"Do you have any vampires?" I asked coyly.
He sucked the back of his teeth. "Vampires don't exist down here. Their human souls are mine, given up in their death. The body stays on earth. But the ethereals that they are here belong to me. I can do with them what I want. Even barter and trade them if I can find a buyer who has something worth the eons of pleasure I can get from them."
"I'm guessing that doesn't happen often."
He murmured his excitement that I was a smart little human soul. "It has happened less than a dozen times in my whole existence." His chest puffed out. "But I recently bartered three of those souls for something far greater."
I couldn't hide my excitement. Gio and his lover. Ismé as well. And that had to mean a connection to Kassie.
"Can I see this thing?"
He looked so pleased with himself that I might have pitied him had he been human.
"In time," he said. "But first you must see the menagerie."
The way to the labyrinth took us deeper into his boudoir. I never got the sense of movement or distance, only the feeling that things were changing. They altered subtly at times and at times one pace seemed a hundred.
Statues rose up out of the shadows to meet my gaze. Struck in every sort of action, frozen in different positions, some of them obvious states of sin, nude and life-sized. And surrounding them, as though to reflect a desire to recreate their tableaus were recliners, lounges, beds, and swings.
The array and variety boggled my mind. Flickers of movement caught the periphery of my vision. They were moving, the statues, but each time I gazed straight at them, they froze again, and it was disconcerting to always feel as though the world around you moved while you remained still.
"How do you like the mirrors," he asked at one point, and I'd not realized he'd placed full length mirrors in strategic places.
I peered into one to see he and I naked and entwined together on a bed of coals. I sucked in a breath, sudden dizziness making me sway on my feet.
He looked down at me and tugged me toward him. I butted up against his waist and felt the heat of his skin. He thought my gasp was of pleasure, the egomaniac.
My heart hammered against my ribs and the sound abandoned my ears as I swung my gaze from mirror to mirror.
In them all, we were engaging in sex. And most of them looked absolutely terrifying. Some of them looked flat-out dangerous. In three of them, I was obviously dead.
He wasn't just a horny bastard, he was a psychopathic one.
My knees turned to wet sponges and I stumbled, catching myself from falling only because his hand was still wrapped over mine and he tugged on me like a yoyo to keep me upright. I hung limp in his grip, a bobbing bit of wood on a slack string. I sagged against him because for the life of me, I couldn't put any steel in my thighs.
I wanted out. My core began to tremble enough that it shook my shoulders. My teeth clattered together.
"I'm not supposed to be here," I stuttered out around the clacking of my teeth. "This was a mistake."
I pulled in hitching breaths, aware that I was hyperventilating. My whole body should have shut down by now. I prayed for it.
"The best is yet to come," he said. He sent me an indulgent look. "And the most interesting. Come. It's what I really want to show you."
He tugged on my hand and we continued. I took in the way the shadows retreated from his step to reveal the door to what he called his labyrinth. It was gnarled and twisted with a material that faintly resembled paper mache vellum. There were streaks here and there branching off into small, cobweb-like tributaries. Much like veins.
"Is that--" I started to say, and he nodded as he put his finger across my lips.
"Flesh?" he said. "Oh, yes." He looked delighted that I recognized it. "But the real treats lie beyond the door."
With a bracing breath, I stepped inside and as I did, the door disappeared behind me and all that was left were dozens of thresholds ahead of me and Lucifer standing beside me with an anticipation so palpable it goose pimpled his skin.
"I've been down these hallways hundreds of times," he said. "But since you're my guest, I'll let you plot our path."
So he wanted me to choose.
I remembered somewhere reading that right-handed people usually turned toward the right, and I imagined he knew that as well. Best to keep him off guard. Besides, if I kept always going forward, the I would stay in the middle-of-the-road. Metaphorically speaking.
"There," I said, pointing to the middle.
The same fabric that made up the door made up the walls as they stretched up past me and out of sight into the shadows.
I had the almost irresistible urge to run my fingers along the surface and reached out for it.
He grabbed my hand and held it back.
"Not yet," he said. "You're not ready."
He squatted down next to me so he could be level with my gaze. With his black eyes pinned to mine, he lifted my hand to his mouth and ran that tongue along my palm. Every muscle in my stomach clenched. My knees buckled, and I tried to yank my hand away.
He held it fast, stared into my eyes.
And then he bit down on it.
CHAPTER 31
I shrieked in pain, but no sound came out. I panted, my chest heaving.
"Now you're ready," he said with a flick of his silver hair.
He spun me around like a kid playing pin the tail on the donkey and ended with me facing the wall of flesh. Close up, I could make out pools of prismatic light beneath the tissue. He let go my hand and I cradled it against my chest.
"Look," he said and waved his arm across the wall. Those pools of light peppered the surface. They went up and on past my line of sight.
"Those are ethereals," he explained. "I have millions of them." There was a sigh in his voice.
He looked down at me with pride in his expression.
"Sometimes I take them out," he said and pulled my hand to the wall, where he planted my palm on one of those pools.
"Blood is how you choose," he said.
At that, something shuddered beneath my palm, seeming to press against the skin. I yanked my hand away, but too late, whatever had brushed against the wound had begun to take shape in the wall. The prism bulged out from the tissue that held it and it grew arms and legs, a torso, a head.
A man erupted from the wall's skin and the grotto where we stood turned into a forest filled with black earth and spruce trees with broken branches.
The man blinked at us as though we were smoke. He rubbed his eyes.
The stink of scorched foliage and sulfur filled the air. Shells exploded overhead, light assaulted the air.
The man my blood gave birth to ran toward one of the trenches. Clothes wrapped around his naked form as he ran, streaking for a pile of dirt. He jumped in.
"Watch," Lucifer said.
He snapped his fingers and the rather small onslaught of sound and light became chaos. Screaming and yelling rent the air and I watched as the man from the wall tried to climb out of his trench and escape the clutches of a man with a bayonet who'd stabbed down into his back repeatedly.
I doubled over in response, unable to keep my stomach from hurling up its disgust and fear. Everywhere I looked that same man was dying a thousand different deaths by thousand different hands. Each one of them more grisly than the last. Instinct made me cringe closer to Lucifer and the heat of his body wrapped around me. He pulled me close, enjoying my fear.
"Oh how I would love to put you in my pocket right now," he murmured. "But there's more I want you to see."
He laid his palm on another pool of prismatic light and this time the grotto shifted like a haze across hot asphalt and transformed into a vacant lot with cement bedding. Unlike the man who had birthed himself whole from the living tissue of the wall, this one streamed from it like lightning toward the centre of the grotto. I noticed he held something orange in his hand. A large can, I thought, reminiscent of gasoline cans.
The man s
at cross-legged in the middle of the cement and upended the can over his head, letting clear liquid stream down over his body. Too late, I realized what was about to happen. I didn't turn my head away fast enough before the man lit a match and was engulfed, screaming, in flames.
Lucifer's shoulders moved in what I presumed was a disappointed sigh, but I couldn't hear it over the shrieking as the man was consumed by the fire.
"He is my least favourite," Lucifer said over the. "Because even though he can make his torment what he wants, this is what he always chooses. It's too fast. Almost as soon as it begins."
He held me close, the palm of his hand running down my back to cup my buttocks.
"You're trembling," he said. "Does it excite you too?"
"Why are you showing me all this?" I asked.
"You want out of my domain, do you not?" he said.
He'd already said he didn't let things go. And it was obvious that whatever else Satan was, he was also a lecherous hoarder, feeding his paradise with people's torture and torment. Relishing every bit of pain and anguish.
No wonder Gio wanted to save his lover from this place. No wonder he wanted his soul back so badly. I thought of Fayed and how he'd said vampires had phantom souls like phantom limbs and I wondered if this was what they felt. This torture happening to their souls over and over for all eternity.
And Kassie. If Ismé had been truthful, Kassie was here somewhere suffering too. I wanted to think I was the kind of person who could push cowardice and self-interest aside, but I was a thief. I didn't care about anyone else but myself. It was a humbling thing to realize, but all I could think of was that one of these was going to be me and it terrified me. Whatever pity I felt for the poor girl, my own sense of self-preservation was paramount. I hated myself for it, but I nodded at him with hope clawing into my chest.
"I do," I said. "I want to go home."
He smiled. "Don't worry," he said. "My domain is one of death. It's a matter of time before you return. A foregone conclusion, if you will. Just like my Welsh warrior, living mortals have no place here."
That was a relief to know. I wasn't stuck here forever. I was a mortal body being lent a bit of time here in Hell by some magics I didn't understand. No doubt the sidhe warlord had bought me that time with the talisman I'd caught as he'd tossed it to me. I didn't have it now. For all I knew, it was at the bottom of Lucifer's tub.
"What happened to the Welsh warrior?" I asked, because it had to mean something that another living soul had descended to this realm.
"He broke," he said with a shrug. "He was only mortal after all. Still living and breathing when he came to me. One of my hell hounds was attracted to him; the warrior had this natural affinity for dogs and beasts of all sorts. The hellhound thought I might enjoy him and collected his body for me before he expired and released his soul."
He spread his hands behind his head as he arched his back. He looked like he was flexing for a sparring match.
"You saw his weapon in my collection. The spear. A magnificent thing, unique in all the nine worlds. I had to have it. When he came to me, it was with the weapon clutched in his hand and when I saw it, I wanted it. I ordered him to give it to me. He refused to relinquish it."
"So you fought him for it?"
"Oh no, I made him fight because it pleased me and his body was mine to do with as I wanted while he was here."
He glowered down at me as much to say I was his possession as well. I tried not to hug myself like a coward.
"But you have the spear," I said, imagining the kind of man who would refuse Lucifer. He would have had to be massive. Brutal. Primal and strong.
"Yes," he said. "I broke his body, alright, but he stabbed me. It's really a horrific weapon that must be cut free of its host. Mortals can't survive it."
He ran his hand absently along his belly as though reliving it, and I noted seven wide scars criss-crossing the flesh that I hadn't noticed before.
He sighed. "I broke his body for his insolence, but his soul was not mine to play with. He wasn't quite all the way dead. Just...broken. Of course I couldn't return him to your ninth world. He would never again be the same."
I felt uneasy. The pieces of the puzzle started coming together as though magnetized. So I could return, but after Lucifer was done with me, I likely wouldn't be the same. But where would I go? How would I be different. I needed to know.
The sheer thought of it, made the space between my ears swim. I had to hold my arms out sideways as I momentarily lost my balance. His gaze slipped over me, assessing me in one quick second before his expression went carefully placid again.
"And which world did you send him to?" I said. I had this odd sensation of detachment, like nothing mattered even though I knew I wanted the answer.
That speculative look again. One split second of interest and then nothing.
"The fourth world, where he could be made whole again. With magics to fill in the places that would never be the same."
The fourth world. The world of the Fae and magic. A warrior who wouldn't give in. There was something there, but it danced just out of reach.
"I had to send him back, but the spear was my trophy in lieu of the soul. And he agreed to leave it on pain of forfeiting his ethereal self to me should he enter again to retrieve it. And I hoped he would. I so hoped. For centuries, I've been waiting for him to use my talisman to return for it."
My heart stopped at his mention of a talisman. Again, that dancing of puzzle pieces trying to fit together.
He peered down at me again with that look of keen interest. It felt like he was looking through me, somehow digging into my past and seeing everything that was there. I fancied he could pick up the moment I clutched the broken glass to stab Scottie and was transported to the fourth world.
Instead he sighed longingly.
"I'd broken him, you see. And as I said, few gods have the magic to regenerate."
His expression lightened suddenly. "I have one of them here, you know," his eyes gleamed like mica stones. "She was a steal of a deal, actually."
I stared at him for a long moment, thinking I should feel something about that information but I was still struggling to find the picture in the puzzle. I knew he meant Kassie. He had to. And yet I had to struggle to bring to mind the appropriate question.
"Can I see her?" I asked.
His lips thinned out for a long moment as he considered it, then he shook his head.
"Time is growing short for you," he said as he sent his gaze up and down my frame. "I dare not wait any longer to put you to service. I've already wasted too much time."
"Service?" I said.
"You are mine, remember?" he said. "For the time you are allotted here, you belong to me and I can do whatever I want with your body and bones."
He waved his hand over the air and it wavered again, shifting the grotto into something of his own making.
I was mortal. I was his possession now. But I, like the warrior, would also break. Far too soon for his liking. I tried not to think about the war scenes, the battle he'd had with the Welsh warrior, because if I did, I was sure the grotto would shift into something horrific.
"Am I going to have to fight?" I squeaked out.
"Oh you're not built for fighting," he said.
I swallowed down hard, knowing whatever he said next was not going to make me feel better.
He snapped his fingers and the grotto became a deviant den of carnal pleasures, decorated with S&M accoutrement and equipment of every imagining.
"You, my living soul, are built for something else entirely."
CHAPTER 32
I balked and stumbled and if he noticed it, his dark chuckle seemed to indicate he enjoyed my discomfort and anxiety.
He was a collector. Collectors liked to talk about their collections. He'd already wasted much of my time already doing that. Surely if I showed enough interest, he wouldn't be able to help himself. I had no idea how much time I had. As far as I knew his idea of
it being short might mean a century.
"But how could you have got this god in the first place?" I said, stalling. "A god wouldn't let herself be bartered, and surely not for a couple of vampire souls."
"Human souls," he corrected. "Vampires are bodies without souls. Those souls are mine."
I put my hand on my hip, indicating I didn't believe him. "You want me to believe a god was fooled by a vampire into becoming part of your collection."
He scowled. "I have no need to lie."
I pursed my lips. "In my world, you are called the god of liars."
"I'm misunderstood in the ninth world," he said. "I don't have to prove myself to you. Remember, you are mine, not the other way around."
"So I'm guessing that means you don't have one," I said. "A god, I mean."
His face darkened. He bristled and with a swipe of the wall, without touching down on the liquid pools, he shifted the entire landscape so that all that was in front of us was a panel made of tissue. Behind, I knew was his wall of collectibles, his armoury, as he'd called it. To the left was his gargantuan tub. The right corner lay shrouded in shadows. My feet felt stuck to the glassy tiles. I did not want to know what lurked in those shadows.
"Behold my god," he said with a flourish in his voice. "I traded for her. A vampire came here with her and all he wanted was two measly souls. Old ones at that. He has no idea what a bargain I struck."
Kassie, I realized. No longer body and bone but something different, something that lent a pale blue light to the room. She certainly looked like herself, just more of a shell. As though someone had stretched plastic down over her body and molded it to her even as her essence evaporated. Without animation, or real veins and flushed skin, she looked more like an empty husk than a teenager in stasis.
Quicksilver ran out from her husk in every direction. I ran my gaze along one of those veins, and realized they branched off into different places, stretching all the way around the living tissue in the wall.
He sucked the back of his teeth as he studied her. "She's only a shell. The other parts are detached and in your ninth world."
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