Magnus

“Fascinating history,” I murmured when we stepped free of the trees.

We strode back through the burnt-out town on the border of the calamut forest. The glow of the full moon shone on the land, revealing the pitted road, broken homes, and dilapidated remnants of the humans who once thrived here. Even though it had been fourteen years since the gateway opened and the bombs were released in this area, the stench of burnt flesh and wood was still detectable on the air.

“Or sad.” Amalia’s skin turned red when she rubbed her arms again.

“It’s both. You’re hurting yourself,” I said and grasped her hands.

She tugged her hands away from me and gave me a look of both anger and intense suffering. “Those lives touched me. They’re in me!”

“Those lives are not in you,” I said as I reclaimed her hands.

I held them against my chest as her ochre-colored eyes stared pleadingly up at me. Running my thumbs over the backs of her silken hands, I watched as her mouth parted, and my body quickened in response to her. Except, this time I longed to hug her against me and shelter her as much as I wanted to taste her again.

“But they are,” she whispered. “I felt their strength flow through me.”

“Amalia—”

She tugged at her hands again. When she grunted in frustration, I reluctantly released my hold on her, and she spun away from me. The edge of her dirt-streaked dress trailed on the ground, becoming browner in color as she stalked down the remains of the battered street. With subtle ease, she avoided the jagged pieces of asphalt jutting up from the broken road.

I hurried to catch up and fell into step beside her. “You don’t have to go back into the Abyss.”

She abruptly halted. “Yes, I do.”

“We’ll find another way to help the others, and we’re not doing much good—”

“But we are doing some good. I don’t care how much I despise that place, I’m going back in there, and you can’t stop me.”

A smile curved my mouth as I stepped closer to her. The impudent expression on her face was as amusing as it was alluring. Over the course of the past two days, some of her hair had straggled free from her braids and cleaved to her face. She didn’t bother to push it away, but I brushed it back before I cupped her cheeks in my hands.

“I’m going back in,” Amalia insisted.

“What if you open a portal and let me go in alone?” I asked as I stroked her silken cheek with my thumb.

“And how would you get back out if you needed to?”

“I’d find a way.”

“There is no finding a way, if something were to happen, you wouldn’t be able to get out.”

“That’s for me to worry about.”

She blinked at me before she gave a derisive snort. “Silly, arrogant demon.”

“We could arrange a designated time to meet up again.”

“It seems as if they’re the same, but time in the Abyss might pass differently than it does here. A few seconds or minutes could throw us off completely.”

“I think it’s the same,” I replied. “Or at least I believe it is for anyone not caught up in the loops the jinn create.”

She pondered that for a minute. “I think you’re right.”

“I usually am.”

She rolled her spectacular eyes. “I am going back with you, and there will be no arguments about it.” Patting my hands, she removed them from her face and stepped away. “We should return to the others and the Abyss.”

“Not before you feed,” I said.

“We can’t take the time that will require.”

“Shadows line your eyes and you look drained. We will make time for it. You’re not going to do anyone any good if you’re too hungry and exhausted to continue.”

She opened her mouth to protest before closing it.

“Come on, Freckles,” I said and claimed her hand. “With as devastated as this town is, there’s bound to be wraiths somewhere close by.”

• • •

Amalia

We found a mass of wraiths hovering over the red blocks of a wrecked building. Most of the blocks were singed black, and many of them had disintegrated to ash, but some were untouched and a deep red hue.

The wraiths here were healthier than any of the wraiths who slipped inside the seals and been fed on by those lurking within. By the time most wraiths made it behind the seals, they were fed on to the point of barely being mobile anymore.

They’d kept me alive, but since coming to Earth, I’d been feeding on far healthier wraiths. Healthy or depleted, I loathed the spirits. They didn’t deserve to be free of Hell. There were others who would say the same thing about me and the jinn, but there was little redeeming about the hideous human souls sent to Hell, and seeing so many wraiths in one place was usually a sign of a lot of death.

“Why are there so many wraiths here?” I asked as I studied the twisted, malevolent spirits darting through the air, plummeting into the ground, and rising again.

“It looks like this was a big place, a school perhaps. My guess is many of the humans gathered here after the gateway opened to seek comfort from each other and find strength in numbers, but something destroyed the place, most likely killing them all.”

“How horrible,” I murmured and lifted my hand to the sky to draw one of the depraved souls toward me.

The wraith’s fathomless eyes stared out of a gray face, elongated into a grotesque mask. This wraith was new enough that I could still make out human characteristics such as its nose, cheeks, and flaking lips. The wraith squirmed in my grasp, but I held on as I drained more of its life from it.

Unlike many other demons, I took no joy in inflicting pain on it. I had to feed on wraiths to survive, but I couldn’t stand the coldness of their spirit or the clammy way they made my skin feel and its vile emotions battering me as I drained it.

By the time I finished, it no longer had lips, and its face had extended and become grayer. When I released it, the wraith faltered until its flapping, black ends dragged across the ground before it swooped toward the sky.

No matter how much I despised feeding on them, when the wraith darted away from me, I felt rejuvenated and better prepared to return to the Abyss. I shuddered at the idea of the lost lives touching my flesh again, but I would deal with it when the time came.

Beside me, Magnus released his wraith, turned toward me, and claimed my hand.

“Let’s get back to the others and the Abyss,” I said.