I followed her to the top, rounding over the lip easily. By the time I hit the top, my arm healed.
What lay before us was total chaos.
Bones and nest material were littered all over, scarcely one foot of roof was showing, the rest was debris. There was one particular heap of matted bones stacked twenty feet high. It had to be the queen’s nest or the king’s or however the hierarchy worked for wyverns. It was massive and sat right in front of the clock tower.
Lily stilled beside me. I could tell she was formulating a plan in her mind. “Don’t tell me the portal is the clock tower.” I pointed toward the huge nest. “That’s not why we’re standing here waiting, is it?”
“The clock tower is the portal,” she replied. “Just let me think. That nest was not here the last time.”
“How long has it been since you ventured here?”
“Two hundred years.”
“What!” I would’ve clapped my forehead at that news, but I didn’t want to waste my energy. “And you didn’t stop to think that maybe things might’ve changed a bit since then? I’m pretty sure the momma wyvern or whoever lives here isn’t going to just let us waltz up to her nest and dig through it on our way to the portal.”
“There are no wyverns up here at the moment.” The demoness swept her long blonde hair off her shoulder as she turned to peer at me. “We can get through if we move now.”
“How do you know for sure it’s clear? One could be taking a nap.”
“Because I don’t sense any.”
“Hmm,” I muttered. “And we’re trusting your inkling to be correct because… why?”
“Because there is no reason to doubt my sensing abilities now.” She started for the nest without looking back.
I trailed behind her, trying not to complain about our awful situation, but not quite achieving it. “When they come back, we will literally be standing in the belly of the beast.”
“I’ll have my power at the ready.” She flexed her fists as she walked purposefully toward the base of the nest. “Stop worrying.”
Most of the bones I glimpsed here were bigger than those of the largest human or demon I’d seen. I gave a futile glance around me, wondering what else lived in the Sholls. Whatever these wyverns fed on was huge.
Lily started yanking apart the nest, tossing pieces of it behind her, uncaring of where they landed or how loud of a racket she made.
“Why don’t you just zap the nest out of the way with your power? This is going to take all day,” I said.
“If I use my magic, they will come. Stop grumbling and help me.” She grunted as she tossed a large mass of what looked to be cartilage connected to a half a skeleton away from her.
I started prying bigger parts away. “You said before that other than the wyverns, we were safe in the Sholls. But they feed on something huge. This bone came from a bruiser of a beast.” I yanked a large bone out and examined it.
“They consume something that resembles a rhinoceros in your world, but is too slow to be of harm to us, and they don’t live in this area. They are called xer tottod and they gather in small groups far from here. The wyverns only venture out when they have to. Mostly they just scavenge on the small beasts, ones that cannot harm us.”
Once we cleared away more of the nest, I spotted what looked to be an outline of a door in the surface of the clock. The hole we’d made was now big enough to enter, so I ducked my head and went in. The only light from outside was putrid gray and very little of it filtered in here. It was like picking my way through a thicket when I was a kid. Only back then I was actually having fun, now I was in Hell trying not to get eaten by a dragon.
The demoness gave a shrill scream behind me, knocking into my back, sending me sailing forward into more bones and twigs. “They have come back. Hurry—”
There was a terrifying screech as the thing landed and the nest above us quaked. I risked a glance behind me and saw more than one gigantic talon blink into existence.
“Go, go!” Lily pushed me again.
I raced forward as fast as I could, yanking things out of my way and crawling over bones that lay across my path like downed trees. “Am I going for the door?”
“Yes,” she said. “Put the palm of your hand in the middle of six.”
“Six what?” I shouted, confused.
“The number six! On the clock!”
“Will that activate the portal?”
“It will open the first door, and then I’ll do the rest.”
Above us the wyvern started to dismantle its nest by ripping it apart. Pieces flew everywhere, raining down around us between the gaps. It kept shrieking its anger and two beats later the roof bounced again as several more landed.
“There’s no more time left, Lily!” I yelled. “They will be on us in a minute.”
She shouted something in Demonish and a pulse of energy shook our small tunnel, collapsing it around us. She gave a frustrated howl of anger and grabbed my back, swinging me aside in one motion.
She was a lot stronger than she looked.
She took the lead, diving for the number six, and I was right behind her. She slammed both her hands into the bottom loop of the six right as the top of the nest sheared off.
My wolf was in overdrive, howling and barking. I had my magic at the ready, but if the wyverns became incorporeal it wasn’t going to help me. “That’s it!” I yelled, encouraging her. “Give it more power.”
“I don’t have any more to give. It’s stuck!” she cried.
I reached around her and jammed my palm into the same circle and blasted my magic along with hers, trying to focus on the dark demon essence I had incorporated into my own signature and pull it forward.
The wyverns gave a mighty howl. I glanced up. We were completely exposed. This was it, we had to open it or die. The portal wants the demon magic, I told my wolf. Pull only the black signature. Frantically my wolf siphoned off the darkest part of our magic and blasted it into the clock.
The portal shook.
One more time, I shouted. More magic came forward in a rush, and with a loud groan, the portal began to open. Lily went first, grabbing onto my arm as she tumbled through. As my body fell, I turned to see the roof one last time.
Right as a wyvern blinked into being, a millimeter from my face.
9
“If I never see another wyvern again, I’ll be a happy girl,” I declared once we’d landed. “I think the portal closed on that thing’s head.”
Lily lay next to me, looking spent. It was actually nice to see she wasn’t as invincible as she portrayed herself. “They are fearsome beings. With my luck, I’ll probably come back as one.”
“That wouldn’t be something to look forward to.” I stood up, clapping off the debris that had followed us in. “Just so you know, I’m not entering the Sholls again, so if we get cornered, you’ll have to come up with another plan.”
The demoness rose slowly next to me. We appeared to be in a large closet of some kind. I leaned over and fingered what looked like to be a bottle of cleaning solution on a shelf next to me. “Did we land in a storage room?”
“No. We are in what we call a mending cell, or a tyfkefr laat in Demonish.”
“A mending cell?”
“This is where we take a demon that has broken the law and try to ‘mend’ it—meaning we try to force it to think like the horde once again, and if that doesn’t work, we use that”—she pointed to the bottles I’d just been grasping—“to kill it.”
I snatched my hand back. “Do they make the demons drink this stuff?” For the first time I examined the space. We were standing behind a partition. I took a step and peeked around it, spotting an evil-looking cross between a bathtub and a bed sitting in the middle of the room. There were restraints all over the place, including ones for the head, arms, legs, and what looked to be… the groin.
Well, now I knew demons had all the working parts.
“No, they don’t drink it.” The demoness s
ighed. “We pour it over them and they disintegrate into a bubbling mass as it eats away at their hide.”
My eyebrows furrowed as I glanced back at her. “This is not what they’re planning to do to Tyler, right? If they decide to kill him, it won’t be in a torture chamber like this? Please tell me they are not going to tie him down and pour acid over him.”
“Likely not,” she answered. “But it’s hard to know. This room is only one of many and they all have particular ways to eradicate errant demons. These rooms are attached to our courthouse and are made especially for the demons who stand trial and are found guilty. But we have mending rooms all over She’ol, some of them very crude. One would be lucky to go this way.” She gestured to the bottle of solution. “It is painful, but it is over quickly. I’ve heard of some demons being ‘mended’ for years.”
I shuddered. “You know, this entire world is the worst. Is there any beauty or happiness here? Or is it just all horror and sadness?” There was a definite pall over the Underworld, like an ongoing depression nagging at me.
She bowed her head. “There is beauty, but it is hard to see. I have been happy here until recently.”
“You mean before you turned on the Prince of Hell.”
“No,” she said quietly. “Before he turned on me.”
I didn’t really want to know, but curiosity got the best of me. “Why did you choose to sleep with him in the first place?”
She shrugged. “I have been here for many years and he is very powerful, as am I. It was a coupling of strength at first, but it turned into something much deeper later. He has feelings. Demons are not void of emotion. In fact, they have a fair amount of feelings. They just choose to keep their true wants and needs concealed.”
Thinking about the Prince being intimate was more than a little disconcerting. But knowing he has real emotions makes him seem a little more… normal. “It’s hard to believe what you’re telling me since he has the outward appearance of a robot.”
“I assure you, he is no robot. He can be very sensual.”
I held my hand up. “Okay. It’s time to move on.” I walked toward what I thought was the door, but in this place it was hard to know. It didn’t look like a door, but more like a cutout in the wall. It wouldn’t have surprised me if we had to slide through another tube to get free of this torture chamber. “On another note, are all demonesses mixed race like you?” I asked. Maybe demons had to breed with other Sects to have females? It wouldn’t be unheard of. “Or are there full demon females?”
Lily followed me, so I kept moving toward the cutout. “There are indeed pure-blooded demonesses, but only a few are born every century. They are treated like queens around here.” Did I detect a little cynicism? “But mixed-race demonesses, as you referred to them, are much rarer. One is only born once every thousand years or so.”
I stopped in my tracks, turning with my mouth open a little. “Are you telling me you’re the only female of your kind?”
“Yes, I am the only one,” she answered. “Imps are always born male, and from human mothers. Most other supernatural Sects are not compatible genetically with demons and cannot produce children, but my mother’s race is strong and fierce.”
I closed my mouth, thinking. “You’re part witch, aren’t you.” I said it more as a statement and less as a question. “Magic of the earth and magic of the blood together in one body.” I made an involuntary shushing noise in the back of my throat, before continuing. “That makes you one very powerful supernatural. That’s why you can’t or won’t take a witch’s circle out of here with me. If the witches know about you, it would be war the moment you stepped foot on my plane.”
There was no way I could bring that kind of danger home with me.
She shooed my words away dismissively with her hand. “I don’t have a beef with anyone, and they have none with me. I was not lying before. The demons will have disarmed the circle already. It has nothing to do with if I can use it or not.”
“Bull,” I retorted. “You have vendetta written all over you.” I made a sweeping gesture up and down her body with an open hand. “I bet you were cast out of your Coven when you were young—why else would you be here? Your English is flawless, so you have to have spent your formative years on the human plane—before what? They found out what you were? Or you rebelled? Maybe your demon side took over? You must have been quite a menace—”
She held me by the throat before I could move to defend myself.
A second later she tossed me across the room. I hadn’t expected her to attack, so it was my bad. My wolf howled at my foolishness. I hear you, I muttered. I flew twenty feet and smashed into a rack of something that broke apart instantly. Bottles and cans bounced all over, rolling around on the floor; luckily none of them seemed to have burst. I stood immediately, wiping blood off my lip with the back of my hand. “So I uncover your true self and you choose to fight me?” I asked. “Fine. We can fight. But it ends here. No more deal-making or aiding one another. The winner walks though that door alone.”
She sauntered over to me, loathing etched across her features. “You think you’re extremely smart, don’t you? That you have me all figured out? The reincarnate wolf enters our realm to save her poor brother… but what’s this?” She arched a hand behind the back of her ear and stuck her neck out. “She has demonic magic running through her veins? Sound the alarms and call the guards!” She faked a gasp and thumped a hand over her heart. “It seems this wolf has turned out to be a much greater threat than any of us had originally thought. And when they finally catch you, they will bring you into a room just like this one.” She spread her arms wide. “And if he’s not dead yet from his own stupidity, they’ll drag your brother in to watch. And once the deed is done, and they’ve killed you in the most horrendous way imaginable, they will send him home with his tail between his legs—but, of course, not before they inflict as much damage on him as they possibly can. Your brother will be sent back as a warning to all others, broken and out of his mind. Anyone who comes to Hell to avenge your death will pay the same price. They will all die and the demons will win. They always win.”
I didn’t think. I launched myself at her, my wolf snarling and snapping her jaws as images of Lily being torn apart flooded my psyche. I was in my Lycan form when we collided, my fist swinging at her face. It connected hard and her neck whipped back, followed by a satisfying crunching noise. Her body connected hard with the wall behind us, denting it. But before she could recover or throw me off, I yanked her down to the ground, snarling right in her face, flashing my teeth. “No one is torturing anyone, do you hear me? I’m freeing my brother and getting us both out of Hell. In one piece. And if I have to kill you, I will, with no hesitation.” Before she could respond, my fist flashed down, connecting with her throat.
She gurgled as her windpipe imploded.
Without pause, she brought an arm up and backhanded me. I knocked into a rack next to us from the force of her blow. This time a single bottle fell to the ground and cracked. Liquid seeped onto the floor around us and started to smoke. I glanced down at Lily, whose neck was regenerating quickly—quicker than mine had—and whose blood was all over.
It was red, a witch’s blood color, not the oily stuff that came out of the Prince.
I wondered in that moment whether she was more witch than demon.
“You can try to kill me all day.” She gnashed her teeth, bringing a hand up along her cheek, smearing scarlet. “But I won’t die, no matter how many times you try. My magic is something you’ve never encountered before. It makes me stronger than any witch or demon, and something you can’t best no matter how strong you are.”
“We’ll see about—”
Before I could retaliate there was a loud crackling noise coming from the PA system, followed by a voice that filled the room around us. “Attention, attention. We know you are in the building. We will find you. Turn yourself over, female wolf, or we will dispatch your kin. You have three minutes to respond
. Thank you.”
It clicked off.
Lily pushed herself up and I let her go, a grim smile playing on her lips. “Still willing to risk your brother’s life by fighting me? I’ve never lied to you. I’m still the only chance you’ve got, no matter what I am, or how strong. And the sooner you realize that, the sooner we can move on.” She gestured toward the door as she stood. There was movement in the hallway beyond it. “I am the only thing that can defeat what lies out there. And because of what I am—a witch and a demon—they all fear me. And because they fear me, they will hesitate to react. I alone can get you and your precious brother out alive. Me.” She placed a single finger on her chest. “And you have one minute and forty-seven seconds to make up your mind.”
My mind raced. “There’s no way I can trust you, and the only way you’re going to keep helping me is if I agree to take you back to my plane. That’s not happening, Lily. You’ve proven over and over again how dangerous you are. Your powers are unique and strong, I get it, but that makes you a serious threat. Too serious to risk bringing you back.”
She took a step toward me, her pupils expanded to form a perfect sapphire oval. “I’ve repeatedly told you I’m dangerous. I’ve never kept it a secret. I also told you I would swear an oath to you that I will not harm anyone on your plane. I am purely looking for asylum and nothing more. I will still swear that vow to you now, if only to prove to you my intentions are innocent.”
I peered at her hard. “If you really want to prove to me you’re innocent—then prove it by freeing me and my brother. Earn my trust and my favor and stop asking for it.”
She opened her mouth and for the first time I saw that some of her back teeth were pointed. “Fine. I will continue to earn your trust, as I have already done, but when this is over, and I have lead you both safely to the portal, you will owe me. But your brother’s life is in jeopardy. There is no more time to argue—”
Red Blooded Page 9
