by Ashur Rose
Helen nodded to the mother as she passed. In response, the mother brought a long knife out of her big purse and gutted Helen from crotch to breastbone. Lilith identified the personal demons clinging to the woman in the same instant. Helen sagged against the car, arterial spray covering the windows. Hands grabbed Lilith as she ran.
The dad grabbed her from behind, levering her wrist behind her back. Lilith called her speak, hearing rather than seeing the father burst into flames behind her. But it was too late. The daughter, though chubby, moved in like a flash. Lilith caught sunlight reflected on a syringe just before the needle jammed into her neck.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
IAIN
HE STRETCHED IN THE fresh dark, twisting knots out of his neck. The previous night had gone poorly. Lilith had given him the silent treatment for hours. Iain knew she needed time, but he didn’t have much more time to give her before the Phyrss would demand both of them manifest in Empyrean.
Iain froze in place, as much as he did in perch. Lilith. He couldn’t feel her presence. Head back, face in the wind, he sought her with all his senses. All he felt was a painful vacancy where his heart used to be. The sensation was not the same as what he’d felt before when they’d been parted. He felt ice in his veins, a dread certainty that they were not separated by distance, but by eternity.
He fell to his knees on the rooftop, flooded in sorrow and loss. Had his arm been separated from his shoulder, he would have felt more whole. With a shuddering breath, he roared his pain to the night sky, anguish echoing from the surrounding façades.
How long later his brothers arrived, Iain could not say. They spoke to him, but he could not understand. They lifted him, carrying him down into the loft. Rough hands wrapped him in a blanket and shoved him down on the couch. Raze peered into his eyes, rubbing a thumb across his cheek.
Iain? Raze reached. Iain found he could not respond.
“Stone dust.” Raze rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. “He’s in pure-shock.”
“Iain covenanted her while she was out cold. Of course a pitiful human would turn tail and run,” Steele said. “Weak flesh, weak will.”
“She didn’t run—she’s gone.” Raze stood from his examination. “If we don’t snap him out of it, he could turn.”
“Gone?” Cree said. “As in dead? Iain would’ve healed her easily once they covenanted.”
“Dead—or something equivalent,” Raze said darkly.
Silence descended as the brothers let his words sink in. Steele voiced the dreaded thought first. “Equivalent, as in she was taken to The Nether?”
Cree said, “How could she be in The Nether and not be dead or damned?”
“Pure-shock following the death of Lilith would have left Iain in perch, or turned, for a full lunar cycle,” Raze said. “We’ve all seen it before. This is something different. We already know the shades need her to free Zorn.”
Iain followed the conversation, the meaning slowly coming to him. He stretched his muscles, feeling the crackle as his partial stone form resisted. “I have to go to her.” His words sounded gravelly, hollow.
Cree pushed him back on the couch when Iain tried to stand. “You’re not in any shape to do anything, little brother.”
“I’ll be in whatever shape I need to get to Lilith.” Iain shook him off and gained his feet.
Be sure about this, brother. Raze’s reach was much clearer than the muddled conversation. If you’re not up to this, you’ll likely get us all killed.
Iain thought, I have no other choice but to be up to this. Whatever this is.
“First, we need to know how the shades could physically transport a human to The Nether realm,” Raze said out loud. “That means we brace our shade spy ASAP.”
The shade flirted with a couple in the corner, still in female form, but dropped its negotiations as the Banes pushed through the door of Serendipity. It ran for the back door, but Steele had it by the neck before it took three steps.
Th bouncer, Big D he'd heard them call him, shoved his way to the action. Iain grabbed him by the wrist in a crushing grip. He gazed at the bouncer over his sunglasses. “I wouldn’t mind breaking you in half, Joe, but it would be counterproductive right now. Go back to watching the door.”
In the alley, the Banes loomed over the shade still gripped in Steele’s hand.
“How did they take her?” Raze said through his teeth.
Why would this thing want to tell us? Iain asked.
This shade is untethered from the hive mind of The Nether, Raze reached back. It has become addicted to impregnating humans with its evil, watching the maggots bloom in their souls, urging them to abominable acts. It craves its own existence to further its infection.
“A portal exists, opened by a century of bloodshed,” the shade wheezed. “I can’t think of any other way.”
Steele shook the creature. “Where?”
Raze answered for it. “The Union Stockyards.”
With a shove, Steele released it. It fell against the wall, gasping.
Iain, cull the thing, Raze reached.
We don’t have time—
Do it. We can’t have you weak.
Iain gripped the shade by its shoulders, imbibing its essence, feeling the stone of his muscles loosen.
“We’ll let you live for now, but your days are numbered,” Raze said. “The next time our paths cross, you’ll find out why Zorn still has it out for me.”
It took some will for Iain to cease his culling. He took nearly all of it, and the shade slid to the ground, eyes rolling and unfocused.
Raze nodded. “Let’s go.”
The four Banes dropped from the sky on West Exchange Avenue in front of the Union Stockyards gate and moved past the landmark at a full run. None of the old slaughterhouses remained, as they’d been replaced by nondescript structures. Still, the blood of a century of millions of slaughtered animals left a vibration the Drygs could sense. The locus of this dark energy turned out to be a single-story office and manufacturing building. Cree reached it first, plowing headlong into a rolling gate and smashing it from its mountings.
They were greeted by the sensation of hurricane-force winds, not physically, but psychically. Iain balked at the pressure. He realized it was because he was a diune, the half-human aspect of him repelled by the gateway beyond. It made him more resolved than ever, and he forced his way through the doorway.
Inside was dark and empty, save for a huge crack in the wide concrete floor surrounded by soot. Brimstone issued from below, steam and smoke, embers and ash flitting into the enclosed space. Flickers of fire reflected from the ceiling intermittently.
“Well, if there ever was a gateway to hell, this looks like the place,” Cree said.
A sound came from below, the distant echo of a thousand mingled screams on the wind.
“Why didn’t we know about this place?” Iain asked.
Raze pursed his lips. “The shades never needed to move physically to the Earth realm before. This does give us some indication regarding how they might open a portal to Empyrean.”
“The valley of blood,” Cree said. “It might explain how Zorn could attack Empyrean in the first place.”
“I’m not about to let him do it again.” The smoky air shifted as Raze tossed aside his trench coat, tied his dreads into a ponytail and morphed into his full Dryg form: seven feet and a quarter ton of living stone. His webbed wings expanded, a dull thud resounding from the leathery forms.
Cree and Iain followed suit, asphalt-colored skin nearly invisible in the burned concrete warehouse.
Steele remained in human form.
Raze shot him a question.
“The Phyrss tasked us with finding intel on Zorn’s next invasion. We got that now. Mission accomplished.” Steele folded his arms. “It was Iain who got tasked with bringing his weak-assed pure back to Empyrean. Way I see it, not my bitch, not my problem, brothers. Good luck.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
L
ILITH
THE DULL ACHE BETWEEN her shoulder blades connected to the burn in her wrists and roused her from a drug-induced stupor.
A voice crawled in her ears like ants. “Apologies for the rudimentary and mundane abduction. We generally have more style. But considering one of my soldiers nearly poisoned you to death, I felt it necessary to go the Earthly route.”
Lilith’s eyelids unglued. She found herself in a groined room of stone without windows or doors. Light swirled from a pit in the floor a few feet away—a sickly, dying fire that issued a damp chill. Above her, a rope stretched away in darkness. Moving, she found herself tied by the wrists, arms behind her, feet barely planted on the freezing floor.
“Welcome to The Nether.”
A figure hidden beneath an executioner’s hood and completely draped in black appeared from behind her.
“Dramatic, no? We’ve instilled this particular fashion on the human world for millennia. It was particularly taken to by religious practitioners.”
The voice grated from beneath the hood. No holes marked a place for the eyes. Lilith’s vision wandered to a rack leaning against a wall, a rough stone table covered with rusted, sharp tools. A torture chamber right out of a horror movie: perhaps the torture chamber that all others were designed after.
A torture chamber in Hell. She knew such a place must exist, given her years fighting demons. Now she herself was here. Lilith found herself unable to form words, or even coherent thoughts.
“Save your words. You may find you’ll need the energy later.” The executioner drew close, drawing a cold finger down her cheek. Lilith jerked away from the greasy touch, making the ropes jerk at her shoulders, the dull ache a drilling agony.
She needed to still herself, reach past her terrified paralysis, her pain, her panic, and draw upon her speak. Breathing deeply, she reached inside her psyche.
“This is going to be easier than I thought.” The executioner laughed, pressing himself against her and drawing his frozen hands along her curves. “Give it to me, Lilith. Strike me with your hellfire.”
The groping fingers made her nauseous. Until now, she’d always cast her speak through her hands. Willing herself still, away from the subtle molestation, out of this horrifying chamber, she built up her speak. She let the blue light fly at her captor.
The executioner staggered away, the blue wave driving him back. The hood turned toward the glowing pit. Lilith followed his gaze. The toxic fire blazed, a whirlpool of faint yellow mixing with the diseased red hues. Its flow grew colder, drawing an ache from her bones.
“Fantastic.” The executioner clapped his pale hands. “Maybe just a little slap and tickle will do the trick, Lily.”
She finally found her voice. “Don’t call me that.”
The hood nodded. “Oh, you hate that name, don’t you? Someone used to call you that. Someone you had a hand in murdering.”
Lilith tasted bile in the back of her throat. Her boyfriend had died because of who she was.
“A little hate goes a long way here, Lily. It untethers the moronic shades from the masses, makes us creative. Free.” He walked behind her, his presence palpable. Her skin crawled as she awaited the touch of his damp hands.
“There are five stages of torture, did you know that?” He whispered in her ear, making her want to flinch away. “We’re at stage three. The first was the Question, which you answered, although feebly. The second was my telling you that you will be tortured. And you will be, you will feel such anguish and misery that you will be compelled to speak, and speak louder than any confession ever made.”
She raged at his touch, his voice, anger gluing her to her terror. Once the drug wore off, once she could fully focus, she would burn this creature to less than ash.
He stepped in front of her again. “I get the feeling you’d like to speak now. Would you like that, Lily? To burn me to nothing?” Hands lifted palms out, he waggled his fingers at her. “Do it. I dare you.”
“Just like a sicko to want to die,” she managed.
“Oh, don’t be silly. You can’t destroy me. Not here in The Nether. No, I need you to strike out with as much speak as you can muster. You see, you possess the only external source of hellfire in the universe. It’s tied to your bloodline; your righteous forbearers were hot to banish evil from the world. Fighting fire with fire, they were, obtaining our source of power for their own ends. Now, my fragile little Lily, you will use it to free the First Untethered, the Lord of the Nether, from his prison.”
“Who are you?”
“Isn’t it obvious? I’m the Unnamed, the bastard son of Zorn. Very soon, through your hate, disgust and pain, you will be forced to speak, and shatter the walls that imprison Daddy Dearest.”
Lilith’s eyes locked on the vortex of fire. Her first attempt to speak the executioner had started the sickly blaze. It seemed fitting that the lord of Hell be imprisoned in fire. But with her years of running, fighting off the demons and killing them as she could, there was no way she would be part of freeing their leader.
“Fuck off,” she said.
The man in the hood wandered behind her again. “That’s the spirit.”
Her fear rose as he moved out of sight, speak flaring, unbidden, a protective reflex as uncontrollable as an eye blink.
“Back to our lesson in the stages of torture,” he taunted. “Stage three—any guesses?” Lilith mentally cursed his mocking tone, wanting nothing more than to release her power. Exactly what he wanted. She breathed deeply, trying to remain calm.
“This provide a hint?” A long, thin knife flickered in her vision. “It’s not what you’re thinking, I can guarantee that.”
The flesh of her back erupted in goose pimples. She awaited a deep stab, the flaying of her skin. Instead, she felt her blouse tugged hard. The blade ripped through the material audibly, the tip nicking her hard as he drove it beneath her bra strap and cut. Edge scraping, the blade shredded her blouse to scraps. It fell on the floor before her.
“Surprised? Stage three, the stripping of the victim.” The chilled blade slipped under the waistband of her skirt, moving between her buttocks, rending the fabric. The seams of her panties went taut, and a single cut left her shivering.
“Humans never feel so vulnerable as they do when naked.” He moved in front of her, waving the knife in the air. “Except, perhaps, when they’re on the toilet.”
The knife came closer. Lilith braced herself for the cut. Instead, the executioner laid the flat of the blade on her right nipple. The cold drew it painfully erect.
“Oh, I love to watch the breast react that way. We all do. That’s why we tend to congregate in strip clubs.” The knife moved to her other nipple. Lilith gritted her teeth.
“Don’t you just hate being manipulated? Your body reacting against your will for some asshole’s amusement?” He twirled the knife. “And you are an amusing one. Those thick thighs, the little gap in your teeth—hardly a beauty, but somehow, it works for me. It must work for a lot of guys.”
The speak boiled inside her as the shining blade moved south.
Mask inches from her face, breath like rotting flesh, Zorn’s son chuckled. “Come on, speak like the bitch you are.”
Power moved inside her, a storm she was barely able to contain. Anticipating his next perverted move, she got ahold of herself.
“Aw, shit.” The hooded man moved toward the rack against the wall. “I should’ve known better. You’ve been manhandled by your bird toilet boyfriend for too long, right? No freakiness I can come up with could bother you enough to speak. Time to move to stage four. No need to guess at this one.”
He maneuvered the rack behind her. Weighted cords dangled from pulleys, running through hinged wheels and to the manacles. She felt stiff leather encircle one wrist, and then the other. With a jerk, her suffering arms were yanked tight against the rack. A moment later, so were her ankles.
“Even if I can’t tease a little speak out of you, your peripheral nervous system won�
�t let you endure too much pain before you let loose.”
The rack tilted, Lilith now nearly parallel to the floor. Already, she felt her muscles stretch, the rough cuffs biting into her skin.
Fully in her vision, the executioner gripped the lever and twisted. With dull clanks, a ratchet yanked the ropes tighter in increments.
“I hope I won’t have to flay you alive. You have such nice skin. I’d like to wear it out soon, a little night on the town.” The Bastard returned to the wheel.
Joints in her shoulders popped first, a grinding tug that sent spots reeling in her eyes. Next, her hips screamed as the executioner tightened the ropes. Her speak squirmed inside her, the feeling like a mental wince.
Zorn’s son paused. “If you’re not gonna let me have it, these ropes are gonna get real tight, real fast. Even if you are into the rough shit, this will be more than you can stand, Lily.”
He waited, hands on the lever. Anticipation was worse than the actual pain. It gave her no time to think, only to imagine the inevitability of her joints separating, tendons severing, muscles stretched to suffering uselessness.
What the son of Zorn did not realize was that even his taunting mockery of her love of Iain strengthened her resolve. Even as the ropes creaked with a crank of the hinges, he filled her thoughts.
Her love, her intended, her pure.
Iain.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
IAIN
ANTICIPATING A LONG FLIGHT, their wings were stretched to their fullest as the Banes dropped through the hole in the concrete and into The Nether. A floor came up suddenly, their plunge abrupt and short.
Walls of a massive cave seemed formed by bricks of glowing coals, the heat intense enough to irritate their granite skin. Even in the under realm, Iain felt Lilith’s presence like a soothing balm. She was here, alive, but for how long, he had no clue.
He gazed up, seeing not a hole in concrete, but a distant, swirling whirlpool in the colors of sewage and infectious discharge.