A sudden burst of light lit up our surroundings. I thought it was the light at the end of the tunnel people always talked about, but all at once the creatures withdrew, focusing on their new objective. I propped myself up on my elbows, dazed, and squinted to see better. Tongues of fire danced around the cave, forcing the skeletons into a corner. Their shrill cries pierced my ears.
“Gurdan, I’ll hold them back. Get the girl.”
The world stood still when I heard that voice. I turned to look at her and our eyes locked for a long moment. A black tattoo concealed her face, but I would have known those eyes anywhere. There was no doubt it was her.
“Stella,” I murmured. I couldn’t believe she was really there. She didn’t look like the defenseless girl I remembered. She was strong, a brand-new creature forged by Hell. A bow in her hand, she was dressed like a warrior, her voice authoritative, commanding.
I lost myself in her eyes. All along I’d been afraid I wouldn’t find her and instead, she was the one who had ended up finding me. She’d even come to my rescue.
Her gaze suddenly went hard. She nocked an arrow and shot it straight at me. Cringing, I looked down, staring at the weapon sticking out of my chest. I looked back up at Stella, shocked.
She hurled a rope out of the cave and vanished a second later as I thudded to the ground.
4
The Price of Survival
I groaned, slowly regaining consciousness. The arrow Stella had shot me with must have been poisoned. The memory of what had happened hit me like a punch in the gut. Then I remembered the hole left by the arrow. That must have been what hurt so much.
Had I really found Stella? And why had she tried to kill me? She must have known I was a Subterranean and that I wouldn’t actually die. Or hadn’t she?
I opened my eyes and found myself bound like a sausage with my back against a tree. When I squirmed to break free the ropes dug into my wounds and I had to stop, gritting my teeth from the sharp pain. Before me lay a dark forest, but I could hear a fire crackling behind me. “Hey! Anybody there?”
“Prisoner awake,” a deep male voice grunted.
“Prisoner?” I said, bewildered. “There must be some mistake. I’m the guy who needed to be saved.”
“Maybe hungry, him. We give food?” the same man asked, but no one answered. I heard someone come up to me with heavy footsteps. The swift stroke of an ax shook the tree I was tied to and the ropes went slack.
“Finally!” I exclaimed. I turned around to look the person in the eye, but banged into the chest of a giant as big as a tank. He held an enormous ax in his fist. I raised my hands in surrender. That was one lethal weapon.
The second he stepped aside I saw her. The sight took my breath away. Stella was sitting beside a fire, looking down at her meal. The man grabbed my hands and bound them together.
“Hey!” I protested. In silence he pushed me toward the fire. “Wait, you don’t mean to eat me, do you?!” I exclaimed, worried. He shoved me down, forcing me to sit, then plunked a bowl of meat on my knee. Stella was on the opposite side of the fire. “What’s going on? Stella, it’s me! Don’t you recognize me?” I said.
She muttered something and finally looked up. The look in her eye was cold, distant, nothing like the Stella I used to know. “Never call me that again,” she warned me sternly.
My eyes widened. I couldn’t believe those were her first words to me. “What are you talking about? You’re Stella, my Stella. We were together, on Earth. What’s happened to you?”
“I’m Kahlena and Hell is my home.”
I froze. Had she forgotten me? Forgotten us? “Is this what Hell’s done to you? What have you become?”
She stood up, grabbed her bow and quiver, and disappeared into the forest without deigning to look at me. I ran my bound hands over my face, anguished. She was so different from the person I’d once known. Now she seemed like an Amazon in those dark leather pants and armed to the teeth. She wore fingerless gloves and around her waist was an arsenal of weapons. Stella had always had a brave spirit, but on Earth she’d shown it by helping others, not by going around shooting arrows into them.
“Meal,” Gurdan grunted, pointing at the bowl of meat before me. He was a big, burly man with a funny patch of curly hair above his ears. The rest of his head was bald. He looked like an ogre, he was so intent on devouring his ration of meat.
I picked up my bowl and nodded my thanks to him. At least it smelled delicious.
Stella reappeared through the bushes and sat down again across from me. I had always adored her exotic charm, and her golden complexion glowed like never before in the firelight. Back in the skeletons’ den, in the dimness of the twilight, it had looked like half her head was shaved. Instead, her hair was woven into an intricate braid close to her scalp that left the right side of her face uncovered. I studied her tattoo: it was a mask of black ink that framed her eyes and made its way down her cheeks, accentuating her sharp features.
“Stop staring at me and eat,” she snapped without looking at me.
I couldn’t believe I’d found Stella and that she’d become so cold and detached. “I still can’t get over it. You shot me in the chest with an arrow,” I said, brimming with resentment. “You could’ve killed me.” If I couldn’t elicit in her the same emotions I was feeling, maybe I could at least manage to make her react. Her emotions couldn’t have disappeared completely.
She said nothing and continued to eat.
“Why’d you bring me here if you don’t know who I am any more? You might as well have left me in the cave with those skeletons,” I said sharply. Still she said nothing. I was angry and frustrated; she’d killed my joy at finding her again with one of her arrows, just as she’d almost taken my life. I grumbled, touching my chest. This seemed to draw her attention. She looked at me for a minute, then went back to her meal.
“You know what? I’m just going to shut up and eat my food too—whatever it is.” My hands bound, I bit into a piece of the meat and found it wasn’t too bad. “At least it tastes good,” I murmured, still eating. “So Gurdan, where’s the girl? You got her out of there too, didn’t you?”
“Girl,” he repeated, his voice gruff. “Eat.”
“Okay, okay,” I said, singsong, frowning. “You must have a screw loose,” I muttered to myself.
“Girl! Eat!” he bellowed, banging his fist on the ground. Was he offended?
“Hey, hey! Don’t get all bent out of shape.” I turned to Stella, who was hiding a smile. It almost took my breath away. It was so nice to see her smile again. “What’s gotten into your friend, anyway? What’s he saying?”
“Gurdan was answering your question, that’s all.”
I looked around. “Well, where’s the girl, then? You got her tied up someplace?”
“She’s right in front of you,” she said, sneering.
I felt a wave of nausea when I understood: we were eating her. I was eating her. I gagged and spat, revolted.
“What’s wrong? Didn’t you say it tasted good?”
“Sure, before I knew I’d met her!”
“Ooh, what a princess,” Stella said mockingly. She had become heartless. That must have been how she’d managed to survive. She nodded at Gurdan, who stood up and walked away.
We stared at the fire for a long time. It was Stella who broke the silence. “How long have you been here?”
“I’m not sure exactly, but I’ve been in the Castle the whole time.”
She shot to her feet, on guard, her weapon pointed at me. “At the Castle? You’re one of them?”
“Calm down. I’m not an ally of the Witches—though I pretended I was.”
“Why are you here? And how did you escape?”
“Some friends helped me out. When I heard you were still alive, that you were out here somewhere, I came running. I had to find you before the Witches did.”
Her face grew dark. “I’m not alive.”
“You are for me,” I blurted.
&
nbsp; “Not like you remember. You’ve seen what we’re forced to do here. And this is nothing.”
I stared at the remains of the girl we had been feasting on. Stella was one of the Damned, but to me it made no difference. She had been forced to adapt. She was still my Stella and I would find a way to make her remember.
“At least you didn’t eat me,” I joked, to break the tension.
“Not yet.” Stella laughed and I did too, poorly concealing how worried I was. The ogre didn’t make me feel very safe, big as he was. A deep silence fell between us and she glanced at me. “I’ve dreamed about them.”
“About who?” I frowned. It was clear who she meant, but I asked anyway.
“About the Witches. About you.”
My eyes widened. She had dreamed about me. I wanted to know more about her dream but Gurdan came back and tossed something at my feet.
“For Princess.”
Stella laughed and I cast her a sidelong glance. “Not funny.” I picked the animal up by its hind legs, trying to figure out what it was. It looked like a squirrel with the snout of a porcupine. “You’re not expecting me to eat this raw, are you?”
“Naturally. We’re the Insane. We eat our meat raw.” She stared at me, her expression suddenly evil as the tension around us grew. The Insane were the worst Souls among all the Damned, the ones who had lost every last trace of their humanity. I had faced lots of them when battling in the Opalion and fuck, were they vicious.
Stella burst out laughing. “Don’t worry, I’m not a freaking zombie. Not yet.” She threw her dagger hard and the animal flew from my hands and onto the embers of the fire. “You can always cook it.”
I lowered my hand, stunned. “Perfect aim. Remind me never to argue with you.”
“Kahlena friend Gurdan. Princess fight Kahlena, I kill Princess.” The ogre bit into a chunk of meat, staring at me menacingly.
“I was kidding, pal. Try to relax.”
Stella smiled to herself and began to speak in a strange language. To my surprise, Gurdan answered in the same tongue. He seemed to have a good command of it, while I didn’t understand a word. The giant stood up and went to lean against the tree trunk.
“Just because you don’t know a language doesn’t mean you’re stupid,” Stella said once we were alone.
“Thank you. Finally, a compliment.”
“I wasn’t talking about you. Gurdan knows Grimtholk really well, but he’s been here so long he’s forgotten our language. I’m teaching it to him again.”
“Oh.” So maybe Gurdan wasn’t as stupid as he seemed. “And Grimtholk would be . . . ?”
“The common language of the Souls in Hell.” Stella lay down on a pile of pelts and turned her back to me. “Get some sleep now.”
“What, you mean he’s going to stay there watching us the whole time?”
“He doesn’t sleep much. He’ll take a turn standing guard.”
“And who’s going to guard me from him?” I shot back sarcastically.
“There are more important things for you to worry about. Like taking a bath. You stink worse than a Molock.”
After a few sniffs I realized she was right. The greenish liquid had dried on me and you could probably smell its stench from a mile away. The worst smell wasn’t coming from me, though, but from my wounds. The skeleton’s bite itched and the hole in my chest from Stella’s arrow still stung. Not to mention the ho le it had left in my heart.
I shrugged. Bathing was the last thing on my mind. Instead, I sat there staring at Stella, lying just steps away from me. Not even in my dreams had I ever imagined I would see her again. Now she was so close, yet I had never felt so far away from her. I wished I could lie down beside her and hold her tight, inhale her scent, lose myself in the warmth of her body. Instead, I hadn’t even been able to hug her. And it hurt.
I turned the dog tag I always wore over in my fingers. I never should have volunteered for the war. I had left her alone, promising I would come back. Instead, I had lost her. That memento was supposed to have been for her, but when I returned to give it to her it was too late. She was gone.
I picked up a pelt, spread it out on the ground, and lay down at her side. Maybe I couldn’t embrace her, but at least she was there with me again. I looked at her, captivated by her face, and knew I could never let her go again.
I didn’t care how long it took me. I was going to win her back.
5
Hell Is Inside Me
The massive door opened in front of us, revealing an enormous hall surrounded by towering windows. Black reigned everywhere in the Castle. Even the floor was a slab of shiny black stone, like a diamond of death. The only color that broke the darkness was a red patch at the foot of the large throne, the symbol of the Witches: a semicircle with an upside-down V and panther claw marks. The same symbol was carved into the center of the Arena. Whatever form the battlefield assumed, that symbol was always there, reminding me who was in charge.
The two Witches pushed me forward and a swarm of black butterflies fluttered around me, agitated. The iron cords binding my wrists burned my skin with every step, as did the lash marks on my back. The Witches had been pretty clear about how things went for prisoners. I had seen it with my own two eyes down in the torture chambers that were filled with the screams of the Subterraneans they had imprisoned. I had even had a taste of it on my own skin. But not all of the Subterraneans in the Castle were down in the prisons. I’d seen lots of them walking freely among the Witches, almost as though we hadn’t been two enemy races since time immemorial. At first the thought seemed crazy to me, but then I’d seen the mark of the Children of Eve on their left arms, just like mine. There was no doubt about it: they were Subterraneans.
The Witches stopped and I looked up at the throne, black butterflies carved into it. Before me was Sophìa, queen of the Underworld. She stared at me in silence with her lapis lazuli eyes. Blind rage simmered within me, but she wasn’t the one causing it. I clenched my fists when Kreeshna rose from the chair to her left. She was the Witch who had tried to steal my soul, tormenting me for decades in an attempt to subjugate me and make me serve her in Hell.
“In the end you’ve come to me,” she said mockingly, drawing closer with graceful steps. Her smug expression made the blood boil in my veins. She stopped a step away from my face, her black eyes probing mine. The serpent inside her broke through her skin and slithered out. She seemed to enjoy the sensation. The sight was at once spine-chilling and sensual. She leaned over me and her lips touched my ear in a whisper. “You and my Dakor will have a lot of time to get to know one another here at the Castle.” The serpent hissed, coiling around her neck. He too, like his mistress, seemed excited by the idea. “On your knees, Child of Eve.” Behind me, the redheaded Witch who had escorted me there cracked her whip.
I hesitated, returning Kreeshna’s challenging look. Then I did as she said, glaring at her the whole time.
“Soldier Drake Reeves,” she proclaimed solemnly, “do you resist or do you submit?” In the grim silence, Kreeshna’s Dakor hissed again. The Witch smiled, reading the answer in my mind.
“I submit.”
The Dakor lunged toward me and sank its poisonous fangs into my neck. The venom burned in my veins. Or maybe what hurt so much was my anger at being forced to make that choice.
“Sweet dreams, sugarplum,” Kreeshna murmured.
Her image went blurry and I crumpled to the floor.
I woke with a start, my breathing ragged and my fists clenched. The sight of Kreeshna with that fucking Dakor had left my nerves aflame. Trying to calm my anger, I ran a hand down my face. I’d never dreamed when I was on Earth. Another bizarre effect of being in Hell. It hadn’t been just a dream, though. It was a memory, a memory of the pact of subjugation I had made with the Witches. At the time it had seemed like the most advantageous thing to do, but the more I thought about the power Kreeshna had wielded over me day by day, the more my hatred grew.
I turned toward Stel
la, but she was gone.
Her things were still there, so she couldn’t have gone far. Worried, I sat up, a groan of pain escaping me. The wound on my shoulder hurt like hell. Gurdan was still sitting at the foot of the tree, his mouth open and his breathing heavy. He had nodded off.
“Great guard dog,” I mumbled, passing him. He grabbed my ankle in a powerful grip that almost made me cry out, but then his hand fell heavily to the ground. He was still sleeping. “Ouch!” I muttered, slipping away.
The sound of lapping water came from a distance. There must be a river somewhere around there. I still stank. Maybe it was time to take Stella’s advice and clean up. I crossed a thicket and found myself on the shore of a lake.
“Finally, a little luck.”
It didn’t take me long to get undressed, since I wore only the standard brown pants the Witches gave all their minions. I had never seen a single Subterranean wearing a shirt in the Castle. They seemed to be forbidden there. Sometimes they even had us do battle barefoot.
Despite the cold, I waded into the water. When I dove in I felt the grime slide off me. The cold stung my still-open wounds. I closed my eyes, driving off the images that rushed through my mind: the Arena, blood, and then Stella’s eyes, black and brilliant. I was captivated by the energy they emanated.
I would have stayed there for hours but I didn’t want her to get back to the camp and not find me there. I rinsed my hair and tied it up tight on top of my head as I waded back to shore. Stella was there, crouched on a branch, her bowstring drawn, an arrow aimed at me.
Slowly, I raised my hands in surrender. “You don’t mean to skewer me again, I hope.”
She lowered her weapon, still staring at me as I came out of the water, naked and dripping wet. I didn’t dare hope it was desire I saw in her eyes. “Want me to get you a soda and some popcorn?”
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