River

I began to regret my decision to make this boat crossing when the wraiths bobbed up in the water. Their dipping and rising motions reminded me of buoys bouncing on top of the ocean water. Except these buoys weren’t colorful lobster pot or channel markers. No, these buoys were the blackened souls of the damned, and there were so many of them.

They churned the water like piranhas in a feeding frenzy. Their frantic movements caused the current to shift and change as their hands clawed at the air. They seemed to be trying, and failing, to grasp something that would pull them free of the tumultuous waters. I couldn’t help but pity them as their desperation beat against me.

My shoulders drooped as the muggy air in the cavern, easily the size of football field, made me feel like a wilted plant. The stagnant pond aroma of the Asharún clogged my nostrils as the current flowed from an archway on my right. I couldn’t see beyond the archway, and when I turned my head, I couldn’t see past the twist in the rocks to my left, but the water coursed that way.

I yearned to clap my hands over my ears and shut out the awful, wailing of the wraiths, but I refused to show any weakness in front of them. Kobal embraced me against him and bent his lips to nuzzle the top of my hair. His innate, fiery scent filled my nose.

My fingers curled into the rigid muscles of his back, drawing him closer. In his arms, I could almost shut out the hideousness of this bleak cavern, screaming souls, and jagged rocks that I swore were really a demented Hell creature waiting to devour us.

We were deep into Hell, and after the things I’d seen in this place, the rocks coming alive and eating us wasn’t far-fetched to me. If someone were to fall on one of those rocks, or if one of them suddenly broke free from above and plummeted down, they would cut through a person or demon as easily as a knife sliced through warm butter.

I shuddered and pressed closer to Kobal. The solid beat of his heart lulled my eyes into closing as I took comfort in the strength he emitted—a strength that flooded my body with life and caused the tips of my fingers to emit midnight blue sparks. His hand slid through my hair until his fingers cupped the back of my skull, and his lips moved down to caress my cheek.

Despite the screaming, churning wraiths, I couldn’t stop my body’s intense reaction to his. Love for him swelled within me. When Kobal’s lips brushed against mine, the electric jolt of contact went all the way down to my toes.

Pulling back, he gazed down at me from his entirely obsidian eyes. There were no whites to his eyes, not until they shifted into the amber color they became when he was enraged, highly emotional, or aroused. A foot taller than my five-nine height, I had to tip my head back to take in his square jaw, pointed chin, aquiline nose, and high, broad cheekbones.

I didn’t have to see the four fangs that emerged, two upper and two lower, when he was ready to fight to know he was lethal. It radiated from the carved muscles of his body and the power flowing through him. Those fangs had pierced me more times than I could count as he’d taken me and marked me repeatedly. I didn’t have fangs, but my bite marks on his neck were still visible against the bronzed hue of his skin.

Reaching up, I brushed back a strand of deep brown hair from his forehead. The only hair on his body was on his head, eyebrows, and lashes. I trailed my fingers over his cheeks to run them across his full lips. For a second, gold color flashed through his eyes, but he tamped it down.

He’d lost his shirt during his recent battle with Lucifer, leaving him bare to my perusal of the etched muscles of his abdomen, chest, and arms. I couldn’t stop myself from running a finger down the center of his chiseled abs as my gaze traveled to his tapered waist and the pants hanging low on his body. We were all in some serious need of clean clothes, but I couldn’t help admiring the way his blood-splattered, torn pants hugged the thick muscles of his thighs.

I forced my attention away from the obvious bulge in those pants to the markings on his chest and arms. On his left arm, flames started at the tips of his fingers and ran up the back of his hand. They wrapped around his wrist and rose to encompass two hellhounds on his thick bicep. From there, the flames traveled up to the base of his neck and licked over his flesh before dipping down to encircle his left pec. I knew, from the many times I’d explored his bare body, that his markings created the same circular pattern on his back.

On his right side, flames also started at the tips of his fingers before wrapping around his wrist and arm. There were no wolves there as those markings were made up entirely of intricate symbols within the flames. The symbols were a part of his ancient, demon language and had been on him when he rose from the Fires of Creation exactly as he was now.

The Fires of Creation had made him different than the other varcolac demons who had risen before him. None of the other varcolac demons had been marked with the symbols he possessed. Symbols like Ziwa, which made him more volatile but also stronger. Having Ziwa on him was considered a gift of strength, endurance, and virility. It was also considered a curse as it marked its bearer with a piece of the hellhound’s soul.

Kobal was also the only varcolac to ever house two hellhounds within him. All of those who had come before him had controlled the hellhounds, but none had been born with the creatures inside them. My gaze fell to the two hellhounds on his arm again, Phenex and Crux, a mated pair. When Kobal chose, he could set them free to rain down destruction, and they did so with glee.

The varcolac demon was meant to have been the rightful ruler of Hell, but Lucifer’s arrival here, six thousand years ago, changed that. Kobal had spent his entire fifteen hundred sixty-two years of existence trying to reclaim a throne stripped from his ancestors millennia before he’d been created.

“Here comes one of the ferrymen,” Corson said.

My attention turned away from Kobal and back to the Asharún. Corson removed his fingers from the water and rose. The echoing wail of the wraiths ceased abruptly, and they all disappeared beneath the surface. The abruptness of their departure robbed me of my breath.

From around the corner of the archway, a boat drifted into view. Ripples flowed away from the boat as the figure standing at the far end used his staff to steer the vessel through the water. The boat resembled the pictures I’d once seen of the gondolas in Venice. On the bow of the boat, the narrow nose of it rose at least five feet before curving over. Something had been nailed to the bow, but I couldn’t quite make it out.

“What about the hounds, Kobal?” Magnus inquired.

My attention turned to Magnimus, or Magnus, as he preferred to be called. The last demon of illusions had saved my life more than a few times. He’d made me better at drawing on my ability to harvest life from things, instead of using my fire when I was panicked, but there were still times when I couldn’t tell if I liked him or wanted to choke the arrogant demon.

With his ice-blond hair, silver eyes, and perfectly chiseled features, I would have thought Magnus better suited for an angel in Heaven rather than a demon. The only thing making him look at all demonic were the two, six-inch-long black horns curving against the side of his head. His hair covered most of those horns, but the tips and outlines of them were still visible.

“Send out the call for another ferryman,” Kobal commanded.

“How many of them are there?” Hawk asked.

“Three,” Lix replied.

Lix was one of the five skelleins left who had come with us on our journey and who had also survived the battle with Lucifer at the seals. Some of the other skelleins had split off before the battle to go with Morax and Verin to try to keep Lucifer distracted. The rest remained on Earth with Shax, Erin, and Vargas, but the skeletal-looking creatures had sustained a lot of losses at the seals.

Because he was a little taller than the other skelleins, I could differentiate Lix from them. Though they all looked nearly identical, I’d also started to pick out subtle differences in the other skelleins. That one’s skull had a small flat spot in the back, and the one beside it had longer fingers, but unlike Lix, the others had never introduced themselves to me.

All the skelleins were shorter than five feet, and most of them were only about four and a half feet tall. The first time I’d met the skeletal, drink-loving, riddle-asking creatures, they’d unsettled me, but the better I got to know them, the more I liked them.

On Earth, the skelleins wore something to differentiate their sexes and personalities. In Hell, they had no adornments and tried to blend together once more. I hoped that when we made it out of here I’d get to see them in their costumes again and Corson wearing his earrings.

This black pit of despair had stripped all of them of their more jovial sides and turned them into unrelenting, savage demons once more. I welcomed their savagery if it helped to keep us all alive, but I wanted to see the skelleins swigging beer and dressing eclectically again.

Corson knelt at the shoreline again and dipped his fingers into the water. I wanted to stick my fingers in to learn if the water was hot or cold, as thick as the blood it resembled or as flowing as the waters on Earth. I didn’t go anywhere near it though. With that many wraiths in it, I had no idea what effect touching that water would have on me. I bet it wouldn’t be a heartwarming, let’s all lock arms and sing experience.

The wraiths started to wail as they rose out of the water again.

“And all three of the ferrymen are as ugly as sin,” Lix stated.

“They can’t be any uglier than some of the other hideous creatures we’ve seen in here,” Hawk said.

Lix planted the tip of his sword on the rocky ground and leaned on it as he spoke with Hawk. “Oh, young former human, you’ve only seen the tip of the proverbial iceberg when it comes to the ugliness of this place.”

Hawk glowered at Lix when he called him a former human, but it was true. If it hadn’t been for Lilitu’s canagh blood mixing with Hawk’s after she sliced him open, Hawk would be dead. Instead, her blood had altered his genetic makeup, turning him into a canagh demon and making it possible for him to venture this far into Hell with us. It also meant he now fed on sexual energy and wraiths, like the other canagh demons did. Hawk wasn’t exactly thrilled about his newly turned, demon status, but he agreed it was far better than death.

“That’s reassuring,” Hawk said to Lix.

“There’s nothing reassuring about Hell,” Lix replied.

The boat came close enough for me to see what looked like a bull skull staked to the bow. However, this skull was more protracted than a bull’s and its red, two-foot-long horns curved up until the tips of them touched in the middle. I didn’t know what kind of creature that skull belonged to, and I never wanted to encounter its live counterpart.

Kobal stepped away from me as another boat emerged from the shadowed tunnel and glided toward us. The hellhounds prowled the shoreline before moving to either side of me and Kobal.

Some of the massive hounds brushed by me as they walked. They rubbed their heads against my sides and nudged me until I rubbed their sleek, black coats. They resembled wolves but they were larger than lions and could rip my head off with the swipe of a paw, but I knew the beautiful animals would never hurt me.

Corson rose and stepped away from the water once more. With his connection to the water broken, the wraiths slid back beneath the surface. A grating noise sounded as the first boat slid in between two man-sized rocks to settle on the shore before us.

I glanced at Hawk when he inched back. He may be a demon now too, but this was all as new to him as it was to me. He looked about as thrilled as I felt to climb onto that craft with the robed ferryman.

Entrenched in shadows, and with the hood of its black cloak pulled over its head, it was impossible to make out many details about the ferryman standing at the stern. However, if the skelleins considered it ugly, I was content not to see its face.

“Mah rhála,” the shrouded figure greeted in a voice that brought to mind dusty crypts housing mummies. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn this thing hadn’t spoken in hundreds of years.

“English, Carion,” Kobal commanded.

“My king,” the dry voice grated out. Its head twisted an inch to the side; I couldn’t see its eyes, but I sensed its attention had shifted to me. “My queen,” it murmured.

Shivers ran over my flesh when I caught a glimpse of two burning red orbs in the area where the ferryman’s eyes would be.

“Shit,” Hawk said in a voice so low I didn’t think any of the others heard him.

The other boat slid onto the shore with a grating sound. The rocks lining the water’s edge looked like they could pierce through flesh, but they didn’t do any damage to the boats. At least they’re solidly built, I thought. Always a bonus when about to take a ride on the river of woe.

Another shrouded figure stood at the stern of the second boat, and an identical skull hung from the front of it. My fingers instinctively fluttered up to touch my shell necklace before I recalled that I’d lost it during my battle with the lanavours. My hand fell to my side as the second figure stepped forward.

“Mah rhála, mah rejant,” it said in a voice as dry as the first one.

My king. My queen, I realized.

“Speak English, Charant,” Kobal replied and the creature bowed its head.

Turning back to me, Kobal extended his hand and I took it. He walked me over to the first boat. I inspected the skull on the front as Kobal lifted me over the side and set me in the boat.