Cast in Hellfire: An Urban Fantasy Romance (The Mage Craft Series Book 2) (13 page)

“Holy crap,” Seth said.

The dog looked at him, mouth closed and throat distended with the mass of the demon that it had devoured. Its long tongue licked its chops.

Konig hacked through the last of the surviving demons, slicing a man from nether to shoulder. His upper half slid sideways off of his body. There was nothing inside but a sludgy black mass that might have been organs.

The only survivor was Arawn, and he didn’t look good. He was sitting in a puddle of his own fluids. He was struggling to move.

The dog bowed its head to the demon to keep eating.

Konig glanced at the dog, and then at Seth. He seemed to be trying to decide if he wanted to save Seth or go after Arawn.

After an instant of hesitation, Konig attacked the dog.

It was sluggish from its oversized meal and didn’t stand a chance of escaping. The dog barely dragged itself three steps before Konig cut it open. The demon it had eaten spilled out of its belly.

Distracted by the dog, Konig didn’t see Arawn phasing across the ballroom. He reappeared on the throne with a swirl of black smoke.

“No!” Seth teleported too. He crossed the distance in a heartbeat, and he dragged Marion out of the demon’s reach.

Arawn wasn’t looking for his pound of flesh, though.

He wrapped an arm around Charity’s throat.

“You miserable child,” Arawn hissed at Konig, blood spraying from his shattered nose. “You stupid little
asshole
.”

Charity turned wide, terrified eyes on Seth. “Doctor?”

“I’ll see you sacks of shit in Duat.” Arawn swept his arm under Charity’s legs, holding her against his chest.

He vanished, taking the revenant with him.

A
rawn and Charity
appeared in a room of crumbling stone in the space of a blink.

She hurled herself away from him, out of his arms.

“Seth!”

Charity stumbled on a piece of uneven floor. The landing shocked through her body.

“Relax,” Arawn rasped. “They’re gone.”

She got onto her knees, eyes wide as she looked around for her friends. But he was right. They weren’t in Arawn’s tower anymore. They were in a room with no furniture, arched ceilings, and walls of obsidian. Murals depicted eerily long-legged jackals, like an entire pack of those white dogs from his home.

“Where are we?” she asked. “What did you do?”

He laughed. “What did
I
do? I’m not the asshole sidhe prince who broke his own rules!” Arawn spat onto the floor. It was more ichor than sputum. “That shithead is going to pay for what he did to me!” He flung his arms wide to show his body to her.

Arawn’s clothes were torn open to expose lengths of desiccated skin, which Konig had carved into with that massive blade. Nothing looked to be healing. Demon he may have been, but preternatural regeneration didn’t seem to be among his skills.

The slashes in his jacket revealed extensive tattoos. Until that moment, he had been covered from throat to ankles and wrists in clothes. Charity hadn't realized he would be marked. Now she could glimpse detailed illustrations over the remainder of his wrecked body.

Arawn was tattooed in suns, moons, and whirling planets, shaded with elaborate stippling. The imagery was strangely beautiful for a demon.

And Konig had cut through much of it.

Yet even though glistening ribs were exposed on one side and dried muscle dangled off his opposite shoulder, Arawn didn’t seem to be in pain. He limped over to Charity and helped her stand.

“Where am I?” Charity asked again,

“I’ve brought you to Duat,” Arawn said. “What are the chances they’ll come for you here?”

If it had been Konig and Marion alone, Charity doubted that they’d put the effort into saving her. But Seth was with them. The man once known as Dr. Lucas Flynn.

Even if he hadn’t needed Charity’s help to control his growing inner monster, and even if they hadn’t been coworkers for years, he would have saved her. He was just that kind of guy.

“Let me go,” Charity said.

Arawn physically released her, but he remained close. “I asked you a question.”

“They’ll come,” she said with no small amount of despair. “I know they’ll come.” Seth would never leave her trapped with Arawn. He was going to hunt her down to fight this hideous demon with the ripped muscles and exposed bones.

“Perfect.” He clapped his hands. “I’m here!” A pair of beetle-like demons scuttled around the corner, carapaces clicking. “Tell Nyx I’m within the walls. I want to see her.” They left, but not before Charity had to swallow down a bellyful of burning bile.

Giant beetles. Sheol was so screwed up.

Arawn offered his arm to her. “In the meantime, would you like a tour of Duat, beautiful one?”

G
etting
out of the tower to rescue Charity was only second priority. Seth’s first priority was to locate the potions in Arawn’s storeroom.

He had to walk through more bodies hanging from meat hooks, ankle-deep sludge, and crates cluttered with bones to find the potions. Arawn kept them on a shelf in the back. There were a dozen different types in a dozen shades of crimson. All were nearly indistinguishable to Seth.

“Can you tell which one’s meant to heal you?” Seth asked, handing one to Marion.

She was sitting in the dentist’s chair where Arawn had been tattooing a nightmare earlier. Konig had carried her downstairs before leaving to search for their missing weapons.

Marion held one of the vials to the light to study the consistency. “This is the one, I think.” She drank it down, and then a second identical to the first.

While her head was tipped back, Seth could see the lacy pattern of veins under her semi-translucent skin. They brightened and faded with each heartbeat.

For several long seconds after drinking the second potion, her heart didn’t beat at all. The cloying veil of death clung to her.

Then her weak heart thumped.

Seth didn’t breathe until it resumed a regular beat. He forced himself to look at her face instead of her neck, her chest, the vessels visible on the insides of her wrists. “Are you okay?”

Marion nodded, eyes screwed shut and nose wrinkled. “I should be grateful I was unconscious last time I drank these. They taste dreadful.” She tossed back a third vial before finally standing.

Seth hovered nearby, watching to see if she was going to fall.

For the first time since entering Sheol, Marion looked fine.

She wasn’t fine, though. She’d pushed death back by a few hours and no more.

“Perfect.” She picked through the remaining potions that he’d brought, discarding a handful of them and stashing the rest in a plastic bag. “These should last long enough for us to reach Duat.” She sounded much more optimistic than Seth felt.

She could take more potions when the first three began to wear off. Arawn had stored enough that Marion might be able to last a few days by taking those every time she started to feel ill again.

It didn’t change the fact that being in Sheol was killing her, slowly but surely, and Seth had a hard time thinking about anything else.

“I hope we didn’t make Arawn so angry that he shatters the Canope,” Marion said. “Dana said that breaking the vessel would allow my memories to escape, and…” Her shoulders sagged at the idea. “It would be quite the act of revenge, wouldn’t it?”

Seth was a lot more worried about poor Charity in the hands of a creepy Lord of Sheol. “I don’t think there’s a chance that Arawn will screw with the Canope. I spoke to him about it at dinner. I don’t think he bought it for fun—I think he was hired to hold on to it for some reason. Maybe even bribed.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Marion said.

“It does if someone wants to lure us to Duat.”

As she considered this information, she pulled her curls back from her face, tying them into a loose ponytail. She missed a few strands near her face. They dangled in her eyes. “What’s in Duat? Aside from the Canope, that is.”

“We’re going to find out,” Seth said grimly. “It’s not like leaving your memories there is an option.”

“Not for me,” Marion said. “You have alternatives.”

“No, I don’t. I really don’t. I’m not leaving you, Marion.” Even if leaving her might have been the best thing for her safety. Her movements had gotten Seth transfixed by her throat again, and the lingering aroma of death that wafted toward him every time she shifted.

“Oh, Seth,” Marion sighed. “You’re kinder than I deserve.”

He folded his arms tight enough that his shoulder blades ached. “Trust me, I’m not.”

Konig reentered the tattoo parlor. “I found your bow, princess.” He’d washed himself of Arawn’s blood since Seth had last seen him. He had also stolen a black t-shirt from the Lord of Sheol and wore the infernal bastard sword across his back. Konig did a great impression of a demon. “And your guns, Doctor.”

“Thanks,” Seth said. He returned his Beretta to its position in the holster under his arm. He stashed the other handgun at the small of his back.

“You’re welcome.” Konig said it so graciously, like he was doing a huge favor for them. Like Seth wouldn’t have been fully capable of locating his own damn weapons without help from a temperamental unseelie prince.

Marion threaded her belt through the quiver and slung the bow over her shoulders. “Okay. What’s our plan from here? How do we get to Duat?”

“According to Dana McIntyre’s map, the only route is directly through the Bronze Gates,” Seth said.

“Let me see,” Konig said. Seth handed the map over. The prince studied it, rubbing a hand over his upper lip. It was strange to see five o’clock shadow appearing on a sidhe’s jaw. Seth hadn’t thought they could even grow facial hair. “Unfortunately, no ley lines cross through Duat, but I can jump us across the Dead Forest. There’s a ley line here.” Konig pointed to a spot between the Bronze Gates and the river Mnemosyne.

“Seth could teleport us into Duat,” Marion said.

Konig’s brow lowered over his eyes. “You can teleport? You’re a planeswalker?”

“Yes, but no,” Seth said. “I tried to teleport out of Sheol earlier, and I can’t for some reason. I also won’t teleport Marion anywhere now. It makes her sick.”

“Then how will we get through the gates?” Marion asked, folding her arms. It looked like she was gearing up to argue with Seth.

Konig spared him from the fight. “I’ll have to do reconnaissance,” he said. “I can figure out a way in, rest assured. Even if it requires killing every demon on the wall.”

It was a stupid plan. No, worse than that—it was no plan at all. But Seth didn’t have any better suggestions, and he wouldn’t be able to come up with anything until he could study the gates in person.

Seth wasn’t confident he’d be able to come up with anything once they got there, either. Marion was a few feet away, her heart steadily fluttering along.

She was watching him. Distracting him.

Konig’s stupid non-plan was still a thousand times more useful than Seth at the moment.

“Where do we go to catch the nearest ley line?” Seth asked.

“A juncture crosses through the tower. We don’t have to go anywhere. That’s how I reached Marion without being disturbed.” Konig wrapped his arm around her shoulders, pulling her tight to his side.

“That’s poor planning for security purposes,” Marion said. “That means the sidhe could have invaded Arawn’s tower at any time.”

“His stupidity is lucky for us.” Konig extended a hand toward Seth. “Are you ready?”

Not even remotely
.

Seth grabbed the prince.

B
eing pulled
through the ley lines felt nothing like teleporting. It was one thing to willfully propel himself across the planes, and quite another to be dragged by an outside entity.

Passing through the ley lines made Seth feel like toothpaste forcibly extruded from a tube.

All of Sheol stretched underneath him. The Nether World was completely contained within a cave with walls pocked like a stony sponge. The hive was burrowed into those holes. The Dead Forest, on the other hand, grew from the loamy quagmire collected along the bottommost curve of the cave, dampened by a network of rivers that flowed in spirals around Duat at the center.

Only one ley line crossed the entirety of Sheol, slicing a path from the hive to the Dead Forest. Seth extended from one position to the next, out of body, out of mind, beyond sensation.

His heart plummeted into his stomach and he reappeared on the banks of Mnemosyne. He stumbled as though he’d been dropped twenty feet, trying not to collapse onto his knees. The river’s crystalline waters sloshed inches from his toes.

“What just happened?” he asked, looking up for his companions.

Marion and Konig weren’t beside him.

He turned to orient himself. Seth had fallen out of the ley lines on the wrong side of the river. Instead of being on the banks nearest the Bronze Gates, he was at the edge of the Dead Forest. The skeletal shapes of the trees were eerie silhouettes in a thick, hot fog that smelled of animal waste and rotting flesh.

Konig must have ditched him a few hundred feet too early. They were probably safely on the other side, where Seth couldn’t see them.

“Goddammit,” Seth muttered.

In all fairness, it was his mistake for thinking he could trust the prince.

He took Dana’s map out and found his dot on the edge of the Dead Forest. There was no bridge crossing Mnemosyne nearby. He traced its looping path around Duat and realized that there were no bridges marked anywhere at all.

Dana had warned him that the Dead Forest was patrolled by Hounds. If they were anything like Arawn’s white dog, Seth didn’t want to encounter them.

He shut his eyes and focused on teleporting across to the other side.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said a soft voice.

Seth looked around. The dark form of a small boat had appeared on the calm waters, and it now drifted toward him.

A cloaked creature stood on the aft of the gondola, pushing it toward him with a long pole. It wasn’t until the gondola struck the shore nearby that he realized that it was the apothecary again. That feminine spirit with the exposed skull for a face and pits for eyes. “Hello again.” Her voice slithered through his ears, penetrating the fog effortlessly. “Looking for a way across?”

Seth took a step back, resting a hand on his gun. “I can get around on my own.”

“You might, if you can teleport without touching the wards,” she said. “Do you know where the warlocks have placed their spells?”

He didn’t. And he couldn’t sense them without help of a witch like Marion, which meant that they may or may not have been there at all. The source of the information didn’t exactly seem trustworthy.

Her gondola was matte black. It didn’t seem to become damp where the water touched it. He wasn’t entirely sure that the water
could
touch it.

Seth surveyed the demon without releasing his gun. “You’re not an apothecary, are you?”

“Not usually.” Her semi-transparent cloak billowed around her in a wind he couldn’t feel. “I pulled you from your friends so we could talk.”

So it wasn’t Konig’s fault they’d been separated. “All right. Talk.”

A skeletal hand swept toward the prow of her gondola. “The Dead Forest isn’t safe for you in this form. We’ll talk in privacy as I take you across. It will be a short passage, I promise.”

It couldn’t be that short. He couldn’t see the other side.

Short or not, it wasn’t like Seth had a lot of options. He could hear howling in the Dead Forest.

He clenched his jaw and climbed in. The demon towered over him, a gangly specter with arms longer than her legs and a spindly neck of exposed bone. She pushed them away from the shore.

“Do you remember the Pit of Souls?” the demon asked.