Into the Abyss

by Brenda K. Davies

Magnus

  I couldn’t shake the twinge to my conscience Amalia’s defeated air created. Happiness had exuded from her while she watched the seeds floating in the air; now, she looked dejected.

  Is this really her first time here?

  She’d insisted it was, but I found it impossible to believe her. If this was where the jinn came to inflict their torment, they would spend as much time here as they spent hunting for their victims on Earth. The jinn would never wait until they fed on and tortured their victims to death in here before returning to Earth to find new prey. No, a hunger like what the jinn possessed would propel them to hunt for more and more targets.

  But Amalia had looked so enchanted with the grass that I almost found myself believing she’d never been here and she wasn’t the same as the rest of her ravenous kind.

  Maybe there really were jinn who were different. So very little was known about the creatures, it could be possible they weren’t all destructive and malicious.

  But then, she was jinn, and one thing I knew about the jinn was they were manipulative. This may all be an excellent act on her part.

  Maybe it made me a fool, but I wanted to believe it wasn’t.

  My gaze dropped to the curve of her round ass, emphasized by the flow of her dress. I didn’t think she realized it as she hadn’t tried to use her looks to her advantage against me, but she was the most enticing woman I’d ever met.

  Watching her, I couldn’t help but visualize my hands cupping her ass as I rubbed my horns over her silken flesh. I’d never considered doing such a thing with my sensitive horns before, but I wanted to stroke every inch of her with them until she begged for more.

  I’d gotten a hint of what her arousal would smell like before we stepped into this place and the fiery aroma was seared into my nostrils. If I dipped my head between her thighs to feast on her, she’d grip my horns, and her scent would increase until it engulfed me. I craved that with this woman.

  When my growing erection started making walking difficult, I was torn from my fantasies of Amalia.

  Idiot! For all I knew, Amalia was somehow feeding such fantasies into my mind, though I doubted it. I was well aware of what was going on around me, and her effect on me, whereas it seemed those in the camp were not. However, this was the world of the jinn, and if I wasn’t careful, I wouldn’t make it out of here alive.

  I didn’t look at her again but kept my gaze focused on where the land met the sky as we climbed.

  When Amalia reached the top of the hill, she lifted her head, released a small cry, and stumbled back. The revulsion on her face told me I wasn’t going to like what I saw before I reached the apex, but I could never have prepared myself for what lay beyond.

  CHAPTER 7

  Magnus

  “This is why others fear us,” Amalia whispered.

  If others saw this, they would do far more than fear the jinn; they would make it their mission to eradicate them. When Kobal learned of this, he may decide to eliminate the jinn completely, and I would help him.

  Then, my gaze fell on Amalia’s trembling lower lip, and the tears sliding down her cheeks. Her eyes were the color of ochre; it was a color that suggested heartache. I almost rested my hand on her shoulder to offer her comfort, but I couldn’t fall into her trap if she were playing games with me.

  Bowing her head, she turned from the scene below us and wiped away her tears. She threw back her shoulders and lifted her chin before meeting my gaze.

  “I think your friends will be below,” she said.

  “I think you’re right.”

  The only problem was I’d prefer not to enter what lay before us, and from the look on her face, so would Amalia, but I had no choice. I couldn’t return to Earth without at least attempting to rescue as many of my friends as possible.

  If I didn’t do something to try to save them, so many could be lost, and I didn’t have many friends. Corson would also join the status of lost or dead if I failed to save Wren. Shax was my friend for centuries before I retreated from the war we’d engaged in with Lucifer to work on honing my ability to create illusions.

  I knew Lix before I retreated, but I wouldn’t have called him a friend; I would now. Erin, Vargas, and Hawk had become my friends in the time since I first met them. Bale was not my favorite demon, and though I wouldn’t call us friends, I’d never leave her to the fate of what lay below us, and she wouldn’t leave me to it either.

  Born and raised in Hell, I’d witnessed and created some pretty horrific things over the centuries. I’d seen the collapse of the seals and the slaughter Lucifer unleashed when he reached Earth, but none of it could have prepared me for the jinn’s Abyss.

  This place was a nightmare come to life.

  The pathway unfurling before us meandered like a serpent through the rock walls lining it. From our position, I could see at least ten more pathways cutting across the barren valley in a sidewinding pattern that caused many of the paths to vanish in and out of view. I suspected it was all the same path stretching throughout, but it was impossible to tell.

  On top of the jagged rocks the paths cut through stood thousands of scraggly trees over what must be miles of Abyss. Once we entered the pathway, the height of the walls would block most of the trees from us. The trees were bent over as if the air itself pushed down on their blackened branches, and irregular formations stuck up between their wilting trunks. Something about those formations tugged at my mind as I tried to place them.

  They’re rib bones. And that is a skull, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a creature shaped like that before.

  “They’re bones.” Amalia placed her hand over her mouth as she came to the same conclusion I had.

  “Are there any unusual beasts in this land?”

  “Not that I know of. I was only ever told it was a land for the jinn.”

  So the jinn probably brought creatures into hunt and slaughter. Is that why she brought me here? Am I their next hunt?

  That could be an excellent possibility, but dwelling on it would only make me paranoid, and I had far more significant problems to contend with. Besides, none of the skeletons looked demon or human, and most of them were small.

  I turned my attention away from the trees and skeletons and back to where all the paths converged in the center of the Abyss. There, rising from a large crater was a multi-sided, metallic black, monolith.

  The monolith rose at least a thousand feet into the air before ending in a pointed top. From here, I could see faint lines on it that I assumed were etchings marking the surface of it, but I was too far away to know for sure. Hovering in the air beside the primary structure, three more elongated, diamond-shaped monoliths orbited the massive one in the center like they were its moons.

  All the same color as the main one, each of them was sharp enough to split a demon or Hell creature in two. As I watched, a fourth one rotated into view, and one of the others disappeared behind the central monolith.

  Though I saw no sun, the Abyss was a scorched, barren wasteland. However, it wasn’t shrouded in darkness. I didn’t cast a shadow, but enough light emitted from somewhere that we could navigate the pathways.

  When I glanced behind me, the purple grass continued to sway and dip. The red sky over the field and lake mirrored the one over the pathways and monolith, but the sky over the grass seemed less foreboding. Over the monolith, the sky had the appearance of a festering sore and looked prepared to strike down any who ventured into the inhospitable environment.

  For a second, I pondered if the Abyss was real or if all this was something created to fuck with my mind. Am I just like everyone else in the camp and playing out my role in the jinn’s game?

  The possibility caused my mind to spin. Then, I recalled the way Amalia opened the portal and felt the grass brushing against my fingers and waist. No, the Abyss was real, and it was another plane, just as Earth, Hell, and Heaven were different planes residing alongside each other until the humans opened the gateway. Except, unlike those plan
es, the Abyss could be manipulated, and the jinn were adept at doing that. I had a feeling the Abyss evolved with the jinn or the jinn with the Abyss.

  A part of me knew the Abyss could still be some elaborate deception, and I could be trapped like the others, but if I stayed focused on it, it would drive me mad. If this were a game, then I would have to play until I could break free, and if it wasn’t, then it wasn’t; but either way, I had to continue.

  “Why the grass and lake and then this shithole? Why are there two such entirely different places in the Abyss?” I asked.

  Amalia lowered her hand from her mouth and inhaled a shuddery breath. “I… I don’t know.”

  Is she telling the truth? I didn’t think she was capable of being this good of an actress, but trusting a jinni was what landed their victims in this place.

  But I couldn’t figure the Abyss out. It made no sense the jinn were trying to lure their victims into a false sense of security by bringing them into the field of grass before revealing this to them. They already had their victim here, there was no need for that, but perhaps it was their way of playing with them like a cat with a mouse.

  Still…

  I turned my attention back to the monolith as a bolt of silver lightning ripped from the sky. It pierced straight into the top of the main monolith. From there the lightning sizzled all the way down the structure, before racing back up to the top where it burst out in four different bolts that struck the heads of the orbiting moons.

  Those smaller structures froze in place and started glowing before suddenly erupting and sending a flash of light across the land. Illuminated by the wave of light the bolt created, the red sky pinkened before becoming an angry red again. The original bolt sizzled when it hit the structure, but everything following it remained disconcertingly hushed.

  Amalia gasped and rubbed at the goose bumps covering her flesh as she huddled into herself. She somehow looked smaller and was more than a little repulsed.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Amalia murmured. “But I felt the… power and… the wrongness of whatever it was go through me. Didn’t you?”

  “No. What do you know about this place?”

  Some of her revulsion vanished as she shot me an irritated look. “I’ve told you everything I know.”

  Turning away from the pathways, she continued to rub her arms while she stared across the field of swaying grass. “Maybe the two sides of the Abyss are so different because there are different jinn,” she murmured. “This side—” She waved a hand at the grass. “—resonates with something inside me. But that side….” Her voice trailed off, and she didn’t look back as she waved a hand behind her. “I don’t want anything to do with it.”

  Is she lying to me? I despised this not knowing if I could trust her more than I loathed the barren land before us.

  “But, the only choice we have is to go deeper into it,” she said and faced the monolith again. “It’s only grass and water back there. And here… well, here are pathways leading somewhere. I can’t imagine there’s anything good down there, which means its where we have to go.”

  “But what lies between here and where the pathways lead?”

  Her troubled eyes met mine before darting away. “I don’t know, but if the jinn are in this place, I suspect they’re in the pit or close to that thing.”

  I didn’t have to ask what she meant by that thing; I knew it was the monolith.

  “Let’s go.” I didn’t look back before starting onto the pathway.

  CHAPTER 8

  Amalia

  Everything about this place made my skin crawl, and I was afraid the lump clogging my throat might become a permanent condition. The jagged red, black, and gray rocks jutting from the walls surrounding us leeched any happiness from me.

  I despised this place, yet a part of me belonged here as I couldn’t deny something about the Abyss called to me. I didn’t understand what that meant, or what about this stark place could resonate so deeply inside me when the Abyss represented everything I disliked about being a jinni.

  Perhaps I was more like my family than I’d realized, but that answer didn’t feel right. There was something here. What that something was, I didn’t know, but I wouldn’t back down from the wrongness of the Abyss, and I would not leave anyone trapped here if I could help them.

  After seeing this place, I no longer cared what the consequences of getting involved in this might be for me with the other jinn. No one deserved to endure anything that happened here.

  As we wound our way deeper into this place of despair, it became increasingly clear that though I loved my parents, I didn’t fit in with them. When this was over, I would go to the Faulted and live with them.

  Lifting my head, I was met with only more rock walls and the dead branches of the trees overhanging the pathway in some areas. In a few places, we had to step over the broken and nearly pulverized remains of small skeletal creatures. I kept my gaze diverted from those bones, but I couldn’t forget the skeletons I’d seen scattered between the trees.

  “Where are they?” I didn’t realize I’d spoken the question out loud until Magnus replied.

  “Are you hoping to find the jinn?”

  “No!” I blurted. “I meant where are those who are trapped here? They have to be here somewhere, don’t they?”

  His eyes were questioning when they met mine, and then his gaze slid over me. I sensed he had no idea what to make of me, but in the end, his distrust would never allow him to see me as anything other than a jinni.

  “I would think so,” he replied before focusing on the path again. “I hope so anyway, as it means we’re heading toward nothing otherwise. Can you open a portal out of here from this spot?”

  “On the other side, we can open a doorway from anywhere, so I assume it’s the same here.” I stopped and lifted my hand before my face, but he grasped it before I could attempt an opening.

  “Do the jinn know when someone opens a portal in and out of this place?”

  “No.”

  His silver eyes were remorseless on mine as he tried to ascertain if I was telling the truth or not. While he silently debated this, his thumb slid over the back of my hand. It was a gesture I didn’t think he was aware of, but my pulse picked up.

  A prickle of awareness came to life in my breasts, and when my nipples poked against my dress, they drew Magnus’s gaze to them. There was nothing I could do to hide them as, unlike humans, I didn’t wear anything under my dress.

  In Hell, we never wore clothing, but once on Earth, the jinn adapted to it. Most humans didn’t trust anyone wandering around nude, and jinn needed to earn their trust to get their wish. I didn’t have to do that, but I’d taken to wearing clothes because I liked the different colored dresses and the way they felt against my skin. Even the thin, pink slippers I wore were comfortable and fun, but I found the human’s undergarments restrictive.

  Besides, I didn’t care if I was exposed more than a human would think acceptable. It was impossible to be shy when locked behind a seal with forty-six other jinn. My parents were Chosen and only with each other, but none of the other jinn were. They’d happily bounced from jinni to jinni, sometimes having orgies for endless periods of time.

  As I grew older, I’d watch the things they did to each other and absorbed the enjoyment they took in it. I’d yearned to come of age and join them for something to break the monotony of my existence, but also because their sensual cries stimulated me in much the same way Magnus’s gaze did.

  If I’d never been caged behind the seal, I would have been free to experiment with demons closer to my age, but behind the seal, all the jinn were thousands of years older than me. While I was still aging, they’d seen me as too young to join them, but it was clear Magnus didn’t see me as too young and would teach me things I’d only witnessed before.

  The image of gripping Magnus’s horns while pulling his mouth between my legs burst through my mind. I’d watched men and wom
en enjoy the act with each other behind the seal and was impatient to experience it. But I didn’t desire it with them, not anymore. I wanted it with this man.

  It stunned me to realize that no matter how curious I’d been about having the jinn do to me what they did to each other, I’d never craved any of them as badly as I did Magnus.

  Lust emanated from Magnus as his eyes slid from my breasts to my stomach before settling on the juncture between my thighs. He may not trust me, but he desired me. If we weren’t in this awful place, I had no doubt I’d lift my dress and let him have me.

  As it was, it took all I had not to lean against the rocks and beckon him closer, but I didn’t think a quick taking by this man would be enough to satisfy me. And once it was done between us, I’d want to do it all over again.

  What an odd thought to have.

  I’d seen enough of demons to know they freely rotated through partners, it’s what I’d planned to do once I got the chance, but I didn’t think I’d easily move on from Magnus. Confusion rolled through me as I tried to process the odd thought while fighting my hunger for this man.

  Then I realized I probably only thought it because Magnus was the first demon I’d encountered, outside the jinn, who didn’t scare me.

  Since being free of the seals, I had little contact with other demons. Those I did encounter were all craetons, and the maliciousness I’d sensed in them frightened me. They were also nowhere near as attractive as the man standing before me. A man who refused to see past what I was to who I was.

  I should have gone with the Faulted; I thought, not for the first time since entering this place.

  At least amongst them I was accepted, and they would shelter me from those who would have my empath ability going haywire. And once I stopped aging, they would stop treating me like a child and start treating me like a woman.

  And they wouldn’t desire me while completely distrusting me as Magnus did. That reminder strengthened my resolve against him.

  “We should go,” I said and strode away from him.