at least we can check one seal creature off the list.”
“That we can,” Corson agreed. “Now let’s go before the jinn arrive.”
This time I did stomp my foot on the snake when I nodded my agreement instead of speaking it. “Yeah, let’s go.” I shuffled down the curve of the ouro’s body and into the tunnels once more.
Chapter Thirteen
Corson
Wren and I didn’t speak as we traveled deeper into the labyrinth. I didn’t know if we were going in a new direction, heading back the way we’d come, or wandering in endless circles. Without light, there was no way to mark where we’d been or to detect any significant difference from one tunnel to the next.
When the rockier walls became mostly dirt once more, I thought we were making our way back up and possibly out, but the soil had given way to rock again after a hundred or so feet. The air felt and smelled the same no matter where we went, stale and earthy. Some tunnels had a breeze in them, and those were the ones I turned into with the hope an exit had created the breeze, but they never offered a way out.
Now we were in what I assumed was a small cave system due to the solid stone walls and the trickle of water drawing me onward. I ran my hand over the walls until my fingertips dipped into cool water. Wren’s arm brushed mine as her fingers fumbled over the wall too.
“Here,” I said and took her hand to guide it into the water. “Drink some.”
“I don’t dare,” she whispered. “Not when we don’t know the source, and I can’t boil it.”
“You have to be thirsty.”
“And I can remain thirsty for another day or two. That water could kill me before then. I’ve gone longer without water before, believe me, and at least it’s cool in here, so I’m not sweating. I do want to wash some snake gunk off me though.”
I listened to water splashing as she tried to clean herself in the thin stream while I struggled to control my impulse to grab her and hug her against me. She was so frail, so mortal. This water was something so simple, something I had no concern for at all, yet it was life to her, and there was nothing I could do to give her what she needed.
“You next,” she whispered and I heard her step away from the wall.
I cupped my hands and let the water fill them before splashing it over my face and hair. I washed myself the best I could before moving away. “I’ll get you out of here,” I promised her.
“Not if we keep standing here,” she retorted, but her tone held none of her usual defensiveness against me, and I heard the exhaustion in her voice.
I touched her arm, drawing her after me as I turned to wind my way through the maze once more. I wanted to return to the ouro and tear it apart some more for trapping us in this place, but I’d never be able to find my way back to it.
Wren stumbled behind me, and her hand hit me in the back. I turned and caught her before she fell to the ground. Drawing her closer, I closed my eyes as I recalled my lips brushing over hers. She’d been about to let me kiss her, something I’d never thought she would allow, but she hadn’t pulled away.
I’d been so close to tasting more of her when I’d sensed the ouro slithering toward us. If my instincts hadn’t alerted me in time, we’d both be dead right now. She was a giant distraction in this place, but I found myself wondering if she would let me taste her again now.
Then, her legs wobbled with exhaustion. Protective instincts I hadn’t known I possessed rushed to the forefront. She’d never admit it, but she needed to rest.
“We’ll stop here for a bit,” I
said.
“We have to…” I heard her gulp. “We have to get out of here.”
“We’re not going to escape if you can’t walk.”
“I can walk!” Though I couldn’t see it, I knew her chin had shot up.
“You are an obstinate creature.”
“I’m not a creature; I’m a human being. You’re a creature.”
I would have laughed if her stubbornness hadn’t been so infuriating. “I’m an adhene demon. Not a creature.”
I was waiting for her wise-ass reply when she pulled herself out of my arms. “What is an adhene demon?”
“To the human world, the closest equivalent might be your elves. Adhenes aren’t magical or anything like that, but your elf legends are probably based on us. Adhenes are fast, powerful, and known to be mischievous.”
I almost jumped away from her when her fingers brushed over the tip of my right ear. At first, I half-expected her to cut it off until she caressed it. Unable to stop it from happening, I hardened instantly against my zipper. If she had any idea how sensitive my ears were to stimulation and what she was doing to me, she would pull away.
Unable to resist, I stepped closer until her chest pressed against mine, but I was careful to keep my waist away from her. Her breasts were the perfect size to fill my hands. I should know, I’d often fantasized about touching and tasting them since meeting her.
“Adhene demons are rare,” I murmured as I tilted my head into her stroking fingers and closed my eyes. “I’ve been the last purebred adhene in existence since my parents died, but the few demons who also possessed adhene blood were killed during the final battle with Lucifer.”
“I see,” she said, and her hand fell away from my ear. “It must be lonely for you.”
I restrained myself from seizing her hand and returning it to me. For the first time, I was grateful for the dark so she couldn’t see when I adjusted my erection. “I’ve become used to it,” I told her, though I didn’t like to dwell on the knowledge I was the last of my kind and that no other purebred adhenes would exist after me.
Hell on Earth (Hell on Earth, Book 1) (Hell on Earth Series) Page 7