2. 2

2

Oren

S o…

He was in Hell.

Totally not how he’d thought his day would turn out when he woke up for work that morning. He’d had a new outfit he was super excited to wear, it was Friday, which meant the last workday of the week, and Sharon had said she’d be bringing in cake because her daughter had just had a baby. A chocolate cake.

It was supposed to be a nice, relaxing, chocolate-cake-tasting day followed by a weekend of sitting in his pajamas in front of the TV, binge-watching any documentary he could find. Oren had been looking forward to it. He’d been planning on alphabetizing his library and redoing his wardrobe since he’d gotten new clothes, too.

Instead, he’d walked to the bus station, boarded his bus, and halfway to work he’d felt a very familiar painful pang in his chest. It didn’t stop.

Until his vision went blurry and then completely dark.

And now he was in Hell, where he didn’t belong, and if anybody asked, he agreed with Luc—life had already dealt him a really bad hand, what with the heart condition and the dying young thing. He didn’t think he deserved to be in Hell as the cherry on top of a very shitty, dust mite-flavored sundae.

Hell, apparently, looked exactly like Oren would have imagined it: messy and overheated, with very bad lighting, stuff everywhere, and people screaming. There were little pools of lava bubbling way too close to where people were supposed to be walking, and pitch-black holes all over the floors. It was menacingly large, the screams echoing off roughly carved walls.

It should have been terrifying.

But… Oren always ran a bit cold, so the heat didn’t bother him. He was used to being alone, so the cacophony of voices felt comforting. And the messes around him felt like projects he wanted to dig into.

Luc’s office was probably the worst thing Oren had ever seen. His skin itched at the sight of those poor, abused, crinkled binders. He just wanted to cradle them in his arms and tell them it would all be okay because he’d help them get nice and organized.

“Okay,” Luc said after he spent several long minutes trying to come up with a solution to Oren’s situation. “I’m gonna go and see where we can put you up until this is sorted. It’ll be at least a few weeks.”

Oren thought about it for a second.

“Do we… I mean…” he started but didn’t really know how to voice it without sounding stupid. “Do we sleep? Now that we’ve died?”

Luc gave him a smile that looked impressed for some reason. And nice. It looked very nice. Like most of him did.

Oren hadn’t known he had a thing for horns curling slightly above dark hair and forked tongues swiping over full lips, but there he was, sitting in all his virginal glory, looking at the boss of Hell like he was a full meal just for Oren.

The man—demon? Devil? Luc—was so large, so incredibly imposing, that Oren was sure he wouldn’t even feel Oren in his arms. His large, leathery wings were taking up so much space behind him, his yellow eyes shining just slightly like two beacons. His skin was a dark red that reminded Oren of blood, and his tail swished behind him restlessly, the tip pointed like a spear.

He was stunning. Scary as heck. But stunning.

“Excellent question, hon,” Luc said, and Oren shifted in his seat, the endearment doing strange things to his usually very disinterested insides. “Technically, no, you don’t need to sleep anymore. Or breathe, or eat, or any of that. You’re not exactly physically here. But that makes torture a logistic nightmare, so we designed this place to mimic the living world as best as we could. You’ll feel things as you would while alive. For all intents and purposes, nothing has changed but the location.”

“Right,” Oren said, finding the information fascinating. “So is it a spell or, like… magic?”

“It’s the Big Guy’s doing, so you’d have to ask him for specifics. I’m pretty sure he’ll personally apologize after this fuckup, so you’ll get the chance to ask him then. Dude is a huge people pleaser.”

“Got it.” Oren nodded, adjusting his glasses.

“Okay,” Luc said, standing to his full height, which was twice Oren’s. “I’ll go figure out your room. Somewhere away from the bad people, I think. Right?”

Oren went to answer ‘yes please,’ but when he looked up, he saw Luc looking at his—colleague? Assistant? Wingdemon?—who gave him a silent nod.

It was clearly all the confirmation Luc needed, because between one moment and the next, he was out of his office, leaving Oren alone with Wingdemon, and okay, he really couldn’t keep calling him Wingdemon. Felt rude as heck.

“Hi.” He tried for a smile but was pretty sure he wasn’t landing anywhere near it.

The demon flicked a flat stare over at him then pulled his gigantic leathery wings closer, the scrape of them over the stone floor loud and chilling. Since the demon had his head down, his set of double horns was pointed at Oren, and the faintly glowing markings on his stone-white skin washed the room in a pretty light.

Oren thought he looked very distinguished. Not hot like Luc, but… nice to look at.

“I’m Oren. What’s your name?”

The staring continued until the demon seemed to get bored and looked away again. “Zorun.”

Oren nodded, running the unfamiliar syllables over in his mind before saying, “Very nice to meet you, Zorun. What is it that you do around here?”

“Torture.”

Right.

Not the best thing to learn about the guy you were alone with in Hell, but Oren was dead anyway, so… what was the worst that could happen?

“Any particular kind you enjoy the most?” Oren asked politely, frowning when Zorun grunted something he didn’t really understand then went back to ignoring his existence.

Oren cleared his throat, searching for something, anything else to talk about. His gaze inevitably fell on Luc’s desk, and all his thoughts focused on the demon.

“Are you and Luc good friends?”

“I’m his second-in-command,” Zorun said flatly.

“Oh! So that’s like best friends, right?” Oren scooted his chair forward in interest. “You’d know if he was seeing someone then?”

“Seeing someone?”

“You know… like… if he’s single. Available.” He felt himself blush.

Zorun stared at him for a moment before he simply turned and stomped out of the room, leaving Oren in there all alone.

Well… clearly, he was going to have a hard time making friends here.

Oren tapped his fingers on his knees, looking around the room and cringing again at the state of it. It was the most disturbingly messy place he’d ever seen.

Looking at the door and tilting his head to try and hear if anyone was coming, he slowly got out of his chair and crouched. He picked up a binder and found it stuffed to the brim with names and assigned numbers, which, upon closer inspection, detailed the level of Hell each person was in, who their main torturer was, and their method of torture, as well as a brief description of their pain tolerance levels and most common reactions to an average torture session.

Oren put the binder down and reached for a different one, finding more information on the demons employed there and their skills. According to the spreadsheet he’d found, someone named Tana was looooong overdue for some vacation time. And according to a note stuck by her name, the fact was making her very cranky. No wonder.

He closed the binder and went to put it away before realizing there was no place for it but the tiny bit of floor he’d picked it up from. He put it back down and straightened up, trying to figure out his next move. He didn’t think being left alone in Hell was particularly fun, but also… how many other people had had the privilege of saying the same?

Plus, Oren was naturally nosy. It was a character flaw and a consequence of growing up sick, because his parents had never set any boundaries for him. He wasn’t really used to being told no, so he figured he’d just snoop a little bit, see what went on in Hell and then, hopefully, be out before he knew it. Once he was in Heaven, he’d have some pretty cool stories to tell. He was pretty sure none of the people up there had ever been where he was, so it was bound to earn him some friendship points.

He shuffled over to the door and peeked out, looking left and right to make sure nobody was around to see him. Seeing the hallways were empty, Oren stepped out, squaring his shoulders as he took the first step left.

He wasn’t a sinner, and he wasn’t a prisoner. He had every right to entertain himself while corporate figured out what to do with him. Oren repeated those lines in his head as he trudged down the hallway.

His curiosity would eat him alive if he had to just stay locked in one place.

As he followed the cavernous hallways, he spotted various oddities. Well… as odd as statues of monstrosities and weird sigils carved into molten rock could be in Hell. Gravestones were used like doorstops, and Oren found himself dizzy over the number of winding spiral staircases that sprang out of nowhere, with no signs or indicators of where they led.

Deciding to stay on the same level so there’d be less risk of getting lost, Oren eventually came across a small door in the wall, slightly ajar. He figured that was as good an invitation as anything. If they wanted to keep people out, they would have made sure it was locked.

Oren grabbed the rusty handle and pulled, the creak of the ancient hinges deafening in the hollow silence. He looked inside at what appeared to be a storage room. The light was busted, and so far windows didn’t seem to be a thing… or sunlight at all.

He pulled the door open completely, letting the pulsing light from the lava streams in the hallway illuminate the part of the room closest to the entrance. He snooped around and found piles of things, most of them made of rusty metal and thrown haphazardly around the room.

Oren stepped farther in and reached down to pick one of the items up. Now, some might wonder how a simple office clerk knew the name of the item he was holding, but Oren had spent a lot of time watching documentaries on everything under the sun, and what he had in his hands was most definitely a torture device. A thumbscrew, if the two rows of spikes and the butterfly screw were anything to go by.

Why a thumbscrew had been discarded on an electric chair along with a few chastity belts was beyond Oren. It wasn’t chronologically correct and didn’t really deal with the same body part, if that had been a deciding factor. He was baffled.

It was impossible to see deeper into the room, and he didn’t want to risk knocking things over, since everything was so precariously balanced. Putting the thumbscrew down where he’d found it, he backed out of the room and pushed the door closed.

He shuffled farther down the hallway, guided by muffled voices, soft cries, and loud scraping sounds of things moving over the floor. He walked to another door, grabbed for the handle, and pulled.

Also unlocked. Free to explore then.

He poked his head in, and at first glance, it seemed pretty tame. There weren’t any racks, no hellfire burning people alive. Instead, a group of sinners had been gathered in a square white room to sit in front of an old TV on a rolling metal cabinet.

But appearances could be deceiving, and one look at what was on the screen horrified Oren, sending a chill straight down to his bones.

An innocuous DVD symbol was happily bouncing around the screen. As Oren watched, it bounced just next to the corner, and the whole torture chamber groaned in despair as it was flung off again, never to hit properly.

“This is monstrous!” Oren gasped.

Zorun suddenly appeared in a flurry of leathery wings from the back of the room. He folded his arms and grinned, all his jagged teeth on display, almost looking like he was blushing bashfully. “Thank you.”

Right. Hell , Oren thought.

“It has to hit eventually, doesn’t it?” one of the sinners said to the person next to him, grabbing him by his raggedy shirt. “Doesn’t it? If I just keep my eyes open… I just can’t blink. Never blink…”

“Bounce, bounce, bounce…” Another girl giggled to herself, rocking in time with her words.

“Ahh! I blinked! Did I miss it? Did it hit? DID IT HIT?!”

As some of the lesser demons broke up the scuffle that ensued, Zorun stepped out of the room, pulling Oren with him to avoid being caught up.

“It’s an old-school but highly effective method. We may have to retire it in a few centuries as it becomes obsolete. Like the thumbscrews,” Zorun mused, tapping a claw against his chin. “But people still like to break those out every now and then, so who knows? Things come back into fashion all the time.”

“Oh, I saw the thumbscrews in the storage room,” Oren said. “If they come back in, you’re toast, because those were in horrible condition.”

“Luc let you into the storage room?” Zorun asked.

Oren bit his lip, eyes going wide. “Um…” He shuffled his feet. “I think he wouldn’t have minded… if he knew… I was in there.”

“Right.” Zorun’s face was completely blank. “How about we ask him?”

“I mean, we don’t really have to,” Oren said, shaking his head and adjusting his glasses. “He’s a very busy… man… individual…”

“You can call me the devil, hon. I’m not gonna get offended.” Luc’s voice came from behind him, and Oren jumped, doing a very impressive twirl on the spot and coming face-to-face with Luc.

Well, face to pecs. Very naked pecs. Very hot, large, defined… What were they talking about again?

“Um… I… um…” Oren swallowed hard, looking up to distract himself from the expanse of naked skin in front of him. Why did he have to be so heart-stoppingly hot and climbable? Would he mind if Oren climbed him? Having a personal jungle gym sounded like a good idea. “I didn’t know if it was like… a slur, or something. So I didn’t want to assume.”

“It’s about the same as me calling you a human,” Luc said. “Just stating a fact.”

“I’ll remember that.”

“Good. As for wandering around Hell unsupervised, I don’t think it’s the best idea for you at this point,” Luc said. “Not all the demons have been informed of your stay here yet, and I don’t want anyone mistaking you for a sinner. You wouldn’t have a lot of fun with that.”

I could have a lot of fun with you , Oren thought as he ran through the rest of Luc’s words in his head.

“So I can wander around Hell… if I’m supervised?” Oren asked, squinting when Luc laughed at the question.

“Not the message I thought you’d take from that.” He looked over Oren with a weird glint in his eye. “But sure, if you can find someone to escort you, I don’t mind you looking around.”

Oren beamed, loving the feel of those bright eyes on him, wanting more but not knowing how to get it.

“Zorun can show me around,” Oren said, pointing a thumb at the demon and ignoring the sputtering coming from him. He wanted to get Oren in trouble? He was welcome to keep him out of it now.

“Sounds good to me,” Luc said. “Zorun, make sure he’s safe, and no going to the bottom levels. There’s no need for him to see that. Keep it casual.”

“Boss—” Zorun started, his markings glowing brighter in annoyance, but Oren clapped lightly to cut him off.

“I promise I’ll be on my best behavior.”

“Now, your sleeping arrangements.” Luc ran a claw over his chin. “I’m afraid that’ll be a bit of an issue. A few of the empty rooms we had caved in over the last few centuries, so they’re not available, and all the other demons are paired up in their rooms. I’m not sure we can find a spot for you…”

“He can room with you, boss,” Zorun said, his hard face splitting into a creepy smile. “Your room has plenty of space, and you’re the only one not sharing.”

Oren gulped again, watching Luc’s expression shift from one emotion to the next, none of them recognizable to Oren. He wasn’t exactly sure he could label his own emotions at the moment. Happy? Ecstatic? Nervous?

“I mean—” Luc started, but Zorun cut him off.

“You can even take over the tour and start there. It only makes sense. I’ll stay here and torture souls.” Zorun looked like an overly chirpy, hell-sent bird as he shuffled them off with insistent bats of his huge wings, not allowing them a single moment to react before he slammed the door shut on them.

“Umm…” Oren stared at the door, then peeked up through his lashes at Luc.

The devil.

He was alone with the freaking devil.

About to go to the room of the freaking devil, where he was supposed to be staying.

He heard Luc sigh, that huge chest rising and falling once before Luc turned to him. Oren quickly looked away, not wanting to get caught ogling.

“Guess it’s just you and me then, hon,” Luc said.

“Guess so.” Oren tried not to sound too happy.

Luc snorted. “Let’s go.”

Oren trailed after him, dragging his feet, mind going a million miles a second. Where would he be sleeping exactly? The floor? The couch? The… bed?

The idea made his breath catch, his thoughts spinning off further.

He’d be seeing Luc before he went to sleep and when he first woke up. Seeing him after his shower and before he got dressed.

Naked.

He might be seeing Luc naked.

What did the devil even look like naked? Was everything the same down there or…? None of his documentaries had ever touched on the subject. What he did know was that Luc could toss Oren around like a rag doll, and that sounded…

“We’re here,” Luc said, and Oren jumped slightly, blushing as if he’d been shouting all his thoughts out loud for everyone to hear.

Luc raised a brow at him suspiciously, and Oren redirected his attention to his surroundings, seeing a door set deep into a carved alcove. Oren stepped closer, the light from honest-to- god sconces reflecting off the heavy wood. The brass hinges were ornately carved, and the knob looked like a work of art, with twin horns curling upward.

Luc stepped up behind him, and Oren forgot what breathing was for a second as he watched the looming shadow eclipse him completely. Luc’s bare chest touched Oren’s back, caging him in against the hard door. Oren didn’t mind it at all. He bit his lip and forced himself to stay still and not rub himself back against Luc.

Luc reached around him, his hot breath hitting the back of Oren’s neck as he put a key in the lock and turned it twice. The loud clicks echoed through the empty hallway, only accompanied by the sound of Oren’s thundering heartbeats.

Luc twisted the horns and pushed in, a gentle creak announcing their entrance into the already-lit room.

“After you,” Luc said into his ear, and Oren shivered.

Given permission, Oren stepped in, stopping short the moment he could see the room properly.

It was both exactly what he had expected and nothing like it. The entire room looked as if it was carved from stone. The walls were rough and brittle, spiky and unwelcoming. There was a large four-poster bed on a raised dais to Oren’s left, but the metal columns were shaped like fanged, clawed beasts, extending their necks threateningly into the room.

A huge sofa took up one wall, a painting of hellfire above it that seemed to actually be undulating. A large desk and chair were in the corner, both surprisingly tidy in comparison to Luc’s office, and there was an open door leading to what looked to be a walk-in closet.

“So this is what the devil’s room looks like,” Oren murmured.

“On good days, sure.”

“What does it look like on bad days?”

“Oh you know… bodies, bones, blood…” Luc shrugged idly. “The depths of Hell can get messy.”

“I imagine blood is hard to get out of… cave rock,” Oren said, toeing at the floor.

There was a guttural snarl in response to his movement, and Oren’s eyes widened, the sound making the hairs on the back of his neck stand up instinctively. He looked up at Luc in question.

“Never mind him,” Luc said, seemingly not bothered.

Oren raised a brow and looked around them. “Him?”

Luc waved a clawed hand dismissively. “Let me go see what extra sheets I have. I got them back yesterday, so they should still smell like fresh brimstone.”

“Non-brimstone-smelling ones are also good.” Oren tried to keep the remark light.

Luc frowned. “You don’t like it?”

“It’s probably a Hell-acquired taste,” Oren said diplomatically, not wanting to tell him it would probably make him want to barf. “I don’t need that many anyway. It’s so hot down here that I probably just need one to drape over the sofa.”

“Sofa?” Luc raised an eyebrow. “Be a bit hard to squeeze on with me on there already.”

Oren flushed, his brain supplying many, many images of just how that would work. Oren was a speck compared to Luc. He could probably curl up on his massive chest like a cat. Or maybe he could put his flexibility to the test and see if he could straddle those hips.

He tried to rid himself of the images, but it was hard… and he was in danger of being the same if he didn’t stop.

“You were going to give your bed to me?” Oren asked, trying to get back on track.

“Giving,” Luc said. “It’s called giving since you’re taking it.”

Oren shook his head firmly. “I want the sofa.”

Luc smirked and crossed his arms. “You think this is a negotiation, hon?”

“That thing is massive compared to me. It’s like a human bed all by itself. And I’m not going to be here for long. You have, well, Hell to run, and you need your rest.” Oren walked over to the sofa and plonked himself down on it. “This is good.”

“I could just move you,” Luc said, voice pitched low and eyes intent, and Oren was suddenly reminded just who he was talking to.

His mouth went dry, but not in fear. The prospect of Luc tossing him around was enough to send him into a spiral of want.

Luc snorted at his sudden silence, his forked tongue darting out to lick the corner of his mouth. Then he shrugged. “Take it if you want it so badly. Let me go dig up some sheets that won’t offend your human sensibilities.”

He exited the room, leaving Oren alone in the large space, tingling, with nothing to do but kick feet that almost didn’t reach the floor.

He looked around again, pursing his lips. He spotted an actual, honest-to-god window in the corner and hopped up excitedly. He threw the heavy hinges on the wood and opened them wide, only to let in a rush of screaming voices. He covered his ears instinctively, searching for the source. He realized they were coming from a crater that went so far down Oren couldn’t see the bottom, only the rings of hellfire that spiraled through it.

He slammed the window shut again and slumped back against it, ears ringing. “What a lovely vista.”

As he was trying to get his bearings, a flicker of red and amber lit up the space under the massive bed, drawing Oren’s attention. It continued to glow and move, like a small flame, and Oren stepped closer, crouching down to see just what it was.

Two molten, pupilless eyes stared back at him from the darkness, and Oren’s heart leaped.

He stumbled back a step, getting upright just as the thing launched itself from the dark space.