House of Ash & Brimstone

by Megan Starks

  Gravel crunched under her boots as she walked through the deserted lot. Shade wheeled the Harley behind her. Beast followed to her right, but kept checking the tree line. He stopped about thirty yards from the pit to keep a lookout. She didn’t blame him. Shade left his bike several yards back as well, but joined her in overlooking the edge.

  There was no better place to work illegal magic than in the spot she’d gotten away with it before. But the mud pit was dank, fetid, and deep. Their descent into Hell was not going to be a glamorous one.

  “You’re sure this is better than using D.C.’s Hellmouth?”

  “Unless you want Rhogan waiting for us on the other side, I’d say yeah.”

  Or unless she wanted to approach Lysander or Maisie at the Office of the Paranormal to expedite her travel clearance. Sure, they could secure her, Beast, and Shade the docs required within a mere few hours—but at what cost?

  The only Hellmouths she knew of on the east coast were in Manhattan, D.C., Atlanta, and Miami. They were housed in giant, well-armed federal buildings and regulated tighter than human airports. It was a process that could take weeks, if not months. Any demons traveling between worlds had to do so through an established, documented channel.

  Except for them, apparently. They were going through a mud hole in the ground.

  “We talked about this, Gigi.”

  And they had. She knew the reason. Her aunt had hired her to steal the Mardoll. The fact that it could open a Hellmouth, something that was incredibly rare, wasn’t a coincidence. They needed to use it to travel freely through the Gates.

  It was a solid argument. And nothing they hadn’t gone over that morning. But staring down at the hole now, she had to wonder—was it safe?

  But Shade was going with her, so she’d trust him.

  She nodded. “Okay.”

  She moved to slice her palm with the edge of the sword, but he stopped her, fingers digging hard into her wrist.

  “No.”

  She looked to him, puzzled. And then it dawned on her. He didn’t want to see her hurt. “I heal faster than you.”

  “I don’t care,” he said.

  He didn’t wait for her approval, slicing his own palm against the tip of the blade. It was a shallow cut but long and sharp—an oozing, red lifeline.

  An immediate response etched itself into the surface of the steel. More and more and more. She glanced away, not liking what the cleaver thought of Shade’s blood. But he didn’t seem to notice. Or if he did, it didn’t worry him. Wiping the blade clean on her pant leg, she sheathed it carefully.

  She turned to Beast. “We’re going ahead to make sure it’s safe. If you don’t want to come, if you change your mind, cab it home and keep the doors locked.” He had the keys and her phone. “And look out for yourself. If something happens, call Warrick and Susanna. They’ll help you.”

  The minotaur scratched a hand through the back of his mane. He looked wistful for a moment. “Beast has made decision.”

  Then there was nothing left to do.

  She felt weird, gross, rubbing the Mardoll’s shriveled face into the blood on Shade’s hand. He gave her an amused look at her discomfort, eyebrows raised.

  Trees rustled in a distant breeze.

  “This is going to hurt,” she said as the eyes started to open. Anticipation spread from the tips of her fingers, a cold shock to the system.

  “I’ll ground you,” he promised.

  He squeezed their hands together, fingers intertwined, and his blood felt slick on her skin.

  “I’d do it if I could. I’d take it all,” he said. “But then I’d be down for the count. The Mardoll was rumored to kill its user, you know. I thought I was going to lose you when you didn’t throw it aside, but by then it was too late. I couldn’t reach you, couldn’t save you. I could only watch it take you. But then you opened your eyes, and you looked up at me.” He cocked her an odd sort of look, a mix of awe and unease. “You’re something else, Gigi.”

  His praise flustered her. Her heart flittered in her chest. “Ah, well, let’s hope second time isn’t the charm.” She gulped. Dying like this would feel really stupid.

  The doll in her hand prickled, its dark power building as its shriveled, dried eyes opened to reveal bright blue beads.

  Then the eyes opened fully, and the pain tore through her.

  She screamed, but it was Shade who fell to his knees. His hand clenched tighter in hers, and he retched as the energy seared through him.

  It hurt. It hurt. It hurt like more than anything she could remember ever having hurt in her life.

  But the fact that she was still standing told her she was enduring less pain than the time before—funny how the mind worked, how it had a knack for forgetting things like torture and agony. Like the night she’d had everything ripped from her all those years ago.

  Even though the energy burned through her, even though it ached endlessly, she knew it was a mere sliver of the amount she’d absorbed when the Mardoll had first channeled her. This wasn’t like then, when it had ridden her to the floor. She could stand and move. And she could think. Because Shade was helping her.

  Her eyes slid to him, seized whole-bodied with the pain, and she wondered why. She was a live wire he couldn’t let go of. Why would he cling to her?

  Because he was her soul-bound?

  If that was the case, then she couldn’t let him down. She had to free him from his contract with her aunt. And after? She’d release him from the marks that tied him to her and her brother. She’d find a way. No matter what it took.

  Here goes nothing.

  Steadying herself, she aimed the Mardoll at the mud pit, angling the eyes down into the dank depths. Bright violet beams tore from the shrunken head’s eyes, ripping her energy out of her and flushing fresh energy through her in the process. She gasped against the pain that hit her in response, sharp and pounding, like a waterfall pummeling into her lungs. She choked and shook, drowning.

  More, she thought, needing the gateway to stay open for longer than before. Take more.

  The Mardoll was happy to oblige.

  A cry escaped from her throat, and she fell to her knees in the dirt. Dark claws curved from her fingers, and she gritted her teeth against short fangs. Red flashed behind her eyes. Her head pounded, feeling like it would crack open from the inside as her horns grew heavy on her crown.

  Okay, maybe she really might die.

  She gasped for air, breathing through fire as the violet beams burned an intricate pattern into the ground, cutting back and forth until all that remained was a shimmering layer of purple energy—an open wound through the veil beneath.

  The Hellmouth was open.

  Then the beams disappeared and the shrunken head’s eyes slipped closed, once more sewn shut with cross-hatched black hair, as if they’d never opened.

  She groaned and closed her own eyes. Every muscle in her body tingled, raw.

  Shade sucked in a ragged breath, and she saw that his eyes had bled tar-black. “Holy shit, that was intense.”

  She hummed her agreement. “Thanks for taking the edge off.”

  Without him, she was sure she wouldn’t have been able to pour so much into opening the Hellmouth. But even this one wouldn’t stay open long. Already, the edges of the portal glimmered and skipped, unstable. She wondered how many demons it took to tear a permanent hole through the veil like the Hellmouths in L.A. or Miami.

  “Let’s go,” she said, dusting her knees off as she stood.

  And to think, they’d only need to do this six more times if her aunt was waiting for them in the deepest reaches of Eden.

  As they walked, she turned her hand front to back, examining her pitch black claws with a strange, uneasy feeling. She couldn’t shape change. What you saw of Gisele was what you got—nubby horns, amaranth-red eyes, snarled blond hair, and all. She didn’t have two-inch, steel-hard claws. She wasn’t hiding some inner demon.

  Or was she?

  Noticing her
gaze, Shade grabbed her fingers and tugged her hand aside. When she looked to him, he scrubbed a hand through the back of his ash-brown hair, offering her a roguish, abashed smile. “You look hot when you stop playing human.”

  The expression looked alien with his elongated canines and black, impenetrable eyes. Everything about him seemed more dangerous when his demon was loose. She stared into his ink-jet eyes, wondering what he was really thinking. “What?”

  “Half-blood has black eyes,” Beast added. He crossed his arms over his chest, thick muscles flexing. “Should be careful.”

  “What?!”

  In her haste, she tripped up to the motorcycle.

  She wrenched the tiny, round side mirror off in her hand when she tried to angle it up. Shade cursed behind her. Whoops. She was strong. Stronger than a human, but she didn’t normally rip soldered metal parts from vehicles.

  Fingers trembling, she brought the mirror up and stared at her face. She didn’t have any pupils. The center of her eyes were a solid, malevolent red, flecked with black and glassy as a marble. Her sclera was a watery, depthless black. It looked like she’d leak thick, black tears if she blinked. Evil. It was the only thing she could think. Her own eyes scared her.

  But that wasn’t all. Her cheekbones were more prominent, her lips fuller, her nose and eyebrows more sculpted—sharper. Her hair was even, more annoyingly, thicker. She looked beautiful and wild and terrifying.

  “Sweet Lucifer!” she gasped.

  She tilted the mirror higher and almost dropped it. Oh God, her horns—her horns were huge. She gaped at the sight of the oversized branches of horns protruding from her hair. No longer knobby and cute, they were pointed and ridged, regal and intimidating. The three that had been sheared short had grown back, not only healed, but bigger, better, sturdier than before. They towered and gleamed like a crown fit for a dark queen.

  Shade pried the side mirror carefully from her clawed fingers. “We don’t have much time before the Hellmouth closes, Gigi.”

  She knew that. She knew that, and yet—

  “Is this me?” she croaked, feeling shaky and hollow. Lost.

  Was this who she really was?

  He tipped his head to the side, considering his options before he answered. “Not exactly.” But he didn’t explain further, straddling the bike instead. With a sigh, he tossed the mirror into the mud. “Ready?” he asked, reaching a warm hand for her.

  They didn’t have time for her identity crisis.

  She clasped his hand and climbed on behind him, settling against his broad back. He keyed the engine on and toed into gear, revving the throttle hard enough that the back tire spun and, whining, ate into the dirt.

  Instinctively, she clenched her thighs around him and gripped her arms tight around his chest. The tactical straps from his holsters scraped against her skin.

  “Don’t let go of me,” he said, and then he let off the brake.

  They raced forward and adrenaline burbled through her. Her breath caught in her throat. She hugged Shade closer.

  The lip of the fighting pit was fast approaching. This was it. Shade was going to hurtle them into Hell.

  At the last moment, he swung the bike sideways and they went skidding at a hard angle, high speed over the opening of the pit, and Gisele screamed despite herself. Then they were falling, down, down, endlessly into darkness, her voice strangled in her throat.

  23

  Thirst, the First Gate of Hell, the realm of insatiable desire, was a single, endlessly spanning, towering metropolis.

  Black and silver high-rises glimmered around them, refracting the light of a blood-orange dusk. They were flying. No, they were falling at an alarming rate.

  “Shade!”

  He didn’t answer, and the ground continued to lunge toward them. This high, the asphalt looked like a snaking, black river.

  She clung to him, arms hooked beneath his and crossed over his chest, trembling as she began to lift off the leather seat. Don’t let go, he’d said. So she was going to hold onto him even as she plunged into the gaping jaws of death.

  Her stomach lurched into her throat.

  “Shade!”

  The ground was so close, she could see the silvery flecks of gravel pitted in its skin.

  At the last moment, Shade’s wings ripped from his back, flinging her up and off the bike. He struggled to keep hold of the handlebars as they stalled in the air, and she struggled to keep hold of him. Before the bike could be ripped away beneath them, he folded his wings in, landing them with a heavy bump and grind that jarred through her bones and rattled her teeth. The bike slid sideways as Shade wrestled with it, and she would have fallen to the road if a thick-scaled tail hadn’t coiled around her waist, holding her in place.

  They stopped, the smell of burnt rubber, ash, and brimstone wafting up from the pavement.

  “Stay here,” Shade commanded, his voice gruff. “I’ll have to catch the minotaur.”

  “We fell all that way,” she gasped. “It opened in the sky.”

  He shot her a look that said, ‘clearly’ but rubbed the back of his neck and admitted, “I wasn’t expecting it either,” as he climbed stiffly off the bike.

  And yet he’d discarded his heavy leather jacket before they’d left. Was it because of the heat—already it felt twenty degrees more sweltering—or because of the wings that had ripped through the back of his thin cotton shirt? She wondered briefly how many shirts he went through on a regular basis. Did he find it a nuisance every time he’d had to fly for her?

  Would he tell her if she asked?

  She was looking to him, but he had his face craned to the heavens, searching. His wings snapped wide, a powerful silhouette as he leaped to the sky. Then he was gone. And she was alone.

  The engine pinged and popped as it cooled. She glanced around the deserted street to the buildings lining either side. There were no entrances as far as the eye could see. No doors. No stoops or railings or business signs. No breaks between buildings. It created a strange sensation, like an optical illusion, like she was trapped in a maze.

  Maybe that’s exactly what they’d fallen into.

  If this was a city, where was the trash, the streetlights, the pedestrians? Where were the signs of life?

  Palms sweaty, she clambered from the bike.

  She’d feel better with a pistol in hand, but it was silly to draw it with nothing to aim at. So instead she curled her fingers under, against her thigh, nails scraping her jeans as she catalogued the street.

  Her vision was heightened, sharper. She could see farther, crisper, better. Colors were more vibrant and varied. She could even penetrate the shadows. These new eyes came with night vision. Handy.

  She turned her gaze to the sliver of orange sky between the rooftops, squinting for a glimpse of her companions. If they never returned, she’d be left to wander on her own.

  The early evening heat pressed on her like a blanket. A bead of sweat trickled down the back of her neck, and she felt the niggling of thirst, her tongue swollen in her mouth.

  Would it be so bad, she wondered idly. To up and disappear, to be alone forever?

  She didn’t understand where the thought had come from or how it made her chest ache even as it pulled at her. She could disappear like Shade had. She could leave him just like he’d left her.

  She licked her lips.

  No. He hadn’t left her. He’d gone to do something. In the sky.

  There! She could just make out a dark splotch in the distance. It was a pair of fluttering, wind-torn wings. And they were falling, fast.

  Alarm shot through her, and she raced away from the bike, tearing down the endless street toward Shade. It wasn’t until she was directly beneath him that she could see he was carrying Beast. Or rather, he was gripping the minotaur under the arms, trying and failing to slow their fall.

  When they were four stories up, he dropped Beast like a stone weight. A shout caught in her throat as the minotaur plummeted, unchecked. Beast lande
d beside her in a crouch, asphalt cracking as the impact blasted a crater around them. She stumbled and swore but leaped back up, bracing herself, determined to catch Shade.

  But in the remaining seconds of his fall, Shade had righted his wings, pitching into a sharp glide. Instead of tumbling into her outstretched arms, he grabbed her wrists, ripping her off the ground.

  She gasped, wind whipping her hair, feet kicking at the nothingness beneath them, as Shade gripped her tight to his chest. He ran a few steps to expel their momentum on touchdown, settling her against the Harley.

  “I told you to stay here, stay safe,” he murmured, breath grazing her ear.

  She smacked him in the chest, cheeks on fire. “I thought you were falling, you idiot.”

  He grinned, hands held up as he stepped back, putting several spaces between them. Despite his rebuke, he obviously liked that she’d worried for him. “I was. Good-for-nothing Beast weighs more than the bike.”

  “But you’re fine now?” she asked, needing to hear the words. “Beast is fine?”

  All thoughts of continuing her journey alone had thankfully vanished—wherever they’d come from. What had come over her? She needed her friends like she needed air to breathe.

  “We’re fine.”

  She glanced past his shoulder, relieved to see the minotaur trotting toward them, unharmed.

  “Let’s not do that again,” she said, settling once more onto the Sportster’s passenger seat. They’d need to be more careful with their future Hellmouths.

  Shade mounted in front of her. It took a few tries to start the bike before it roared to life.

  “Should not stay here long. Should not linger,” Beast said, eying the expanse of the street with guarded suspicion.

  “Don’t plan to,” Shade agreed.

  “Where will we go? Where is everyone?” The one time Gisele had come to Hell, working an escort with Warrick, this wasn’t what it’d been like at all. They’d popped through the GTPA’s Hellmouth in D.C., landing at the bespelled arrival docks in Thirst’s capital courthouse, dumped their client and left. This outside, unregulated, part of the Gate seemed desolate, lonely. And more disturbingly, it gripped at her. Leave her companions? How could such a strange desire have rooted in the back of her mind only moments ago?