Emily tossed the torch into the fire pit. She stood with her back to the bank, flying embers swirling behind her, knowing her silhouette was visible. There was no way to tell how many denizens of hell stood in the shadows. She hoped no more than twenty. With her arrow notched, she stood ready, planning to shoot for their throats as they came for her. At least until her arrows gave out.
“Angel of Death,” a voice cried from above, “have mercy on me.”
A birdcage filled with people hung overhead. Their arms reached through the bars.
“Dark Angel, I beseech thee,” somebody cried.
Farther away, someone else called, “Helfen Sie mir.”
Within moments, cries for help encircled the room. Voices swelled like a tsunami. Fingers poked through the grates, and shackled arms fought their chains.
“Dark Angel.”
“Laissez-nous vers le bas!”
“Anjo escuro.”
Emily’s aim faltered. She wasn’t who they thought she was. She wasn’t there for them. But she couldn’t tell them that. Their cheers were more disarming than their moans of pain. The upsurge of emotion grew almost tangible. The air was thick with it.
Shadows moved. Emily tightened the grip on her bow. A group of hell-spawn stepped into the open from the paddlewheels and racks. But they did not step toward her. They staggered, arms outstretched as if in ecstasy. As if they’d found nirvana.
Frowning, Emily watched them. All at once, she understood. They were overcome by the emotion in the room, stricken by abounding hope. After a moment, they fell to the floor and lay motionless.
She wondered if they were dead. Keeping her arrow trained on the group, she kicked one of the demons. He responded groggily.
They were stupefied. From what she could see, all the fiends had fallen. Should she kill them? It would be an easy task. But how would she hide the bodies? Roll them into the lava? It was better to leave them, she decided, than to broadcast her presence.
“Angel, have mercy,” the people continued to wail.
“Ange fonce!”
“Deixe-nos para baixo.”
“Sauf moi.”
Emily raised her voice. “April, where are you? Answer me.”
“Here,” cried a woman. “She is here.”
FORTY-FIVE
Emily’s heart lurched. She ran toward the center of the dungeon, looking up at a swaying cage. “April, are you there?”
“Yes,” called the woman. “She is with us.”
“Show me.”
“Alas, I cannot,” the woman said. “We are too tight.”
“But you have her? A little girl?”
“Yes. Get us down. Set us free.”
Emily’s mind raced. There must be a way to raise and lower the cages. She followed the chain with her eyes, expecting to see a pulley, but the ceiling was too high and dark to be sure of anything.
She would have to do it the hard way.
Shouldering her bow, she ran back to the fire pit and the brass boar. Its arc took it over the pit and out almost as far as the nearest cage. If she could alter its path, she could swing to the structure and then to the next until she reached April.
The boar made its return pass. Emily leaped aboard. She heard a hiss an instant before she registered the pain of burnt fingers. The brass was searing hot. Grateful for her heavy armguard, she clung to the boar with her forearms, pulling herself up. Her weight sent it spinning, and the person inside groaned with pain. She realized the brass boar was a flying oven.
Hands on the chain, she climbed to her feet. She shifted her weight until she swung toward the dome-shaped cage. At the apex, she released the chain and jumped.
She hit the bars like they were a solid wall, knocking the breath from her lungs. People reached to her, touching her face, stroking her hair. She climbed higher, trying with all her strength to set the enclosure swinging so she could reach the next in line—but it was too heavy. It was so filled with people, they couldn’t move, couldn’t sit.
The door had a rusty, oversized padlock. Emily took out the sword and brought it down in a smooth arc. Sparks flew as the blade cleaved the lock in two. The door sprang open.
“Make a chain of your bodies,” Emily said, “and climb down.”
No one listened. With a roar, the imprisoned people erupted from the cage. A resounding cheer rose through the dungeon. The noise must be heard upstairs. Was the aura of hope so strong it stupefied anyone coming to investigate?
Shifting her weight, she rode the empty structure through the air. The people in the next coop waved, their emaciated arms flapping. When she reached the proper angle, she let go, sailing, bracing for impact.
She latched on. Again, she swung her sword and struck the lock. The door opened—but this time the people did as she asked and formed a chain, gripping each other’s waists as their cellmates climbed down.
From the bars, Emily looked to the final cage, trying to spot April’s tiny face. The woman who had beckoned to her shouted at her mates, getting them to rock the enclosure. It picked up speed, rattling and creaking.
Emily didn’t know if swinging her target would help or hinder, but she admired the woman’s spunk. She matched their efforts, timing her jump. As the two cages neared each other, Emily leapt.
But the creaking chain could not hold another ounce. It gave way, sending the cage flying. With a reverberating crash, the metal structure struck the floor and rolled. The trapped people screamed. Emily was thrown clear. She held her head, dazed.
Several grates were knocked askew. Prisoners scrambled from the holes, adding to the melee. The structure’s iron bars parted from its bottom, leaving a gap large enough to climb through.
Filled with both horror and hope, Emily rushed through the escaping crowd. “April? Can you hear me?” She snagged the woman’s arm. “Where is she?”
The woman’s hollow eyes glinted. “Would you have come for us if I told you she wasn’t there?”
Emily stepped back, stunned. It was a lie? But it couldn’t be—April must be there. She delved deeper into the crowd, searching. There was no little girl.
Cold anger flooded her. She glared at the woman, wanting to beat her to death. Her fist rose as if of its own accord.
A man grasped it, pressing her knuckles against his dark forehead. “My life to yours. My will to your bidding.”
His action snapped her into a semblance of reason. His words were so like Brother’s.
“Run,” she said. “Take as many as you can. Go down the back steps and out the tunnels.”
“I will obey.”
Emily withdrew her hand. She looked toward the woman, but she was gone.
The crowd thinned. Emily felt a crushing weight. With heavy arms, she took down another torch and searched the remaining cells for her daughter. Fingers reached from the grates at her approach, and pleas for help trailed in her wake.
“Sono giu qui.”
“Je suis vers le haut ici.”
Over the racket, a low voice called, “Goodman. Emily Goodman. You’ve got to help me.”
Emily startled at the use of her name. She approached a figure upon the rack.
It was Vanessa.
FORTY-SIX
Vanessa, her nemesis, was strapped to a rack. Her over-stretched limbs were long and thin, the dislocated joints popping through her skin. Gashes outlined her protruding ribs, and slashes from naval to groin exposed bulging intestines.
A pang of pity softened Emily’s ire, although her voice remained cold. “What are you doing here?”
“He betrayed me. Laughed at me. Said I never mattered. He handed me to Satan himself. After all I’ve done.”
“Ah, yes. Let’s look at all you’ve done. How many innocent people have you condemned to this place? If it’s one for every dead rabbit you hid in your closet, it must be hundreds.”
“All for him. My life for him. Joey was the only person who meant anything. All I ever wanted was for him to love me.” Her mouth
stretched wide with wracking sobs as if the torture she endured was nothing compared to her emotional pain.
“Some people don’t know how to love,” Emily muttered.
Vanessa’s face sharpened. “If he stood before me now, I would kill him and spit on his corpse.”
“Good news, then. The last time I saw Joey, he was swimming in the middle of the lake of fire.”
Her gaze sought Emily’s face, eyes widening in horror. Arching her back, she screamed. Her wail rose over the other cries in the dungeon, hoarse with hopelessness and loss.
Then her face sharpened once more. “Is that why you’ve come? To tell me this? Did you get your story?”
Emily blinked, remembering her job as a reporter as if it were from someone else’s life. She was a different woman then—skeptical and callous. She wouldn’t be so quick to doubt again. “I’m looking for a girl. Six years old.”
Vanessa gave a derisive chuckle. “There are no children in hell.”
“That isn’t true,” a woman said behind them.
Emily held out her torch. She saw a slumped woman shackled to a post. Her legs bent in too many places. Her right arm was ripped off her body. It dangled over her head, trailing ligaments and tendons, still attached to the chain.
“What did you say?” Emily asked.
“What she told you isn’t true. I saw a child.”
“Where?”
“Will you kill me?” asked the woman, lifting her head with difficulty. “If I tell you, will you kill me? Will you set me free?”
Vanessa laughed, sounding deranged. “She is not the angel, you fool.”
Emily knelt, facing the woman. “I will.”
“I was taken upstairs.”
“To the orgy room, you mean?”
“No.” The woman’s gaze turned inward, as if she were recounting steps. “I went through the orgy room into a short hall. Then I went up another flight of stairs to a special room. VIPs I think. As I was dragged in, the demons carried out a little girl. She was putting up quite a fight.”
“Carried where?” Emily wanted to shake her. “Where did she go?”
“Up,” said the woman. “I don’t know. Perhaps the tower.”
“The tower?” Vanessa shrieked with laughter. “That’s where the harpies roost. Her bones will be picked clean by now.”
Emily cringed, but kept her voice strong. “Is there anything else you remember?”
She shook her head. “Now keep your side of the bargain. You must kill me.”
Reaching into her quiver, Emily pulled out the caretaker wand.
What are you thinking? You have no right to kill. Their fate is in God’s hands.
But what if there is no God?
Why wouldn’t there be? There’s a devil, isn’t there?
She offered the woman a faint smile, feeling less a murderer when she looked into her eyes. Moving as if her hand were not her own, she touched the woman with the rod.
A wave of sparks drove through her body. She stiffened but did not cry out. Light streamed from her eyes and mouth, encapsulating her, glowing bright in the dim dungeon. Then flesh and bone fell to dust, leaving only her severed arm hanging from the shackles.
For a moment, there was silence in the room. Even Vanessa stopped her insane cackle. Then the voices of the damned rose in a crescendo.
“Me next! Do me!”
“Angel of Death, set me free!”
“Dunkler Engel, avenge uns.”
Emily got to her feet, feeling close to collapse, running a dusty hand over her face. She stood at the foot of Vanessa’s rack.
Weeping and pleading filled the dungeon, but it seemed far away, as if she and Vanessa were in a bubble together, just the two of them.
“I know I’ve done wrong,” Vanessa whispered. “I knew it was wrong every time I did it. That’s why I kept the rabbits, you see. Whenever I touched a pelt, I saw the faces of the people taken. All of them. I thought as long as I could remember what they looked like, they wouldn’t truly be gone.”
“They aren’t gone,” Emily said as she turned to go. “They’re in hell.”
“Goodman, please,” Vanessa cried. “Please forgive me. Let me die.”
Emily paused. Snide remarks sprang to her lips, and she battled them down. She looked at her adversary upon the rack, her naked body marred with bloodless wounds, and pity struck again. She jabbed the wand into Vanessa’s leg and stalked off before the woman lit.
As she rushed toward the stairs, she touched the wand to every person she saw, disintegrating them. With each death, she told herself it was kindness. Not murder.
FORTY-SEVEN
Two demons lay sprawled upon the dungeon stairs. They appeared to have tumbled halfway down. Emily paused, reluctant to pass, incredulous that the emotion in the room could incapacitate the fiends. She expected them to grab her ankles. When they didn’t move, she scurried up the opposite side of the stairs, climbing the steep steps on all fours.
Torchlight streamed from the floor above. Emily peered over the edge, and then clambered up. She stood in amazement. Unconscious demons littered the floor. They lay in scattered heaps as if enjoying group hugs before oblivion gripped them. There was no sign of the towheaded teenagers.
Emily hoped every demon in the castle was stupefied, not only those in the rotunda. She took out her bow, just in case, and stepped gingerly around the huddled masses. She searched each exit, looking for the hallway the woman mentioned. The doors led outside into the bitter wind. Stairways led to floors above.
Cries from the dungeon radiated through the orgy room. Emily didn’t know how long the diversion would last. Frantic, she glanced about. Across the room, an archway opened over a darkened passage.
She headed toward it. In the wavering torchlight, the eyes from the murals seemed to follow her. She itched with the need to hurry, but forced herself to tread softly so as not to disturb the sleepers.
An outside door burst open. A blast of frigid night air circled the room, causing braziers to gutter and smoke to curl. Emily halted, hearing a clatter of hooves, and turned to see a centaur enter the rotunda.
Its golden breastplate gleamed in the firelight. A bejeweled crown sat atop its matted mane. It carried four iron pikes in one massive hand. She suspected they were the pikes she’d knocked over to release the impaled women.
Emily was painfully aware of how ineffective her bow would be against such a creature. She considered running for the hallway, but decided she’d never make it. The beast was certainly faster.
With a loud crash, the iron pikes fell to the floor. Emily jumped, imagining demons awakening and attacking her en masse. She trembled so violently, she thought it must be visible from across the room, but she refused to cower. She held her head high.
The centaur peered around at the fallen demons. Its eyes came to rest on her, its lion-like jaws parting to reveal a mouthful of sharp teeth. Bending one arm across its torso, the beast lowered its head in an unmistakable bow.
Emily stared, not knowing what to do. She nodded in acknowledgement, and then turned her back on the beast, walking toward the archway. Her hearing seemed to be on overdrive. She heard the crackle of torches and the moan of wind. She heard cries for release from the dungeon. But she did not hear movement from the watching centaur.
With an overwhelming sense of sanctuary, she stepped beneath the arch. She looked back. The centaur remained stationary in a half bow, its gaze upon her. Its scorpion tail coiled and uncoiled upon its back.
Melting into the shadows, Emily leaned against the wall. She pressed shaking fingers over her mouth, her shoulders wracked by dry sobs. The centaur could have captured her. It could have stabbed her with its stinger or impaled her on a pike.
Why hadn’t it? Why did it bow? What did it mean?
She scrubbed her eyes with her knuckles, and then looked around. She was not in a short hallway as she expected. In one direction, the torch-lined passage stretched for a good twenty-five yards befo
re bending out of sight. To the right, however, it went only a few paces, ending at a stairwell.
Notching an arrow, Emily climbed the stairs. Her muscles felt as taut as her bowstring. She reached a landing and, hugging the wall, met a darkened doorway. She needed to cross the entrance in order to continue up the stairs.
Beyond the doorjamb, she saw a shadowed antechamber with a larger room beyond. A window glowed orange. Emily recognized the fiery aura around the lake of fire. No silhouettes marred the light. No movement disturbed the space.
Was this the room the woman spoke of? The place where she saw her little girl? Emily closed her eyes, pushing fear to the back of her mind. She was getting closer.
With her bow gripped tight, she darted across the doorway and up the stairs on the other side. She glanced over her shoulder, memorizing her route.
On the next floor, she heard muffled weeping. Light pooled beneath flickering torches. The ceiling billowed with webs crowded with dark many-legged spiders.
Keeping near the wall, Emily crept down the bright and shadowy passage. Doors stood to either side. They had small, circular windows covered with iron bars. Even standing on tiptoe, Emily could not see through them.
So it was a surprise when a door burst open. Emily stifled a cry and jumped behind it, trying to suppress her fright. Six demons stepped into the hall. The room they left was bright. Light shone through the entrance like a spotlight. One had a leashed hellhound. The dog whined and strained at its chain. Emily was certain it knew she was there.
The group chatted jovially as they made their way down the passage. Emily peered around the door. Four of the demons and the hound went down a staircase at the end of the hall. Two hesitated as if remembering something. While one of the fiends waited at the stairs, the other returned.
Emily eased into the shadows, scarcely breathing. The demon called into the room, conversing with an unseen being, and as he did so, he grabbed the edge of the door. Emily stared at his thick, yellow claws. She had an image of similar claws grasping her daughter around the neck and holding her in the air like a doll. Anger and hatred surged through her.
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