Let Me Win You (Seven Horny Sins #2)

Chapter 15

15

Nicole

W arm and comfortable, I must’ve dozed off.

A screeching noise yanked me out of sleep. The maze shook. The water in the river bubbled and smoked.

Invi sprung up. The ground under us bulged out, unraveling the coils of his tail. I slipped off to the floor.

A wall rose between us.

“Invi!” I screamed, struck by panic. The horror of being left alone in the maze sent me to my feet. I clawed at the rising wall, breaking my nails, but it was already too tall for me to climb over.

“Nic!” He grabbed onto the top edge of the wall, risking his head being crushed as the wall neared the ceiling.

His tail lashed over the wall, scooped me from the ground, and dragged me over to his side. Reaching its full height, the wall slammed into the ceiling with a crashing noise and a cloud of rock dust just as Invi and I fell to the floor, both on the same side.

Invi landed on his back, with me dropping on top of him.

“Invi.” I climbed up his torso and hugged his neck. “Are you okay?”

“Fine. You?”

I buried my face in his shoulder. “Don’t you ever, ever leave me.”

He wrapped his arms around me tightly.

“Never,” he vowed.

I couldn’t imagine being left here without him. I would never find a way out of here on my own. I simply wouldn’t survive. But it went further than that. I no longer wanted to be without him even beyond the maze, even in the world where I lived.

“Let’s go,” I urged, climbing to my feet. “Let’s get out of here and win this damn thing.”

My clothes were left on the other side of the new wall. They were blocked away from us now, with no way of getting them back. I had nothing but my sandals on my feet. But I didn’t care. I’d do this naked if I had to, as long as Invi was with me.

Holding my hand, he rose from the ground and looked around, searching with his senses for the right direction for us to move.

“This way.” He pointed at one of the several corridors that had opened all around us this time.

I headed that way, walking alongside him, but he lifted me in his arms again.

“It’s safer this way,” he explained.

I didn’t object. The scare I got when we got separated had rattled my nerves. The closer I was to him now, the better I felt. Besides, he moved faster than I could walk, which meant we’d be out of here sooner, and I was so ready to leave this damn maze.

“It’s not far now,” Invi assured me, as if sensing my mood.

He sounded calm, but I noticed how alert he was, scanning the walls carefully. The black stains on the dark gray walls appeared to move. Some undulated along the stone surface by spreading out then contracting again. Others bulged out of the rock, forming knobs and tendrils.

A faint humming vibrated through the air. At first, I dismissed it as background noise. After a while, however, words formed in the humming.

“Come…”

“Come with me…”

“Help me…”

“Do you hear it?” I asked Invi.

With his mouth pressed into a firm line, he nodded. “Just ignore it the best you can.”

The stench of sulfur grew stronger, making it harder to breathe. The air seemed warmer, too, sweat slicked my hair around my face and trickled down my neck in a thin, chilling rivulet.

Black smoke seeped from the walls, blending with the stains and the shadows. An impenetrable darkness moved in the same direction as we did, slithering along the walls in tendrils and gathering under the ceiling in drips.

“Come with me!” A clawed hand reached out from the smoke, grabbing my foot.

I screamed and kicked it away.

Another hand pulled at my hair.

“Fuck off!” Invi punched it, and it retreated into a puff of smoke.

“What are these?” I hugged my arm, barely evading another clawed shadow.

“These are the souls of the damned on their way to where they belong.” Invi punched another dark spirit out of our way.

He lashed his tail from wall to wall, shaking off the souls of the sinners that tried to cling to him.

“Come, come, come with me….” The words rustled from all around us.

“Why do they want us to come along?”

“They’re frightened,” Invi explained. “It’s always scary to face the consequences of one’s actions, especially when one is completely alone.”

The wall on the right up ahead had caved in. The space beyond it was pitch dark with waves of smoke and heat blasting out of it.

“Is that…hell?” I swallowed hard.

“No. Just a passage into it,” Invi replied.

The dark spirits moaned in horror, as the gaping hole sucked them in. They rushed down the corridor from both directions, then disappeared into the open mouth of darkness.

“No! No! No!” they bemoaned their faith.

“Don’t let it take me.”

“Hold me.”

“Stop me.”

Long, gnarly fingers clawed at Invi and me, pulling us forward.

“Nic, listen to me carefully.” Invi held me with both arms, while punching and shoving the sinners away from us with his tail. “There is no way around this. We have to go past it. We’ll have to make a run for it. If we get separated?—”

“We won’t.” I shifted in his arms to hug his neck tighter, then hooked my legs around his chest. “I won’t let them separate us.”

He smiled and placed a quick kiss on my cheek.

“No matter what happens,” he said. “You run, alright? Run past the dark passage and don’t look back. The exit is close. If the corridor forks up ahead, you should be able to see the outside light at the end of at least one of the corridors. Do you hear me?”

I nodded. “We’ll be fine. We’ll stay together.”

“Nicole.” He dipped his head to see my eyes and get my full attention. “You will not survive hell. If they drag you in, you’ll be cremated alive. Do you understand? No matter what happens to me, you’ll have to keep on running.”

“Come with me!” a spirit screeched, grabbing Invi’s hair.

“Come!” Another one pulled his arm, prying it away from me.

He punched the dark spirit away, then angled his head down, thrusting his horns forward.

“Let’s go.” He moved ahead.

The black smoke curled all around us. Dark shapes leaped out from it, grabbing on to Invi and pulling, pulling, pulling him toward the darkness of hell.

I wanted to close my eyes and hide my face in his chest, to pretend that none of it was happening.

A claw scraped my arm, searing my skin with pain. But it drew no blood. It hardly even left a scratch. Another thin hand with knobby knuckles grabbed for me, but its claws slipped from my skin as if it was oiled and slippery.

As the dark spirits held Invi, dragging him to the gaping mouth of the passage, their claws, teeth, and hands seemed to be unable to get a purchase on me.

The black smoke curled around my ankles and wrists. The pungent stench invaded my nostrils. The shadows shrieked and moaned, their tendrils sifting through my hair and grabbing for my limbs, but their fingers slipped off without locking.

“Nic, you have to run,” Invi ordered.

His shape had almost completely drowned in shadows. He propped his tail against one side of the dark passage while holding on to another as the spirits pulled and shoved him towards the all-consuming scorching heat of hell.

With his other arm, he sat me down.

“Run, sweetheart.”

“Not without you.” I shook my head so hard, it was a miracle my neck didn’t snap.

The shadows tightened around him like chains. I tore at them with my hands, ripping them to shreds, only for the new ones to curl around him right after. Bracing my heels into the ground, I clung to his arm.

He tensed. The muscles in his neck and arms bulged out as he strained to hold on to the walls against the impossible pull of the damned.

A blast of heat from the depths of the passage blew back my hair.

“Go, Nic,” he pleaded. “See? They can’t drag you in with them. Because you don’t belong in hell. But you will be taken in with me if you don’t let go of me. Let me go.”

“Never.” I punched the closest ghostly shape, then another one. “Remember? We stay together.” I kicked another dark soul, sending it into the abyss of hell with a moan.

I’d never kicked or punched anyone in my life. But now, I was throwing both kicks and punches right and left, fighting the shadows.

“Go to hell! Let him be!”

With both arms free, Invi got a better hold of the crumbling wall, but the darkness had already claimed his tail, pulling it into the passage. I took a step after it but quickly shrank back.

“Fucking hot.” I whipped the sweat off my brow.

A screeching spirit flew by, then grabbed onto Invi’s shoulder. “Come with me!”

“No! He’s mine.” I slammed a fist into the dark shape, knocking it off Invi and into the whirlwind of the damned that spiraled down the passage to hell. “Come on, my love,” I pleaded with Invi. “Try just a little bit harder.”

A convulsion ran through his entire being as he tried to free his tail. Baring his teeth, he strained his arms and shoulders, pulling himself out of the tunnel to hell. I kept shoving and punching the spirits off his torso, as far as I could reach into the passage without boiling alive.

His tail flew out of the tunnel with so much power, it lashed against the opposite wall, shaking off the spirits that clung to it like mud.

“Come.” I grabbed him under his arm, pulling him away. “Move, please.”

Using his hands and his tail, he crawled along the floor under the hurricane of dark smoke and shadows.

“Almost there, Invi,” I urged, brushing off the hands and claws reaching for him. “We’re almost there, baby.”

When the storm of heat and darkness was finally left behind us, he dropped to the ground, exhausted, and grabbed for me.

“Nic?”

“I’m here.” I kneeled at his side.

He hooked his arm around my waist and pulled me in for a kiss.

“Did you call me your love, back there?” he grinned, and I slapped his arm.

“Is that all you remember from your fight with the forces of hell?”

“It was the best part, for sure.” Smiling wide, he pushed from the floor with his hands and rose above the ground, propped on his tail. “All right, dearest, let’s finish this.”

I stumbled alongside him, going down yet another long corridor. My knees shook, and my feet seemed to forget how to walk from exhaustion. But Invi could hardly move himself. He didn’t need the added strain of carrying me.

“Look, there.” I pointed at the end of the corridor as we turned around a corner. The glow of the setting sun colored the ugly walls of the maze with warm burgundy and gold. “It’s over, Invi.” I exhaled with relief, speeding up the best I could.

Several adjacent corridors led to a small plaza outside the exit with a crowd of multi-colored souls gathered around it. A few hundred spirits joined Pandora and the two virtues. Shimmering with all the colors of the rainbow, the crowd cheered, spotting us on our way out.

As Invi and I approached the exit, a large, yellow shape rolled out of one of the corridors and onto the crowded plaza, barely a step ahead of us.

“What a fucking vile place that is!” Gul climbed to his feet, shaking out his fur. Glancing over his shoulder at Invi and me behind him, he grinned ear to ear. “I won!”

My heart dropped into my stomach.

We were too late. After all we’d been through, we still lost.

“No.” Invi grabbed for me, but Gul was faster.

Snatching me, he raised me over his head like a trophy.

“I won! She’s mine.” He turned me in his hands, giving me a quick inspection. “Just look at you, completely naked and so delightfully dirty. The maze is a grimy place, isn’t it? You must be very hungry too. Do you know what that means?”

I didn’t want to guess what that meant. My head was spinning as he turned and tossed me around like a doll. It was all I could do not to throw up.

“It means I’ll feed you and give you a bath.” He lifted a strand of my matted hair with a wide smile that looked more like a scowl because of his long tusks. “I’ll finally get a chance to use all those bath soaps I have. A mortal body is such a neat thing to have?—”

“She’s mine!” Invi roared, charging Gul.

“Hey!” Gul moved me under his arm and out of Invi’s reach. “I won her, fair and square.”

He lowered his head, meeting Invi’s next attack with his thick, curved horns.

“Now, boys,” Pandora clapped her hands, stepping between them. “The rules are that the winner gets the prize. If Gul is the winner, the human is his to do with as he pleases.”

“But I don’t want to be his!” I yelled from under Gul’s arm, kicking my feet. “Can I not make decisions about my future here?”

“I’m sorry, but that wasn’t in the rules.” Pandora waved a hand, muttering something under her breath.

Invi lunged at Gul again but crashed into an invisible wall this time, his tail lashing against it.

“Fuck!” he yelled, slamming his fists into the invisible barrier separating us. “Mother, remove the ward, now! Stop meddling.”

“Oh, but who will keep you boys in check if I do?” she cooed. “Without me, you never follow any rules at all. Well, it appears Ira didn’t make it. Which leaves just the two of you, and Gul was here first. We all saw it, right?” She turned around to the crowd, and they clapped in support. “Gul is the winner,” Pandora announced cheerfully.

Gul pressed me to his chest, and I found myself drowning in his thick, golden fur as he took me away.

I jerked my head back, spitting out the fur. “Let me go!”

“Don’t worry, little dumpling. I’ll take good care of you.” Gul petted my head. “What would you like for dinner tonight? I have veal pelmeni with sour cream and black pepper. Or how about Beef Wellington? It’s often a favorite with mortals. You’re not a vegetarian, are you?” He winced. “It’d put some limitations, but I can work with that. Do you have any other…um, what’s that word that humans use?” He snapped his fingers, his long claws clicking against each other. “ Dietary restrictions?”

“Nic, I’ll free you!” Invi’s voice reached me from behind. “No matter what, I will.”

“Invi!” I pushed away from the wide furry chest, but Gul held me firmly.

“Forget about him,” he murmured. “No one can feed you better than I can. I’ll wash your hair and find you some cute clothes to wear. We’ll have so much fun together. You’ll love it.”