Bone Hunter

by Thea Atkinson

  Death should be dark, aching even. Not wet.

  That could mean only one thing.

  I was alive.

  Wherever the damn sidhe had sent me, it wasn't to hell.

  And I would be dead in seconds if I didn't find my way to the surface.

  I fought whatever it was that had me tight in its grip. I thrashed about, trying to find the surface. I coughed, spluttered, tried to expel what I could even as I twisted and reached with straining fingers above me. Something tangled in my hair and yanked. Real, tangible fingers knotted the locks and used them as a handle as it pulled.

  My scalp burned with pain.

  Whatever had me by the hair was dragging me along the water. I struggled against its grip and thrust, scratching out, biting down. Kicking wherever I could. More water invaded my mouth as I tried to protest.

  I could hear another heartbeat in the water, drumming along with my own.

  I struck out with feet and hands. I thought my toes touched bottom for one second, that my fingers found air. Thank god and the angels, I thought I found purchase. I was ascending.

  In the next heartbeat, I was coughing up hot water and soap was running out my nostrils like a lava flow. Everything from my lungs to my sinuses were on fire. I blinked, trying to squeeze the water out of my eyes enough to see.

  My hair hung wet over my eyes and bled water down to my mouth. I coughed again, drooling up the last of the soapy water onto my chest. I struggled to find the edges of whatever I'd felt that I had fetched up against and when I did, I wrapped my arms over the lip, hanging on and trying to see where I was.

  "How did you get in my bath?" said a masculine voice. It sounded deep and throaty and masculine.

  Something hiccupped in my chest. The dread and ridiculous hope that the voice was Maddox's died as quickly as it surfaced. I didn't recognize the voice at all.

  Bath he'd said. I reached out on both sides and my fingers fingertips touched metal on the left and right. A bathtub, yes. A deep bath. Like a swimming pool. I reached my toes down toward the bottom and found that I could just barely scrape the bottom.

  "I said how did you get in here?" he said.

  I clawed my fingers across my eyelids and brushed the hair out of my face. I peeled my eyelids open despite the soapy burn that made them water all over again. I blinked too fast and too hard to get a good look. The blindness disoriented me.

  "Where am I?" I said in a shrill voice. "Who are you?"

  I heeled my palms into my eyelids, frantic to be able to see.

  Whoever was in the tub with me, had an iridescent sort of glow to his skin, and an aura that traced his body like those old-fashioned medieval paintings. I thought I could make out silvery white hair. Two of the blackest eyes I'd ever seen were inches from my face.

  I started, not expecting them so close and sent a ripple of waves to splash against the sides. I bobbed against the rim.

  I tried to propel myself over the side, but I couldn't get enough purchase with my toes. I could feel the water moving again, larger waves lifting me higher as he swam toward me.

  I thought I could make out the faint throbbing sound of a heartbeat all around me. I knew the sound of ragged breathing could not be mine because I had the feeling I was still holding my breath.

  "Am I dead?" I said.

  "Not dead, apparently," he said.

  I clung to the side with both arms flung over the edge. I hung there as the water buoyed me back and forth until it went still enough that I could look sideways at the person who was with me in this oversized tub of hot soapy water.

  What sat on the other side of the tub like a gargoyle hunkered down in a steaming Roman bath was a man at least triple my size. His chiseled pecs rose above water level and flexed and twitched under my scan. If I looked just the right way at him, the glow around his edges was reminiscent of the illuminated text in books scribed about the medieval saints.

  But I knew this was no saint, and I knew it as soon as my feeble brain slipped all the puzzle pieces into place.

  "You're the devil," I said.

  An arrogant smile formed on his mouth. A beautiful mouth. One that was thick and pensive.

  "I prefer Lucifer," he said.

  Angel of the morning. Of course. He looked very bright indeed. His beauty was heart stopping.

  "And who are you?" he said as he leaned toward me, laying the tip of his nose against the skin of my cheek.

  I froze as he inhaled and dragged the tip of his nose down along the column of my throat and beneath the water toward my chest.

  At least I was still dressed, if clothed in tatters of a shirt from my visit with Scottie. The flaps of my shirt were still hanging from my sides and I felt Lucifer's nose fetch up against the cup of my bra beneath the water.

  I had the feeling he might try to bury his nose beneath it much like a dog might. But he didn't. Instead his head broke the surface of the water again. He regarded me with suspicion and something that looked like unexpected delight.

  "You're not ethereal," he said with a note of wonder. "I think you might even be human."

  He said that last with a tentative gasp that made me shiver. It pleased him, this information.

  "Mortal," he said in a whisper. And then as though he surprised himself with this news, he laid his hands over both of my breasts atop my bra. One palm covered half of my chest. He squeezed ever so gently, testing.

  "Mortal, alright," he said. And his tongue ran along the bottom of his fleshy lip.

  I knew the sound of lust in his voice. The sound of possession. I'd run from it, made a life for myself with the note of it haunting my nightmares.

  I'd come all the way to hell just to hear it again.

  No way. No fucking way. I wasn't going to be someone's possession again. Not even Lucifer himself. I didn't care if I'd come here willingly to try to help a god escape hell. I didn't care if I had to promise the devil my first-born child to get back home. I didn't care if I had to kill Scottie to keep him from me forever.

  I. Was. Not. Doing. This.

  I moved to crawl out of the tub. He caught me and wrapped both arms around my waist. They were pythons of muscle, broad and undulating as he pulled me against him. Water sloshed up my throat and went up my nose. My legs swung free between his as he stood to his full height. I was molded to his chiseled frame. Water sluiced down my back.

  As massive as he was, I was no more than a child's toy against a full-grown man.

  With a deft movement, he scooped my knees from beneath me and wrapped my legs around his torso. He buried his face into my neck as I felt him step up and over the edge of the tub. Busy hands began trying to peel the clothes from my body as he strode across the floor, but they must have proven too small for his huge hands and fingers. He had to tear the shirt from my body. It fell backwards off my shoulders.

  The air in the room dried my skin immediately.

  I was stunned. Terrified. My brain incapable of forming any other realization except that evidently, Lucifer was a horny little devil.

  I knew one other thing, and it streaked across my mind with crystal clarity.

  I had to get free.

  CHAPTER 29

  I beat against him and he chuckled darkly. Obviously, he knew I couldn't best him that way. He was too strong, too big. Instead, I thrust myself backward, arching as far as I could and as suddenly as I could.

  That, he wasn't expecting. My feet swung free of his waist, since my legs weren't long enough to hook behind him and I fell onto the hard floor.

  I lay on my back with the wind knocked out of me for too long. He was already advancing toward me, his naked body glistening from the bath. He was magnificent, yes, but his size was terrifying. I tried to roll onto my side and push myself to my feet but couldn't move. I was left trying to gasp in a gulp of oxygen as my eyes tracked his progress toward me.

  Behind him squatted that swimming pool he called a tub. It was half buried into the floor the way a hot tub might be. A magnific
ent copper thing with ornate decorations along the side. Close inspection might prove them to be demons cavorting with angels, but I wasn't about to get any closer to it than I was already. Even with me a few paces away from it, and with it sunk into the black and glassy tiles, he was able to close the distance in one tread.

  I was riveted with horrific fascination by the sight of his member, engorged and standing.

  Panic bit into my throat. I held my hand up in surrender.

  "Wait," I said. It had worked before hadn't it? With Scottie?

  "Wait, I need to catch my breath."

  He stood over me, the water sluicing from his skin and dripping onto my face. I blinked, as one of the waterdrops landed in my eye.

  "You're not ready for me?" he said, confused and agitated. "Why else would you come to me here if not to please me?"

  He sounded ridiculously entitled, but I stuttered out an explanation, something about not knowing I was even on a journey let alone to please him. I apologized. Three times.

  He reached for a plush swath of material that appeared just within his reach, hanging in the air as if from an invisible peg. It was big and broad enough to cover my recliner chair, but in his hand, it looked like a regular sized towel. I was beyond relieved when he lay it over his hips, covering his massive erection and freeing my gaze finally.

  I thought I could breathe again.

  "You didn't want to come here?" he said. "How odd."

  His gaze tracked over what was left of my sopping clothes and dripping hair.

  "And how disappointing."

  I let go a breath of relief at the statement. I didn't know what he expected of me and my visit, but I was sure I wasn't ready for any of it.

  He crossed his arms over his chest. The monumental pecs flexed and let go.

  "So," he said. "You want me to wait; I will wait. It's not every day a living mortal descends into my paradise. Take a few moments to recover yourself."

  It was as good as I was going to get, I supposed, and it was enough for now. Enough that I could take in my surroundings and search for an exit or an escape route if I needed. I had a reprieve, even of a few moments, and I wasn't about to waste it.

  Without my shirt, and my jeans yanked half off my hips, I could feel a pulse in the floor beneath me. It wasn't just heat, but a warm heartbeat that thrummed deep within its core and coursed hot blood through large and small veins every direction. My palm ran along the surface and found it smooth like glass. Black in spots so deep there was no reflection. In some spots rough as though hewn from hardened lava. But all over it was warm. I felt my skin drying even as it heated the air around me to an almost uncomfortable temperature.

  The walls were covered in paintings of apples in various states. Some were large, some small. Every colour and shape of apple was depicted, some of them bitten into and some of them whole. It seemed to be a theme. One that he revisited over and over.

  I tried to hitch up my pants over my hips and felt better when they covered my backside.

  "You are recovered?" he said as he noted my scrutiny. "You're ready to tell me why you're here if not to service me?"

  I tried to get up and failed. The shock and after effects of Ismé's bite, I supposed, coupled by seeing Scottie, then being throttled through what I imagined was a portal threshold much worse than the Blood Gate at the Shadow Bazaar.

  I tried not to think about how I was going to get back out again even if did manage the sidhe's mission. Because surely that's why he'd sent me here. The knowledge of it burned in my throat. I was never likely to accomplish let alone survive. And he knew it.

  "I was sent here," I said. "Against my will."

  He made a thoughtful sound deep in his throat.

  "I shouldn't be here," I went on. "I need you to let me go."

  "Let you go?" he said.

  "Yes." I started to add that someone else was here as well, someone who no doubt had found herself trapped here who didn't ask to come, but he crouched down next to me and propped his elbows on his knees as he regarded me.

  He laid his thick index finger against my lips. It took up three quarters of the width of my mouth.

  "No one asks to come here," he said matter-of-factly.

  He scooped me to my feet so that I stood in front of him, looking up and feeling terribly small. I crossed my arms over my chest to cover the barest parts of my breasts not covered by the demi-cups of my bra.

  His eyes dipped to my navel then back again to my face. I had an image of him running a long, slug-like tongue along his bottom lip and yet, his expression remained carefully placid. I shivered involuntarily despite the heat.

  "Let me show you my Paradise," he said, and the undercurrent of his tone reminded me of slick and dark places where moss grew, covered in cobwebs and murk.

  I followed his gaze with mine to track along the room. The lighting seemed to come from everywhere and it washed everything in red. Whether or not it was from lights or its natural hue, it made the walls look drenched in blood.

  "I have a labyrinth," he said proudly. "One that doesn't get appreciated nearly as often as it should."

  He looked down at me with the boyish pride. "I'd like to show it to you."

  "But my reason for being here," I started to say but he cut me off with a sharp look.

  "Many people think hell is nothing but a burning, agonizing plane made up of fire and brimstone," he said as though I hadn't interrupted him. "But it becomes what you expect of it. I can make it whatever you want. I can make it whatever I want."

  He slipped his hand over the small of my back and at his touch I felt a tremor move through my entire frame. A thousand images kaleidoscoped through my mind's eye. I felt grief and pain all at once and then it was gone, and I was just padding along next to him, helplessly led toward a shadowed area that the blood-red light didn't touch.

  As we moved across the glassy floor, shadows lifted one by one as though some master lighting expert was illuminating tableaus in a theatre.

  "First," he said, aiming me toward a wall that seemed to go along toward a far-off horizon. "You need to see my collection."

  We drew near a wall lined in artifacts large and small, weapons interspersed with arcane objects like chalices and goblets. They seemed arranged aesthetically rather than by purpose. While a human collector might have shelves filled with curios, pottery, even wineglasses supported on wooden shelves or hung with decorative hooks, his were desiccated hands and feral creatures' jaws, and they clutched weaponry of all sorts or balanced trinkets on pointed teeth.

  "Aradia's grimoire," he said, pointing to a vellum-bound book before moving on to point to other objects in turn. "The helm of terror, Merlin's staff, the Ripper's blade." He sighed with longing. "I haven't touched that in decades."

  "They're mine," he said in a tone that would have caressed each piece if it was a touch. "Acquired over millennia."

  He reached out as though he wanted to touch the knife but held off just a hair's breadth away. He moved his hand to the left and lingered over a spear large enough to fit his hand perfectly. Whatever it was, it had to be owned by a giant.

  "The spear of mortal pain and death," he murmured. "Hewn from the bones of the greatest sea monster of your history. In your ninth world, the spear would need to be stored in a vat of water; its heat is so great it would spark fire in stone. Here, however, it rests as though it has always craved the quenching my heat can bring it."

  He let his hand fall to his side and turned to face me. I knew he was looking directly at me, expecting me to be impressed, maybe even expecting me to show him with round eyes of awe exactly what I thought of it all.

  I couldn't meet his gaze. Instead, my eye rested on that hideous spear. I couldn't imagine something like that coming from my own world or imagine the man who might have wielded it.

  "You've collected all of these?" I said. "And all from my world."

  "I collect things that interest me," he said. "This spear is especially relevant to your ple
a of escape."

  He touched my cheek, forcing me to look at him. This time, that slug-like tongue did run along his bottom lip and he didn't try to hide it. I thought I might faint.

  "I don't usually get living mortals here," he said in a lowered voice. "In truth, I get ethereals. Well," he shrugged diffidently. "I always get ethereals. They are better suited to service me because they don't get broken."

  The way his eyes ran over my skin made it crawl in response. Every hair lay down flat against my skin, as afraid, it seemed, as I was beneath that gaze.

  He swallowed slowly, convulsively and when he spoke again, it was with a husky, throaty timbre.

  "Without the risk, where is the excitement?" he said and let his head fall back and closed his eyes. I took a single step backward, not sure where I would go but instinctively wanting to be as far away from as I could be. His hand snaked out and gripped me by the wrist, holding me steady.

  "It was a man last," he went on inhaling as though the air was the memory of it and he couldn't get enough. "A Welsh warrior whose mastery over that spear was legendary. Oh how he fought me. He was strong and very bright. Beautiful to behold."

  He crushed my hand in his massive one.

  He looked me over and despite the heat I went cold.

  "Surely you see that I'm not in the business of letting things go," he said.

  Now I understood exactly why Colin hadn't come himself. He knew what I hadn't and what I was only just beginning to understand.

  There was no way out of hell.

  CHAPTER 30

  He clasped me by the hand and pulled me more than led me toward one of the more shadowed areas. We passed the tub and I bent to scoop my shirt from the floor as we passed by. I pulled it over myself as best I could and clutched the tatters together over my chest.

  "Come," he said. "You must see my menagerie. I've set it all out like a safari. You'll enjoy it."

  "The labyrinth," I guessed, and he laid a finger against my temple, tapped it twice.

  "Smart," he said. "Even if you are quite small," he said, inspecting me. "I could carry you in my pocket." He seemed to show some delight at that and although it was a strange sentiment, especially in light of the fact that he was still naked, I pretended to be impressed.