by Lisa M Basso
“We should go,” I whispered to Kade.
He tightened his grip on my sleeve.
My pulse raced, throwing my head into a spiral. What if Kade’s act on Earth—the feeding, killing, and obeying that Lucien and Az had forced me to watch—hadn’t been an act at all? If Lucifer had put him through the same kind of torture he’d used on me, there was a good possibility Kade had broken. It was hard to believe after he willingly entered Hell to be with me.
I glanced at him, his mask concealing everything I needed to see.
Anything was possible.
The block of ice landed on the stage with a crack, freeing tiny rocks from the ceiling. The ice slid almost to the edge of the stage while the souls returned to their river.
I prayed the woman would make good on her promise to hide Lucien’s head so it could never be reattached.
“To show how powerful she is, I arranged for a demonstration.” Lucifer climbed atop the block and held out his hand. Two Fallen marched an angel onto the stage. A real angel. Kade must have heard my sharp intake of breath, because his head turned slightly and his shoulders went rigid. The angel’s white wings hung low, mangled, his body covered in whip marks and dried blood. “This, children, is Lofiel, an angel.”
The crowd collectively chanted their approval.
I struggled not let the hate brewing inside me overcome my common sense. Charging the stage to find out if I could kill Lucifer, too, was a bad idea. But it was there, brewing.
“I had planned for our guest of honor to regale us with a show. Her escape is a hitch in those plans. However, all is not lost. The angel’s life is still in her hands.” Lucifer threw the angel down, forcing him to his knees atop the block of ice. “There is no escape, Rayna, not from here, and not from me.” His growl stitched terror into my bones. He hadn’t said it in so many words, but he must have known I’d killed his son.
“Return now,” Lucifer continued, “and I will spare this abomination’s life.”
“Now we should go,” Kade said, giving my sleeve a small tug.
“I can’t let him die,” I whispered back.
“He’s been captured, brought to Hell. He’s already dead.” He spun me around, then urged me forward.
“So far we’ve gone easy on you, child. This. Ends. Now!” Lucifer bellowed.
The sound of a sword slammed into the ice stage. Two things dropped. The angel’s head, and then his body. My knees gave out, but Kade kept me upright and moving.
“Find her!” Lucifer’s voice boomed again, shaking the cave.
“Stand on your tiptoes,” Kade whispered close to my ear.
I balked at his order. “What?”
“You’re too short. You’ll be spotted.”
He was right. I did as he said, but it meant walking so much slower and unsteadily on the uneven terrain.
The crowd of Fallen dispersed, some removing their masks, but thankfully not all. We fell into step with a group heading toward the ice caverns that Shirtless and Fornicator had brought me through. Kade yanked me out of line and pulled us in another direction.
“What are you doing? That’s the way out,” I hissed.
“Not the way I came.”
He led us in a different direction, one few Fallen had gone because of its distance from the stage. Again doubt crept in. Kade had been a different person on that screen. On Earth. What could he have done in order to gain enough trust from Lucien to get him out of here? How had he returned? And why? There were certain things I had to know.
“How did you—”
“Sir.” A Fallen stopped in our path, lowering his head.
Shit.
I stretched higher on my toes and stopped. Now would be the perfect time to call to the hate clouding my thoughts, but with Kade here, no matter how unsure I was about him, I couldn’t use my light. Thinking fast, I tipped my mask a fraction of an inch, then tried to channel Lucien. What would he do? How had he treated his army? I walked around him without wasting a word on him, hoping Kade would follow. He did.
His footsteps sounded louder than usual behind me. He must have wanted me to know he was there. Unfortunately, talking would only get us noticed. Blind faith. I had to trust him. For now.
Chapter Ten
Rayna
Seventeen: the number of times we made a wrong turn in the ice tunnels Kade led us through. Ten: the number of times I cursed not heading back the way Shirtless and Fornicator had brought me. Three: the number of times I retched from hunger and fatigue. Two: the number of times the ever-changing caves nearly closed in on us. Eternity: the amount of time it took us to find our way out of the tunnels and into another set.
I kept my eyes sharp on the path in front of me. My blood was icing, refusing to cooperate with what I needed it to do, which was go faster.
I followed Kade deeper into the tunnels. The further in we traveled, the more entryways appeared. A maze. Kade had been smart enough when venturing toward the castle to map his pathways with smears of blood in indeterminate corners. Once we found them it had been a small miracle, but nothing lasted forever.
Kade stopped at the fifth tunnel intersect. “It’s gone.”
My mouth sank open. “Completely?” I knelt between the nearest two openings. Marks three and four had been faded, almost too faded to see; this next one could be the same. I scuttled along the floor, lifted onto my toes, and scoured the walls, desperate to find a red smear. Anywhere. But there was nothing to find.
Hell was a place with a rabid heartbeat, always shifting and changing. Probably to make it impossible to escape.
“We’ll have to choose one.”
Getting lost hadn’t been such a big deal before we’d wasted what must have been half a day’s journey on a single wrong turn. Time was running out. One wrong decision could be the final nail in our coffins.
Of the three openings, both of us angled toward the center. I followed, keeping Kade in front of me instead of at my back, still unsure if his soul gorging on land would affect him down here. I trusted him once, so long ago. I’d rather not be this close to escaping Hell only to be attacked by someone I thought I could trust.
The middle cavern walls and ceiling narrowed, the ice giving way to brown and black rocks that tightened the space, eventually tapering into a point.
We headed back around and tried the tunnel on the far left, which led to yet another room of tunnels and choices. While Kade pricked his finger on his sword and marked the opening we came out of, I noticed another blood smear on the tunnel to the left. We took it and found ourselves back at our last destination. Three tunnels, the center one leading to nowhere, and the one on the far right somehow tricking us backward.
My gaze dropped to the floor. “We’re going in circles.” My eyes burned. If I’d had any water to spare, I might have cried.
Scuffling noises edged in all around us. Kade’s gaze caught mine. His hands wrapped around my shoulders, squeezing in a way that felt so familiar—urgent, not romantic. I followed him into the center tunnel, as far in as we could get while maintaining our range of motion. This way we’d still have room to fight if we needed to.
Though the caves glowed a soft blue, it was dim enough to hinder seeing very far in any direction. Noises carried and intensified the way they would in any caves. I didn’t dare inch forward to get a glimpse at who approached or how many. For all I knew there were ten—twenty—plenty to search each tunnel with a partner by their side.
This could be it. I tried to swallow away the dryness. The resulting lump stuck in my throat.
Kade pressed the handle of the blade into my hand. I didn’t refuse, even though the heavy steel weighed me down. His fingers squeezed my shoulder, lingering there longer than they should have. Longer than I wanted them to? Probably not, if I was being honest with myself.
With my free hand, I touched my cold, clammy fingers to his. He reached forward, lacing his hand with mine. For a moment, one single, breathless second, I let my eyes drift close
d and remembered him holding me in our cell, kissing me beneath the blankets, coming after me on Earth when I wanted nothing to do with him, sacrificing himself to Hell … for me.
My apprehension melted away like the waterfalls of Lucifer’s castle. This was Kade. We’d literally been through Hell together. Neither of us had done much to be proud of since then.
But that was before I’d turned into exactly the kind of monster that could end his entire existence.
I jerked my shoulder out of his grip and readjusted my mask. Stay in the moment, I reminded myself.
Rocks crunched under approaching feet. At least we couldn’t be attacked on both sides. Our tunnel only had one way in and one way out.
Just like me and Kade. One way in—fighting. One way out—more fighting.
The footsteps and blunt, hushed whispers made it even harder to determine how many there were.
Kade shifted around in front of me, his feet silent on the rocky ice.
He stopped not far from the mouth of the tunnel and flashed me two fingers.
“I’m going to check ahead,” one of the Fallen said.
A shadow draped over the opening. “Good. I’ll circle back around, see if she got lost.” A winged shadow passed our tunnel, growing larger then smaller, as the one near the opening circled back around.
Two. One more and we would have been in it deep.
We waited until the footsteps faded, then made our move. Kade headed toward the opening we hadn’t checked yet, on the far right. I snuck toward the one that led back to the previous openings. Kade yanked his mask off, dropping it to the floor and searing me with those ageless eyes.
In the lowest voice possible, I said, “We have to split up.”
Kade mouthed his words. “No. I’m not leaving you again.”
The flutter in my heart made me hate myself a little more.
I pulled my mask off and jerked my head toward the cave that led behind us. “Better to have one in front of us than behind.”
He nodded, a tense pull in his neck muscles, and let me take the lead. I was the one with the sword after all.
The Fallen we hunted made no effort to stay quiet, which made it easy to sneak up behind him. Once I inched close enough, I aimed the heavy broadsword for his wings, guessing where his heart would be. Kade darted around me, moving my sword aside with his body, and reached around the Fallen to cover his mouth. He twisted the Fallen in his arms to face me. I wasted no time aiming the sword over his heart. It didn’t instill a lot of confidence that the tip of the sword shook like a leaf in a strong wind.
“How many more of you are there?” I hissed.
“Murrm mmurrmm merrmmer umph!”
Kade held tighter to his mouth, his lips puckering from the effort.
“When I was being tortured and I would scream,” I said, keeping my voice as low as possible, “Lucien would turn his weapon around”—I turned the broadsword around—“and he’d … ” With a sure stroke I jabbed the butt end of the weapon into his throat.
Kade held tight to the Fallen who choked and coughed and struggled, but he wouldn’t be making much other noise for a while.
I pointed the tip of the sword against the Fallen’s neck. “Last chance. How many more?”
He feebly fought Kade’s grip, still choking and trying to pull Kade’s hand away.
I touched the sword to his hand next. “How many?”
He swallowed another coughing fit. His round face and neck were red. When he stilled, Kade released the cover over his mouth. The Fallen hissed. “Everyone.”
Everyone in Hell was looking for us.
Kade and I exchanged oh shit looks.
Regaining my composure, I pressed the tip of the broadsword into the tall Fallen’s throat. “How do we get out of here?”
The Fallen jerked out of Kade’s grip. Kade let him, nodding to me over the Fallen’s tucked back wings. We needed him to be able to move so he could show us the way out.
The Fallen grinned at me, then heaved himself throat first onto my sword.
Adding his stocky frame to the already substantial weight of the steel made it impossible to hold on to. The clank of the blade on the ice was muted somewhat by the body following it.
“Well, that was unfortunate,” Kade said, kicking the body onto its back.
He yanked the broadsword out of the Fallen’s neck and laid it on the floor. His face remained still, unaffected as he jerked the Fallen’s robe off and tossed it to me. Our eyes met as it sailed toward me. Kade. He was really back. The belt tie came an inch from smacking me in the eye, but I caught it before it ended up on the ice.
“Put it on and check the pockets,” he instructed while he rifled through the body’s pockets.
Without wasting a moment, he unfolded the small hunting knife he’d found and started sawing through the Fallen’s chest.
I turned so Kade was at my back and clamped the robe between my knees, peeling off my wet prison layers. With my teeth chattering and the sound of a knife fighting through flesh and bone, I peeled the last, blood-soaked shirt from my skin and tossed it aside. The near-freezing temperature assaulted my bare flesh. I swore Kade’s cutting stopped for a heartbeat. I slipped the cleaner layers on one by one, followed by both robes.
Turning back toward Kade, I searched the dead Fallen’s pockets. An MRE. My mouth watered at the thought of food, even in its dehydrated state. Maybe the Fallen was trying to tell me about this when he was speaking behind Kade’s hand, that if I gave myself up, they’d feed me. I shook my head and pocketed the instant meal. I could eat after we found our way out.
Kade reached into the Fallen’s chest. The cracking, snapping, juicy sound of tearing a raw chicken in two turned my stomach, but not as much as watching Kade rip the heart out and crush it slowly under his boot.
I looked down at the Fallen, the ragged, gaping hole in his chest. “I’m glad I killed him.”
Kade knelt down to clean his hands off on the Fallen’s pant legs. “The actual killing was my handy work.”
“Not him. Lucien. Oh, Lucien’s dead, by the way. At least, I think he is.”
Kade stood up, keeping his voice as low as mine. “No. How?”
“You used to say I asked too many questions. We should go find the other one.”
The lids of his eyes flattened out, as did his mouth. He wasn’t budging.
“Fine. I cut off his head. Took it with me, so they couldn’t reattach it.”
“Then where is it?”
I thought back to the icy river filled with haunted souls. “With any luck, somewhere they’ll never find it.”
“And you just … ” His hand came down in the air like an ax.
“It wasn’t that easy. It took a few tries.”
Kade’s feet ate the distance of the ground between us. He jerked me into his arms, wrapping me up in a bear hug.
I wanted nothing more than to relax into his touch, to melt into him the way I had so long ago, but I was different now. I was poison to him. “Don’t touch me!” I shrieked, pulling so far away, so far into myself that I might never come out. It didn’t matter that every Fallen was on the alert, or that more might be close by. Kade had to know the score and he had to know now. “Don’t ever touch me again!”
“What’s wrong?” The hurt on Kade’s face snapped the part of me that still cared apart. “What happened?”
“Don’t ask me that.” My voice rivaled the temperature of the cave.
“Tell me you’re okay. That they didn’t … do something irreversible.” His hands hovered in the air half way between us. They stayed there, the pain in his chocolate eyes obvious.
“Of course I’m not okay.” This time I returned my voice to a whisper.
“Ray, both of us went through something, we went through Hell.”
“Don’t tell me what we went through. I know. And don’t ask me about what happened when you left—”
“When they took me,” he corrected.
“You le
ft.” I cut into him with my words, unable to stop the hate from seeping into my head. “And I turned into something—they turned me into something.”
“Ray, I—”
“Don’t you get it? I’m everything Lucifer said I was. I’m his weapon now!” I hissed. “I’m barely human anymore.”
“Of course you’re human. You wanted to go back for that angel.”
“Wanted to, but I didn’t! The old Ray would have gone back, no matter the cost.”
Before I knew what was happening, Kade was pulling me into him. I leaned in before I realized what I was doing.
“I said don’t touch me!” I pushed off him. Then I pushed him twice more, for good measure, my hands landed shaking by my sides. “Don’t even get near me. You’re not safe with me. I’m dangerous. A monster.”
Tamping down the sobs wanting to rise from my chest, I pushed passed him and kept moving.
Chapter Eleven
Rayna
We caught up to the first Fallen quickly enough, looking to the damp, rock-covered ground for fresh footsteps to follow. The trouble was that we’d chosen to follow the slowest, laziest Fallen in all of Hell. He must have stopped five times in so many minutes—or hours, it was impossible to tell.
Keeping our distance and remaining silent were battles in and of themselves, especially when my stomach was hell-bent on getting us caught with its growls of starvation. After another dozen sets of maze-like tunnels, Lazy stopped again. A long icicle protruded from the ceiling, a constant leak coming off the tip. I fished in my robe’s pocket for the MRE, tore it open painfully slowly, and held it beneath the drip until enough water gathered inside the foil-lined pocket where I could dump the lumpy contents straight down my throat. I refilled the pouch with as many drops of water as I could, rolling it closed, and replaced it in the robe’s inside pocket, hoping some of it would hold for later.