Chapter Three
Iwoke alone.
Peeling my lids open, hot, fetid, burning air immediately rushed in, making them water and sting. I sat up hacking and coughing, trying to see through the haze.
Where am I?
No sooner had the thought crossed my mind when the world slowly appeared before me... in all its dead, burned, soulless horror.
I was in a forest, if it could be called that. The trees surrounding me were hollow, white, dead things with not a leaf in sight. Beneath me, hard, life-sucking earth faintly burned my hands and exposed skin like a sandy beach on a scorching day—but nowhere near as picturesque.
Rising to my feet, I spun around—my gaze landing on nothing, nothing, and nothing. A glance down showed me I wasn’t in my sparkling red dress and shoes anymore.
Simple black pants and a black shirt wrapped around me. The only thing distinctive about the outfit was the large black-and-gray patch woven into the front—the logo of Abaddon Academy. Also very distinctive, were the two size C breasts pushing against my shirt.
“How am I supposed to get into an all-men’s academy in this outfit? This badge does not hide my boobs, darling!” I croaked, sweeping the miles upon miles of dead trees and black earth. “Not that there even is an academy anywhere near here. Where am I!”
“Where elssse? Hell.”
I twisted on my feet, eyes bugging. “Who said that?” I demanded, then coughed some more. My lungs did not like this air. “Who’s there?”
“Down here, human.”
Down here? Slowly, I tipped my chin. I couldn’t make out a thing until the ground moved.
Slithering over the charred earth, a snake as black as night came straight for me.
“Ahhhh!”
“Stop that caterwauling, you ridiculous creature!” she snapped at me.
But how could she do that?! She’s a snake!
“I’m hardly the first snake you’ve come across, and although I’m tempted, I will not harm you.”
“How are you doing that?” I shrieked. “You’re talking! Snakes don’t— This isn’t real—” I tossed my head, backing away. “This isn’t happening.”
“Wrong on both counts.” She rose up. Turning her head, she beheld me with her strange, slitted eye. “Snakes do communicate, just not in a way you humans can translate. Lord Lucifer fixed that.”
“Lord... Lucifer.”
She dipped her scaly, triangular-shaped head. “Because you saw fit to bind my lord to you with those impertinent, blasphemous terms, he was required to provide you with everything you need to succeed in your goal. And one such thing you need is someone to explain to you how things work in hell.
“That is my unfortunate duty.”
My mind was spinning trying to make sense of this. “You? A snake?”
“Me,” she shot back. “A snake. And this is your first lesson: do not scream. Ever. Screaming is what prey does. If you act like prey in this world, you will be treated like prey. The second lesson is that a disguise only works on the ignorant,” she explained.
“The same goes for glamour magic. You know you’re a woman, so you see yourself as you are. Everyone else will see a man.”
I just stared at her. I was too deep in my shock to skip to the part where I was speaking merrily and normally with my new snake guide.
She wasn’t interested in waiting for me to catch up. “Let’s go. The sooner you find your nestmate, the sooner I return home.” Slithering over, she slipped under my pant’s hem, and climbed right up.
“What are you doing!”
“What do you think? Do you expect me to chase after you all day and night? Do you not see the least you can do is carry me?”
I swallowed another scream as her scales glided over my skin. I wasn’t afraid of snakes, but then, I’d never had one in my pants before!
She hissed at me. “Why do you recoil? Are you inconssssiderate as well as insolent? No wonder you’re sixty years old and have never mated.”
“Excuse me?” My tied tongue loosened quickly. “I’m twenty-two and—and I’m not a virgin!”
She sniffed. I don’t know how, but the tiny black snake sniffed at me. “Well, you look sixty. You’re clearly aging horribly.”
I bit off a hot retort. If this was really happening, and I wasn’t one hundred percent it was, I wasn’t about to get into a roasting match with my delusion. “Can you at least hang around my shoulders?”
Wrapping tight around my torso, she replied, “No.”
“Straight out of charm school, you are.”
“Shut up and get moving. We have a long way to go if we’re going to make it to the academy in time for the trials,” emerged from my shirt.
“Any late arrivals are denied entry and can’t apply again for another month.
” A shiver crawled up my spine as she squeezed me tighter.
“I suspect you don’t want to keep your nestmate waiting any longer than you have. ”
“How long a ways do we have to go?” I asked. “And which way?”
Her tail poked out from under my shirt. “That way. Ten miles.”
“Ten?!”
A strange, whispery, hissing noise bled through my fabric. It took me a second to realize it was her laugh.
“You made a fool of my lord with that contract. You should expect him to return the favor as often as he can.” She laughed again. “By the way, the trials start in an hour.”
“What!”
“Better get moving.”
I didn’t waste another second. Turning in the direction she indicated, I took off at full pace—racing through the lonely, desiccated forest.
Hang on, Dora. I ran faster still.
I’m coming for you.
All Caught Up
“HELLHOUNDSSSS,” MY snake companion bellowed from below my collar. “Get up the fucking cliff, human! Now!”
She didn’t need to tell me twice.
Racing past a guffawing Erlik, I launched at the cliff face—desperately scrabbling for purchase, and opening seams on my palms in a dozen little places. I had nothing— No, less than nothing left in my tank.
I knew from the first ten minutes into my forest run that Lucifer had done something to my body.
I should’ve been winded and gasping for water, but instead, I felt great.
My body thrived on the exercise like I was an athlete.
My muscles were relaxed in the movement.
My lungs were primed to pump at full efficiency.
I was positively flying through the desolate place... until I hit mile eight.
Maybe if I’d been running through my neighborhood park on a nice day with a bottle of water strapped to my arm, I’d have been fine.
But this was hell.
The burning, smoke-filled air irritated and ravaged my throat and lungs. The oppressive heat drained my body of moisture, and there wasn’t a single water source in sight to do anything about it. By the time the gates of Abaddon Academy loomed before me, I was in trouble.
My lungs burned. My legs ached. I was beyond dehydrated... and Erlik wasn’t hearing any of that. Thus, began the trials.
He made us walk a tightrope over open flames. That killed twenty-five percent of applicants right off the bat. Next was the footrace.
We had to sprint five miles while dodging magical attacks from Erlik, and the other applicants. Being that I was already wiped from my forced ten-mile sprint, I was dead fricking last. Surprisingly, that’s likely what saved me.
Erlik was too busy torturing the runners at the front and picking them off one by one to even see me in last place. Ditto for the gut of runners bringing up the middle. They were too busy attacking each other to hang back and worry about me.
But none of that would help me get up this cliff.
“Come on,” I bellowed at myself, climbing a foot from the ground, and then two. “Come on!”
“Ahhh!”
Someone fell past me, nearly knocking me off smashing into my shoulder before crashing to the ground.
The hellhounds were on him in a blink. Terrifying, blood-chilling horror rocketed through my body as five of them pounced on him. He was still screaming when one ripped open his stomach and started eating.
Everything went white. I think I was screaming.
I think the snake in my shirt was shouting too, but that might have been to tell me to shut up and stop acting like prey.
I couldn’t comprehend of any of that as I climbed—climbed, climbed, and climbed with no more thought in my head but to get away from those horrifying monsters.
“No! No, no, no!” My bloody hands slipped on the rock. “You’re not dying here! Dora needs you! Keep going!” Tears cut tracks down my cheeks as someone else fell from the cliff, and their dying screams pummeled my eardrums. “Keep going! She needs—”
A tight grip closed on my wrist, snapping my head up. Blinking, swimming eyes latched on to a wide, gleeful grin, and just above it, the pinnacle.
I’m almost to the top. My eyes saw it was true, but my heart could scarcely believe it.
Only a few more feet and I’m there. Oh my gosh, I’m going to do it.
I’m going to get into the academy! Dora, I’m coming!
“Th-thank you,” I rasped, tugging on my wrist. “But I think I can climb the rest of the way on my own. I don’t need hel—"
“Sorry, worm.” Impossibly, the smirk grew wider—curling in on itself like the Cheshire Cat. “This is as far as you go.”
“Wha—”
Yanking sharply on me, he broke my hold on the rocks... and let go.
Screams echoing through the valley, I plummeted through the air... into the eager, waiting maws of the hellhounds below.
A roar ripped through the valley. Bounding over the heads of his brothers, a foamy-mouthed, hackles-high hellhound bore straight for me.
I didn’t care about the rules of prey versus predator—I screamed.
It leaped—soaring straight for me and my squishy, chompable neck.
“Eleguh!”
Seizing my collar, the creature snatched me out of the air—dropping its paws and the full weight of its bulk on the two snapping jaws of his counterparts, smashing them into the dirt.
I choked on my scream, scratching at my strangling collar as it whipped his head, and threw me in the air.
I fell hollering onto the hellhound’s back.
“Hold on tight, darling.”
My eyes flew wide. That voice. I know that voice.
I didn’t think, I just did. Gripping his fur, I had enough time to shout, “Wait, no—!” before he ran at the cliff.