Three Trials

by Kristy Cunning

  No one says anything for a while. It’s not the first time I’ve attempted to bare my heart and soul, then have the pieces of it get thrown in my face directly after by them.

  It’s odd that I’m thankful for the next bird-snake that emerges to break up the awkward tension surrounding us. It shoots out, passing through me again, just like the last one.

  “Why do they keep shooting out at me?” I snap as that sickly tail slashes through me, the bird-snake soaring out and away from us.

  I think that other one must have somehow warned him I’d kick his scaly ass.

  “I’m a badass,” I state primly as I walk a little taller in my sexy phantom heels.

  “You could at least give us something pretty to look at while we’re off to face death,” Ezekiel states flatly.

  “My outfit is badass and hot.”

  “It’s…not our thing, really,” Kai drawls.

  A sexy little red Devil Halloween costume appears on me, along with red fishnet stockings hooked to the garter belts. The cliché pitchfork, red horns, and little red heels complete the look for hell’s belly’s deadly excursion.

  At first there’s silence, then suddenly there’s boisterous laughter, and I grin to myself while swishing my ass that is clad with red lace panties.

  “May be just a little too distracting,” Gage groans.

  “You wanted pretty. My ass in lace is as pretty as it can get.”

  “I think it’s her vanity that always catches me off guard the most,” Ezekiel says on a rumble of laughter.

  “I prefer to hear it called confidence,” I once again point out.

  “I think it’s her greed that surprises me. Wanting all the jewelry and fancy dinners we bought the other women,” Kai muses.

  “Not greed. I’m not really all that greedy, to be honest. I spent five years coveting the gifts you gave these women as tokens of your brief but passionate affection. They didn’t even know you, yet you showered them with such things. I still want all that,” I go on. “Even if you do deny me the rest of the fantasy, I still want all the sweet stuff. You might have saved my life, but you did it without effort. I’ve certainly had to exert effort to return the favor. I feel like the tokens of affection could be accepted as tokens of gratitude, and then there could be balance in the debts.”

  It grows immediately silent, and I turn to look behind me to see they’ve also stilled.

  “It’s not like you don’t have the money,” I say on an exasperated sigh.

  “It’s just the choice of words you used,” Jude says, not giving anything away with his tone or expression.

  A screech from below sounds before the earth starts shaking hard, and Kai is pitched to the side. The others shout for him as he falls toward a lava stream below us.

  I zap down, landing on the last ledge before the cliff, and I turn whole just in time to grab his hand as he falls by me. His hand immediately clasps mine as my hair falls around my face.

  Light beams around me, almost blinding the both of us, and I jerk him onto the ledge before the light disappears and I tumble to the ground in my phantom form, my heart racing so fiercely that I almost can’t stand, even without gravity hindering me.

  Kai is panting heavily as he drops beside me, and he says, “You’re a lot stronger than you look.”

  I laugh humorlessly, staring up but not able to see anything.

  “What the fuck happened?! All we saw was a blast of light!” Gage shouts.

  “I’m alive,” Kai calls out. “The rest can wait,” he adds, though it sounds as though he’s just talking to me as he pushes up to his feet.

  He groans as he stares at all the lost progress.

  “I’ll meet you at the top. Don’t linger. I don’t want to know what just shook the earth that hard,” he calls out.

  He studies me for a minute, but I turn away and start hiking again, electing to stay with him so that he’s not left down here alone.

  “Will you be able to make it three days without giving in to the urge to solidify?” Kai asks me.

  “No. My level-up has its own form of balance, it seems,” I answer on a sigh. “How much can Lucifer see?”

  “Not really sure, but I doubt he can see in caves. You can turn whole in those to rest and gain strength,” he says to me. “We’ll have to break for rest anyway. This place will drain our energy.”

  “But you’re at your most vulnerable when you sleep. I’ll just rest an hour at a time. It’ll be enough.”

  “It’s obvious Lucifer has an interest in you, possibly even knows what you are. If you go whole, you’re at your most vulnerable, and you’re not a participant in the trials. He can haul you out and execute you. You know he’s stronger, and he might know of a way to stop you from escaping.”

  “Careful. You’re starting to sound like you care, and that conflicts with your selfish image,” I say, lightening the mood.

  The more they act like they care, the more attached my stupid little heart tries to get to them. Like it’s starving for all the scraps of attention.

  “It gets old,” he finally says with a shrug.

  “What?” I ask as we move up higher on the mountain, our pace brisk to make up for lost ground.

  “It gets old,” he says again. “The game. It’s always the same. The only time we shook things up was when we tried to tackle relationships. Once we even tried to have a relationship with four women, and they were game for it. Sex was together, one woman at a time. They didn’t find out about each other, but when they did, things got bad. It’s the only time favorites didn’t matter, because we were all someone’s favorite. Yet…”

  “They didn’t like sharing their favorite,” I decide to say.

  “Yeah. They didn’t mind sharing the rest of us, but the favorite was off limits. Even that proved to weaken us. Our bond is the only thing that steadies us. We’re a volatile explosion waiting to happen, and the bond is the glue that holds us together both individually and as a unit. Anything that threatens the bond is the worst threat to us.”

  “What about being all together in the same room with different women?” I muse.

  “Tried that too. It’s not…I don’t expect you to understand, but we bonded when sharing, and sharing only strengthens the bond. We don’t feel whole when we’re not sharing.”

  I bet the bleeding hell rocks have synced up their mensies

  “I think I know why you’re all so moody,” I say as though it’s just dawned on me. “You all have your man-periods at the same time.”

  “I’m not even sure how to respond to you when you abruptly shift directions and say shit like that, and half the time you take silence as a sign of being moody,” he murmurs distractedly.

  “Episodes of homicidal rage. Uncontrollable lust. Middle-of-the-night pizza cravings…Yep. You’re all totally synced up like these menstruating rocks,” I go on.

  I get the usual groan.

  “I mean, it’s right there in the word. Menstruating. It’d make more sense to define moody men.”

  “Feel free to talk about anything else,” he grumbles. “Unless you want to keep hearing silence.”

  “You’re just grunting and groaning, not really staying all that silent,” I inform him.

  He gives me an impatient look.

  Oh, yeah. I need back on the original topic. “For the record, I totally didn’t want any of you touching anyone else, and that made me feel selfish. If it wasn’t for the evil vagina that got you all individual hard-ons, what would the answer have been to my proposal?” I ask mildly, glancing at another bleeding rock.

  Kai weirdly walks into a cave, and I follow, warily looking around. He spins once we’re deep inside. “Turn whole,” he demands.

  I do, and the light is absent this time. I guess the adrenaline must have been playing a part on the cliff.

  “What’s going—”

  My words are cut off when he’s suddenly on me, kissing me hard as he lifts the flimsy little skirt that doesn’t even cover all
of my ass and presses me against the cave wall.

  He reaches between us and rips away the scrap of lace, and my breath catches, forcing me to break the kiss, when his fingers find my clit. My eyes almost cross, and I clutch his shoulder, amazed by how much better it feels when someone else touches me than when I touch myself.

  Ignoring the terribly inappropriate timing, my lips hungrily find his, and I moan into his mouth as he starts working a finger inside me, his thumb still working those incredible circles at the exact right speed and perfect pressure.

  I can’t even think.

  He kisses his way down my throat, and my nails dig into his tux jacket as he drives me insane with very little effort. The orgasm hits me so much faster than it has under my own manipulations.

  My entire body shudders and comes alive with sensation, and I kiss him even harder, needing more of him as I clench around his fingers, not feeling that hollow sensation quite as much.

  He manages to break the kiss, pulling back as he pants heavily and stares into my eyes. He brings his finger up and sucks it like he’s tasting the most intimate part of my body from the one piece of his body that has touched it.

  My eyes grow hooded, and that uncontrollable desire spikes even more like I’m caught in a haze.

  He closes his eyes like he’s savoring the taste, and my hands mindlessly go to his belt, undoing it like now he’s mine to have. His hands clasp around my wrists, halting me, and I look up to see his taunting smirk.

  “If we could have you, I wouldn’t be so selfish. I’d make sure you were well sated before taking mine, and I’d make you crave me as often as possible. The fact that I’m not your favorite kills me. But because of that aching need to be your favorite, I know you’d be the end of us.”

  He pushes away and starts walking, while I try to gather my senses. I shift back to my phantom form, still feeling the aftershocks of my first orgasm that wasn’t self-induced.

  Who knew there were varying degrees of pleasure like that? Just a taste and I’m addicted.

  “Truthfully, you’re totally my favorite right now,” I tell him honestly as we exit the cave.

  He half groans, half laughs, a tortured sound that fills me with a weird sense of accomplishment.

  He stares up at the cliff that bypasses the hiking trail.

  “I’m the fastest climber of the four of us,” he says, excluding me from that grouping.

  Obviously, he knows I’m faster.

  “It’ll be quicker to go up,” he goes on, sounding like he’s talking himself into that conclusion more than explaining his logic to me.

  He starts climbing, and I ask a reasonable question. “What if one of those bird-snakes shoots out and knocks you off? I might have set the bar too high with that fabulous first catch, but I’m not so sure we want to see if I’m a one-hit-wonder or not.”

  He curses and laughs at the same time, straining his muscles as he heaves himself up quicker and quicker.

  “Climb behind me several feet down. They seem to be attracted to your presence the most,” he says.

  “Did you forget my fear of clinging to a mountainside? I was just going to zap up when you got closer.”

  The ground rumbles, and I start climbing immediately. The rumbling shifts, and as if cued, the bird-snake shoots through me instead of taking Kai down.

  Kai blows out a shaky breath as that scaly tail—the tails are the absolute worst—finishes slithering through me.

  “Since you’re my favorite and gave me my first two-person orgasm, I’ll tough it out,” I grumble, closing my eyes as I start climbing slowly, not really needing to actually worry about falling so long as I don’t look down.

  His masculine, reluctant chuckle accompanies his usual groan.

  “I’m going to need you to stop talking about that, because I’m hard as stone, and you have no idea the temptation I’m battling.”

  “My evil vagina is impressed with her powers of temptation,” I deadpan.

  Two more bird-snakes pass through me before we reach the top. I zap the rest of the way there once Kai tells me he’s over the edge.

  The other three men stand from their seats on the ground, and Ezekiel grimly gestures to the next leg of the trial.

  A hellfire tundra awaits us, stretching as wide and far as the eye can see.

  And there’s no way across.

  Chapter 3

  “We can go back down and into the forest, but it’s going to exhaust us, and who’s to say we won’t find the same thing on the other end of it?” Ezekiel asks, frustrated.

  I look out, only seeing the black forest behind us and nothing beyond it. I’m assuming that’s the Devil’s trick.

  “So we wait for a gift from one of the children, in other words,” Jude says on an annoyed breath.

  I move to the edge of the fiery lake, bending low. My hand merely passes through the flames, and I try to think of the power I envied so immensely that Lilith wielded.

  It crashed through me with such an overwhelming presence before it temporarily dried up the lake of lava then.

  “I’m not volunteering to step in it this time,” Kai says bitterly. “I was the last sacrifice.”

  Jude curses, moving toward the edge like he’s going to do the same stupid thing Kai did at the last trial.

  “Stop!” I shout, and he does, but just barely.

  “What if I can duplicate what Lilith did? I remember the power. I recorded the feeling.”

  “Recorded the feeling?” Gage asks.

  I nod. “It’s how I’ve learned to do things. I record the processes in my mind—like the clothing issue that started in the beginning. I pick apart the powers later. I even drew out acid on command today because I’ve been getting better and better since my last level-up.”

  “Lilith has a lot more power than you,” Kai decides to point out.

  A wave of envy washes over me again. I’m assuming she did something to me when that power rushed through me, because I’ve really hated her ever since.

  “Just for that, you’re no longer my favorite. It goes back to Ezekiel by default.”

  Ezekiel’s eyebrows raise, at the same time Gage asks, “How did Kai become your favorite when he was your least favorite?”

  Since I already replaced the ripped panties with an exact replica pre-barbarian Kai, there’s no evidence of our detour.

  “The most important part of that you should concern yourself with is the fact you’re the only one who hasn’t been my favorite,” I tell him flippantly, studying the fire lake a little more intensely.

  My eyes close as I recall that day, making it clear. I separate each intricate part of the power, trying my damnedest to see if I can duplicate it.

  “Anything you care to explain?” Jude drawls, distracting me only briefly when my eyes open to see him staring expectantly at Kai.

  “Kai showed gratitude. The rest of you could really take a lesson,” I inform them absently.

  Ezekiel just laughs and walks away. Gage rolls his eyes. Jude is the only one acting like he’s upset right now.

  The ground around us starts to shake, and the guys go silent as it shakes harder and harder.

  “Please fucking tell me you’re doing that,” Gage says on a quiet breath.

  Something is pouring out of me, but I sure as hell am not shaking the ground.

  “Not me,” I groan.

  Just as they start to take cover, a massive beetle spews from the lake, spanning at least twenty yards as it floats atop the fiery surface. It spits and foams at the mouth, and it gnashes its crooked, spiky teeth close to Gage.

  A beetle that likes hellfire instead of burning? No thank you.

  Gage flips back, and in the next instant his hand shoots out. The beetle freezes, and Gage lunges, connecting with the beetle’s leg that he grips with both hands.

  A scream tears through the air as the beetle’s massive body starts to shrivel, the fight slowly leaving the beast.

  “Stop!” I shout, and Gage does
, looking at me like I’m crazy.

  “We can ride it across. It’s subdued with whatever you just did that is making it wilt like a rotten piece of fruit, but it’s still floating.”

  The guys all exchange a look, and then they quickly start climbing it. Kai is the only one left on land, and he kicks his foot out hard, knocking the beetle off the land what little bit it was beached.

  Then he runs and leaps. Jude catches his hand, pulling him up the rest of the way. I zap myself up there with them, and we slowly float down the fire. The center of the beetle escapes the licking flames, and they stay there, away from harm.

  There’s just enough of a current to slowly drag us in the right direction.

  “How do you pass an impassible lake without a consequential gift from the Devil’s children?” Ezekiel asks as he lies down.

  “You wound a hell’s belly monster just enough to ride it on the premeditated current,” Jude answers, looking over at Gage as he clenches and unclenches his fists, still wired from whatever he just did.

  “Riddles,” Kai states flatly.

  “The riddles are subtle?” I ask on a sigh. “I expected a super creepy echoing voice to pop in and ask us questions that we had to get right before we could pass on to the next phase.”

  Ezekiel snorts as he tosses his tux jacket off the side of the beetle. It turns to ash instantly when it hits the flames, and he adds the tie to the flames next.

  “Why must they overcomplicate these things? How do we know when there’s a riddle or just an obstacle?” I ask. “Lamar said the riddles would be the most important.”