Melting into the shadows, Emily leaned against the wall. She pressed shaking fingers over her mouth, her shoulders wracked by dry sobs. The centaur could have captured her. It could have stabbed her with its stinger or impaled her on a pike.
Why hadn’t it? Why did it bow? What did it mean?
She scrubbed her eyes with her knuckles, and then looked around. She was not in a short hallway as she expected. In one direction, the torch-lined passage stretched for a good twenty-five yards before bending out of sight. To the right, however, it went only a few paces, ending at a stairwell.
Notching an arrow, Emily climbed the stairs. Her muscles felt as taut as her bowstring. She reached a landing and, hugging the wall, met a darkened doorway. She needed to cross the entrance in order to continue up the stairs.
Beyond the doorjamb, she saw a shadowed antechamber with a larger room beyond. A window glowed orange. Emily recognized the fiery aura around the lake of fire. No silhouettes marred the light. No movement disturbed the space.
Was this the room the woman spoke of? The place where she saw her little girl? Emily closed her eyes, pushing fear to the back of her mind. She was getting closer.
With her bow gripped tight, she darted across the doorway and up the stairs on the other side. She glanced over her shoulder, memorizing her route.
On the next floor, she heard muffled weeping. Light pooled beneath flickering torches. The ceiling billowed with webs crowded with dark many-legged spiders.
Keeping near the wall, Emily crept down the bright and shadowy passage. Doors stood to either side. They had small, circular windows covered with iron bars. Even standing on tiptoe, Emily could not see through them.
So it was a surprise when a door burst open. Emily stifled a cry and jumped behind it, trying to suppress her fright. Six demons stepped into the hall. The room they left was bright. Light shone through the entrance like a spotlight. One had a leashed hellhound. The dog whined and strained at its chain. Emily was certain it knew she was there.
The group chatted jovially as they made their way down the passage. Emily peered around the door. Four of the demons and the hound went down a staircase at the end of the hall. Two hesitated as if remembering something. While one of the fiends waited at the stairs, the other returned.
Emily eased into the shadows, scarcely breathing. The demon called into the room, conversing with an unseen being, and as he did so, he grabbed the edge of the door. Emily stared at his thick, yellow claws. She had an image of similar claws grasping her daughter around the neck and holding her in the air like a doll. Anger and hatred surged through her.
The empathic fiend, perhaps sensing her flare of emotion, glanced through the window and saw her. He roared.
In a single fluid movement, Emily leapt up, swung her arm, and plunged her knife through the window. The blade sank into his temple. The demon’s roar changed to a yelp. He shook the door. The knife handle would not fit through the bars. It effectively pinned him.
As Grandfather taught her, she tightened her focus like an arrowhead. She stepped from behind the door, facing the demon still standing at the stairs, and put two arrows into his throat before he could move. He teetered for a moment, holding his neck, and then toppled backward down the staircase.
Emily groaned, thoughts whirling. She had to retrieve her arrows, had to hide the body. She stepped into the light falling from the doorway when she remembered the unseen demon still in the room.
Tables arranged in rows filled the room. People in various states of dismemberment lay upon the tables. They writhed and wept. A demon stood in the center of the room, staring at her as if mesmerized.
Emily took it in with a glance. Her gaze fell upon the figure the demon was shielding. All she saw was a small foot—like a child’s foot.
“April.” Emily ran into the room, tugging the sword from the back of her coat where it was sheathed.
The demon stepped back. He held a small knife in his gore-covered hands.
Emily swung her sword, and the blade hummed. It sliced through the demon’s outstretched arm, sending his hand and the knife sailing. Maroon blood sprayed the air.
She swung again, drawing a dark line across his chest. He stumbled against the table. She stepped closer, hacking at him, ruled by fury. Hot blood spattered her face. With each blow, the demon sank a little lower until he was eye-to-eye with Emily. His gaze held dazed surprise.
With the strength of her hatred, she brought the blade down, decapitating him. As if a spell were broken, she dropped the sword and stared in astonishment at what she’d done.
Her coat dripped with blood. Her arms trembled with exertion. Remembering why she was there, she tore her eyes from the grisly sight and looked at the figure upon the table.
It was not April lying there. It was a small man. She stared, her emotions balled up, not sure if she resented him for tricking her or pitied him. Pity won.
He looked as if a line were drawn from the top of his head to his groin, splitting him in two. One side looked reasonably normal, but the other was stripped of all skin and muscle, showing clean white bone. Emily saw his heart and lungs inside his ribcage. His heart did not beat.
But his eyes moved, and as they met her gaze, the man whispered, “Run.”
Emily knew it was sage advice, but she couldn’t leave him there. She took the caretaker wand from her quiver and disintegrated the man.
Her bloody sword was on the floor, and she grabbed it as she rushed from the room. The demon with her knife still hung from the door. His hands twitched. Emily grasped him by the horns and pulled. The knife gave way with a wet, squelching sound. The demon crumpled.
She wiped her knife on the edge of the door, and ran down the hall. She planned to go down a flight and retrieve her arrows—but voices were coming up the staircase.
Panic twisted her stomach. Emily spun, looking for a place to hide. She saw bloody boot prints leading to where she stood.
Cloven feet thundered up the stairs.
FORTY-EIGHT
The demons were coming for her. She’d made a mistake shooting that bastard in the neck and not recovering the body. Now they knew she was there. They were looking for her. With a muffled sob, she leapt for the shadows of the upward-leading staircase.
A group of hell-spawn clambered onto the floor. They approached the demon lying in the doorway. Light framed the body, showing a puddle of blood from the knife wound to his head.
Panic-stricken, Emily backed up the stairs. The onlookers gathered around the body. Then two newcomers stepped into view, and she froze.
They towered at least a head taller than the tallest demon. Their heavy black horns curved from the sides of their heads wider than their shoulders. They wore gleaming, metal gauntlets with raised blades like a frill of feathers down the back of their forearms.
Super demons.
One toed the body as if expecting it to leap to its feet. The other ran a discerning gaze about the hallway. They held the disciplined air of trained security forces. Were these the creatures who would be tracking her? Not demons on vacation but hell’s elite?
Emily reeled beneath waves of sick fear. She had to run, had to escape, but she couldn’t lift her feet.
The group filed into the room, and she flinched, awaiting their shout of alarm at finding the demon she butchered.
Run,
she pleaded inwardly, but her legs were like lead, her arms numb. She watched, eyes wide, as one of the guards noticed her bloody footprints and followed them to the stairs. Terror rose like vomit up her throat. Her head swooned. The sword slipped, and she gasped, snatching it. The guard looked at her.
Emily dashed up the stairs. She heard voices and the sounds of pursuit behind her. At a wide corridor, she paused. Shadows danced in the flickering light. With the sword held high, she ran down the hallway, lopping off the heads of torches, putting out the flames on one side of the corridor. At the end, she found a stone block wall, not the staircase she expected. Wind coursed through the brick like it was whistling through its teeth.
She glanced down an adjoining hall. Apprehension swelled within her. Starshine warned that the upper floors were a mass of mazes. She saw herself running, helplessly lost.
The two guards stepped onto the floor. Emily pressed into the niche of a doorway. She held the sword up, the flat of the blade against her forehead, willing her arms to stop trembling.
The demons moved toward her in the gloom. They were so tall their massive horns stirred the spider webs hanging from the ceiling. Besides the gauntlets, they wore only leather thongs that hung in tails behind them.
Halfway down the hall, one guard turned back. The other continued walking. He stopped in front of her, not a pace away, looking about as if not knowing she was there. He was close enough for her to hear the rasp of his breath, see the gleam of his armored body.
Then he saw her.
With an upward thrust, Emily jabbed the sword beneath his jaw. His bony cleft chin deflected the blade through his throat and into his skull. Blood spurted over her hand. He went limp, tipping onto her, threatening to smother her with his weight.
She shoved him away. With her foot against his mid-section, she yanked her sword free. He fell backward as if in slow motion, hitting the floor with a heavy thud. She stepped over the body.
Raising his voice in a war cry, the second demon rushed her. Emily swung her sword overhead. With all her might, she slashed down, hoping to cleave him in two.
The edge struck with a painful jarring clang. She staggered to the side. Her sword had met the fiend’s metal gauntlet and caught in the frill of blades along its back. She wondered if the gauntlet was constructed of the same material as the sword.
With a deft movement, he twisted his arm, wrenching the weapon from her grasp, sending it clattering behind him. At the same time, his other hand caught her with an uppercut. She flew down the hall, bounced off the whistling wall and hit the floor. On her stomach, she writhed and struggled to take a breath. Her chest stung where the gauntlet sliced through her coat.
Vaguely, she was aware of doors springing open and figures moving on either side of the hall. Voices mixed with the buzzing in her head. Blurry eyed, she watched the approach of the guard’s cloven feet, his muscular legs, the swaying bulge of his thong.
He lunged, snatching at her hair, but Emily avoided his grasp. She flipped onto her back, pulled the caretaker wand from her quiver and plunged it into his groin. Light flashed, and he bellowed like a castrated bull, doubling over.
Emily crab-walked out of the way as he dropped to his knees. She leapt to her feet, menacing the air with her stubby wand, glaring at the demons now lining the hall. They stared in silence.
She backed away. Her attacker remained kneeling, holding his smoldering gonads. His partner lay in a puddle behind him. Farther away, her beloved sword was lost to darkness.
With her eyes on the dumbstruck vacationers, she entered the adjoining hall, walking sideways, her pace increasing until she was running as fast as she could.
FORTY-NINE
Satan lay in his bed in his penthouse suite listening to the fire roar in the hearth and the wind howl through the shutters. Soon the wind would die and the land would become frozen and silent. It was his favorite time of year.
He rolled onto his side and ran a delicate claw over his plaything. She panted fast, making little mewing noises, eyes wide and unblinking.
Catatonic. Satan enjoyed catatonia. It soothed his nerves.
“My lord,” said a voice. His chief executor stood in the doorway.
“There you are, Marbas. It took you long enough. Did you speak with Abaddon?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Excellent.” He rose from bed, dragging the young woman with him, and crossed the wide room to the window. Wind burst inside as he threw open the shutter. “Sometimes a little shock wakes them up,” he said and tossed the woman out. He gazed down seven stories at her sprawled, torch lit body. “Sometimes not.” He chortled, and then realized he was the only one laughing. He closed the window and poured himself a goblet of vitriol wine. “Report. What does the centaur say happened to my moat?”
“He said the deity dried it up. It offended her.”
Satan paused. “Deity?”
Marbas went on in a rush, as if hoping to say as much as he could before being forever silenced. “King Abaddon saw her himself. Others saw her as well. They say she rose from the lake of fire and entered the castle.”
“She is inside?”
“Yes, my lord. King Abaddon saw her in the delivery room. Patrons lay in dream state at her feet. An aura surrounds the dungeons. One cannot approach without succumbing to rapture. King Abaddon says those fleeing the cold through the tunnels cannot enter the castle because the chambers beneath the dungeons are filled.”
Moving like the bitter wind, Satan crossed the room in two strides. He grabbed Marbas about his neck and lifted him from the floor. “Did Abaddon say what this deity looks like?”
Marbas wheezed. “She looks like one of them.” He motioned to the window.
Satan threw him against the wall. “It’s not the deity, you fool. It’s
her.
”
He paced. He’d never come upon one like her before. Why didn’t she fear him? How did she invade his realm? He returned to his wine and downed the cup.
Deity. He had to dispel that rumor.
He
was the Lord of Hell. She was nothing but an enraged mother searching for her pup.
Satan smiled. “The gift I obtained for Chancellor Adramelech’s newling. Is it still in the tower?”
“Yes, my lord. Shall I retrieve it for you?”
“No.” His smile broadened, and he poured another goblet of wine. “Send an entire contingent. And Marbas…make sure they’re armed.”
FIFTY