“He’s okay,” I said, touching Ryan’s shoulder.
“Cool trick, but he could’ve just pointed at the door.”
I raked my bangs away from my face, blowing out a puff of air when they fell forward again. The door clue was very good and very bad news.
“Hey. You okay?” Ryan asked.
“The door. There are three doors in Hell. The way in, the way out, and The Oubliette. I can’t be sure that’s what he meant, but if he did … getting in and out of Hell is one thing. Getting past the door that leads to the dungeons—and out again—is another.”
“What do we have to do?”
“We don’t do anything. You can’t go down there.”
He wasn’t impressed. “You could sneak me in, I’m sure.”
I looked up at him, serious. “No, my love. Humans don’t leave Hell. I know you want to help, but you can’t go.”
He wasn’t happy but conceded. He couldn’t die, or, as his guardian, I would die, too. And that was one risk Ryan would never take.
“So how do we get you past the doors?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered. “No one’s ever done it.”
Chapter Four
Levi
Knock, knock.
I wish I could say it felt good to be back. The first time I passed through planes to land in Hell, I was just eight years old. Before long, bouncing back and forth took all the effort of blinking an eye. Since Dad revoked my authorization because I refused to kill my girlfriend, this hometown hero has had to find more creative ways to breach these boundaries. That meant sneaking in where I wouldn’t be seen, leading to me mastering breaking into the one place no one would suspect: the impenetrable dungeon of Hell, formally known as The Oubliette.
The double doors of the Oubliette stood twenty feet tall and wore white-hot flames that whipped and danced around its edges. Just in front of its entrance was a few simple deterrents to the already impossible-to-escape prison: a pair of petrified thousand-year-old oak trunks to lock its captives away from both the inside and outside, and a river of molten lava, all guarded by twin demons, Ozroth and Mechziel who had single-handedly held off Michael’s army for two days during the Last War. Dad didn’t play around when it came to punishment, and he didn’t want his prisoners escaping before they’d been reprimanded nearly to death. He also allowed only the warden and the guardians entry.
I stood just within the doors, brushing ash off my shirt and jeans.
Screams pierced the haze before me, the guttural shrieks of Hell’s Most Wanted. Those who misbehaved without permission, those who made Hell vulnerable by breaking the rules, those who disobeyed or defied Lucifer, or those who—directly or indirectly—tried to help the other side. I’d had my own cell here once, in the back where they stuck the truly forgettable. The burning chains around my wrists, neck, and ankles were a distant but still vivid memory, and that was decades before I was sent to Earth to redeem myself.
She was worth it.
The ridged soles of my boots crunched over the broken concrete and rock beneath my feet as I turned to face my former prison. The walls glowed red and orange, broken up only by wooden stall doors, the windows simple holes secured with crossing metal rods. The darkness painted the seemingly infinite ceiling. I covered my cough with my fists. Even the wind carried fire. My lungs were no longer accustomed to the Sulphur, nor the air that was almost too hot to breathe.
Excited whispers seeped in from every corner, some repeating the same inaudible words over and over. They only grew louder after I took my first step, the low rumble of the fire unable to drown them out.
I checked the first cell, the rusted metal lock as big as my head. Two female creatures sat inside on their haunches, one wearing the headdress of a nun’s habit, naked from the waist down, her misshaped ostrich feet flat to the ash-covered ground. The other had a peasant’s scarf over her head, bodiless except for shoulder and arms. She held up a heavy book, probably her punishment for whatever crime she’d committed against my father. Cracked eggshells were littered on the ground around them. My father particularly enjoyed punishment, and they were typically carried out in a theatrical manner, almost with deeper meaning than most could decipher other than the tortured.
The prisoners stared at me and then at each other, but did not speak.
Bones and pierced hide stretched, and rotting covered the walls; all demons, all tortured beyond belief before their deaths, only to rise again and suffer again before my father, or his generals would send them to task or end them permanently (if they were lucky). True death did not come easy in Hell. It was a mercy more than a punishment.
I closed my eyes and felt my surroundings for Eden. It was hard to feel anything in the dungeons except sorrow and pain, but her light was present, however faint. I could feel her, but she was far away. Cell after cell I searched, and my frustration grew. There were hundreds, each scene more horrific than the one before.
The last cell confined an enormous black figure, a layer of ash settling on his burnt wool-like fur. His wide shoulders the biggest part of him, his legs reduced to that of an alligator. He was slouched over in defeat.
“Surgät,” I said. “You’ve been here a while. I thought you were the one who could open all locks. Isn’t that what the Grimoires say about you, in all their fruity, pompous text? Guess not, eh?”
He huffed at me like a tired bull, but he was centuries into his sentence, and had lost any fight he still possessed a long time ago.
“Is there a girl here?” I asked. “A human girl. Surely that would catch your attention.”
He glimpsed at me, annoyed, then returned to staring at the crumbling wall. Something fearful was on the other side, but I couldn’t tell what. It wanted inside Surgät’s cell, though.
“Answer me,” I demanded.
“Never here,” he groaned, as if the words took all he had to speak.
“Where is she?”
“Deeper.”
I frowned. “Deeper than the Oubliette? There is nothing deeper.” I thought for a moment. “Except for the temple. Are you saying my father risked taking her there?”
He looked up me, his bloodshot eyes tormented and burdened with old knowledge. “The Keepers here say they buried her beneath to keep her hidden. To keep her bound.”
“She’s in the bog,” I said, dubious. Lucifer resided in the Ninth Layer of Hell, like the Oubliette, and beneath the deepest of many of its caverns was a pit filled with a darkness so thick not even my father frequented there.
I let myself relax and think of Eden. Surgät was right—she was there, but she was restless, confused. She was imprisoned in-status, curled into the fetal position, floating in nothing and nowhere. The temple was on the far side of the Ninth Layer in a valley, and not just any valley: The Prince’s Trench. I had to work fast; the soles of my boots were already melting.
“Damn it,” I hissed under my breath. There was a faster way to get there than sneaking or even the underground tunnels, and I wouldn’t have to set foot on the ground until I arrived.
I approached the dungeon doors and flicked my fingers. They obeyed, swinging open. The gargantuan demons guarding the other side were stunned only for a few seconds before attacking, the petrified trunks laying in half on the ground. Ozroth took one swipe, holding me against the exterior wall by the neck. With both hands I kept hold of his weapon, a u-shaped pitchfork that matched his horns. The razor-sharp edges were burrowing into the thin skin of my jaw, my blood dripping down the length of the dark metal and feet dangling six feet from the ground.
Ozroth’s black eyes focused on me, puffing mist from his snout. His face was a mixture of a goat and a rat, tar-stained hair matted in places, bloody in others. He shook his head, his thick coat from neck to pelvis latently rocking back and forth, ash flying in all directions.
“Take me to my father,” I said.
Ozroth glanced at his brother and then back at me, his eyes
narrowing.
“Do it now, or I’ll kill you and Mechziel will take me.”
Ozroth’s eyes grew big. He finally recognized who he had pinned to the wall. He bleated, signaling for transport. With one yank, he pulled his pitchfork from the wall, and I fell to the ground, landing on my feet. I brushed off my clothes, blood from my hands smearing on the fabric. I rolled my eyes. “Great.”
“Good to see you, Oz. Where’s Ramiel?”
A low growl gurgled from his throat.
“Junior!” Ramiel called, strolling past me as the twins prepared my cage. He was one of the only beings in Hell besides humans not to look like a failed science experiment. He was tall and blond, a jarring contrast to everything else there. His ice blue eyes seemed happy to see me, but thick with an old pain he had been burdened with that would stay with him for eternity. “It’s been a while. I hear you’re in love … again. Why have you put yourself through such torture? You know they’ll come after whoever you care about.”
“It’s her. I’ll only love one woman, Ramiel, just like you.”
His smile vanished. “It’s her?”
I nodded, my body jerked to the side as Ozroth clamped my neck with a thick, rusted metal ring and locked it to one of the long, jagged bones used to enclose the cage. Some were horizontal, some vertical, creating squares for me to see out of, but none of the bones were human. Hell was a punishment for all creatures, from every corner of the universe.
“Wait,” Ramiel ordered, holding up one hand.
“They’re taking you to your father,” he said. “Was she captured?”
“Killed. Lucifer murdered her in front of me … and her family.”
Ramiel had spent eons building a reputation for himself in Hell. Ruthlessness was respected here and nothing else. As the only post-war Arch, Ramiel had to show strength at all times. He now lived among the angels-turned-demons he’d once fought against in the war of all wars: the Battle for Heaven.
Still, his hardened expression wavered just long enough for me to notice.
“She’s at the Temple, then,” Ramiel said.
“In the Bog.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Do you know where Lizeth is?” I asked.
Ramiel’s eyes instantly softened, and his lids snapped shut as he focused on the human woman for which he’d grieved so deeply he’d decried God.
When his ice blue irises were finally visible again, he peered up at the pinpoint of light in the hazy darkness above. “She’s sitting at a small dining table alone, looking out the window over the main gardens. She doesn’t know I’m here; thinks I’ve just gone out for a moment. Sadness doesn’t exist in Heaven.”
He would likely never see her again. Lizeth was taken from him in the early days of humans as an example to other fallen Archs who’d fallen in love with a human and left his Taleh unprotected. Ramiel’s love for Lizeth was legendary; the story that wrote the first rules of Hybrids. Those rules govern superhuman families like the Ryels whose biological connection to their Talehs survival would last for generations, a gift and a curse for the half angel, half human hybrids.
“Is it at all possible?” I asked. “For you to find your way to her again?”
The distant look in his eyes vanished, and his hardness returned. “Only one way, Junior. And sacrifices are hard to come by in Hell.”
He signaled for Ozroth and Mechziel’s minions to begin their journey. Six crooked, timid Underlings scurried from under rocks a few yards away to pick up two long sticks that carried my cage; the rickety, make-shift cell becoming unsteady until they could get a decent hold.
“What can I do to help you, Ramiel?” I asked, sincere.
Ramiel held up a hand, and the Underlings paused. “Help me?”
“What can I do?” I asked again.
He thought about my offer, quiet for several seconds before he asked, “You’re going to try to release Eden?”
I nodded.
“He’ll disown you, Levi, and it will be permanent this time. Not even the favor your mother carries will protect you.”
I nodded.
“But she’ll try. You know she will,” Ramiel said. I couldn’t tell if he was concerned or simply curious. The eyes are indeed the window to the soul. I could see the wheels of Ramiel’s mind spinning, searching for an answer, a solution, something.
“My mother is the only human in history to impress Lucifer,” I said. “He didn’t allow her to live after she gave birth to me. She fought her way back from Hell. Even Eden’s grandmother, Cynthia, wouldn’t stand a chance, and you know she—”
“You’re right,” Ramiel said, amused at his thoughts. “Petra is absolutely diabolical. The stories of Petra are impressive,” his smile faded, “but she’s still human. You do this, Levi… There will be consequences.”
“There always are.”
Ramiel conceded, then took a shallow bow in a gesture of respect. “Good luck to you, Son of Satan. But if I ever catch you in my dungeon again, I’ll kill you.”
“No, you won’t,” I said with a grin.
The Underlings marched forward with a collective grunt, and set out on the pathway leading to Lucifer’s Temple. Pieces of chewed flesh peeked from between their tiny, sharp teeth, human scraps that were fed to them by their demon masters. Humans were plentiful in Hell, used like cattle were on Earth, their byproducts used for all sorts of things. Underlings were far smaller but sturdier, the workhorses of the Underworld. Different from Drudens, Underlings resided only in Hell, created only to serve Hell’s hierarchy. They had no names, no homes, no time to rest, and no rights. I couldn’t imagine a more miserable existence.
With two on each stick, the Underlings heaved me over hills and down ravines, their grayish, thin skin and quick, tiny feet making them seem like naked rats trekking over the uneven ground. Even in the stifling heat, they didn’t break a sweat. We passed oceans of wailing humans, lakes of demons, burning cars and buildings, the fire and soot whipping in the wind. Creatures crawled along the ground like insects, and other curious, creepy beings aimlessly traveled the same road we did, dazed and adrift. A low rumble from the flames and distant, mysterious cracks were the background noise for the nightmarish place I called home.
The entropy and chaos of Hell was familiar, and yet I still felt disdain. Born of the pain but detached from it, I recoiled more than I could witness. I had to remind myself that we don’t always belong where we begin. Love sometimes changes us so much that there’s no going back to who we once were. Eden had freed me, and, despite all my sins, I no longer belonged in the bowels of the universe. For that, I would be forever grateful to her.
The rubble began to give way under the Underlings’ paws, and my fist grew tighter around the bones that surrounded me as they stumbled. They were strong, but their tiny, rat-like eyes made them clumsy. I braced to fall over the narrow ledge they followed to my father’s temple below.
Somehow, we made it to the bottom, and the creatures sat the box I stood in on the ground. Once they completed their task, they backed away, cowering from what was inside.
The temple loomed above me, but not even half as high as the cliffs that surrounded the trench I was nestled in. No windows and only one open entry, backlit by the liquid fire bubbling from the abyss that sat behind the structure. My father’s house didn’t need doors. No one went inside without permission.
I grabbed the bones again, calling out to whatever could hear me. “Honey, I’m home!”
A woman stepped into the open doorway, then walked forward, placing her elongated fingers on the bones that made up the handrail. Her long, square, black nails curved around the banister, and they slid further down as she descended the steps made of leathered flesh.
“Cassia,” I said, greeting her coldly.
Cassia’s black hair was sectioned into rows; the thick, inverted braids pulled tight and secured at the nape of her neck with a gold ring, letting the
rest of her hair fall over her bronze shoulder in a single ponytail. The strands were somehow shiny even though Hell was absent of light. Cassia wasn’t a Queen of Hell—being unable to bear children for my father—instead, she was his steward and had been since the early days of her Persian empire.
Cassia was a daughter of Zartosht, known to the Greeks as Zoroaster. His teachings were that their god alone—Ahura Mazda—should be the one and only god worshipped. As most religions, it took a lot of bloodshed to convince everyone of this, and Cassia was eager to please her father, becoming the most prolific converter in human history. Zoroaster developed Zoroastrianism, the first monotheistic faith, but Cassia developed a taste for blood, and that new addiction didn’t just go away when the dissidents and even the outliers were silenced. That was when Cassia caught the attention of my father.
“Levi,” Cassia whispered in her smooth voice, sauntering from the bottom step to my cage. Her hand slid over the bones until her palm settled on the lock. She clicked her tongue. “This couldn’t have kept you caged. You needed a ride?”
I met her gaze as she looked up at me, seductive as ever. Most men would lose their minds with lust, but knowing she was once gleefully covered in the innocent blood of children helped me to see her for what she was.
“Is he here?” I asked.
She began to open her mouth, but one of the Underlings who had carried me squealed as it toppled down the ledge to the bottom. They were almost to the top; the long fall had injured him.
Cassia was unimpressed with his writhing. He’d interrupted her. She targeted him with her hazel eyes and then looked to the far cliff. With her eye movement, his body left the ground and slammed into the rock. He didn’t get up a second time.
She was satisfied, a grin relaxing her face.
“Good to see not much has changed,” I said.
She reached into the cage and pressed her palm flat to my chest, her fingernails grazing the base of my throat. “You’ve come back for her. She’s here.”
I could feel Eden stronger than I had since my father took her. She was sleeping, trapped deep beneath the surface in a dark dream.
Sins of the Immortal Page 3
