Chapter Three #2
Lethal, unforgiving claws sank into the rock, finding purchase better than crampons, screws, and flimsy fingernails ever could.
Lucifer scaled the length of the cliff face in a flash. Heaving over the top, he roughly shook, deposited me painfully on my face, then bounded away—disappearing into the hazy, smoky gloom.
“Ow!” Untangling my limbs, I flipped right ways up and groaned. My throat hurt, my hands hurt, my feet hurt, and my face hurt. Vindictive little devil-man. He one hundred percent could’ve put me down more gently!
A strange noise pressed against my ear, demanding that I take notice—and that was the lack of it.
Silence reigned.
Blinking my eyes open, I met the shocked, angry, and astonished faces of the students, and all of those faces were fixed on me.
“Uhhh...” Was I supposed to say something?
Scooching to the edge, I peered down into the open-mouthed fury of Erlik.
He stood there surrounded by hellhounds who had all stopped howling, roaring, gnashing, and eating.
An untouched victim lay at their very feet, and instead of stopping him from getting away—which he was doing as quickly and quietly as possible—the hellhounds all had their unsettling, beady eyes turned to the pinnacle, and me.
I didn’t know a thing about hellhounds, or how intelligent they were, but I felt as their eyes lingered on mine that they weren’t too pleased that one of their own snatched a meal from them, and when the time came, they’d snatch it back.
I forced a smile on my lips, waving down at them.
“It’s okay, puppies, I wouldn’t have tasted very good anyway.
Nothing but gristle and bone underneath these clothes.
” I turned my beaming smile on a reddening, furious Erlik.
“So I guess this means I pass, sir. It’s a good thing you didn’t make this challenge harder. ”
OUR GROUP TRUDGED THE long way down the hill.
Or most of us did. The beings with wings took off and flew to the academy, and no doubt the beds and showers waiting for them.
But not a single one of them left without giving me an assessing look tinged with disgust. With them gone, that made room for everyone else to stare at me like I was a freak.
“Um.” I pressed my chin to my collar. “Why is everyone looking at me funny? Is a demon riding a hellhound that strange?”
“Yes, stupid girl, it is. Hellhounds are not pets. They are not and cannot be tamed. To see one refuse to eat you, and instead come to your aid and allow you on its back for seemingly no reason is unheard of,” she hissed.
“And that is the risk you’ve forced upon my lord.
You’ve only been here one hour and you’ve already threatened his exposure. ”
I rolled my eyes. “No one forced him into anything. He came to me, so try your Lord Lucy’s a victim routine on someone else.”
A sharp pain erupted in my abdomen. “What the—! Did you just bite me!?” I belted out, uncaring of my watchful audience.
“So what if I did? I’m not venomous, you geriatric cow.”
“Like that’s the point!”
“Who the fuck are you talking to!” The tall, lumbering figure in front of me spun around.
I bounced off his hard chest, blinking up at the face unfolding before my clearing vision.
“Wow.”
He was gorgeous. And when I said gorgeous, I didn’t mean supermodel gorgeous or Hollywood-actor gorgeous. I meant stare-too-long-and-you’d-go-blind gorgeous. Give-him-everything-I-own-just-to-be-in-his-presence-for-a-second-longer gorgeous. One-smile-from-him-and-it’d-cure-all-your-ills gorgeous.
Olive skin would’ve shone gold in the sunlight if there was any sunlight, but that didn’t stop the unnatural, burnished sky from kissing life into his tanned skin all the same.
Full lips curled, showing off perfect white teeth set in a strong, dimpled jaw.
The stranger was covered in faint scars—some big, some small—all over his face, neck, and his very bare and very muscled chest. But somehow, they did not mar his beauty one iota.
On the contrary, they made him look like a wild, rugged mountain man who was going to whisk me away to the middle of nowhere where he’d build me a log cabin with his bare hands, and then spend all day and night ravishing me in it.
Oh no, I liked the scars. Especially the one that split his left eyebrow in two, because they gave me an excuse to linger on every sculpted, angular etching of his face before reaching his brilliantly golden eyes before jumping in—
Wait? Golden?
I blinked at the eyes narrowing on me. They were many things, but red wasn’t one of them. “Why aren’t your eyes red?” I blurted.
Rage stole across his face as a growl erupted from that wide, glistening chest. “Why in the fuck would they be!”
Whoops. That was the wrong thing to say.
“And I asked who were you talking to?” He dropped his forehead on mine, clunking our skulls together, and enclosing me in the long, wavy, sweet-smelling curtain that was his chestnut hair. “You trying to pull something, demon? Huh? Shouting about getting bitten, so they’ll all think it was me!”
“What? No! Of course not. I wasn’t talking to or about you.
” Stumbling back, I grabbed the hem of my shirt and flipped it up shamelessly.
The mean snake said everyone who looked at me only saw a man, and therefore a flat chest, but even if that was a lie, I was wearing a bra. “See? I was talking to my pet snake.”
“I am not your pet!”
“She’s a cranky broad,” I explained, “who apparently bites when she’s mad at me.”
“Ugh,” he spat, disgust crawling all over his face. Men didn’t usually have that reaction to my breasts, so it was obvious that while there might’ve been a spell on my chest, there wasn’t one on the snake. “You really are a freak.”
With that, he walked off and left me standing there with my shirt up.
“Not doing too well with this making-friends thing, am I?” I muttered, my attention wandering to the demon who plucked me off the cliff and flung me to my death.
As if he felt my eyes on him, his furry, feline-like head swiveled around and locked on to my gaze. A slow smile stretched his lips abnormally wide as he looked me right in the eyes, and drew a line across his neck.
ERLIK WASN’T WAITING for us when we made it back to the foot of the cliffs, but thankfully, neither were the hellhounds. The message was clear—find our way back to the academy ourselves.
I trudged behind, keeping my distance. Although, from my place in the back, I could see that pretty much everyone was keeping their distance from everyone else.
Where were the huddled-up, laughing groups of friends?
Or the buddies clapping each other on the back as they told each other of their summer vacations?
I pulled away my collar and peeked into my shirt. “Sorry I haven’t asked this before, but what’s your name?”
Another sniff. “Of course you forgot to ask. The elderly often struggle with their memory.”
My goodness, the sass on this reptile.
“But if you must know, it’s——” she stated, pouring out a string of hisses, head bobs, and tongue flicks that I couldn’t have gotten even if I practiced it for ten years.
“Wow, that’s a... lovely name,” I got out. “Really suits you. But if you were to translate that into English...?”
“I did translate it into your ignorant, peasant language, human. Or at least the one your earth snakes use.”
“I’m afraid I’m not fluent in the language of the earth snakes, so how about a nickname?” I tried. “What do you think of Sabrina?”
“Call me what you like,” she replied a bit snappishly. “It won’t matter once you get inside, follow your nestmate’s scent trail, and then return her and yourself to where you belong. No more than a day or two, yes?”
I blinked. “Uh, I very much want to find Dora in a day or two, but you do know I can’t follow scent trails, right? Humans don’t do that.”
“What?” She burst out of my shirt, shoving her scaly head in my face. “What are you saying? How do you intend to find her, then?”
My fist balled. “I’ll find the demons who took her, and they’ll lead me to her.”
“Lead you to her?” Snakes didn’t have expressions, and I still knew she was thinking I was the biggest idiot on hell or earth. “That’s it? That’s your plan?”
“Yes.”
“You—!”
“I don’t want to hear it,” I sliced off.
“Every day for the last month everyone’s been telling me how hopeless it is, how crazy I am, and that there’s nothing I can do to get her back.
But I’m here, aren’t I? All I could do for a month was look at this stupid patch, but now it’s on my chest and I’m about to walk right inside Abaddon Academy, so don’t bet against me, snake,” I barked.
“Nothing is going to stop me from rescuing my sister. Nothing!”
She tasted the air, my reflection held in her cool, reptilian eye. “I never had a sister worth rescuing.”
I tensed up. She could say all the crap she wanted about me. High school and then working as a waitress taught me to deal with every kind of difficult person, but what I wouldn’t do was let her talk crap about Dora and get away with it.
“Yours must be pretty special.”
Brows popping, a small smile stole over my lips. “Yeah. She is.”
Sabrina sniffed. “Then, she deserves more than a sweaty octogenarian with a faulty nose as her rescue party. Your useless human body has failed you before you’ve even begun,” she said, slithering back down into my shirt.
“You’ll be dead before the week is up, and not even my lord will be able to save you. Serves you right.”
My brow twitched. Okay, maybe I knew how to deal with difficult humans, but mean-ass, prissy snakes that live in my blouse? Not so much.
“Right, do you think you can take a break from insulting me, Sabrina, and give me some of that information you promised me?” I flicked up to the scarred, shirtless Adonis strolling ahead of me, heading for the same place we all were—the black castle on the shadowed horizon.
“Why did he get so mad when I asked about his eyes?”