by Melody Raven
Muriel warily eyed the door. “Do you think I can make it in without bursting into flame?”
Kier clenched his jaw. “I thought this was just a test run.”
Muriel sighed at his continued reluctance. “And that was just a test question.”
“I think you probably wouldn’t die immediately. However, Azazel and his men have complete control in Hell. The souls give him power to do whatever he wants with just a thought. All he has to do is see you to kill you.”
All of that was information she knew, but hearing it again had the desired effect of scaring the shit out of her. How often did these prophecies come true? Oh yeah, one hundred percent accuracy.
Muriel met Samuel’s eyes from across the room. “If I take him out, there won’t be any false apocalypse. You’ll be free.”
Samuel remained expressionless, but Ava perked up at the thought. “Think of it, babe,” she said. “No more running or fighting. We could take a vacation.”
Kier bitterly laughed. “Please. All Samuel had to do was stay alive. Muriel is expected to take on a fucking demon king who knows she’s coming!”
“Kier, I’m not just going to sit back and watch everything I know and love be destroyed! If I can stop this, I will.”
Kier looked into Muriel’s eyes, and for a moment they stood motionless. Each willed the other to make the first move.
He stalked up to her until his face was just inches from hers. “I’m not going to let you destroy yourself for this.”
“You really think you can stop me?” He was in for a surprise if he thought he could subdue her by force.
“I don’t need to stop you. I just need to stop the prophecies. There is no point in killing Azazel if the prophecies are bullshit. You wouldn’t even be here if you never heard that you were supposed to be.”
Muriel shook her head at his flawed logic. “You can’t prove a prophecy false.”
Kier leaned in for a quick kiss. His hands fisted in her hair as he roughly claimed her mouth. She gasped at the suddenness of it but didn’t fight him.
Just as quickly as it started, he was gone. Her hands grabbed at empty air. She looked around for where he had transported but didn’t see him.
The cracking noise from behind her was quiet, but the impact was almost deafening. Muriel had been around long enough to know the sound of a neck snapping.
Samuel’s lifeless body fell to the floor before Muriel could turn. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t even form a rational thought. All she could do was stare helplessly at Samuel’s dead body and then back up to Kier’s stone-cold face.
Through her haze, she heard a whimpering noise, and, as though she was outside of her body looking in, she realized that she was making the noise. Then came the scream.
Ava ran to Samuel as an ear-piercing cry of grief permeated the room. She fell on her knees next to him, whole body shaking with sobs.
The sight of her friends—one dead, the other destroyed with grief—brought Muriel back to herself. Why? She wanted to ask Kier, but she couldn’t bring herself to speak to him. Her hands clenched the sword, fully ready to attack.
“Samuel will live and the false apocalypse will not come to pass,” recited Kier. “Now that Samuel is dead, there is no way to stop the apocalypse. No point in you going to Hell.”
Hesitation gone, Muriel charged Kier, sword outstretched. Her battle cry was abruptly cut off when she ran into the wall. The bastard had transported away before she had even gotten close.
Muriel frantically turned, looking around the room for any sight of Kier. Esmeralda and Jared both stood back, smart enough to stay out of her way but not quick enough to stop Kier. Apparently he had fooled them all.
Of course he fooled them. She begged them to accept him. She had ranted about how she deserved him because she was sacrificing so much.
She looked down at the cost of her foolishness. Ava wouldn’t look at her, and Muriel didn’t blame her. What could she possibly do to amend her terrible judgment?
She hadn’t merely thought Kier was trustworthy. She’d known it with every fiber of her being. She’d known he cared for her. She’d known he understood how important her friends were to her.
On some level, she understood that he only killed Samuel because of his feelings for her. Because of his vow to protect her, he wanted to make sure she stayed out of danger. She just couldn’t comprehend the lengths he went through to keep her to himself.
Well, there had been a flaw in his logic. If he thought she was going to stand down now, he was dead wrong. Taking one last look at the devastation that surrounded her, Muriel inhaled a final breath of fresh Earthly air before she stepped into Hell.
An innate sense of wrongness filled Muriel. Kier hadn’t been lying when he described Hell. It was unwelcoming; the cold winds pushed back her hair and caused her to shiver in only her tank top and jeans.
The dark purple skies gave off no light, but she was able to see well enough through the dark.
She stood in some sort of field. A large mansion stood about half a mile in front of her, and the lights of a city in the distance shone behind her. There were no paths leading anywhere that she could see, but there wouldn’t be. Demons could just transport themselves wherever they wanted to go. No need for infrastructure.
Muriel kept her eyes and ears open to listen for any hint of a threat. She was wide open, and anyone or thing could take an easy shot at her. There was better coverage in the trees, but they might be even more dangerous than leaving herself wide open for attack.
There were no leaves on the trees. Their empty and rotting branches swayed dangerously in the wind. The sound of the wood creaking and the wind rushing through the decaying plants would prevent her from hearing an ambush, but at least the sound would give her a better chance at sneaking up on Azazel.
Behind her, the doorway she had just entered through sputtered out. She wanted to be surprised. She wanted to be scared. Without that doorway, she had no hope of escaping with her life. No hope of survival.
She felt nothing. She wasn’t suicidal. She didn’t come here with the intention of dying. She had come for the sole purpose of killing Azazel. No more and no less.
She just didn’t see any benefit to her surviving. Kier had set her up, thinking she would back down from this fight. Screw him. She would have Azazel’s head on a plate.
He had hunted Samuel for years. He had weakened the walls between all realms, had incited the vampire war that was quietly raging on Earth. He had sent assassins to her home.
This fight was personal, and as she was running her blade through his chest, she would imagine it was Kier dying in front of her.
Maybe then Ava would forgive her. Maybe then she could forgive herself.
The rage and grief tried to sneak back, but Muriel refused to let it in. She shook her head to clear her mind and forged ahead.
The ground was covered with scattered vegetation, but the loose sand underneath was very visible. No sunlight ever shone in Hell, so it was a wonder that there was any vegetation at all.
Muriel carefully stepped around the strange-looking plants while she kept her eyes and ears open for any sign of movement.
Every few steps, she could swear something rustled in the grass like snakes crawling through the sand, but she never saw anything come toward her.
She walked for half an hour before she fully understood the wrongness surrounding her. Her eyes lied. The mansion had looked so close when she had arrived, but even after walking what had to be two miles, she wasn’t much closer to her goal.
She finally reached the dark cover of the trees, but the constant noises around her kept her on edge.
Every movement of the plant life reminded her she was behind enemy lines. Every rustle of wind through the creaking trees had her convinced that an attack from above was imminent.
She was looking up in the trees for a possible threat when something wrapped around her ankle.
Whatever it was yanked her ba
ckward; she tumbled forward. Tucking her sword so she wouldn’t impale herself, Muriel turned to land on her shoulder. The sand was soft enough that the fall didn’t hurt, but the small sticks and stones buried in the sand sure as hell packed a punch. The pain didn’t let up as she was dragged over the rough sand.
Muriel twisted to see what had such a strong grip on her, readying her sword to strike, but all she saw above her was night sky. As she looked down at her ankle, her eyes widened in horror at the sight. She was being attacked by a damn plant!
Fuck this. She slammed her sword into the sand, piercing down into more solid dirt to give her much-needed leverage and stopping the plant from pulling her farther. Tightly gripping the embedded sword, Muriel raised herself up and called her hellfire. She sent a moderate blast at the vine, refusing to be afraid of a plant, no matter how sentient.
Apparently Hell’s plants were a bit different than the ones in her garden in Arkansas, because when the fire hit the thick bark ripping into her pants and skin, the plant didn’t burn and recoil as expected. The bark expanded and broke apart; new growth pushed its way out of the former shell as an even bigger and stronger vine started to wind its way up her leg.
Another vine found her other ankle and started to pull her in a different direction. It was as though two different demonic plants fought over her like dogs fight over a chew toy. She grabbed at one of the six knives strapped to her waist but couldn’t reach the vines.
With the pressure trying to pull her away from the sword, there was no way she could pull it out of the dirt. As the two vines decided to try to split her like a wishbone, Muriel released her death grip on the hilt of her blade and jammed the five-inch silver dagger into the biggest vine.
The good news was that the plants were not immune to pain. The vine immediately recoiled from the wound and released her leg. The bad news was that a bunch of its friends had somehow become aware of the fresh meat and had joined the feeding frenzy.
One tentacle-like vine wrapped around her left wrist. It was smaller than the one around her still trapped leg, and she easily cut the end off.
While she was distracted with killing that one, another tentacle wrapped around the leg she had just freed, and a thick, arm-like one wrapped around her waist.
Well, now she was worried. She kept on cutting and stabbing, but every time she hurt one, two more would show up to grab her. One of her wrists was finally dragged down to the soil, leaving her only one free arm and no room to twist around. She was pinned to the rocky, cold desert sand as her body was covered by the attacking plants. Instead of fighting over her, they were now dragging her somewhere.
She looked back to see the retreating form of her sword stuck in the ground. She felt no fear. Just the cold rage that anything would dare to stop her on her mission. She tightened her muscles as she used all her considerable strength and tried to break the vines surrounding her. After drinking Kier’s blood just hours ago, she still felt the effects.
Before she had a chance to see whether her super strength could break the vine’s hold around her, she was caught in a downpour of freezing cold water.
In a flash, all the vines withered and retreated away from her as suddenly as they had appeared. Muriel sputtered and wiped the water from her eyes as she looked up and into the eyes of a demon.
Not just any demon. She’d seen this one before. “Are you here to kill me?”
Teryn looked down at her. An empty bucket dangled from his hand. “It doesn’t look like you need my help for that.”
Muriel pushed herself up and willed herself not to shiver from the combined chill of the wind and her soaking wet clothes. “But if you did, you would get the bounty, wouldn’t you?”
Teryn simply shrugged. “It’s been brought to my attention that it’s stupid to accept a reward from someone who you know is about to die.”
Well, at least he thought she stood a chance against Azazel. Muriel skeptically looked him over, trying to decide whether he was telling the truth. He looked like most demons. Tall, muscle-bound, with dark hair and dark eyes. He and Kier could have been mistaken for brothers if they were in the same room together.
The thought of Kier sent a pang of anger through her heart. She felt her hellfire tingle for release, the anger threatening her control.
She needed to stop thinking about him. “So in Hell, the plants thrive on fire but are chased away by water? What kind of logic is that?”
“Just the cold water. They hate the cold. They seek out anything with body heat and will tear their way inside to keep warm. Since angels typically run a few degrees higher than humans or demons, they are a good guard dog for the castle.”
“Well, getting killed by weeds wasn’t on the agenda for tonight, so thanks for the interference.” It felt strange to thank him. Just a day ago, he had been trying to kill Samuel back at the base. Just a day ago, Kier had stopped him to save Samuel’s life.
As though he knew who she was thinking about, Teryn asked, “Why are you here alone?”
“Kier killed Samuel.” The words sounded wrong. Impossible. If someone had told her that her lover would betray her in such a heinous way, she never would’ve believed it. But she had seen it with her own eyes.
“That doesn’t sound like him.”
Muriel was overcome with the urge to hug the big demon in front of her. She’d been kicking herself for being such a fool. For trusting a demon. Finally there was someone to back up her claims that murder was out of character for him.
Muriel kept her face blank and looked over her shoulder to her sword. “I’m going to kill him,” she said softly.
“Well, that would be a shame since I’m pretty sure he’s in love with you.”
Teryn and Muriel walked for hours. There was no way to tell the time for sure. Hell had no sunrise or sunset to measure the passing of time. Only the slow changing landscapes were what told her she was making any progress at all.
Teryn informed her that Azazel’s home was protected by many magical barriers, the vines only being the tip of the iceberg. Everything was designed to kill. Her eyes lied to her about the distance. The wind rendered her enhanced sense of hearing and smell useless. If it wasn’t for Teryn, she probably wouldn’t have made it past the first vines that attacked.
They were not the last. Every fifteen minutes or so, another vine, which Teryn called “feelers,” would reach out of the darkness to rub against her arm or wrap around a leg.
Demons had a perfect defense mechanism. They simply transported away. Instead of fighting them off, Teryn would simply grab her arm and transport her ten feet away from the feeler.
She asked him why he didn’t just transport her to Azazel; he told her that Azazel would feel the amount of power required to move too far, and no demons could transport in or out of the mansion without Azazel’s knowledge and permission.
That was when he laid another bombshell on her. Hellfire wasn’t accessible to anyone but Azazel inside the devil’s mansion. “Kier couldn’t have mentioned that sooner?” she angrily exclaimed.
“He probably thought he had more time to teach you these things.” Teryn softly defended Kier every time Muriel spoke against him. It was getting tiring. She wanted to scream and curse her anger, but the various dangers hiding in the dark woods kept her constrained.
She was stuck relying on an enemy to keep her safe.
He maintained that he was helping her due to a sudden realization that Azazel was a lost cause. It was stupid to fight against a prophecy, and if the prophecy predicted that Muriel would kill Azazel, he wanted to stick with the winning party.
It might have made sense if she hadn’t seen him trying to kill her best friend just a day ago. Neither human nor demon changed sides that quickly.
Well, except for Kier. He sure as hell changed his tune quick enough.
Her hellfire crackled beneath her skin, begging for release. She focused her gaze on the mansion. “Is it just me or are we actually getting closer?”
In the past ten minutes, the mansion managed to look about a quarter of a mile closer.
“We must’ve passed the illusion wards in place. The plants shouldn’t be much of a hassle anymore.”
Muriel shivered at the reminder. Even if she did survive this, no matter how many centuries passed, she would never forget the sensation of being pulled to her doom by that cursed forest.
She stared at the lights of the mansion over Teryn’s shoulder. He had been leading the way for the past few hours. He knew better than her where to step. Every now and then, she could swear he turned in the opposite direction of the lights, but he assured her that it was all part of the illusion.
Her small amount of trust in him had paid off. She smiled at her victory. She had made it into Hell and conquered a cursed forest. If she hadn’t just done it, she might not have believed it possible.
Not bursting into flames was victory enough. Teryn had been amazed by that. He pestered her with questions about how she had made it into Hell for a full mile before she gave in and told him anything he wanted to know.
“You don’t seem like an angel who has drunk demon blood,” he muttered while he stared at her in amazement.
That caused Muriel to stop in her tracks. “You have met a fallen addicted to demon blood? What are they usually like?”
Teryn shrugged. “Exactly like you’ve heard about. Out of their minds with the need to be stronger and powerful. Not able to realize that in their addicted state they are weaker than ever. If you were truly addicted, though, you would have probably already offered yourself to me in exchange for blood.” That was in line with everything she'd heard about the blood addicted fallen.
Teryn continued, “Usually if a demon refuses a fallen their blood, they are immediately, and clumsily, attacked. You don’t seem like you want any of my blood, and judging by your skirmish with the plants back there, I don’t think your fighting would be that clumsy.”
Muriel was skeptical about that. “I don’t think you could really call me skilled after seeing how quickly they kicked my ass.”
