32. Chapter 32 #2
Remy was right, I could feel it beneath my skin, the screams. They buzzed through the soles of my boots and wormed inside my marrow.
Some of the damned fought doomed battles with flames that licked only up their calves; some were submerged to their waists, their chests, their throats.
Flesh melted like tallow in a never-ending cycle, as if their bodies kept producing more and more to feed the fire.
The flames were ravenous, everywhere, boiling the air. Smoke erupted from every pit, stinging my eyes. I closed them but flames still seared red through my eyelids, the stench of scorched meat filling my nostrils.
Heresy, Remy said. That’s what’s punished in Flame.
Finn held my hand as if he were some sort of gentleman caller, tipping his head to the demons we passed.
He’d grown brighter beneath the light of so much flame, his skin blazing a pure and blinding gold, dark hair haloed in red.
He knew his way about the pits but didn’t seem in a terrible hurry, his weaving gait as languorous as if we were out for a walk in the meadow, but eventually the gold of his skin began to dim.
The air grew thinner, cooler, the pits further apart, and a slick and shadowy path up ahead led off into a black recess.
In an instant, sound came crashing back, a low tide of screams ebbing in the distance. Not ignorable, perhaps, but bearable.
“So those were the pits,” Finn said when we met merciful darkness, as though we’d passed through something vaguely dull.
“Those were our damned. Heretics, you know. God has always struck me as a narcissist. Demanding love and devotion for something nobody asked for and punishing you when you respectfully disagree.”
“I doubt,” I said, and I realized then that I was shivering despite the heat, “that people who wind up in Flame respectfully disagreed.”
“Well, no,” he said with a sharp smile, canines white in the dark hallway. “You’re right on that score.”
Torches flickered to life as we passed them, as if they recognized his spark and hastened to follow suit.
“There’s a common room down there.” He waved an idle hand toward a black tunnel branching out behind us while flames sprang up around us on both sides.
“A kitchen, a hall for receiving important guests. A throne room nobody ever uses anymore. The apartments are at the back. I haven’t been in mine in ages.
It’s probably unfit for company.” A serene gold glance down at me. “I hope you’ll forgive me.”
I doubted he cared whether I would or not, but it couldn’t be worse than the state of Remy’s room. Steel doors had begun to appear in the stone walls, shimmering beneath torchlight, ornate flames engraved around their edges.
“Six years with my brother.” Finn’s voice was grand, his hand hot around mine. “You must be a saint.”
“He’s not that bad,” I said, while Remy buckled his arms around himself and sighed into his cell.
“Loyalty. I like it. He can be an awful whiner, though.” Finn said this as if it were a fair declaration. “Surely you’ve noticed.”
I thought it all the time but I wouldn’t admit that to one of Remy’s brothers. “I doubt you would enjoy being stuck inside a human mind.”
“Oh, I might,” he said. “It would be an interesting change of scenery. I like your world. I hardly wanted to return when Valic’s fire told me Remy had come back. Here we are.” He held open a door, waiting for me to step into the stale darkness first.
It was black until he entered, and then the sconces roared to life to reveal windowless stone walls, much as I’d expected.
Sumptuous in a devil-may-care, masculine sort of way, I supposed, plush fabrics and baroquely carved wood furnishings that glowed like honey.
Wine-colored hangings around the bed, half parted to reveal blankets of the same shade.
Scattered little tables, a wardrobe left ajar, a parlor bleeding into a bedroom and a door that must have led into a washroom.
It hadn’t been left in a state of nervous collapse, at least. Finn was either less of a slob than his brother or had someone tending to his apartment.
He directed me to sit on the bed and shot me a devastating sort of smile when I chose the cushioned bench in the parlor instead.
His fast, clever fingers unbuttoned the dark waistcoat he wore over a white shirt. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
The room grew ever-so-slightly darker when he left.
Well. I sunk back into the cushion, which enveloped me so completely I had to fight my way out and perch on the edge. I’d say he seems nice, but he doesn’t, really. Friendly, though. I wouldn’t expect many demons to find humans very interesting.
He’s easily bored. I can only imagine what he got up to out there, how many half-demon children he’s sired.
I know someone else who’s easily bored. I picked up a ceremonial-looking dagger from the table in front of the bench. It was all silver scrollwork and black whorls, the whisper of etched flames along the steel. What is it he was doing while he was gone?
Looking for Luceric, probably, he said. The angel who killed our father. Though why it’s taken six years for one of them to get off their ass and look for him is beyond me.
Caution makes sense if they’re trying to build a case against an angel, Remy.
I should have told you my name a long time ago. His smile was audible. I like how it sounds on your tongue.
Something else you and he have in common. I watched sconce light run down the blade. You’re both flirts.
Right. Lock me up, I’m a madman. I find a woman attractive. Cracking neck, groaning sigh. I’m guessing Finn is in his finest form just to bother me.
And does it?
Well I don’t love it.
When Finn returned with a bewilderment of wet hair and a dark red robe hanging loose to expose a golden swath of bare chest and stomach, he made straight for his bed.
If Remy wanted to speak to him, the options were to either call ridiculously from across the room or join Finn where he’d flopped, a leonine blight on a pool of red blankets.
I held in a sigh and made my way over. Finn rolled onto his back, his gold eyes heavy-lidded, looking up at me when I sank onto the edge of his mattress.
“It’s been a while since I’ve had a woman in my bed.” A warm hand found my knee as if by accident, his other arm pillowing the back of his head. His chest was hairless, leanly muscled like an incubus. He’d look like an angel if not for that too-casual, too-innocent gleam in his eye.
I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of pulling away, quite sure he wouldn’t be pleased until he’d sent me into a tremble of either fear or desire. “I’m not in it, I’m on it.”
“You’re very pretty.” He took my hand, pressed the back of it to his lips.
I felt the residual glow of the kiss long after he’d released me.
“Your skin looks like cream. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were a half-breed succubus.
” He gestured to the open flap of my shirt; the buttons had been torn loose when I’d gone for the blade between my breasts.
“They can be very tempting. Are you planning to lull me now that you’ve gotten me alone? ”
“I know very little of lulling.”
Wide crooked smile; a black and gold flicker of lashes as he blinked up at me.
“You wouldn’t have to try very hard to lull me.
I would be very obedient.” He looked feverish, dreamlike.
I wanted to look away but I forced an expression of polite boredom onto my face instead, though I don’t think for a moment he bought it.
“Finn, knock it off,” Remy said wearily with my tongue. “I thought you had news.”
He lifted himself up onto his elbows, his trousers riding low on his hips, every exposed inch of him sheathed in gold. “Let her keep her voice. Haven’t you taken enough from her?”
I thought Remy might disregard that but he sank back into a defensive half-crouch, sharing my body, my tongue, rather than overtaking it all. “Have you found him?”
“Not yet.”
“What have all of you even been doing? Six years and nothing to show for it?”
“We have jobs, if you’ll recall.” Finn’s brows drew together.
“Not all of us can run off half-cocked whenever we want. And after what you did,” he said, in a brutally delicate voice, examining a thumbnail, “we had to lay low for quite a while. Have you any idea how long it took us to round up those souls? After everything else you did, you’re lucky the council left your punishment up to your mother and didn’t decide to have your capricious little head off. ”
“Everything else he did?” I asked, Remy’s heavy sigh rumbling through my chest.
Finn lifted a delighted eyebrow. “He didn’t tell you?”
“He tells me very little,” I said after a sick, silent pause.
“He attacked the ferryman.” Finn ticked the offense off of one finger.
“Savaged him so badly it took him three entire days to heal; you wouldn’t believe the soul backup.
He defaced the holy scrolls in some ridiculous Tower of Knowledge.
Being so close to a divine artifact nearly killed him.
I had to leave Hell to fetch his half-dead body and he convalesced on my bed for nearly a week, hiding out from his mother.
He toppled statues and spread slander and what else, Remy, I feel I’m missing something out.
” Silence, then a quick flash of gold as Finn snapped his fingers.
“He threatened a killing streak, said he’d murder every human who worked in Luceric’s little tower if he didn’t show himself.
That,” he said, charming smile, sharp teeth, “went over splendidly. And it’s our fault that Luceric is overly cautious of late?
You blame us for not finding him? Frankly I feel we’ll be lucky if we ever set eyes on him again. ”
“Then what have you been doing since I’ve been gone?” Remy asked, after a baleful spell of quiet in which it felt like he might really like to stab something.