She got to her feet and headed for the door, grabbing Lucifer’s black satin cape on her way out. When he realized she was gone, he would just force her to return, and she wasn’t sure he could even make her do that anymore since he’d signed the contract. The only reason she’d stayed this long was because she knew he couldn’t touch her and she didn’t want to miss anything about Rhyan’s journey through the sydes. It definitely wasn’t because he’d demanded her to be there.
Abigail closed her eyes and brought Thoros to mind. He was in his personal chambers alone, and with a heavy heart to boot. She knew she’d been right in assuming the female angel meant more to him than he was letting on. It was bad enough that Lucifer had her, but would be far worse if he knew for certain the prince had feelings for the girl.
Dematerializing to the Prince of Lust’s private chambers was the easy part. She took in a deep breath, then let it out in a whoosh before knocking on his door lightly.
There was a brief pause, then, “Come in, Abigail.”
After closing the door behind her, she removed the hood and found the handsome rogue sitting on a stool at the bar, with what appeared to be a half empty old fashioned glass of scotch in his hand. She shuddered to think how many full glasses he’d consumed so far.
“Thoros—” she began, but he held up his hand to silence her, then scooted off the stool and stumbled his way to the chair in the living area of his chambers. He all but fell to the cushion and let his head relax against the backrest, revealing his swollen face to Abigail for the first time.
She gasped, her hand flying up to her mouth to stop the ‘What the hell happened to you?’. “Did Lucifer do that to you because of my husband?”
He chuckled and threw back the rest of the scotch in one single gulp. He gave a loud belch and leaned forward to let his elbows rest on his knees, then shook his head. “Nope. Your husband did this to me because of Lucifer.”
Her response was instantaneous. “What? Rhyan would never—”
“I can’t help him, Abigail. Matter of fact, I have no choice but to make sure he fails. Lucifer has Josselyn, and she doesn’t deserve to be here any more than Rhyan does, but he chose this. She didn’t. She’s been stripped of her abilities and was taken against her will, so I need to make sure she gets out of here with everything she had.”
Abigail swallowed and choked back the tears. “Since when has any soul mattered to you, Thoros?”
Hands clasped together, he let his head fall to rest on them. “Since the moment Lameria brought her into Lucifer’s lair.”
“Why now, when I, your friend for over a century, have a chance to get out of here?”
“I have no choice, Abi—”
Tears streamed down her face. “He will go through the sydes a thousand times if that’s what it takes, but Rhyan will not give up! He promised—”
“Promises are meant to be broken.”
“Not Rhyan’s promises. You don’t know him!”
Thoros stood quickly and glared at her. “I know he thinks he’s fucking his human charge right now, and it doesn’t at all look like he’s worried about saving your precious soul!”
The slap across his left cheek was instant, and Thoros stayed in the position the hit left him in. “You, bastard!”
“You’re right, I am. So what? You’re a bitch and always will be. We’re demons, Abigail. We can’t screw angels and have anything good come of it.”
“I’m not just screwing him. He’s my soulmate!” she cried.
“And Josselyn’s mine!” he roared back at her.
They both froze and just stared at one another for a moment.
Abigail shook her head. “No—it can’t be—”
“If our roles were reversed, if Josselyn was in your syde and fighting to save my soul, but Lucifer had Rhyan and the only way he could keep his soul was if Josselyn failed, could you let her earn the door to the next syde? Honestly, Abigail, would you do that for me, your friend of over a century, knowing that your soulmate would forever be damned and under Lucifer’s heavy command?”
She lowered her head and swallowed.
“I thought so,” he said, and turned away to get another drink from the bar. “Want a drink? You look like you need one, now.”
“If our roles were reversed, and you had the power the contract between Rhyan and Lucifer has given me over him, what would you do?” He stopped halfway to the bar and spun to face her. “Would you stop him?” She read the yearning on his face like a book. “I think I can stop him, Thoros, but I can’t protect any of you if you aren’t on my side. Fallis has already turned me down. He is afraid I can’t hold up my end of the bargain and we will all be thrown into Wrath for my boldness. You know what’s at stake here, what you will lose and what you can gain. Lucifer thinks he has us both tied, but I’m not going down without a fight. Help me and we can both win.” He started to shake his head, but stopped and looked back at her when she started talking again. “You really think he will just let her go if you do as he commands? He’s desperate, Thoros. He will say anything to get what he wants, because he wants a pure soul willingly given to him. He won’t get that with Josselyn, but he will if Rhyan fails. We can save them both if you will just help me. I won’t let him hurt her, but you have to let Rhyan go. Give him back his memories of me, please.”
Abigail felt like a whole day and night had passed in the silence between them as she waited for his response.
Thoros finally sighed and rubbed at his tired eyes. “We have much to plan and no time to waste. What do you suggest?”
Rhyan
The rush of images flashing through my mind had my hips stopping mid-stroke to grab hold of my head, for fear it would burst if my fingers didn’t hold it together.
“What is it, Rhyan?” Kendra asked.
I looked down at her with wide eyes, then scrambled to the pea-gravel to get away from the demon that was surely not my human charge. “What have I done?”
“I was blocked from you somehow, Rhyan. I did everything in my power to reach you, but you couldn’t hear me. Your memories of Abigail were temporarily taken from you. I’m not sure why you have them back now, but you cannot lose consciousness again,” Isaiah replied.
“Come back to me, Rhyan.”
I shook my head at the female that looked a whole lot like Kendra, then got to my feet. I realized as I looked at my feet that it had all been real. Both of my boots were gone and my blistered feet had been cleaned and wrapped so they could heal. My body was clean, even my hair was still damp from the washing.
“You’re not real,” I said, shaking my head.
She smiled. “Of course I’m real. I’ve been real for over thirty years now.”
“No, no more mind games. You are not Kendra, and even if you were her, I wouldn’t have had sex with you if my mind hadn’t been tampered with. She is married and so am I.”
“Don’t be silly, Rhyan.” She held her hand out, encouraging me to join her. “You know you want me. I’m here. I’m yours. I can stay here with you forever.”
“I don’t want you. I don’t want anyone except my wife Abbi.”
I glanced out of the corner of my eye and noticed a bright red door. I sighed in relief, and when I looked back to the Kendra look-alike, she was gone.
I took my time in dressing and arranging my pack of supplies. I couldn’t allow my thoughts to dwell on whether Josselyn would be okay if I walked through the door. None of us would be alright if I didn’t, so I silently told Josselyn goodbye and thanked her for the friendship she had given me. I could only pray she heard me. I had to be on top of my game in Wrath, and distractions would only get me killed.
I had no idea why my memories of Abbi had returned. I could only pray the Prince of Lust took mercy on me and was now on my side, but I knew there was no hope in ever converting the Prince of Wrath to side with me and let me through his syde unscathed. Murry was not my friend and never would be. That was okay. The feelings were mutual.
Chapter 50
After walking through the door to Wrath, I had to agree with Malcolm on the death and destruction bit. It was the image of Hell that I had always pictured in my mind, even as a human.
Fire rained from the dark, black and red sky. Flashes of blue lightning streaked across the horizon, giving each section it touched a purplish hue. Massive lava-filled clouds hung low and dispersed flaming baseball-sized volcanic rock into the heavy winds. And, man, was it hot, I thought as I wiped at the sudden dampness that broke out across my brow.
The shouts and screaming from the tortured sent chills throughout my body. I made a mental note to stay hidden as best I could, so I didn’t become one of the tormented souls I couldn’t see.
I caught movement out of my left eye and whirled just in time to brace myself as what appeared to be a small gargoyle-like creature tackled me, knocking me off balance and backward over the edge of one of the many high-rises I’d seen after entering into Hell’s belly. Tumbling down the steep hill head first, feet passing over my head for the third time, my pack strap broke free from my shoulders about twenty-five feet down. I managed to grab the loose end, but my spear was nowhere in sight. All the while, the serpent-like creature clung to my body, riding the wave of flips and bounces as if it were on a thrilling carnival ride.
I fought to tear him from my arm and he wrapped his little exoskeleton limbs around my waist, shimmying down until he clung tightly to my thigh, hissing and snapping at me every time I attempted to pry him free. I finally gave up and concentrated on turning my body so I could stop myself from rolling down the hill that was obviously never going to end.
I threw my hand out and grabbed at the first thing it hit. I was going too fast to clutch the stationary object in my hand, but I did manage to turn my body in a different direction so I could dig my boots into the muck, slowing the momentum of the fall to a stop.
Breathing heavily, and one hand clutching an odd branch protruding from the face of the muddy cliff, I finally looked down.
“Jesus,” I muttered, and closed my eyes as I firmly pressed the front of my body to the stinky, slimy muck and hung on for dear life. I’d thought the hill was getting steeper, and I had been right; only about ten more feet and I would have fallen straight off to an approximate two-hundred foot drop-off into a massive burning canyon of fire.
I looked around me. There was no way to prevent myself from falling into the giant pit. Even if I could manage to climb to the top, there was nothing for me up there except the door to the previous syde. God knew I didn’t want to attempt Lust again, so that option was out. I looked out to the sea of fire and twenty or so cone-shaped cliffs around me, and couldn’t see anything beneficial to working my way around to the other side of my own personal cone cliff.
“Dammit,” I swore. “Isaiah!”
“I’m here. I’m thinking, Rhyan. You need wings.”
“Send me some on down here, will ya?” The odd branch I clung to gave and dropped me a little. “I’m gonna need them now,” I added.
Isaiah sighed in my mind. “I can’t send you wings. Dig your feet in more so you don’t put as much weight on the bone.”
My brow furrowed. “Bone?” I said, then looked up to my hand, and what my fingers were grasped around. I looked away quickly. “Christ. How am I holding onto a bone, Isaiah? I thought if you died here, you came back to life to suffer through more hell?”
“One does. That one just hasn’t revived yet. Then again,” he pondered, “they might come back as something else completely different, like a flesh-eating fiend of the undead. Of course, zombies aren’t real on Earth, but I certainly wouldn’t rule anything out there.”
“So, he’s really alive?”
“Yes, and I don’t think he will be too happy when he wakes and notices he has someone dangling from one of his appendages. Looks like a femur bone. I’m sure the rest of him is around there, close.”
“You are such a comfort to be around.”
“I do try.”
After giving a heavy roll of my eyes, I noticed a vibration in the small mountain, then suddenly knew it wasn’t the hill that was quaking; it was me. I looked down to my leg at my new companion. He was trembling so violently that it was shaking my entire body.
“Why are you so frightened? You have wings,” I spat, and then my eyes grew wide as I realized what I’d just discovered. “You have wings!” I exclaimed.
The creature peered up at me, seemingly harmless now that I wasn’t trying to beat his head in and throw him to the great pit below. He made a few audible sounds that I couldn’t decipher or translate, but I was sure it was the creature’s language, and I could tell he was trying to communicate with me.
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
“Not the smartest phrase to use at the moment, Rhyan.”
I gave a light chuckle and kept my attention focused on the creature. “Can you fly?”
He rattled off another stream of incomprehensible sounds to my ears, but then nodded and spread his wings out wide. The span of them had to have been at least eight feet from end to end.
I laughed out loud. “I guess you can. Think you can carry me?”
The arch of his little eyebrow popped up and his thin mouth moved a little to the side as if he were calculating in his head his body weight and mine to see if his wings could carry us both. He finally gave what I could only take as a smile, then energetically crawled up my body. The quick movement caused the bone to slip more and he jumped from my back to wrap his arms and legs around my head, uncontrollably quivering as if afraid he would fall again.
I couldn’t breathe with his arm covering my mouth and nose, or see with his other arm in front of my eyes, and I could tell the bone was about to break loose from whatever it happened to be attached to; I shuddered at the thought of it being a pelvic bone, then briefly wondered where the rest of the leg was, the part at the other end of the femur bone. Most people had a little more, like a tibia bone, several bones in the foot region and five little wiggly ones at the end.
I reached up and pried his arm away from my mouth. “If you can fly, why are you so afraid of falling?” I asked, then took in several deep breaths.
He muttered more incoherent words, then I heard his sharp little teeth as they went into a frenzy of chattering.
“He seems to be afraid to fly, Rhyan.”
“I bet if I chucked him off the side of this cliff he would get over that phobia real fast,” I said through my mind, then tried to calm myself so I wouldn’t scare the beast more when I spoke. “Look, you’re going to have to get us both out of here, so if you’re afraid of heights, then you just need to try not to think about it until we reach solid ground. There’s no other way. You have to get us down. Do you understand?”
The chattering stopped and he loosened his grip on my head, said a few words, then jumped from me to the muck and started climbing back up the hill.
“Hey! Where’re you going?” I shouted up at him, but he never looked back. “That’s great.” I huffed, then tried to rearrange my grip on the bone. All the blood had drained from my arms and my hands had begun to tingle. I knew I couldn’t hang like that forever, but I would as long as I could; I hadn’t come all that way to give up at the very end.
Something moved in my peripheral vision and I turned my head to look, then a smile spread across my face as relief filled my tired bones. “Ha ha, yes!” I cheered. He’d found my spear, and he had it grasped with his hand-like feet and flying toward me. He flew past me once; I assumed, so he could figure out exactly the best way to land with a big stick clutched in his landing gear. I motioned with my arm for him to get closer, and the bone I was hanging from detached from the hill. I let go of it and struggled to dig the toe of my boots in further, but the angle was too steep and the mud too slick and I began to slide.
“Rhyan, grab hold of something!”
“I’m trying. There is nothing within my reach,” I said, but still prayed something would magical
ly appear out of thin air to save my hide.
I heard the creature squawk, then felt the wind of his wings at my back, but I was traveling too fast to seek him out. My right foot slipped off the edge. Desperately searching with the toe of my boot, I couldn’t feel anything but infinite space below. There was nothing else solid to stop my descent. My arms scrambled around in a panic, attempting to grab something, but there was nothing, and it was too late. The weight of my lower body hanging from the edge was too much and gravity took over from there. I fell back first toward an untimely death.
I was falling and there was nothing I could do to stop it from happening. I was getting closer to the pit of flames with every valuable second that passed.
“I’m sorry, Isaiah.”
“Me, too, son,” he replied sadly.
Refusing to turn and watch the floor of Hell rush up to greet me, I used my last remaining moments to pray, hoping like hell someone up there besides my guardian angel could hear me. I prayed someone got Josselyn away from Lucifer safely, and that she would never again set eyes on the Prince of Lust. I prayed that Kendra and her family stayed safe and out of Murry’s reach. The Lord knew that I would enjoy ripping the heart from his chest if he hurt her in any way.
I prayed for Malcolm’s safe return back into the Heavenly Realm, so that he could guide me back through the seven sydes of Hell. I needed my friend and I wouldn’t accept that he was lost forever.
I wasn’t giving up on my mission either. All of Hell would completely freeze over before I would say those words. I didn’t feel like I had failed. It was just going to take me a little longer to accomplish my goal.
I could feel the heat intensifying at my back, and knew it wouldn’t be much longer.
Lastly, I prayed for Abbi. My wife, my true love and my soulmate; she would be disappointed, but I knew she would wait for me, and I knew Lucifer couldn’t touch her unless I gave up. I prayed for her to have strength and never stop believing in the love we have for each other, because it alone was stronger than any Hell anyone could make me go through.
The temperature was so extreme I could smell my hair scorching. I was just about to tell Isaiah goodbye when he shouted through my thoughts.
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