Voices of Hell

by Catherine Stovall

  Voices of Hell

  By

  Catherine Stovall

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, including photocopying, recording, or transmitted by any means without written consent of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, establishments, names, companies, organizations and events were created by the author. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or actual events, companies or organizations is coincidental.

  Published by Crushing Hearts and Black Butterfly Publishing

  Text Copyright 2014 held by CHBB Publishing and the Individual Authors

  Edited by CLS Editing

  Cover by CLS Designs

  Photograph by Amanda and Troy Krieger

  Visit www.catherinestovall.webs.com for more info on the author

  “You are my holy one. This day.

  My power at your feet I lay.

  And for your love one moment long.

  I'll give you all eternity.”

  ~ Mikhail Yur'yevich Lermontov

  Chapter One

  Death wears a familiar face to comfort his victims. A mask resembling cherished loved ones fitted over his ghastly brow, so the dying might willingly take his hand and pass from this world in peace. It is this cruel twist that is the biggest injustice of all. He is charlatan, another one of the Universe’s lies. Trickery! Trickery, I say.

  Show your face, Death, you guiltless reaper of souls. Let the masses look upon the unrevealed existence of their end, do not sweeten the agony that you bring. Do not promise peace from turmoil whilst masquerading. I proudly wear those horrors on my countenance, which you wish to hide. I welcome such brutality with open arms. The life I lived was gilded in golden bars and chains—a prison for a home and a sanitarium for the mind. I wish to leave the people of this world in the same angry decay in which I existed.

  In the darkest moments, it has always been the lost ones who seek the light with a vengeance to rival all others. It is in desperate prayer and pleas that they reach out to a greater power, something beyond themselves. They seek a divine existence that possesses the power to free them from the bonds that tether their pathetic souls, the pain that eats away at their insides, and the deep abyss that threatens to swallow them up without a trace of who they once were. I once pleaded for such things.

  Do they find that solace? Is it for these poor souls that have tried to bargain, defend, and plead for their lives that the reaper appears in his facade? Is it their unwillingness to go gently into everlasting darkness without proof of an existence beyond the fragile human life they have lived, that brings about Death’s many faces?

  These are the people who should be shown the true visage of the creature that shall escort them into whatever lies beyond. I shall bestow upon them that fearful day, that hateful moment. They will hear the unspoken words that Hell sings and will know what is to come. The demons will dance in the firelight, the darkness will call from the shadows, and their screams for mercy will fall upon deafened ears.

  I am the bringer of death, the whisperer of destruction. I am the one who shall claim the lives of those who were too blind to see and too deaf to hear. Ashur’s calling is a simple one, and I am his vessel, his crier, his siren. I am the voice of Hell.

  These were the thoughts that ran through Iyzebel’s mind as she sat upon the edge of the apartment building, looking down on the sleeping city. Fuming about her human past, she longed to abandon her perch and begin the culling that would rock all of humanity at its very core—if only Ashur would arrive.

  Sighing, she let the breeze carry her red hair out of the hood of her cloak in soft tendrils. Vain as it sounded, she had carefully chosen the image she would represent to those who would die at her hand. The reaper, clad in his dark ensemble and carrying his sickle, would envy her chosen wardrobe. The lady who walks in the night, draped in an ivory cloak and offering a dove white rose to those she claims, would curl her nose up in disdain. However, Iyzebel gloried in her rebellion.

  Standing to leave, she let the long robe billow out around her naked body, baring her ample breast and voluptuous curves in the night air. A vision in crushed red velvet, with the moon reflecting on her ivory skin, she felt more like a Goddess than the halfling servant of a demon prince in Hell who couldn’t show up when he was supposed to.

  “Feeling a bit dramatic tonight, Izzy?” Ashur’s words were coated in adoration for the woman before him.

  Turning toward the sound of his voice, a half-smile already curving her luscious, red-painted lips, Iyzebel quipped, “What? No trumpets to announce your arrival? No white stallion with hooves that leave trails of fire? If I am dramatic, Ash, it’s because I learned my theatrics from you.”

  “Ah, the vengeance in your eyes burns as if they are made of heated sapphires! It makes me hungry. What were you thinking about just now?” Ash licked his lips as he leaped down from the outcropping and landed at her side.

  Reaching, without thought, to brush away a smudge of dirt from his white suit coat, Izzy smiled. “I do love when you dress like an angel, Ash. Very suiting for all that long blond hair and chiseled good looks.”

  In response, he bowed at the waist and bent down from his incredible height to look her in the eye. “I’d forever be your angel, if you promise to wear that robe to my bed tonight.”

  Giving him a playful shove, she laughed. “Okay, okay. Stop with all that. I’ve had enough fire and brimstone rolling around in poetic words through my head. I swear hanging out with ancient beings is making me talk like you. I learned, long ago, just what caused you to fall from Heaven, Ash. Those lines won’t work on me. Where and when do we begin? Where are the generals? Where are the legions?”

  Ashur chuckled, his green eyes blazing. “Patience, my siren, has never been a virtue you possessed. We shall not wage our war tonight.”

  Her lips forming a natural pout, Izzy glared at him for a long moment. Craning her neck upward, so that she could take in all six-feet and seven-inches of impossible beauty, she waited for an explanation. When none came, the fire in her veins exploded.

  “What the fuck? I have waited and prepared for this for five years, the ten before that spent in a living Hell. I have earned the right to bring these disgusting humans to their knees. Now, you want to wait some more.”

  The look in Ash’s eyes was no longer playful humor when his voice boomed out over the rooftops, making more than a dozen pigeons fall dead to the street below. “You have waited? You! Don’t forget, Iyzebel, five years ago you were still one of those pathetic earthbound souls. It was I who freed you, and I who laid out this plan. I placed the demon inside you with my own two hands. Those fleshy insects played their part in my fall, and I will have my revenge. But only when I am ready.”

  She let the challenge stand in her eyes for a heartbeat after he finished before dropping her gaze to the ground. “Yes, Prince Ashur.” The emphasis on his title made it clear that she was displeased, but her deference was complete.

  Hooking his finger under her chin and turning her face up to meet his gaze, he softened his tone, “Don’t fret, dear. I know you are disappointed, but I have learned of something that might hinder our plans. Once this nuisance has been dealt with, you shall have your culling. However, I have a special mission for you, which I think you will enjoy.” Eyeing her for a moment, he added, “But it might require a wardrobe change.”

  With a wicked grin, Izzy traced a hand down the edge of her open robe, “Too sinful?”

  Chuckling at her quick change of attitude, Ash took her by the hand and they disappeared into the night.

  ****

  Three floors down from the rooftop where the demons had stood, in a small apartment to the rear of
the building, Raf shivered. His bronzed skin puckered in the coldness suddenly brushing across the back of his neck. His grandmother would have said someone walked across his grave, but even that dreary image could not compare with the sense of foreboding that tugged at the back of his mind.

  Hand held in mid-stroke, he stared at the little red farmhouse nestled amidst a field of flowers that he had been painting. Moments before, he had been mindlessly adding brilliant colors and sunny spots to the image, perfecting the glowing peace conveyed on the canvas. In an instant, the color seemed too bright, the cheery flowers bending in the breeze appeared too soft. In a fury, he sat the painting aside. Already stirring his brushes and grabbing up a pallet of darker colors, his mind ran wild with the visions that danced before his eyes.

  The red for her hair must be dark, not like dried blood, but close. The crimson of her lips should be so bright that they beg to be kissed—if only to smudge the flawlessness in which they are painted. The blue of her eyes, it must be deep and have a touch of glimmer. The flesh tones must be pale, the color of one who has never seen the sun. Surround her in darkness, so that she is the light. Yes, she is an ethereal light, my beauty.

  He mixed and blended, perfecting each tone before carefully and quickly bringing to life his mental picture. Hours passed in his madness, until the sky lightened with the first vestiges of morning. Finally, with his hand cramped and aching, he fell to the floor in an exhausted heap and removed the ear buds from his ears. The music fell silent and the sound of his heart pounding took its place. As Raf gazed upon the stranger’s face he had replicated with pigment and passion, tears shined in his caramel eyes.

  The phone rang somewhere on the other side of the apartment, a million miles away. He was with her, the woman with the fire in her cold blue eyes, and nothing else mattered. He heard the voice through the machine, but he was too tired to focus.

  “Raf, it’s Marty. Put down the paint brush for a minute, I have some good news,” the voice of his agent came through the fog of fatigue. After a pause, the man continued, “I’ve booked you a showing. Private collector with old world money, man. Pick up the phone, or call me back. Saturday night, at nine o’clock, with a midnight unveiling. I’m sending over someone to pick up all your new work tomorrow. This is it, buddy, this is the one we’ve been waiting for. Call me, okay.”

  Unmoving, Raf idly thought over the words that filtered slowly through his brain. A show. The first in a long time. Well, since Shelia left. Shelia, what a faded memory that is. Doesn’t matter. Only the canvas matters. Only the face of this new beauty matters.

  Brushing away the memories of the girl who had broken his heart, Raf studied the painting in a drowsy state. He knew the woman that seemed to glare back at him would be part of his destiny—even if he didn’t know how.

  With paint smeared on his brow and speckled up his arms, he fell into a deep and merciful sleep. He whispered a name into the first rays of the sun, its sound forgotten before it fully left his lips. “Iyzebel.”

  Chapter Two

  Izzy paced the foyer, black heels sounding off like shotgun blasts against the marble tiles. Stopping to stare at the grandeur staircase, she hissed a string of curses under her breath. “Kept me waiting the other night, and now he’s done it again. He is worse than any woman known to Earth, Heaven, or Hell.”

  Just as she had about given up on him, he appeared. “Iyzebel, you look lovely.”

  “I’m surprised I haven’t aged a hundred years waiting on you to finally come down from your lofty throne in the sky,” she growled through clenched teeth.

  “Temper, temper. You really need to learn to unwind, you know?” Chuckling at his own quip, Ash descended the stairs in a carefree bound, taking two steps at a time with his long stride.

  “Not all of us have been alive since the Creation. Time still means something when you haven’t watched a few hundred eons pass.”

  “This old man still has a few eons left in him. Just you wait and see.”

  Izzy spun from the room in a flurry of clicking heels and swirling black skirts, “Come on, Ash. Your painter will be here soon.”

  As if her words had signaled the action, the bell rang. A demon, disguised as an elderly butler, pulled open the door with a deep bow, revealing an overly posh looking man with a rather round figure and a thinning hairline.

  This is the man I am supposed to seduce? Iyzebel couldn’t believe her eyes. The Darkness help me, Ash has got to be out of his damn mind.

  She’d charmed plenty of human men and women in the five years since being freed, a few demons as well. That didn’t bother her. The rising amount disgust that she felt was solely based on the fact that the man seemed completely unlike how she’d pictured a starving artist from the Lower East Side, and she certainly didn’t find him attractive. That would have at least made the game a little more entertaining.

  “Mr. Ashur Daeva?” he questioned as he thrust out his hand. “My name is Marty Price. We’ve spoken on the phone.” The man hesitated on the stoop, his eyes darting between the occupants of the room.

  Ash leveled his gaze, bright green eyes shimmering in the light. “Mr. Price, I am well aware of who you are. Please, come in. Where is our talented young lad, then?”

  Marty paled, making the lines in his face that much more defined. “I must extend my apologies. Raf…er…Mr. Denat sends his regrets. He has fallen ill and could not make it tonight. He hopes this does not reflect poorly on his gratitude—”

  “He has what?” Ash’s ire could have scorched the poor man’s face off. “I have opened my home to more than two dozen of the most renowned collectors of independent art for this reveal. I have furnished entertainment, catering, and wait staff. Now, you are telling me the ungrateful wretch can’t bother to come down here and slum with the people who would pay good money for his art? All because he has a fucking head cold?”

  Marty’s face flushed a deep crimson as he tried to stammer out an excuse.

  One look at Ash, and Izzy knew she’d better step in before the human ended up a brainless mass of flesh and bone. “Mr. Price, allow me to make a suggestion. Leave your men here to set up and handle the art while you go fetch our little artist. Dose him up with some cold medicine and splash some water in his face. Whatever it takes, get him here before midnight. I assure you, your agency does not want to make an enemy out of this family.”

  The little man’s head jerked up and down as if he’d suddenly transformed into a bobble head on the dashboard of a car. “Yes, Ms. Daeva. Absolutely. I am so sorry.” As he spoke, Marty backed toward the door with tears welling up in his dull brown eyes.

  Standing in the doorway, Izzy watched as he waddled out to the large circle drive. Feverishly pointing and shouting instructions to the movers on how to handle the art, he mopped his wide forehead with a handkerchief. The idea that anyone in that day and age still carried around such things struck her as hysterical.

  Laughing at the shaking and sweating man, she left the room. Calling over her shoulder between fits of giggles, “I will leave you to your party preparations. I am going to go check on the wait staff and the food.”

  Ash shook his head, “You mean you are going to check out those bottles of Dom Perignon I noticed them icing down earlier.”

  She turned at the large arched doorway, the gilded angels carved into its frame giving her the perfect backdrop. “Ashur, darling, this is a celebration. Is it not?” the drawn out way she spoke the words was meant to exaggerate the dull voices of the ridiculous rich, but she did it all too well for it to be completely fake.

  “Careful, Iyzebel, your human heritage is showing,” Ash taunted her.

  Heels clacking louder than ever, she spun and stomped from the room, flipping him a very un-ladylike gesture as she went.

  The beast, she thought as she snagged a bottle out of the cooler. With little regard to tradition or instruction, she twisted the bottle until the cork popped off in her hand, and took a long cold gulp.

&
nbsp; “That bastard,” she whispered to the bottle as she strode into the kitchen.

  Ash completely understood the scathing hatred she felt for those biologically connected to her. It had taken her time to forgive him for tainting her soul when she had been nothing more than a child, but once he had opened her eyes to the truth of the world and the war between good and evil, she’d forgotten any ill will that she’d held for the demon. The people she couldn’t forgive were the human parents who had locked her away.

  She could no longer hate the hospital staff, though their treatment of her had left scars inside and out. It’s hard to hate dead people, she thought as she watched the cooks bustle around the stainless steel emporium. Ash had promised her they’d pay, and he hadn’t lied. Once he’d slain the residents and drank down their souls, she’d watched the building burn down to nothing more than cinders. However, the people within those cold and loveless walls were not compensation enough for the pain she felt with each thought of her parents and their shame over having a daughter who’d gone crazy.

  Crazy. I wonder what they’d think of me now. Ignoring the gentle greetings from the staff, she plucked a cheese truffle from a silver tray and stuffed the whole thing in her mouth. Barely tasting the delicacy, Izzy washed it, and her soured feelings, down with another gulp from the bottle.

  “Is everything to your liking, Ms. Iyzebel?” the head chef hesitantly asked.

  “Yes. Thank you, Peirce.” She smiled sweetly at the older man, knowing that he was one of the few who at least suspected that his employers were not of his world. She no longer felt anything more than a slight apathy for any human, but Pierce was one of the few that she could genuinely look at without hating.

  Pierce whispered, “I have hidden a small cheesecake in the fridge. The gentleman need not know.”

  Izzy couldn’t help herself as a genuine laugh escaped her lips. “Thank you. You are such a dear to me.”