Corson

With no light piercing this deep into the bowels of the earth, it was impossible to see what lay before me, even with my enhanced demon senses. I kept my right hand raised; my talons extended straight ahead as we wound deeper and deeper into the labyrinth the ouro had created.

My left hand ran over the cool dirt wall. The ouro had traveled through here enough times that the earth and stone beneath my fingers had been smoothed by its passing. I kept my hearing attuned to any hint of danger as my hand fell into the open air of another tunnel.

We’d already slipped into two different passageways since leaving the main pit behind. I had no doubt the ouro was coming for us, but if we kept taking turns, there was a chance we might be able to avoid it. A tiny chance.

Fifteen minutes ago, a vibration beneath my feet alerted me the ouro was traveling toward the trap it had created and we’d fallen into, but I hadn’t felt any vibrations since then. If I’d been Shax, I would have been able to detect the faintest movement of earth, would have known the ouro was coming long before it arrived, but Shax remained above with the others.

I strained to hear the faintest hint of sound, but Wren’s breaths were all I detected, and she kept those so quiet I knew no one beyond us would hear them. I’d seen the flash of fear in her eyes earlier before she’d declared she wanted to do some snake hunting, but she didn’t display any unease now.

When Wren had been at the wall for a bit, River had told me she believed Wren might be a little insane, and maybe River was right, but I didn’t think so. I thought Wren was more scared of the things residing in her world than she’d ever let on to others, especially demons, and she hid behind a bravado some would find off-putting. Wren would probably shoot me if I ever told her that though.

Instead of dirt, rocks began to increasingly scratch my palm as we traversed a gradually sloping descent. Wren’s arm grazed mine while I followed the dips and hollows of the ground. The heat of her body warmed my skin, and her natural scent of leaves and pine filled my nostrils. She lived and breathed the Wilds, and it radiated from her pores as she stepped so close to me that her breasts brushed against my back.

Gritting my teeth, I flexed my right hand as my cock stirred. Now was not the time to be thinking about taking her, but my body wasn’t accustomed to being denied sex for as long as it had been and I’d never been this close to her before. She’d affected me without ever touching me in the past. In these tight confines, she was likely to drive me mad. Her hands fell briefly on my waist when I came to an abrupt stop.

Images of her naked and straddling me burst through my head, making it difficult to think about anything else.

My breath hissed in through my teeth as I struggled to regain control of myself. As soon as we were out of this place, I’d find another woman and slake my lust with her. A night of screwing would purge Wren from my system. My head would be on straight once I had sex again, but if I didn’t get it on straight right now, I’d be dead.

And so would Wren.

For some reason, the thought of Wren’s death was more of a wake-up call than the possibility of my own. It doused the lust she so easily roused in me. I would not allow anything to happen to her.

“Why did you stop?” she whispered.

“To listen.”

Her hands fell away from me. The end of her braid tickled my arm when she tilted her head to the side. My hands flexed as I focused my attention away from her and onto the tunnel.

The absence of noise in this place made it feel as if I’d gone deaf as well as blind. We were so deep below the earth now that I couldn’t detect so much as a worm moving through the soil. Anything capable of living at this depth had either fled the ouro or been devoured by it.

The only time I’d ever seen the ouroboros was when the seal caging it fell. That glimpse had been more than enough to sear the one-hundred-foot-long and twenty-foot-wide, green serpent into my memory. The ouro possessed two hooked fangs and a hood that unfurled from the sides of its diamond-shaped head. Its black and red, forked tongue flickered in the air when it hunted its prey.

“Do you hear anything?” Wren asked.

The beat of her heart drifted to me as it increased. She would never admit it, but she was scared. Placing my palm against the tunnel, my fingers dug into the rocky wall, and I took a steadying breath to ease the unexpected rage growing within me. I should have protected her from this. She shouldn’t be here. She was in jeopardy because I’d enjoyed baiting her and watching the sway of her hips as she stalked away from me.

“I’ll get you out of here,” I promised.

She stiffened against me. “I don’t need anyone to rescue me.”

I turned my head to try to see something of her. She was inches away from me, but black encompassed my vision. “I didn’t say you did, and no, you’re all I hear.”

“Then maybe we should keep going.”

“Demanding woman,” I murmured as I continued forward with her following closely.

“Can this giant snake do anything special, like is it poisonous too?” Wren inquired.

“Its venom can kill, and it eats everything in its way. If it requires more room in its stomach to kill, it throws up so it can eat more. From its back, snake tails curl out every fifteen feet, and each of those tails has a rattle at the end. If it doesn’t have any other food, it will eat those tails and wait for them to regenerate before eating them again.”

“So it surpasses most expectations of horrific Hell creature.”

“Yes.”

“Good to know.”

My left hand fell into open air again. I paused to inhale the rich aroma of dirt and the more mineral-like tang of the rocks. Unlike the tunnel we were in now, a rancid breeze stirred the air from within this new branch.

It smells like rotting corpses, but it could be a way out. As the possibility entered my mind, some instinct within me shouted it wasn’t a breeze I detected, but a breath.

Leaping back, I wrapped my arms around Wren and spun her to the side at the same time something hit my arm and knocked me back. I pressed Wren against the wall, my body melding over hers as the smooth ripple of scales ran across my flesh. The suppleness of the scales was surprising given the rigidity and thickness of the body beneath them.

Then a smaller tail hit me. The rattle bashed my cheek as it vibrated in the air. The distant echo of more rattles resonated down the tunnel and bounced off the walls.

Wren gasped as another tail lashed out with a whistle. Throwing my hand up, I honed in on the sound the tail created and sliced it away before it could hit her. The appendage thudded against the ground, its flopping movements hitting my calf as the pitch of the rattles became higher, and a loud hiss filled the air. I didn’t need my vision to know the ouro’s head had swung toward us. I felt the shift in the air currents when its tongue flicked out, and the stench of death washed over me.

Lifting Wren, I pinned her to my chest. I much preferred to stay and attack, to slice the ouro to shreds and end it, but I couldn’t risk her getting hurt while I battled the beast.

Wren’s hands shoved against my shoulders, and her feet kicked my shins as I turned and fled down the tunnel with her. “Put me down,” she ordered. “I can run; I can fight.”

Rocks and dirt clattered behind us, the rattles reverberated against the walls as the ouro came after us. Where the silence had been deafening, this cacophony beat against my ears until it became my entire world. Wren went still in my arms before she wrapped her legs around my waist and clung to me while I ran.