~~David~~

  Acelina was carrying him. Part of him was surprised it wasn’t Caera, but the tiger dy was faster on all fours, and she couldn’t carry him in her arms unless she went on two. Another part of him was surprised Acelina had bothered to come back and grab him at all. But those thoughts danced away on the surface of the currents, and while he could look up and see them above his consciousness, some other part of him yelling down at him through the surface of the ocean, David was too deep. They were distant. The ocean was not.

  The forest was open, trees ripped apart, and a path cleared for his demons to run through, and Acelina’s hooves sent up bck dirt and broken, sharp twigs into the air with each step of her hooves. David looked down from over her shoulder, the huge demoness holding his legs and back in a hug, like he was a child held to her armored chest. Somewhere ahead of her, the others had taken the path and were out of sight. But behind, the fme wings of the rider tore up the ground that trapped him.

  David held out one hand over Acelina’s shoulder, and told Hell to entomb the rider. Bury him. Stop him. Sink him deep into the tunnels, va, and guts of Hell. And she listened. With an invisible dance, Hell trembled, and the ground quaked. The trees were sturdy but brittle, and they shattered in a circle around the rider for a hundred meters in every direction, as if a cinder block had crashed into a gss wall.

  Acelina almost tripped, but she spread her massive wings and caught herself. All movement David only noticed at the edge of his awareness. All that existed was Hell, the bck dirt, the bckstone mixed within it, the strange bck trees that were closer to gss than tree, the ground and va veins below, and the fire sky above. They were the ocean currents that pulled him. They were the wave the rider fought against.

  David pyed harder, and the hellquake reached further. Trees exploded, sending sharp branches into the sky and above the fog as David’s song turned the ground into a churning machine, vibrating and twisting, coiling stone pulling on the rider’s position. Down. Sink down into the dirt and die.

  The rider’s burning wings fpped harder, still piercing up through the dirt, but gaining no altitude. David pyed harder again, and Acelina let out a shriek as the surrounding trees exploded, burying them both in their shards. But it wasn’t enough. The song drowned the area for kilometers in all directions, and soon Acelina’s hooves sank, too. But it wasn’t enough.

  “David!”

  “Keep running.” He didn’t look her way, eyes locked on the distant fog and the burning wings disappearing behind the veil of gray. He summoned more vibration, until Hell herself groaned with the effort, and the ground sank into a crater, ripping it out from under Acelina. Only her wings kept her from falling, and soon she was running up a slope instead of ft ground.

  Hissing and panting, Acelina fpped hard and jumped, unching the two of them into the air and back up onto the lip of the crater. She didn’t look back, breaking into a run the moment her hooves hit the dirt, and she squeezed him tight to her chest as she leaned forward for bance. The feel of her chest armor pushing into his chest hurt, and the jolt of pain pulled his eyes to her, and past her to the bck forest beyond.

  The forest of bck, gss-like trees was gone. And in the distant flog and crater below, the fire wings disappeared into the churning depths. Got him.

  The hellquake continued. David stopped pying the strings, but they continued to vibrate, the presence in the ocean with him plucking the strings regardless of him.

  “David! Stop this! You’ll kill us!”

  Stop this? It was the song. Why would he stop the song?

  A scream in the distance cut across his spine like a whip, and he snapped his head up and looked back. Somewhere in the fog, somewhere on the path he’d created for his friends to escape, someone was screaming.

  He grabbed the strings inside him, and silenced them. The vibration tore into the fingers in his depths, like rope burn, but he held on, and crushed the vibration. The currents came to a harsh stop, and cruel reality ripped him from the ocean, the rope tearing non-existent skin from his non-existent inner fingers. But the hellquake stopped.

  He looked at his real hands and bit down the urge to scream.

  Whether Acelina looked his way with her featureless face, he couldn’t tell, but as a thousand little thoughts restarted in his brain like a PC reboot, he forced his eyes away from his fingers. A part of him was still convinced they’d been burned off. He looked at her, past her, and sucked in a breath. The forest really was gone.

  Thirty seconds ter, she found the group, all of them in a circle and working to dig someone out of the dirt. The path he’d created was gone, every tree reduced to shards, and sections of ground were raised or sunk, churned, or broken open into small ditches or rge trenches. And one of the girls had gotten trapped, half sunk below the ground. Lasca.

  “Oh fuck, Lasca,” he said. Acelina set him down, and he got on his knees beside the little demon.

  “David!” She reached out for him, and he got her hands in his. Caera and Dao were already digging her out, though, and Jes spped David’s hands away and took Lasca’s hands instead. Stronger than him. It wasn’t long before the little dy was free.

  She threw her arms around David and hugged him. If he hadn’t already been on his knees, he would have fallen over.

  “What the fuck?” Jes said, fring her wings. “Where’s my hug?”

  Latia, Laria, and Laara all squealed, ran past Jes, and hugged David from all directions.

  “So scary!”

  “Rider scary!”

  “Too scary!”

  “David got him!”

  “Killed him!”

  “Big quake! David made the quake?”

  “We saw him sink! Then we were too far, and—”

  “Gone!”

  Laara winced and held out her wing to David. It was torn and bleeding.

  “Can you fix?” The way her big eyes looked at him, a mix of awe and sadness in her expression, yanked his feet out from under him.

  “I… can’t. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. David saved us.” She hugged him again and rubbed her forehead and horns against his shoulder.

  He fucking melted.

  “The rider isn’t dead. I buried him, but he’ll probably get out, and—” Stars danced in David’s vision, his head grew a thousand times heavier, and bckness drowned him. He fell, and all four Las fell with him, squashing him and squeaking as his back hit the dirt.

  “David!?” Caera yelled, coming up behind him. Frowning down at him with her single eye, she pushed him back up to sitting. “What’s wrong?”

  Acelina swept a wing out, nudging the Las aside, and they got off him and knelt around him, all with enormous eyes locked.

  “I… I… I’m…” Fire surged through his chest. Energy drained out of him. Everything grew heavier, and he fell back again into Caera’s hand. “Holy shit.” He grabbed his half breastpte and held it as more pain pumped through his insides. His inner fingers screamed at him in protest, and his stomach shrieked with hunger.

  Dao unleashed a flurry of clicks and squatted beside him, gently nudging the Las out of the way. Frowning, she undid the straps of his breastpte, tossed it aside, and pressed a palm to his chest.

  He grabbed her hand and shook his head.

  “It’s… fine. It’s just the… the strings. I pyed… too hard, I guess.” Not very convincing. Every breath was a bored mess, and new beads of sweat dripped down his forehead. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get enough air, and he squeezed Dao’s hand as tremors worked through his limbs.

  “You’re not fine,” Jes said. “But if the rider’s still coming after us, we have to go. Now.”

  “I’ll take him,” Caera said.

  “We help!” the Las said, and too many hands helped him to his feet. He sted a whole second before falling.

  “Fools,” Acelina said. Hissing at the little dies, she fpped her wings at them once, enough to nudge them back, and she picked David up by his wrists. For a moment, he thought she might treat him as gently as she had minutes before when she’d saved his ass, but nope. She dropped him onto Caera’s back, nearly crushing his balls, but at least she’d pced him so he didn’t get one of Caera’s spikes up his ass.

  He leaned forward, grabbed Caera’s spikes as best he could, and held on.

  They got ten feet before he fell off.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  He woke up. It was a strange sensation, waking up during the day, when his ghost body told him sleeping was only meant for night. Instead of pulling up out of the depths of stasis like usual, a robotic but seamless and easy feeling, this felt like dragging himself up out of a swamp. He had to fight to wake up, eyelids refusing to listen, and limbs insisting they were anchored to the ground.

  Where was he? The sensation was familiar. Oh, right, when Acelina had picked him and run away with him, away from the rider, his fire wings bursting up from the ground. That’s where he was, in Acelina’s arms, his chin over her shoulder, his body pressed to her breastpte.

  Forest. Bck trees that looked almost like gss. He’d destroyed the forest before, for kilometers, so the group must have covered a lot of ground while he was out. Groaning, he forced his head up off Acelina’s shoulder and looked behind him at the group. The trees were more spread out here, with some giant tombstones dotting the nd and fog, and the group followed Vicus between them. No path.

  “How long was I out?” he asked.

  The Las all spun, cheered with squeals, and dashed back toward him, only for Acelina to brush them back with a wing. But the little critters would not be deterred, and they ran circles around the spire mother as she marched forward.

  “A few hours,” she said. “I am guessing your use of your special strings proved too taxing?”

  “I… guess, yeah. My fingers are killing me.” As if someone had grown new limbs inside him, he was too acutely aware of invisible fingertips he could still flex and move, and that they were throbbing, sore, and if they’d been physical, bleeding. “Fuck… I am starving.” And of course, his guts had become a bck hole, content to eat him alive from the inside out.

  Daoka joined them, clicking, chirping, and gesturing around and behind them. Jes joined her, and she smiled up at David as she motioned for the Las to take her pce by Caera at the head of the group. They did, whining and sharing some pleading clicks with Dao, but the satyr ushered them toward Caera, probably so the tiger had some backup if Vicus betrayed them.

  “We’ll get you some food,” Jes said. “Vicus knows a church around here. We can sleep, and maybe hunt if we’re lucky. He says there’s no food around here, but you never know.”

  “Sounds… like a dangerous pce to sleep.”

  “Yeah, could be. But he insists no one comes down this way.”

  Acelina hissed quietly and whispered. “I do not trust Vicus. He will betray us.”

  “Maybe,” Jes said, “but he needs us more than we need him.”

  David wasn’t sure about that. Vicus knew the area, they didn’t, and he could just run if the rider showed up again while they were sleeping. The rider wasn’t dead. He’d get out sooner or ter, and if they didn’t have any clue of how to get to Timaeus, they were going to have problems. The rider had tracked them down, just like he’d done Mia, which meant he had some way to follow David. Maybe not to his exact position, but to his general area, maybe.

  But they were all exhausted and didn’t have a choice.

  He tried to keep his head up and scan the fog for more threats, but everything felt heavy, especially his skull. It wasn’t long before his cheek was on Acelina’s shoulder, arms limp, and he rexed as he listened to the movement of her body, ear against her neck. Clop. Clop. Hooves against the dirt. Eyes half closed, he kept them open, but the weight pulling on his limbs and the ache in his guts didn’t make it easy.

  A few hours ter, they arrived at a church.

  “Here,” Acelina said, and she put him on Caera’s back again. “Hold on this time.”

  “Thanks,” he said, body teetering a little, but he stayed upright, hands on Caera’s back spikes.

  Acelina hissed and gestured forward. She might have saved his life and carried his ass, but she wasn’t willing to face-check a building for them.

  Jes was. She and Daoka followed Vicus toward the church, and after a few clicks from Daoka, the little dies ran off and fnked the building, checking for traps or ambushes.

  “I wasn’t lying,” Vicus said. “And after seeing what the unmarked did, I’m gd I didn’t.”

  David managed a weak smile for the vrat, almost slipped off Caera’s back, and almost squeaked as he grabbed her spikes.

  “I… yeah.” Admitting he still wasn’t entirely sure how to control his powers to a stranger was not a smart idea, but suppressing his reflex to say more than he should was a pain.

  The church was something straight out of medieval fantasy, an old abandoned building made of gray stone, surrounded by a shallow metal fence. The windows were empty square holes, and the roof was made of sbs of bck… wood?

  “I have seen churches in scrying pools,” Acelina said. “This hardly qualifies. This is what humans call a… a…”

  “Shack,” David said. “A rge stone shack in the woods. Why are we calling it a church? I’m fully expecting an evil book with a cover made of human skin awaiting us in the basement.”

  The demons raised their brows. Apparently, they hadn’t seen that one.

  “Come on,” Vicus said. “We spent the day traveling inward. There’s nothing out here. No souls, no other demons.”

  “So you say,” Caera said, slowly prowling toward the front door. A big wooden door, made of more of the bck trees. It’d probably shatter like gss if someone hit it hard enough.

  “Clear!” Lasca yelled. Everyone hissed; too loud. She squatted in an empty window, tail swaying behind her. Apparently she’d seen the scrying pool enough to know about the word ‘clear’, but not about the Necronomicon. Disappointing.

  Vicus nodded, made a small, sarcastic bow, and pushed open the door. It turned on hinges. Hell had grown hinges?

  “Oh,” David said once the inside came into view. “Yeah, church.”

  Church it was. There were pews inside, made of more of the bck wood; he didn’t need to sit to know they’d be uncomfortable as hell, in Hell. There was a pulpit at the end of the room, same material, and skull nterns dangled from bck rafters, fire burning in their eyes. It wouldn’t have been able to fit more than a hundred people, but that was plenty for them.

  Lasca was right. It was empty.

  “There a lower floor?” Caera asked.

  Vicus shook his head and stepped behind the rge pulpit.

  “No. If we’re attacked, it’s not exactly easy to defend this pce.” He gestured to the windowless windows. “But we’re out of the way, here, still close to Death’s Grip, and a decent way closer to the river Styx. Souls rarely get dropped off here, so demons and hellbeasts don’t come here often.”

  Nodding, Caera walked down the aisle between the pews, up to the pulpit, and leaned over a front pew. David took it, and groaned as his heavy body sank onto the hard, ft wood. Uncomfortable was fine when every finger weighed a hundred kilos.

  “We need more than sleep,” she said. “We need food.”

  David raised a hand. “I… think I need food, too. A lot… lot of food.”

  Caera prowled up to him and pushed up between his legs, kinda like a dog that was the size of the biggest Siberian tiger. She set her head on his p against his stomach, turned her head enough to aim her good eye up at him, and nudged her horns into his bare chest. Without his breastpte, she had to be gentle, and with a little work, she used a horn and pushed his hand until it was on her head.

  He smiled down at her and combed her thick dreadlocks.

  “You saved us,” she said.

  “Saved us!” Laara said, hopping from pew to pew, perching on their backs and gripping them with cws and talons.

  “Saved us!” Lasca joined her.

  Latia and Laria had hooves and couldn’t bance on the backs of pews very well, but they tried, and giggled when they slipped and fell. Some giggles turned to sniffles though as Laara slipped as well, spread her wings wide, and fell on the pew beside David. Little whines filled the silence as she held out her wing to David and Caera again, little drops of blood lining the rge tear in the red membrane.

  “I’m sorry,” David said, and he stroked her wing’s arm with one hand, the other still combing Caera’s dreadlocks. “The rider is after me. Maybe you should have stayed back in your mountain, with Greg dead, and the other imps and grems alive and well.”

  Gasping like he’d backhanded her, Laara snuggled into his side and rubbed her forehead against his shoulder.

  “David doesn’t want Laara around anymore?”

  “What? I didn’t—”

  “David mean!” Lasca said, sitting beside Laara. “Cruel!”

  “Cruel and mean!” Laria said, coming up around the pew and standing beside Caera.

  “Mean and cruel!” Latia stood behind David’s pew and set her chin on his shoulder opposite Laara. “Why would David abandon us?”

  Oh shit. David looked down at Caera for help, but she just smiled at him and let him stew in guilt he shouldn’t have been feeling.

  “Sorry! I’m sorry. I don’t want to leave you.”

  Laara beamed up at him and hugged him as best she could with the pew in the way and Caera’s head still on his p. But it didn’t st, and the little dy squeaked and held her side where she’d been stabbed.

  “Bloodgrip is nicer,” she said.

  “Nicer.”

  “Nicer!”

  The Las chatted between themselves, all gathering on David’s pew but sitting beside him so they could chat with each other. Talk of bloodgrip vines, different caves they knew, different tunnels, and different imps and grems were the topic, and they spoke high speed, complete with lots of clicks. It wasn’t long before they sat in a circle on the stone floor, each facing each other’s backs so they could clean each other’s dreadlocks and damaged wings of a bck wood shards.

  He refrained from making any comment about them being a bunch of girly girls. Jeskura would have ripped his head off.

  Jeskura and Dao were with Vicus, talking about the area, potential nearby threats, and Vicus was doing his best to convince them it was safe. They weren’t convinced. Acelina stood by the front door, giant axe still in hand.

  In the peaceful moment, David took a deep breath, ignored the hunger in his guts, and smiled down at the wonderful tiger dy still resting her demon head on his p. She had small cuts all over her, little things that must have bled, but small enough they healed quick, and Hell whisked away blood in a few hours. Still, she looked rough, and he stroked her horns and massaged her scalp, as if he could somehow soothe her wounds.

  “You destroyed miles of the dead forest,” she said.

  “Kilometers.”

  “Whatever. Canadian.”

  He smiled. “I… I saw you girls getting hurt by the forest, you know? It was… bad.” He gestured to the Las, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “They were really terrified, you know? I’ve never seen demons scared.”

  “Imps and grems don’t normally get scared. Demons don’t, in general. We get caught up in the violence, and just give ourselves to it. But… something about the rider, his aura, the… presence.” Caera shivered. “We resisted him because he was at a distance, and being on the edge of that aura was… terrifying. If he got close, it’d pull us in. It’d be… just like with those hellhounds. We’d throw ourselves at him, and die.” She lifted her head, brought it close, and kissed him. “And I think some of us are a little more attached to living than some other demons. Maybe that’s why they… why we got scared.”

  “I’m gd you are. I mean, about getting attached to living.”

  Smile growing, she licked his cheek.

  “You did some crazy shit, back there. You broke all the trees in our way, and then destroyed the whole forest, anyway. And then you buried the rider. You create a hellquake.”

  “I just pyed the song. Whatever it is that listens to me did the heavy lifting.” He whispered straight into Caera’s ear. Much as Vicus already knew a lot and was proving useful, it wasn’t a good idea to hand a stranger every secret they had.

  “But you’re the one who passed out. You’re the one who drained yourself, and now you’re starving. And… I don’t know if I’ll be able to find you any food. Hunting in the Grave Valley is hard, and Vicus says there’s no food around here. And—”

  “I’ll be fine.” He summoned a smile, but his muscles weren’t happy about it, and he sagged in the pew. “Just tired. I won’t be pying the strings anytime soon, probably until I eat a… few dozen hearts, but I’ll be fine. Just need sleep.” He kissed her cheek, and she rubbed her horn against the side of his head, like a house cat rubbing their cheeks on their owner. “And you need sleep.”

  “Yeah, I know. We all do. But I’m taking first watch.”

  “Want me to—”

  Daoka hopped over to him, clicked rather loudly straight into his face, and kissed his forehead.

  “She’s right. Sleep the night, the whole night, and we’ll figure out what to do in the morning.”

  He wanted to argue. Taking shifts was done as a group, with a third of them watching for one third of the night, cycling between everyone. That included him. But guilt about going to sleep vanished under the heavy weight of his eyelids, and as much as the gnawing pain in his guts demanded food, it also sapped his energy. Before he was out, he had the distinct impression he was borderline comatose.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  ~~Mia~~

  Evening twilight was coming. They’d avoided hellbeasts through sheer luck so far, but it wouldn’t st forever. Their group was pretty tough though, and could probably handle most hellbeast encounters, save for one very big problem: Vinicius was starving. He rumbled loud enough Mia borderline vibrated, still riding his back, and he looked around with the hunting eyes of a hungry predator.

  “We need food,” she said.

  Vinicius said nothing.

  “I’m keeping an eye open,” Adron said. “But when I went through here st, I barely got a bite to eat. I avoided everything I ran into.”

  “We don’t have that luxury,” Faust said, walking beside the vratorin. “We’re lost out here, and we have two big reasons we’re going to have trouble.” And because he enjoyed doing things in a grandiose way, the incubus did a small bow and flourish of his hand toward Vin and Mia.

  “I’m not going to draw trouble,” she said. “I mean, demons won’t recognize me at a distance, right?”

  “The clothes,” Kas said, marching behind. Much as the big guy usually walked on hands and feet, almost like a goril, he stayed more upright in the swamp. Less muck on his body that way.

  “If it’s a big problem, then I guess I’ll go naked. But not yet. And something tells me the fact I’m wearing red silk and sandals isn’t going to be the deciding factor on whether we get into a fight.”

  “Skimpy red silk,” Oudoceus said, finger raised, tail wagging.

  “Shut up.” She gred back at the incubus and made sure the dangling silk covered her ass. “You’re sure this is the right way, Faust?”

  All four incubi shrugged, and all four gestured back in the general direction they’d come from.

  “Pretty sure Death’s Grip is back there, somewhere,” Locutus said. The other incubi nodded between themselves, sharing a thousand little ‘in the know’ gestures as subtle as a nod. They’d been together a long time.

  “We push forward,” Vin said. “We kill whoever we find.”

  This again. She bopped Vin on the shoulder, but he didn’t even gnce her way.

  “I’d prefer we didn’t kill everyone we come across. Allies can be useful, you know? Case in point, the Damall.”

  Vinicius wasn’t convinced. With a grunt, he gnced around at the four incubi and the tetrad fujara, and then down at the vrat and sarkarin. Adron and Kas weren’t a part of the Damall, but they were still allies, and the reason Mia wasn’t dead. And if Mia had died, the rest of them would have died, too.

  “We’ll find something,” Julisa said. “I grow hungry, as well. I—”

  Mia threw up a hand.

  “Do you—”

  “You dare interrupt me? I—”

  “Julisa! I… I feel something.”

  Everyone froze. In the dead silence, all demons looked to her, waiting, and she stared down at the muck, waiting. There was something there, quiet and tickling. Did the others feel it? No. They all watched her, waiting for her to expin.

  It was a buzzing sensation, like a vibration. Like a string vibration.

  “That’s a—”

  The swamp erupted into a boil. Dark gore shot up into the bck fog and sky. Nearby mounds ripped apart, the twisting bones underneath scattering and plunging into the muck. The screams of distant remnants vanished under the rumbling of a hellquake, and everyone fell over, even Vin. Mia squeaked, tossed from Vin’s back, and nded on her side.

  “What are you doing?” Julisa yelled, on her knees in the swamp with Mia.

  “Me? I’m not doing this!” The egg? Where was the egg!? Mia spun, twisting in the bck gore up to her hips. A lump sat on the swamp, and she scooped it up and set it in her sling. If that’d happened on hard ground, the egg might not have survived. Small blessings. “Faust? Adron? What’s going on? What’s—”

  The ground opened up, and the swamp pulled out from under them. Like an avanche, the bck muck flowed and tumbled, twisting Mia until she sank beneath the ooze. Some small part of her brain screamed to keep the egg close to her chest, and she clutched it tight with one hand over her eyes as the swamp destroyed gravity and drowned her in an unending spin under its waves. Up and down disappeared, and the rumbling of the ground attacking the swamp above rose to a crescendo that buried the roars of the nearby demons.

  The swamp sank underneath her. A break in the drowning gore enveloped her, and she opened her eyes. Gravity grabbed her again, and she spun in the air, twisting as waves of the bck swamp fell with her into the darkness below.

  A fsh of blue light flew by, enough she figured out which way was down, and she turned to keep her back aimed that way, egg against her stomach. She nded a couple seconds ter, onto more of the bck muck, hard enough the wind rushed out of her lungs and her head sank back into the wet yer of swamp. But she was alive.

  More of the bck swamp rained on her, and blurry red shapes above followed it. With a loud squeak, she threw herself to the side as hard as her aching body could handle, nded on her back again, and hugged her egg snug to her belly. A spsh of bck gore fell on her, and she hid her face against her egg until it passed.

  Vin, Julisa, and Kas nded on their feet, each earning giant spshes that hit Mia again, and again. Some of the other demons were already down with Mia, covering their faces from the spshes, and once the st incubus nded, that was everyone.

  The unfelt, unheard, almost tickling vibration changed, the rumbling picked back up again, and everyone looked up as the raining bck swamp came to a stop. Tiny blue light illuminated the roof of the cavern enough to see the dark ground closing in on itself, sealing what’d been a giant crack over their heads. A giant crack they’d fallen through.

  They stared around at the enormous cavern, walls dripping with bck ooze, the tiny blue lights that pulsed near the top, and… amber fmes that occasionally poked up from cracks in the ground underneath the group. The fires were tiny, seeping up along little cracks and holes in the new ground, and every so often they caught along cracks in the walls that seeped up to the cavern roof overhead. They lit blue fme, like fire hitting gas pockets, and some of the blue fme seeped up through more cracks above. That expined the bursts of blue fme above the swamp, then.

  Bck ooze dripped from thousands of cracks, millions of them. The group was now inside a cave, but it was raining, anyway.

  No one said a thing, and from the dropped jaws, no one had seen this before. Might as well be Mia to break the silence.

  “The fuck is going on?” Whining, she wiped some more muck off her body, her hair, her clothes, and kicked it off her sandals. All that time spent avoiding the muck and now she was covered in bck grossness, just like everyone else.

  Groaning, muscles and back aching, she slowly sat up and looked around. Everyone was here, cmoring to their feet, and standing in a foot of muck that coated the cavern floor. Mia quadruple checked her egg, and then started the rounds, checking anyone for injuries.

  “Worry about yourself,” Julisa said, snarling and pushing Mia away with her tail.

  Mia squeaked, again, nded on her ass, aimed an angry gre at the bitch, and gestured for Vin. Past Vin might have entertained Mia’s whining and pushed Julisa around in retribution, but ever since Kas and Adron showed up, he was being a right pain in the ass.

  She joined Adron and Kas, frowned at Julisa some more, and gestured out at the surrounding cavern. It was a tunnel.

  “This… can’t be happening. I just spent weeks in tunnels.”

  “At least these are rger,” Gallius said, wiping some muck off his armor.

  Larger was right. The cavern had to be a seventy, maybe a hundred meters high. They’d fallen far, but the momentary crack that’d opened up underneath them had brought in a literal mound of bck gore for them to nd on. Now that the crack was gone, the muck spread out, thinning enough for Mia to walk around.

  Beyond the muck was hard ground, bck stone and dirt, moist from the constant dripping of bck wetness from above.

  “At least we can see,” she said, gesturing towards the walls and the tiny ember fmes that danced along their cracks, and the momentary blue fmes they lit above.

  “At least!” Julisa stomped a foot as she gestured out around them with her four arms. “Look what you have done, unmarked!”

  “I didn’t do anything!”

  “Lies.”

  “I didn’t! Pying the strings is really hard, okay? Super hard. And right now, even just thinking about trying hurts. I didn’t py any strings, and I didn’t—” She bit her lip and gulped as she looked up at the crack. “I mean, I know I didn’t make this happen, but… but I did feel the strings vibrate, right before the ground opened up.”

  “What else can do that?” Adron asked.

  “I don’t know. How would I know? Vinicius?”

  The titan shook his head.

  “I know nothing of strings.”

  “The rider?” she asked.

  “No.”

  Well, fuck. Mia paced around in a circle, eyes on her egg, and she stroked it as she listened for the vibration again. Whatever or whoever had pyed the strings, it hadn’t been her. The strings didn’t vibrate anymore, either. Hell? It hadn’t felt like Hell, like with the firestorm; assuming that’d actually been Hell. So what the fuck happened?

  “There might be another unmarked nearby,” she said. “But it didn’t feel like that. When I pyed the strings heavy enough to make Hell do stuff, Hell had mirrored what I’d pyed to make that happen. I think. I didn’t feel that this time. It was just some random strings that’d started vibrating, strings that were connected to the swamp. It was random!”

  Adron ughed. “There’s no way it was random. Something or someone caused this”—he gestured up at the ceiling—“and sealed it up. We’re down here because someone wants us down here.”

  All four incubi groaned.

  “Let’s go,” Kas said, picked a direction, and got walking.

  She joined him and checked his leg while she was at it. A limp, but a small one, and with an asshole like Kas it wasn’t like he’d admit to being injured anyway, even if he got it in battle with some sorta giant alien creature.

  “Why this way?”

  “The other direction leads back toward Death’s Grip. If we must pick a direction, let’s go in the direction we want to go, above or below ground.”

  “You kept your sense of direction while drowning and falling?” Adron asked.

  Kas snorted and clicked once.

  Sighing, Mia patted the shark dinosaur’s shoulder, and followed. With a direction to go and nothing else to do, the rest of the group did the same, and Mia slowed down until she was in the middle of the group. The cavern tunnel was enormous, but it only had two directions, no forks that she could see. Almost as if someone had pulled them into a trap, and now they had no choice but to walk straight into it.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Whoever id the trap was taking their sweet-ass time springing it. They walked a couple hours with nothing to show for it, only more giant cavern with bck ooze leaking from the ceiling and down the walls, with tiny ember fmes flickering up the wall cracks. The fmes lit gas pockets in the ceiling, each bursting into small blue fme, but never anything more than a tiny gasp of light. More light than they’d had on the surface, but that wasn’t saying much.

  The embers died down, and so did the blue lights, announcing twilight. The group spent an hour looking for an alcove they could sleep in, found none, and settled on the worst option imaginable: the center, on a big, ft dry spot where the bck blood didn’t drip on them.

  “At least it doesn’t st forever,” Mia said, gesturing at the bck muck still on their skin. It was evaporating.

  “All this time in Hell,” Julisa said, rolling her eyes as she sat on a boulder, “and you still worry over blood on your skin?”

  “It’s bck blood!”

  “Irrelevant.” And like she’d just won an argument, she waved Mia off with two of her hands.

  What a bitch. Mia flipped her off, but the demoness just looked at her, eyebrow raised. No point in arguing with her, so Mia went to Vinicius instead, stood by his feet and tapped his knee. He’d sat down, and she nudged the tip of his knee spike with a fingertip.

  “How’s the hunger?”

  Rumbling, Vinicius looked back at the four incubi sitting together. Mia knew that look. That was his hunger look. She punched his knee, but all that got from him was a small, rumbling chuckle. Considering his attitude tely, a condescending chuckle was a win.

  “We’ll find something,” she said. “If there are caverns below the Bck Valley, I’m sure some demons or souls have fallen down here in other pces, too.”

  Much as the big asshole tried to put on a stoic, impenetrable face, the four-armed dragon nodded, and he looked past Mia to the path they’d walk tomorrow. He was starving.

  It hurt, seeing her bodyguard in pain when there was nothing she could do about it. But there was no point in sharing that empathy with him, expining it, when all that would do was piss him off. But quiet acceptance from her that his pain was real, and they all recognized he was tough enough to bear it? Yeah, that’d feed into his ego, so she patted his knee, gave him a stern nod, and sat with the others a few feet away.

  “I never thought I’d end up in this situation,” Adron said. He sat with the four incubi, Kas behind him and already taking first watch. “And I never realized you worked with the Damall, Faust.”

  “What vorin isn’t good at keeping secrets?” Faust grinned at the rger demon and gestured to Mia. “I didn’t realize you were really working for Zel. Really, really working for her. I figured you were just one of Diogo’s.”

  “Took a few years to convince Diogo to trust me.”

  “You’re smart for a vratorin.”

  Adron ughed and rubbed at the burn scars on the side of his face and shoulder.

  “I suppose that’s a nice compliment to get from an incubus.” Adron leaned over a leg and eyed Faust. “No one trusts an incubus.”

  “Not true. Mia trusts us.”

  “Mia,” he said, gesturing to her with his tail, eyes still on Faust, “is a young woman from the surface. And unlike every other young woman from the surface to come to Hell, she’s way too nice, and na?ve.”

  “Hey!” Mia backhanded the big demon across the shoulder. “That’s only partially true. And I never said I trusted any of you.” A finger jab at the four incubi was warranted, and she aimed it like a weapon. “You were spying on us!”

  “We had to,” they said, in tandem. Quite the choir.

  “Well, you’re all a bunch of sneaky boys, Adron included. Kas though”—she got up, stepped around Adron, and sat beside Kas—“is an honest man.”

  Kas looked down at her, and she reached up and touched one of his forward-pointing horns. Of course, he didn’t know how to react to that, Mia being all nice and whatnot, but that was expected. Kas was just one of those stoic, grumpy, ‘doesn’t understand nice people’ sorta guys, and if he’d had a beard and tattoos to go with his scar and attitude, he would have fit into a romance story about a hardened warrior perfectly.

  “I’ll give you that,” Adron said, rolled his eyes, and got to work checking his sword for damage.

  “Go to sleep,” Kas said down at her. “I’ll take first watch.”

  Mia nodded, patted her egg, and patted Kas’s arm, too. It was important he understand she was more than just happy he showed up and saved her life. She wanted him around. He wasn’t like other demons.

  The thought almost made her ugh. Yeah, he wasn’t like other demons, but just like Vin, he was still a violent and deadly creature. The fact he’d showed up at the st second and saved her life from that angel was clearly making her feel butterflies in her chest, and she’d read enough psychology books — and shitty romance stories — to know those feelings were just from the situation. Him, and Adron, too.

  Adron. She turned, sat against Kas’s arm, and watched the four incubi and vratorin work, the group of them checking their armor and weapons for issues. Burn marks covered half of Adron’s body, and while they’d healed in an almost pleasing way, kinda like flowing waves on the skin, they were still burn scars. A permanent reminder of that day, and all the things he’d lost. No longer Zel’s favorite vrat. Hannah dead. And now the new ruler of Death’s Grip would happily kill him if he found the opportunity.

  But he smiled, kept all that shit underneath a yer of casual nonchance, and looked Mia’s way. They looked at each other, and Mia felt her expression soften as she gazed into his single eye. His other eye refused to open. Would it even work if it could?

  Adron was smart. After looking at each other for a while, he lowered his eye, and his smile faded. He knew what she was thinking. Poor Hannah. Poor Adron.

  If it weren’t for everyone else around, she’d have gone to him and comforted him. Would he have even liked that? Vin would have hated it, but Adron wasn’t like that. Maybe she’d try ter. She missed the old Adron, the guy who’d come up to her and flirt with her, toy with her, tease her, and she missed the blonde girl who’d join him.

  Fuck. Thinking too much. That was David’s problem, and it was quickly becoming her problem. Groaning, she ran a hand down her face, wiped away her sadness as best she could, closed her eyes, and went to sleep.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  ~~Day 53~~

  She woke up. That was nice. She’d half expected to not, considering the circumstances, but wake she did, to the sound of strange growls. Her mental Hell clock, combined with the brightening fmes, told her it was morning twilight, and that’d she’d managed a good eight hours of sleep. What a fortunate coincidence that whoever was attacking them had waited until then.

  She jumped to her feet and spun around, eyes tching onto shadows skittering on the walls. There were shadows on the walls!

  Momentary blue fmes lit up the shadows, exposing the creatures and their lizard bodies. They scurried, cws gripping the wet stone, and came down the walls toward the group. They had ft-ish shapes, bellies touching the walls, and their long tails whipped left and right with their almost frantic steps.

  “Illorads,” Kas said, pushing Mia back with his tail.

  Illorads? She’d heard of lorads, small demon lizards. These things were not small. They had to be ten or twelve feet long, like full-grown Komodo dragons that someone had glued big spikes onto. A dozen of them. Six of them sprinted along the cavern walls near the base, and six more followed them on the ground.

  Everyone drew their weapons, but Vinicius took the longest getting ready, body weighed down by nothing, and he snarled down at the floor as he pushed himself up with three arms. Normally, it took him one.

  Faust and the others got their swords out in front of them, borderline back to back, eyes locked on the oncoming wave. Julisa stood ready, four swords out, and Adron came and stood with Kas. Mia was protected on all sides.

  The lizards ran, hissing, snapping at the demons, and… went on by. They hugged the wall, kept plenty of space between them and the demons, and scurried on, looking back and throwing gnces at Mia and the demons for only a second. They disappeared into the dark cavern.

  “Um… a hunting party?” Mia asked. “It’s morning twilight, right? Hellbeasts out hunting for easier game?”

  “Maybe,” Adron said, and he hooked his sword to his back. “Hellbeasts have been acting weird tely. And usually a pack of hungry hellbeasts wouldn’t hesitate to throw themselves at us if they thought there was even a chance they’d win.” He gestured at the fleeing lizards with his sword. “There’s enough of them. They might have gotten two, maybe three vorins, if they’d tried.”

  The incubi — vorins — rolled their eyes as they sheathed their swords.

  “They flee,” Vin said, eyes pointed the way the lizards had come from.

  Everyone looked back the way the lizards had first appeared, and waited. Breaths held, they listened for the inevitable growl of some giant monster that would take every bit of skill and strength they had to defeat. Maybe the not-so-invisible monster had found them. They waited, but nothing came.

  “Smell anything?” she asked Kas.

  “No.”

  “Then… I guess we go? We need food asap, and find a way back topside, and find a way back to the trenches and hopefully to the big Trench, and find Romakus and Yosepha.” She counted on her fingers. A list of impossible tasks, but everything on her to-do list was impossible tely, and she just kept pushing forward.

  Knowing David was out there, still alive and trying to meet the same goal, made it easier. If she died, he’d do it. Not that she was thinking she’d die on this journey, not with all the friends and allies she’d made, along with all the crazy shit happening to her. But considering the ground had literally swallowed her, randomly, it was safe to assume someone or something out there was trying to interfere with her journey. Best way to interfere was to kill her. And if she died, he’d succeed.

  “We go,” Julisa said. Not agreeing with Mia, of course, because that’d be too nice, instead using her bitch tone to make sure everyone knew she was in charge. Whatever. As long as she and Mia had the same goal, what difference did it make?

  It would eventually. In the future, Julisa would get directly in Mia’s way, leading to some kinda conflict, and who knew what’d happen then. Ugh, why couldn’t people just get along?

  Mia walked. A gnce Vin’s way proved the titan was struggling, and she didn’t want to be another burden for him to carry. Of course, he wouldn’t admit he was struggling, just that he was hungry. So she climbed onto Kas’s back instead, and he didn’t so much as grunt.

  “Kas,” she said. “You have anything you wanna do, when this is all done?”

  “Do?”

  “Yeah. I mean, you and Adron joined us pretty quick, and I get why, what with that Diogo asshole apparently running Death’s Grip now. But assuming we get to False Gate, we find a way across the red sea, and we get to the Forgotten Pce and save the world, what are you gonna do? What’s your pn?”

  Kas rumbled, vibration tingling her thighs, but after a few seconds of waiting, he said nothing, not even a click. Resisting the urge to poke him on his ft shark head, she looked back to Adron.

  Adron shrugged. “You think any of us pn that far ahead?”

  “Zel did.”

  “Zel acted like she did, but Zel only ever had one goal. She wanted to rule Hell, and she pursued whatever road looked like it’d head in that direction. Not like she ever thought about what she’d do after she succeeded.”

  Good point. It wasn’t that demons didn’t think, but rather, they didn’t think about things past their immediate goal.

  “Well, I have pns! Ideally, I’d find a way out of Hell, maybe to Heaven, and you’re all invited, of course. Yes, that includes you, Julisa.” Cssic harassment tactic. Offer an invitation to the girl you know won’t accept. High school bitch maneuvers 101.

  “Heaven?” Adron asked, jogging and catching up.

  “Well, yeah. I’m unmarked, right?”

  “Neither am I, and no way they’d let me in Heaven.”

  “But I…” Sighing, she stroked her egg and slumped forward. “Yeah, you’re right. I’m not human.”

  “I dunno,” Faust said. “You seem pretty damn human.”

  Julisa barked a ugh. “She fit Vinicius inside her. She is not human.”

  Fuck. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to try and socially maneuver with Julisa. The bitch was mean.

  “Maybe she’ll have room for more than just him, in the future,” Gallius said, grinning.

  Mia blushed, heartbeat in her face, and she gred back at the incubus. All four of them grinned at her.

  Vinicius rumbled. Not a snarl like usual, just a quiet rumble. Too hungry to be possessive of Mia, or maybe he didn’t care.

  He had to care a little. Right?

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  ~~David~~

  Somehow, they got through the night. Everyone slept and woke with energy they didn’t have yesterday.

  David’s stomach felt like it was eating him from the inside out, though, and he groaned as he clutched it. His voice cut through the silence, and he snapped his head around. Girls? The girls. He sighed, unclenched his muscles, and walked his way over to them. All of them had found pces to sleep on the floor, some between the pews, Caera along the aisle, while Vicus and Jes both stood watch at the front door.

  “He didn’t find us?” David asked.

  With a long groan of her own, Caera did a big, cssic cat stretch, and sauntered up to David. She rubbed against his body, again like a house cat, and he couldn’t help but lean down and kiss her.

  “He didn’t,” Jes said. “Vicus didn’t lie, apparently. This church is kind of out of the way of the action. No souls. No demons. No rider.”

  No souls. David rubbed his stomach and pressed on it. But the hunger wasn’t physical, and squashing his stomach did nothing. Holy fuck, it was like a bck hole. Combined with the ache of his inner fingers, worse now than ever, he really felt like shit. Exhausted, but not sleepy, so at least he had that going.

  “We need to get moving,” Caera said. “David needs to eat. Vicus, you sure we can’t hunt from here?”

  Vicus closed the front door and took watch by an empty window.

  “I’m sure. There are pockets of nothing in the Grave Valley where nothing happens. This is one. If the rider is chasing the unmarked, it isn’t as simple as following his trail. He would have found us already.”

  Finally, some good news.

  “We guard David!” Lasca said, and she raised her sword high. “Fight rider!”

  Acelina hissed down at the four Las as she stretched, too.

  “You ran the moment those cannams arrived.”

  “Las can’t fight cannam,” Laria said. “Too big. Too fast!”

  “And don’t think we didn’t notice how quickly you ran from the rider. Far faster than you ran from the cannams.”

  “Leave them alone,” David said. “You saw what the rider could do. Even with that aura telling me to fight, I was fucking terrified more than anything.”

  The spire mother marched up to David and gred down at him with her featureless face.

  “I know all too well.”

  David tilted his head. “What?”

  Scoffing at him, she swung a wing in his direction. Caera knocked the huge fp aside, but Acelina didn’t stick around to start an argument. She joined Vicus and looked out the window.

  David and Caera shared a quick look. That was strange behavior from Acelina. Sure, she was a stuck up princess and a royal pain in the ass, but she didn’t mindlessly look for arguments over random stuff.

  Maybe the rider had spooked her? It was hard to pin whether demons actually gave a shit if they died or not. The Las seemed to, and Jes, Dao, and Caera all certainly cared if the ones they cared about died. But from what he saw at the spire, a lot of demons were happy to be suicidally violent, just like hellbeasts.

  Ugh, he couldn’t figure demons out. Sometimes they behaved like humans, sometimes not. Where was Mia when he needed her?

  “What’s the pn?” he asked, sitting down in a pew near the aisle.

  The tiger sat by his pew, leaned in, and nudged a horn along the side of his head.

  “We follow Vicus. We’ll all starve if we stay here, not just you.”

  “I… don’t suppose we can just sit here for a bit, and not do anything?”

  “You think you can? You look like you’re going to pass out if you don’t eat.”

  No getting around it. He was starving, and every second he didn’t have food was pain. Groaning, he nudged his cheek into Caera’s, and she turned her face in toward him and returned it, kissing his cheek and licking it, too.

  “Yeah, you’re right.”

  “We could eat Vicus.”

  David pulled his head back and eyed the tregeera. Kidding? Hard to say.

  “No, we need him.”

  “I know.” But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t kill Vicus and feed him to David, if he asked.

  Everyone got ready to leave. Easier said than done. Every limb felt like a lead weight, and if he moved too quickly, he saw spots, grew dizzy, and his feet tried to slip out from under him.

  “Sit on me,” Caera said, and she y beside him.

  “I—”

  “Just sit. You saved our asses. Least we can do is—”

  “Hardly,” Acelina said with a snap of her tail. “If the rider is pursuing the unmarked, which he probably is, then David owes us. Not the other way around.”

  Something had definitely affected Acelina. No point in asking about it, not when she’d just lie or dodge, or spit venom at him without ever answering the question.

  Daoka clicked furiously at the enormous demoness, joined David, and helped him onto Caera’s back. Still clicking and putting dolphins to shame, she helped him put on his half breastpte, but gave his dagger to Lasca instead.

  “Then it’s a good thing,” Caera said, “that we’re dumping your ass off at the spire. Your royal bitchness won’t have to worry about the rider or whether David will help you once we’re out of your horns.”

  Fring her wings like she could summon an army with them, Acelina showed her shark mouth and its many teeth as she snarled at Caera. But nothing came of it. She hooked her wings around her shoulders, stood by the door, and waited.

  “Lead on, vratorin.” The following hiss was threat enough. If he betrayed them, she’d eat him.

  Vicus gred up at the woman, but led the march again, and the group followed. Everyone’s wounds were mostly healed, but some demons still had a few holes in their wings, especially the Las.

  “Go slow,” David said. “And let’s get somewhere we can hunt asap, and not just for me.” He gestured to the little dies.

  “Lasca fine.”

  “Laara fine.”

  “Latia fine.”

  “Laria fine.”

  “You’re not fine.” He grabbed Lasca by the shoulder and stuck a finger through one of her wings, literally. The holes were more than big enough.

  Whining, she turned and rubbed her face in his stomach.

  “Thorns got us! Used to bloodgrip vines. Not used to trees.”

  “Stay in the back of the group,” he said, and patted her head.

  “Hey Jes,” Caera said. “Wanna take lead? You, Dao, and Acelina. Keep an eye on the vrat.”

  “Yeah, sure.” Nodding, the gargoyle and satyr joined the spire mother. Jes was almost seven feet tall, and she looked like a child compared to Acelina, Dao more so. Once she was close to Acelina, Jes dug her talons into the floor, opened the door, and motioned for the much, much bigger winged demon to take lead. “After you, your majesty.”

  Dao clicked protest and nudged Jes’s arm, but Acelina only scoffed and headed out after Vicus.

  “It’s the rider,” Caera said, looking back to David.

  “What?”

  “I can see you trying to figure out why Acelina’s angry. It’s the rider. He killed Zel, remember? She loved that bitch. I bet she’s dying for a chance at revenge, but all she can do is run. All any of us can do is run.”

  “The rider… Right.” David gulped and nodded. “Yeah. I… yeah.”

  She stared at him, single eye boring through him.

  “David?”

  “It’s nothing. I’ll tell you after we’ve dropped Acelina off.” Gncing back, he gestured to the Las. “Come on, girls. I’m weak. You’ll have to protect me.”

  “Protect David!” Called to their charge, the little dies ran ahead, and immediately broke into whines and whimpers as their torn wings caught air. Second attempt with wings snug to their backs went better, and they ran out of the church and chased after the others.

  Caera eyed him, frowning. He could whisper it to her, right now, no problem. It was just the two of them in the room. He wanted to. Christ, he wanted to. Holding a secret felt like drinking poison. But as long as Acelina was with them, each person who knew what Mia had done was a risk. A slip of the tongue, a heated argument, anything could go wrong, and if Acelina found out what actually happened, she’d try and kill David. Or worse, find a way to get to Mia.

  “It’s important,” he whispered, and chewed the inside of his lip. “Please?”

  Her frown melted away, and she nodded.

  “I trust you.”

  “Thanks.”

  Nodding, she followed the Las.

  And got a whole three steps before the group came to a stop.

  “Well well, is that Vicus? Where you been, you damn rat?” Yet another new voice. Holy fuck, he was getting sick of new voices randomly showing up out of nowhere.

  Vicus had started them toward the tree line, sharp woods with more space so the girls could walk it, but some demons had come out of the woods, instead. A few dozen demons. More. Vrats, brutes, gargoyles, one tiger, a couple bat girls, with more hidden in the fog. Two tetrads led the group.

  A korgejin and a bolstara.

  Korgejins and their gorujin counterparts were the only rge male demons with wings, ten-foot-tall titans of muscle and power. Korgejins had hooves, no tail, and faces that bordered right on the line of fucking scary and kinda awesome, demony with big jaws and hard eyes. And damn, those were two big horns.

  Bolstaras and fujaras both had four arms and no wings, but like the korgejin next to her, the bolstara had hooves and no tail. Four enormous horns decorated her hair, like a crown sitting on her long bck dreadlocks. Both demons wore sbs of bck metal across various body parts, along with most of their friends.

  Vicus sucked in a hard breath and took a step back. No point. More demons came out of the woodwork, circling the group.

  “Zalia is dead,” he said, backing up until he almost touched Jes and Acelina. “I surrender.”

  The word choice was a bad one. The demons ughed.

  “Dead?” The korgejin stepped forward, rumbling in his throat and chest. Two axes dangled from his hips. No hellfire glow.

  “The rider got her.”

  “The rider is here?” The bolstara joined her fellow tetrad and walked forward. She had four swords, two on her hips and two sticking up over her shoulders.

  For a tiny moment, David stared at the bolstara, and did a double take on her and Acelina. They both walked with the same strut, thanks to their hooves, but the tetrad woman had a foot of height on Acelina. Even so, the rest of their proportions were simir, and the hip sway grabbed David’s eyes and didn’t let go. Now was not the time to think of sex, but… damn.

  “The rider is,” Vicus said. “He—”

  Jes and Acelina jumped back, and both fpped their wings and snarled at the korgejin. One of his axes stuck out of Vicus’s head, buried deep, a double-bded axe with a short handle; perfect for throwing at unsuspecting vrats. How could someone that big be that quick? Quick and accurate. The axe stuck out of the dead center of Vicus’s forehead, and the vrat y perfectly on his back, limbs spread. Someone might as well have sniped him with a silent gun.

  “How dare you!” Acelina yelled, fring her wings. “He was to escort us to Timaeus! I must speak with Azailia at once.”

  The two tetrads gnced between each other, an eyebrow raised each.

  “A zotiva?” the korgejin asked, and he stepped closer. “From Death’s Grip?”

  Snorting, Acelina walked forward, her axe hanging along her back. If she drew it, the tetrad might cut her down. Much as Acelina whined and compined a lot, she was smart.

  “You know about the tragedy of Death’s Grip?”

  “We heard Zel died. But we haven’t confirmed.”

  “Then I confirm. Zendariel is dead, and something catastrophic has ripped the province in half.” She gestured back to David with a wing. “You’ve heard of the unmarked?”

  Caera took a step forward. “Acelina, don’t—”

  “It is important he remains unharmed. You need not know why. Take me to Timaeus, and your bailiff will take us to Azailia.”

  Royalty indeed. David froze, hands tight on Caera’s spikes, and he looked at the demons that’d completely circled them. The Las stayed close, almost pressed to Caera’s sides, while Jes and Dao stood just ahead, weapons already drawn.

  The korgejin growled down at Acelina. Considering how tall and thick he was with muscle, he probably weighed over thrice what the enormous demoness did. But something in his eyes relented, and he smiled.

  “Name?”

  “Acelina. You?”

  “Teleius.”

  “Teleius. And you?” Acelina set her eyeless gre on the woman demon.

  “Laoko,” she said, and she strutted up and stood beside her fellow tetrad. “You have some nerve making demands of us, zotiva.”

  “Have you ever known a zotiva to leave her spire? Why would a spire mother leave her home?”

  Laoko tilted her head to the side, and some of her long dreadlocks spilled over her shoulder.

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “Then you should know this is important. Take me to Timaeus, or Azailia, if you are willing to make the trip.” Acelina folded her arms under her chest and tapped a hoof on the soft dirt. “Now.”

  David’s jaw dropped. The Las stared, frozen. Only Jes, Dao, and Caera didn’t freeze, but they’d also stopped watching the demons circling them, and stared at Acelina instead. It’d been one of David’s reasons for keeping Acelina around, that she could deal with political situations, parley and whatnot. Apparently, it’d been a good call. Maybe. Hopefully.

  “I suppose Timaeus will reward us for bringing him a zotiva, and an unmarked.” The korgejin Teleius shrugged and gestured to the group. “Kill the rest.”

  Fuck. The Las hissed and waved their weapons around, and Jes and Dao backed up more until they stood near Caera. Every muscle in Caera’s body turned to steel underneath David, and she growled as she looked between the approaching demons, ready to fight.

  “Do not kill the others,” Acelina said. “They have served me well, and once Azailia learns of our mission, she will be gd they live.”

  They hadn’t really figured out how much they were going to tell Azailia when they reached her. Jes probably wanted to dump Acelina on her doorstep and take off, but without the spire mother, they’d have a hard time crossing the rest of the province without running into trouble. Like now. But if Acelina was going to keep them alive by taking charge, then, sure, let her take charge. Hopefully, the girls would agree.

  Teleius reached past Acelina, and Caera tensed. But the huge demon ignored her, she ignored him, and he retrieved his axe from Vicus’s body. Part of David felt sorry for him. A rger part of him had a sneaking suspicion the vratorin had pnned to betray them.

  Laoko slowly tilted her head to the other side, wearing a subtle, almost welcoming smile, and she looked past Acelina to David. He froze. Again.

  “He truly is unmarked.”

  “He is,” Acelina said.

  “And the rider’s arrival has something to do with him?”

  “Everything has something to do with him, and the other unmarked. But those details are not for you. They are for Azailia.” Acelina fpped her wings twice, enough for Laoko’s hair to bounce against her hips. And ass. “And you”—she pointed at a nearby brute—“fetch the vratorin’s heart and give it to the unmarked.”

  Everyone stared at her. This wasn’t happening.

  Teleius frowned and snarled, like an upset dog. Laoko maintained her subtle smile and chuckled. She gestured to the brute, and the muscled juggernaut muttered, but didn’t disobey. Devorjin brutes were huge, all muscle, with no tail or spikes or horns of any kind, but compared to a tetrad, they didn’t look any more imposing than Acelina did. Still, everyone gave the brute room as he fetched the heart for David, and tossed it to him.

  Catching bloody organs out of the air. What a world.

  David scarfed it down. No time for a moral dilemma today, and no desire for one, either. The heart tasted amazing, and even the horrible memories of Vicus filing away in his brain barely warranted notice. The vrat had done some pretty dirty things, including a lot of backstabbings. He was sneaky. No wonder Teleius axed him.

  The ache in David’s guts settled, and he rubbed his stomach as he paused and waited for the next wave of hunger. It came, but not as bad as before.

  “You’re still hungry,” Laoko said, coming closer. Strut strut. “How strange.”

  “Yeah, it is.” He did his best to maintain a neutral face, show no emotion, stoic and all that, but Laoko was a tetrad and David had only interacted with them through statues. They were just so damn big. The fact she had the same curves as Acelina only made things worse.

  “You desire more?” Her nose was ft-ish and subtle, giving her an alien quality, with a small mouth and thin lips forever in a sly, analyzing smile. If they’d been sitting around a table, with various banners of various kingdoms, she would have been sitting at the head, a big crown on, and a wicked smile on her face as she forced everyone to sign a treatise they didn’t like.

  “I… do, but Vicus said there aren’t any souls out here.”

  Caera gred up at the tetrad. “That’s a good point, actually. What’re you doing here? There’s a lot of you. No chance you all came out here on a hunting trip.”

  Teleius gestured in the direction Vicus had pnned to take them.

  “Zalia has some allies in that direction, near a pit where souls are frequently dumped. Three days away. Vicus was probably taking you there, not to Timaeus.”

  “And we’re here,” Laoko said, “because we heard a mighty sound, and felt the ground break.” She gestured to the tregeera she’d brought with her pack.

  “The nearby forest has been shattered,” the tregeera said, “and the ground has been churned. There’s a molten hole in the center of it all, too.”

  A molten hole? The rider was free.

  “Then we should get moving,” Acelina said.

  “I would love an expnation.” The tetrad woman folded one set of arms under her chest, the other above.

  “And maybe Azailia will give you one.” With a quiet stomp of a hoof, Acelina adjusted her wings and didn’t back down, even as Laoko got closer and stared down at her from a foot away. “But we will tell you nothing. Just take us to Timaeus, and if you insist, follow us to the spire.”

  Laoko’s smile was relentless, but after a few seconds of deadly silence, she nodded and gestured to the demons around. Three dozen had become six or more, mostly vrats, brutes, and gargoyles, and they’d completely circled David and the girls.

  “We taking the vermin?” Teleius asked, gesturing to the Las.

  Daoka clicked twice up at the titan and stepped closer to the Las. Two hid behind her legs, while two stuck with Caera and David, and they bared their teeth as they spread their little wings.

  “We are,” Acelina said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I said so.”

  Again the silence tightened, ready to snap, and everyone set their eyes on the two tetrads and the spire mother negotiating on a knife’s edge. So this was what it looked like when two provinces were ‘friends’. Jes was right. These demons would have eaten them, Death’s Grip or not, if it not for Acelina.

  “Teleius,” Laoko said. “I’ll take forty and bring them to Timaeus.”

  “Fine. I’ll see what destroyed the trees, and what created the hole.” Hooking his axe back on his hip, he gred at David, and walked by. “If it was the rider, I’ll kill him.”

  “Don’t!” David half spun on Caera’s back. Only a moment’s hesitation stopped him from grabbing the demon’s finger. “Don’t try and fight the rider.”

  The korgejin gred down at him. What David had suggested was tantamount to telling some demons to stop breathing or eating, but this dumbass korgejin hadn’t seen what David had seen. A korgejin, just like him, getting chopped into fming bits by the man in red and bronze armor.

  They stared at each other, and Teleius broke first, grunting and fring his wings.

  “You, with me,” he said, and he gestured to swaths of demons. They followed, forty, maybe fifty demons taking scouting positions and running ahead while the big demon marched forward with a few brutes at his sides.

  “Come along, then,” Laoko said. “We can reach Timaeus in a few days, and he can decide if he should honor your… request.”

  Acelina scoffed, but said nothing, gave her wings another fre, and readjusted them on her shoulders as if donning a royal cape. The forty remaining demons watched, eyes roaming her body, or getting lost in her obsidian, featureless face. Her face or David’s face. Once they got used to seeing a spire mother outside a spire, it was David they stared at, squinting to see his forehead, some coming in close and directly observing him. The closer they got, the more Caera growled and snarled at them.

  This was going to be a rough journey.

  Unlike Teleius’s demons, Laoko’s didn’t fan out. A few did, but most stayed nearby, also falling into familiar positions they must have taken hundreds of times before. Some in front, some in back. Laoko stayed with David and the girls, and she gnced back over her shoulder many times, tilting her head as she analyzed them.

  “Ericia,” she said.

  “Yes, Laoko?” a demon said. A bat girl — diloja — ran up to her side. Six feet tall, skinny and dainty, but she had a few nasty scars on her shoulders, and she frowned back at the group before looking up at Laoko. Battle-hardened.

  “We’ll be crossing the White Lands. Take a hunting party and gather hearts to feed to our guests.”

  “Guests?” The bat girl hissed back over her shoulder. That was an angry girl. Maybe she’d get along with Jeskura.

  “Yes, they are our guests. You don’t think a spire mother outside her tower, and one of the unmarked, qualify as guests?”

  “I think they’re gonna get us killed.”

  “Timaeus might agree. But imagine what Azailia would say if she found out we had this group and didn’t bring them.”

  Ericia fred her arm wings and gred back at David.

  “I suppose.”

  “Good. Now, as you can see, the unmarked boy is unusual, and starving. I want him fed, even if that means a half dozen hearts. He must survive to see Azailia.”

  “So she can eat him?”

  Laoko nodded. “If she wants.”

  Gulp.

  The diloja gred back at David one more time, snarled up at Acelina, and took off, bringing a few vrats and gargoyles with her.

  “Ericia does make a good point,” Laoko said, slowing down until she walked with Acelina on her right, David and Caera on her left. “Unmarked have been causing chaos, clock and counter-clockwise of the Grave Valley. We know one in Death’s Grip has been using Cainites—”

  “David got that one!” Lasca yelled. “Killed him!”

  Acelina, Jes, Caera, and Dao all threw gres at Lasca, and the little dy sulked and covered her eyes with her palms.

  “One unmarked killed another?” Laoko asked, and she smiled down at David. “Why? Did you eat him for his power?”

  “No. I killed him because Cainites are a problem and he needed to die.”

  “But you ate his heart, yes?”

  “I… didn’t. Didn’t get a chance to. His flesh melted in seconds.” It might not have been smart to share that, but it seemed innocent enough.

  “Oh. Interesting.” She nodded, two lower arms still folded under her chest, one upper now holding her chin while the other combed her long dreadlocks over her shoulder. “I will make sure to tell Azailia.”

  “You’re joining us all the way to the spire?” Caera asked.

  “Of course. Vicus and his lot are… were but one of many groups in the Grave Valley, and some are not so quick to recognize the bailiffs as their leader, or Azailia as spire ruler. But Teleius and I do.”

  “Smart, not biting the hand that feeds you.”

  “Indeed. But you are from Death’s Grip. You understand what it’s like, warring against your neighbor.”

  “Yeah,” Jeskura said, leaping ahead of them and looking back. “It sucked. Dao and I—”

  Daoka clicked at her lover before shaking her head and gesturing to Caera.

  “It’s complicated,” Caera said. No transtion for David. “But none of that matters. We need to get through the Grave Valley, and as much as we’d prefer to just not deal with obstacles, I guess that isn’t happening.”

  “You thought you could simply walk through our province?”

  “We thought,” Acelina said, “that I would be escorted to the spire, where I can find a new home with Azailia. These fools are helping me, so I am bound to help them. They should be allowed through the province unharmed.”

  Laoko’s gentle smile faded. “Why?”

  “Ask Azailia, after we’ve spoken with her.”

  Why Acelina was determined to push boundaries and see how far she could piss everyone off, David wasn’t quite sure. An arrogance thing, a pride thing, something was making the woman lean into being even more pompous and annoying than usual. Yes, spire mothers were prized, but demons killed demons regurly. This was dangerous.

  “I’ll let you keep your secrets,” Laoko said, voice going a little deeper, a little… sultrier? “But I would like to know a few things. Innocent things.”

  Acelina scoffed. “Such as?”

  “Such as the rider. He hasn’t been seen in many years, but now he’s here, as are you. Will he hunt us down? I’d prefer to know if an unstoppable killer who has terrorized demonkind for centuries will be an issue.”

  “He will be,” David said. It was probably better to let Acelina do the talking, and she confirmed by looking back at him and exposing her shark teeth in a sneer. But his mouth moved on its own. “But, not just because of me. The rider is on the warpath. I don’t know why, but he’s out to get me, any other unmarked, and kill everyone in his way.” There. A nice, intimidating, foreboding warning.

  “So why should we spare the unmarked? Why not give you to the rider?”

  David gestured back toward Death’s Grip. “The rider didn’t create the canyon that ripped Death’s Grip in half. Something else did. And me and the other unmarked are the only ones who can stop that from happening again.” A white lie. Maybe not even a lie, if that thing underneath the canyon had something to do with why David was on this trip at all.

  “Enough,” Acelina said. “We will expin the rest to Azailia.” A lie. “But no more. Rest assured, Laoko, killing the unmarked is a bad idea.”

  “But the boy himself said he killed another.”

  Shit. David put up his hands.

  “Necessity. I didn’t want to. He forced my hand.”

  Laoko nodded, set her eyes down, and watched the ground go by underneath them. Thinking mode. David did that all the time. Whoever this Laoko was, she had a head on her shoulders, and that could be a good or bad thing.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Ericia returned ten hours ter, and she and a few other demons handed David a half dozen hearts. All human. She’d had to go far to get them.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  The demons reared their heads and snapped eyes between each other. Right, he said the cursed word that shalt not be said. Even Laoko looked back at him with a raised eyebrow.

  “Unmarked.”

  “Yeah?”

  “No. I mean, you are unmarked. I can hear the… niceness… in your tone, and see it in your motions. You should be in Heaven.” She gestured up at the burning sky, half hidden by the gray fog. “You reek of empathy.”

  “He does,” Jes said. “But it grows on you.”

  David smiled at her, and handed her a heart. She returned the smile, took the heart, and split it between her and Dao. He gave one to Caera, and she smiled up at him and ate it. He gave one to the Las, and they split it and ate it, giggling. He gave one to Acelina, and she scoffed and ate it.

  Two left for him. He ate them. The hunger in his guts settled, enough that he didn’t feel like he was turning inside out anymore, but holy shit, he was still starving. What the hell?

  “Those were for you,” Ericia said, and she half hopped, half glided to him. “The fuck are you doing?”

  “Sharing with the girls who’ve saved my life a half dozen times?”

  “They can hunt food for themselves.”

  “Not if they’re with me, protecting me from… you demons.” He nodded to the near forty demons following them. They’d traded their sneaky demon escort for a convoy of jailers.

  “You’re safe with us,” Laoko said.

  “I might be. Acelina might be. The rest of them? No, they’re not. I want the girls well fed in case they have to kill all of you.” He bit down on the st bit of a heart, and gave Laoko his best determined gre.

  Laoko returned it with a gentle smile.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  The White Lands. He didn’t need anyone to tell him. It was like someone had run over a million of the giant white tombstones and paved the ground with them. Hundreds stood before him, crumbled and broken, bck dirt covered in their shattered remains. Ten times that were ft on their faces, cracked like gss, covering the ground in their shards. Maybe that was an exaggeration, damn fog blocking his vision, but considering the name and what he could see, yeap, that was a wastend of destroyed tombstones.

  No fences. No trees. No empty grave plots. Just a fucking load of tombstones big enough for gods, all broken.

  “Any… souls out here to eat?” Caera asked. “Because it looks barren.”

  “No souls. No demons,” Laoko said. “We cut through here and make good time to Timaeus. Three days, as I said.”

  “But no food,” Jes said, hopping ahead a bit and climbing one of the half broken tombstones. “Good thing David fed us.”

  “Indeed.” Again, the four-armed ten-foot demoness gnced back at David, and he squirmed on Caera’s back. She kept looking at him, analyzing him, and sneaking him subtle smiles. If he didn’t know any better, he’d think she was flirting with him, like some sorta succubus. He did know better. She was pying some sort of game, and happy not expining the rules.

  The bat girl Ericia, on the other hand, looked at David like she wanted to rip his head off.

  “We’re not waiting for Teleius?” Acelina asked.

  “No. I trust him. Our nest is a day toward the outer edge, and we will meet there when I return.” She shrugged and flicked some of her hair back over her shoulder. The dreadlocks bounced against her ass. “Come.” She stepped onto a ft tombstone, and her hooves made quiet click cck tippy taps on the white stone.

  The group followed. Laoko’s demons spread out and circled the area, while Laoko herself stuck close to David and the group. Her other demons were in a constant state of tension and awareness, as if they’d have to fight at any moment, but Laoko just strut along, using the same sort of pompous, arrogant body nguage Acelina used, minus the pompous, arrogant words.

  Time for a little reconnaissance.

  “Caera, I think I can walk now.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. Still hungry as fuck, but I can walk.”

  “Alright.” She helped him off her back and take a few test steps.

  Feet working, lungs working, he walked on his own, and slipped his fingers through Caera’s hair.

  “Thanks for carrying me.”

  “You weigh almost nothing.”

  “Yeah, but, more than just that.”

  She nudged her head into his chest and smiled. He gestured to himself with a thumb and nodded toward Laoko. She raised a brow, but shrugged and slowed down a bit and fell behind.

  David jogged for a moment, joined Laoko, and walked on her right, opposite of Acelina.

  “I’m confused,” he said. “You and Teleius work together?”

  “We run this merry band of adventurers, yes.”

  Merry band of adventurers? She wasn’t unfamiliar with expressions from the surface. Maybe she watched the scrying pools.

  “And the two of you were investigating the hellquake?”

  “That, and to potentially kill Zalia and her brood, or perhaps her allies, if we saw the opportunity. As we said, Vicus lied, and was taking you to them.”

  “Across an area with no souls?”

  “Yes, to avoid other demons. Hunting nds are never empty. Souls are dumped onto Hell in zones, and groups establish their nests near those zones. This is not the Scar. Here, we gather in groups and fight each other for the right to survive.”

  “It’s not like that in the Scar?”

  “Not exactly. The vos all work together and share the food, but engage in games of politics and backstabbing.”

  “Synonyms.”

  Laoko ughed. “Yes, I suppose a human would know best.”

  Laoko didn’t talk like other demons. Even Caera had a certain brutality to her inflections and word choices, but Laoko spoke softly, and used words that nded softer. Mia might know better what that meant, but all he could tell was Laoko seemed smart, and dangerous.

  “The other groups. They don’t like Timaeus?”

  “Some groups are willing to bow to the bailiffs and to the spire ruler. Some are not so easily broken. Vicus’s friends and their allies tested the boundaries, and Timaeus has decided they should die.”

  “Oh. So you were sent to kill them?”

  “No. He decred them problematic. Whoever kills them earns favor. Or the troublemakers survive, and perhaps Azailia promotes their leader to be her new bailiff if they’ve earned the right through sheer might.”

  Might makes right. Or in the wise words of green men: biggest ork is boss.

  “I—”

  Demons ahead froze, and those with wings fred them and climbed up half broken tombstones. The ones without drew their weapons, and snarled at the fog as they swung their bdes into the gray beyond. The heavy thunk and fleshy spsh told him what it was before David saw them.

  More remnants.

  They shrieked and screamed, and slowly pushed through the fog toward the group, some with arms out in front of them like cssic zombies. Uh oh. Every demon near David, Laoko included, hissed and drew their weapons, and the ones with cws on their feet dug them into the white pebbles decorating the bck ground. Every muscle tensed, and tails went rigid. Fangs were bared, and demons drew in closer to each other.

  Remnants were borderline harmless to big demons, and even imps and grems had an easy time dealing with them usually. But demons feared zombies for some reason, and sure enough, the remnants came at them like a swarm of zombies. They groaned and moaned, some with jaws half ripped off, some missing an arm, or half their face, but that didn’t stop zombies. They tripped, fell over each other, broke limbs on the hard edges of fallen tombstones, but that didn’t stop them, either. They closed in on the group, by the tens, by the hundreds.

  By the thousands.

  Why couldn’t they just catch a fucking break?

  “This again,” Laoko said. Snarling, she pointed her swords forward. “Go.”

  Forward Laoko and the group marched, chopping down remnants like weeds.