46. Max
Max
The Harvest Road ran up out of the dark, broad as a river, and the dead came down it in an endless current.
Asteroth climbed ahead of us, breaking the flow like the prow of a ship, and the newly harvested parted around our bodies and didn’t stop screaming.
“The way you came in doesn’t run backward,” he called over his shoulder. “The chasm of hellfire is a mouth, Heir. Mouths swallow. They don’t spit politely.”
The general of the Third Host slid his eyes back to me.
“This runs to the side gate. It’s also how the crop comes down. Don’t linger on it.”
What he called the crop were souls with faces.
Ordinary faces, office faces, grandmother faces, rich assholes’ faces, streaming past on every side with their mouths torn wide.
Their hands came out of the current at us as they went, grabbing for anything that might stop the fall and buy one more second before the machine down there started chewing on them.
The hands went through me like cold water and put every hair on my neck up. The screaming would haunt my sleep, and there was no blocking it out.
I clenched my teeth. I wanted my palms over my ears, but I needed both hands to shove the dead off me, even though there was nothing to shove. Drakken’s arm came around me and locked me against his side, and I matched my steps to his.
Where the road bent, the ground opened, and we looked down.
Far below, the current poured over an edge into a shaft of fire that had no bottom, and the souls went down in a glowing cataract, burning as they sank, feeding whatever engines turned in the deep. The light that came up from it was the exact amber of the sea under my father’s palace.
“Shit,” I said.
“Brutal,” Drakken said.
“The Ninth Vent, Heir.” Asteroth’s voice boomed over the screaming, satisfied.
“Most of them earned their ticket. You’d think so too, if you knew what they did before they came down.
Every one of them thought they were untouchable.
Mortals live like they’ll live forever, fussing over nothing, certain there’s no bill at the end.
” He chuckled, deep as a rockfall. “Here they go.”
Drakken and I traded a look, and he pulled me tighter.
This was Hell, literally.
No appeals down there. No second chances, no mercy, no door out. The machine was hungry, and the general walking ahead of us was enjoying every minute of it.
This was my father’s domain, and he’d named me its heir in front of his whole court. But I wasn’t coming back. Not if I could help it.
Then a great power rolled across all of Hell like thunder.
Asteroth dropped to one knee on the road. Below the trail, on the palace grounds, in the distant halls, on the rocky ground across the sea, on the beach, every demon in the realm went down.
I turned toward it.
Lucifer stood in the air between the twin towers, in the empty span where Drakken and I had shattered his bridge. The King of Hell had set the man aside.
He was in his true form.
Over twelve feet, and the height was the least of it. Great horns swept back off his brow like a crown. Wings opened behind him, vast and black, and the black of them wasn’t shadow. It was deep space.
His face was still my father’s face, midnight-sapphire eyes and all. The morning star burned at his brow, one point of pure white light.
Over my heart, the Hellgold flared back, and warmth radiated through my ribs.
He inclined his head, acknowledging me across his own sky.
One thing, daughter, before you go. His voice arrived inside my skull without troubling the air. Every angel carries Grace. When I fell, mine fell with me, and it changed on the way down.
Below us, the harvested poured past, screaming.
Dark Grace. There is no other kind on this earth.
Your mother didn’t give you that, and no witch alive can teach it to you.
The star at his brow dimmed by a fraction.
Understand what you inherited from me. It has no true loyalty.
It cannot always tell your friends from your enemies, and it will not come because you ask it nicely.
It answers a trigger, and you will not always like what pulls it.
Until you can hold its leash, treat it as a bomb you happen to be carrying.
I let out a shaky breath. “And when I can hold it?”
Then nothing on the surface of that world will stand a chance against you.
The wings closed. The star at his brow went out like a shutter drawn, and my father was gone.
It took me a moment to move. Then I climbed the last leg of the Harvest Road.