Let Me Win You (Seven Horny Sins #2)

Chapter 12

12

Nicole

H olding on to my flying horse with both arms, I somehow managed to steer it to follow Pandora.

Charity and Kindness were way ahead of us already, flying along the wall and around the maze building.

“Where are we going?” I screamed after Pandora, who kept moving up to the top of the wall.

Was I supposed to follow her ? Or the virtues?

Worry buzzed through me. If it was dangerous for us to stay near the opening doors, how would Invi fare down there? Even without a body to lose, one could suffer when faced with danger.

My head was spinning when I tried to look down, and I couldn’t see a thing through the thick black smoke spreading over the ground below.

“What is happening down there?” I asked Pandora, catching up to her.

“Come this way.” Pandora waved for me to follow her over the wall. “It’s a perfect view from here.”

My pegasus lined up with hers, and we hovered over the prolapse in the roof.

“Keep at this height. Don’t get any lower,” Pandora warned. “Things can get nasty inside these walls.”

The exposed section of the maze had high walls constructed from stone and metal. The walls were so high and the space between them so narrow that sunlight didn’t reach the ground between them. Sharp rocks littered the packed ground, and black smoke clung to every turn and corner inside.

“Just how nasty can it get down there?” I asked anxiously.

This whole idea of the race had disturbed me from the beginning. But seeing this dark, sinister place made me realize it also might be extremely dangerous.

Pandora shrugged in reply. “I mean the maze is the gateway to hell, so…not exactly a pleasant place to be.”

“How close is the actual hell here?” A shiver ran across my shoulders, and I clung harder to the warm neck of the pegasus. “Why did we even come here? If you absolutely had to have this stupid race, why not have them run along the creek in the forest or on the road in town?”

“And what would be the fun in that?” Pandora laughed in sync with the kaleidoscope of colors bursting through her shape.

I couldn’t believe how much she was looking forward to this. “Are you really going to have fun while watching your children fight for their lives in this nasty place?”

She tossed a lock of her hair over her shoulder. “Calm down, little human. You’re forgetting that my children are powerful entities, practically immortal, and perfectly capable of taking care of themselves. Ira is actually the one in charge of the maze. It’s his second home. He spends more time here than in his own lair.”

“Ira…lives here?” I cast another glance down at the grimy walls and the dark, narrow passages, wondering how anyone would spend a minute here not because they had to but because they wanted to.

On the other hand, with his hooves, his head of a bull, and his state of barely contained rage, Ira actually fit right in there, visually at least.

“He keeps the maze stocked with horrible beasts to torment the sinners for the devils,” Pandora explained.

“Are there more than one devil?”

“Of course there are. One wouldn’t possibly be able to look after all the circles of hell on his own, not with your world supplying a steady stream of sinners on a daily basis. There is also an entire army of demons to manage and supervise. It’s too much work for one being to do it all, no matter how powerful he may be. Hell is huge. The maze is just the very top circle of it—a front hallway, if you will. The actual hell spirals deep under ground. And trust me, it is as ghastly as they say. Let’s just hope you’ll never see the inside of it.”

“How do I make sure that I won’t?” I asked, seriously disturbed by the possibility of landing here at any point of my existence.

“Hell is not as hard to avoid as many think. Just try not to mess up majorly in this lifetime, and you’ll be fine.” Pandora scanned the maze below us. “Oh look!” She pointed down inside of the outer wall. “There is Invi. And the others.”

In the gloomy darkness of the maze, the glowing figures of the sins were easy to spot, even through the thick, black smoke that hugged the walls and the ground. Invi’s tail pierced through it like a bright green ribbon shimmering along the passages. Gul and Ira followed close, both currently moving just as fast as my Sin of Envy.

“There are several ways to get through the maze,” Pandora explained. “Only one is the shortest, but it’s not necessarily the safest. The trick is to figure out which way it is, because the maze doesn’t stay the same.”

“What do you mean it doesn’t?”

“It’s not stationary.”

Her reply didn’t really clarify anything, but I didn’t ask again, focusing on what was happening below.

As Invi continued straight, Gul turned off into a passage on the right, and Ira turned left.

“Wouldn’t Ira have an advantage over his brothers, since it’s his maze and he knows it the best?” I asked.

“Not necessarily, since the maze moves all the time.” Pandora twirled a strand of her hair between her fingers. “So, which one is your favorite?” She tipped her chin at the glowing figures that rushed through the passages below.

“I don’t have favorites,” I said quickly.

“But you do have at least some preference for the winner, don’t you? You’ll be living in his house, after all.”

A tendril of black smoke separated from the wall as Invi was passing by. It stretched, forming a clawed hand with gnarly fingers that reached for him.

“Watch out!” I screamed, nearly sliding off the saddle in agitation.

Pandora flew in a circle around me. “We’d better take you out of here. You’re way too unsteady in the air.”

I followed her, but my focus remained glued to the green sin below. The gnarly black hand grabbed his tail, yanking him back. He fell to the ground, face down.

One passage over, a massive shape leaped from around the corner on Ira. The Sin of Wrath roared so loud, the walls of the maze shook. The beast that attacked him looked eerily similar to Ira. It had a humanoid shape with the head of a bull, but with no tail and with feet instead of Ira’s hooves.

“A minotaur!” Pandora gasped in awe. “You won’t normally see them anywhere but here in the maze.”

Another beast just like the first one rushed Ira. Their horns locked with a thundering sound that spooked my pegasus. Frantically beating the air with his wings, my mount lurched to the right, shaking me out of the saddle.

“Ahhh!” I screamed, plummeting until the reins yanked at my hand stopping my fall.

I dangled in the air, held only by the reins clutched in my hand, as my pegasus flew around, flapping his wings wildly.

“Nicole!” Pandora called from above, but I couldn’t see her through the cloud of black, pungent smoke rising from the maze.

No, the smoke wasn’t rising, I realized, as a gray rock wall rushed by me—I was falling.

In a desperate attempt to get free from my weight dragging him down by the reins trapped around his neck, the pegasus jerked to the left, slamming me into the wall so hard, breath rushed out of me in a groan. The reins slipped from my weakened fingers, and I fell into the gaping mouth of the maze.

I braced in horror for the inevitable impact with the sharp rocks and the hard ground below.

Instead, strong arms caught me. The thick green tail coiled around me tightly. I rolled on the ground, but Invi’s torso and tail cushioned my fall and kept me safe from the rocks and the walls.

“Invi…” I exhaled.

“You have to get out!” He panted in alarm.

His tail uncoiled like a spring, lifting him above the ground, with only the short, rattled end propped in the dirt.

“Mother!” he shouted, holding me up in his arms. “Get Nic to safety. Now!”

“I’m sorry, sweetie,” Pandora’s voice filtered through the surrounding smoke. “I’m trying. But it’s tight. There is no space for the wings between the walls?—”

The clashing of horns and the roars of minotaurs fighting with Ira nearby drowned the rest of her words.

A growl came from below. Invi jerked suddenly as if something rammed into the lower part of his tail. Like a cut down tree, he tilted and crashed with me in his arms.

With a screeching, deafening sound, the walls of the maze shifted.

“It’s moving.” I gripped Invi’s shoulders in rising panic as our passage grew narrower. “Invi, the maze is moving.”

“Fuck.” Pressing me to his chest, he propelled himself with his tail, sliding over the ground smoothly like a knife through butter.

The smoke around us thinned. But the sky disappeared, too, as we rushed into the covered section of the maze.

With a feral roar, a minotaur ran after us. As he got closer, he dropped to all fours, somehow galloping even faster that way. His bovine mouth opened wide, baring two rows of sharp teeth that belonged to a predator, not a bull.

“Invi, your tail!” I screamed.

The nightmarish beast snapped his teeth, taking out a chunk of Invi’s tail, just above the rattle.

The muscles in Invi’s neck bulged out. He growled, making one final push to propel us out of the disappearing corridor just before its walls slammed closed together.

We fell to the ground, Invi’s tail dropping in coils on top of us. A thick black liquid burst out from between the closed walls, spraying us with the sticky, stinky mess.

“What is this?” I shook my hand, trying to get rid of the stuff.

“The minotaur. All that’s left of him.” Invi pushed from the ground, still clutching me in his arms.

Disgust brought bile up to my throat as the full meaning of his words registered with me. When they had slammed together, the walls of the maze liquified the minotaur monster into the black, foul-smelling goo that was covering my entire arm.

“You can’t be here.” Invi scanned our surroundings quickly, as if expecting more monsters to jump out at us any minute.

With the roof over our heads, it’d be completely dark if it wasn’t for Invi’s glow. The walls had closed all around us, leaving only a narrow passage up ahead.

“You know what?” I tried to wipe the black gore off my arm, but it clung to my skin like tar. “At this point, I’d say you shouldn’t be here, either. This race is fucking dangerous, Invi. This could’ve been us!” I thrust my filthy arm his way with black goo dripping from my fingers.

“You,” he corrected.

“Pardon?”

“This could’ve been you, Nic . ” He turned to me, trapping my eyes with his gaze. “You are the one with a mortal body, not me.”

“I’m sorry, but being flattened into a pancake between two stone walls couldn’t possibly be pleasant regardless of whether one has a body or not.”

“It’d be a torture for me,” he agreed. “But I would recover. You, however, my dear, gentle, fragile human… You would be dead.”

I swallowed hard, fighting the heavy ball of dread sinking in my stomach. I’d narrowly avoided being crushed to death with that minotaur in there. Had Invi been just a little slower or that minotaur a little faster… We wouldn’t be talking here right now.

Invi gently ran his fingers over the hair above my ear. “I came here fully aware of the danger, my darling. But I’m not prepared to put you through this.”

I drew in a long, shaky breath of the stale, musky air. “What are we going to do now? How can we stop the race?”

“We can’t. The maze is closed. The only way out now is by going through it.” A deep frown crossed his features. “Dammit. This was not in the rules!” He slammed his fist into the nearest wall.

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t stay in the saddle.” I dropped my shoulders in regret. “Riding a flying horse turned out to be quite different from riding a regular one.”

“It’s not your fault” His voice softened. “I’ll blame myself before I’ll ever blame you. I was the one who brought you to Purgatory in the first place. And for that, I’m deeply sorry.”

This was new to me. The few men I’d dated would’ve seized the opportunity to put the blame on me, even if just to graciously forgive me right after. Invi had made one mistake on impulse, but he had fully accepted his responsibility for it and had apologized more than once already.

“How’s your tail?” I asked. “He bit you pretty hard. Does it hurt?”

Invi lashed his tail over the ground to test it.

“It’s fine,” he said. “We feel pain differently than mortals do. The bite doesn’t bother me at all. We should be going.”

Setting me down next to him, he peered cautiously into the narrow passage ahead of us, which was our only way forward.

“You have a race to win.” I nodded, heading alongside him into the passage as he moved ahead.

“No. I have a mortal body to protect, one that I’ve grown quite fond of and wouldn’t want to see damaged in any way.”

“Oh, you mean this old thing?” I gestured at myself casually. “Getting a new one can be an upgrade,” I quipped in an attempt to lighten the mood.

Yet his expression remained serious.

“Don’t say that. Losing a body is often painful. I don’t want you to suffer. Also…” He gently stroked the side of my face then traced my collarbone with the tip of his finger. “I like this body too much not to mourn its loss greatly. I’m hoping to touch it again in ways that make you whimper and moan in pleasure.”

I got hold of his finger, since his hand was too large for me to hold.

“You have to stop being so charming, Invi, or I’ll beg you to do unspeakable things to this body right here and now, and then where would we be?”

Finally, his features relaxed a little, his lips stretching into a dreamy smile.

“With you naked and in my arms, my dearest Nicole, even this dreadful place would feel better than heaven.”