25. Chapter 25 #2
A startling amount of effort was required to throw Its brother back, but I couldn’t see the results of the tussle because the guard It hated swept in to herd me away.
The hallway wasn’t a hallway at all but a staircase leading down, and soon enough, it echoed with hollow screams. I wanted to duck for cover each time a new howl came tumbling through, ricocheting off the sweaty stone walls.
You’ll be hearing them a lot, It said, not unkindly. Better get used to it.
I felt I could sooner detach my limbs than grow used to it.
A dazzling sense of unreality descended upon me.
Surely I wasn’t here right now. These could not be my feet, carrying me down this staircase.
I had never been more aware of my living, trembling body as I was at that moment.
All the vicious wounds it could take, how little effort a demon would need to exert to blow me out like a candle.
The fear pounded over me in a wave that left me gasping, and when the breath came back and I blinked around at where I was, it was as if Hell’s staircase was illuminated in a light so stark and lucid I could hardly remember a world that had been anything but horrific.
My mother was dead and Serich probably was too; I’d never see Livvy again, hadn’t even had a chance to say goodbye—
It blasted me with a chill so sharp I lost my train of thought.
The stone reverberated with screams now. Maneuvering Jessarine down the steps was a difficult task. She went willingly enough but I was afraid of nicking her with the blade and had to turn her sideways to manage.
Keep Jessa at your side, It said. Put your arm around her, keep the blade at her belly. She won’t fight you.
And it was easier that way, though the ice in her skin made me flinch.
Our footsteps echoed so madly it sounded as though a load of people were clattering around behind me, though most of the guard had melted away when Its brother put up a fight.
Now only one made up the rear. It smelled of soot and sweat and metal, blood and fire.
The light grew brighter, the screams louder, with each step down the staircase.
They went hissing up the walls, clouding my ears, running through me like a sword.
Screams of all sorts: thin wails and full-bodied, endless moans, wordless weeping.
Spiraling sobs, echoes that I could feel inside my own body.
You’re okay, It said as my heart contracted like a fist. It’s just Fang.
I wanted to claw off my ears so I wouldn’t have to hear such pain any longer. It infected me, did something to my soul to listen, tore me up inside, and I felt It run a cold finger down the wall of that dark room. I can block your hearing.
No. I’ll listen to every one of them. I need to hear it to appreciate it. And a part of me felt I owed it to these souls to hear their suffering. Mine were the only sympathetic ears in this entire institution.
Sweetheart, It said on a small and disbelieving laugh as a guttural growl ripped through the staircase, these aren’t exactly innocent babies.
That doesn’t mean I’ll be unaffected by their pain.
These are rapists and thieves. Gluttons who fed their addictions instead of their children.
Gamblers who robbed their families, left them homeless in the gutter.
Wantonly lustful scum who spread diseases that killed babies in the womb.
They put themselves above all the rest. They wouldn’t shudder at your pain.
If it were possible to make you take their place, they would do it in a second.
You mean nothing to them, less than nothing.
Don’t waste your pity on them for a second.
We were edging toward a landing now, a pool of yellow light flickering across the stone floors. I squeezed Jessa’s cold little hand with my numb one. I wanted to look but I didn’t; I had to know but I wanted to press my eyes shut and remain in the dark, where it was safer.
I caught only a flash as we passed the open stone archway, a loud blast of horror, but that was more than enough.
Dense air heavy with sweat, the tang of blood, the crack of bones and an unearthly, terrible scream rising above all the limp moaning.
Lit by an absurd number of torches, as if the demons wouldn’t like the damned to miss a thing.
Bodies shackled to the wall like sconces or some macabre decoration.
The sound of flesh tearing as a hellhound ripped into a flabby stomach like it were butter and unspooled a nauseatingly long link of intestines in a shower of gore, blood freckling black fur.
Tangles of lurid, naked human flesh. Long, lean demons striding about with inhuman grace.
A sheet of smooth copper hair obscuring the face of what had to be a succubus bending over the prone form of a beseeching man; it looked as though she were speaking to a lover but she held a black whip which graded into red the closer it got to the ragged end, and just before I shuddered away, she flicked a glance up at my face.
Scarlet eyes and lips to match, one suggestive eyebrow lifting in the split second we spent looking at one another.
A little cat smile pricked the corner of her mouth.
Blood stippled the steel-cut arches of her collarbone like a rash. Then she was gone as I kept moving.
The next staircase curved to the right, turning in ever more claustrophobic spirals, but at least the screams from Fang bled away the lower we descended.
Shadows long and ghoulish flickered along the walls, flames igniting the metal of the guard’s helmet.
We had the briefest spell of silence, only a minute or so as we corkscrewed down, where nothing but the crazy echoes of our footsteps gonged against the stone.
The stench of blood still hung in the air but soon the sounds of raucous, reckless laughter careered around the corner.
Laughter and blood, I thought dully. These two things don’t mix.
They do in Fury.
Though it sounded far from furious. The dull, tavern-like roar swelled with every step and sounded like a party.
Animal carousing, lively and wild. Light spilled like ink up the stairs, brighter and brighter until the next landing appeared around the corner like a mirage and the noise nearly blew out my ears.
I felt a throb of something almost tender that hadn’t originated from me. It stared through the windows of my eyes as if at a memory.
A great, bright rhapsody of activity, the atmosphere charged and rumbling with laughter like claps of thunder. Shouting, jeering. I stopped there on the landing for a moment in a muddle of confusion as the stench of mud and blood and ale reached out and slapped me across the face.
Sprawling and cavernous, illuminated by merry torchlight and bonfires, it may have seemed almost friendly if not for the humans, naked and sweaty, grappling each other’s slick limbs.
Waves of entangled flesh, bloody mouths snapping and snarling like beasts.
Rainbows of bruises, black and violet waning into phlegmy greens and yellows.
Muddy pits and scattered fires and humans fighting everywhere.
Demons were grouped around them, shouting and screaming and cheering, fingers funneled around their mouths as if calling insults or advice.
Tankards were held in careless hands, ale sloshing and dripping to the mud, where it frothed in puddles.