by J. E. Taylor
“I wouldn’t say any of us are okay. We’re in hell, and we have an awful lot of ground to cover to find the last breach,” Levi said and stepped out of my grasp.
I blinked and glanced around us as the situation fully sunk in. We were actually in hell. H E double hockey sticks. Hell.
Chapter 19
“If we can get to the entrance, I can get us into purgatory,” Levi said as we walked down the mountain path from the breach. It was so cold, and I was glad I had the snow suit. I didn’t know if we were lucky or not, but we didn’t run into any ogres.
“What good would that do us?” Kylee argued. “Purgatory is still in the land of the dead.”
Levi muttered under his breath but conceded.
“We need to get to that breach.” Kylee undid her gloves and peeled one off, then pushed her sleeve up far enough to see her watch. She pulled up whatever program she had on there, and a red dot appeared on a map.
She raised an eyebrow and met my gaze. “At least we are going in the right direction, but we have a long way to go.”
She showed me the watch, and I slowed to a stop. The black dot of the one we’d just closed was so close to where the green dots showing our location were, and the red one looked like it was a half a world away.
I swallowed hard. What had I done to us? How many territories of hell did we have to get through to get to the breach in Ireland? How many monsters did we have to battle?
Kylee ran a hand down her face. “The only good thing is he isn’t here,” she said very softly. “There probably will be some animosity between the kings and some internal power struggles. At least there used to be every time he used to take his leaves. Of course, that’s if there are any left. Those that tried to take the helm were destroyed.” She glanced at her watch and sighed. “I just never thought I would be setting foot in this place again.”
“Can you get us to where we need to go?”
She shrugged. “We’ll find out.” She unclasped the backpack and pulled out weapons, then clipped them to her legs and handed me a couple as well. “I know you have your angel fire, but we probably shouldn’t use it unless we have to. Same with you, Levi. You can’t transform unless it’s the only way to get us out of here.”
“So, I’m just supposed to be vulnerable in this form? I would much rather have a demon buffet.” He sounded greatly disappointed.
“We are going to try to blend in, so when we get to that wooded area down there, we are going to ditch these snow clothes. Demons don’t get cold, and we can’t be bundled up like this walking through the main domain.”
I chewed my lip, remembering the demon that escaped in the subway tunnel. She was wearing what I would call normal clothes, so my jeans and sweater that I had on underneath would fit in. Although if this cold persisted throughout the rest of this place, I would die of frostbite before we got to the other side.
So far, hell didn’t look that much different than the mountainside we’d left on the other side of the void. I wondered if hell mimicked earth in some way.
“I don’t think it does,” Levi said.
“Does what?” Kylee asked, looking at him.
“Hell doesn’t mimic the human realm.”
“Some parts do, but most of it is desolate. The topography has some similarities like the mountain we’re climbing down, but the rest of it is very different. You’ll understand when we get to the woods.”
When we approached the woods, Kylee found a fallen log for us to sit on and strip the ice spikes from our boots.
“Are you sure you want to do that?” I asked. “Because sharp spikes on my boots sounds like a really good idea to me.”
“You can’t run very fast on spikes,” she said and pulled her boots off before she dropped her ski pants and winter coat. She yanked her boots back on and laced them up. When she finally stood, she was weaponized to the hilt, and she handed me a bottle of water and a protein bar from the backpack. “It may be a while before we get a chance to eat again.”
After I strapped the knives she gave me to my thighs, I put the gloves in my back pocket and finished off the protein bar and bottled water.
She took my empty bottle and stuffed it in the backpack along with hers and then handed me the backpack. “You can carry that. I need to be agile if I have to take down demons, and it will protect your back.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Kevlar.” She shrugged and gave me a smile. “I’m always prepared for the worst.”
I slung the straps over my shoulder, and she stepped forward, clipping it together.
“If it’s clipped, it can’t be easily torn off.” She glanced at Levi. “You need to walk with us and not bound forward all willy-nilly.”
I swear Levi rolled his eyes, but he didn’t argue, even when she pointed to the spot between where we were standing. He grumbled and stepped in line with us.
A chill ran down my back as we stepped into the woods. A few steps in and they swallowed us up. Kylee was right. This wasn’t the kind of woods I was used to. The trees were black as melted tar and looked just as appealing. The bushes looked like blood with sharp prickers. She steered us clear from those, but every now and then, my jeans would catch on a thistle.
At least the ground looked like normal, hard packed dirt. I kept my eyes on the narrow path looking for any gnarled roots that might trip us up. Eventually the path opened up so we could walk together instead of single file.
“It looks like someone poured hot tar all over the trees,” I said.
Kylee glared at me. Zip it. Eyes forward and walk like you know where you are going. Her thoughts echoed in my head.
I stared forward again, focusing on the path ahead of us, wondering just how long this would take us. I didn’t have the luxury of time. Not with Alex missing. I tried to think of how many miles it was from New Zealand to Ireland. I knew the world was roughly twenty-five thousand miles around, and we were a tad less than half a world away from Ireland. My brain stalled. If I were calculating correctly, it would take us something like six months to walk half way around the world if we walked night and day.
Kylee gave me a sideways look. “Chill,” she whispered.
I didn’t realize my breath was wheezing. But I couldn’t imagine what would be left of Alex if Lucifer possessed him for a month, never mind a year.
Levi whined softly and nudged my knee. It was his way of comforting me. I dropped my hand to his head and gave him a pat, but my nerves were as frayed as they had ever been.
I forced myself to breathe normally, but that didn’t stop my heart from galloping away. Especially when the woods thinned and offered me my first view of hell proper. A barren red desert as far as the eye could see.
“Shit,” Kylee muttered and stopped in her tracks. She looked at her watch again before glancing at me. “This isn’t good.” She sighed and scanned the sand. “We aren’t even at the right level.” She wiped her face. “I am such an idiot.”
Numbness set into my limbs as I got the gist of her thoughts. This wasn’t hell proper. This was the monster realm of hell. She should have connected the dots when all that attacked us at the mountain were ogres. We were much farther from home than she’d initially thought. And demons don’t go into the monster realm.
Only Lucifer dared to walk the monster realm.
My eyes widened.
“Um, Levi.” Kylee cleared her throat. “I think we could use your true form to get across that.” She pointed at the red sand. “And you have permission to eat whatever tries to stop us.” She looked at me. “Feel free to use your fire, too,” she added with a nervous smile.
Levi leaped into the air and turned into his natural form. His tail nearly plowed us over, it wagged so hard. He lowered his shoulder for us to climb up, and I took the forward seat.
Kylee unzipped the backpack and pulled the rope out. She threaded it through Levi’s collar and then tied it around both our waists and back again. She wrapped her arms around the bag securely hook
ed around me.
“This time, neither of us is going anywhere, and you have some leeway to use one of your hands if needed,” she said. “So, hold on tight. This is apt to be a hellish ride. No pun intended.”
“What’s in the sand?” I asked.
Before she could articulate an answer, Levi took off, yanking us both backwards. If Kylee hadn’t tied us in place, we would have tumbled off. He bounded like an overexuberant dog on a clear stretch of beach.
I held on to his collar with both hands as we bounced on his iron-like skin.
Movement to my left drew my attention. I gasped at a scorpion that was scrambling across the sand. It was as big as a car, but then again, Levi in his natural form was as big as a cargo plane, dwarfing the creature. Before I could blink, another half dozen of the things were racing towards us.
Levi let out a joyous laugh and picked up speed.
The wind nearly blew us over. If I didn’t have my feet hooked under Levi’s collar, we probably would have been bouncing at the end of the rope like two insignificant rag dolls. I was sure by the time we got off this wild ride, I would have a bruised tailbone for the next decade.
“Duck,” Kylee yelled in my ear.
I folded forward with her pushing me down. Thankfully, it was just enough as a creature sailed towards us.
Levi snatched it out of the air. His jaws crunched its exoskeleton to a pulp before he tossed it aside. Without breaking stride, he went through the pod of scorpions like a wrecking ball, laughing as he dismembered and discarded them.
“I’m glad he’s on our side,” I said to Kylee.
She chuckled. “It is scary as all get out to be chased by him. Been there, done that, and somehow lived to tell about it because of Michael Andreas.”
I glanced over my shoulder and she smiled.
The scorpions stopped attacking. They kept a sufficient distance, but they paced us, flanking either side like they were waiting for Levi to tire. These things had intelligence.
A shiver caught me unprepared.
They were biding their time. Studying us. Waiting for the right moment to attack us en masse. It was eerie to the point I couldn’t not shudder.
“Light them up,” Levi said as he kept up his brutal pace.
Kylee and I sat up, and I opened my arms wide, pointing my fists at the clans in the distance. I tilted my head back and closed my eyes, calling on the fire within me. A hum filled my ears as I collected strength until it pooled in my belly, coiled and waiting.
My eyes and hands snapped open. Jets of fire shot out of my palms with the precision of a marksman. The screeches of the scorpions filled the air. By the time I got to the front of each pack, a few of them bugged out, but for the most part, I left a black scar of giant, and very dead, scorpions.
I closed my palms, pulling the fire back into the box in my mind. Shutting it until I needed it again.
“You’re getting better with that,” Kylee said in my ear as we continued to gallop across the barren wasteland that reminded me of the pictures from the Mars rover.
“Every time I use it, the power seems to grow.” Each time I used the powers at my disposal correctly, it flared like a battery renewing tenfold. Same with the mental stuff. Each time seemed easier than the last. I knew from experience that tapping myself would incapacitate me for longer than we had time for, so using these quick bursts that built strength was helpful.
“Ten degrees to the north,” Kylee called out. She pulled her sleeve down over the watch and buried it in the space between my back and the pack she clung to.
Levi adjusted his trajectory.
“Watch for sand serpents!” Kylee called.
Levi nodded, continuing to lumber at a speed which belied his size. Sand spit behind us with each thrust of his hind legs. I wished I could see him running at a distance. I could envision him running like a cheetah, but with a much more feral, reptilian face and a tail that could crack boulders with its power.
In his natural form, Levi reminded me of a dragon from a JRR Tolkien movie. Except he didn’t have wings, and he didn’t breathe fire. Basically, he was this deadly prehistoric lizard the size of Godzilla, but he was deceptively agile and much smarter than most people I had come in contact with, the Ryans included.
Levi’s chuckle rumbled across the sand.
And then there were times like this when he was more like a little kid with his choice of toys. Here he was in his element. I didn’t know nearly enough about Levi, other than he was Death’s sidekick.
“I was chained in purgatory for thousands of years until Nick set me free,” Levi said. “That is why I am loyal to the boy.”
I patted the side of his neck. Leviathan was honorable. Who would have thought?
He glanced over his shoulder at me and cocked an eyebrow.
“Look out!” Kylee pointed in front of us.
A giant worm shot up from the sand. Its mouth had a thousand razor-sharp teeth in row after row, and it was heading straight for us.
Adrenaline shot through my veins in a hot pulse. My hands were up in front of me before my brain caught up. The blast exploded the thing outward into a million tiny bits. A bloody mist hung in the air, and when Leviathan ran through it, the mist coated my skin, making me gag.
Kylee coughed from behind me, but I didn’t dare look back, not when Leviathan’s grey coat now was a gross mixture of red and green. I would have preferred to ride through raining ash than whatever that had been.
Leviathan’s tongue swathed his face. “Yum.” He grinned and kept running.
“That was gross,” I said, looking for a clean piece of clothing to wipe my face, but there was none.
A zipper sounded, and then Kylee handed me a washcloth. “I grabbed a couple clean cloths just in case we needed them on the mountain.”
I didn’t question her preparation reasons. I was just thankful she had the forethought to think of these things. I wiped my face and neck then tried to get what I could off my hands, but the cloth was already dripping. The thought of squeezing it out just made my skin crawl.
“What do I do with this?” I held the cloth out to my side like it was diseased.
“Toss it.”
I glanced back at her. I didn’t want to litter, even if this was hell.
“Something will eat it.”
“But…”
“It’s cloth. It won’t hurt a monster.”
“That’s like saying eating a sock won’t hurt a dog.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” She grabbed the cloth from me and flung it out into the sand. “I can’t put it back in the bag and contaminate everything in there with worm guts. These creatures don’t have the same digestive issues that we have on earth. Their stomach acid will disintegrate that thing.”
“Oh.” I faced forward again, feeling a little small and stupid, more from her tone than her words.
Levi slowed his pace at the first signs of something other than red sand in the distance. And it wasn’t another mountain range.
A spewing volcano reached into the mass of black clouds that looked even more daunting than the ones over Mount Cook. But that wasn’t what made us pause.
It was the sea of monsters and demons fighting at the base.
“Double fuck,” Kylee whispered.
“That is how we get to the demon realm?” Levi asked.
“Yup.” Kylee said.
“We should have kept the cleats,” I said, looking at the volcano instead of the fighting.
She huffed behind me.
The sand around us started to rumble. Levi bolted towards the ruckus. He ran straight for it, thundering down on the monsters and demons alike with claws and teeth bared.
Scorpions and sand worms barreled down on us from behind. A few of the fighters on the outskirts turned towards us, their eyes widening at the sight of Leviathan.
There were too many blocking our path. The fiends following us were just as menacing. Levi’s ferocious roar sent some of the group runnin
g, but those with weapons turned from fighting each other and focused their blades in our direction.
Leviathan was a behemoth even here. I guess from a distance Levi didn’t look all that formidable, but the closer we got, the more the masses scattered. It was like seeing King Kong take New York, but even King Kong could be taken down with a well-placed strike.
The minute his feet hit solid ground, the earth shook with each of his bounds. The scorpions stood in a line at the edge of the sand snapping their claws and raising their stingers in the air.
Levi trampled a path from the edge of the sand to the side of the volcano, leaving a trail of broken limbs and decapitated bodies. He leaped into the air, and I grabbed his collar, straining to hold on. His nails dug into the side of the volcano, cutting trenches as he hauled us towards the heat above.
Kylee hissed loud enough to catch my attention, and I turned to see her pulling an arrow out of her arm. Another one flew by my head. I reached around her and opened my palm, aiming directly for the demon with the bow. Before he could let the next arrow fly, he turned to dust under my white firebolt.
All the other demons froze in wide-eyed terror.
Their only task was to not let the monsters escape.
That was their only job in hell, and with the breaches in both realms, the demons were losing the battle to keep the status quo.
I almost felt sorry for them, especially with the renewed determination of the monster clans now that Levi plowed a way through.
I scanned the monsters, and my chest tightened as I realized just what kind of mistake we had made in approaching this way. My gaze moved to the scorpions lining the sand, and I knew there was no other way across that desert than bounding across on Levi.
If we didn’t get the last breach closed, our world…
The thought hung in my mind, and I turned forward in time to be swallowed by the black clouds.
Chapter 20
Levi pushed on, his head hanging low against the pressure of the cloud. Kylee and I clung to Levi, both leaning forward to make out anything but the cloud surrounding us. Even letting the fire burn on my fingertips provided no penetration. There was no visibility, and all I could think of was stepping off the ledge and falling into the hot lava rumbling in the belly of this beast.
