House of Ash & Brimstone

by Megan Starks

  The only problem was, she wasn’t holding back.

  “This was a dumb idea from the start. We should just bury the body.”

  “Hey, it’s okay. Forget what I said earlier. Less is more, but nothing won’t help us. So stop holding back, and we’ll make do with the excess. I can still ground you—even if you take too much.”

  “But I’m not. This is all I can do. I’ve never pulled that much before, Shade. I couldn’t hold it.”

  He gave her a sideways glance, black eyes reflecting her image back at her. “You’re not blocking it on purpose?” His brows knit with confusion. And then she saw it fill his face, understanding and something else—pity. “What did they do to you at that Catholic home?”

  She could feel the truth lurking behind his accusation, waiting to strike out and punch her in the gut, and she couldn’t stop it, couldn’t avoid it. Images flashed like heat lightning in her mind: the visiting priestess, a woman with fiery hair, a coy smile and sensuous green eyes, whispering in Father Patrick’s ear, her fingers tickling beneath his chin. That same woman holding Gisele under the surface of the water, drowning her in a copper tub. Holy water boiling in her lungs. Father Patrick pouring a cup of the woman’s blood into the bath, running the baptism red as he chanted in a language she didn’t understand.

  She’d clawed the woman’s arm to the bone—until her tiny claws had blunted and lost their steeliness, diminished to human nails.

  A horrified cry burst from Gisele’s throat. They’d sealed some part of her away. And now the Mardoll had burned through its cage.

  “You’re right,” Shade interjected hastily. “I should do it. I can probably pull it off. Just don’t let go of me. Whatever happens, just don’t let go, okay?”

  He touched a rough thumb to her chin, the gesture meant to be tender even though she could feel his claw on her lips. She swallowed, trying to push the memories from her mind.

  Maybe it wasn’t that something was being done to her now. Maybe something had been done to her in the past—to make her forget a boy who’d risked his life to protect her.

  But why? To hurt Shade? To hide her? Or both?

  Shade tightened his grip on her hand and closed his eyes, breathing out long and slow to ready himself. She wriggled her fingers between his, and then it happened. The air around them changed. It crackled, prickling over her skin. Tendrils of her hair floated off her shoulders. Red motes flickered at the edges of her vision. Some part of her had slipped into the veil between worlds—the fiery, nowhere of the in-between that Hellmouths cut completely through.

  This wasn’t at all like creating a flame with a simple spell. To summon an object from Hell without drawing it through the protected opening of a Hellmouth—he was attempting something extremely difficult and dangerous.

  They were adrift in a deadly realm. Or Shade was—she was still aware of the tall pines around them, now licked with flames, the sound like a thousand hissing snakes mixed with a thousand whipping waterfalls. She was aware of the smoldering ground beneath their feet and the burnt-orange moon bleeding across the sky.

  She was their anchor.

  “You don’t play in the veils between, darling,” a voice had told her—her aunt’s. She’d had an aunt. She remembered now, a woman with fire-kissed hair and two, large, curved horns adorning her head. The same woman with the coy smile—the priestess who wasn’t a priestess at all. Gisele sucked in a sharp breath. Her aunt had told her, “Children that conjure from the veil don’t often come out.”

  But she wasn’t a child anymore. She’d broken her seal, and they needed the hellfire. If this was the way to get it, then they had to try.

  She trusted Shade to know what he was doing.

  The veil existed between every realm of Heaven and Hell, and the Earth between, a membrane both separating and adjoining various layers of cells. Touching the veil was easy—passing through it unharmed was another thing. There was a reason Hellmouths had been invented, doors for safe passage, to cut straight through to the other side.

  She squeezed Shade’s hand for assurance, but he’d gone rigid, his attention locked in another realm of existence. He stared, unseeing into the distance, breaths coming in short, shallow pants. Sweat trickled down the side of his face.

  She didn’t want to find out what would happen if she let go and Shade was cut adrift into the veil. It was like he’d disconnected in some way from his body. Without her tying him to a physical spot, would he be able to find his way back from wherever he’d gone?

  She shuddered, trying to stand tall, listening to the incessant crackle and gush of burning fire in every direction. A branch cracked in the distance, and she whirled, heart pounding and palms sweaty.

  She drew her pistol with her left hand, keenly aware that her right hand was taken. Sighting with her dominant hand would be better—sighting with both hands, better still.

  But there was nothing she could do about it now.

  Something was coming.

  “Shade, hurry up,” she muttered, but he didn’t respond.

  The pad-pad-pad of soft, slow footsteps came from behind her and she swiveled again, this time slower, trying to spot a movement that wasn’t fire or shadow among the thick, burning trees. Low growls erupted in the distance, drawing closer from several sides, and she scanned the area without turning, trying to count how many had surrounded them.

  How many shots did she have left? She’d been so shaken after killing Vyx, she hadn’t thought to reload. It was stupidly amateur of her, and she cursed her shortsightedness.

  “Shade, it’s time to come back,” she tried, but he might as well have turned to stone for all that he could hear or answer her.

  What was he doing that was taking so long? She had no idea what it involved to conjure a physical object from Hell—why had Shade thought she’d be better suited for it?

  The first of the creatures, a two-headed, snarling hellhound, stalked from the perimeter of the trees. Its fur rippled as it walked, black and wet as blood, its claws crunching in the charred pine needles. The demon looked like a mix between a mastiff and a bear. Each head wore a half-mask, a bronze ceremonial covering that left its drooling maw bare. It was the mask her brother had worn in her dream.

  Shade cried out, dropping to his knees in pain and clutching at his shoulder—the one that bore Rhogan’s now-blistering mark. She dropped to her knees with him, afraid his hand would be ripped from her otherwise. It was a terrible position to be in, but she didn’t know what else to do.

  She darted her eyes from the hellhound drawing ever closer to them, gun aimed waveringly in its direction as Shade cried out again, the noise tearing at her heart. He sounded as if he were dying. He’d dug his claws into the mark, shredding his skin, head bowed forward, face twisted in fear and pain, but his eyes were still unfocused, still lost to another time and place.

  “Shade? Are you okay? Shade!”

  Again, it was as if he’d never heard her.

  The rest of the pack emerged from the flames, dark violence winding ever closer. They were slighter and leaner than the leader, but no less terrifying. Faces bare, their eyes shone bright yellow with malicious intent.

  Their lithe, black bodies slunk ever closer, but the masked hound stopped, massive paws grinding in the charred earth as it sniffed the air. It snuffled and growled, slinging drool as it lashed its heads.

  A strange, yipping-chuffing sound met her ears, and she realized one of the heads was laughing. The other sneered, a violent baring of pale, blade-like teeth. And then it spoke in a voice that embodied darkness and terror.

  Rhogan’s. From the dream of the night when he’d killed her.

  “F-ouuu-nd you.”

  It laughed louder. The image of it stuttered-juddered-hazed, and then the hellhound was no longer a hound but a man. A man in a mask who was hurting Shade.

  The hellhound closest to her left gnashed his fangs and leaped.

  Searing pain sliced through her shoulder. She shot at poin
t-blank range just beneath its ribs, and the creature died with an ear-shattering yelp, coating her in slick blood from its belly, just as two more descended onto her, four heads biting and lashing at her arms and legs, nipping at her throat. She fired and killed a second of the hellhounds, blasting the front of its face off, its other head shrieking and whimpering as the creature fell. Then she was out of bullets.

  Her body was on fire, burning from the ragged cuts, aching as the pack savaged her. She dropped her spent gun and reached cross-body to draw her second pistol.

  She couldn’t let them have Shade. He was relying on her. She had to protect him, even if she failed to protect herself.

  She aimed for her brother, the masked demon beckoning to Shade from twenty feet away. Squeezed the trigger.

  A hound crashed into her back, rocking her forward. Another slammed into her side, tearing her toward the ground.

  Her shots went wild.

  No!

  The hounds rode her savagely down. A third tackled her with enough force to knock the wind from her lungs.

  And her hand jerked from Shade’s.

  She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. As soon as their hands ripped apart, Rhogan and the hounds blinked into nothingness, lost to another realm. The fires faded and began to disappear, and with them, so did Shade’s body. He was going to disappear, trapped in the veil.

  “Shade!” she screamed.

  She wasn’t anchoring him anymore. She’d lost her hold on him. She’d—

  She had to touch him somehow; she couldn’t let him slip through her fingers. She stared at the image of him curled in on himself with pain, Rhogan’s mark burning bright red in his skin. His master was still calling to him, touching him from afar, connected to him even from another realm. Blood pulsed from her neck, so much, running out of her with every heartbeat.

  “Come back to me!”

  She shouted it with every fiber of her being, every ounce of her willpower, funneling the whole of her magic and power—the entirety of her soul—into the command, felt it thrum out of her in the frantic pumps of her lifeblood. The mark on his chest, the mark of her name, flared to life like a beacon in the night, blinding and breathtaking. Radiant. Her hold on him was so strong it hurt to look at it.

  Purple motes swam before her eyes.

  She had no idea if it was wishful thinking, desperation, or a hallucination from the blood loss, but she could have sworn she saw him jolt in the blast of searing-white light, onyx demon-eyes sliding to look at her.

  Then everything went black.

  18

  “You’re down forty men, darling. Keep playing so recklessly, and you’re sure to lose.”

  Aunt Tisia’s nails scraped Gisele’s scalp as she pretended to smooth her hair down. She was always doing that, tempering a scolding with a soothing gesture. Underlying the same affection with a bite of pain.

  “I don’t like games of strategy,” Gisele whined, wriggling her tiny body, squirming where she sat on her aunt’s lap.

  Across the twenty-seat long marble table, Rhogan scoffed. He rested his chin in one hand, elbow propped on the red and gold whorled stone top. With the other hand, he played with a dead howler. Each time he stroked the length of its spine, he lit the cat-like creature up, the electrical surges jolting the corpse, compelling the bristled flesh into a disturbing, strangely hypnotic dance.

  Two turns ago, the howler had been alive and purring.

  Gisele crinkled her nose but didn’t dare protest her brother’s behavior. Doing so would accomplish nothing but to transfer his attention onto herself.

  One of the Rights of Blood Rhogan had inherited from their bloodline—innate abilities only demons directly descended from fallen Seraphim, or Devils in other words, possessed—was an electric touch. As the Right was from his mother, not their shared father, Gisele did not think she would share it when she grew old enough that her abilities would manifest.

  “Like or dislike matters little. If you’re to rule, Giseraphel, you must learn. And learn well,” Rhogan drawled.

  Hot shame washed over her as she heard the truth in his tone.

  He didn’t think she could.

  Or maybe he simply didn’t think she should, her being the youngest and yet the crowned heir. With Gisele’s birth, her mother had stolen what was rightfully Edelmark’s—the right of succession. Rhogan had sneered it at her enough times that she would never forget it.

  Their bloodline stemmed from the fount of a fallen archangel. The original. The shining strength in the darkness. But that had been a millennia ago. Since, they’d weakened incrementally, generation by generation. Until Gisele’s mother had tumbled from grace, and in giving birth, restored the family’s might.

  Edelmark, lounging in the ornate chair beside him, said nothing. The oldest sibling was a demon of few words. But from the way he was watching Gisele with a rare interest, she did not want to disappoint him.

  They were playing pairs. Gisele and her aunt against the princes, her half-brothers. But Aunt Tisia was not doing much to help her.

  “It’s just a game,” Gisele grumbled. Losing always put her in a bad mood. Though she did not hate losing as much as Rhogan did.

  “One day, it might not be. One day, someone might bring war upon your father. Seeking revenge.” Aunt Tisia’s red-painted lips touched the top of Gisele’s ear, preceding the sting of teeth. “Try harder, darling.”

  “I know what will motivate her.” Rhogan perked up, a sharp-edged smile cutting across his face.

  Standing sentry by the ballroom’s grand double doors, Shade tensed. The grip he kept on one of his twin swords turned white-knuckled, but otherwise he stood stock still, knowing better than to step out of line.

  They often did that. Made her soul-bound keep guard from some yards away. Across a room or the courtyard or outside on the terrace. It was her family’s punishment for his impertinence. For having ‘ruined’ the princess’s binding ceremony when he snuck in far too young—a child himself, only three years older—and been chosen by a five-year-old Gisele over the horde’s most elite, adult warriors.

  Her father had come close to killing Shade that night. But the soul-bond had held true and strong.

  In contrast to her soul-bound’s distance, Edelmark’s valahan, two fiery-haired doppelgängers who shared a soul, lounged on the armrests to either side of the eldest prince, oiling their blades and whispering to each other as he downed a goblet of tart wine.

  Rhogan’s battle-scarred and hulking brute, Atlas, stood just slightly to the right of and behind his chair.

  Aunt Tisia had no soul-bound at all. Hers had been executed for crimes against the crown a year before Gisele was born. Or so Rhogan had laughingly explained to her once.

  “Yes,” Rhogan said now. “Perhaps, dear sister, your motivation would benefit from a wager. If you lose…I’ll snap your arm in three places.”

  Gisele examined the black and white pieces remaining on the board, spanning the table between them. Each piece represented ten soldiers in her or her brothers’ armies. It also happened to be that the pieces were living creatures. Little black floof balls Edelmark had invented, part dust bunny, part damned soul (from humans who broke their contracts with Devils), spliced together in the workshop where her eldest brother spent most of his nights.

  Half of the pieces had been sprinkled with flour from the kitchens to mark them white. Those were Gisele’s.

  When one piece conquered another, it did so by eating its opponent.

  Four of her brothers’ troops had gorged themselves, bloating to triple their original size. Soon it would be five.

  Gisele didn’t want to have her arm broken, even if it would mend over time. It would still hurt and, worse, feel like a mark of shame.

  “Careful, Rho.” Edelmark spoke up. “Father is beginning to suspect your envy.”

  “Nephew, to be sure, you wouldn’t harm our precious heir.”

  “Of course not. Shade will stand in as her whipping b
oy. Though I must say, it is strange the way you act like she’s yours, Aunt Tisia. Such protectiveness when you have no relation to our father’s wife. Is it because you never had a child?” Rhogan raised his blond brows in a falsely innocent expression.

  Gisele didn’t like the look on his face. Or the way he’d said those things.

  First off, Rhogan often lashed out at her whenever she annoyed him. He didn’t at all mind bruising her or even drawing blood.

  One time he’d dropped her out a window, and she’d screamed and screamed until Shade caught her, his heart beating as hard against her chest as her own.

  Secondly, Gisele worked really hard at behaving so that Shade never had to take her punishments. Watching her dragon suffer for her failures hurt worse than taking a whipping herself, and she’d learned early on that begging mercy only earned him more pain. She would never willingly accept a wager that required Shade to stand in for her, and Rhogan knew that.

  But in front of their father—or in this case, his visiting sister—she didn’t have much choice.

  Third of all, Rhogan’s words made Aunt Tisia’s face mottle red and her sharp nails dig into Gisele’s thighs. She didn’t know why his taunt had angered the older woman. But she knew an upset sovereign was a danger to any demon, other sovereigns included.

  Gisele’s voice sounded very small when she said, “I’ll take the bet. But only if I pay the price, myself. I won’t learn anything otherwise. Right?”

  Rhogan revealed his teeth as if she’d said a particularly stupid thing but made him happy.

  Aunt Tisia said, “I’ll allow it. If the wager is returned the same in reverse. Boys?”

  Edelmark nodded.

  Gisele’s pulse skittered in time with the floof soldiers as they marched across the board. She could feel Shade’s stare, hot on the side of her face. He was furious with her; he always was when she tried to shield him.

  She didn’t look at him for the rest of the game.