It had been days. Maybe even weeks. After the wraith tore into me, the snake twins returned for more blood. Rinse. Wash. Repeat. I’d lost all track of time, but knew I’d survived the day when Leviathan would come in to heal me. Each time, I told myself that this would be the last one. I would find a way to escape and I would leave this awful place. But each time he came to check on me, I was too weak to even speak. I’d tried to blink away, but felt none of my power circulating inside. Leviathan had some kind of magic preventing me from using my gift and that made me want to kill him even more.
The sad part was that, as an archdemon, Leviathan couldn’t be killed. He could be held somewhere, punished, and tortured…but never killed. So, as the days stretched on, and the snake twins got more creative with their torture, I drifted to the place in my mind where I could think about the things I would do to them all when I got out of here. I wondered how long the girls would survive if I cut off their heads. I thought about Leviathan’s weakness for serpent-like creatures and decided I would kill every snake and lizard I saw. The wraith? Well, he was going to burn inside a fae spell I once learned that traps evil spirits. Would any of this work? I didn’t know. But it’s what kept me alive and helped me resist the urge to break.
Leviathan sauntered into the large room and placed his hands on the iron bars. Resting his forehead against the metal, he let out a dramatic sigh. “Are you ready to give up yet?”
Battered and bruised and tucked up in Jericho’s shirt, I glared at the demon “You can’t break me.” He morphed into Jericho, adding several more gray feathers to the white. It panged my heart each time he did this, yet I couldn’t let it show.
“Come on, Arabella. I can use this form for a while. Until you get used to me.” His words held a hint of disgust, as though shifting to a fake angel mirage was way beneath him.
“Go away,” I grumbled.
“If you insist.”
He snapped his fingers and the snakes came back. They crawled under the bars. Fell from the ceiling. And dropped onto my head when they slithered out of the walls. Leviathan had been doing this every day, but I’d learned that the snakes never bit me. They never really attacked me either, just used their scaly bodies to hold me down or tie me up.
Knowing what was coming next, I stood and held out my arms. Immediately, four different snakes wrapped around my wrists and forced my hands together behind my back. Then they pulled my feet apart and made me stand still. The snake twins appeared outside the bars, wicked smiles etched in their perfect skin.
“Ladies,” I said.
“She will not last much longer,” Red-eyes proclaimed.
“Today may be the last,” the other taunted.
With a shrug, I stared them down. “You can’t hurt me anymore.”
“We can,” they said in unison. The green-eyed twin spoke to the snakes who immediately obeyed whatever command she’d given them. At once, each serpent let go of my body and moved to the middle of the floor. Making a giant ball of rolling scales, they weaved in and out of each other until I couldn’t see where one ended and one began. The sphere of serpents expanded as more and more joined in. The twins continued chanting out commands in a language I wished I’d learned. The ball grew, and grew, until the individual forms looked like one giant creature twisting around on the floor.
And then a snake’s head, larger than my own, shot out of the center of the pile and found my eyes.
It hissed, fangs protruding from its mouth and saliva dripping to the floor. One tooth would pierce right through my thigh, let alone every single one inside its mouth. I pressed my back into the cold, damp stone, trying to make myself flat. The snake twins laughed at my fear from the other side of the bars while the beast uncoiled and showed me its true size. With its body weaving back and forth across the cell, it barely squeezed inside with me. A tongue darted out of its mouth and licked the side of my face. Scenting me like a predator, the giant creature cornered me against the wall.
“Will you break now?” Red-eyes asked. She’d shifted into Ashby once again, but that no longer bothered me as much as the giant, black serpent did.
I didn’t answer. Instead I squeezed my eyes shut and anticipated the pain. The snake chomped down on my left arm and I screamed. Blazing, white-hot agony exploded from my bicep. As suspected, the fangs went right through my bone and hurt like a sonofabitch. With my right arm free, I decided I needed to fight back. Swinging out wide, I slammed my fist into the side of the snake’s head and smiled when it jerked away. I couldn’t move the arm it had attacked, so I continued to fight with the only good body parts I had left. Running as fast as I could in the tiny space, I jumped toward the beast. Slamming my shoulder into its body, I was able to knock it toward the side. With a single swing of my leg, I straddled the snake and held its neck against the ground. It slithered and hissed and spit at me while it thrashed on the floor. Using all my strength, I squeezed and squeezed until my fingers ached.
And then I squeezed some more.
But I’d forgotten about the tail. Just when I thought I had the upper hand, a large piece of meaty flesh smashed into my back and threw me up against the wall. My head hit the stone hard enough I saw stars, and when I tried to push to my feet, I almost passed out. The snake whipped its body around again to face me. With jaws extended, it swayed from side to side, looking for the right time to strike.
I tried to stand, but my legs were weak and my stomach nauseous from the hit to the head. Slipping to my knees, I bit my lip and tried to will the dizziness away. The snake crunched down on my ankle, inciting another round of sheer terror as the pain raced up my leg. Yet the pain also helped cure me of the dizziness and I used the wall to push up to standing. I couldn’t put any weight on my right leg. My left arm still hung freely since the beast had crushed a bone or two. Blood dripped down the side of my face and into my eye. I felt my matted hair sticking to the liquid.
I was in rough shape.
But I wasn’t giving up.
Screaming as loud as I could, I shouted at the beast. “Fuck you!”
The twins laughed as the snake reared back in preparation for another attack. I stood as tall as I could. With shoulders back and blood all over, I waited for it to bite me again. The anticipation was almost as bad as the attack. The demon spawn faked a strike several times over, giving me a little heart attack each time and pissing me off even more.
“Do it!” I screeched.
The snake lifted its head as high as it could, reared back, and…
Hot liquid splattered across my face at the same time a deafening shriek pierced my ears. The twins cried out and a heavy piece of flesh slammed into my side. The sheer weight of it muffled the chaos going on around me, but I swear I heard a dog howl.
Pushing on the piece of meat which I realized was the giant snake, I tried to find some air before it suffocated me. My hand slid along the scaly skin and stopped when it hit something sticking out of its head. Touching a few fangs in the process, I felt along the skull until I could grab the handle of the dagger that had killed the beast dead. The ornate wooden handle fit perfectly in my hand, so I yanked it out and gave one big push to get the dead animal off me. As it fell to the ground, I sat on my knees…and stabbed the thing over and over until my arm started to burn.
“Arabella!”
“Stefan?”
“Get over here!” The iron bars shook as one of the twins slammed into it. They were back in their original human façade, but along the far side of the room, I noticed a pair of glowing red eyes.
“Ivan and Tore,” I smiled. Mammon’s hounds were here. Stefan was here. They came for me.
“Stefan, watch out!”
I was surprised to hear Echo’s voice but extremely grateful for it. He warned my incubus friend just in time and he was able to dodge out of the way of the wraith. The dark shadow darted across the open space, circling for another attack. Echo held one hand out toward it while he read from a small book clenched in his other. The wraith shifted focus and rushed at Echo. The small demon dodged it gracefully and continued speaking the words written in the tome.
“Shit,” Stefan groaned.
Whipping my head to the side, I saw his issue. The green-eyed twin had shoved her knife straight into his stomach just like they’d done to me. He struggled against her, stumbling backward and yanking the dagger free. But she was ready for him and had already gathered another knife in her hand. Raising it up over her head, she screamed like a banshee as she went after Stefan. But her voice was quickly muted when Ivan ran up her spine, sank his jaws into the back of her head, and knocked her to the ground.
On the other side of my cell, a hound screamed—a sound that could only mean he’d suffered a painful blow. Echo’s voice grew louder as he spat the incantation at the wraith and the dark shadow kept attacking each chance it got.
Where is Mammon? If her hounds were here, and if Echo was here, she couldn’t be far. A stream of fire shot from Echo’s hands and jutted right through the wraith. The shadowy creature split in two as the fire passed, and tried to reform. Yet before it had a chance to do so, it shattered into a million dark pieces of ash, crackled, and landed on the floor like broken glass. Echo slumped over and caught my eyes. He winked at me a moment before he lost consciousness.
Stefan stumbled my way and the last twin set her sights on him. She grabbed a hold of one of the iron bars to steady herself. That’s when I noticed she was missing a part of her thigh, a gift, I imagined, from Tore. I watched in slow motion as she started to lift her hand and the dagger in it, preparing for a throw. Stefan was unarmed now, having dropped his own knife after Ivan tore into the other twin.
Looking down at my own hand, I knew I had one chance to use Stefan’s knife or we might both be dead. I scrambled over the dead snake’s body, slipping on the skin and at one point getting my injured foot twisted underneath the carcass. She was closing in. Stefan saw her but didn’t try to run.
And just as she was about to throw…I hit her in the head with a perfect shot.
She dropped to the ground, her body exploding into black pieces just like the wraith. “Arabella,” Stefan breathed when he grabbed the bars. “Are you okay?”
I wrapped my hands around his and pressed my forehead against the iron bars to meet his. “I am now.” My voice hitched with the pure happiness I felt, and I swallowed a giant lump in my throat so I wouldn’t cry in front of my friend. “How did you find me?”
“We don’t have time for that now.” He swung his head around and shouted over his shoulder. “Echo, come on. We need those keys.”
“I think he’s out. Did you see what he did to the wraith?”
“He told me he’d read a spell once, but I didn’t believe him.”
“I have a newfound respect for that man,” I said with a smile in my voice.
“Well, I won’t unless he gets his ass over here.” Stefan started to limp away, but I grabbed his arm through the bars.
“Jericho?” I hated asking another demon if an angel was safe, but I had to know.
Stefan grinned and patted my hand. “Your angel is fine. He’s the one that helped us find you.” Pulling away from me, Stefan yelled at Echo and started to shake his lifeless body when he reached him.
I sighed against the bars. Jericho was alive. And looking for me. The twins were dead. The snake was dead.
And my angel was somewhere nearby.