Hell to Pay: A Paranormal Reverse Harem Romance (Razing Hell Book 2)

by Cate Corvin

  “None of us would let you go.” I stroked her back until her pale bat-like wings stopped shivering. “Belial went out and saved some of the women. He claimed them as tribute. I know we didn’t save them all, but some of them will get to go home.”

  “That’s better than none,” she whispered, closing her eyes. Purple shock-circles had formed under them.

  “Go to sleep. When you wake up, you’ll feel better. Some of the women will need you.”

  “And what about you?” she asked, cracking one eyelid open.

  “Well…” I looked down at my other hand, clenched in my lap. “I have some bloody work ahead of me.”

  A faint smile crossed Vyra’s face, and when her breath evened out, I crept out of the room and shut the door.

  Azazel and Tascius waited for me in the parlor, and the moment I swept into the room, Lucifer landed on the balcony. He swiped a forearm over his mouth, wiping away the blood from his split lips.

  Weariness gnawed at me as I beckoned him over. He sat obediently on the couch, and I summoned the white fire of my healing magic.

  As long as Satan lived, Vyra would always live in terror, and Lucifer in torment.

  There was no more time to waste.

  “You know why we’re all here, I think.” I released my magic when Lucifer stretched, his wings spreading and pulling back in. Under the glaze of blood, he was healed. “That was my last straw. I’m not going to wait around while he takes women just because he’s pissy about something, and we know what we need to accomplish it.”

  “The Sword of Light is out,” Azazel said, his violet eyes sweeping over me, and I knew what he was thinking: that if I touched it now, I’d be burned alive in an instant.

  “But there was another option.” I glanced up at Lucifer. “The inverse sword.”

  Lucifer leaned back on the couch, settling his arm around my shoulders and drawing me close. “The problem is that an inverse sword doesn’t exist yet. We would need to have one made.”

  I chewed my lower lip, mulling it over as Azazel leaned forward. “I’ve done a little research into the issue of an inverse sword, and we’re in luck, for once. The finest smith in Hell resides not far from Dis, at the foot of Hekla Fell.”

  “What is Hekla Fell?” I asked, squinting at him.

  Azazel smiled. “The Forge of the Gods. A volcano on the outskirts of the wastelands. There was once an entire sect of smiths who lived there, but if my research is accurate, there is one left who might be able to help us.”

  “So we make a new sword, or we find a way to turn the Sword of Light. We’d have to take on Gabriel, and probably Raguel and Barachiel, just to get our hands on the Sword- and there’s no guarantee we’d be able to pick it up and move it.” I gripped Lucifer’s hand, squeezing his fingers tightly. “Our best bet is the smith.”

  Tascius nodded in agreement. “To Hekla Fell, then.”

  Azazel cast a sleeping spell over Vyra before we left, ensuring she’d slumber through the rest of the day and the night after. He kissed her forehead and shut her door, and we descended to the ground below.

  “Melisande’s horse is a little too small for you, Nephilim,” Azazel said, looking over Tascius. “We need something a little… larger.”

  “Are there horses in the Fields?” I asked, ducking around a shade with a mouth full of asphodel.

  “There are if you know where to look.” He smiled thinly, then placed a finger in his mouth and whistled.

  Instead of the sound being swallowed by the swirling fog, the piercing note seemed to grow, splintering into a chorus of sound that swept away across the Fields. I waited with bated breath, clutching Tascius with one hand and Lucifer with the other.

  Several of the roaming shades looked up and wandered away, the grass hissing from their retreat. I strained my ears, and under the swish of grass, a sound that seemed like a quiet heartbeat began to pick up its pace.

  It grew louder and louder as the whistle died away. A dark shape burst through the mist, trampling the grass underfoot.

  My mouth fell open at the sight of the dark horse. It was dark as night, with tiny purple asphodel flowers braided in its mane, and dwarfed Capheira even from a distance.

  Its hooves were dense iron, as well as the spiraling horn protruding from its forehead.

  “You want me to ride a unicorn.” Tascius’s voice was emotionless.

  The unicorn slowed to a trot, then a walk as it approached Azazel. He reached out and touched the velvety dark nose. “He’s a very nice unicorn.”

  “Oh, come on friend, how many people get to say they rode a unicorn?” I tugged his sleeve, grinning up at him.

  Tascius rolled his eyes upwards, then stepped forward. I pressed a spare sugar lump in his hand. “Here, give him this.”

  The unicorn watched him approach with dark, unfathomable eyes. I held my breath, wondering if my poor Nephilim was about to get himself gored with that pointed iron spiral, but Tascius held out the sugar. “You do look like a very nice unicorn,” he muttered.

  It accepted the offering, licking his palm for more.

  The unicorn didn’t stir as Tascius swung himself up on its back, a graceful-looking feat for a man so large, but I could’ve sat cross-legged on the creature’s back with room to spare. With his silvery hair and carved features, he almost looked like a prince from a fairy tale.

  “Where’d you make friends with a unicorn?” I asked Azazel, who stepped back from the horse. “Does he have a name?”

  “He’s always lived here, and no. He just… is.”

  “Do you think the old tales are true, that unicorns only approach virgins…?” I wondered aloud, and Azazel growled.

  “No more questions,” the Watcher said briskly.

  “One would think you’d encourage a healthy curiosity in your students-”

  “Not today, I don’t.”

  I raised an eyebrow at Lucifer as Tascius nudged the unicorn into a trot, picking his way down the sloping fields.

  “I’m pretty sure he’s not,” Lucifer whispered with a conspiratorial smile. “But I could always be wrong.”

  Azazel gave us a scathing look and dissolved into mist, following the unicorn overhead.

  Lucifer and I took flight, dancing around each other as we followed the unicorn to the edge of the fields, where the soil gave way to black sand. The dunes were smaller, flowing more gently than those in the Starsea, and I raised a hand to shield my eyes as I peered in the distance.

  The rim of the crater I’d made when I’d fallen was just visible. The shards of my broken halo were probably buried somewhere under all that sand.

  We rounded Dis, careful to keep a distance from the city as we headed towards the mountains in the distance. They rose in jagged spires and pillars, painting the rim of the sky like a set of teeth.

  Tascius’s unicorn trotted lightly over the sand like it was as solid as the ground of the Fields of Asphodel, and I occasionally swooped down low to fly alongside him, reaching out to touch his hand.

  Despite the fact that he was riding a unicorn, he gave me a smile every time, his fingers tickling my palm when we touched.

  But when we were flying, and he looked up, there were flickers of loss in his face, pain at knowing what he was missing out on.

  It took two hours to reach the edge of the wasteland, where the first spikes of jagged, glassy stone rose out of the sand. My back muscles were burning from the strain of flight on such still air, and a fine layer of sweat coated my forehead.

  I spiraled down to the smooth rock and landed, my wings gratefully pulling in against my back.

  “The way to Hekla Fell is through here.” Azazel re-materialized, looking up at the crags dispassionately. “We’ll go on foot from here on out. There is a tunnel we’ll need to pass through.”

  Tascius patted his unicorn’s neck and dismounted, and I gave him another bit of sugar to pass over. Thank god for Belial and the little sack of horse-treats he’d given me. The unicorn preened under Tas
cius’s touch, even though I knew very well that he wasn’t a virgin by any means.

  Lucifer, to my annoyance, looked as cool as if the flight to the edge of the wastes had been nothing but a walk in the park. He gripped my hand, pulling me up to the edge of a trail worn in the stones.

  “There will be an answer here.” His silver eyes flashed as he looked up at the mountains. “I know it.”

  “If there’s not, we always have the back-up plan,” I reminded him.

  He glanced down at me, his brow furrowed. “You’re not touching the Sword of Light. Not even if all hope is lost. I’d rather serve in Hell than watch you die screaming.”

  “Nobody’s going to die screaming,” I said, sounding more confident than I felt.

  It was a question that weighed on me heavily, assuming we found no demon smith. Would I be able to hold the Sword again?

  I took a deep breath and hiked up the trail on his heels, with Tascius bringing up the rear behind me.

  We wove through jagged pillars that arched overhead, climbing higher and higher as the sun beat down on us. Within an hour, I was almost grateful for the sight of the open mouth of a cavern, almost nothing more than a slot in the dark stone ahead of us.

  Still, despite my desperation to be out of the sun, there was something about the darkness crawling inside it that made my hackles rise.

  Azazel stared into the darkness, his eyes narrowed. “I’ll light the way. Melisande, stay between us.”

  It was an order, not a suggestion.

  The Watcher went first, and as he disappeared into the cavern, tiny stars flickered to life in the air around him like fireflies.

  “You next,” Lucifer said, and Tascius nodded in agreement. I swallowed hard, and stepped into the darkness after Azazel.

  The heat of the sun dissipated instantly, like the shadows had sucked away every bit of warmth from my body. I shivered and drew closer to Azazel, staying within the little cloud of his stars.

  With Lucifer at my back, some of the latent fear left my body. We wove through the darkness, sometimes hearing small scuffles of an unseen something moving around, but Lucifer always reached out to touch me when I paused, listening intently.

  It felt like something was watching us, like we were no longer really in the mountains at the edge of a wasteland, but under the eye of something too enormous and vast to comprehend.

  I couldn’t even bring myself to speak until light filtered into a distant crack far ahead, and my eyes teared up at the red-hot brilliance of it.

  As soon as we stepped out of the tunnel, the weight of watching eyes vanished, but a heat that made the wasteland sun seem like winter blasted against us.

  I gaped open-mouthed at the mountain that loomed high above us. A woman’s face had been carved in the sheer drop, and a fall of lava gushed steadily from her open mouth, splashing viscously into the lake of fire that shimmered before us.

  “Hekla Fell,” Azazel said softly. “The Forge of the Gods.”

  I dropped my gaze. We stood on a broad shelf of polished obsidian, and a ramshackle little hut had been built under an overhang, only yards away from the lake of molten stone.

  As I watched, a demon crept under tarp hung across the open door, slithering on a long body to the edge of the lake, and used a long pair of tongs to hold a crucible over the lava-flow. He had more arms than I could count, and the rest of him was still in the hut. Lank gray hair hung over two sets of his shoulders, and scorch marks smudged his scaled skin.

  He tilted the crucible, revealing the flash of molten gold, and sighed in satisfaction before retreating to his hut. Before his head popped back inside, it swiveled to face us, revealing one normal eye, and one that was a round, polished ruby.

  “Well, are you coming in or not?”

  Then he vanished.

  I glanced up at Azazel. “Is that what you were expecting?”

  He blinked at the hut. “I’d expected a little more grandeur, but I’ll take what I can get.”

  I took a deep breath and carefully walked over the sharp stone, avoiding razor-like ridges underfoot until we reached the door of the smith’s hut. Sweat ran down my back, and I could’ve sworn I felt my wings crisping from the proximity of the lake.

  I paused outside the cloth door.

  “Oh, do come in,” the smith said silkily, and I pulled aside the cloth and stepped inside.

  16

  Melisande

  I blinked and let my eyes adjust to the darkness.

  The first thing I saw was a rivulet of pure liquid gold, sparkling as the smith poured it from the crucible into a mold.

  His body was coiled all around the interior of the hut, brushing up against tables laden with polished armor, over trunks packed with glimmering jewelry, and my breath caught at the sight of a sword hung on the wall, with a rippling blade of blue steel.

  It was flawless. My fingers itched to take it down and test its weight.

  “What are you here for, then?” The smith lowered the crucible.

  I met his eyes, gazing at the ruby that looked like a bloody orb stuffed in his skull, and lost my voice.

  Azazel ducked under the tarp, pressing his hand to the small of my back. “We’re here about a sword.”

  The smith just laughed, a gurgling chuckle. “I have all kinds of swords. I have swords from Old Earth, swords from across worlds, swords made of gems and feathers and wood. But all my swords will kill someone, take your pick.”

  “We’re here for a specific sword,” I said firmly, not backing up even as the smith’s centipede-like upper body drew closer. “Would you be able to make a sword that was the perfect inverse of the Sword of Light?”

  The smith paused, and his tongue crept out and ran over his upper lip.

  I felt movement at my back and moved aside to make room for Lucifer and Tascius, which put me uncomfortably close to the centipede demon, but if I could handle seeing giant eyeballs in the floors, I could handle being close to him.

  “An inverse to the Sword of Light,” he repeated slowly, his good eye flicking over the new additions to his tiny hut. “You mean Gabriel’s sword?”

  I resisted the urge to ask, how many Swords of Light are there? “Yes. I want a sword that is its polar opposite.”

  The smith leaned back, and I dared to breathe a little deeper.

  “Oh, but he would be furious,” the smith whispered to himself. “So angry. It’d be delightful to watch. But the means…”

  “What would you need in payment?” I asked evenly.

  The smith looked at me like he’d forgotten I was there. “What you need to worry about is where to get the raw material.”

  I must’ve looked confused, because the smith’s face broke into a wide, slow grin. “Ebonite, little angel. You’ll need ebonite for a sword like this.”

  “Why would finding ebonite be an issue?” Belial had a dagger made of it. Surely there were more blades that could be used.

  “Because you need raw, unformed ebonite.” The smith rummaged in a box and held up a tiny, pitted chunk of dark metal. “Ebonite that has already been forged with a purpose in mind is useless. It has metal-memories. You take a helmet of ebonite forged to protect the wearer and melt it down, all you have left is metal that will always protect its wearer. You could make a shield, make armor… but it would be useless as a sword. You take an ebonite cup made to never spill, melt it down, you end up with the most useless pile of shit any smith’s ever seen.”

  “I think I get it,” I said, cutting him off before he could give me more examples.

  It made sense. Belial’s knife had been forged to hurt those with angelic or demonic blood, like the Nephilim, but it was too small for my prey. To kill Satan, I needed a sword of awesome power.

  “Where do we find raw ebonite?” Lucifer asked.

  The smith tucked away his little chunk of metal again. “I could tell you to dig in the Deeps, but odds’re good you’d never come out, the lot of you, and I know of a much easier mine than tha
t.” If anything, his smile got even wider, almost touching his ears. “It’d be my payment, as well. That, and the joy of knowing Gabriel is no longer the special snowflake he thinks he is.”

  “Tell us. We’ll bring your payment if you can do this.” I wiped sweat off my forehead, almost suffocating in the heat of his forge.

  “If I can do this? If I can do this? I’m Wayland the Smith! Of course I can fuckin’ do this, woman, otherwise I’d’ve sent you home when you first walked in my door.” He glared at me, the ruby twinkling. “It’d be my pleasure to stick it to that overgrown bundle of a goose’s ass-feathers. What you need to do is find the outcast oracle.”

  “Where-”

  “You’ll need to go to the City of Sight to find out where the ol’ bitch is living now. I once made her the most beautiful scryin’ mirror, and the hag never paid me. I want her hands and that mirror as payment, but when I was toiling over my stolen work, I saw that she had a cache of raw ebonite. It was enough for a sword. Bring me that ebonite, the mirror, and her hands, and I’ll make you the Sword of Mourning.”

  A shiver ran over my skin as an odd sensation pulsed between us.

  Whatever he’d done, it was a bound promise. A compact. Even the air of Hell had heard the promise of a Sword of Mourning and had stood still in anticipation.

  “I’ll get you what you need,” I said, licking my dry lips, and ducked out of the hut as Wayland the Smith laughed.

  The journey back was mostly silent. I hovered low and swooped over dunes, sticking close to Tascius. A sigh of relief escaped me when we hit the cool mist of the Fields of Asphodel, and Tascius turned his unicorn loose with a pat on the neck.

  I landed in the grass and looked up at the three of them. “How long will it take us to journey to the City of Sight?”