by Nadine Mutas
My only answer was another wet sob.
His wings flared restlessly. He gestured at the doorway. “This won’t hurt you.”
“It’s not that,” I got out between gulps of air. Sniffling, I wiped at my cheeks, my breath stuttering. “I’ll never see them again.”
And they won’t ever see me again. That part was almost worse. Just the idea that I was going to be plucked out of this life, just disappeared like the victim in some gruesome true crime documentary, that my mom would be left wondering, hoping, searching for a clue because she didn’t even have the closure of my body being found… It would tear her apart.
And my dad—I pressed my fist against my mouth in an effort to stem the tangle of emotions associated with him, most of which I’d never dared to examine further. To say my relationship with him was rocky was the understatement of the century. I’d all but cut any contact to him, even though he’d tried, again and again over the years to make amends for his past mistakes. But some wounds just went too deep.
Or so I’d thought.
Now, faced with the prospect of truly never seeing him again… The sharp hurt in my chest seemed too much like regret.
“You can.” The demon’s voice pulled me out of my miserable thoughts.
“What?”
“See them again.” When I squinted at him through tear-clouded eyes, he went on, “You can visit.”
My heart stumbled over its own rhythm. I sniffled, blinked several times to clear my vision. “Really?” God, why did I sound so pathetic?
“Yes. Now stop...that.” He waved at my face.
I pulled a tissue out of my bag and blew my nose. The sound echoed uncomfortably loud in the silence of the park. My throat still raw, eyes burning with the aftermath of my crying, I followed his gesture when he beckoned me closer. The doorway shimmered behind him, an impossibility for the rational part of my mind, but given that one of the demon’s huge wings brushed my back, that rational part had pretty much called it a night.
I wished I could as well.
Sudden bone-deep weariness drenched me, pulled me down like a lead weight. I just wanted to go to sleep and wake up in the morning and realize this had all been a weird dream. I didn’t want to fight with an overbearing demon who may or may not yet decide to torture me for his pleasure. I didn’t want to face whatever awaited me in Hell. Not to mention processing the trauma of being ripped from my familiar life.
My maudlin whinologue was interrupted by the demon unceremoniously picking me up as he’d done before. Immediately, I snaked my arms around his neck.
“Are we going to fly again?”
“In a minute.”
With that, he stepped up to the glowing doorway, and I had the ludicrous thought of how ironic it was that he was going to carry me over a threshold like a traditional bride.
I snickered.
The demon canted his head and peered down on me. “Something funny?”
“Nothing.” I pressed my lips together to keep from grinning. “Carry on.”
And that did it. I burst out laughing.
He muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, “Humans” and continued walking.
I hid my face against his shoulder, still giggling. I was losing it. This time well and truly. One of my fuses must have snapped, and I had entered the phase of trauma response that made people act ridiculously, like laughing when their life went to shit right in front of their eyes.
In the periphery of my vision, the glow of the doorway was super close now. The demon took one more step, and the shimmer enfolded us.
Chapter 3
Darkness.
Silence.
I didn’t even hear my own breath.
Pressure all around us, growing, growing, growing, until my ears popped and the demon stepped out into light again.
I took a deep breath—and inhaled an incongruent mix of ash-flecked air and the scent of flowers. The sky above was dark blue streaked with red, casting everything in a fiery glow.
“Lord Azazel.”
The voice came from our right, and I craned my neck to take a peek.
The demon—my demon, Azazel—tightened his arms around me and pressed me closer to his chest. He even pushed his hand that was behind my shoulders up to my head and shoved my face back against him, making any attempt at seeing who had spoken to him impossible.
“If you breathe one word of this to anyone,” Azazel said, his voice a shard of ice, “I will make sure you are stripped of your hides and hung by your intestines for a hundred years.”
My heart stopped for a moment, before two voices snapped, “Yes, my lord.”
Good grief, I’d thought he’d spoken to me. I’d been ready to crawl into the nearest corner to hide based on the vicious note in his voice—one he hadn’t ever used on me. Yet.
He took two steps then paused, half turned back. “That includes her. Not. A. Word.”
“Understood.”
I barely had time to take another breath before he lifted off with a mighty thump of his wings. We soared, higher and higher, the fire-licked sky a dramatic painting all around us.
I couldn’t make out much of the landscape below, but lights twinkled in the darkness here and there, some clustered together just like on Earth. Settlements, probably, some form of villages or towns.
Or maybe that was where they tortured the damned souls.
I shivered.
The air here didn’t have the same chill as in San Francisco, instead it felt like I’d opened the oven and received a blast of dry heat right in my face. Particles of ash clung to my hair, my lashes, and I had to blink hard not to get any in my eyes.
A thought hit me, made nausea roil in my belly.
“The ash…” I rasped. “Is it...it’s not…”
“Sinners?”
I nodded, didn’t dare open my mouth again for fear of getting particles right on my tongue.
“No.” He angled his wings. “It’s Hell itself. The land burns. The trees burn. Every part of her incinerates itself from time to time.”
Oh, thank God.
Then my brain caught up. “Does your...house randomly catch fire?” Did he even live in a house? Did demons have to sleep? I had so many questions.
“It’s manageable.”
That…didn’t sound very reassuring. I squirmed a bit in his hold, dread pooling in my stomach. My mind swirled with ideas of what kind of “accommodations” would await me, and none of them settled the unease churning inside me.
Sounds echoed in the semi-darkness. Like a dirge, mournful and slow, a chorus of wails rose from somewhere beneath us. It took me a moment to identify the sound—I’d never heard human voices like that, but human they were.
We must be flying over some form of torture pit then.
Bile crept up into my throat. The wails were so full of suffering, such sharp pain and despair, it tore at my soul. The one time I’d heard something remotely similar was when I’d watched a documentary on slaughterhouses. The pigs’ screaming had rattled me so much that I’d gone vegetarian that same day.
But these here were people. Human souls, each one of them once alive and now still sentient and feeling. And I could taste every one of their painful emotions like a cloying perfume in the ash-flecked air.
A horrible thought flashed through my mind. The demon could simply drop me here. He might—might—not be allowed to kill me as per the nebulous contract between us, but what would stop him from opening his arms, prying my fingers loose and simply letting me plummet into whatever pit of writhing bodies in pain? As long as I was still alive, he wouldn’t have violated the covenant, right?
It probably wouldn’t even be a big deal to him. He’d shrug and go on. Because how much could someone who came from a torture dimension care? Making people suffer would be in his nature.
I shivered despite the searing heat. It hit me now, worse than before. Back when we’d walked away from the bar, the realization that I was at his complete and ut
ter mercy had been more of an abstract one. The fear I’d felt had been more subtle, my mind not quite grasping the full details of the mess I’d gotten myself into.
Now, that fear morphed into bone-chilling panic. Faced with the very realness of this dimension, confronted with the acoustic proof of others being tortured, my earlier realization of my powerlessness became so very tangible that it threatened to arrest my breath.
I’d provoked him so much. I wasn’t sure how much worse I could have made the beginning of this sham of a marriage. I supposed I could have puked on his shoes or tried an actual Catholic exorcism on him, but even so, I was now likely high on his shit list.
High enough to warrant the treatment of a damned soul? I didn’t know. And that uncertainty shook me to my core.
I should have bargained for another contract, one that stipulated he couldn’t hurt me, when I still held a grain of leverage over him. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Why hadn’t I thought of that? I totally could have made him agree to certain terms under the threat of not marrying him and thereby dooming him to lose his powers.
I had nothing left to bargain with, and I’d missed my chance at securing a modicum of a civilized existence for myself down here.
There was a reason I hadn’t gone to law school…
All that was left was to hope for some form of leniency from a being that had probably slurped sinners’ suffering for breakfast for thousands of years.
I couldn’t undo what I’d done so far, but I could try to be more agreeable and less...me from now on. Maybe, if I just made myself small and invisible, didn’t draw his attention, I could get by.
My mind firmly settled into gecko brain mode. New goal: survive, appease, avoid pain.
The demon banked, and the lights below drew closer. A howl rent the air, making me jerk in the demon’s arms. I’d heard wolves howling before, an eerie enough sound to unnerve any human with a bit of a primitive survival instinct.
This was nothing like it. As if a thousand screams were trapped inside it, the sound changed and audibly oscillated, rising and falling, whispering and roaring, the primal aggression of it raising the hairs on my arms and neck, making my muscles twitch with the urge to run.
I had an inkling, still I asked. “What is that?”
“My hellhounds. They patrol the grounds.”
He had hellhounds. Of course he did.
A desperate sound between a laugh and a sob wanted to wrench itself out of my throat. I swallowed that sucker down. Survive, appease, avoid pain.
“Lovely,” I croaked.
We swooped lower still, over the sounds of his monstrous pets baying—in welcome?—toward a large, dark structure squatting in the middle of the landscape still shrouded in gloom. I could barely make out details of the building, only that it loomed in the darkness like a fortress of epic proportions. Few lights illuminated the walls, flames flickering over what might be stone.
The demon began his landing maneuver, and I curled my fingers harder into his collar. Again, he managed a touchdown far more graceful than I’d anticipated, folding his wings neatly behind his back as he strode forward. No stopping this time, no letting me go to stumble to the ground.
Now closer to the fortress, I could make out more details. We’d landed on a small platform that jutted out from the wall, like a large balcony without a railing. From what I could tell, we were still high up, several stories above the ground level. The wall had a door and two windows—with what looked like iron bars attached to them. Fire burned in sconces next to the wall.
The demon swiftly walked up to the door and loosened the arm that supported my shoulders. I had to scramble to reinforce my grip on his neck and collar so I wouldn’t just slip and dangle with my upper body. Thanks for the warning, jerk.
As with the gate in the park, he drew signs in the air, each lighting up for a second before fading again. The door opened with a hiss, and he pushed through, letting it fall shut again behind us. His wings disappeared with a sound of susurration. I stared at the spots on his back where just a second ago his mighty wings had sprouted. There weren’t even slits left over in his fighting gear. It was as if he’d never even had them to begin with.
He strode on without pause, through a semi-dark room that appeared to feature a huge bed and a seating area. I only had a few seconds of trying to take in the surroundings before he’d reached the next door and marched into another room, some sort of sitting room judging by the sofas.
And on he went. Through another door, into a hallway lit by flickering sconces, the walls dark stone, painted in shadows. All the way, he carried me without a sign of letting up.
Under any other circumstances, with a different man, this might have been deemed romantic, but instinctively, I knew better. Something in the way he held me and walked spoke of necessity rather than affection. His face was all hard angles and inscrutable beauty, not a hint of softness or benevolence. He was as detached as if carrying a package.
It shouldn’t have rankled, but it did.
Here and there I saw movement in the periphery of my vision, shadows scattering or something slithering toward the ceiling. We encountered a group of small creatures, three feet tall at the most and looking disturbingly like a mix between a house-elf from Harry Potter and the yucky thing cuddling up to Jabba the Hutt in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.
As one, the group threw itself on the floor, heads bowed, as the demon walked by. I peeked over his shoulder once we’d passed and watched them scramble back up to a stand after a moment, chattering and busying themselves with what looked like cleaning. House-elves indeed. Not as cute as Dobby, though.
After what seemed like an eternity of traversing hallway after hallway, winding staircases and maze-like turns and bends, the demon finally stopped in front of a door. He let go, and I slid-hopped down his front and managed to stand without falling over, which I was quite proud of, given the fact I was rather stiff from being carried in the same position for possibly hours.
He swung open the door and waved me inside.
Gingerly, I entered, expecting the worst.
What greeted me was far from that.
A spacious room, the stone walls whitewashed and reflecting the firelight from the sconces scattered around. Rugs on the floor, tapestries on the walls, comfy furniture to lounge on, decorative tables with books on them. For all intents and purposes, this was a beautifully appointed living room with a medieval flair.
Two more doors in the left- and right-hand walls stood open, and I walked over to peer through them. Door number one led to a room that was mostly empty except for some more rugs on the floor and...a treadmill? I blinked, shook my head and backed out to check out the other door.
It led into a bedroom, dominated by a large four-poster bed piled high with cushions, an armoire, two armchairs with a table set between them, and another door in the opposite wall. I glimpsed a shower and a sink through the doorway. A bathroom, then. Alrighty.
I turned back to the demon, who leaned against the wall in the sitting room, his arms crossed over his chest. As with every time I looked at him, I was jolted by his ethereal beauty, so unfair considering what he was. And I didn’t mean demon. Jerks just shouldn’t be this pretty.
Still, my accommodations were miles better than I’d feared. My stomach settled, the panic abating with the realization that, hey, this wasn’t so bad. There were no torture instruments strung about, no fire pit to roast over, no monstrous hellhound ready to devour me. A knot loosened in my chest, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
Maybe this would be okay. I could deal with a surly husband as long as I wasn’t going to be locked in an Iron Maiden.
“These are your rooms,” the demon said. “Your meals will be brought here. If you require anything else, lay your hand on the plaque next to the door, and someone will come to take your order.”
Well, that sounded reasonable. And having my own rooms was a boon, a place where I could retreat and be alone. Heaven knew with a brooding as
s like him for a husband, I’d need lots of me time.
“You are not to leave these rooms.”
Wait, what? I opened my mouth, closed it again. Squinting at him, I modulated my tone in an effort not to show the spark of irritation inside me. “Then...you will come here?”
The demon’s eyes glittered hard. “No.”
My thoughts raced, same as my heart. Skin prickling, I tried to slow my breathing. “You just expect me to stay put here. Alone?”
Like a package he deposited in a storage unit.
The demon raised a brow, an arrogant gesture of confirmation without him having to utter a single word.
“Will I meet anyone else?”
“No.”
I exhaled roughly, trying to stifle the bitter laugh scratching my throat. “So I am not allowed to leave, you won’t come to see me, and I’ll be locked in these rooms for all eternity without visitors? No one to talk to or interact with?”
“That’s the plan.”
Oh, that motherfucker.
What was this, some fucked up version of Jane Eyre?
Scratch trying to appease. Forget about being agreeable. My good intentions of surviving this hellscape of a marriage went up in flames as indignation burned through me.
“You pop up in my living room,” I growled, “you pluck me from my life, drag me down to Hell, and then you just want to park me here out of sight and out of mind, not even making an effort to engage with me?”
He pushed off the wall, his eyes flashing like lightning, black shadows writhing around him. Two steps and he was right in front of me, towering with all the intimidation of a panther cornering a mouse. I had to crane my neck to even look at his face, but I refused to back away.
“Do you want me to engage with you?”
I shivered. The gecko part of my brain—you know, the one looking out for my survival, preferably in one piece—screamed at me that no, no, no, engaging with this dangerous hunk of a demon was a bad idea. As in, on a scale of one to Pandora opening that box, this was off the charts.
And yet…the anger boiling inside me burned away this more rational part of myself until what was left was a feral creature with bared teeth. I would take fighting with him over an eternity alone.
