by Lizzy Ford
The Underworld
#4, Rhyn Eternal
By Lizzy Ford
http://www.LizzyFord.com/
Cover design by Eden Crane Design
http://www.EdenCraneDesign.com/
Mobi EDITION
The Underworld copyright ©2014 by Lizzy Ford
http://www.LizzyFord.com/
Cover design copyright © 2014 by Eden Crane Design
http://www.EdenCraneDesign.com/
Typography Copyright © by Regina, Mae I Design
http://www.MaeIDesign.com/
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
This novel is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events; to real people, living or dead; or to real locales are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.
Chapter One
For the first time in far too long, Death stepped from the portal room in Hell into his own domain. A towering, muscular form dressed all in black, he surveyed the world that was his with eyes darker than night. Power swept over him then retreated, lingering in the forests of the underworld, a sign he had not yet won the right to command his realm.
But he felt the tension around him. His magic recognized its rightful master and was struggling not to come to him. He was meant to be here, to break down the dam between him and the magic of the dead that was rightfully his. The souls were calling to him in a faint, mournful wail, their peaceful existence threatened by his weakness.
Hang in there, Gabriel urged them silently. I’m one step closer.
He had never been as relieved to be home as he was this moment, standing beneath the milky grey skies where even the weak midday sunlight never matched the power of the setting sun on the mortal plane. He found himself no longer squinting the way he did in the human world.
The trees moved, leaning away from him while their branches slithered like snakes far above his head. Shrubberies and other small plants scurried out of the way of the three invaders. The air was cool and light. It grazed his skin, bringing with it the familiar mossy scent of the forest.
Home.
“You know where we are?” Rhyn, his best friend and closest ally, asked from behind him. The silver-eyed half-demon was radiating a different kind of tense energy, probably as a result of their trip through Hell to get to the underworld. The power of Hell clung to him.
“Always.” Gabriel knew his home better than he knew anything else. “But my magic is still blocked. I’m not going to know if we’re in danger.”
The thick forest was too dense for him to see beyond the first layer of trees.
“We have two choices. We go Rhyn-style and smash everything in our path to get to the palace. Or, we take our time to scout and plan for a day or so,” Gabriel said, turning to face the others with him.
“I think Darkyn needs to make that call,” Rhyn responded.
The smaller, lean Dark One, the third member of Gabriel’s rescue party, was taking in his surroundings with a sharp gaze.
“How long does she have, Darkyn?” Gabriel asked gruffly. He wanted nothing to do with the demon lord. The only reason he allowed the Dark One to be there: the woman-turned-demon that was trapped somewhere in the underworld. They had no choice but to work together at this point.
Darkyn’s fists clenched. Unreadable, the lethal, youthful demon was glaring at him, his long fangs resting on his lips.
“Don’t be a dick, Darkyn,” Gabriel snapped. “We have the same goal. If we need to act fast, then tell me.”
“My mate is newly blood bound. She will weaken quickly,” growled the Dark One. “She doesn’t have more than three days.”
As usual, the demon’s candidness left Gabriel a little surprised. When Darkyn had no reason to lie, he was almost trustworthy. The problem: figuring out if this was one of those times, because trusting a lying demon almost always ended in someone losing his soul.
The only leverage Gabriel had was that Darkyn was also blood bound, meaning he’d need the blood of his mate or spin out of control with unquenchable bloodlust. And … he had begun to think that the ruler of Hell had a soft spot for the mate he claimed.
“Rhyn, go on ahead and scout. We’ll move fast,” Gabriel said.
“I’m going with the half-breed,” Darkyn replied.
“No. You’re staying with me.”
Darkyn faced off with him.
“Neither of us has any magic here. We have a better chance together, especially since the underworld hates full demons,” Gabriel said. And I’m not letting the Dark One loose in my fucking domain. “Rhyn, go.”
Rhyn drew a knife and trotted off, his thick frame disappearing into the thick foliage.
Gabriel half-expected Darkyn to trail, but the Dark One remained.
Breathing in the humid air, Gabriel assessed their location and the best way to approach the palace at the center of the underworld, where they needed to be. He had spent long enough repairing the defenses of the underworld to know where the best places to place scouts and sentries were. Common sense told him to go the path of least resistance.
The instincts of a master denied his place, however, wanted to chop a direct route through the forest and to slaughter those involved in betraying him and kidnapping his mate. As much as he hated agreeing with a demon, Darkyn was right. Gabriel needed to conquer his world once and for all.
Once he figured out how to do it without getting everyone around him killed.
“You up for a fight?” he asked Darkyn.
The demon drew two blades and spun them deftly in his hands.
“Thought so. No mercy, demon.”
“It’s not in my nature to grant such a thing.” Darkyn almost spat the words.
Gabriel chuckled. You really fucked up this time, Harmony. Betraying one deity was worthy of a sentence in Hell. Betraying two?
If his own mate wasn’t involved, Gabriel might’ve felt some remorse at the thought of turning over the traitorous death dealer to Darkyn.
Darkyn whirled the blades. The black band around his wrist caught Gabriel’s attention. “I didn’t know demons wore watches.”
“It’s not a watch. Why would an immortal give a shit about the passage of time?” Darkyn replied.
“So you’re just accessorizing?”
The Dark One pinned him with a glare.
Gabriel almost smiled. Poking the lethal demon was dangerous – but entertaining.
“It’s connected to Hell. Time passes differently in your underworld,” Darkyn explained. “This tells me how much time my mate has left before starvation or bloodlust take her.”
At once Gabriel felt guilty.
Sensing it, Darkyn offered a cold smile. “It also tells me how much longer your mate has until she loses her soul. That deal was made in Hell on Hell time.”
Note to self: never talk to this bastard again.
“At least it matches your outfit,” Gabriel managed.
The Dark One scowled. “Ever find the instruction manual you were looking for? The one to tell you how to do your job as Death?”
“Fuck you, Darkyn.” Gabriel had forgotten the demon was able to read the mind of human-Deidre – and knew every secret or thought he’d ever shared with the woman who had once been his mate for a few weeks.
Gabriel’s in
stincts were humming with warning. Everything from his heart to the human world was at stake, and he had nothing but his intuition, pure strength and flickers of mostly denied power to wrest back control of his underworld.
He couldn’t let himself think about the two women whose lives hung in the balance or the fact that no Death in history had allowed the Dark One access to his realm. Likewise, he wasn’t going to consider how many souls the rebelling death dealers had compromised or how much suffering the newly dead and supposed-to-be-dead were going through. He wasn’t even going to acknowledge the stifling Immortal Code or how many rules he’d broken.
He was here to reclaim what was rightfully his, no matter what the cost. Only then would everything else fall into place.
“Mates, blood, fate,” Darkyn’s growl was quiet as he recited the only sacred rules the deities were expected to follow. “In the time-before-time, that’s all there was. Right now, that’s all there is.”
Gabriel glanced at the demon. A full head smaller than his almost seven foot frame, Darkyn was deceptively underwhelming in person. But Gabriel knew how ruthless, aggressive and cunning the master strategist really was. With no conscience and battle prowess forged in the depths of Hell, the lean demon was one of the two greatest allies Gabriel could think of wanting at his side, and the greatest enemy he’d ever face.
I have a feeling he’ll be both before we leave here, he thought.
Despite knowing Darkyn wasn’t one to miss out on an opportunity to try to usurp the authority of a fellow deity, Gabriel almost felt a connection with the creature from the time-before-time, a demon hatched before any of the current realms existed. He wanted to think it was their mutual connection to the women trapped in the underworld, and ignore the fact that he’d begun to regard Darkyn in a different light since becoming a deity himself.
“Is this what the time-before-time like?” he asked, unable to help his curiosity about the mysterious era.
Without answering, Darkyn started forward, towards the living forest of the underworld.
“How did it end?” Gabriel pressed.
The demon lord paused and faced him. The slow, evil smile on his face told Gabriel he didn’t really want to know.
“The Dark One won,” Darkyn replied.
You’ll have to get through me first, Gabriel vowed silently. It wasn’t the right time to let Darkyn provoke him, not when Gabriel wasn’t able to access the power of the dead.
The stakes were higher than ever before. He pointed in the direction they needed to go and breezed by the bristling demon, determined to take back what was rightfully his before anyone else lost their souls.
Chapter Two
The former goddess of the underworld, known as past-Death, crept down the corridor leading through the dungeon. It was the most ancient part of her palace, all that remained of the original structure created in the time-before-time. The rest of the palace had been rebuilt many times over, but the worn, uneven stones lining the floor, walls and ceiling here had seen the passing of every age since Death first began ruling its domain.
With her memories stripped by the Dark One, she found herself pausing every few steps, listening hard, concentrating harder, knowing there were memories being whispered by the walls, secrets she was no longer privileged enough to hear. The dungeon had remained intact for millions of years, rendering it the most powerful stronghold in the underworld.
It should mean something to her, something important. Something she’d know if she were still a deity or if the damned Dark One hadn’t taken her memories.
The yellow-grey flames of ensconced torches located every ten steps or so along the corridor provided some light. Even weaker than the daylight in the underworld, there was more darkness in the hall than light despite the many torches.
She reached the end of the hallway and gazed at the solid wall. It was a dead end. This much she recalled when she set out walking. While concerned about escaping, she was more worried about knowing whether the death dealers had freed …
Them. She racked her mind once more and rested her fingertips on the stone wall. There was danger here, emanating from the two cells nearest the dead end, those with powerful wards capable of imprisoning a full deity. Gripping her head, she tried hard to recall why this was more important than escaping, whom she should fear more than the death dealers likely to kill her.
Why, as one of the most powerful deities in the universe, she had once felt threatened enough to lock up these two prisoners and leave them to rot for eternity in her dungeon.
“How the fuck did you do that?”
Past-Death’s eyes snapped open, and she stared into the darkness overhead until she recalled where she was. Her head throbbed from the rough treatment of Harmony’s loyal death-dealers. The dream of walking down the hallway remained vivid in her thoughts.
I’m lucky to be alive. She didn’t know why she was. Becoming human had keyed her in on a few things she never knew as a deity, and one of them was that her death dealers despised the fact they were conscripted into working for her for millennia. Many of them didn’t simply resent her; they hated her with a passion she’d never felt for anything.
Except maybe for Gabriel.
Despair and sadness spiraled through her at the thought of the man she’d always loved. By now, he had to hate her as much as any other death dealer. He’d been willing to give their relationship another chance, but this latest ordeal had to be one too many. No one could go through what she put him through and still love her.
The idea hurt her physically. She didn’t understand her human body enough to know how that was possible. She’d never had aches and pains as a deity, either, and those made her feel even worse than the knowledge she was locked in her own dungeon.
She pushed herself up, not registering there was someone else in the dark cell until he spoke again.
“Really,” came the male voice.
“Really what?” she responded, squinting into the corner from which the voice came.
The tall, lanky frame of a demon emerged into the weak light cast into the cell through the single window. His hair was blond, his teeth sharpened to points. He appeared gaunt. If the glow in his eyes was any indication, he was also half-starved.
Her whole body went rigid in fear, until she heard the rattle of the chains trapping him in the corner.
“Oh, good,” she sighed. She hadn’t realized how sore she was. It was the uneven stones she’d been passed out on as well as the mistreatment by Harmony’s death dealers. “You can’t eat me if you’re chained.”
The demon growled.
She propped herself up against the wall and relaxed, assessing her human body. Nothing hurt too badly, aside from the ache of her muscles and the grumble of her stomach. As much as she loved food, it was becoming really annoying to be so dependent upon it, more so here, where there was no ready supply.
“You can get out,” the demon said. “How?”
“What?” She leveled a look on the disgusting creature. “You think I’d be sitting here if I could?”
“I saw you, Lunchmeat. You faded until you weren’t there then came back.”
Frowning, Past-Death reviewed the dream. She’d been walking down the hallway, but it obviously wasn’t real if she was trapped in a cell.
“You have some sort of magic?” The demon was eyeing her in a combination of hunger and suspicion.
“No,” she said with a snort. “You must’ve been hallucinating.”
“I know what I saw.”
I hate demons. She didn’t respond. She’d tolerated demons as a deity, but being attacked by one as a human made her regret not permanently eradicating the vermin when she was a goddess. Unlike the demon, she wasn’t chained and stretched to try to alleviate the cramping of her muscles.
There was a chance she was able to access some of Gabriel’s magic. As the mate of a deity, she was supposed to have that ability. The only problem was that Gabriel wasn’t able to access his own power co
nsistently. The chance she could? Probably none.
The creature was staring at her with such longing, she stifled a tired laugh. He was clearly hungry.
“How long have you been here?” she asked.
“Forever,” he replied angrily.
“No, really.”
“In human time, perhaps a week. But time here is different. A month?”
“Could be a month or a second, depending,” she mused, accustomed to the way time changed in the underworld. “Too long, either way.”
“Long enough to know you have fallen from favor, cupcake.” There was satisfaction in his voice.
“I’m not the one chained to a wall and left to starve,” she shot back, irritated.
Another growl.
“Did I really disappear?” Past-Death rested her head against the wall and closed her eyes.
“Yes.”
The idea was ridiculous, but humoring it, talking to the demon, kept her mind off the pain burrowing into her heart and her physical discomfort. The dream was solid in her mind. She was almost able to recall the feel of cool stone beneath her hands when she’d touched the dead end.
It was real enough. Then again, she’d been Death for thousands of years and had known every part of the palace at one point. How much was a dream, and how much was a memory resurfacing from wherever the Dark One had cast them?
Her thoughts returned to the two cells at the end of the corridor, and her frown deepened. The cells were aligned based on their ability to hold prisoners. Immortals and death dealers being punished for various reasons were kept in the cells nearest the entrance, those cells with the least amount of magic binding them. The cells at the end of the hallway contained the most powerful magic spells, capable of imprisoning full deities forever.
Behind doors made of colorful petrified wood, there were prisoners important enough for her to almost remember, even after having her memory wiped.