Chapter 21 #2
Everywhere Ava looked, the wrongness accumulated. Shadows that fell in the wrong direction. Smiles that showed more than they should. Laughter that lasted a beat too long. Hell was pretending to be normal, and the pretense was almost worse than open horror would have been.
“It’s so…” She searched for the word. “Almost right. Like a photograph that’s been altered. You can’t quite say what’s wrong, but you know something is.”
“Hell is a place. People live here. Work here. Raise families.” Victor pulled her closer. “But don’t let the normalcy fool you. Everything here runs on hierarchy and ownership. And right now, you’re wearing proof of both.”
She looked at her hands. The golden chains pulsed visibly beneath her skin: veins of light that traced patterns up her arms, around her wrists, across her knuckles.
A passing demon stopped to stare. His eyes widened with something that might have been respect or hunger.
“A willing substitute.” His voice carried awe. “Haven’t seen one of those in centuries.”
“Move along,” Victor said.
The demon scurried away, but others were looking now. Pointing. Whispering. The chains made her visible in a way she hadn’t anticipated: a beacon announcing what she was to every demon in sight.
“They can all see it,” she said.
“Everyone can. In Hell, ownership is visible.” Victor pulled her closer. “You’re marked as Marchosias’s property. Contested property, which makes you valuable. And dangerous to approach.”
“Small comfort.”
“It’s the only kind Hell offers.”
He led her across the plaza. Demons glanced at her with varying expressions: curiosity, contempt, calculation. But none got too close. Victor’s presence helped, but the chains themselves seemed to create a bubble of space. Property of a Duke. Touch at your own risk.
At the plaza’s edge, he raised his hand. A taxi pulled up: black and angular, windows too dark to see through. The driver had curved horns and a face that was almost human, except for the third eye in his forehead.
“The Gilt and Thorn,” Victor said in Abyssal.
The driver’s third eye fixed on the golden chains visible on Ava’s skin. “Substitute. Rare cargo, sir. This’ll cost extra.”
“Name your price.”
The taxi wound through streets that shouldn’t have fit together: sharp turns that led to avenues they’d already passed, intersections where five roads met at angles that hurt to calculate. Ava watched through the dark windows as Pandemonium scrolled past.
She saw forges where massive hammers pounded glowing metal, sparks rising like inverse rain.
Pleasure quarters with neon signs in scripts she couldn’t read.
A park where trees grew upside down, their roots tangled in the burning sky.
Two demons arguing on a corner, their gestures sharp and angry, while a third filmed them on something that looked almost like a phone.
Normal life. Abnormal everything else.
The taxi stopped in front of a building dripping with baroque gold decoration. THE GILT the partners won’t overlook that.”
“Good.”
The elevator opened onto the lobby. Outside, through the glass doors, Pandemonium’s streets pulsed with demonic nightlife. The chains on Ava’s skin glowed bright enough to draw stares from passing demons, marking her as unmistakably claimed.
Claimed. Contested. Running out of time.
“We need to find someone who can get us an audience,” Victor said. “Before midnight.”
“Do you know someone?”
“I know someone who knows everyone.” He took her hand, her chained hand, and led her toward the entrance. “Andromalius. They call him the Finder. If anyone can get us to Marchosias in time, it’s him.”
“Where do we find him?”
“A place called the Serpent’s Vesper. Three stops on the Pandemonium transit system.” His expression was grim. “Stay close. Don’t speak to anyone. And if anyone tries to touch you…”
“I’ll bite.”
That surprised a brief smile from him.
“Then let’s go save your soul.”
They pushed through the hotel doors onto Hell’s crowded streets and descended into the depths of Pandemonium.