CHAPTER SEVEN
REAVER
The stench of sulfur and decay burns my nostrils as I travel the burnt-out path from the Dimmu gate to The Inferno.
I pause for a moment and look back at the gate behind me.
Like in my underworld, the gate is a mangled pile of bones that arches into the darkness above.
I know that destroying it will do me no good.
I’ll still be able to return. But it would make me feel better if it were nothing but dust and debris.
“Fuck,” I growl out before kicking the base and watching a skull shoot across the landscape like a soccer ball.
“Nice move, Beckham,” a deep and familiar voice mocks from behind me.
I grit my teeth before turning around to see Hades.
“I didn’t expect to see you back so soon.
I thought you were out professing your love to the amazing Kennedy and scurrying off to live happily ever after.
” His tone is sarcastic, as if every word is acid on his tongue.
My upper lip pulls back into a sneer, listening to his cynical tone about love, despite knowing that I’d be happier if I could share his view on the subject. But that doesn’t seem as if it will ever be possible.
Like me, Hades isn’t a fallen angel. Not exactly, anyway. He’s here by choice. Unlike me, he wasn’t tossed into the underworld by Themis, he left on his own and rarely ventures into the human world. There are many speculations and rumors as to why.
Some have said that he’s a tortured soul, and the woman he loved rejected him. I don’t believe that for one minute. He’s too much of a selfish bastard to care about the love of another or lack thereof. His reasons for solitude in the underworld are his own, as are mine.
Clearing my throat, I try to tamp down my annoyance. I’ve known him for a few hundred years, and that still isn’t long enough for him not to get on my nerves every time I see him. “I thought we were meeting at The Inferno?”
“I had to get out of there. The crowd you draw in…” I watch as he gives a full-body shiver as if to say the crowd in his bar repulses even him, which is highly doubtful.
The Inferno is as seedy as one would expect a bar on the outskirts of Hell to be.
“Anyway,” he continues, “as soon as word got around that you would be stepping into the pits… let’s say it’s a bit too crowded for my taste.
And I wanted to come and see for myself if I won the Kennedy pool. I did not, by the way.”
I’m barely listening to a word he’s spewing out until he mentions Kennedy’s name. “The what?” I question, because I couldn’t have heard him correctly.
“Kennedy pool. It was a genius idea, really. Me being a romantic and all, I thought love would prevail, and I would clean up. Turns out, you let me down,” he adds as he slaps me on the shoulder. “I was certain you would have convinced the mystical Kennedy to follow you into the abyss.”
I’m not sure what I consider more annoying—his theatrics as he speaks, or that there was a pool regarding my relationship with Kennedy. Both have me wanting to pummel him, yet my curiosity about the pool prevails. “And secondly, we wouldn’t have come down here.”
“Well, I lost anyway. So you owe me, big time.”
“How do you figure I owe you? I didn’t make the bet. I didn’t even know about it.”
“Yeah, but now I’ll have to pay out more money than I want to, and since you’ll be fighting in my pits, I’ll be generous and only take fifty percent of your winnings and won’t charge you to fight.”
I let out an aggravated sigh. There’s no point in arguing with him. His bar, his rules, which he changes randomly to serve his best interests.
“First of all, I never intended to drag Kennedy down here. She’s far too good for this place and me,” I mumble, more for myself than for him. “And secondly, why the fuck would you start a pool? You knew I had no intention of returning with her. That was just stupidity on your part.”
“As I said, I’m a romantic.”
I can’t help the laugh that comes out of me. Hades is anything but a romantic. “Sure, whatever you say. When’s my first fight?”
There is no point in beating around the bush.
I have one purpose here, and that’s to fight.
When I knew I would be staying here indefinitely, I could have continued my work with Zachriel as his head of security.
But being in society without Kennedy lacks a certain appeal.
At least here, I don’t need to hide the monster I am.
The time I spent working with Michael and Salem helped build my humanity, but I know that I’ll never fit into the mold needed to be with Kennedy. She is better off with Dr. Stick Man, than having to babysit my sorry ass.
“I don’t understand your need to hide away, and Pestilence isn’t all that scary. Not if you know how to deal with her, anyway.”
“Isn’t hiding exactly what you’re doing here?”
I watch as his face momentarily contorts as he clenches his jaw. “No,” he snaps. “I’m avoiding the inevitable. There’s a difference,” he corrects.
“Pfft,” I snort.
Hades is one of the only people I’ve met that can easily go between this reality and the other, not that he ventures into the other very often.
But he was the one that showed me how to go back and forth.
The reasoning behind why is still a mystery.
Although, most believe it’s because of a split in humanity’s reality when Gabriel destroyed the world for the love of Pestilence.
That may be true, but why can only a select few travel back and forth?
The walk to The Inferno only takes us a few minutes. Hades continues to drone on about… something. Not that I care to pay any more attention than I already am.
Looking around as we approach The Inferno, it never fails to amaze me the similarities between this world and the one I just left.
There have always been small differences between this world and the one I came from.
Most aren’t even noticeable, unlike the blazing red neon sign that reads The Inferno when it should say The Firehouse.
Walking in the crowd parts as I make my way down to the fighting pits. Hades waves me over to my corner as if he’s some Olympic coach waiting for his prize fighter. Which, let’s face it, he kind of is.
“You ready, big guy?” he says with a smile and a pat on the shoulder.
I don’t even bother to respond. What’s the point?
Instead, I give him a grunt as I pull my shirt over my head, revealing centuries of scars and more pain than anyone in this shit-hole has ever dreamt of experiencing.
Without looking back, I step into the fighting area and square up my first opponent. They want a show; I’ll give them a show.
Every bone in my body feels like it’s been ripped out and then put back together again, only in the wrong order.
The pits at The Inferno are no joke and not for the faint at heart.
Lucky for me, I am neither of those things.
But even the best of us gets our ass handed to us now and again.
Or in my case, I let my ass get beat. Feeling pain numbs the emptiness that has festered inside me for the past year.
“What the hell are you doing, Reave?” Hades sneers at me as he tosses me a damp towel. “You could obliterate this guy with one hand tied behind your back.”
“He deserves a fair fight,” I mumble through my swollen face.
Just like the pits at The Firehouse, where I won my freedom from Tracheary Prison.
Prisoners were granted their freedom if they won three matches against me.
Of course, it’s to the death, and I have no intention of dying.
But they all deserve to think at least they have a shot before I annihilate them.
“No, he doesn’t. Have all the blows to that thick skull of yours made you delusional? The spectators don’t come to see you win. They come to see the blood and gore as your opponent loses.”
I glare at Hades through my one good eye. “It helps with the odds if the assholes who bet against me think I might lose. Or do you secretly care that I get my ass beat to a pulp every night, and you’re worried about me?” I add as I spit blood onto the floor.
Hades lets out a laugh somewhere between a cackle and a snort. “Nice one.” He pats me on the shoulder. “I just don’t want to be the one to have to explain to Kennedy why you have more brain damage than you did before you left.”
The mention of her name has me wondering if I should just let the asshole I’m fighting win and end my suffering. Instead, I hold up my left hand, giving him the single-finger salute. “Fuck you.”
“Fuck you too. Now finish this asshole so we can drink.”
The asshole opponent for tonight’s match is a seven-foot, winged beast with tusks and six-inch razor-sharp claws.
Looking up at him from across the fighting pit, he seems confident he’ll win.
That will not happen, but I like his bravado as he struts around, probably making plans to eat babies and terrorize villages with his newfound freedom.
At least, that’s what I tell myself. Or maybe he’s like me—nothing left to lose, so why the fuck not.
The Inferno doesn’t have the signature Skull Wine of The Firehouse, but Hades does have a private stash of the nectar of the gods, Ambrosia. Which will fuck up an ex-Arc and whatever the fuck he is just as well.
The fighting rules are simple… there are none.
Standing from my spot, I grab a dagger that’s been conveniently left unattended on the ground next to me. It’s not the only weapon strewn around the pit but the closest. The beast on the other side doesn’t bother grabbing anything. He’s confident he’s walking out of here, as am I.
Besides, the dagger isn’t for him. Taking the blade, I run it along my chest, causing my flesh to split and bleed.
The metallic scent of blood, while always strong in the fighting pits, doesn’t compare to that of a fresh wound.
I notice the beast’s nostrils flare at the aroma moments before he enters a blood rage.
Tossing the dagger to the ground, I stare him down as he charges. He’s snarling and dripping a viscous goo from his protruding tusks. He only gets a few steps in before he explodes, and a myriad of body parts, blood, and gore rain down on the crowd.
“Now that’s what they come here to see!” Hades yells over the cheering bystanders.
There’s not much left for the vultures to pull off and make a meal out of, but the feeding frenzy in the pits isn’t something I want to stand around for.
Hades tosses me a bag filled with gold and most likely jewels. “Courtesy of tonight’s event and betting pool. You were right. It turns out some thought you were due to lose. Not me, of course.”
I let out a laugh that comes out more as a snort as I exit the pit and make my way through the crowd. “No, never you.”
The only thing I want to do is get drunk.
It’s been a year since I walked away from Kennedy and every day it still hurts.
My original plan was to come here, earn some money, and maybe return to work with Zachriel.
But after some thought and a few beatings, staying out of the human world was probably for the best.
“Where’s your secret stash?” I ask Hades as he settles in at the bar, ready to order some shit that will do nothing for me.
He glances down at his wrist as if he were looking at his watch, which he doesn’t have. “Is it that time already?”
All I can do is glare at him.
“Well then!” he exclaims as he slaps me on the back. “Let’s get this pity party started, shall we.”
I don’t know if he’s aware that today marks one year since I’ve seen Kennedy. The only thing he does have correct is that I want to wallow in self-pity. I want to see her so badly that if I’m not passed out drunk, I know I’ll step through that damn gate and find her.