by Tara West
She leaned forward, placing a hand on mine. “Not anymore.” She gave my hand a reassuring squeeze as she looked at me with luminous eyes. “His blood oath was broken when he was cast down. Mother has reassured us. Do not fear. If anyone can save your friends, Shadow can.”
Sweet Hell on fire. I so desperately wanted to believe this woman. At the moment, nothing would please me more than to sit here with her and get lost in her gaze forever.
“There you are. How did you manage to get cast down to the fourth level, you worthless idiot?”
I jerked back at the sound of Katherine O’Connor’s grating voice. I rose from the bed on shaky legs and confronted my brother’s dead wife.
Cara looked at Katherine and then back at me with a raised brow. “Your nettle?”
I nodded as I began stoking the flames deep within my chest. “Perhaps you should leave us alone.” Though I knew the nettle would find her way back up, I had no other option than to burn her to dust so I could have a few days’ reprieve.
I sucked in a deep breath, the heat expanding my lungs. All the while, my nettle continued to call me a drunk and an adulterer.
Cara threw an arm in front of me before stepping between us. “Don’t burn her.”
I slowly released a breath, regretting the steam that fanned her face. “Step aside,” I said with a wheeze.
She shook her head, coughing as she turned from me, and let out a shrill whistle. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Mother will rid you of her. You won’t have to worry about your nettle after this.”
I didn’t know if her promise was more comforting or disconcerting. The spider must produce powerful venom if she could banish my nettle forever. “How do you mean?” I asked.
“She will feed her to the web of light,” Cara said on a breathy whisper.
“The web eats nettles?” Okay, now I’d heard of everything. That web had looked like nothing more to me than a regular web dusted with flakes of silver, and yet it could make seeds and destroy nettles? “How does a web do such things?” Suspicion laced my words as I narrowed my eyes at Cara.
“I do not know, for the web only reveals its true powers to Mother.”
How convenient, I thought wryly. Mother probably ate the nettles herself.
Fear tore up my spine as I heard the faint clacking of the arachnid’s long legs. The walls buzzed as the sound grew louder. It was as if the very tunnels trembled in fear. Katherine was pointing a finger at me, bare breasts heaving as she called me a deceiver and a whore. She gasped when two long legs reached inside my small cave and snatched her by the waist, rolling her out of the room as her mouth was smothered in sticky gauze. In the next instant, my nettle was gone, and the rattle of the spider’s legs slowly faded away.
“Holy shitfire,” I breathed.
Cara’s eyes dazzled with an unnatural glow. “Isn’t she magnificent?”
I was too alarmed to tell Cara my true feelings, so I slowly nodded my assent. If by magnificent, she meant morbid, frightening, and lethal, I had to agree. It was then I resolved to plan my escape, and soon. I didn’t care if the beast had done me a favor. I had to get the hell out of here.
Ash MacLeod
The sign posted outside of town read “Tombstone, Hell, population 1043” but the numbers had been crossed out many times over. Weird, because according to the markings, at one point there had been over five thousand people living in Tombstone. Where had they all gone?
A deafening roar in the distance, and I had my answer. As if the bugs weren’t enough, I’d nearly forgotten about the dragon. We quickened our pace as we headed for one of the many saloons. Raucous laughter and loud piano music could be heard from inside. Shit. I didn’t know if it was such a good idea going in there. The last guy I saw coming out had gotten his head bit off and eaten. I was rather fond of my head and wasn’t in the mood to lose it at the moment, running around the town like a headless, flapping yellow chicken. Wouldn’t that be a sight? I’d be bleeding out of both ends.
The roar sounded again, this time shaking the ground beneath my feet. Okay, the saloon was looking more and more welcoming by the second. As we rushed up the steps toward the swinging wooden doors, I feared Jack might not fit inside. Aedan went in first, hand tucked inside his robe, probably on the hilt of his hammer, followed by Boner and then me and Mar. Jack barely squeezed in behind us, fitting in one head and then the other, but his butt was still hanging out the door. I nervously eyed my doggy, praying his ass wouldn’t be turned into a dragon snack.
The place had gone dead quiet. You know those cheesy old western movies where the newcomer walks into a smoky saloon and the piano music comes to a sudden halt? Well, I felt exactly like that newcomer, only change the saloon patrons to angry, salivating demons with red eyes shining beneath wide-brimmed cowboy hats. They looked up at us from their poker cards and barstools as if we’d just pissed on their mamas’ graves. One by one they stood and started walking our way. Aedan pulled out his hammer, Boner brayed and scraped the floor, Jack growled, and Mar did the smart thing for once and didn’t utter a peep as she ducked behind me. My wings nervously hummed, and energy pulsed in the tips of my fingers as I splayed my hands.
These cowboys are messing with the wrong set of circus freaks.
The demon who’d gotten into the street brawl and bitten off another demon’s head with his huge maw stepped forward. He had smooth green skin that reminded me of spring foliage and a big football-shaped head with an impossibly huge mouth that made him look like a man-eating plant. “Well, what we got here?” he said as his head bobbled on a long, slender neck.
Another demon stepped forward, yipping like a hyena as he rubbed his furry paws together. “Lawbreakers is what we got.”
Aedan widened his stance, his hammer firmly in his grip. “We’re not here to break your laws,” he said as his steady gaze swept the room. “We’ve just come to get our friends, and we’ll be on our way.”
Wow. He seemed so cool and collected. Lucky for those demons, I’d somehow lost my nerve. Otherwise, I’d have zapped everyone to dust.
“Can’t you read?” The plant demon sneered as he pointed to the wall behind us with a leafy arm. I spared a momentary glance at a wooden placard decreeing all weapons were to be checked in with the Marshal.
As if. The only weapon I had was my lightning, and there was no way I was parting with that. And seriously, all Aedan had was an old, rusty hammer. It wasn’t like we had shotguns and revolvers or whatever the hell they’d used in the Wild West.
Aedan didn’t bother to look at the sign, his knuckles whitening as he clutched the handle of his hammer like a lifeline. Did he really expect to use that thing? I mean, he wasn’t freaking Thor. What was he going to do? Nail them all to death?
“Like I said,” Aedan growled, “as soon as we get our friends, we’ll be on our way.”
“Friends?” The plant demon’s chuckle was a frightening cross between Chucky’s revenge and a cat with laryngitis. “There ain’t no such thing as friends in Hell. There’s only two kinds of folks here. Those that get eaten, and those that don’t.” He jutted a foot forward, widening his mouth like a hungry crocodile.
Jack’s heads growled so menacingly behind me, I was afraid he’d bust through the tavern doors and tear the place down.
“You forgot the third kind….Those that get zapped.” I raised a hand and aimed a bolt at the wooden chair beside him, blasting it into sawdust. “You come any closer, and I’ll blast your ass to the thirteenth dimension.”
“We’re looking for a dragon named Callum, a green demon named Sergeant Sanchez, and five giants.” Aedan’s voice boomed across the smoky tavern.
“And Katherine O’Connor,” Mar squeaked from behind my shoulder. “She has blonde hair and green eyes.”
“And an ugly ass snake growing out of her head,” I added with a wry smile. I couldn’t help myself. My PMS gremlins made me say it. Mar’s audible huff made my smile widen. Score one for the gremlins.
&nbs
p; “Direct us to our friends, and we’ll be on our way.” Aedan swung his hammer in the plant demon’s direction.
Okay, ease up Captain Carpenter. No demon with a razor sharp mouth as wide as a bathtub is going to be intimidated by a hammer.
The demon shook his head. “Like I already said, ain’t nobody got friends in Hell.”
“Marie?”
I recognized the sound of her voice in an instant, and my gaze shot to the beautiful woman standing at the bottom of a smoky staircase. How hadn’t I noticed her come down the stairs? With the exception of the creepy pale snake growing out of her head, she looked like a stereotypical saloon prostitute wearing a crimson lace dress that surprisingly covered the length of her arms, heavy eye shadow, and bright red lipstick. Well, I supposed if she was going to act like a slut, she might as well get paid for it. Maybe she could earn enough money to afford a conscience.
“Katherine!” Mar practically shattered my eardrums as she pushed past me and raced toward her sister.
Aedan threw out his hand to stop her, but Mar skirted him, throwing her arms around Katherine’s neck and squeezing her to her chest. A wide-eyed Katherine patted her sister on the shoulder, her snake curling around Mar’s back as Mar wept into Katherine’s hair. I’ve heard of sisterly love, but Mar took it to a sickening level. Didn’t she care she was being hugged back by a snake? Actually, make that two snakes. Katherine might have had the face of an angel, but she had the cold-blooded heart of a spitting cobra.
Katherine jerked out of her sister’s embrace, the stony glare of indifference in her eyes. “What are you doing here?”
Mar clasped her hands together, beaming. “We’ve come to save you,” she said with too much unnatural perkiness, as if Katherine had just won a new car.
Katherine’s snake hissed as she scrunched her features. “Save me?”
Mar eagerly nodded. “Bring you back to Purgatory.”
Katherine frowned. “But I’ve been damned to Hell.”
“I know God will release you,” Mar said with a pleading voice, as if she was a kid begging for an ice cream cone. “All you need to do is repent.”
Jeez. Sounded easy. So even if you were a lying, cheating, manipulating slut who tortured people with poisonous snake hair and had abused innocent giants for over a hundred years, you’d still get a free pass to Purgatory? Would she start on level two shoveling shit? Or would she talk some stupid soul out of his credits and open up her own whore house on level thirteen?
Katherine didn’t seem to be buying Mar’s delusional fantasy, either. She took a step back, her snake uprising and hissing in Mar’s face. “This is a test.”
Mar arched back. “What?”
I eyed Aedan, waiting for him to rescue his perfect princess, but surprisingly he just stood there aiming his hammer at ugly demon faces.
Katherine swept a hand at us with a sneer. “You are all apparitions. My master is testing me.”
“No, Katherine,” Mar cried, trying to sidestep the snake, who followed her like a cobra in a trance. “This is not a test. I swear it.”
Katherine stomped a foot, pouting. “I would never betray my master. I would never give him cause to feed me to Zahaka.”
Oh boy, here we go again. Another sick master has exploited her with torture.
I’d almost feel sorry for Katherine, if I hadn’t known she was a raging bitch.
“Katherine, listen to me, darling,” Mar pleaded with outstretched arms. “We are here to save you.”
Jeez. Mar’s pleas were kind of pitiful. My sister would have never fought for my release from Hell. She would have probably wished me good luck and taken the first elevator out of there. Actually, she wouldn’t have come for me at all.
“My dear Kate,” someone wheezed from a darkened corner of the room. “You didn’t tell me you had guests.”
The crowd of demons parted as if this guy was Moses and they were the Red Sea. See, I did occasionally pay attention in Bible class. I narrowed my eyes, trying to make out who he was through the haze. A gaunt man was sitting at a poker table, five cards in his white-gloved hand. He was dressed rather nicely for a demon, in a satiny tailored jacket, a thin tie, and a crisp white shirt. His hair was slicked back, and his golden moustache was impossibly long and tapered on either end, giving me the impression he’d died last century and hadn’t read any current issues of Demon Vogue. The only accessory that was out of place was a white bead necklace wrapped twice around his neck and hanging almost to his waist. Weird. Maybe he’d just come from demon Mardi Gras.
When he gave the other demons in the room a red-eyed glare, they all scrambled for the nearest exits. This must have been the master, aka the Marshal, aka another sadistic scumbag hell-bent on making our afterlives miserable. Either his moustache was made up of poisoned darts or his hollowed-out eye sockets shot lead bullets. Or else he had a barbed dick with a raging case of herpes. One thing was certain; he hadn’t ascended to the Marshal of Hell by selling the most fundraiser candy bars.
Damn. I could so go for some chocolate right now. I craved finely crafted European dark chocolate, but I’d have settled for a cheap bar of the American shit. That was how damned and desperate I’d become. Oh, great. I was starting to care more about chocolate than my immortal soul.
“Forgive me, Master.” Kate trembled as she spoke. “I had no idea they were coming.”
The man stood, his necklace rattling like a snake’s tail as he hovered over the table. His demonic gaze bore down on Katherine like a thousand stinging whips as he flashed a wide grin. “I wish to have a word with them.” He motioned toward a chair by the staircase. “Sit and do not speak.”
“Yes, Master.” Katherine fell into the chair as if her legs had given out on her.
I’d never seen her look so frightened. It was as if this skinny devil dude had scared the bitch right out of her.
When the Marshal turned his grin on us, I got a creepy, unsettling feeling in my gut, and no, those weren’t period cramps. They were holy-shitfire-please-don’t-torture-us cramps.
“Please, won’t you have a seat?” he asked with a southern gentlemanly accent, one that was a total contradiction to the hard gleam in his eyes.
I refused to sit in case I needed to fight. Tension radiated off Mar and Boner as they stood on either side of me. Jack’s whimpers from the doorway were the most disconcerting. I knew he was sorely tempted to burst through the tight doorframe. And then what? All chaos would break loose, and we couldn’t afford to take any chances at the moment, not when we still had no idea what had happened to our friends.
I warily eyed Aedan, standing behind him as he tucked away his hammer, pulled back a chair, and sat a good three feet away from the table.
“I recognize you. You’re Doc Holliday,” Aedan said with a mixture of awe and derision in his voice. “You were a legend in our day. I read about your shootout at the O.K. Corral.”
Doc Holliday? I’d watched a movie about him and the Earp brothers once. My ex-boyfriend, Travis, had picked the movie, as usual, because he said chick flicks made him want to burn his eyes out with hot pokers. I vaguely remembered Doc Holliday had some awful disease, maybe tuberculosis. Despite his illness, he’d still managed to get into several scrapes on both sides of the law without getting killed. He’d also had a hooker girlfriend named Big Nose Kate. I looked around for her, but the only Kate in the room had a little nose and a big snake.
Doc set down his cards, chuckling before he coughed into his fist. “Lies, most of it.” His voice cracked as he waved at Katherine. “I’m sorry. I can’t let you have her. Only a few short weeks, and I’ve let her get under my skin. What can I say?” He coughed again before picking up a shot glass and tossing the contents down his throat. “I’m a sucker for whores named Katherine.” The scratchiness in his voice abated as he sneered in her direction. “Only the last Katherine I knew nursed me as my disease consumed me. This whore would probably smother me with her venom if I let down my guard.”
Katherine made as if to protest, but Doc silenced her with a look.
“Then you should let us take her off your hands,” Mar squeaked.
He leaned back in his chair, shooting Mar a smug look. “Do you really think she will be allowed into Purgatory?”
Mar’s shoulders stiffened, a haughty look in her green eyes. “We’re hoping God allows her if she repents.”
He coughed into his fist again before grabbing a decanter off the table and pouring more amber liquid into his glass. “I’d wager you’ll lose that gamble.”
A tic worked in Mar’s jaw, and I could tell she was having a hard time keeping her composure. “It’s a chance we’re willing to take.”
“Then you’re all fools.” He laughed before downing another drink. His string of beads clacked together as he slammed his empty glass on the table.
I squinted in the low light and got this unsettling feeling in my gut his Mardi Gras necklace was actually a string of teeth. I swallowed a bitter lump of bile when I saw each bead was indeed a tooth, some resembling those of humans, and others looking like they’d come from canines. Oh, gross. I so didn’t want to know how he’d gone about collecting them. Whatever happened to normal collections like coins, bellybutton fuzz, or fingernail clippings? Okay, the fuzz and clippings weren’t exactly normal, but they were far less psycho than yanking out someone’s molars. I only hoped he didn’t have any sinister plans for my teeth. I hadn’t spent a small fortune on whitening strips only to lose my smile to the demon dentist from Hell.
“Where are my manners? Bourbon?” Doc set an empty glass and the decanter in front of Aedan.
Aedan pushed the bottle away. “No, thanks.”
Doc ignored Aedan’s snub, snatched up the glass, and poured bourbon into it anyway. He slammed it back down in front of Aedan, issuing him a challenging look. “Please don’t make me drink this fine spirit by myself. It’s not every day I receive guests from Heaven.”
I watched with bated breath as Aedan and Doc locked gazes in a stare down. Aedan wasn’t much of a drinker, and he needed to keep his senses sharp. Truthfully, I didn’t want him drinking demon bourbon, either. No telling what was in that stuff. What if he lost all his hair or his dick shrunk four inches? Finally, Aedan picked up the glass and took a sip before setting it down.
