Every Last Breath

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

  scent of coffee was thick in the air. To a human, they’d all look normal, but their eyes gave off weird glints.

  They weren’t exactly people, not in the technical sense.

  A few gave me a weird look. Others downright ignored me. One, a young woman dressed in some kind of bustier I could easily see Cayman purchasing, stood from a recliner, her wide eyes glittering as she hurried across the lobby, disappearing down a hallway.

  I had no idea if that had to do with me or with Roth’s presence. I really didn’t get the demon dynamics when it came to Roth, but none of the demons milling about in the lobby came near us.

  As I started to turn to Roth, Cayman appeared in the middle of the lobby, under the chandelier. Stiffening, I watched him swagger toward us, his floral pink and teal Hawaiian shirt possibly the gaudiest thing I’d ever seen.

  “Okay. I officially change my opinion on Cayman shopping for you,” Roth said.

  I snickered.

  Cayman ignored the comments. “It’s a great morning, isn’t it?” he said brightly, stepping to the side of Roth. “The sun is out, but they’re calling for snow tonight. Lots of snow. So much snow—”

  The crack jolted me.

  He had moved so fast, I didn’t realize what he’d done until Roth’s legs folded and collapsed. Heart leaping into my throat, I tried to grab Roth, but he was too heavy and I ended up going down on my knees.

  Cayman had snapped Roth’s neck.

  fifteen

  HORROR FILLED ME as Roth’s head fell to the side at an awkward angle. “Oh my God!” I shouted, looking up at Cayman. “What did you do? What did you—?”

  “We needed to distract him.” He gestured at the floor. “He’s distracted. And you have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that. Let me have my moment.”

  My mouth dropped open.

  A demon walking across the lobby carrying coffee in white to-go cups pivoted on her pointy black heel. “I don’t want any part of this,” she said, hurrying away.

  My hands shook as I glanced down at a still Roth. I couldn’t breathe, and as I stood, my skin started to harden, the skin on either side of my spine tingled.

  “Whoa.” Cayman threw up his hands. “Simmer down, crouching demon, hidden Warden. He’s fine. Look, if he was seriously in danger, Bambi would be off you in two seconds. He’s going to wake up in a couple of minutes, beat the crap out of me, realize you’re gone, and when I snap his neck again to stop him from going after you, we’re going to rinse and repeat, so please—please don’t take forever.”

  My heart hadn’t slowed down. “If he’s hurt—”

  “He’s not,” a demon from the couch said, his face ashen as he stared at Roth. “You can’t kill the Prince that way and when he wakes up—”

  “Yeah, he’s going to be pissed.” Cayman sighed.

  “I didn’t even get to say goodbye to him, Cayman.” I sucked in a shallow breath. “What if I—?”

  “Don’t finish that sentence. You will be back. Layla, you need to get a move on it. Don’t let the butt-whupping I’m going to receive be all in vain. You need to go.” He pointed behind me, and I looked back toward the gold-painted elevators.

  I needed to go.

  Heart pounding, I knelt and brushed my lips along Roth’s cheek as I smoothed my hand over his head, brushing his hair back from his face. I didn’t want to leave him. I wanted to sit there until his eyes opened, but I couldn’t.

  “I love you,” I whispered, voice choked as I curled my right hand into a fist.

  Standing, I turned to Cayman and cocked back my arm, punching him right in the stomach as hard as I could. Several demons gasped.

  “Omph,” he grunted, doubling over and clasping his stomach. “Sweet Moses in molasses.”

  Feeling a wee bit better about the situation, I forced myself to pivot around and walk toward the elevator. I didn’t look back, because if I did, I wasn’t sure I would keep walking. I liked to think that I would’ve, that I would’ve recognized that this situation was bigger than me and Roth, but I wasn’t sure if I was that good a person, that selfless.

  The gold elevators waited for me and I smacked the one round button on the panel a little harder than necessary. With a soft, almost-human-sounding groan, the doors slid open. I stepped inside, turning around to face the hall.

  Cayman appeared in front of the elevators, rubbing his stomach. “Be careful, Layla. Remember, nothing in Hell is what it seems.”

  Before I could respond, the doors sealed shut and the elevator jerked into movement. I stepped back, swallowing hard as it started a slow descent down. There was no music, no inside panels on the elevator, and the door seemed to be made of some kind of weird material. I brushed my fingers along the inside of the door and then jerked my hand back with a startled gasp.

  It felt like...like skin.

  My stomach cramped, and I thought I might hurl as it rippled.

  A strange orangey glow reflected off the walls of the elevator. Lifting my gaze to the ceiling, I smacked my hand over my mouth.

  There wasn’t really a ceiling above me.

  A roof of flames rolled, burning bright, licking along the edges of the walls. My eyes widened as I expected it to engulf the entire elevator, but the flames didn’t spread. The elevator jolted and that slow descent sped up.

  I was knocked back against the wall. Throwing my hands out, I gripped the rail as the elevator suddenly dropped at a rapid clip. Heart thumping, my knuckles ached from how tightly I was gripping the piece of metal. The elevator felt like it was going to split apart.

  Without warning, it jerked to a stop, throwing me off balance. My knees cracked off the floor, the pain dull compared to the sudden dizziness seizing me. It took several moments for the wooziness to subside, and I realized then, the elevator had stopped moving.

  Pushing myself up, I’d just straightened when the elevator doors parted softly. My mouth dropped open as I got my first glimpse of...Hell?

  Not at all.

  What lay beyond the open elevator doors was white walls—a white floor, a white ceiling. Shiny white. Pristine. My feet carried me out of the elevator, into a wide and vast circular lobby with hundreds if not thousands of hallways. There was music playing. Horrible, jaunty lobby music; the kind that would drive you crazy if you had to listen to it for longer than five minutes. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Hell had a lobby.

  Nothing was guarding the lobby. No demons waited to pounce on me, and that surprised me. Then again, Cayman had warned me that nothing in Hell was what it seemed. Maybe I just couldn’t see the demons. As I wheeled around, searching for hidden dangers, I realized there were gold placards on the walls near each hallway, displaying the names of...

  “Holy crap,” I whispered.

  Names of all the demons were clearly etched into the gold placards. Some I didn’t recognize. Others made my stomach twist and then drop. ABADDON. VINE. MOLOCH. BAEL. The names went on and on. Straight across from the elevator was the hallway labeled THE BOSS and beside it was one that caught my breath.

  ASTAROTH.

  I almost started toward it, because something inside of me wanted to see how Roth really lived when he was down here, but I stopped myself. I didn’t have time for this.

  Across from those names was THE PITS. And there, three down from that, was the name I’d been looking for: GRIM.

  Taking a deep, fortifying breath, I walked briskly toward the hall bearing Grim’s name and then down the long, brightly lit, relatively cool tunnel. There were no windows. No scents to speak of. The air was stagnant but clean, and still, the hairs all over my body began to rise.

  I reached a double set of windowless doors and before I could do anything, they opened silently, revealing a world I’d never seen before as a blast of oppressive heat smacked into me.

  Stopping an inch from the exit, I bit down on my lip. This...this was what I’d expected. In a way. The sky beyond the hall was a burnt red. There were no clouds. No sun or moon. Just
a deep, orangey red that seemed to have no source. The scent of sulfur and something I couldn’t quite make out turned my stomach.

  A road made of some kind of stone separated tall, ash-colored buildings. They rose like skyscrapers, reaching into that strange sky, their windows dark with no sign of life inside them. My gaze tracked over the formidable, intimidating buildings to the massive structure at the end of the road, several city blocks away. It was the largest of all the buildings, but designed like something straight out of the Middle Ages. Twin steeples rose from either side of the pitch roof, and it gave the impression that it was more of a fortress than a home. Sort of like the compound I’d grown up in.

  I swallowed hard, knowing that was where I was going to have to go, because of course, it wasn’t like Grim could live in a cute house with a picket fence or something. Oh no, it had to be the Lord of the Rings-type castle all the way down there.

  Knowing I didn’t have a lot of time and that time in general worked vastly different down here, I pulled up my big-girl undies and stepped out of the hallway.

  It happened immediately.

  Without any warning, a shiver rippled across my skin and I felt Bambi and Robin leave my body. Panicked, I tried to stop them, because I wasn’t sure if Robin was ready for that, but there was no calling them back.

  Two shadows drifted out from underneath my shirt, forming two irregular shaped circles. They trembled, and then dropped to the stone roadway, spilling into a million tiny balls that shot together. The inky black balls rose into the air, but they didn’t drop to the ground like they normally would.

  The dots spun and spun until a thick shadow formed. Before me, as my mouth hung open, legs formed, along with torsos and arms and heads. For a second, they were two people-shaped pools of black oil, and then, within a heartbeat, the murkiness gave way to detail.

  A boy and a girl stood in front of me.

  My jaw was starting to ache from how long I was gaping, but I couldn’t snap my mouth shut. They weren’t little boys and girls. Actually, they looked slightly older than me, but they were definitely of the male and female humanoid variety.

  The guy was tall and slender, with auburn hair that fell into crimson-colored eyes. Shirtless, he was all wiry grace. A fine dusting of reddish hair covered his bare skin. Standing next to him was a woman with hair a deep red, nearly matching her eyes. Dressed in a black tank top and jeans, she almost looked normal. Almost. Patches of her skin weren’t exactly...skin. More like tiny scales breaking through, all so very...snake-like.

  Oh my God.

  The woman grinned brightly. “Hey, girl, hey.”

  “Hey,” I said slowly, glancing between the two. “Um...”

  Raising his chin in a greeting, the guy’s nose twitched and then...then his ears did the same. “Hi.”

  Oh my God.

  “I so knew you were up to shenanigans, and I was right!” Turning to the guy, the girl raised her hand, flipping him off. “Told you so. Told you that she was going to come here. So you should be glad I’m here, so you don’t get eaten by dragons. And yes, there are dragons here. And not as nice as Thumper, either.”

  “You’re just so smart,” he replied drily.

  “Damn tootin’.” She spun toward me. “He’s not very helpful right now, since he’s like new to all of this. I needed to come along.”

  “You... You are...” I almost couldn’t bring myself to say it. “You’re Bambi.”

  Hopping, she clapped her hands together. “And you’re Layla. And he’s Dumbass.”

  Dumbass sighed. “I’m Robin. You know, your real familiar. Not the parasite who needs to go back to Daddy.”

  Bambi snorted. “How about you go back to yourself. Huh? How about that?”

  That didn’t even make sense, but the fact that I was staring at Bambi and Robin and they looked like humans didn’t make sense, either. “So you two... This is what you really look like?”

  She nodded. “Yep. When we can, which tragically isn’t very often. But we can talk to one another even in our animal forms. Sort of telepathically.” She pouted. “Robin here is a bore. He’s really just slept this whole time.”

  He scowled in her direction. “Because I needed to get charged up.”

  “Whatever,” she quipped. “I miss my boys. Nitro and Fury and Thor. They’re fun. Thumper is like you. Another bore who just sleeps all the time, and when he doesn’t, he’s a grumpy tool.”

  I blinked slowly as Bambi raised her arms above her head, stretching. Her top rose, flashing a taut stomach, and it suddenly hit me that Roth had a chick on him. Roth seriously had a chick all over him, all the time! On lots of parts of his body. And I had a dude on my stomach!

  Roth and Cayman had failed to mention this little detail to me.

  An ugly, insidious feeling crept into me and I couldn’t stop myself from saying, “You are on Roth.”

  “Um, yeah. And sometimes I’m on you. Duh.” She frowned. “Did you hurt your head or something?”

  Okay. I squeezed my eyes shut briefly. The jealousy was ridiculous. I couldn’t be jealous over Bambi, who might be a hot girl but also was a snake most of the time—a legit, giant snake that ate gross things.

  Besides, I had a dude on me— “Oh my God,” I groaned, looking at Robin. “You were on me last night. You were on me—”

  “The moment you all started losing clothes, I totally checked out.” He raised his hands, wrinkling his nose. “Did not want to see any of that. Didn’t feel any of that.”

  “I...” There were no words.

  “Look,” Bambi said, “for most of the time we’re on you, we aren’t paying attention to what you’re doing. Well, not true. When you were with Zayne, I was so paying attention.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. “So the kittens? They...”

  “They are hot. Oh my golly God, they’re triplets,” Bambi said, smacking my arm with enough force to stagger me. “Triplets, Layla. There are actually three of them.”

  “I got that.” I rubbed my stinging arm. “Thanks.”

  Robin folded his arms as he cast his gaze to the orangey sky. “I have a feeling we should not be here.”

  “This is unspeakably weird,” I muttered, trying to grasp the fact that I was talking to the familiars.

  Bambi flipped that crimson hair over her shoulder. “I think it’s fantastically delightful.” Prancing forward, she stuck out her tongue in Robin’s direction. Even in her human form, the tongue was still forked. “But you know what’s not delightful? Your taste in men. I was really hoping you’d hook up with Zayne. He looked yummy.”

  “You’ve already eaten one Warden—”

  “Honey, that’s not the kind of eating I’m thinking of when I clap eyes on that big, blond ball of sweet, sweet loving.”

  My eyes widened as Robin rolled his. “I’m...uh, sorry to disappoint you?”

  Bambi continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “I liked it when he would pet me and I think you liked it, too,” she said, and my face went up in flames, because I knew exactly the moment she was referring to. “But I wonder how he’d feel if he knew what part of me he was actually feeling up. It wasn’t my neck.”

  “That’s disgusting,” Robin said.

  She snickered. “It was amazing.”

  Okay. I knew I needed to focus on the important stuff, but I was still stuck on the fact they were here. “How is this possible?” I asked.

  Bambi opened her mouth, but it was a male’s voice from behind me that answered. “Ah, spoken like a true newcomer. Allow me to enlighten you, young innocent. Whenever familiars are in Hell, they automatically take this form. Obviously, no one thought to tell you, because they believed it would be a nonissue.”

  Spinning around, I fought the urge to back up. Instinct demanded that I move far, far away from the tall man who stood in front of the doors leading to the hallway. Tall really didn’t do him justice. He had to be near seven feet in height. A ruggedly handsome man, if dark beards and hard, glacial eyes we
re your kind of thing.

  “They can also take this form topside,” he continued.

  Bambi giggled from behind me. “Astaroth lets me do that. Not often. But when he does, it’s always fun. I wish he would do it more often.”

  The man arched a brow. “Probably not the wisest of decisions. You see,” he added, directing his attention to me again, “the familiars have very little impulse control and they do not operate by any human moral compass.”

  “Damn skippy we don’t,” Bambi agreed.

  “You and I need to talk,” the man told me, raising his hand. He