Demonic and Deserted (Eternally Yours Book 4) (21 page)

“Look out!” Sarge yapped.

I ducked as a javelin flew above my head, slicing off a corner of my ear before jamming into the wall behind me, right into the console beside the door. A loud crackling noise came from the console. The door lifted about a foot off the ground, before slamming shut with a thud.

I clutched my throbbing ear, falling to my knees.
Ouch! That shit hurt!

Sarge crawled into my lap, whimpering while licking blood splatter off my neck.

A guard stomped over to the wall and tried to pull out the spear, but he howled when a spark arched off the weapon and threw him back. 

Satan frowned down at us. “Now look at what you’ve done, you bad, bad dogs!”

Two guards flanked him, steam pouring out of their snouts as they kicked up their hooves.

“Throw them out the back door,” the Devil said to them, “and muzzle them this time.”

* * *

N
o surprise that Thelix showed up a few minutes later with two muzzles. I figured her for the kind of girl who had a treasure trove of kinky sex toys.

She leaned into the bull, slapping the muzzles in his hands. “I want these back when you’re through.”

The bull made some odd chuckling sound while unfastening the back of the mask. He was the same beast with the white spot above his eye and the twisted horn. I got the feeling he was going to make sure my mask fit extra tight. I thought about fighting, but with four guards aiming their spears at my head, I decided to save my strength for a more opportune time.

I grunted when he jerked the mask over my head. I was pretty sure it wasn’t designed for a dog, because it squished my nose to one side. The mask didn’t fit Santiago at all, so they just tied a rope around his mouth while he fought like hell. He bit into a few fingers, causing them to moan like branded cows. But when the twisted horn guard slapped Santiago, causing his head to loll to one side, I jerked up, growling. The asshole turned to me with a snarl, binding my wrists and ankles before throwing me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. 

I flopped like a fish out of water while he carried me behind the stairway, the same direction Aedan had gone. He bounced me along as we walked down a dark, damp, stone hallway, reminding me very much of a dungeon in a medieval castle. Could this be where they took Aedan, too?

We walked for several minutes before stopping.

“Where you go?” a deep voice bellowed.

“We take guests out back.” My captor answered, his low baritone rattling my bones.

I heard a clanking sound like metal keys slapping one another and then an unlatching and a low creak. As we passed through another portal, I caught sight of the heavy wooden door with a barred window behind us. The place was dark like a cavern, lit with torches that hung from the walls. The stones were wet here, lined with black moss. I gasped when my captor lost his footing before clutching the wall for support. One false move, and the bull would fall on his furry ass, me along with him. 

I hissed when a rat the size of a small dog ran straight up the wall beside us. I growled at it when he looked at me with red, glowing eyes, and he answered back with an ominous hiss as it barred its jagged teeth. We passed several cells with sobbing, naked creatures. Even though I knew they had to have been pretty bad to have landed in sub-level thirteen, my heart still broke for them. My breath hitched when I saw Aedan lying on a cot in the last cell, Melanie bent over beside him, smoothing a hand down his brow.

“Bffftch!” I mumbled as the leather contraption prevented my tongue from moving. “Git yer hands oth him!”

“Shut up, dog.” Steam poured out of my captor’s nostrils as he rattled me hard, shaking my skull as if it was full of marbles. Then I felt the cool metal of the poker as it slid down my arm, landing into my cupped palm. I fumbled with it for a few seconds before finding the switch that extended the weapon. I let out a slow and shaky breath, mentally preparing myself to hit the button. This was my one chance at escaping, so I had to make it count.

The bull tripped again, swearing as he hit the wall, clutching it for support. I seized on the opportunity, flipped the switch and aimed for his ankles. He howled and slipped down the wall as I burned holes right through his Achilles heels. I slid off his shoulder, falling to the ground with a thud. The poker stick still in my bound hands, I spun around on my back, kicked off from the side of the wall, and sliced the tendons of the bull carrying Santiago. He fell with a groan, clutching the bars of the cage beside him.

Melanie’s hands jutted out through the bars, wrapping around the bull’s horns. She looped her belt through the bars, tying it around his neck and holding him in place. Santiago jumped from his captor’s shoulders, clawing at the ropes binding his mouth. He’d freed himself in no time, and quickly chewed through the bindings on my wrists.

I untied my ankles and jerked the muzzle off my face just as twisted horn bull came charging me on his knees. I sliced off his big, ugly head, and it rolled down the dark corridor before bouncing down a flight of stairs. His body scrambled after his head, falling down the stairs as well. Melanie kept her hold on the other guard as I sliced his head off his shoulders.

“Thanks,” I said, reluctantly. She was still on my shit list.

The heavy door behind us swung open, and the bull guard charged me, steam pouring out of his snout, as if I was taunting him with a big red flag.

I channeled my best Jackie Chan, letting out a “Hi-ya” and spinning round house style, which wasn’t hard with such strong hind legs. I sliced open his big furry gut, watching with morbid fascination as his innards spilled out onto the floor along with chunks of undigested, moving maggot meat. The bull fell to his knees, trying to scoop his intestines back inside. It made gross suction noises as it slipped around and mingled with the demon spam. While he was preoccupied, I sliced off his head, too. It mooed as it bounced down the hall. His headless torso crawled after it, dragging his guts behind him. The maggoty things followed, too, slipping across the floor like zombie snot.

Santiago chased after the guard and snatched the keys from his belt, his tail wagging wildly as he ran back to me. 

“Good boy!” I holstered my poker, patted Santiago on the head, and grabbed the keys, fumbling with the lock on Aedan’s cell door until I found the right fit.

I swung open the door, bumping Melanie’s shoulder maybe a little too hard as I rushed to Aedan. 

“Aedan!” I ran my hand over his brow. “Can you hear me?”   

He moaned as his head rolled to the side, blood trickling down his nose.

“Aedan!” I shook his shoulders. “You need to wake up. Please,” I cried.

His eyes fluttered open and then bulged. He stared at me as if he was seeing a ghost, or in my case, a really big, ugly dog/human freak of nature. 

“Ash?” he asked. “W-what?”

“Satan turned me into a dog, remember?” I said on a rush of air. “Then he threw your brother and the priestesses outside. He was about to throw me outside.”

He shot up, rubbing the back of his skull. “Good God. We need to find a way out of here now.”

“But how?” Melanie asked, twisting her fingers in front of her while batting thick lashes. Damn, I didn’t like her.

“Perhaps I can be of assistance,” a familiar, ominous hiss rolled through the dungeon. 

Santiago yapped like crazy, bouncing around the cell like a jumping bean before pulling back his lips with a snarl, the hair along his spine standing on end.

I gasped as I looked out to the occupant in the cell across from us, a black widow spider the size of a small car with a huge, red abdomen, eight long legs, and a human head. She hung from a contraption that somewhat reminded me of the sex swing my grandfather tried to lend Aedan and me, her legs bound by chains that draped from the ceiling, her abdomen hovering over what looked like a vat. What kind of torture device was this and why was the spider not in human form like the rest of us? I’d assumed the damned only took on demon form when outside.

Melanie walked to the edge of our cell as if on a cloud, clutching the bars while gaping at the giant spider. “Mother?”

“Yes, child, it is me.”

The beast flashed an odd smile, and it took me a moment to realize those big ugly pinchers that used to protrude from her mouth had been severed, leaving behind two ugly stumps. Ouch.

She waved a leg at Melanie. “If you would come to me, I could help you.”

I clutched the keys tightly by my side, jutting a foot forward. “Don’t trust her, Melanie.”

Santiago let out three little barks, followed by a low whimper. “My instincts tell me it’s a trick.”

Aedan stood, hobbling over to the bars. “How is it that you are still in demon form when the rest of us are not?”

She brought her front legs together in a prayer pose as she smiled serenely. Too serenely. “I’m not human and never have been.”

“What are you?” Aedan asked.

“My true name is Arachne,” she answered. 

Aedan squinted then shook his head. “From the Greek fable?”

“I am no fable.” Her long neck extended before she arched back. “I am a true demon, not a human hybrid. I was driven into the underworld years ago by humans. I’ve lived peacefully in hell for thousands of years until you and your friends came along.”

When she waved at us with a sneer, I knew this bitch harbored serious resentment. There was no way I was trusting her.

Santiago growled, and then let out a frightened whine. I knew he didn’t trust her, either. 

“Peacefully?” Aedan cocked a brow. “Is that what you call feeding hapless victims to a soul sucking dragon?”

“A small sacrifice to keep my priestesses safe. Now look at what you and your friends have done.” Her chains rattled as she jutted her legs toward the vat below her. “He forces me to make babies, and then he takes them from me. I do not see them once they leave my nest. I have no idea what he’s done to them, but I fear he’s using them as spies. He knows they can easily traverse up and down the levels of hell.” 

“I’ve seen them,” Melanie piped up. “They’ve overrun sub-level one.”

The spider went eerily still, her sharp gaze tunneling on Melanie. “He has sent them that far? Have they been harmed?”

Melanie looked down at Sarge, whose ears flattened against his skull as he whimpered.

“Yes,” Melanie said with a nod, “many have been destroyed.”

The spider’s luminous eyes filled with tears, as she let out a spooky wail that made her sound like a dying horse. “And I bet the Devil didn’t even shed a tear.” She flashed Melanie a pitiful look as tears streamed down her face. “Help me,” she begged.

Melanie fell against the bars with a wail. “Oh, mother!”

Aedan grabbed Melanie’s shoulder, pushing her behind him before puffing up his chest. “There’s nothing we can do for you, spider.” 

For some reason, that little protective act made my fur stand on end. Jeez, why was I still jealous?

“There’s something I need to show you,” the spider said before grabbing her chains and pulling herself up.

I gasped when her squishy abdomen lit up like a Japanese tea lantern. What had happened to all the protective armor that covered her body? I cringed when I saw patches of metal stuck to her abdomen. Had someone ripped it off? Ouch! My eyes widened when a distinct shadowy shape floated within her womb before settling against her abdomen wall.

“My scythe!” Aedan ran out of the cell, slipping across the mossy floor before grabbing onto the spider’s bars. “Where did you find it?”

Sarge and I followed Aedan out, growling as we flanked his sides. Melanie kept a safe distance behind us. 

The chains rattled again as the spider lowered herself until she was hovering horizontally above the vat. “I found it in a cavern shortly after I was cast down to level five.”

“How did you end up here?” Aedan asked.

“I kept getting knocked down. The lower the level, the bigger the demons.” She flashed a slanted smile. “They didn’t particularly care to have a spider in their midst, and I could never get the scythe to work for me.”

Aedan pointed to the shadow in her belly. “The buttons operate using heat sensors.”

A look of understanding flashed in the spider’s human eyes. “Arachnids are cold-blooded creatures.”

That made sense. I remembered his other scythe had blinky lights at the bottom, and the one floating in her stomach was simply a cold piece of black metal not much bigger than a cellphone. 

Aedan’s brows knitted together, and I could tell he was thinking up a plan to get the scythe.

If we had the scythe, our troubles would be over, well almost. We just had to get our friends from outside, but Aedan could use the scythe to summon an elevator and get us all out of this miserable inferno.

The spiders’s pinchers shook as she let out a baleful sigh. “If you want it, you’re going to have to cut it out.”

Melanie gasped. “What will happen to you?”

“I will suffer in unimaginable pain, but the Devil will patch me up and force me to breed again.” One of her long legs extended out toward Aedan. “Unless you use that scythe to obliterate me.”

Whaaat? She was asking Aedan to erase her from existence? I smelled a snake in that spider’s den. “Uhhhh. I don’t trust her, Aedan.” 

Aedan clutched the bars with whitened knuckles before turning to me with an ashen face. “We don’t have a choice.”

He was right, damn him. I just hoped we didn’t end up as spider chow.  

With a shaky hand, I tried several keys on the keyring before I found the one that unlocked the spider’s cell.

Aedan braced his hands across the opening. “You all stay back.” Then he turned to me with grim determination in his eyes. “Ash, please tell me you have the poker.”

I slipped the poker from my belt and handed it to Aedan. He extended it, wielding it like a sword as he circled the spider.

She grabbed the chains, pulling herself up and giving him an easy shot at her round gut.

“Brace yourself,” he told her.

Melanie sobbed behind me. “Oh, poor mother!”

I turned to her with a shut-up-or-die look. She bit down on her knuckles, stifling her sobs.