Chapter 2
We’re suddenly alone in the middle of what looks like a fiery canyon. The fire travels up in streams, wrapping over the mountains in front of us. On the other side, we have woods full of black, ashy trees and zero light.
The right and left of us fades into both as they touch. We’re standing in the only clearing between the two options.
“Do we die in the forest or on the mountaintop?” Gage asks, looking back and forth between both.
“At least we can see death coming if we climb the mountain,” Jude answers.
I zap to the top of the mountain, looking around, then zap back down to them. “He didn’t say anything about not siphoning. No rules other than to finish the course,” I tell them. “Which way is the end? We’ll just—”
“Either direction we choose will take us toward the end or in a circle, depending on Lucifer’s agenda at this point,” Gage butts in. “And I’ve been trying to siphon since we got in here. He’s blocked that ability somehow. Maybe because we’re in the belly of hell it doesn’t work. Who knows at this point?”
“And I can only do it in this form—the form where I can’t touch anything or anyone so that I can siphon them with me, because for whatever reason, each new gift has a downside. Yet I’m not supposed to be a gift from Lilith because that’s impossible,” I state-matter-of-factly, rambling again.
Gage starts climbing the side of the mountain with Ezekiel right behind him.
Jude and Kai move as well, and I grin when I hear Ezekiel yell down at Jude. “Really glad I got that good night of sleep now.”
Jude mutters something as he climbs a little more angrily now. I just hang out, watching them near the ledge, making sure nothing comes at them while they’re distracted. As soon as they reach the ledge, I zap up there, and start looking around, inspecting it for dangers that might catch them off guard.
“I wonder if I can create weapons the same way I create clothes,” I say to them, moving from spot to spot on the barren mountainside ledge in front of them as they start hiking up behind me.
“Don’t risk it,” Kai says to me absently. “Lucifer is likely watching our every move. Besides, we need certain weapons to actually be able to do any damage in hell. I don’t think you’ll be able to materialize those.”
“Can the Devil hear you?” I ask him.
“No,” Jude answers. “Not unless he comes down here.”
I look around, but don’t see an obvious hole in the air where the doorway once was.
As we continue to hike up, avoiding the side with the lava spilling upward, I conversationally say, “So they focus on quads, and they’re desperate to know of your powers. Even accuse you of being too strong to be topside. Yet he seemed surprise you had a balance.”
“I noticed that too,” Ezekiel tells me.
“Just curious, but do you think they’re searching for the Four Horsemen?” I ask.
Jude snorts.
“We thought of that first. The Four Horsemen were killed centuries ago during a collision of the two kingdoms, before we were even born,” Kai answers me. “We thought we’d access more information on it, but even if that’s what we were, they’d be trying to get us in hell; not keep us out.”
Huffing out a breath of frustration, I start to say something else, when a huge half-bird, half-snake creature, breaks through the mountain side, passing right through me with its wide, fanged mouth open for food.
A shudder ripples through me as the scaly tail finishes passing through me, and power pulses from me without me even summoning it, sending the bird-snake squawking in pain as its wings stumble their flight and it starts spiraling downward. It catches itself right before the bottom and shoots off in the opposite direction of us.
“That was so not cool,” I grumble, shuddering again, feeling like I need a shower. “Did you see its tail?”
Gage chuckles, but we all start warily listening to the mountainside now that we know there are beasts that can shoot out of it.
“I don’t know if that thing could see me, but I am curious why the hell some monsters have seen me, even though people—not even the Devil—can do so,” I state idly, glancing around.
No one volunteers any possible answers, so I prattle on, adding, “Maybe because they’re deader? Mushed up in that soul chamber called hell’s throat until they’re the abominations they are now?”
“Maybe because the monsters see differently than our kind. The monsters don’t see things three-dimensionally. It’s another level of vision that has evolved in their state,” Kai says through strain as he starts shoving at a boulder.
Gage helps, and they topple two boulders into the lava, using all their strength to interrupt its path. It’s safe to assume it’s hellfire lava. Quickly, they all jump over those boulders before they sink.
“I wonder if they see me like an ink blob. Psychology would make so much more sense to me if so,” I observe thoughtfully, changing my entire attitude about ink blobs prints on movies now.
“Or maybe they see things in ones and zeroes. Could be the origin of code if one of these was humanoid and got loose topside.”
Apparently they think I’m ridiculous since no one is dignifying my very creative musings as conversation starters.
I keep talking, mostly to myself since they’ve stopped responding. Talking seems to calm me down, and I’m still a little nuclear-level furious from the Devil’s betrayal that we really should have seen coming.
There’s a reason people tell you to never make a deal with the Devil.
“Why not just get one girl and keep her for those fun times? Is it really because you’re too selfish to spend any amount of time on a woman? Do you not find her worth your time between bouts of dirty four-way sex?” I ask, not expecting an answer as I try to distract my mind.
As I open my mouth to keep talking, Kai answers. “Relationships are different than a one-night experience. Attention gets divided when emotions get involved. We’ve tried. There are always favorites, and none of us enjoy it when there are favorites, not even the favorites.”
“It creates jealousy among us, and we always suffer a power loss,” Jude says, staring a little accusingly at me.
“Well, favorites change. For instance, you were my favorite in the beginning. Now you’re a peg below Mr. Selfish,” I dutifully point out.
“You had us numbered, so I’m assuming four was the best?” Gage muses. “Making me your least favorite, despite your animosity toward Kai and his selfish ways.”
“Actually, you were numbered based on the order I saw you in,” I tell him as I step across a bleeding rock.
Yes. The rock is bleeding. I’m not sure if it’s dangerous, but if it’s bleeding, I’m gonna say it’s not a good rock.
Certainly not sanitary.
Or maybe it’s on its period, so I assume stepping on it would really piss it off more than usual.
“When I first started drifting in and out, fading out of existence then back in again, I saw you,” I tell Gage. “I realized quickly that the longer I could see you, the longer it took for me to fade. I followed you everywhere for a few days, but I could never see anything around you or hear anything at all. It was just silence and one gorgeously tattooed anchor.”
He clears his throat and looks away, and I shrug a shoulder.
“My vision soon started expanding, and I saw Ezekiel next. He was the one with you when it first expanded. Then Kai came into frame moments later. At last, I could see the whole room, and Jude was the final piece. Just one helped my state-of-being grow slowly. All four sped up the progress exponentially.”
They exchange a look, but I pretend not to notice. They’re likely trying to detect a lie or spot the manipulative web the evil vagina is weaving.
“Then I watched you moderately. Every time you’d take a woman back, I’d fade out because I refused to watch that. It got harder and harder to come back, so I finally started watching. Then berated myself for not watching sooner.”
Kai snorts out a laugh.
I continue on with my story, since I never told them the details of my beginning. “Finally, sound came. It was overwhelming at first. Smells were just behind it. Sight. Sound. Smell. Touch took the longest to appear. The last was taste that followed quickly,” I say, adding the last part a little quietly.
Ezekiel steps a little closer, then makes a conscious effort to put immediate space between us. He was my first taste.
“You got all pissy about us keeping you around just to boost our powers, yet you admit you stuck around with us to power yourself. Double standard much?” Jude drawls, being his typical asshole self.
My usual response would be witty and catty with equal parts menace and humor. Today, it’s honest. Might as well be brutally honest and rip the veins open. Death could come by nightfall for all of them, then me by proxy.
“You four were there for every step of my growth, even seemed to aide in it. I grew attached to all of you—infallibly loyal, viciously protective, savagely lustful, and tragically devoted. I genuinely believed I’d seamlessly slide into your lives and fulfill your need for a woman to share. Pathetic and short-sighted as it may sound to you, it was that fantasy that kept me coming back. And because the four of you unknowingly saved me for years, I became indebted to you on a scale that I can never repay. That is why I stick around. I could give in and just fade out—could go back when life would have been so much easier and less lonely. I finally get to be the one saving you, giving back to you all you gave to me, despite your rather extreme protests, so I stay.”
No one says anything for a while. It’s not the first time I’ve attempted to bare my heart and soul, then have the pieces of it get thrown in my face directly after by them.
It’s odd that I’m thankful for the next bird-snake that emerges to break up the awkward tension surrounding us. It shoots out, passing through me again, just like the last one.
“Why do they keep shooting out at me?” I snap as that sickly tail slashes through me, the bird-snake soaring out and away from us.
I think that other one must have somehow warned him I’d kick his scaly ass.
“I’m a badass,” I state primly as I walk a little taller in my sexy phantom heels.
“You could at least give us something pretty to look at while we’re off to face death,” Ezekiel states flatly.
“My outfit is badass and hot.”
“It’s…not our thing, really,” Kai drawls.
A sexy little red Devil Halloween costume appears on me, along with red fishnet stockings hooked to the garter belts. The cliché pitchfork, red horns, and little red heels complete the look for hell’s belly’s deadly excursion.
At first there’s silence, then suddenly there’s boisterous laughter, and I grin to myself while swishing my ass that is clad with red lace panties.
“May be just a little too distracting,” Gage groans.
“You wanted pretty. My ass in lace is as pretty as it can get.”
“I think it’s her vanity that always catches me off guard the most,” Ezekiel says on a rumble of laughter.
“I prefer to hear it called confidence,” I once again point out.
“I think it’s her greed that surprises me. Wanting all the jewelry and fancy dinners we bought the other women,” Kai muses.
“Not greed. I’m not really all that greedy, to be honest. I spent five years coveting the gifts you gave these women as tokens of your brief but passionate affection. They didn’t even know you, yet you showered them with such things. I still want all that,” I go on. “Even if you do deny me the rest of the fantasy, I still want all the sweet stuff. You might have saved my life, but you did it without effort. I’ve certainly had to exert effort to return the favor. I feel like the tokens of affection could be accepted as tokens of gratitude, and then there could be balance in the debts.”
It grows immediately silent, and I turn to look behind me to see they’ve also stilled.
“It’s not like you don’t have the money,” I say on an exasperated sigh.
“It’s just the choice of words you used,” Jude says, not giving anything away with his tone or expression.
A screech from below sounds before the earth starts shaking hard, and Kai is pitched to the side. The others shout for him as he falls toward a lava stream below us.
I zap down, landing on the last ledge before the cliff, and I turn whole just in time to grab his hand as he falls by me. His hand immediately clasps mine as my hair falls around my face.
Light beams around me, almost blinding the both of us, and I jerk him onto the ledge before the light disappears and I tumble to the ground in my phantom form, my heart racing so fiercely that I almost can’t stand, even without gravity hindering me.
Kai is panting heavily as he drops beside me, and he says, “You’re a lot stronger than you look.”
I laugh humorlessly, staring up but not able to see anything.
“What the fuck happened?! All we saw was a blast of light!” Gage shouts.
“I’m alive,” Kai calls out. “The rest can wait,” he adds, though it sounds as though he’s just talking to me as he pushes up to his feet.
He groans as he stares at all the lost progress.
“I’ll meet you at the top. Don’t linger. I don’t want to know what just shook the earth that hard,” he calls out.
He studies me for a minute, but I turn away and start hiking again, electing to stay with him so that he’s not left down here alone.
“Will you be able to make it three days without giving in to the urge to solidify?” Kai asks me.
“No. My level-up has its own form of balance, it seems,” I answer on a sigh. “How much can Lucifer see?”
“Not really sure, but I doubt he can see in caves. You can turn whole in those to rest and gain strength,” he says to me. “We’ll have to break for rest anyway. This place will drain our energy.”
“But you’re at your most vulnerable when you sleep. I’ll just rest an hour at a time. It’ll be enough.”
“It’s obvious Lucifer has an interest in you, possibly even knows what you are. If you go whole, you’re at your most vulnerable, and you’re not a participant in the trials. He can haul you out and execute you. You know he’s stronger, and he might know of a way to stop you from escaping.”
“Careful. You’re starting to sound like you care, and that conflicts with your selfish image,” I say, lightening the mood.
The more they act like they care, the more attached my stupid little heart tries to get to them. Like it’s starving for all the scraps of attention.
“It gets old,” he finally says with a shrug.
“What?” I ask as we move up higher on the mountain, our pace brisk to make up for lost ground.
“It gets old,” he says again. “The game. It’s always the same. The only time we shook things up was when we tried to tackle relationships. Once we even tried to have a relationship with four women, and they were game for it. Sex was together, one woman at a time. They didn’t find out about each other, but when they did, things got bad. It’s the only time favorites didn’t matter, because we were all someone’s favorite. Yet…”
“They didn’t like sharing their favorite,” I decide to say.
“Yeah. They didn’t mind sharing the rest of us, but the favorite was off limits. Even that proved to weaken us. Our bond is the only thing that steadies us. We’re a volatile explosion waiting to happen, and the bond is the glue that holds us together both individually and as a unit. Anything that threatens the bond is the worst threat to us.”
“What about being all together in the same room with different women?” I muse.
“Tried that too. It’s not…I don’t expect you to understand, but we bonded when sharing, and sharing only strengthens the bond. We don’t feel whole when we’re not sharing.”
I bet the bleeding hell rocks have synced up their mensies
“I think I know why you’re all so moody,” I say as though it’s just dawned on me. “You all have your man-periods at the same time.”
“I’m not even sure how to respond to you when you abruptly shift directions and say shit like that, and half the time you take silence as a sign of being moody,” he murmurs distractedly.
“Episodes of homicidal rage. Uncontrollable lust. Middle-of-the-night pizza cravings…Yep. You’re all totally synced up like these menstruating rocks,” I go on.
I get the usual groan.
“I mean, it’s right there in the word. Menstruating. It’d make more sense to define moody men.”
“Feel free to talk about anything else,” he grumbles. “Unless you want to keep hearing silence.”
“You’re just grunting and groaning, not really staying all that silent,” I inform him.
He gives me an impatient look.
Oh, yeah. I need back on the original topic. “For the record, I totally didn’t want any of you touching anyone else, and that made me feel selfish. If it wasn’t for the evil vagina that got you all individual hard-ons, what would the answer have been to my proposal?” I ask mildly, glancing at another bleeding rock.
Kai weirdly walks into a cave, and I follow, warily looking around. He spins once we’re deep inside. “Turn whole,” he demands.
I do, and the light is absent this time. I guess the adrenaline must have been playing a part on the cliff.
“What’s going—”
My words are cut off when he’s suddenly on me, kissing me hard as he lifts the flimsy little skirt that doesn’t even cover all of my ass and presses me against the cave wall.
He reaches between us and rips away the scrap of lace, and my breath catches, forcing me to break the kiss, when his fingers find my clit. My eyes almost cross, and I clutch his shoulder, amazed by how much better it feels when someone else touches me than when I touch myself.
Ignoring the terribly inappropriate timing, my lips hungrily find his, and I moan into his mouth as he starts working a finger inside me, his thumb still working those incredible circles at the exact right speed and perfect pressure.
I can’t even think.
He kisses his way down my throat, and my nails dig into his tux jacket as he drives me insane with very little effort. The orgasm hits me so much faster than it has under my own manipulations.
My entire body shudders and comes alive with sensation, and I kiss him even harder, needing more of him as I clench around his fingers, not feeling that hollow sensation quite as much.
He manages to break the kiss, pulling back as he pants heavily and stares into my eyes. He brings his finger up and sucks it like he’s tasting the most intimate part of my body from the one piece of his body that has touched it.
My eyes grow hooded, and that uncontrollable desire spikes even more like I’m caught in a haze.
He closes his eyes like he’s savoring the taste, and my hands mindlessly go to his belt, undoing it like now he’s mine to have. His hands clasp around my wrists, halting me, and I look up to see his taunting smirk.
“If we could have you, I wouldn’t be so selfish. I’d make sure you were well sated before taking mine, and I’d make you crave me as often as possible. The fact that I’m not your favorite kills me. But because of that aching need to be your favorite, I know you’d be the end of us.”
He pushes away and starts walking, while I try to gather my senses. I shift back to my phantom form, still feeling the aftershocks of my first orgasm that wasn’t self-induced.
Who knew there were varying degrees of pleasure like that? Just a taste and I’m addicted.
“Truthfully, you’re totally my favorite right now,” I tell him honestly as we exit the cave.
He half groans, half laughs, a tortured sound that fills me with a weird sense of accomplishment.
He stares up at the cliff that bypasses the hiking trail.
“I’m the fastest climber of the four of us,” he says, excluding me from that grouping.
Obviously, he knows I’m faster.
“It’ll be quicker to go up,” he goes on, sounding like he’s talking himself into that conclusion more than explaining his logic to me.
He starts climbing, and I ask a reasonable question. “What if one of those bird-snakes shoots out and knocks you off? I might have set the bar too high with that fabulous first catch, but I’m not so sure we want to see if I’m a one-hit-wonder or not.”
He curses and laughs at the same time, straining his muscles as he heaves himself up quicker and quicker.
“Climb behind me several feet down. They seem to be attracted to your presence the most,” he says.
“Did you forget my fear of clinging to a mountainside? I was just going to zap up when you got closer.”
The ground rumbles, and I start climbing immediately. The rumbling shifts, and as if cued, the bird-snake shoots through me instead of taking Kai down.
Kai blows out a shaky breath as that scaly tail—the tails are the absolute worst—finishes slithering through me.
“Since you’re my favorite and gave me my first two-person orgasm, I’ll tough it out,” I grumble, closing my eyes as I start climbing slowly, not really needing to actually worry about falling so long as I don’t look down.
His masculine, reluctant chuckle accompanies his usual groan.
“I’m going to need you to stop talking about that, because I’m hard as stone, and you have no idea the temptation I’m battling.”
“My evil vagina is impressed with her powers of temptation,” I deadpan.
Two more bird-snakes pass through me before we reach the top. I zap the rest of the way there once Kai tells me he’s over the edge.
The other three men stand from their seats on the ground, and Ezekiel grimly gestures to the next leg of the trial.
A hellfire tundra awaits us, stretching as wide and far as the eye can see.
And there’s no way across.