Hell Bound

by Maribel Fox

  But also beautiful in its other-worldly eeriness.

  He’s got nine, thick, fluffy tails swishing around behind him, and he ducks his head, looking away from us all in shame.

  “No one’s going to be able to stomach kissing me like this, it’s useless,” he says, one of those nine tails wrapping around to cover his eyes.

  I cluck my tongue, chuckling and shaking my head.

  “Really, Izzy? You think so little of me?” I ask, stepping up to him, stroking my fingers through his fur. He shudders, looking down and away again.

  “You don’t have to—”

  “Yo quiero,” I whisper. Not just for Lili, but for him. He’s so convinced he’s a monster like this, that no one can even stand to look at him.

  Sound familiar?

  I shove that thought aside and kiss him, the moment I do being ripped out of normal existence.

  “What the—” I murmur, all alone suddenly in a big empty space. That’s it. Emptiness as far as I can see. The floor beneath my feet is shiny and black, but there are no walls, no ceiling, no furniture or people.

  “Hello? Is?” I call, my voice disappearing into the void.

  “Okay, think,” I mutter to myself. Ku said something about a mental challenge, this must be it.

  But what’s the trick here?

  I start walking, pick a random direction and just go. The black mirror finish of the floor fades, morphing into the warm wood panels of the B&B’s flooring.

  I’m at the front desk of Brigid’s, and no one’s in sight.

  Is it over?

  I head to the living room, wondering if everyone’s still gathered there, but it’s only the Faerie Queen and her little brother on the couch. I clear my throat.

  “Excuse me, but have you seen—”

  They both turn to look at me and Ava’s eyes go wide as she shrieks and pulls her brother into her chest. “Ian, don’t look!” she cries, recoiling away from me.

  Ice washes through me, a million memories rushing back, a thousand instances just like this — crying, screaming, running in fear.

  I start to retreat, muttering apologies, but then I stop at the doorway, frowning.

  “I don’t mean to bother you, but have you seen Iseul?” I ask.

  “Get out, dark one!” she screeches at me, shielding her brother. “You’re not welcome here!”

  “Ava? What’s wrong?” Raj asks, barreling into the room, his face etched with worry.

  He stops dead in his tracks when he sees me, disgust flashing through his eyes before he averts them.

  “Who let that thing in here?” he sneers.

  Ian starts crying.

  “Make him leave,” he sobs, clinging to Ava as Raj moves in protectively.

  I hear the others coming, Ava’s other men ready to join the defense. I start to back out of the room, hands held up.

  “I’m just looking for Izzy,” I say, but they’re yelling and screaming, and then Ava tosses a book at me and I flee, running up the stairs.

  “Is! Izzy, please!” I call, desperation clawing at my throat.

  It’s not real. It’s not.

  Right?

  I don’t know. It feels real, the tightness in my throat certainly is.

  “Ku!” I cry, relieved as I run into the big guy. “I need your help.”

  Ku gives me a startled look, says nothing, and scurries down the stairs.

  “But…” I swallow back a hopeless cry. I can’t give up this easy. He’s got to be here somewhere. I need to find him and… do something? I don’t know. I probably should have asked for more clarification before setting out on this, but I didn’t expect the mental challenge to be so… challenging.

  Shadows move on the walls independent of anything else, clawing at my memories, dredging up things I’d rather not remember. I’m in a hallway that looks like it belongs at the B&B, but it just keeps going, and when I open a door, looking for Is, all I find are more shadows, reaching out for me, trying to draw me in. And when they fail to draw me in, they start to seep out, flowing like water from under the doors, rising up like smoke to form the too-familiar shapes.

  “Why are you doing this?” I scream at it, knowing it won’t do me any good. These are my shadows.

  A kitten runs through, swallowed up by the monsters.

  The monsters I created.

  The monsters I used to kill. To bring down death and destruction on Cortez’s men. They perverted my shadows, the way I made them dance and brought joy to people destroyed by the need for power. The need for a better weapon of war.

  Overnight, I went from the prince of flowers to the bringer of darkness.

  And they’re not going to let me forget it.

  “What was I supposed to do?” I cry, dropping to my knees, the stench of blood thick in the air, the sounds of a thousand screams echoing in my ears. My powers are made for death and destruction. There’s no getting around it, and it’ll always make me a monster.

  The shadow creatures swarm around me, snarling and lunging, but they can’t get me. They can’t attack me. Their presence is the attack.

  I am the one standing in my own way.

  Lili would never let someone control her like this. She would double down, get even more stubborn, and barrel through more determined than ever.

  “Damn right,” I mutter, a growl to myself to snap the hell out of it.

  It’s an effort and a half, but I manage to stand, staring down the snarling shadow creatures. I take a breath, and step forward, waiting for them to block my advance. Instead, they part for me, making a clear path to a door at the end of the hall.

  Another deep breath, and I push the door open. A sigh of relief escapes my lips when I see him.

  “Izzy,” I say with a big grin. His back is to me, but there’s no mistaking him, not in a million years, even when he is Iseul and not the fox-demon thing.

  “Excuse me?” he asks, turning around scowling. His scowl deepens when he sees me, and he staggers back, face scrunched, repelled by me.

  “Get away from me, you disgusting thing,” he says, turning away from me.

  “Is, what are you saying?”

  “What part is confusing you? You nauseate me. You’re hideous. Light doesn’t even want to touch you, why would I?”

  The rejection is everything I’ve always feared; he’s echoing the words I’ve been telling myself for centuries, and yet…

  “No,” I say.

  He stops, glaring at me, baring his teeth. “No?”

  “No,” I repeat. “That is not how Izzy would ever talk to me.” It still hurts like hell coming from this projection or whatever it is of him, but I know it’s not real. He would never be so cruel.

  “Where is he? The real Iseul.”

  Fake-Iseul’s face breaks into a distressingly wide grin, spreading and spreading further across his face like his head is going to split in half.

  All at once, like a soap bubble popping, he disappears, and there’s a whole bedroom left in his wake, a room that wasn’t really here until I decided to look at it. Standing by the window, nine tails all swishing as one, is fox-demon Is.

  I swallow thickly, praying and hoping that this is really him. I don’t know how much more of this I can take.

  “Please, Izzy,” I mutter, stepping up behind him, holding my breath. He turns to look at me, red eyes blinking.

  “Ocho?”

  My heart jumps into my throat, more hopeful than I have any right to be with how things are going here.

  “I’m gonna kiss you now,” I tell him, moving in closer.

  He looks away, turning his cheek to my lips. “You don’t want to do that,” he insists. “Look at me.”

  “I am,” I say. “And I still want to kiss you… If you’re not too put off by me,” I say, actually teasing about it this time. Other people might still be a challenge for me to accept their acceptance, but Izzy? I know where I stand with him.

  “Of course not, bu—”

  I kiss him bef
ore he can try to argue with me anymore. I kiss him, and the jolt back to my actual body makes me stagger, Is and I both stumbling, only staying upright because Ku reaches out to support us.

  He gives me a look and a nod. “Ask,” he whispers.

  Right. I’m supposed to get the answer to a question.

  I take a deep breath, consider the wording, and finally ask, “What is the best path forward to ensure the happiest result?”

  Is’s eyes glow brighter and redder, like they’re lit from within, and when he talks, it’s not his voice, but some ethereal monotone: Follow luck’s creature In Between.

  32

  Iseul

  Everyone’s staring at me and I don’t think it’s because I’m a crazy-looking fox-demon. I blink and shift back to being human, looking around for some explanation. I remember Ocho kissing me — first here, then in the vision — and that’s where we’re at.

  “What?” I finally ask.

  “Follow luck’s creature in between…” Ku mutters to himself, pacing in front of the fireplace that’s strung with garland, stocking hanging from the mantle.

  “What?” I ask again.

  “That’s what you said,” Ocho explains. “That was your answer.”

  “What’s ‘luck’s creature’?” asks Maal, brow furrowed in thought.

  “I need to look something up,” Ku says, leaving in a hurry to head upstairs. We all look after him, but it’s Dima that trudges up the stairs without saying anything.

  “Guess we should see what he’s onto,” I say, still feeling a little strange after everything.

  “You okay?” Ocho asks as Maal goes up ahead of us.

  I nod, giving him a studious look. “You?”

  “Actually… Yeah,” he says with a little smile. “I think I really am.”

  I have no idea what kind of challenge Ocho had to endure to get his question answered, but he seems a little different now. More at ease, maybe?

  “What is it?” I hear Maal asking eagerly.

  “I have to read it first,” Ku answers, sounding testy. He gets like that when he’s onto something. Anything that distracts from his books is unnecessary and a nuisance.

  Ku glares at the book and tosses it aside, snatching another off his shelf, flipping through it furiously.

  “What are you looking for, can we help?” I ask, stepping in. I’m perhaps the one person he won’t snap at right now.

  “I know I read something…” he mutters, flinging the book in his hands, grabbing yet another.

  “About luck’s creature?” I ask.

  “No,” he says. “No, that’s you—”

  “What?”

  He sighs, giving me a long-suffering look.

  “’Luck’s creature’ refers to the fox, I’m sure. But in between… I know I’ve read it somewhere. It means… something.”

  “Not ‘in between,’” I say, suddenly piecing it together from stories my father told me. Though he wanted to be a good father for me, to raise me up right, he made no efforts to hide the fact that he felt he was sacrificing a great deal to do so. That he couldn’t wait until I was old enough he could return to being a Kumiho full-time.

  Back to the bloodthirsty demon that can travel In Between.

  “In Between is a place, not a path.”

  Ku looks up, startled I think, that I might know something he doesn’t.

  “I can’t… I have no idea how to get there,” I mutter.

  “Here!” Ku cries, slamming the book down. “I couldn’t find it again because it’s under ‘Shadowlands’ in this book. ‘Also known as In Between, the realm is accessible to few creatures capable of metaphysical state.”

  “Uh… What?” asks Maal.

  “We are to travel Shadowlands?” Dima asks skeptically. “To get to Hell? Why not portal?”

  Ku makes a face. “I don’t know, but the Kumiho said this is the path to the happiest end result. It won’t be wrong.”

  “I don’t know if this is a good idea. I don’t know anything about In Between — how am I supposed to lead you through?”

  “Instincts, Izzy,” Ocho says, nodding at me, his sage green eyes making me believe maybe I can do this crazy impossible thing.

  “I believe if you focus on Lili, it will help guide the portal you open,” Ku says. “Portals generally operate the same, regardless of the realm.”

  I don’t like the idea of this at all. I feel like it’s a bad idea to open up the Shadowlands when I don’t know what I’m doing, but this is the answer we got from the frenching magic, so… who am I to argue?

  “You can do it,” Ocho says.

  I blow out a heavy breath and shake my head.

  “This has got to be the worst idea we’ve had yet—”

  He snorts. “Not worse than me running after Lili and nearly getting me and Dima killed, surely.”

  I don’t say it out loud, but I feel like this could kill us all, not just two of us.

  “Uh… Let’s all hold hands,” I say. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I feel like we all need to be connected and thinking about Lili together. I don’t have a good enough handle on this to do it on my own.

  “Okay, let’s all think about getting to Lili,” I tell them, and Ocho squeezes my hand reassuringly as I screw my eyes shut tight and focus harder than I ever have before.

  Suddenly, I feel air being sucked in around me and open my eyes, a huge black hole yawning open in front of us. It’s so dark inside, but there are shapes moving, shadowy tendrils licking out around the mouth of the portal, trying to escape.

  Dima shifts, his great wolf nothing more than a shadow — something I didn’t know he could do — and Ocho follows suit, phasing in and out between shadow and solid form.

  “Stupid collar,” he grumbles. “Can’t wait to get this maldito thing off of me.”

  Ku shifts to stoneshape, his body made of rock rather than flesh for the time, and Maal concentrates, his fists freezing over.

  They’re all looking to me, and reluctantly, I shift back to the fox-demon. Now is not the time for vanity.

  “For Lili!” Ocho cries, and we all charge into the portal together, darkness closing around us in an instant, Ku’s room, the B&B, Lupine Bay — all of it left behind.

  “What the—” I say, but I don’t. Nothing comes out. Not a sound. Not a peep. Not even a whisper of my breath. It’s silent — deafeningly so, and I feel like my head might explode from the quiet of it.

  I look at the others and they’re just as alarmed by the silence, but all looking to me.

  I’m supposed to be leading the way. Not that I know where to go, but we opened the portal with a place in mind. Maybe we just have to get to the other side. I give the other guys a stiff nod and set off, but as soon as the others start to follow me, the shadows attack. They’re not real shapes, not beasts or animals, just whips snapping out at us, tendrils trying to grab us, trip us. One wraps around Maal’s ankles and hoists him into the air. He flails wildly, mouth open with a silent call for help.

  There’s nothing I can do for him; I’m wrestling with what might as well be an anaconda as it tries to wrap around me, squeezing air out of my lungs. I slash at it with my claws, but they slip right through the air. Maal’s having the same problem with his ice, nothing landing, nothing hurting them, and Ku is getting piled on, shadows swarming in from all over to cover him, smothering him.

  I know we need to just keep moving forward, I know that’s the answer, but how can we? Even Dima, who’s a shadow-wolf has his hackles raised, lips curling back with a silent growl as the shadows dance around him on all sides, hitting him on one side, then the other, toying with him.

  Only Ocho isn’t being attacked, the shadows don’t go near him here, even though everywhere else they cling to him. Here, they’re repelled by him, and it’s not long before I see why.

  Ocho isn’t cloaked in shadow — he’s pouring out light. It’s dim at first, a wavering, flickering shimmer that grows. It doesn’t get terribly brig
ht, and I can tell he’s struggling to maintain it, but it’s enough. He brings the shadows to a heel, racing off in all directions, desperate to get away from even his feeble glow. Maal falls from where he was being dangled in the air, and it’s Dima there to catch him — or at least break the fall.

  The shadows smothering Ku have fled, but he’s staring after them, torn between what’s happening with Ocho and what’s happening with the shadows. There’s no time for him to stand here studying. I shove him, his hulking stone form not budging at all, but it gets his attention. I gesture at Ocho, the light fading out fast, shadows already starting to creep back in, and he gets the message.

  All together we run full tilt, charging forward, not taking any time to look where we’re going or think about direction. I’m leading, but only by a bit. In my peripheral, I can see all four of them, all of us running together like a pack. I let out a spontaneous yip, but of course, the sound is lost. It doesn’t matter. The feeling isn’t. The feeling like we’re in this together and we’re going to take down anything to save our woman.

  A thin, shimmering ring of light is the only warning we have of the exit portal before we all go spilling out into a large, well-appointed study.

  Right in front of Lili, with a sword pointed at the throat of a man cowering on the ground, bleeding. Lili’s a picture of rage and vengeance, chest heaving, eyes wild. At our arrival, she turns, jaw dropping.

  33

  Lili

  The moment I’m back in Hell, I regret it.

  Well, partially, at least. I know this is necessary. I know Ku was trying to let me down gently, but this is the only way I’m going to get this damn collar off, and the longer I go with it on, with Valephar still having the key, the more crazy it’s going to drive me.

  I’m not waiting any longer.

  But being down here again now, after being up in Lupine Bay for a couple days, is making me question my resolve to stay in Hell forever.

  Maal’s right — this place is bleak. And I don’t appreciate that I can’t look up. What’s that even about? Some bullshit magic put in place just to control how we think.