~~Mia~~

  The horde of creatures screamed, and all sound disappeared under the silence, crushed by the void. Not real sound, but the hidden sound, the vibrating strings that permeated everything. For a second, they were gone, and Mia almost squealed with whipsh when the screams died, and the strings returned.

  “W-What do we do?” Mia asked.

  “You’re the one with special powers,” Julisa said, hissing as she drew her four bdes. “Do something.”

  “I can’t! I’m trying to py the strings, but it’s not working!” Her inner fingers ached, and every attempt to pluck a string failed. Worse, trying to hear and feel them was like trying to listen to music through a concrete wall with what the weird squid monsters were doing, drowning everything in… nothing.

  Adron brought out his sword. “Do we fight?”

  Vin took a step forward toward the creatures, but Kas spun and hit the ragarin on the side with his tail.

  “We run!” And with a heavy snort, like some sort of grunting starter’s pistol, Kas took off. If Kas wanted to run, then running was a good idea, and no one questioned it. Everyone turned and ran.

  Problem. The new dog-like squid creatures were fast, and their weird hand-like paws didn’t sink into the muck more than a few inches with each bounding leap. They closed the distance, thick limbs growing thinner until they had the proportions of tailless wolves, and they didn’t hesitate to throw themselves at the group’s heels.

  Adron jumped and spun, bringing his sword around and nailing the creature in the side. It split in half, and something white spttered over the sword, Adron’s body, and the bck muck, only to disappear a moment ter, along with the creature. Its skin shifted color, and drops of its own blood fell through its body before shifting into nothingness.

  Another dove for Vin’s tail, and Mia squeaked as it got its tentacle mouth on the giant demon. From so close, the changing color was more clear, navy and dark green blending over bck, with glistening skin like something that’d crawled out of the ocean. Pockets of see-through flesh remained, phasing in and out, colors bleeding over and off them, exposing the nothingness that y beyond.

  No, there was something in the nothingness of its flesh. White blood, pulsing, disappearing and reappearing, the same as the rest of it. And through the invisible, shifting parts of its flesh, Mia saw teeth hidden behind the tentacles, a beak with teeth, and they tore into Vin’s tail. Red blood poured into its mouth, some falling through the see-through parts of the creature, some going into its gullet.

  Vin swung his tail and sent the creature into the air. It nded deep in the swamp, but the soft yer of bck guts meant the impact was borderline harmless, and it resumed the chase a second ter, along with a couple dozen of the strange, tailless, vaguely human-like creatures. They closed in on Vin, some going for Adron, some for Kas and Julisa, but the majority came for Vin.

  Not Vin. They came for Mia, and their obsidian eyes stared at her with the vast emptiness of the void. Bck holes.

  “Maybe we should just give them the girl?” Julisa asked between her running pants. Before anyone could answer, she snorted. “I jest! But we need an answer to the situation and we need it now!”

  One creature jumped, this time onto Kas. As big as the giant human-wolf-squids were, Kas was rger, and he spun and rolled with the monster. In the muck, he ripped his cws down through the creature’s guts, and sent the white blood across the bck swamp. It had guts now, pieces of intestines coming into existence for only a moment, and only in random pces, before disappearing again. The rest of the creature followed right behind it, fading away, along with the blood.

  “We fight ghosts,” Kas said. “These are not creatures. Not hellbeasts, souls, demons, or angels!”

  He was right; they weren’t normal living creatures. And if they came from the same pce that thing in the canyon showed, the endless bck oblivion, then… then what? What the fuck were they? Why were they coming after Mia?

  Right now, it didn’t matter. Swords and cws stopped them, and so did hellfire.

  “Vin,” Mia yelled into her bodyguard’s ear. “Can you breathe more hellfire?”

  “Yes, but it would hit nothing right now. They are fast.”

  “Then we get them lined up and bottlenecked. Get them stuck! Get them—”

  He turned his head enough to raise a dragon eyebrow, and Mia gestured at the giant trench beside them.

  If Vin had one awesome, perfect, exempry trait, it was his complete ck of hesitation. The moment he knew what she meant, he jumped into the trench, a mighty leap that sent Mia’s heart down into her stomach, and up into her throat on the way down. He nded in the ditch, and sure enough, the bck muck of the swamp nearly reached his knees. It wasn’t enough to stop him from running forward, sheer weight and power enough to crush through the gore, but when everyone else followed them into the trench, they struggled, Julisa included.

  With silent howls, the creatures jumped into the trench with them. The bck gore of the trench was thinner than on the ft ground, enough the alien creatures couldn’t walk on it with their weird half human, half paw hands and feet. They didn’t sink deep, but sinking up to their elbows and knees was enough to slow them down.

  Vin turned, and again his spikes glowed.

  “Everyone, get down!” Mia screamed.

  Julisa, Adron, and Kas threw themselves face down into the gore, and Vin unleashed Hell. Again, as before, fire poured out of his mouth, but not regur fire. Hellfire. There was something special about hellfire, about the way flecks of amber danced in the orange, red, and yellow fmes. The runes in her mind told her hellfire was some strange reaction between resonance and essence, something that didn’t fit everything else, where resonance and essence permeated the world. Hellfire had them rip each other apart, a fission reaction of pure destruction.

  She’d summoned it before, the climax of her firestorm. And Vin summoned it inside him, only to unleash it as a wave of carnage that rushed down the trench and onto the creatures. They screamed as before, and the hellfire crashed against both them and their silent cries, as if a bubble enveloped and protected them. But it sted only a second before crumbling, and all the creatures that’d jumped into the trench succumbed to the fme. Like the others, they fell to their wounds, some screaming, others shuddering, and they all melted from existence, leaving behind nothing, not even their corpses. Only hellfire.

  Vin turned to face a few of the creatures that stood on the edge of the trench, looking down at him and Mia, but they turned and vanished, leaving Mia and her bodyguard standing in the burning muck, waiting for the next attack. But none came.

  The others climbed up out of the bck gore, and Julisa groaned like an indignant cat.

  “You couldn’t wait four seconds, Vinicius?”

  Vinicius grunted. Mia would have ughed at how gross Julisa looked, the pretty royal bitch now covered head to toe in bck guts, but she couldn’t find any ughter to summon. Just panic.

  “Adron! Kas!”

  They climbed up out of the swamp, groaning, snarling, and Adron snapped a growl at some too-near hellfire still burning on the bck muck. If it’d touched him, Mia would have jumped down and run to him, but the big vrat threw the muck away and joined them in seconds, Kas right beside him.

  “Smart,” Kas said, and set his eyeless gre on Vinicius. “Asshole.”

  Vin snarled down at the shark dinosaur, but turned and carried on as if he hadn’t just nearly killed Kas, and Adron, and even Julisa. Would he have cared if he did? God damn it, Vin.

  “We can’t stay,” Julisa said. “Those creatures may find us again.”

  “But, what about the Damall?” Mia asked. “Romakus, and Yosepha, and Faust and Oudoceus and—”

  “Once they see we’re not here, they’ll do the only thing that makes sense. They’ll head toward the center point of the trench.”

  “But that’s… over a week away.”

  “Two weeks,” Vinicius said. “The swamp slows all.”

  Great. Fucking wonderful. Groaning, she half hung from Vin’s spikes and looked down at Adron and Kas.

  “You two alright? Adron, you—”

  “He didn’t get me this time,” he said, gring at Vin. “I’m fine.”

  Fine. He was fine, except he had that weird determined look again, a gritty and hard look that he’d never had before Hannah died. Before Vin had burned him.

  “Hey.”

  A new voice cut through the silence and distant screams of remnants, and everyone spun. But relief ran through Mia’s body as a shape came into view.

  “Slow down,” Faust said, panting as he yanked his foot out of a deep section of muck.

  “Faustinus,” Julisa said, turning. “You were supposed to stay in hiding.”

  Mia snapped her gre at the tetrad.

  “I thought only you stayed behind to watch us!”

  “A foolish idea. I am but one, and there are three of you.”

  Mia counted on her fingers. Three? Right, Mia didn’t count. What a bitch.

  “So Faustinus—”

  “And me,” another voice said, coming out of the bck. “And—”

  “Me,” another voice said.

  “And me,” another voice said.

  Mia threw up her hands as Faust, Gallius, Oudoceus, and Locutus all stepped out of the shadow.

  “All four of you were watching us!?”

  “It’s what we do,” Gallius said, joining them. “We knew you knew Romakus wouldn’t let you stay behind on your own while they go hunting, so Julisa stayed behind. But we knew you also might just ditch her, or eat her, so—”

  “So you thought you could help her stop us?” Vin asked, giving the incubus the smallest, most evil smile ever.

  Faust and the others were cssically handsome, tall, muscur but lean men, while Gallius had a little more size to him, a little more height, and had a scar across his forehead and cheek. Incubi had a couple small horns, long, thin tails that ended in the cssic devil spade, and short bck cws, but were otherwise very human looking. Dark red skin aside, of course. They were handsome, and hot, but they weren’t exactly the deadly killing machines other demons were.

  But Romakus had sent them to keep an eye on Mia and the group. Maybe they were deadlier with their swords than Mia knew.

  “Not help,” Faust said, shrugging. “But follow.” Or that.

  Kas snarled back at the incubi, but shrugged and continued on. Adron did the same. Even Vinicius only gave a small grunt and rumble before resuming the march. Only Mia had the audacity, the sheer nerve, to actually find it kind of offensive that Romakus had left a secret group to monitor her. To the demons, this was perfectly reasonable.

  “So what now?” Gallius asked.

  “What do you mean?” Mia said, gesturing to the trench. “We follow the trench back to the big trench. The… Trench, right?”

  Oudoceus shook his head. “That’s not one of the trench veins.”

  “What?” Oh. Oh fucking fuck no.

  “That’s not one of the trenches that connects to the main trench,” Locutus said. “It’s…” He slowly spun around. “Somewhere out there. When that thing attacked, you guys ran in a direction, and we followed as best we could; that monster was only interested in you guys, not us. But, uh, you didn’t follow the right trench.”

  Clenching her eyes until she saw stars, Mia took a deep breath, and forced herself to look back out into the swamp. There were other ditches, too, long trenches that cut through the bck gore in all directions, and she hadn’t even noticed them when Vin had turned — at her command — to attack the creature. And when they’d run in a panic when those smaller monsters had shown up, they’d followed this trench.

  The wrong trench.

  “Damn,” Julisa said, snarling and kicking at the muck.

  “So, what do we do?” Mia asked.

  Faust gestured out at the endless swamp around them, and the bck fog that blocked their vision.

  “The only thing we can do. We pick a direction and get walking. I think back this way is Death’s Grip.” He gestured behind him. “Anyone disagree?” No one said a thing. “Then I guess we keep going.”

  “But we can’t see anything. We’ll start drifting and turning, if this is the wrong trench.” Just saying the words had her feeling heavier and heavier every second, and she buried her forehead against Vin’s back.

  “It might be a vein that’ll connect us to the main trench. But probably not. All we can do is keep going, or maybe find some demons that know their way around.”

  Right, other demons. She hadn’t seen any yet, or hellbeasts.

  “We do not want to run into other demons,” Julisa said.

  “No,” Adron said, wincing. “We don’t.”

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  ~~David~~

  An uneventful day was a good day in Hell.

  “You know,” David said, voice low, “I’m kinda surprised.”

  Dao clicked once, standing beside him.

  “We haven’t run into a single demon. That’s kinda weird, right?”

  Jes and Caera prowled ahead, leading the party, while Acelina walked in back. The imps and grems were out exploring the graveyard, the giant headstones, the empty graveyard plots — yes, it had those — and the strange soft ground that was nearly grass but not quite. Their first time out of Death’s Grip, the unfamiliar sights were interesting to them, and problematically, the little critters weren’t all that good at considering the future when making decisions. They were going to get caught at some point, drawn into some encounter by their curiosity. But then again, they’d survived the mountain tunnels full of Cainites for quite a while. Maybe he wasn’t giving them enough credit.

  Shrugging, Dao touched shoulders with his and gestured out around at the spiky fences they walked by.

  “She says demons are probably hiding,” Caera said. “She’s right. I smell them, but they’re not making themselves known.”

  “I figured demons would try and eat strangers.”

  “Unlikely,” Acelina said. She stomped a hoof and gave her massive wings a few fps. “Any demon that sees me will immediately know we are important and not to be trifled with.”

  “Then… why haven’t any demons initiated contact, at least?”

  “Scared we might eat them,” Caera said. “That is a problem with demons. We have a habit of getting into tussles and eating each other.”

  “Cannibals.” His joke earned some small chuckles from the tiger dy. He loved the sound of her ughs. “But Alessio and Zel were on good terms, right? If any demons see us coming from Death’s Grip, wouldn’t they—”

  The gargoyle shook her head and gave her wings a small fp.

  “‘Good terms’ just means we don’t actively hunt and kill or eat each other. We’re not allies.”

  Demons were assholes. And as awesome as Jes, Dao, Caera, and the rest of them were, they’d all killed plenty of demons and humans on the regur for food before meeting David. Did they prioritize not killing demons who didn’t deserve it? Was that something demons even considered? Dao had to, surely.

  Remember, David. This is Hell. Different rules. Demons, from the moment they were born, were thrown into a pit where they had to fight each other for food, or literally eat each other. The only humans they ever met were horrible. They knew only the worst of… everything.

  But that wasn’t entirely true. Jes had told him that story of the grem in the hatching pit who’d fallen in love with a human man she’d been watching in the scrying pool. And when he’d died, the little dy had been so broken, she’d let herself get eaten. Demons weren’t mindless creatures addicted to violence and their hungers, and that meant communication was always a possibility. If they ran into any, he’d try.

  And be ready to kill them the moment they didn’t reciprocate.

  They stepped around another giant tombstone, and instead of continuing on, Caera sat down and rested against the sb of white stone.

  “We need to find a pce to sleep. I don’t know this country well, and finding a pce to rest will be tough.”

  “Tough?” He sat down with her, back to the tombstone. Daoka sat with him.

  “I’m not seeing a pce to sleep,” Jes said, squatting in front of them, wings gently fpping. “No hole or anything.”

  “Maybe we can find a building,” Caera said. “There are church ruins around, but I haven’t seen any. And if we find some, we might have to fight for a pce to sleep.”

  David raised a hand. “We can’t sleep out in the open? Take shifts?”

  “We just might have to.”

  Everyone groaned, even the Las as they came back to walk with the group. No one liked the idea of sleeping out in the open, even in a group big enough to have people on watch without issue. Everyone, David included, had grown quite fond of cave walls to cover their backs.

  Funny. Grave Valley looked almost nice compared to Death’s Grip, but the more they explored, the more obvious it’d be a greater challenge staying alive here than there.

  “Maybe we should head more toward the inner coast?” David asked. “Maybe if we had the middle sea on our right, we’d have one less direction to worry about.”

  Daoka shook her head and clicked at him before rubbing a horn into his shoulder.

  “Dao’s right,” Jes said. “There are more demons on the shoreline, and plenty of hellbeasts. More than a few of them live in the Styx, too.”

  “Styx?”

  “Yeah, Styx, the river that circles the Forgotten Pce.”

  “I… thought it was more like an isnd in a sea.”

  “It’s that, too.” Jes shrugged and sat down beside Daoka. “Lots of things from the surface kinda bleed down here through the scrying pools, so sometimes we pick up some names and they catch on, like the river Styx. And a lot of big, nasty hellbeasts swim in those waters, and attack the shores.”

  “Hellbeasts. Bleh.” They hadn’t run into any hellbeasts for a bit, and he wanted to keep it that way.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  In the end, they found a pce to rest. They didn’t find any buildings, but the ground had enough dips and rises that they found something with a short cliff edge and some big rocks. A far cry from Death’s Grip, but still, it was a wall of rock that gave them a dip in the ground to hide in. If there’d been trees, it would have been just like a forest, the kind David saw as a kid in Canada. The fog fit, too, the kind you found on a cold morning, except the burning sky above was dimming, not brightening.

  Tombstones stood on their left and right, high and almost connecting with the little cliff they hid against. The closest thing to shelter they’d find tonight. The fog had grown heavier, almost to the point they could barely see fifty meters, and each breath felt wet.

  “Can anything even smell us in this?” he asked.

  “They’ll have trouble,” Caera said. “Now sit down and sleep. I’ll take first watch.”

  “Hard to sleep knowing we’re vulnerable.”

  “That is life,” Acelina said. “Even in the spire, every night was a risk. Many demons hung chains over openings to their rooms for warning, or strung bones together to do the same.” She’d sat down first, back to the rocks. The mound of rocks wasn’t tall enough to hide the tip of her horns, and she grumbled as she scooted down.

  “Sound traps.”

  “Yes.”

  “Imps and grems not like that,” Lasca said, and she climbed onto David’s p, facing away from him. “We trust each other. Sleep in big piles. Someone always watching to keep us safe.”

  “There is a word, I believe,” Acelina said, “for surface creatures that gather and do nothing but eat and watch the world. Humans raise them for food.”

  “Uh, farm animals?” David asked. “Sheep. Cows.”

  “Yes, those creatures. We are being followed by cows.”

  “I uh… don’t think imps and grems are really like cows.”

  Daoka chirped as she giggled, sat between Acelina and David, and snuggled into his arm.

  “Not cow!” Laara said, and she sat on Dao’s p. “Cows not sexy. Laara sexy.” With a devious grin showing off her huge shark smile, she snuggled against Dao’s chest, but armor-on-armor made it difficult for the impa to enjoy the satyr’s breasts.

  Jeskura made it harder. She grabbed the little dy and tossed her aside, literally, and Laara squeaked as she nded on talon and cw.

  “You, Laria, and Caera are taking first watch.”

  Laria stomped a hoof, but helped up her fellow La, and the two little dies scrunched up their noses at Jes and joined Caera. Lasca rubbed her face into David’s neck, Latia climbed onto Acelina’s p, and Jes groaned as she sat across from them, back to a tombstone. A big, happy family, ready to fall asleep now that twilight was coming.

  It was the creepiest, weirdest pce to sleep. He’d never felt so exposed, even with all these beautiful and deadly women protecting him. But one of the strangest things about Hell, and one of its greatest kindnesses, was how sleep became so mechanical. No dreams. No thoughts running through his mind a million kilometers an hour.

  Come the night, all he had to do was think ‘sleep’, and he—

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  ~~Day 52~~

  His eyes snapped open. He swung his arms out, and they collided with something hard and warm. A demon was in his face. A demon missing an eye.

  Caera?

  “Shh,” she whispered, so quiet his heartbeat was louder. She lowered her hand, and crept back out around the surrounding tombstones, body low. All the demons had already woken up, and all of them were in stealth mode, prowling, wings low, tails down. Even Acelina, who looked like she’d never gotten on her hands and knees in her life, had somehow squashed herself low to the soft, bck dirt.

  Someone was coming.

  He bit down the urge to groan. Whatever it was about the night and day cycles in Hell, his body just knew it was still the middle of the night, and he needed sleep. Why he did, considering he wasn’t made of flesh and blood anymore, who the fuck knew. Same reason he still needed to breathe. If he didn’t get sleep, he’d spend the whole day miserable, and unable to sleep because it wasn’t night.

  Better that than dead. The quiet clink clink of metal told him who it was before David saw him.

  The rider.

  In the distance, the fog was heavy but not heavy enough to block vision of the man, riding on his giant goort, the two of them covered in bronze and red armor with gold lining its edges. His skull mask, shining and ornate, had a T-slit through it, but there was no seeing anything in the darkness within. All you could see was the skull shape of the visor, as cold and ruthless as the rider himself.

  God damn, that armor looked cool, and heavy. The goort wore it, too, ridiculously heavy gear that looked like someone had taken bronze and gold pte armor, and beautifully painted sections of it blood red. And of course, two axes were hooked to the rider’s back, their edges glowing soft amber with hellfire.

  Slowly, as if he had all the time in the world, the rider trotted along on his goort mount, and the huge horse-like creature kept its dark eyes pointed forward, uncaring about the world around it. Just a casual stroll through a graveyard, surrounded by tombstones that made the rger man and enormous horse look small. If there were any demons or hellbeasts around, he wasn’t worried about them.

  No one said a word. Everyone held perfectly still and watched the man ride by. In the dead silence, there was nothing to distract them, and the rider’s aura fell on them like hail. Burning cold, indifferent, and impossible to hide from out in the open.

  The girls were right. His aura was different from David’s, and from demons'. A demon aura stabbed you through the chest. David’s aura was like vibration in the ground and air, unavoidable. The rider’s aura was like deadly weather. You could withstand it, resist it, block it, but it was constant and powerful.

  David dug his fingers into the dirt, ground his teeth, and watched.

  The rider stopped and looked their way. No one moved. No one breathed. It was dark, the burning sky dimmed for the night, and the mist had grown thicker, wetter, and all-around more uncomfortable. Thank god it did, because it was the only thing that let them blend well enough in the dirt, while the rider’s armor highlighted him. He wasn’t hiding.

  The aura buried them in murder. Cold, heat, deadly murder, death, everything that told David’s brain he was staring at the literal Grim Reaper, and the feeling plunged straight into his guts. Icy sweat dripped down his skin, and his insides clenched until his abs ached. It made him want to fight. It made him want to die.

  The rider disappeared into the fog. A minute ter, the quiet clink of his armor vanished. No one so much as shifted their tail for another ten minutes.

  “He followed me,” David whispered. In the silence, his voice was almost thunder, and the Las all twitched.

  “Yeah,” Caera said. “But he doesn’t know where you are.”

  “Or he cannot sense your exact location,” Acelina said. “He knew your sister was at the spire, but that does not mean he knew where within.”

  “Maybe.”

  They waited another ten minutes. Nothing. Safe.

  “What do we do now?” Jes asked.

  Dao clicked several times and gestured back the way they came.

  “No time,” Caera said. “We got one option. We stay awake and keep going. Around the rider.”

  Staying awake. They’d never done that. No matter what happened, the group had always found a way to get half a night’s sleep, and even then, they’d paid for it the following day. The afterlife was strict about its sleep schedule.

  “There’s no way he’s not suffering, too,” David said. “Staying awake all night, hunting me?”

  The demons all frowned, thinking the same thing he was, but no one dared say it. If the rider didn’t need to sleep, they had a problem.

  Silently, everyone got their weapons, got into position, and resumed the march. Eight demons, one human, creeping ahead in the fog, and what’d once been a casual stroll speed slowed to a near crawl. They hid behind the giant tombstones, crouched low, leaned low, did everything they could to hide their bodies, but unlike Death’s Grip, they didn’t have ditches, trenches, tunnels, holes, giant boulders, or much of anything to stay hidden behind. Every step was exposed, with only the fog and occasional tombstone protecting them.

  Someone had roped an anchor around David’s ankles, turning every step into a giant pain in the ass. Limbs, heavy. Head, heavy. His eyes refused to focus, and his eyelids fought against him. He wouldn’t fall asleep by accident; that just wasn’t a thing in Hell. But not getting eight hours of sleep meant he and the girls would be stuck in this shitty, exhausted state until they did finally get some sleep. And it’d only get worse each night they didn’t sleep.

  Caera knew the way, and they followed her, tails dragging and wings drooping. Even the Las had lost all energy, no more running around or jumping or squeaking or clicking, just slow walking. A bunch of zombies.

  Hours ter, a shape on the soft, dark ground awaited them. Caera froze, and the group did the same. Everyone traded confused looks, and the tiger prowled ahead, each step slow and deadly silent. They held their breath, and Caera motioned for them to come closer.

  A dead gorga, cleaved in half, body burned.

  With a quiet growl, Jes squatted beside the corpse and plucked at it, lifted the wing, the tail, until she finally gestured to the fact the woman was in literally two pieces.

  “Can’t even eat her heart,” she said. “Burned.”

  David gulped down the urge to gag. Seeing bodies cleaved in two had become almost bsé, but a burned body? Burned flesh was something entirely different, and he forced his eyes away from the charred skin. Even the meera metal armor looked melted in some pces.

  “What happened?” Lasca asked.

  Caera gestured to the corpse, but moved on, too, and everyone fell in line.

  “The rider happened. He’s got hellfire imbued weapons, like some of those Cainites did. Except stronger, I bet. Aera armor, aera weapons.”

  The Las gasped.

  It didn’t take long for things to get worse.

  “More bodies,” Caera whispered, failing to suppress a growl as she pushed over the charred remains of a tregeera.

  David stepped around a giant tombstone and froze.

  “There’s more,” he said, and the demons came and joined him.

  The open ground, dotted with more tombstones and metal fences, was covered in bodies. No imps or grems, but another gargoyle, a few vrats, a couple brutes, and a few others the charred and mangled flesh left unrecognizable.

  “We’re following him,” Caera said. “I… didn’t mean to do that. I can’t smell him in this damn fog.”

  Daoka clicked as she squatted down beside the corpse of a destroyed body with hooves. Another riiva, a satyr like her.

  “He’s going toward Timaeus, too?” David asked.

  Caera nodded. “He must be. Timaeus lives in a building a few days from here.”

  “Then we follow the rider,” Acelina said. “We cannot hope to beat him to Timaeus, but what choice do we have?”

  “We can hope the rider gets into a fight that slows him down?” Jes said. “Morning twilight will be here soon. Demons are waking up. It’s not like the rider can just—”

  “Just what?” Snarling, Caera stood up and got in Jes’s face, gring. “Just walk around and kill everyone in his path?”

  Jes fred her wings. Caera had more than a foot on Jes when standing, but the gargoyle didn’t give a shit and she stood her ground.

  “The fuck is your problem?”

  “We’re all just cranky right now,” David said. “Let’s… dial it down a little, and think about what to do.” Both dies gred daggers through him, and he put up his hands. “Don’t kill the messenger! I’m just saying, let’s try and get to Timaeus by a scenic route, and—”

  A growl cut through the fog, and everyone spun. Weapons were out in an instant, Acelina’s included, and she fred her wings as she hopped back from the noise until the group were between it and her.

  A demon stepped into view.

  “You seek Timaeus?” they said. He said. A vrat.

  He looked like most vratorins, over seven feet tall, humanoid and muscur, with a couple rge bck horns, a couple arms and legs, a long tail, and some bck spikes on his back and joints. The cssic demon, with a demon-y skull-ish face that bordered on handsome, with a pronounced jaw and eyebrow ridges. He had a bck sword in hand, sbs of meera metal on his chest, and a big scar across his face. Unlike Caera, both of his bck and red eyes were intact.

  “We do,” Acelina said, casually walking forward as if she hadn’t just jumped back and put the group between her and a potential attacker. “We must speak with Azailia.”

  The vrat blinked up at the spire mother.

  “Why is a zotiva not in her spire?”

  “Long story,” Jes said, approaching the newcomer. “The rider, is he here?”

  Wincing, the vrat leaned against a tombstone, and his arms drooped, tip of his sword nding with a quiet thunk in the soft dirt.

  “He came and went. I don’t know why he’s here, but he found us sleeping. We thought we could fight him. He sughtered us.”

  “You fought him and lived?” Acelina asked.

  “I… resisted his aura. Barely.” The vrat gestured past them with his sword, to the bodies. “I haven’t lived this long mindlessly following my sin’s desires.” Or in so many words, he hid from the battle, resisted the rider’s violence aura, and let his companions die in a bloodbath.

  David braced for some name calling, insults, anything to call out the demon’s ck of honor, but none came. Perfectly reasonable thing for demons to just let each other die, or kill each other to eat each other or take each other’s meals. Supposedly, the demons in the Red Pits and the Navameere Fields were far more militant. Maybe they’d care, but the Grave Valley was supposedly like Death’s Grip: no rules except keep yourself alive.

  Which meant this guy would only expose himself if he saw a way to profit from it. It wasn’t like he could kill David and the girls, so he probably came to them thinking they were his best chance of survival. Which meant he probably thought he couldn’t get to Timaeus without help.

  “You know the fastest way to Timaeus from here?” Caera asked.

  “I do. I’ll take you, if—” His eyes froze on David. “Uh…”

  David came up beside Caera and did his best to stand tall and strong. Short young man with messy red hair and freckles? Not exactly intimidating, but intimidated the demon was.

  “You’ve heard about the unmarked?” Caera asked.

  “I have.”

  “What have you heard?” Jes asked, and she came up alongside the vrat. Daoka came up on his other side, quietly clicking, head leaned forward slightly in case she needed to headbutt the man and break him into kindling.

  “Just… that there are some unmarked souls out there, causing trouble. I’ve heard about the canyon, in Death’s Grip; we felt the quake out here. Some demons say it was caused by the unmarked. I’ve heard about an unmarked working with Cainites, and—”

  “David killed that one!” Lasca said, and she hopped up in front of the demon almost twice her height. “David killed Greg. Got him!”

  Caera, Jes, Dao, and Acelina all shot Lasca a gre, but Lasca was impervious to social cues, and stood happy and proud of David as she gestured to him with a wing.

  “You killed an unmarked?” the demon asked. “And, your name is David?”

  “Yeah. It uh… yeah.” David put up his hands for a moment, the best peace gesture he could figure. “I’m not looking to go around doing anything. And I have no idea what the rider is doing, either. All I need to do is get to Timaeus, avoid the rider, get to Azailia, have a chat, and be on my way.”

  The demon tilted his head, scanning the group, trying to get a read on them, but David didn’t need Mia to know he wouldn’t be able to. They were a strange bunch.

  “I’m Vicus,” he said. “I work under… well, it doesn’t matter now. They’re all dead.” A gesture with his tail drew their eyes back to the mess in the fog. “The rider killed all of us.”

  Daoka clicked a question.

  “A hundred.”

  “Fuck,” Jes said. “The rider got that many?”

  “Easily.”

  “Fuck,” Caera said. “And he’s between us and Timaeus?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fuck,” the four Las said, in tandem. Then they erupted into giggles for a whole second before Acelina hissed down at them, and they shut up like she’d struck their palms with a switch.

  “How about,” David said, “we just… get moving. Get any sleep, Vicus?”

  “No. My nest is far, and my group is dead.” Eyes down, Vicus hooked his sword to his back, a slow and lumbering motion. “I am exhausted.”

  “Fuck.” David rubbed his eyes with his palms. “Well, let’s do the best we can to not die, and head toward Timaeus.”

  Vicus raised a brow, gncing between all the demons before finally settling his gaze on David.

  “You’re… giving orders?”

  “What? No. No… Right?” He looked to Jes and Dao.

  The two dies shrugged, and Dao chirped a few chuckles as she joined him, abandoning their watch of the potential threat Vicus. He’d passed the test. Not a threat.

  “Not giving orders then.” With a shrug to mirror theirs, Vicus took a deep breath and stood up straight for a half second, until weight pulled his shoulders, limbs, and his tail back down. Their guide was more than exhausted.

  Rumbling, Caera prowled back toward the dead, and drifted around in the fog.

  “Scout the bodies first, then we go.”

  Scout they did. They found a few pieces of meera metal that fit their bodies better, sbs of bent metal chunks that wrapped their thighs or chests or forearms, and weapons that were sharper. Even David found a chest piece that was thinner than his current one, and fit him better. Shedding an extra five pounds of metal was wonderful.

  By the time they were done, Jes had a sword, Dao had an axe, Lasca and Laara had small swords, Latia and Laria had small axes, Caera didn’t bother with weapons, and Acelina still had the giant axe she’d found earlier. David still had his hiriously heavy dagger, smallest of their weapons, and he groaned as he tried to wield it. His wrist did not appreciate.

  “You struggle with that?” Vicus asked, gesturing to David with his tail. “I’ve seen Cainites wield bigger. And betrayers.”

  “I’m not a Cainite, or a betrayer.”

  “You’ve been eating demon hearts, right?”

  David eyed him, squinting. “Why do you think that?”

  “I have to guess you came from Death’s Grip, if you have a spire mother from there. There’s a good chance you’ve eaten demon hearts if that’s true, what with the anarchy going on there right now. The trip—”

  “Leave the boy be,” Acelina said, hissing and clicking once at the smaller man as she walked by. “He may not be physically strong, but he has other uses. His life is worth more than yours, so be silent and take us to Timaeus.”

  David blinked up at the spire mother as she walked by, big ass in full strut mode, her featureless bck face pointed at the vrat. It almost sounded like she’d defended him. Almost.

  Vicus was smart to put together that David wasn’t ensved by the eight demons with him, to deduce from there that they’d been working together, and David had probably eaten demon hearts. And this Vicus demon had probably pieced a lot of this together before he’d made himself known. Yeah, smart guy, and someone to be careful with.

  “I don’t know how it works,” David said. “I’m not marked, and demon hearts don’t give me the same kick they seem to give other souls.”

  “Why not become a betrayer?”

  “Because I don’t want to die hundreds and hundreds of times in this pce?”

  With a sinister little smile, Vicus nodded and pointed out into the fog.

  “This way. If the rider is ahead of us and making his way toward Timaeus, we can slip closer to the river Styx, and if we move, we can get to the Border Stones quickly. Hopefully, some hellbeasts give the rider problems on the path he’s taking.”

  “What kind of hellbeasts?” David asked. “And we won’t be running into any?”

  “Cannams prowl that direction, sometimes by the dozens. I know a route with fewer problems.” No need to say it. Every demon gave Vicus a very suspicious look, but the vratorin just shrugged and started walking. “Follow me or not. I’m going.” Liar. He needed them.

  Sighing, Caera followed the man, and everyone fell into their usual positions, wings drooping and tails dragging. Exhausted was not the best condition to be following some stranger in, but Vicus was exhausted, too. If he tried to betray them, he wouldn’t be able to fight them himself.

  The more obvious problem was if he led them into an ambush. No need to say that, either. Jes gnced back and frowned at David, shifting her eyes Vicus’s way. Dao did the same thing, using her chin instead of her non-existent eyes. Even Caera, right behind Vicus, risked a peek back with her single eye, and everyone shared a quick nod with her, Las included. No one trusted this guy.

  Demons trying to screw demons. Just another day in Hell.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  The burning sky was hazy behind the mist, and everything disappeared under the darkening gray blur of the fog. If it weren’t for all the danger, climbing the giant tombstones for a peek at the world around them would have been easy, but the rider was near, and David and the crew weren’t exactly diplomatic allies of the province. Best to stay hidden.

  Caera’s advice rang in David’s skull. The Grave Valley had sub groups, tribes, just like in Death’s Grip, except they were rger. The rider had run into a group, had killed them all, and only this Vicus survived. If they ran into another group, one that didn’t like Vicus and his old buddies, there’d be a fight, and despite how good Jes and Caera were at fighting, they wouldn’t be able to beat a hundred demons working together. Acelina might create a diplomatic solution, but demons were demons. There’d be a fight, and David was useless.

  He needed to not be useless.

  “Laria, can you take this? I need to… work.” He handed his dagger to the little grem, and she took it without question.

  “Work?”

  “Yeah. I need to be able to do what I did st time, at the temple.”

  She tilted her head. “Fight?”

  “Fight.”

  Nodding, she marched on, axe in one hand, dagger in the other, big shark smile on dispy, proud and happy. It was too adorable.

  The path ahead was easy enough to follow, soft bck dirt under his bare feet, twelve-foot tombstones around, and an empty path. If people could walk through traffic in dense cities with their eyes pointed down at a phone, he could follow the girls and work on his music skills.

  “Okay, let’s see if I can…”

  The fingers inside him were sore, but still working, like recovering from a serious workout. He tested them against the strings, and winced as his insides ached. He could still craft auras, and had a few times since the angel incident, but they didn’t have the same punch they used to. It was because he’d pyed the music so loud, it’d touched some sort of presence in Hell, something that mirrored his song and amplified it. Hitting the strings that hard had hurt him.

  Did Mia do that to create that firestorm? She was probably aching more than he was.

  Okay. Py the music. Sounded easy enough. Pying the strings didn’t require any skill from him, just intent and effort. And emotion. It was a weird blend of putting what he was, what he was feeling, and what he was thinking into the inner fingers so they pyed the strings as automatically as thinking about something.

  Seeing Dao hurt had snapped something inside him, and he’d hit the strings so damn hard, something had answered back. Answered, and had made it easy for his mind to understand new ways of pying music, far beyond simple auras. Hell was connected to the strings, and he could make Hell dance.

  In the same way a pianist could improv and py little tunes to mirror someone walking around and doing chores, music could convey action. All he had to do was think of music that conveyed the action, and the rest of his brain aligned with it. And with some effort, his intent and emotions could align with it, too. Hopefully.

  David looked at the ground, and pyed a string, something sharp, something that felt like ‘stab’ and ‘forward’ and ‘up’. Nothing happened. He pyed the strings a little harder. Nothing happened.

  He tripped on a stone, yelped, caught his weight on his palms, and groaned. Daoka clicked back at him, frowning.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine.” Dusting himself off, he got up and got back to work. Walking and thinking about strings and music and shit was harder than expected, and he almost tripped again as he tried to weave some sort of ground spike. This was difficult.

  “David,” Acelina said, standing over and behind him. “By Lucifer, what are you doing?”

  “Trying to do what I did before.” Dodging specifics with Vicus nearby was annoying, but the st thing they needed was for more demons to know what he could do.

  “Now?”

  “I need to be useful. Last fight I was useful, but before that? I did nothing.”

  “You defended yourself, the fight before that one. I saw it, remember?”

  “Oh. Right.” He’d forgotten somehow. When that Cainite had tried to strike him down in the tunnel, when the Cainites had ambushed them, Acelina had unleashed her aura and turned the ambush into a clusterfuck rumble, eliminating their advantage. But one soul had gotten past her, up to David, and had tried to hit him. He’d blocked the attack in a fsh of gold light.

  The rune batm shined in his mind. He’d used it. How the fuck had he used the rune? He could see it in the network of runes better now, attached to the rune ‘angel’ and ‘heaven’, but that didn’t help him. No matter how hard he thought about it, no matter how much he tried to summon it, the rune refused to listen to him.

  He’d used the rune once, though. He could use it again. Finding out how was the problem. It’d come out as a reflex, which meant he had to get his brain out of the way if he wanted to trigger a rune he hadn’t learned how to use. The only rune he knew, genuinely knew how to use like it’d been unlocked, was the rune for a sacrifice ritual, to turn a soul’s resonance and essence into a contained reaction of destruction, and imbue it into a weapon. All the other runes he could see and read, but to ‘use’ them was beyond him.

  “I don’t know how I did that,” he said. “But the stuff after Greg, the battle, I think I can do all that again. I just have to py the strings right.”

  Acelina said nothing, but she stayed close, wings snug around her shoulders like a cape. It was rexing, her guarding him; awesome as the Las were, they weren’t exactly reliable.

  He scooped up some dirt and watched the soft, bck bits crumble and fall between his fingers. He could feel it, sense it, know it was a part of Hell. A sixth sense had grown inside him, and told him every step he took was on something ‘there’, as if touching it hadn’t been enough before.

  He scooped up some more dirt, and pyed it a tiny song in his palm, but it did not move. He pyed louder, hard enough his inner fingers ached, and he winced.

  The dirt moved. Barely, a shift no bigger than the ones his feet created in the dirt, but unless he was going crazy — a distinct possibility — the dirt had moved. He tried again, plucking the strings and telling them to make the dirt stand, and again the dirt moved, but not enough to mean anything. Ripples, nothing more.

  “Maybe I just need to heal,” he whispered to no one. “I… can’t hit the strings hard enough.”

  Acelina leaned in close, and he almost jumped.

  “How did you strike them hard st time?” Her head had come down low, right next to his, and she set one set of her cws on his shoulder. Scary.

  “I… saw Dao get hurt, and it… overwhelmed me, you know?”

  “A powerful emotional reaction.” She smiled, just a little one, but she had one of those big shark smiles filled with too many sharp teeth. Shark smiles were kinda cute on the Las, but on Acelina’s rge, featureless, bck face, it was outright terrifying. And kinda sexy, in a monstery way.

  “I guess, yeah.”

  “You are a sensitive little creature, aren’t you?”

  He frowned. “I am. Is that a problem?”

  “No, but you often come across as—”

  “Robotic?”

  “I was going to say introspective. What would a spire mother know of the fiction of the surface?”

  Sighing, he stared at the dirt in his hands, and tried to make it move some more. Nothing.

  “I am sensitive, and I do what I can to make sure it doesn’t get the best of me.”

  “Except where the riiva is concerned.”

  David set his eyes on Dao, and smiled. God, she was so beautiful, and nice, way nicer than any demon he’d met yet, Las included.

  Other satyrs were hot, too, usually six or seven feet tall, walking on a pair of hooves, huge asses with no tails, all eyeless with bck bone covering their eye sockets and forehead that merged into their four ram horns. Unlike other satyrs, Dao had hips and boobs for days, but that wasn’t the reason his eyes locked onto her and the many bck spikes on her back. He liked watching her. He liked her presence.

  So did Acelina.

  “You’d react the same way,” he said, “if you knew her as well as I did.”

  Acelina snorted, a hot gust of hair hit his neck and shoulder, and she gestured out past him to the satyr ahead.

  “Then gather those emotions and channel them. Demons do it all the time. Emotions give our sin strength, and we use them to either drown the world in rage, or lust.”

  “I… I mean, I’m not sure I can just summon that emotion. That was a heavy emotion. I thought Dao was dead.”

  Shrugging, Acelina backed off, but also flicked him in the back of his head with a cw.

  “Hell is a realm of intent, and emotion. Learn to summon and channel them.”

  That was a good point. He stared at the small mound of dirt in his hands, and past it to Dao. The memory of a crazy angel’s sword stabbing through her like she was made of butter was clear, visceral, and thinking about it got his blood boiling.

  Method acting. Channel the emotion by thinking about something else? David was no actor, struggled to hold eye contact, and always did everything he could to remove his emotions from any argument. Emotions never helped anyone. Except when they did.

  David closed his eyes for a second, long enough to recall the weak clicks Dao had made when she’d colpsed, and the searing heat that’d shot through his veins. His whole life, he’d have instantly recognized he was delving into a bad memory, and have pulled himself out of it with a distraction. Porn, video games, candy, something. Dwelling on a bad memory was a great way to destroy yourself, and he knew that from a young age.

  It was why that funeral had run him over. So many people, pouring their guts out wordlessly, crying and sobbing. It’d broken him. He couldn’t handle being around emotions like that, not when they were real. Mia could, but not him.

  He tried to summon what he’d felt when Dao had gotten hurt. It bubbled, simmered, but died away before it could boil, because of course it did. Because he’d trained himself to suppress emotions like that, control them, bury them. It was a reflex that got in his way when it came to making friends and to talking people, but he’d never considered it all that important, then. Now…

  Sighing, he let the dirt go.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Twilight came and went, with only the shade of the fog to tell them it had, the burning sky above having only a mild effect with the fog blocking much of it.

  Vicus knew where he was going, and Caera seemed to have at least some knowledge of the area, enough she trusted his direction. Good, because David didn’t have a clue. It was easy to orient which way to go when they were walking on mountainsides, and could see out dozens, even hundreds of kilometers, sometimes all the way to the inner or outer edge of Hell. But in the Grave Valley, the fog and depth of the valley meant he couldn’t see shit.

  “At least it isn’t the Bck Valley,” Jes whispered over her shoulder.

  “Is it bad there?”

  “The fog is thicker, and darker. It’s an endless swamp of remnant guts, all tainted bck. The worst hellbeasts you can imagine swim underneath the gore. The—”

  He put up a hand. “I get it. Mia’s in for a rough time.”

  “Rough indeed,” Acelina said. “Zendariel spoke of the Bck Valley often, and the difficulty traversing it when she attacked it in the past. The Bck Valley does not have as many demons as Death’s Grip, but the ones that live there are deadly, and crafty. They have to be, the survive the hellbeasts.”

  David eyed the spire mother, and she fshed her shark smile at him.

  “Not like we’re going to have it easy,” Jes said. “And I don’t mean because of the rider. Hellbeasts are deadly, but they can be avoided. Demons, on the other hand, it’s better to just kill them before they kill you.” She gestured to Vicus ahead of them before giving him an accusing gre. She didn’t trust Vicus, and from the way she was wiggling her cws and fring her wings, she was ready for a fight.

  That idea got under David’s skin. If everyone defaulted to thinking everyone else was out to get them, cooperation was impossible, and it wouldn’t be long before everyone was dead. Why wasn’t every demon dead already if that was how they lived?

  “Acelina,” he whispered, “how many demons do you let out of the hatching pit, on a day-to-day basis?”

  “My sisters and I released perhaps two hundred each day. Half are imps and grems, for they are forever refusing to die, and earn their reward. The other half are the other breeds. Why?”

  “Just doing some math.”

  Caera suggested there were at least a hundred thousand demons in Death’s Grip, and from the way she’d said it, she didn’t mean imps and grems, the misfits of the demon community. If the spire released a hundred of the bigger demons each day, and the popution hovered at a hundred thousand big demons, then on average, a hundred of the bigger demons died every day. That also meant most demons only survived for about a thousand days after being released, some far less, and—

  He tripped again, and this time couldn’t stop himself from pnting into the ground. That shouldn’t have happened. He pushed himself back to his feet and checked his foot. And froze.

  A hand, jutting out of the bck dirt beside one of the colossal tombstones, had grabbed his foot. A mound of dirt moved, revealing the ruined hair and scalp of a head.

  It spttered under Acelina’s hoof, and David yanked his foot away as the remnant’s hand squeezed with its dying throes. Remnant blood dripped down his leg.

  “What the—”

  The garbled, broken, desperate screams of the damned cut through the silence of the fog, and every demon spun in random directions as movement erupted. More hands broke up from the ground, gripping at nearby rocks, the dirt, each other, or the giant tombstones, each set of mangled fingers clutching anything they could. It wasn’t long before more heads pushed out from the dirt, and they gred around at David and the demons as they freed themselves from the ground.

  “What’s going on?” Vicus asked, doing his best to yell without yelling.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Caera said. “Kill them and keep going.”

  Acelina yanked David up to his feet, and the group pushed on, pace changing from steady to brisk walk, and dragging limbs raised to kill every remnant that got in their way. They were still tired, still drained, but they had to keep going. No need to say it, each screaming remnant was like a beacon telling demons, hellbeasts, and the rider to come their way.

  The remnants climbed out of the not-graves, and they came by the dozens. Each tombstone was titanic, as if a beast bigger than any child of the Old Ones was buried beneath, but nothing rge came out of the ground. Just remnants. Dozens. Hundreds. And every single one of them yelled and screamed before someone took them down. But even with nine demons sughtering the damned as they sauntered toward the group, there was just too much noise. Worse, there were too many remnants, and they grew closer.

  “Fuck!” David jumped up and away from a dozen hands that ripped up through the ground directly under him, only to half fall into a dozen more intact remnants that crept around another tombstone. He spun to face them and swung out the dagger he didn’t have. Fuck fuck.

  All four Las jumped past David and tore into the remnants, spttering their bodies with their swords and axes. Laria threw David’s dagger down at his feet, got both hands around her axe’s hilt, and turned into a spinning disc of destruction. It would have been funny if not for the blood spttering everywhere as the mighty little creature cut through limbs and smashed bones. The remnants fell, cut down, until they climbed over each other, eyes locked onto anything that wasn’t another remnant. They cwed at each other, only to use each other as traction to get them closer to the demons, or to David.

  A few of them spoke words, garbled and messy. Kill me. Die. Hungry. If it weren’t for the desperate look in their eyes, it wouldn’t have been so awful.

  He scooped up the stupidly heavy dagger, and sshed out at the nearest remnant, only for Acelina to shove his shoulder.

  “Do not stop.”

  “But—”

  Lasca ran past him, sword high, and almost chopped him in half as she brought it down on another remnant, half crawling out of the ground. Laara did the same, and as she ran by, a taste of her sin hit him. Violence, hunger, it flooded his brain, and was gone a second ter as Laara threw herself further and onto another target.

  The Las weren’t exactly careful about their movements. Latia straight-up bounced off David’s back at one point, talons almost cutting into him, and the other Las circled around him like fish before going for new prey. Okay, yeah, Acelina was right. Keep moving, before being in the middle of the frenzy got him killed.

  He caught up with Dao and Jes, and the two stuck by his side, falling in line with far less chaos than the little dies, and each using their weapons with more control. The Las ran rampant, defying their exhaustion and cutting down more of the damned crawling up out of the dirt, stepping into view from behind a tombstone, or walking into the fray from the fog. It was endless, more remnants coming from pces he couldn’t even see, and even if they were slow and lumbering, that didn’t matter when you were surrounded by hundreds… thousands of them.

  “This isn’t natural,” Vicus said between clenched teeth.

  Caera mirrored his snarl as she cut down a remnant that popped up between her and the rest of the group.

  “You’re telling me.” She and the vrat led the pack, but as they weaved around giant tombstones in the endless fog, she had to fall behind and follow Vicus. “We’re making too much noise.”

  “You’re the one summoning all the free remnants.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Your unmarked is!”

  Caera gnced back only long enough to meet David’s gaze with her one eye before she jumped ahead to get beside Vicus again.

  “Then we kill every remnant that comes for him. Come on.” It was taking effort for Caera to not roar and yell at the vrat. The st thing they needed was more noise, but as time went on, the fight only grew louder.

  A gush of air cut across David’s back, and he turned around in time to get his side spttered by blood. Acelina hissed down at the remnant corpse, giant axe in her hands coated in red and dripping with pieces of flesh. With another sharp hiss, she gestured him forward with a fp of a wing, and cut down another remnant. She was better at combat than he figured a cranky princess who lived in a magic castle her whole life should be.

  A remnant came up directly in front of David, and with pure reflex, he stabbed the dagger down through their skull. Remnants were softer than humans, but not so soft he didn’t feel the distinct cracking of bone, and the squishy way brains split apart on the knife. Before the sensation could make him dry heave, another remnant climbed up from the same hole in the ground, and David killed them in the same way. And the next.

  Barking sounds spun him around, and the demons did the same, Acelina’s long wings whipping about like two capes. Like rge bullets with cws and fangs, hellhounds burst from the fog and charged straight for the first thing they saw: Acelina.

  “Cannams!” the Las squeaked, and all four took to the tombstones and climbed, fpping their wings desperately.

  The hellhounds were huge, as big as the biggest wolves on Earth, with dark red skin and bck spikes on their back and tails. More bck spikes circled around near their necks, like a mane, and a single bck spike stuck up from their foreheads. They had mouths full of white fangs, long bck cws, and bck and red eyes that stared at David and the demons like ravenous animals.

  At first there was only one, but within a second, a dozen more appeared, and not all came from the same direction. They’d surrounded the noise, hunted as a pack, and closed in like lions.

  They roared, and David wished he could climb a tombstone as easily as the Las.

  The closest one charged straight for Acelina, and she brought down her axe hard enough the ground shook and dirt exploded in all directions. But she missed, the hound dodging to the side at the st second, only to pounce against a tombstone, and unch off it into Acelina’s side.

  The giant demoness went down, twisted and turned, but the hellhound stayed with her and drove her back into the ground. It was like a lion wrestling with an ox. She couldn’t turn easily with her wings in the way, and the cannam pinned her long enough to go for her throat.

  Somewhere behind David, someone clicked. Dao’s clicks, high pitched, panicky, and coming his way. She’d be too te.

  David threw himself at the huge creature, and drove his dagger down onto its skull with both hands, bde pointed down. It wasn’t very sharp, and he knew the hellhound’s skull would be harder to penetrate than a remnant’s. He poured his weight into the motion, falling to his knees beside the creature’s skull, and sank the bck bde straight down onto its head.

  The bde went through, breaking bone, and sank into the soft stuff inside. The hellbeast died half a second ter.

  Acelina looked at him, bnk face somehow conveying a million expressions. Before he could say anything, another hellhound dashed around the nearest tombstone, and dove for David, but two pairs of big ram horns crashed into its side hard enough he heard the crunch.

  Daoka, clicking up a storm, helped him back to his feet. The dagger was stuck, because of course it was. Groaning and spitting venom, he yanked on it hard, drilled a foot into the big dog’s side, and pulled harder, both hands.

  With an annoyed snort, the spire mother got to her hooves, pushed David back, yanked the dagger free with two fingers, and tossed it to him, literally. He had to snap it out of the air quick so it didn’t stab his foot on the way down.

  Daoka clicked up at Acelina, angry at her for nearly stabbing him, but she turned mid click and dove headfirst into another hellhound, interrupting its pounce. The creature fell, and Dao brought her axe down before it got the chance to move. It didn’t die. Writhing and snarling, it twisted enough to get its teeth around the axe’s shaft, yanked, and pulled Dao forward.

  She fell to her knees, right in front of the cannam, but Acelina brought her much, much bigger axe down onto the hellhound, and instead of sinking the bck, jagged, half-blunt bde six inches deep like Dao had, she cut the beast in two. The ground rumbled, and blood turned the bck dirt red.

  Without a word, Acelina helped Dao back up, and used her wings to nudge her and David forward until the zotiva had enough space between her and them to swing her enormous axe with freedom. Another hellhound dove for her, and she cleaved its skull in two down the center.

  “I thought you lived in a spire your whole life?” David asked. His lungs burned already, sweat beaded on his forehead, and every word spoken was a moment without breathing. Focus, you dumbass. Breathe. Nothing in life — or the afterlife — was as taxing as a fight.

  “You say that as if a spire life is easy. I have killed many demons.” Acelina turned and walked backward, gncing back only long enough to make sure she was following them before bringing her axe down and scaring off another hellhound. “If we do not move faster, the rider will find us.”

  “He’s kilometers away by now.” The words sounded hollow, even to him. They were fucked at this rate.

  The Las hopped from one tombstone to the next, gliding low out of sight of potential angels above, but gliding low meant being in biting distance. Hellhounds jumped high, snapping at them, and the little dies shrieked with rage, and panic. They couldn’t fight things like this, not with how small they were, how easy a target their wings were, and how suicidally violent the hellhounds were. Unlike a real animal, they didn’t have any sense of self preservation, and only dodged an attack if it meant an immediate opportunity at another one.

  They had more in common with demons than the demons probably wanted to admit.

  David couldn’t fight things like this anymore than the Las could. Another hellhound came at him, and Dao was quick to get between him and the beast, driving it back, only for a half dozen remnants to rip up the ground from underneath the creature. They were slow, but twelve hands made quick work of the dirt, softening it as they climbed up out of the ground so the cannam’s paws sank into the hole.

  It ripped apart their soft bodies like a dog biting into a roll of toilet paper, but the distraction was enough for Dao, and she got her axe into its face. She couldn’t muster the same level of destruction Acelina could, but the hellhound managed only a small yelp before it died. It sank deeper into the mess of writhing libs and soft dirt until it disappeared into the ground.

  “Las!” David yelled. “Go up front. More remnants up there. Jes! Help us back here!” Why he was yelling orders, he didn’t know, but the words came out before he could process hesitation.

  Everyone listened. The Las joined Caera and Vicus, away from the hellhounds, and sughtered the remnants in their path, coating the ground in dead bodies. The hellhounds were mostly coming at their group from the back end, and he needed Jes. He almost asked for Caera to come join them, but she was their best bet at spotting a demon ambush, or killing Vicus if he betrayed them, or dealing with any number of horrible things that were bound to happen any moment now.

  The hellhounds got smarter. Once Jes joined them and cut down one of the huge beasts with her sword, they stopped throwing themselves at the group. They prowled at the edge of the fog, snarling, waiting. A scream made David jump, and Jes turned and cut down the remnant that tore up from the ground behind David. A signal for the hellhounds, and they rushed in quick, only for Acelina to fre her wings and bring them to a halt as her enormous wing span covered over twenty feet.

  Rumbling deep in their throats, the hellhounds slowed again, until they followed at the edge of the fog, sneaking around tombstones, and hiding in shadow. Not as dumb as David thought.

  “Someone better think of something fast,” Jes said. “We—” She spun and cut a remnant in half. “Someone is going to hear this.”

  No point in asking why the hellhounds weren’t going for the remnants. Hellbeasts preferred eating humans and demons; far more filling than remnants. Grems and imps scavenged remnants, sometimes, and even their little bodies struggled to survive on them. But nine demons and a soul, getting dogged by hundreds of remnants? They were easy prey.

  “If you could use some of those powers of yours,” Acelina said, “now would be a good time.”

  “I’d love to, but I can’t!”

  “These remnants are here because of you!”

  “You don’t know that!”

  She snarled over her shoulder at him.

  “Every random, vile upsetting of Hell happens because of you and the other unmarked. It is your responsibility to deal with this situation. So deal with it!”

  David ground his teeth and looked at his sides. Jes traded a look with him, and his stomach sank. She agreed with Acelina. He looked Dao’s way, and she looked away with a snap, as if he could see the truth in her non-existent eyes. A mountain of trouble was falling on their p, again, and it might not have been his fault, but it was his responsibility.

  And in the distance, metal on metal clinked. Quiet, barely audible behind all the screaming and violence, but the telltale ting of metal bouncing and hitting more metal reached his ears, and a familiar chill shot through him. Far too familiar.

  “Caera,” he yelled, “we have to get out of here!”

  “I hear it! But these remnants aren’t stopping!”

  “The rider!” Vicus’s voice. Everyone was screaming now, no point in hiding, and their panicked yells didn’t even top the unending chorus of the remnants. They just didn’t stop, more and more climbing up out of the ground, making any surface graveyard look like a joke compared to the endless corpses this nd could summon.

  The rider. A hint of gold glinted in the distance, and more than just David and the crew stared at the approaching shadow atop its horse as it pushed through the fog. The hellhounds turned, snarling and barking, only looking away from the rider long enough to rip apart a remnant that sauntered too close. But even their barking stopped once the rider came into full view atop his giant goort.

  Coming from behind the group, trotting slowly on his giant, armored horse, the rider casually unsheathed one of his axes, and the bde glowed with hellfire, its amber color lighting the fog and bloodied dirt. Eyes hidden inside the shadow of the t-slit of his skull mask helmet, he made only the smallest grunt, and the goort charged as if the rider had dug spurs into its sides. It aimed straight for David.

  Three cannam threw themselves at the rider, one of them nding on the massive goort’s side by the rider’s leg, the other two hitting the horse creature from the front. The rider cut them down with barely a motion, swinging his arm and nothing else, cold, efficient, and quick. The three hellhounds died almost instantly, the sharp bde piercing skin, bone, and setting them on fire, all at the same time. Their bodies fell, and the two in front gave the goort only a moment’s hesitation.

  A fourth hellhound gave it more. It got its cws into the goort’s back, and while it couldn’t penetrate the gold and bronze armor, it did twist the weight, and the goort stumbled.

  It didn’t fall over. Almost like it was dancing, it put its weight onto its front hooves and drove its rear hooves back, straight into the chest of the hellhound. The crunch was sickening. But it was enough to force the goort to stop for that moment, long enough for more hellhounds to surround the rider.

  They pounced. They’d been more hesitant about the demons, but they had no reservations about attacking the rider. It was nice to see the man wasn’t capable of taming every beast he came into contact with, but it didn’t matter when every cannam died the moment they got within a foot of him. It only got worse when he unhooked his second axe, and twisted only just enough to bring an axe down on one beast, while swinging the other up. The goort twisted and turned with the momentum, seamlessly countering the weight of its rider, the two working together to push forward like a blender on legs.

  It was his aura. Demon auras didn’t work well on hellbeasts, but even at a distance, the blistering wind of the rider’s untouchable aura reached David. It was huge, and David covered his forehead with his hand as if he could block the burning ice that didn’t exist, or the crashing hurricane power that wasn’t really there. The hellbeasts couldn’t resist it at all, and they roared mindlessly as they threw themselves at the rider, only to die upon his bdes.

  It took him thirty seconds to kill them all, but thirty seconds was enough for the group to break free of the remnants and into a new area. There were fewer and fewer tombstones, but something else crept up in the fog. He almost froze, but Acelina pushed him on, and the sharp, bck shapes cutting in the fog came into focus.

  Trees?

  Trees. Bck trees. Sharp branches forked, jagged, twisting, so dark their bark almost looked like bckstone, and they made bloodgrip look soft and cozy. Not a leaf in sight.

  “Stay low!” Vicus’s voice cut through the screaming remnants as he pushed forward into the trees. He navigated the branches without issue, ducking left and right, under, jumping above, and weaving through what quickly turned into a giant thicket with spikes big and sharp enough to kill elephants.

  Jes, the Las, and Acelina all froze. They had wings. Vicus, Caera, and Dao didn’t.

  Dao did her best. She charged ahead and brought her axe down on the branches, shattering the most heinous ones directly in her path. Gss would have been jealous of the explosive effect the bck metal bde brought on the branches, sending thousands of little shards everywhere to disappear in the bck dirt. Each branch she destroyed remained a sharp, deadly threat, but at least their shorter lengths were out of the way enough the winged demons could push forward.

  The Las whined, occasionally shrieking as their wings caught on the sharp things; they weren’t used to the trees like they were tunnels filled with bloodgrip. Jes snarled. Acelina hissed. If they’d had time, they could have pushed through the woods slowly, or maybe go around, but the gallop of the rider’s goort grew louder, the clink of armor on armor, and the sickening squish hooves made when crushing remnant flesh.

  Jes turned long enough to meet David’s eyes, and they froze for a single moment as panic shot through them both. Laria screamed, Lasca shrieked, and Latia let out a desperate whine as another spike drove straight through her right wing and into her side.

  Dao turned around and rejoined them in the back, axe in hand.

  “Go!” Jes said, and she shoved her lover back onto the path she’d created. “Go!”

  Dao shook her head.

  “Go! Fucking—”

  Caera rejoined them, too, body covered in cuts, and she growled up at Jes as she walked past her to face the oncoming rider.

  “We can’t get through this fast enough to escape him. We have to fight. We have to—”

  Laara let out a desperate cry as a spike caught her side, punctured her wing, and tore it along its length. She half spun back to face David and the rest of them, the group only maybe a hundred feet into the sharp forest. Tears filled her rge eyes, her gaze snapping back and forth between David, and the rider now at the edge of the deadly woods.

  David stared at her, frozen.

  The rider looked between the branches in his way, hopped off the goort, and walked. The animal was too big to do much turning in the forest, even with the path the demons had tried to make. Without a word from the rider, the animal stayed behind, and the rider walked after them, axes at his sides.

  He didn’t bother chopping down branches in his path. He pushed forward, and the branches shattered, unable to penetrate his armor, and they gave only a moment’s resistance before his weight broke them. His boots sank in the dirt, crushing it. A few remnants caught up to him, but he ignored them, walking forward toward David and letting either his mount sughter the damned, or letting the remnants skewer themselves on the branches.

  Laara screamed, tears flowing down her cheeks, and every muscle in David’s body clenched. He’d never heard a demon make a sound like that before.

  He hit the strings, hit them until his body ached, hit them until his brain fried like he’d pressed his ears to a speaker and struck all the strings at once.

  Something in the depths of the vibration answered.

  The vibration made sense. The buzzing feeling of the strings only he could feel turned into meaning, the way a composer’s squiggles on a page spoke in a nguage as old as civilization. Older. He knew what notes to py, what strings to hit and in what cadence to create the response he wanted, and Hell was going to mirror his intent. This wasn’t like when he’d tried to move the dirt earlier. This time, he was going to py the music, and Hell was going to py it back to him with a full symphony.

  He turned, aimed his hands at the rider, and the nearest trees around the armored man closed in on him. The trees weren’t truly alive, no more than anything else in Hell, no more than bloodgrip or the burning bushes or the statues. They were a part of Hell, like the dirt, the bckstone beneath it, and the veins of hellfire beneath that. They listened to the song, and they twisted in from the top down onto the rider and into his path, hitting him on the way down.

  He fell to a knee as the sharp branches shattered on his body. Unharmed, but slowed. He stood up, and David weaved another song, sending the trees behind the rider for his feet. He fell, this time to his side, but pushed forward and got back to his feet with seamless motion. David brought in more trees, bending a dozen of them forward and into his path; they were brittle, but bent to his song as if made of rubber. But the rider brought down his axes, and the bck trees shattered in an explosion of embers and swirling fme.

  The fire didn’t spread, but it rained down on the path, and the rider walked through it, helmet’s gaze locked on David.

  David pointed his other hand behind him, toward the girls. All the Las were trapped, squirming movements getting their wings caught in the trees, and their desperate cries ripped his guts apart. Even through the ocean currents that drowned him, he could hear the squeals of panic, and see the fear in their eyes.

  He told the trees to release them. Their branches shattered into heavy dust, and fell around the Las’ feet.

  “David!” Lasca yelled, and she dashed for him, tears in her eyes as well. “David, we—”

  “Stay with the others. Get down.”

  All eight demons stared at him, but once Caera threw herself to the ground, the rest followed.

  The trees beyond them bent and twisted, some shattering, some losing their branches, but past the girls and for several kilometers in a line, the forest bowed to the song. A path, trees spread apart.

  Somewhere in the back of David’s mind, the image of Moses parting the red sea came and went.

  Acelina spun and faced David and the rider.

  “Boy, you—”

  “Go!” David took a step back, away from the rider and toward the girls, eyes locked on the encroaching reaper. “And you. I won’t let you kill me. I have a world to save.”

  The rider said nothing, but his aura buried them, a hailstorm of embers that ignited hunger, rage, and blood thirst. It was a wonder the demons didn’t succumb, but even as some of them clicked or yelled in protest, Acelina, Jes, and Caera scooped them up, and ran. Dao had tried to stay, and her storm of clicks echoed in the ocean currents David sank beneath. Distant. She sounded so distant.

  All the reflexes in the world told David to turn and run, but the currents pulled him, wiped away the pesky little thoughts, and brought all his focus on the task at hand, the music, and the rider in front of him. The armored man drew closer, and said nothing.

  David would have tried to say something else, to learn something from the man, or plead for peace, but again, all those thoughts washed away in the current. Whoever was yelling those thoughts at him was above the water, while he swam in it. It was down in the water where the vibrations were strongest. It was down in the depths where Hell could hear the song.

  David pointed both palms at the rider, and drew them out to the side. Hell shook, and broke apart. The ground underneath the rider opened with a mighty crack, and the armored man fell into the bckness below like a shiny rock dropped into a well. How deep it’d gone, how far the crack had reached, David couldn’t tell. Like cracking gss, the canyon had spread as it had desired, summoned by the song but free to do whatever it wanted. Hopefully, it reached deep.

  David smmed his palms together, and the canyon closed, smming with all the grace of two rocks smashed together. Trees toppled, and a million shattered branches decorated the bck dirt. The hellquake came and went in an instant, and a deadly silence followed, every nearby remnant rendered either dead or catatonic.

  David waited.

  New vibration rumbled up through the ground, but it wasn’t the song. It was the rider.

  David raised his hands again, prepared another song, and fell on his ass when burning red wings erupted from the bck dirt. The same wings the stranger woman had used when she’d taken Mia from him.

  The fming wings pierced up through the ground, far bigger than any demon’s wings, attached to the rider but unable to free his armored body of his tomb. That didn’t stop him from trying, and the burning wings ripped up the ground until the trees and dirt melted, slowly morphing into va that drew closer and closer to David’s feet.

  David turned, tripped, and fell into Acelina’s awaiting arm.

  “Fool,” she said, scooped him up, and ran after the others.