House of Ash & Brimstone

by Megan Starks

  She handed her aunt the Mardoll dangling by its string. And the contract burst into flames.

  “It is finished,” said Felicitisia.

  “Let me go now,” Marcel said, fighting against the minotaur’s hold.

  “I want my soul-bound. Send me to him. Please.”

  “No. He has failed you too often. And you have grown too fond of him. He is a servant, Giseraphel, no more. I should not have stayed his execution in his youth. I should have sent someone else to protect you. But I did not fathom you would make the same mistake I did.”

  “What do you mean? What’re you talking about?”

  “Outside of your brothers and I, you were thought murdered by assassins from the Fifth Gate, darling. When a soul-bound fails to protect his liege, is it not customary that he or she be publicly executed? However, as you were very much alive and safely hidden by my hand until the time of your maturation, I spared him on the chance that he might be of use to you in the future. I convinced your father that a more severe and fitting punishment would be to gift the soul-bound to Rhogan. After all, his dragon was beheaded ‘defending’ the family during the attack. And Rhogan, ‘in grief of his sister,’ would be sure to inflict a prolonged and agonizing punishment spanning the many remaining years of his servitude.”

  Atlas had lost his head while trying to kill her. And from the look on her aunt’s face, she knew that.

  “How could you do something so cruel? You disgust me.”

  If she’d known…if she’d remembered… Bile crept up her throat at the thought. This whole time, he’d needed her. He’d suffered, endlessly, not even knowing she’d lived. If she was disgusted with anyone, it was herself.

  She had to do something to fix it. She had to set him free for good. But first she had to find him.

  “Gisele, don’t,” Marcel begged, but it was already too late.

  A wave of unexpected pleasure cracked through Gisele, arching her spine and dropping her, sweating and panting, to her knees. Making her gasp. Heat flooded her cheeks for Beast to see her this way.

  “You will show me respect, Giseraphel. Your life belongs to me. I can be your benefactor, or I can be your cruel proprietress. Which do you prefer, darling? It makes no matter to me.”

  “I don’t belong to anyone,” Gisele gasped, defiance ruined by the breathiness of her voice. But she pressed on, unable to back down. “I’m not yours to play with, and neither is Shade.”

  Her aunt broke into a chiming bout of laughter. Light and airy, yet shudderingly sensual, it swept like ice crystals over Gisele’s skin, tingling and making her cringe at the same time. Beast clacked his hoof against the polished wood floorboards in warning.

  It was time to go.

  Gisele looked to the cleaver, silent and cold in her hand. It was a sword for slaying demons, but so far all she’d used it to do was hack, mangle, and maim. “Joy, I’m so sorry,” she said. Then she stabbed the length of the blade into the floor.

  The sword screamed at the same time that her aunt did, both screeching their protest as Gisele swiveled and cut a hole around herself in the floor. Her arms trembled from the effort. Sweat slicked her palms and the small of her back.

  “Beast!” she shouted, inching closer, tug-by-tug, toward completing the circle.

  Marcel called to her, “Don’t you dare!”

  She shot him a sneer, but the look on his face flash-froze her anger. He was terrified.

  A clap of lightning struck her so hard she nearly passed out. If she hadn’t been clinging to the cleaver’s hilt, she had no doubt she would’ve been flung across the room. Her aunt reached for her.

  If Felicitisia could strike with such force from a distance, she didn’t want to know what she could do once she got her hands on someone.

  “Giseraphel!” The woman’s voice thundered.

  Slender fingertips pressed to her shoulder, and Gisele’s insides lit on fire. She convulsed, trapped in a circuit of pain, unable to breathe, unable to cry out.

  It hurt almost as much as the times she’d used the Mardoll.

  Except this torment had no set duration she could control. It would continue, relentlessly, for as long as her aunt desired.

  She’d never met a woman so exceedingly cruel. In this area, her aunt might rival even her brothers.

  After what felt like an eternity, her body spasmed enough that the sword was able to cut the last bit of the circle, freeing the space below her. She plummeted into darkness, sucking air into her lungs like breathing underwater.

  Above her, Felicitisia screamed like a banshee.

  Cursing and panting, Gisele dragged herself away from the hole. She couldn’t see. But she could hear something skittering in the dark.

  With a thud, Beast landed behind her. “Cut another hole.” He sniffed and snorted. “Hurry.”

  Spindly, clawed fingers latched onto her ankle, and she yelped. She kicked at the unseen creature, hurling it off her. Another yowled as Beast got ahold of it.

  She scrambled forward, searching blindly for a wall to cut into.

  If they kept falling, where would they land? She didn’t know, but when all she could find was open space, she decided—down again it was. She dug into the floor, swallowing against the surge of sudden weightlessness as she dropped.

  She landed on aching palms and knees on top of a scratchy, sprawling gray carpet in a mid-’90s office building.

  A fury with red, chitinous wings and a pincer-like tail in a rolling desk chair leaned out of her cubicle to look at Gisele. “You the new girl?”

  27

  With a ding, the sleek chrome doors of the elevator opened and a gaggle of demons in dark business suits filed out. The lack of color in the industrial building was a clear motif.

  The suits barely spared Gisele or Beast a glance, despite their grimy attire—too busy and too preoccupied to concern themselves with the obvious outsiders. The two stepped into the elevator, and Gisele punched the button for the lobby.

  But instead of going down, they started a swift upward ascent. Of course.

  “Should we have left Marcel behind?”

  Beast shot her a sideways glance that let her know exactly what he thought of her sympathy. “Yes.”

  The thought made her itch between her shoulder blades. She stood up straighter, jostling the sword in the scabbard on her back. The half incubus, half valahan seemed a victim of her aunt as much as anyone, but he wasn’t innocent. Leaving him behind to take the brunt of Felicitisia’s wrath didn’t feel right, but Beast wasn’t wrong—bringing him along would have been stupid and dangerous.

  She lifted her eyes toward the heavens, though she doubted anyone within them would provide guidance to someone like her, the child of a Devil and one of their own fallen. But even if they did, could it reach her while she was riding in a tin can in the bowels of the underworld? Unease knotted in the pit of her stomach as she watched the numbers tick up and up. They were being summoned to one of the top floors.

  Beast shifted uncomfortably, having noticed as well. He rumbled his displeasure. But before he could speak, the elevator lurched to a halt, and the doors whooshed open.

  Her eyes slid down the length of the hall.

  As if in delayed reaction, the elevator dinged. And dinged, and dinged, and dinged.

  Taking the hint, she eased into the spacious hallway.

  “Wrong floor,” Beast said, but she found herself still moving, unable to turn back.

  She sped her pace, emotion swelling in the back of her throat.

  There were only three doors at the end of a long, blank-walled stretch, and she could feel exactly what waited behind one of them. Shade was on the other side of the far left door.

  Without a word, heart aching, she broke into a dead run.

  Blinded by a wash of sunlight, she burst through the doorway like a sprinter bolting past the finish line at the end of a race. Her legs moved as if they’d run off without her, even as she tried to apply the brakes, a hand raised to sh
ield her eyes.

  Pebbles slid under her feet, and she cursed, breathing heavy.

  They were on a balcony—a balcony the size of a large ship’s deck, thirty-four stories high.

  “Shade!” she shouted before she had time to think better of it.

  Two figures, further ahead, started at her sudden appearance. One of them was a stranger. The other had his back to her, bared and shirtless, brand blazing like a fresh wound. Her dragon.

  He turned, shock stark in his face. Reflexively, he stepped toward her.

  He’d made it less than a few paces when the other man said, “I thought I told you to stay. Now.”

  His voice cracked like a whip, and immediately, Shade fell still. The fingers on one hand twitched, but otherwise his arms remained loose at his sides, though his posture was rigid, his muscles tense. He ran his tongue over his teeth. His features sharpened, setting with a sudden coldness as he stared at her.

  The man that was with him—a taller man with a slight build and an aquiline nose, wearing a sharkskin suit—stepped forward, circling Shade, lips parted in contemplation. He slipped a hand through his tousled blond hair, hooded, blue-black eyes narrowed with interest. “I don’t normally have to say it twice.” He studied Gisele, head cocked to one side. “Tell me. Who is she?”

  For a moment Shade only stood there silent, staring into the distance.

  And then the man added, “Now.”

  Shade flicked his gaze to Gisele, gray eyes cold and hard as steel. “A girl I wanted to fuck.”

  She heard the annoyance in his voice, saw it in his posture and his dismissive scowl. She was no one, nothing to him. She was stupid to have come here.

  He couldn’t mean that. And yet…it very convincingly felt like he did.

  The man smiled. He touched a finger to his lips. “But you don’t want me to hurt her.”

  Shade paused, tongue touching his bottom lip in hesitation. “No.”

  “Because you like her?”

  He shrugged. “More or less.”

  The man’s smile grew into a sharply edged grin, and a heavy feeling settled in the pit of Gisele’s stomach. Watching the two men watching her—speaking of her as if she wasn’t even there—was damned unnerving. She would have said something to disrupt the moment, but before she could, the door slammed open behind her as Beast clomped onto the roof.

  “Oh, and she’s brought a guest,” the man said, delighted and melodious. “Say now, how long have you known this girl standing before us, this ‘her’ with her unexpected guest?”

  “A while.” Shade flinched as the words escaped his throat, as if they’d been ripped from him, bidden by another, and Gisele was struck speechless by the sense of his roiling frustration, his anger—all of it directed at her. “Look, I don’t even know her that well. I swear, I never thought she’d follow me.”

  The man lifted one shoulder in a whimsical shrug. “But she’s here now. Without preamble or invite. And you like her—more or less. So don’t you think we ought to give them a show?”

  The tenor of his voice had deepened to a purr.

  “What’s going on?” Gisele asked, finding her voice. Fear crept cold up the length of her spine. “I was worried about you.”

  Shade didn’t answer. The muscles in his throat tensed as he swallowed. Scratching at the stubble along the underside of his jaw, he looked away again.

  “If you want,” he said, at last, sounding resigned. “I’ll be stuck with the cleanup either way.”

  “Leave little dragon,” Beast cautioned her, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Come away with Beast. Little dragon is threat now. Is dangerous.”

  Gisele shook her head. She knew something was terribly wrong, but she didn’t want to accept he could turn against them so easily, without warning, like the changing of a tide, one moment calm, the next ready to swallow them whole. He wouldn’t do that, not now, not after everything, not willingly. No.

  This man had a hold on Shade. Which could only mean one thing. She was standing face to face with her older brother.

  Rhogan.

  He’d been wearing a half-mask in her dream, but his bared face was even more haunting. Memories of another dream fluttered to the forefront of her mind. Rhogan electrocuting his pet howler. Snapping her arm in three places.

  Found you, the sylphlike man seemed to smirk at her, blue-black eyes brimming with a dangerous promise of violence.

  “Leave little dragon,” Beast repeated, tugging her several paces backwards.

  Her feet slid, though she knew she shouldn’t. She couldn’t just leave Shade.

  “Ah, don’t leave so soon.” Rhogan sounded put out. “I have something I wanted to show you. Quickly, now, before they go, Shade; take out your knife. Let our guests get a good look at it.”

  Gisele faltered, caught off guard. Her mind raced.

  Shade reached behind him without hesitation and gripped the handle of the large knife strapped to his lower back. He hadn’t had it in The Fucking Goat, had given his tactical knives up at the coat check along with her pistols, but she had no time to wonder where he’d gotten the replacement. He pulled it out and turned the blade in the air, letting Gisele and Beast take in its sizable length.

  The handle was carved of horn, the blade black.

  “Stab it in your thigh, now,” the man said.

  And Shade did.

  He winced, holding it in place as if unable to let go, leg tensed and beginning to tremble as blood welled and ran down the front of his thigh.

  Gisele’s hand shot to her lips to stifle a gasp.

  “Oh, don’t be so upset. I’m doing you a favor.” Rhogan smiled, but it was a chilling, unpleasant expression—too angular and jagged. “You see, this one obeys every word I say. He can’t help it. But he’s been very naughty of late, and I find myself in the mood to punish him.”

  “Stop it,” Gisele said, but her brother paid no attention to her.

  “Cut up to your hip. Then,” he paused as if in thought, “twist the blade.”

  “Don’t!”

  “Now, Shade.”

  Sweating, jaw clenched, Shade jerked the blade, trying to make it a quick, clean slice. He dropped to his knees, cursing, crying out as he wrenched the blade sideways at the end.

  One hand on the ground, the other still gripping the blade bisecting muscle and skin, he panted, eyes downcast, refusing to meet her gaze.

  When he looked back up, his features were cast in a sneer.

  You’ve done this to me by coming here, he seemed to be saying to her. And she couldn’t help but think he was right. Leave, his anger and hate pulsed at her, and she found herself stumbling backwards once more.

  Beast grabbed a fistful of her shirt and yanked her toward the door, but she dug her heels in and twisted against him. She wouldn’t leave Shade again.

  “No!” she shouted, writhing free and shooting Beast a dirty look until he backed off, snorting his annoyance with her. He clacked his teeth and stomped one hoof, anxious. “We’re taking him with us.”

  Shade looked to her, eyes wide and knuckles white where he clutched the knife buried beside his hip. She watched him try and fail to school his expression, too desperate, too drowning to hide behind his anger, and she knew then that she’d put him in terrible danger.

  “You dumb bitch,” he snapped. “Get the fuck out of here already!”

  Rhogan gave a sharp, cacophonous sort of laugh. He clutched a hand at his suit buttons and dabbed at the corner of one eye.

  Faster than Gisele could follow, Shade ripped the knife free and lunged for his stomach, but the other man simply said, “Stop, now,” and Shade froze mid-swing.

  He strained to finish the strike, the muscles in his shoulders and back cording as he sweated and cursed, trapped.

  “It’s not like you to make this many mistakes when you’re trying to lie to me,” Rhogan said, sounding pleased. He knelt, his lips parted with anticipation as he caressed two slender fingers down the side of Shade’
s face. “Did you really think I wouldn’t recognize my dear, sweet, baby sister?”

  Shade keened, the sound coming from deep in his chest. He looked to Gisele, panting with fear, and she realized with a start that all this time—it was her he’d been thinking of, trying to protect.

  “Gigi, run!” he choked, but she found herself rooted to the spot, pinned by her terror and her inability to help him.

  “Did you think I didn’t know where you’d been, or what happened to my Vyx? How did you think this would play out, Shade? That I would let Giseraphel go after I’d had my fun? Or did you hope I’d send you to finish her off, but let you get away with losing her trail—or letting her best you?” He slid Shade a contemptuous look, laced with what might’ve been pity if he was a different sort of creature. “No. You’re going to kill her for me. After all these years, you’re going to redeem yourself. Now, go and end her. You’re going to sever her head clean from her body. And then you’re going to bring it to me so I can see what a good job you’ve done. Understand?”

  “Please,” Shade begged. His muscles seized as he fought the command. “Mercy, please. Not this.”

  “Mm. I do believe it’s been years since I last heard you say that.” Rhogan’s smile was wistful. “Now do as I have bid,” he said, dusting his knees as he stood.

  Shade stumbled forward, rising to a shaky stand, bloodied knife clutched in one fist. His brand burned luridly, an angry wound on his shoulder blade.

  “It will be done,” he intoned, and when he lifted his gaze, his eyes were as black and consuming as the deepest pits of Hell.

  Gisele ran, heart swollen in her throat.

  Rhogan tipped his head back and laughed. The tenor of it was pleasant and rich, and when he spoke next, his words almost sounded good-natured. “Yes, run, little sister. Run from your fate for as long as you can.”

  The sound brought with it a thousand stinging memories, of his face, his smile, so kind and yet frightening to her, of how he would tease her so sweetly when she’d vexed him—silly Gigi—even as he bruised the bones in her hand or shoved her down the grand entry’s stairs.