by Jayce Carter
“And they use a flimsy wooden fence to keep it safe?”
Hunter bent down and picked up a rock from the edge of the road, rolling in his palm for a moment before tossing it over the fence into one of the fields.
Plants near the house moved, from at least three separate spots. The tall branches shifted as whatever it was barreled through us, and those small moments of bravery fled entirely. Something dark, angry, and with flames struck the fence, bouncing off it.
Not a fence, but a ward of some sort.
My ass hit the ground after I stumbled backward. Even though I didn’t see any real details, I’d spotted more than enough to make it clear I should avoid the fields.
Hunter reached out for my hands, then tugged me to my feet. “They keep those things in the fields to discourage anyone who thinks about stealing. Not that it stops them. I’d say a few a day still try it.”
The idea of that made my stomach uneasy. “What happens to them?”
Hunter glanced to his side, his gaze hitting the mist that swirled over the field and near the ground.
He didn’t need to say it. It seemed I’d gotten good enough at understanding hell to hear it loud and clear.
The thin mist, the red that coated the dirt…
Blood, the particles thin enough to float like fog.
I tried not to think about the dampness of my ankles.
In fact, I didn’t say another word to Hunter. He was right—there were things I didn’t want to know, facts I just didn’t want to have. I would have happily gone to sleep every night for the rest of my life without knowing that fields of blood fog existed, that they were watered by the death of things that ventured into the yards patrolled by monsters.
Hunter didn’t try to coax me into conversation after that. We traveled the path, and he said we only had a day’s walk before we reached Styx.
The odd thing was that despite how much we’d traveled, I wasn’t as sore as I’d have figured. It wasn’t like I was overly athletic before, since my exercise usually went as far as paying for a monthly gym membership and swearing weekly I’d go.
Grant walked just ahead of me, fiddling with something in his hands.
Hunter had taken off again, always quick to check the space ahead of us, while Troy hunched forward, hands tucked in his jacket pockets, as surly as ever, taking up the rear with Kase.
I jogged up the few feet to stay beside Grant. “Why aren’t I more tired?”
He didn’t lift his gaze, focused instead on what appeared to be a necklace made of string. “Because Kase probably isn’t that good in bed.”
His words took a moment for me to understand, and when they did, my cheeks burned. Apparently, I hadn’t been all that quiet…
Grant’s lips pulled into a smirk, telling me he enjoyed rattling me far too much.
“You aren’t as funny as you think you are.”
“Of course I am,” he said without a speck of uncertainty. “You aren’t tired after the walking because you aren’t in the living realm. You don’t expend energy the same way here you would back home, especially because you’re mortal.”
“That makes no sense.”
Grant continued to work, his hands sliding along the string, braiding and tying it as he spoke. “You’re mortal, so let’s say you’re an electric car. Hell, it runs on gas.”
“Wouldn’t that mean I’d get tired faster? Since I couldn’t recharge?”
“No, because the only way you move here is essentially hitching a ride on a gas truck. You’re using very little of your own power. That’s why we have to hide your scent, because others here would love to get a look at your…battery.” He chuckled softly at his own joke.
I nodded at the string. “What’s that?”
Grant held his arm out, the mark he’d had on the small bare area of his forearm gone. “When we’re here, my tracking spell doesn’t work. Spells don’t transfer because they use power from the living realm.”
“So stalking me becomes harder? Poor man.”
He added another knot to the string, whispering a few words beneath his breath. “The keys for the rooms gave me an idea.”
“To give up magic and become a jeweler? Not sure there’s a market in hell, but I appreciate the hustle.”
Grant stopped and reached toward me. He fastened the string around my throat, so it fit like a choker, whispering a few more words as he did before explaining, “Magic doesn’t work quite like it does in the living realm, but this connects here.” He held up another string with a bone tied to the end, one that didn’t hang down but arced toward me. When I shifted side to side, it followed. “I’ll be able to follow you. It isn’t quite as nice as my old one, but it’ll work.”
I frowned as I thought about something else. “The guy outside the bar noticed me. Jerrod did, but he followed the scent. Shouldn’t my tattoos have made it so the guy ignored me?”
“Those tattoos weren’t done in hell. They were made to work in the living world, to keep you hidden from things there. It’s like having desert camouflage and going into the jungle.”
I blew out a breath. “Just great. I finally accept that my parents put something useful on me and it stops working.”
“I doubt they’ll even blast someone anymore. Sorry, you’re as visible and vulnerable as the next person now. Unfortunate, since you ended up in so much trouble even with the spell before.”
I offered him a half-hearted glare before kicking a rock from the road. It sailed to the side, into a field, and the same response as the last time happened.
At least this time it wasn’t as scary.
“So you really think we can make it to the Court?”
He lifted his dark eyebrow, as if the question surprised him. “You having doubts now?”
“It just seems like everything I see, everything that happens, all just ups the ante. I feel like we’re betting too much.”
“Maybe,” he agreed, “but we don’t have much of a choice. I wouldn’t have suggested hell as a vacation spot for you, but as long as Lucifer’s markers are on you, we’re stuck.” When I huffed, unconvinced, he kicked a rock as I had before. “I learned something when I was young, a lesson I’ve never forgotten. It’s easy to obsess about options and choices when you have them, right? If you have cake and brownies, you can spend forever deciding which one is best. If all you have is cake, however, the fact that cake isn’t your favorite doesn’t matter. Worrying about it, hating it, none of that changes what is. One you get pushed out of an airplane, the time to wonder if you should jump is over.”
I cast a side eye at him, the words strange from him. He was the ‘I can do anything’ man. He was the one who could create things from nothing, manipulate the laws of physics, and he was lecturing me on what a person could and couldn’t do?
“What do you know about that? It seems like you can do about anything.” Then his story about the council also hit me. “Besides, your father was the Magistrate, wasn’t he? Doesn’t that make you some sort of legacy? I doubt you know much about not getting what you want.”
Grant’s demeanor changed, just the barest tensing as if the conversation had turned into dangerous territory. “Not exactly,” he said, but didn’t elaborate. “I’m just saying that we’ve got one choice, Ava. Forward. Wasting energy wondering if we can climb this cliff isn’t going to change that we have to.”
The advice made sense, in the way good advice always did. It sounded so easy and yet was rarely simple to apply.
Still, arguing with good advice never got anyone anywhere, either, so I curled my shoulders in and kept moving forward.
I was tired of getting answers that didn’t help. It wasn’t like before, when I didn’t want to know. I asked questions, and I understood what I was told. Vampires died when someone stabbed them. Werewolves didn’t like silver. Poltergeists liked to strangle the shit out of me. Those were basics that I knew.
Now, however, every question I asked had some open-ended answer that meant not
hing to me, that left me no better off after hearing. You’re mortal so you don’t get tired for some complicated reason that makes no sense.
My foot caught something, pitching me forward when I was too distracted by my frustration to notice the rock buried in the road.
Wait… It wasn’t a rock.
A skull stared up at me, buried partly in the road and cracked at the top, as if heavy things had stepped on it for years. The eye sockets were large and empty, and it mocked me.
“There’s a skull,” I said, voice flat.
Kase came up beside me, as though he’d spotted my pause and wanted to check in. When he saw the skull, he frowned. “And?”
“Nope.” I shook my head, crossing my arms.
“Nope?” Troy walked up alongside the others until all of us stood in a circle, even Hunter, who usually disappeared for long periods of time.
“That’s right. Nope. Not doing it.”
“Doing what?” Grant asked.
“There is a skull in the road like it’s nothing. It’s too much. This is stupid, all of it.” I gestured at the skull, then around us. “There shouldn’t be random skulls just chilling in the middle of the road. I don’t care that this is hell, I don’t care what is normal here, this is ridiculous.”
The men all looked at me as if I had lost my mind, which annoyed me even more. How was I the unreasonable one when my complaint was corpse parts just hanging around. That was a basic boundary for most people, right?
Hunter answered carefully. “You’ve seen plenty of bodies before.”
“Yes, but they’re not in the middle of the road. They’re in shallow-dug graves like decent dead bodies should be. This thing has been run over for years and no one cares. Do you not understand how fucked-up that is? What sort of place do you have to be in for people to just ignore the skull in the middle of the path?”
“Ava,” Kase started to say, but I lifted my hand toward him.
“No. I’m done.”
“You can’t be done,” Grant said. “We’re stuck here until we see Lucifer, in case you’ve forgotten. It isn’t the sort of thing you get to be done with just because you feel like it.”
I walked away and yelled over my shoulder, “Done!”
Okay, so I wasn’t done forever, but I needed a moment. I needed a chance to reset again, to take back my own sense of normalcy. Damn it, I needed to feel like I was in control, even if it was just of this hissy fit.
“Ava,” Troy called out, his let’s be reasonable voice. It seemed that my hissy fit was enough for him to talk to me.
I turned and stomped my foot on the ground. “No more. No more blood mist, no more weird drugs, no brimstone or wardens or anything else.”
The men stared at me, their eyes widening, and for a moment I thought they’d taken me seriously.
Then their gaze moved up, above my head, and I realized…shit.
I turned to find a large, misshapen figure behind me. He was huge, easily eight feet tall, with fangs that dropped below his chin and skin covered in burn scars.
So I shouldn’t have walked away from the men. I remembered one of my foster mothers telling me that having tantrums never made anything better.
One point for her…
The man lifted an orb, then slammed it down, the ground disappearing beneath me as I fell into a darkness that swallowed me up, and the sounds of familiar roars distanced, grew fainter, until everything went black.
Chapter Seven
My head pounded when I came to, but my eyes wouldn’t open. It was as if my entire body refused to come to get with the program of being conscious.
Eventually, I shifted, rolling to my side, then pushing up to sitting. When my eyes finally opened, I didn’t recognize anything around me. I was inside, but it didn’t seem like a house. Plank walls and a dirt floor made me suspect some sort of shed.
On my wrist sat a steel manacle that hooked to a large metal bolt in the floor.
Which was a really bad sign.
No one woke up cuffed and thought, Yes, this is a positive turn of events. Everything is going according to plan.
I yanked at the chain, grasping it with both hands and planting my feet against the ground for leverage.
It didn’t even budge, though the metal groaned.
As my head cleared, I realized more things, and each one painted a worse picture. None of the men were around—I couldn’t remember anything after that sinking sensation—something sniffed around outside the wooden walls and the ground beneath me had big splotches of red which could only be blood.
Or someone was really aggressive with their finger painting…
Whatever stalked outside was large, and when its shadow played against the wall, it gave me a glimpse of black and red.
Why was everything black and red? It was like hell had no other colors to use.
Then again, maybe obsessing over a small color palate wasn’t the right thing to focus on at the moment, especially when something chuffed right next to the door, as if it knew I was in there.
Which made me realize yet another bad thing. My cloak was gone. I never figured I’d miss that smelly, damp piece of cloth, but I sure did.
I reached for my throat, and at least the string still rested there.
If Grant’s even still alive…
The thought made me swallow hard. The idea that anything could have happened to Grant, to any of them, felt like something entirely impossible. They were bigger than life. Nothing could take them out.
Except…I’d also learned that life wasn’t so easy.
Heavy steps thudded against the packed dirt outside, something a lot larger than the creature who sniffed around the door. When the new figure approached, the creature let out a loud yelp after a thud of flesh on flesh.
Anything that could send that thing running wasn’t something I wanted to see.
Not that I had a say in the matter. The hinges of the door squeaked as it opened, and I got a better look at the same being who had stopped me in the middle of the road.
And he was even worse this time, when I had the chance to study him. His skin was not just burned but melted. Worse, it was shiny, as if it leaked some sort of slime. His fangs made Kase’s look like nothing. They were so long, they passed his chin, like a saber-tooth tiger’s. Huge black horns curled back and over his head. His hair was stringy, thin and didn’t quite cover his entire scalp.
He left the door open, and through it I spotted the rows of ambrosia plants and the flash of a creature running through them.
Which meant what had sniffed around and been kicked by this guy was one of the protectors of the fields.
I couldn’t stand, the chain around my wrist too short. Still, I scooted as far away as I could.
He didn’t look toward me, and somehow, him not even looking my way was worse, like I wasn’t important.
The man dropped a large bag that had been slung over his shoulder. Dust kicked up when it hit the ground, and the clatter of metal made my eyes widen. Never in the history of time was a big, heavy bag full of pieces of metal ever the start of something good.
“So, if you just open the cuff up, I’ll get going.” My voice came out high and panicked even though I tried to act controlled, like I was abducted on the daily and it was no big deal.
He didn’t respond, though he did reach into the bag and pull out something that resembled a machete.
It had a longer handle, but, really, the blade was the important part of a machete, right?
He set it down and went to pick up something else.
I did not need to see what it was. I yanked at the chain again. “You don’t want to do this.”
Still he didn’t answer. I thought about how a goat might feel as someone prepared the room to butcher it. Suddenly, going vegetarian sounded much better.
Too bad Grant’s little mark didn’t work anymore—I was pretty sure his entire arm would be in flames because of my fear.
The man turned, finally lookin
g directly at me. His lips curled into a sickening smile, though something about the fangs made it not quite as scary. It was like someone with fake vampire teeth trying to smirk. “I haven’t seen a full mortal this far into hell in a while.”
“A mortal? Me? That’s crazy.”
He made a chiding sound, as if scolding a kid. “I can smell you, human. You reek of mortality, of life. Even with the cloak, my nose is good enough to spot it.” He took a step toward me.
“Okay, fine, I’m mortal, but I am a terrible one. Whatever you want, I won’t be helpful with it. Did you know a vampire spat out my blood? See? You should save us both the trouble and just let me go.”
He neared me, thankfully without his weapons, but didn’t seem to be listening to me at all. He caught my hand, the one without the shackle.
I kicked. Okay, so I’d only taken like two of those cardio kickboxing classes, and it wasn’t like I had much power behind the kick, but I was without options.
My foot struck his leg, and it sank in as if his body was made of not quite solid flesh, but he didn’t react.
He lifted my hand, having to lean down in the end because the chain kept me from standing fully and he was a lot taller than I was. He ran his fang over my palm in a quick jerk, the sharp tip slicing it open.
I cried out. Sure, it would have been nice if I’d been stoic, but he’d just opened a gash in my palm that made Grant’s seem like a paper cut.
He released me, then went to a cabinet. “My crops need to expand,” he said, his tone civil, as if we were discussing basic gardening and not my eminent demise.
“I’ve heard fertilizer does wonders.”
“The blood mist keeps them growing, but new plants must have roots. I take clippings of the old ones, the strong ones, and plant them into their new home when I can, but roots are hard to come by.”
I had a sinking suspicion roots had something to do with me.
He took out an empty pot—no, wait, it had dirt in it—and another pot with a large plant, setting both on the ground beside me. “This is my oldest, my best crop. I don’t harvest it for product anymore—it’s too valuable for that. Instead, it creates new plants, fathering some of the best crops in this area.”
