Brimstone Nightmares (Queen of the Damned Book 4)

by Kel Carpenter

  Julian rubbed my shoulder, softly kneading the tissue. I froze, forgetting myself for a moment because the gesture was so strange coming from him. Julian paused. “Something wrong?” His lips skimmed the hollow of my ear and my eyes fluttered. I fought the urge to sink into him. The only thing that stopped me was the narrowed eyes of my other three mates.

  “No—”

  “Ready?” The voice carried on a heavy note. A subtle thrum of the old south to it. Standing with his right arm crooked in a proper motion of a server, the demon had dark skin, long dreadlocks woven with gold, and bright purple Cheshire eyes.

  Enigma. Chaos demons.

  Their kind weren’t common on Earth, partially because their inability to blend as well as most other species. Enigmas were incapable of glamoring themselves because of the chaos that lived within. It leaked out into the atmosphere causing misfortune wherever they went—usually in the form of breaking things. Two tables over, a waiter stumbled. Three cups of coffee tipped off the tray, straight into a rubrum’s lap. It was only seconds before a fist went flying and the cafe descended into madness.

  I swallowed hard and Julian’s arm dropped away from my shoulders.

  “We should be going while they are distracted,” the enigma said. My eyes drifted over the scene as multiple demons had to move on the rubrum in an attempt to subdue him. Most other demons didn’t even bat an eye at the outburst.

  As if sensing my hesitation, cool fingers brushed across my cheek. I turned into Julian as he captured my chin between his forefinger and thumb. “We will keep you safe.” His dark eyes trailed over my face for a fraction of a second longer before he dropped my chin and pushed back in his chair. He got to his feet and extended his hand, waiting for me to follow him and take it.

  Ordinarily I would have gotten to my feet and stalked off, but I wasn’t feeling all that sassy or brave today.

  I took his hand and he pulled me to my feet. Without another word, the enigma turned and led the way through the cafe. My palms started to sweat as we came to pause before a black metal door that was scraped in spots. The paint had faded to leave a silver sheen beneath the claw marks. The enigma shot us a grin over his shoulder before pushing the door open.

  My feet stalled as my mouth fell ajar.

  I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but a ten-foot-wide hole that plunged straight down with no end in sight wasn’t it. The weathered concrete floor gave way to some sort of craggy black stone as it neared the abyss.

  “What the fuck are you doing here, Jax—”

  “I’m on an assignment,” the enigma cut in. His purple eyes flashed with something mischievous.

  “No can do,” the same guard who’d called at him stepped up. “We’re under strict orders. No one is supposed to go through that portal.” He thrust his chin towards the portal and came to stand toe-to-toe with Jax. The enigma smiled at the other demon, clearly not all that concerned.

  “If that’s the case, you can be the one that tells the Sins why I couldn’t escort Lucifer’s heir and the Four Horsemen back to Hell,” Jax said. The pale demon raised his eyebrows and flicked his gaze towards me. The beast pushed forward to smile callously at the demon, and he flushed.

  “See something you like?” she asked in a flat, dead voice. Rysten stepped in front of me, blocking the male’s line of sight. A low growl reverberated from him. That seemed to please her. I shoved forward, rolling my eyes as she receded with a smirk on her face.

  “That’s his daughter?” the guard asked in a hushed voice. “I thought it was just a rumor that she’d been in NOLA…”

  “Are you going to let us through or stand there ogling at my mate?” Rysten asked softly. It wasn’t the caress that woke me from my nightmares, but the whisper of death and decay. “If it’s the latter, you won’t be standing long.”

  Moira snorted and the glamor around her dropped. The other guards surrounding the portal cast her wary glances as she smiled ruthlessly, flexing her wings like a proud stallion might strut. The very tip of one whacked into the back of Rysten’s head, and she snapped them in tight, whistling to herself as he looked over at her. What I would’ve given to see his face.

  “Who is she?” The same guard that had been staring at me only a moment before now watched Moira with interest. She lifted a dark green eyebrow and ran a hand through her hair, pushing it back so that the brand on her forehead glowed. The horned helmet with black wings.

  “No one,” Rysten growled.

  “Out of your league,” Moira said at the same time. She twisted her lips in a smirk at Rysten’s expression, not even noticing the way the guards watched her.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Jax answered, crossing his arms over his chest. He nodded toward the portal and said, “What’ll it be, Levi?”

  The guard looked over all of us, seeming to weigh his decision back and forth. The Horsemen seemed utterly at ease, and I got the feeling if he denied us entry it might not matter. He likely wouldn’t live to see that decision through. Levi must have realized this as well because he took a few steps back and swept his arm towards the pit to motion us forward. An uneasy knot twisted in my stomach as we approached the chasm.

  “Out of curiosity,” Levi mused, “which Sin sent you?”

  The enigma paused at the edge of the rock. His bright purple eyes shining faintly in the low light as he stared down into the seemingly never-ending hole. “Which one do you think?” He let out a dark chuckle. “The only one I was dumb enough to make a deal with.”

  He stepped off the ledge without a shred of fear. I wish I could say the same, but even the beast couldn’t make me that brave. A warm hand wrapped around mine and I looked up at Moira.

  “It’s going to be okay, Rubes.”

  “You say that about everything,” I scoffed. Inside me the panic was slowly rising. This was it. My last moment on Earth. And I was quickly becoming paralyzed with fear. Sharp claws pricked my leg as Bandit tried to get ahold on my jeans to pull himself up. I bent at the waist and scooped him up with one arm. He clung to me as his tiny paws wrapped around my neck, like he understood what was happening.

  “I say that because I know it.” She tapped her temple with her free hand and flicked her eyes towards the abyss. “We’re going to get through this, and you’re going to pass the trials and get your crown. It’s what you were born for.”

  I shuddered. If only it could be that simple.

  My arms broke out in goosebumps at the subtle heat emanating from the portal. The energy felt familiar. Almost like…home.

  Without giving myself the chance to rethink it, I gripped Moira’s hand and held Bandit tighter—and then I stepped over the ledge and into my future.

  My life on Earth was done.

  My life in Hell…it was only beginning.

  Chapter 2

  The rush of the wind rattled my bones as a scream ripped from my throat.

  The time Allistair pushed me off a cliff felt like a lifetime ago, and I thought that was bad. Little did I realize how much worse it could get. At least the lake beneath had stars to look at as I thought I was hurdling towards my death. The abyss was simply nothing.

  There was no light. No stars. No end.

  We could be freefalling to our deaths for all I knew. Not that I believed that. Jax had stepped off without fear like he’d done this a hundred times, and while I couldn’t turn to look, I did sense that the Horsemen were falling behind us.

  A light touch to my back made me twitch as a warm hand grasped the back of my shirt. I craned my neck to the side as flames sparked in my hands. Golden blonde hair tinted blue shined in the low light, and my terror thawed just a smidge. Rysten’s comforting darkness wrapped around me, settling like a security blanket. Moira squeezed the hand she held tight, her palm growing slick from the smothering heat of the portal.

  Tiny beads of sweat flew behind her as whatever force pulled us downward grew hotter. Moira opened her mouth and yelled in carefree abandon like she was having the time of her
life, oblivious to the power I sensed and ignoring the stifling temperature.

  Pressure built, making my ears hurt. Rysten yelled something that was lost in the chamber as it echoed off the stony rockface around us. Bandit followed it up with a savage growl, his claws hooking into my back like devil-damned talons just as the swelter and strain became unbearable.

  Like breaking through a sound barrier, a pop filled my ears and suddenly we weren’t hurdling down anymore—but up. It started as a tiny flicker of blue in an endless darkness. A light where there wasn’t. And that spot continued to grow. A hole appeared above us, one that was an impossible azure, almost like the sky, but somehow brighter. I squinted my eyes to discern what it was as droplets of water splattered against my face. My mouth fell ajar. Only as we were cresting the edge did I realize that the speck of blue was actually the other end of the portal. We shot twenty feet straight through a spray of rushing water and into the open air.

  A cool breeze filled with the scent of smoke and ash hit me. I reached a peak in my ascent, becoming weightless for a split second before gravity rushed in. Rysten’s fingers slipped from my loose t-shirt as a sudden force kept me from falling, and he was jerked away. I swung my gaze wildly, breathing out an uneasy sigh at the sight of flaming wings. Moira hovered above me, gripping my hand with a strength I didn’t know she had while she pumped her wings to slow our descent.

  Hell, I thought to myself. This is Hell.

  The skies were a jewel tone of sapphire blue, intense amethysts, and the deepest of reds. Ruby. grey wispy clouds hung overhead, luring my gaze to the mountain range and dark plumes of smoke in the distance. That was far off, though, and between here and there was a stretch of burning forest. Trees so tall they had to be a hundred feet from the ground, reaching their spindly branches for the sky. Ones that hadn’t yet been eaten by the flames had lost any of their original color, glittering black ash dusting every inch from trunk to the furthest tip of a branch. Flames so dark and devastating flickered in patches where only those ashes remained, encroaching on the hauntingly beautiful trees.

  My feet had only barely touched the ash covered stretch of beach when I asked, “What happened here?”

  “You left,” Jax answered before Rysten could. “Lucifer died, and without power to hold the barriers, our world started crumbling.”

  “It’s not exactly like I had a choice in the matter,” I said tersely. The beast’s ire rose at what he implied. Like it was our fault. It was Lola, Lucifer, and the Horsemen that took us from our home world. They were the ones that left us on Earth for twenty-three years.

  “You asked what happened. If you don’t like the truth, then change it.”

  “She can’t go back in time, asshole,” Moira snapped. Her wings spread wide as she stepped up beside me and bared her teeth at the chaos demon with a fierceness not even a hellhound could muster.

  “That’s not what I meant.” He swept his hand all around, referencing the burning patches of Hell. If not on fire, I imagine it might have been beautiful. It still was, in a way. “She’s the only one that can stop the borders from continuing to collapse inward on Hell itself. If she doesn’t like how our world looks, then she’s the one that can change that.”

  “What do you think I’m doing here?”

  Jax eyed me shrewdly. “It takes balls to enter Hell when the Sins aren’t happy with you. I’ll give you that. Whether or not you fix this remains to be seen.” I swallowed hard, biting back my words. There was no point in arguing with him when he wasn’t the one I needed to convince. Jax was just an errand boy. The real people calling the shots were somewhere out there—in the fiery depths of Hell.

  I turned my back on the burning landscape to look at the sandy shores we’d landed on. The beach stretched on for miles in the opposite direction. Sand mixed with ash, giving it a marbled effect of black on white. The tide reached for my boots as it pushed in and out, but never got closer than six inches away.

  “What’s that?” I pointed to a mass of rocks. Water crashed against them, giving off a misty spray that reflected rainbows a good thirty feet out at sea. This ocean had some of the clearest water I’d ever seen, which made it all the more troubling at the way it glittered in the sun as particles of ash danced within.

  “The portal,” Rysten answered as Julian appeared out of the rocks. A blowhole, I realized, as he shot into the sky looking like some god of legend. His white hair sparkled with the same ash that permeated the air and sea and every part of this devilforsaken land. As he crested mid-leap, his legs swept forward, and he hit the ground running, far more graceful than the tumble and roll Rysten took in the sand.

  “Already forgotten how to stick the landing, brother?” Julian asked as he came to a stop. Rysten rolled his eyes as both Allistair and Laran burst from the portal, sending a shower of glittering water several tens of feet high and landing a few feet over from us. Bandit chose that moment to fling himself from my arms and into the crystalline waves, if you could call them that. This close to land the water didn’t get higher than a few inches, but that didn’t stop Bandit from rolling around in it, coating his fur with sand and salt.

  “I’d be wary of letting your familiar get too far,” Jax said behind us. Bandit waddled a few feet farther to where the tide came all the way up to his chest.

  “Why is that?” I asked, debating taking my shoes off and joining him. No sooner did the thought occur did a dark tentacle snake around Bandit’s entire body and pull him under. I lurched forward to grab him as Bandit let out a garbled cry of dismay that was abruptly cut off by the waves.

  “The Kraken.”

  “What?” I screeched. “You mean to tell me a motherfucking kraken just—”

  I didn’t get through my sentence. A large mass rose up from the water, pouring gallon upon gallon of sea water off its sides. Tentacles—all eight of them—were as long as any bus and the undersides dotted with massive suckers the size of my head. And one of them held Bandit by the foot.

  I grit my teeth against screaming for him and instead reached for the flames of Hell. That squid was about to become calamari.

  A burning orb of blue appeared in my hand when Moira grabbed my wrist.

  “What are you doing—”

  “That thing is massive, and the waves are rough. If you kill it, it could land on Bandit and he could drown,” Moira said.

  “If I don’t kill it, he could be its dinner!” Bandit let out a mewling wail as the sea monster’s mouth opened and let out a roar. A tongue as fat and thick as any tentacle twisted crudely in the air, pointed teeth as large as my raccoon covered every inch of it. I tore my arm away from Moira, adrenaline making me desperate. Fire licked up my right arm as I hurled a ball of blue fire. It put a hole straight through the fleshy part of the tentacle holding Bandit. The monster thrashed in pain as the fire spread, eating away its skin. Bandit went falling. A gust of wind from the rapid thrust of Moira’s wings slammed into me as she jumped into the sky and darted forward to catch him. Another tentacle took a swipe at her, and the split second it took for her to dive and recover her balance sent Bandit careening into the depths of the sparkling black ocean below.

  “No!” I shouted, but just as my voice broke across the waves, something crazy happened.

  A second mass rose from the water where Bandit had just fallen. One with teeth and claws of its own. He stood over thirty feet tall, water cascading over his body as his black and blue-ringed tail twitched side to side.

  “What in Satan’s name—” Rysten started to curse. The growl coming from Bandit’s chest cut him off as my raccoon stood on two back legs and lifted his arms in the air, letting out a roar that pierced the fear coiled around my heart. Fire shot from his mouth, only missing Moira by inches as she dove to the side, the muscles in her wings strained against the battering winds as she tried to get out of the way of Bandit’s raging as fast as possible. Fire rained down on the kraken, blasting it to pieces as claws slashed ferociously. The kraken tried to
wrap a thick tentacle around Bandit’s short snout in an attempt to close his mouth and stop the spewing flames he breathed.

  It was a bad move for the monster. Bandit lunged, his jaws snapping shut over the meaty appendage. He bit clean through it and the flames ate at the moist flesh, leaving the air smelling fishy and charred as the tentacles dropped off the body, one by one.

  Within moments, the only remains of the great sea monster were ashes in the waves.

  Moira swooped around and landed on the beach beside me, looking as shocked as I felt.

  “Remind me next time I call him a trash panda that he can eat me,” she muttered. I took off at a dead sprint into the water.

  “Wait, Ruby!” Rysten called.

  “Damnit!” Julian growled.

  Water splashed behind me, but I didn’t pay it any mind as Bandit reached out and grabbed me. He let out a purr, setting me on his shoulder as he walked us back to land. Oh, how the tables have turned. I wrapped both my hands in his wet fur, clinging tightly as my body swayed back and forth from the wind and his scampering. He still lumbered around like he weighed thirty pounds and not thirty thousand.

  “Now look what he’s done—” Rysten started. Moira elbowed him hard and crossed her arms over her chest.

  “You don’t get to speak. He might never give her back just to spite you,” she said pointedly. Rysten shut his mouth, glaring to the side at my best friend.

  “Ruby, get him to put you down,” Julian demanded.

  “Why? I can just ride him to the first Deadly Sin like this.” I wasn’t being serious, but the dark look in his eyes made me snicker. Bandit’s massive shoulders shook as he let out this booming noise and fell to the side. I realized too late that he was laughing and I lost my balance. Airborne for only a second, my butt smacked hard against the wet sand, six inches from the incoming tide. “Ugh,” I groaned.

  “You saw that! The vermin almost got her hurt,” Rysten said. He reached out to help me up. I ignored the gesture, pushing myself up with my own hands and feet.