“So you believe the elf legend to be based on you because of your ears, and I’m assuming your build. I remember elves are supposed to be tall and lean,” she said.
“Yes.”
“I don’t remember any elves with talons sprouting from the backs of their hands.”
“It’s not like humans saw everything through the veils once separating our worlds, and most of what they did see they jumbled up, or the passing of years twisted their tales into something entirely different.”
“What are the veils?” she asked.
“Some humans were able to glimpse into Hell and Heaven through the veils separating our worlds. It’s how many human myths were born and how some people knew about the existence of demons and angels. Some people glimpsed things in Hell and Heaven and revealed what they saw to other people. Other humans encountered demons and angels when they were allowed to walk the Earth. From werewolves to vampires to leprechauns, many demons are the basis of your legends. I am the closest thing to an elf you will find in the demon world.”
“What about Magnus? I could also see him as an elf, especially since he does have magic of a sort.”
I thought of Magnus, the last demon of illusions, and his ability to weave things out of thin air. I didn’t like the idea of humans twisting Magnus and me into the same legend, but with his magical abilities, lean build, and ice-blond hair, I couldn’t deny that it might be true.
“He has horns instead of pointed ears, but yes, Magnus or one of his ancestors could also fit into the elf legends,” I agreed.
“Interesting,” she murmured.
“Didn’t you learn anything about us at the wall?” I asked her.
“I never thought to ask about these kind of things,” she admitted.
“Why not?”
“Because I knew most of what I needed to know about demons.”
“How to kill us,” I said flatly.
“Yes.”
I didn’t know why her confirmation aggravated me; I knew what Wren was and that she’d only agreed to work with us to save the other Wilders. “With the way you think about demons, you must be expecting me to leave you here to die.”
“No, I’m not. You would have let me fall into the ouro’s hole by myself if you’d planned to let me die.”
At least she gave me that much credit.
“Besides, worse things than you have tried to kill me and failed,” she stated.
“And one day they might succeed.” I had to work to keep my talons restrained over the idea of her dying.
“Most likely,” she replied with a yawn. “But I never expected to live this long to begin with.”
“This long? How old are you, twenty-five?”
“Twenty-two, but some days I feel like I’m a hundred. How old are you?”
“A great deal older. I’m thirteen hundred years old.”
She snorted before coughing. “Did you say thirteen hundred?”
“I did.”
“Impressive. I didn’t think I’d make it to thirteen. I sure didn’t expect to turn twenty, and I doubt I’ll see thirty, but thirteen hundred! I can’t imagine living so many years. Most days, I can barely imagine the next hour, never mind tomorrow.”
Her words stirred sympathy within me, something I didn’t have much of, and I rarely had it for humans. When it came to Wren though, I only wanted her to be safe and know peace. However, I wasn’t sure Wren could ever know peace, not in these Wilds and not when she would do everything she could to keep the Wilders with her safe.
I didn’t know what she’d endured in her lifetime or what she’d done to survive it. In many ways, her life had been as brutal as mine, maybe more so, and it had probably been more brutal than most if not all of the civvies. Even now, with escapees from Hell roaming more freely across the planet than they ever had before, the wall and towns beyond it, were still safer than the Wilds.
Wren yawned again.
“This is a good place to rest. Get some sleep, and I’ll keep watch,” I told her.
“There’s nothing to watch and what about the jinn? Are we far enough away from them?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll stay awake and alert for anything coming.”
“Okay.”
I heard the scratch of something sliding down the rocks. When Wren spoke again, her voice came from lower than before.
“Corson?” she murmured.
She was so tired that she’d said my name. I didn’t point that out to her as I slid down the wall to sit beside her; it would only shut her down if I did. “Yes?”
“How many seals were there?”
“Two hundred three.”
“Shit,” she whispered. “And there was something different behind each of them?”
“Yes. The jinn were behind the ninetieth seal and the ouroboros behind the eighty-second.”
“And you’re sure all the seals fell?”
“I am, but not everything behind the seals broke free of Hell. Some were killed before they could reach Earth, and others were trapped in Hell when the gateway closed again.”
“At least there’s a bright side,” she murmured.
“There is.”
Her soft breaths filled the air, and I realized she’d fallen asleep sitting up. After a few minutes, she slumped toward me and her head dropped to my shoulder. A strange sense of tranquility settled over me as her body warmed mine while I listened for something stalking us through the tunnels. I’d cut them to pieces before they got anywhere near her.
Chapter Fourteen
Wren
“Here you go, my bonnie girl.”
I clasped the silver spoon my mother extended to me. Some of the batter was sliding to the side and threatening to fall off, but I licked it away before any of the precious dough could plop onto the floor. My feet thudded against the cabinet under me as I swung them back and forth while sitting on the counter.
Twisting the spoon, I rotated it to get more batter as some slipped down to settle on my fingers. I’d save that for after I cleaned off the spoon. My mother scooped out little balls of dough from the glass bowl before her and plopped them onto the cookie sheet.
Three years ago, we’d started the tradition of baking cookies once a week when my dad had started working Saturdays in the summer. We’d decided it would be our special way to make his weekend better.
When my dad came home from work, he’d kick off his shoes and inhale whatever new concoction my mom and I had whipped up for him. He would then call for his lasses. His Scottish accent had faded over his years in the States, but it was still noticeable. It was most noticeable when he said lass, which always made me giggle.
When I heard him arrive, I’d leap off the counter and run eagerly into his open arms, while my mom patiently waited her turn to kiss him. Tugging on my father’s red beard was the way I greeted him every time we were reunited, and he would swing me around until both of us became dizzy and couldn’t breathe from laughing. I couldn’t wait for him to come home today as we were baking his favorite cookies.
Though both my parents had come from Scotland as children, they hadn’t met each other until they were in their twenties. Both of them had gone to the same college in Kansas and happened to meet at a coffee shop. My mother had accidentally dumped her ice coffee in my father’s lap.
My mom once confided in me that it hadn’t been an accident. When she’d heard him talking with his friends, her curiosity was piqued, and she’d been determined to talk to him. Due to her shyness, she hadn’t known how to approach him and had thought her ice coffee would be a good way to break the ice. My father later confided in me that it hadn’t been an accident and he’d been so intrigued by her that he’d accidentally tripped her. Cold, wet clothes had been a small price to pay for love, he’d declared.
The way they told it, they’d been inseparable ever since, and I often asked them to tell me their story while they were tucking me into bed at night.
I licked the spoon again as, through
the open window behind me, the birds’ songs floated on the hot July air. Usually, we made the cookies earlier in the day before it became this hot out, but we’d had to go to the store for more ingredients before baking today. The heat of the oven would make the kitchen unbearable soon, but it was worth it for my dad to have his oatmeal cookies.
I was almost done licking the spoon when a strange whoosh went through the air. I had no idea what had caused it, but it blew the hair back from my face and silenced the day. My tongue froze on the spoon; I didn’t move as I tried to figure out if what I’d experienced was real. It had looked like the whoosh created a blast of air across the room like ripples spreading out from a stone tossed into a lake.
Maybe I’d imagined the ripple of air, but my hair had blown back. I glanced behind me at the open window. I hadn’t felt a breeze coming through it before, and I didn’t feel one now. Plus, the rush of air had blown my hair back not forward.
My tongue remained stuck to the spoon as I turned toward my mom. She’d frozen with her finger in the middle of scooping cookie dough onto the sheet. Gravity took over, and the ball fell with a wet plop onto the sheet. The sudden intrusion of sound caused me to jump.
My tongue returned to my mouth, and I slowly lowered the spoon as my mom lifted her head and her eyes met mine. Was that fear I saw there? My mom wasn’t afraid of anything!
I was struck with the overwhelming urge to cry as I gazed at her blue eyes, so similar in hue to mine. However, I’d turned eight last month, which meant I didn’t cry anymore. I certainly didn’t cry because I’d imagined seeing a ripple of air and it had suddenly become very quiet outside. That was something seven-year-olds did, and only because they were babies.
I resolved not to cry, but I squeaked when a bunch of car alarms went off at the same time and the high-pitched noise pierced the air. The spoon clattered onto the counter when I dropped it to clap my hands over my ears. My mother wiped her hands on her apron before gathering me into her arms.
I was small for my age, but I’d stopped letting her carry me two years ago. Now, I was happy to let her lift me off the counter as car horns and alarms continued to blare. I lowered my hands from my ears and hugged her. When the neighborhood dogs all released an eerie howl, my arms tightened around her neck.
“It’s okay, my bonnie girl,” she whispered, but her voice trembled before she kissed my temple.
Leaving the kitchen behind, she walked into the living room and toward the front door. Shifting her hold on me, she gripped the knob, twisted it, and stepped onto the porch. It was my porch with its peeling white paint, familiar red door, and drooping potted plants hanging from the beams. However, I felt as if we’d stepped into another world as dogs howled, horns honked, and people shouted to be heard over the cacophony.
My eyes went to the sky and the hundreds of birds rising from the trees. Their multicolored feathers would have been beautiful if there were a couple dozen of them, but now their colors blended until it became a rainbow of death spreading over us to block out the sky as they soared higher. Shade spread across the ground as the sun vanished behind their bodies, and it seemed as if it were closer to dusk than early afternoon.
The birds didn’t caw or shriek; they simply flew higher and higher. I couldn’t rid myself of the feeling that they knew something was coming and were fleeing from it. I wished for wings to take my mom and me away too, but that wish went unanswered as we remained standing on our sagging porch. Despite the summer day, a shiver ran down my spine and the hair on my arms rose. My mom choked when I hugged her tighter.
“Easy,” she said and tugged at my arms until I loosened my grasp.
My gaze scanned the nearby homes as people emerged to see what was happening. Most of them appeared as confused as I felt. Some of them had their keys pointed at their cars, and some of the alarms shut off. The noise lessened, but my ears still throbbed.
A lot of the adults had gone to work for the day, but most of those who remained had children standing by their sides. As I watched, a pack of teenagers slid from the woods across the street and crept closer to my neighbor’s porch.
Then, all the blaring car alarms abruptly ceased. The sudden hush of the world frightened me more than all the noise had. Tears welled in my eyes. I had no idea why I was crying, but they spilled out of my eyes and soaked my cheeks before I could stop them.
“Mommy,” I whispered as a few more people emerged from their homes.
“It’s okay,” she murmured as she rubbed my back. “A small earthquake probably set off the alarms and stirred up the birds.”
I’d never experienced an earthquake like it before, and I’d never seen the birds act so crazy, but I didn’t argue with her. I wanted her to be right too much to argue. I almost stuck my thumb in my mouth, something I hadn’t done in years, but I’d have to let her go, and I refused to do so.
You're a baby. Sniffling, I stifled my sobs.
My mom shifted her hold on me, her arms drooped and I knew she was going to set me down before she did. When my feet hit the porch, I stepped into her side and pressed as close as I could.
“What happened?” the elderly neighbor across the way called out. He leaned heavily on his cane as the teens stopped at the corner of his porch.
“Earthquake!” another neighbor called out.
“Sure didn’t feel like an earthquake!” Mrs. Campbell called out.
Mrs. Campbell’s son Chuck had his arms around her waist as he leaned against her side. I didn’t feel like such a baby now as Chuck was my age and my friend. If it hadn’t been cookie day, Chuck and I would have been in his backyard hunting for salamanders or playing king of the castle. I had planned to head over there as soon as the cookies were cooling.
Lifting my hand, I gave a small wave to Chuck. He slid one of his arms away from his mom and waved back at me.
“What else could it have been?” another woman demanded.
What else could it have been? I wondered as I gazed up and down the street. The sun had baked the asphalt until a haze wafted into the air and the scent of tar permeated the day. It was such a warm, summer thing to see and smell, yet my chill sank deeper into my bones, as did the certainty something was coming.
Some of our neighbors descended their stairs and jogged toward their cars. The dogs all released a shrill yapping before beginning to howl and bark. I slapped my hands over my ears again as fresh tears streamed down my cheeks. My mom wrapped her hand around my head and pulled me close. She cradled me against her stomach when some of the dogs yelped in pain before their cries no longer blended with those of the others. My heart ached for those animals before they abruptly went silent.
As one unit, the birds all swooped away from my neighborhood as fast as they could. Their disappearance caused a burst of sunlight to stream down. I blinked rapidly as my eyes adjusted. All the neighbors stopped where they were, and their heads slowly turned back and forth as they searched the street.
I held my breath until my lungs burned and I gasped in air. My fingers curled into my mom’s belly as that impending sense of something looming closer grew stronger with every passing second.
And then I saw a shadow creeping through the side yard toward the teenagers. I didn’t know what the shadow was until a creature emerged. The creature resembled a man, but it had two black horns curving out of its head and the legs of a goat. It jumped on one of the teen boys. The teen girls shrieked and fled across the street toward our house and the neighborhood beyond. The other two boys tried to pry the weird-looking man off the teen. When they were unsuccessful in freeing their friend, they turned and fled too.
I felt as if I were viewing one of those horror movies I wasn’t supposed to see, but that Chuck and I had snuck out of his parents’ collection and watched in my basement. The man-looking creature couldn’t be real and neither could the teen’s screams as that thing tore into his belly. Those vivid red intestines spilling across the ground certainly couldn’t be real. It was all make-believe, but
those were the most genuine and pain-filled screams I’d ever heard.
Some of our neighbors fled into their homes and doors slammed. Others raced toward their cars, and new shadows slid forth to reveal more hideous creatures. The creatures all had human-like qualities to them, but they were also deformed in some animalistic way.
A scream lodged in my throat as more of my neighbors were pounced on and torn to pieces. My mom turned and ran into the house with me against her side. I didn’t realize I was sobbing loudly until the door closed behind us. The thick wood door shut out some of the shrieks of the panicked and dying, but they still drifted through the open windows. The screams grew louder when more of them filled the air, and I had the unsettling feeling I was listening to all my neighbors dying.
And we would be next.
“It’s okay. It’s okay,” my mom breathed over and over again as she turned the locks on the door. “We’ll just… we’ll…” She never finished what she was going to say. Propelling me forward, she snatched the phone from where it sat on the table by the couch. She frantically hit buttons before holding the phone to her ear. She pulled it away, hit more buttons, listened to it again, and flung it aside. “Shit!”
I started to cry harder. My mother never swore in front of me. I found it more unsettling and real than seeing the teen boy being torn apart by some human-animal mix.
“It’s okay; it’s okay,” she said again as she rubbed at my arms. “You have to stop crying. You have to be a big girl now, and big girls don’t cry, right?”
I nodded, but I found I couldn’t speak as terror pulsed in my veins. I blinked away my tears and wiped off the snot pouring from my nose with the back of my hand.
“Good girl,” my mom said as she crept over to one of the windows and leaned over to peer out it. She jerked back. She tried to hide it, but I felt the tremor running through her.
“Daddy,” I whispered when she edged me away from the window.
“He’s fine,” she said. “You’re going to have to hide now.”
Hell on Earth (Hell on Earth, Book 1) (Hell on Earth Series) Page 8