A Matter of Time (The Angel Sight Series) (6 page)

When he didn’t answer, I stretched my neck to the right and then the left, and tried my hand at standing. I had to cling to the femur bars, but managed okay.

Any more questions would only make him jumpier. Which made me think he hadn’t been prepared for me to wake so soon. That could mean maybe I was somewhere I shouldn’t be, looking at things I shouldn’t see. And that probably included whatever had moved in the darkened corner.

The gears screeched as our cage shifted, throwing me into the bars. The red light in the cart faded to blue. In this new light I could make out whatever had moved in the corner. Something very large. A green and purple tint coated its skin. Huge hands wrapped around a lever jutting out from the floor. Even bigger arms bulged from the strain of holding that lever, suspending our descent. The creature was a demon if ever I’d seen one—and according to my piecemeal memory, I had. I followed the thick lines of the demon’s body up. It would tower over the roof on this cage if it hadn’t been hunched forward.

“Brother,” the Fallen warned.

He may or may not have been the one to snap my neck before. Either way, he wouldn’t hesitate to do it again.

I took the warning at face value and turned around to face the sights of Hell again. The elevator resumed its descent. A new scene played itself out. Rain poured down from the blackened ceiling onto the buried heads of souls.

Each circle of hell was more horrifying than the last. That much I remembered from the first trip down here. This level, the fourth, was a special place in Hell for traitors; those who backstabbed their friends, family, entire civilizations. Here you would find Brutus, Benedict Arnold, and probably a few U.S. presidents. Not necessarily the power hungry, but the ones that utilized a different kind of human shield.

“This one’s my favorite,” my companion said. “This is one of the only circles that’s subjective. Most other circles you either committed your crime or you didn’t. Here is the place where you can find some of the worst with some of the best. Word has it there’s a former priest in here somewhere. After raising a particularly entertaining cult he was shot and killed in a police standoff before the Vatican could send in one of their men to save his soul. Now he’s shuffled back and forth between here, the second circle, and the sixth.” The second circle. For thieves. The sixth. For sexual crimes. “Point, Hell.”

The femurvator shook again, shuddering under the no-so-gentle touch of the demon sending it down the shaft. A secret shaft. This had to be Lucien’s secret, how he could meet us near the surface so quickly.

A secret not many knew about. Because it could lead to a way out of Hell.

The bones creaked beneath my tightening grip.

“Careful, brother.” The Fallen’s hand tensed behind his shoulder where he must have had a weapon stored.

His warning burrowed into me. I was unraveling. My truth showing.

“I want to go back up.” I said, disguising my eagerness to leave with an eagerness to feed, both of which raged like wholehearted truth inside me.

“You aren’t ready.”

Five years inside Hell, tortured and used, burbled up in me with the heat of magma. I had never been more ready for anything in life. Spite and agony thundered out in my scream. “I wasn’t done!”

The downward spiral of our bone cage stopped.

“Done is exactly what you will be if you don’t enjoy the ride, Kasade.”

The Fallen’s name came to me, right on the back of my favorite one. But I couldn’t think about her right now. My time was better spent calming down, focusing, playing the game. “Tartys?” I gripped the bone railing again. “What happened up top?”

The tension in his shoulders unraveled. Our elevator resumed its downward curve. “You did well, but lost control. It took four of us to hold you down.”

Good
.

The remainder of the ride passed in silence. I turned my back on the remaining circles, doing my best to drown out the screams, each worse than the one before. When the femurvator jolted to its final stop at the bottom of the ninth circle, I had to wait for my surroundings to change before I allowed myself to believe it. Tartys unlatched a femur on the front right side, closer to the creature still cloaked in shadows, and waited for me.

I stole one final glance into the shadows. The demon hunched over against the top of the elevator, the ceiling hitting his shoulders, forcing his neck and part of his back to hunch forward. His head was a yellowish tint, wider than a human head. His nostrils were two slits at each end of his flat, wide nose. Two sets of eyes, the first black and almond shaped, the second set stretching wider below them. Pinkish spots dotted his face and neck, different altogether than the purple spines on his arms. The demon had to be another of Lucien’s pets, if he worked the elevator.

My feet kicked up the sandy ground surrounding the entrance of the ninth circle. I moved slow, hoping Tartys wouldn’t find a reason to reach for the blade strapped beneath his clothes again. He followed me out and turned to latch the gate closed behind him. Even with the shadowed demon no more than ten feet away, I knew if Tartys was suspicious—and if he was smart, he would be—this was my only chance.

I slid toward him, but a noise stopped me. Something deep and reverberating. Nothing I’d ever dare dream of hearing in Hell—let alone the ninth circle.

The faint pounding of drums.

“Good. We’ve arrived just in time for the festivities.” Tartys cleared the latch, and the elevator disappeared. It didn’t wind up the spiral gears, or even move too fast to see. It simply vanished into the bedrock wall.

When Tartys turned, he clapped a hand on my shoulder and spun me around. “It seems you’re in for a treat. Lucien has quite the surprise.”

I stumbled forward purposely, jarring Tartys’s hand loose from my shoulder. With the edge of my wing, I swept his leg out from under him. He hit the floor and immediately moved to stand, but I was already behind him.

“He’s not the only one.” I twisted his neck to the right, then snapped it to the left.

Tartys’ body went limp. I patted him down, finding his weapon tucked closely to his back. I freed the blade and went to work on freeing him of his heart as well.

Chapter Eight

Rayna

I had never been so cold in my life. Death couldn’t be quite so cruel. Which made me almost certain I was still alive.

The cold confines of my new cell tucked just outside Lucifer’s ice castle weren’t as bad as its size, or its complete absence of light and sound. My cell was little more than a sensory deprivation chamber. Designed to help those in fairly decent mental health explore their minds, unblock their emotions, and relax. For those beings way beyond the normal range of mental health, it would drive. Them. Mad.

Mad was a good word to describe me. Crazy, yes, but also filled with so much anger and hate. In my time alone in Hell, I’d come to a realization. When I almost died at the hands of Az and his sword in Lucien’s chambers, Lucien’s essence had saved me—but it was also killing everything inside me that once made me,
me
. Rayna Evans, the garden-loving, sci-fi-learning nut who loved to draw, was quickly disappearing into the murky darkness of a deep, icy grave.

The need for revenge and payment overtook any desire for freedom.

I’d never been so very, very mad.

A loud knock reverberated off the walls, into my head, out of my head, into my head. The creak of the door opening sent me to my knees, shielding my ears from the torture. The light that flooded in blinded me, seared my eyelids closed, and singed my retinas. I tried to scream, but it came out as a hiss.

“Good to see you looking so down, pet.”

Even with my ears covered, his voice pinged off my exploding eardrums.

“To your feet.”

I balled myself up in the corner, my hands still over my ears.

“Come now, you should recover from the time spent in here quicker than this.”

A whine broke from my throat. I huddled tighter into myself.

“Maybe what you need is more of my essence in your veins.”

No more. Anything but that.
My eyes shot open. I blinked twice against the brightness of the low light behind him, and squinted as they adjusted.

“Ah. There are those pretty human pupils.” He dropped a protein bar at his feet.

I lowered my hands from my ears. Other than that I didn’t dare move, even though all I could think about was crawling forward and inhaling the food.

“Pick it up,” he growled through clenched teeth. When I didn’t scurry to his side, he closed the two feet of distance between us. “NOW!”

Fear spiked inside me at his command. I stretched around him for the meal bar. His pointed-toe boot wound back and drove into my side. I twisted on the floor, the cell not big enough for me to avoid his shoes again. Pain flared in my body, and then dissipated, like the kick had never happened.

I sat back against the corner, opening the bar and shoving it into my mouth in three bites.

“Good. Eat up. Something very exciting is going to happen.”

I looked up from the shiny wrapper. I hated his face, his hair, his boots. But I couldn’t let myself go. I couldn’t let Lucien win in this too. I had to find a way to hold on to myself. Somehow.

“You’re going to put on a little show. Father has built you your very own chamber of ice.”

The steady beat I first thought was my heart slamming into my ribcage changed tempo. It almost sounded like drumming.

“Wha—what’s happening?” I asked around the tasteless bar.

“Get up.”

I stayed where I was, gritting my teeth for the next strike.

It didn’t come. Lucien’s voice was calm, almost eager. “You are going to show everyone out there what you can do.”

He wanted to prove to Lucifer that he hadn’t messed up. That he could control me. That must have been why he’d kept the truth of my powers from his father. He wanted a show.

One he wouldn’t get while I was still breathing.

“No.”

“I could threaten you, but you’ve heard it all before. I won’t drain you of your energy by bleeding you. You already know the consequences.” He stepped back out of the small room. “Forneus, take her.”

Fornicator’s tall silhouette invaded the doorway, dressed in a long, dark robe and a grotesque mask hanging by a black satin ribbon around his neck. With one move he pulled me up and dragged me into the lit hallway on my knees, where another Fallen waited, wearing the same robe and mask.

Lucien crossed his arms, the amusement usually plastered on his face when he tortured me gone. He looked so much more like Lucifer now that I shuddered. “It’s time, pet.”

It
was
time … to stop Lucien.

The crisp scent of the ice flipped the switch on all my senses. My hate for the man in front of me burned so hot I could finally feel the tips of my fingers again.

All the emotion I’d been void of while in Lucien’s cell hammered into me. I clenched and unclenched my fists to fight off the tides. Every muscle around my stomach tightened. Mountains of tension gathered, funneling through me all at once.

It was enough to drive me out of my head all over again. If I let it.

Focusing on my anger, I centered myself and let everything else—the pain, the sorrow, the hopelessness—disappear.

Fire raged inside me, hot and cold at once. Oceans of pressure built up in my head until the only place for it to go was out. A bright light burned my retinas through closed lids. It exploded outward along with every bit of energy I had to give. I didn’t even feel myself hit the floor.

***

Later, the scent of ashes and cinder wafted to my nose.

My eyelids, gummy and dry, stuck together the first time I tried to open them. On my second attempt, I scrubbed the back of my hand along them and sat up. Water colder than should be legal created an indent around my body, soaking my clothes through. Chills racked me. My head swam. A copper tang coated my tongue like a layer of heavy leaden paint. I repressed the urge to spit. Around me the Fallen lay on the ground, unmoving. Unconscious.

Not more than five feet behind me, the front of what I thought was Shirtless’s robe was covered in black dirt. At least I guessed it was Shirtless. His belt thing was still attached around his waist with the sword in it, but the black dirt covering the front of him from face to feet was like no dirt I’d seen before. As a gardener, I knew dirt.

I glanced around the room again, everyone still unconscious.

I did it. I actually did it.

Whatever had affected Shirtless had also somehow damaged Fornicator’s left arm, covering it in the same dirt. Blood leaked around his head, making a crimson halo on the ice.

Lucien, who had collapsed where he stood, was unaffected by this black dirt the way the Fallen were, and he had been the closest to me.

Fatigue and shock started clearing from my brain, allowing me to scramble to my feet. My knee gave out beneath me on my first try, bumping my hip hard into the cold, slippery pool of ice water. My body heat must have melted some of the ice, though with my teeth chattering and the chills burrowing down to my bones, I wouldn’t have thought I had any heat left. The second time, I stood on shaky legs and angled out of the indent. Then I held still, my breathing so snail-like a tortoise would be jealous. Still no sounds of movement, only the distant drumming.

The door at the end of the hall caught my eye.

Two slippery steps later, I skidded down the icy slope Shirtless’ body warmth had created around him. I reached in his belt and slowly slid his sword out. The entire front half of his body collapsed in on itself, sending the black dirt into a puff of smoke. The sword clattered to the floor when I realized the black stuff wasn’t dirt, but ash. The rich, heady scent of fireplace suddenly made sense. My power must have somehow burned only his front half.

The ashes wafted toward me. I blinked them away, knelt to pick up the sword, and finally looked to Lucien. Unconscious. Unguarded. And me with a sword. Beyond the echoing clank of the sword on ice, another, softer sound drifted. It could almost be footsteps. The way the ice echoed, I couldn’t tell which direction the noise came from, but I had to assume they were headed my way.