Chapter 24

CHAPTER24

Lucifer took me deep into the bowels of his palace.

With every staircase we descended, an invisible fist closed tighter around my heart. Still, I wasn’t quite as intimidated as when I’d initially walked in here. The realization that he couldn’t really hurt me had taken off a lot of the pressure and foreboding.

As I followed him down through winding, ever narrowing corridors and flights of stairs, black walls barely lit by crackling torches here and there, I pondered this new development.

Would I even have to do what he said? How would he possibly enforce any of his orders to me if he couldn’t lay a hand on me, nor order one of his lackeys to do so? Maybe I could simply refuse to obey if he commanded me to do something egregiously vile?

Of course, I’d try to comply with his orders as much as possible, seeing as I wanted this punishment to be fulfilled so I could return home. But this unexpected turn of events might have just given me the opportunity to evade the worst kind of non-physical torture.

I really needed to give Lilith a big hug the next time I saw her.

I also wondered whether the protective aspect of the spark inside me was intentional, or maybe just an unplanned side effect of her inherent power? Had she deliberately calibrated her magic like this, to ward off aggression by Lucifer? Or did whatever bond she shared with him simply have this effect, did the fact that he genuinely cared for her make him incapable of harming her, and that automatically extended to the kernel of her essence in me?

Questions upon questions.

From all I’d seen and heard of him, there seemed to be two people he truly loved with unwavering affection, which appeared at odds with the rest of his personality—Lilith, and his daughter Naamah.

Somehow, I’d become connected to both of them, and I had yet to find out whether that was boon or bane.

Farther and farther down we went.

One might think that the deeper levels of the palace should be the coolest, as they were the farthest from the oven-like air on the surface, but somehow, the reverse was true. Every time we stepped down a staircase, it seemed the temperature rose by a few degrees. It was like we were drawing closer to the boiling mouth of a volcano.

Sweat dripping down my spine, my temples, I panted and held on to the smooth black stone wall as I paused for a moment. “I think,” I gasped, “I just saw two hobbits come by. How much farther to Mount Doom?”

Lucifer halted and turned around, his look pinning me to the spot. “Are you already delirious? We haven’t even started the torture yet.”

“How come none of you demons are Lord of the Rings fans?” I muttered under my breath. “Seriously bad look for you guys.”

Out loud, I asked, “Where exactly are we going?”

I had a hunch, of course. Descending this far down in his palace…it was either the dungeons, or the Pit—where he kept his personal stash of damned souls to torture. The place from which Azazel and Azmodea had stolen my dad’s soul at the Fall Festival.

“You should know,” Lucifer purred.

A tingle of ice crept down my spine. I checked and rechecked my mental shields. They were all in place, my thoughts safely hidden from him. “Your Grace?”

“I’d have thought you would have recognized the way by now.”

I didn’t like that glint in his eyes. Not one bit.

I straightened. “I’ve never seen this part of your palace, Your Grace.”

And that wasn’t even a lie—while Azazel and Azmodea had executed the rescue mission for my dad’s soul, I’d been knocked out, sleeping off the effects of amrit. I’d only come to after they’d successfully retrieved him and were already on their way up again. So, technically, I had been down here once before, yes, but I’d never seen these corridors.

Words were important. Like most demons, Lucifer could scent a lie.

“Someone,” he said with silken danger in his voice, “stole a soul from here at the last Fall Festival.”

My nostrils flared and my eyes widened. That was the extent of my outward-facing reaction, because I grabbed hold of my physical response with an iron fist and beat the wild panic wanting to rise in me into submission. I couldn’t reveal how fucking scared I was. It would be tantamount to a confession.

“Who would do such a thing?” I whispered, losing the fight against the weighted silence pressing down on me. I babbled when I got nervous. I couldn’t help it. “Surely, no one would dare anger you in this way?”

The light of the torches cast his face in a changing relief of shadows, the only thing constant the disturbingly bright glow of his turquoise eyes as he glared at me.

“H-how do you even know if a soul is missing? Do you do a roll call in the morning, like they do at school? Like, do they have to recite a pledge?”

A hint of confusion on his face.

“You know, the pledge?” I stammered. Cue my babbling. “ ‘I pledge allegiance to the flames of the United States of Hell, and to the inferno for which they stand, one nation under Lucifer, indivisible, with torture and suffering for all.’ ”

I’d even laid a hand over my heart for full effect.

He rolled his eyes heavenward.

I wrung my hands, my heart threatening to beat out of my throat. “Do you guys have an anthem? I mean, it could come in handy as a way to foster team spirit, like, your demons could all sing it together before they start the tortur—”

My sentence ended in a choked gasp when he grabbed my throat—just enough to make me shut up, not enough to hurt or trigger the Lilith Protection Charm.

Leaning in close, his power pressing against my skin, he asked in a harsh whisper, “Did you think I did not know?”

I made an embarrassing whimpering sound.

“Not a single soul has ever gone missing from my Pit,” he continued. “Until the last Fall Festival. Incidentally, the first one in ages that my dear grandson deigns to attend. With his new wife, disguised as his pet. Whom, as it turns out, he loves. Truly. What a coincidence, then, that the soul that went missing is that of his beloved wife’s late father.”

If my eyes widened any more, they might just pop out of my head.

Shitfuckingshitfuckdammit.

He knew.

My heart pounded so hard, so loud, it drowned out all rational thought. Pure, unfettered fear pulsed through my veins.

He knew.

Something writhed underneath his face, as if some giant beast was pulling at the leash that kept it chained inside him, rearing to burst out. Here and there, his skin seemed to split, revealing a glimpse at fire-touched lightning beneath.

“Do you take me for a fool?” he whispered, almost gently.

“No,” I choked out.

He studied me silently for a long, aching moment, still holding me by my throat. “Remember that when you think to defy me.” Letting me go, he stepped back and resumed walking down the corridor, his hands in his pockets, as if out for a leisurely stroll. “And yes,” he threw back over his shoulder, “I know exactly where you keep him.”

I deflated with an exhale that hurt all the way out. Pulse still painfully fast, I slid down the wall and collapsed in a heap on the floor, all my earlier bravado and false sense of security gone in an instant.

He knew.

Why hadn’t he come for us? For my dad? Why had he let this slide until now?

Of course, it now gave him the perfect leverage over me to make sure I did not step even one toe out of line. Had I contemplated just minutes ago that I could simply refuse to obey certain commands of his if I didn’t feel like it? Yeah, scratch that.

I’d lick the floor if he told me to.

With the fate of my father’s soul on the line, I’d do whatever Lucifer asked of me. I still vividly remembered what it had felt like to know my dad was being tortured down here, with me unable to help him. I’d endure whatever Lucifer had in store for me to make sure that didn’t happen again.

I’d been desperate to get my dad’s soul out of Hell even when I hadn’t yet reconciled with him—it would be even more important to keep him out of here now that I’d made up with him and had been talking to him regularly for a year. We weren’t as close as we’d been before his betrayal had torn our family apart, but I deeply loved him, despite everything, and he’d become a vital part of my life again.

I wouldn’t risk losing that.

“Keep up!” barked Lucifer from somewhere up ahead.

I flinched and jumped to my feet. “Yes, Your Grace,” I panted as I jogged after him.

* * *

I’d imaginedthe Pit as, well, an actual pit. Like a huge ditch or trench or something along those lines, where the sinners writhed in one giant tangle of limbs while demons poked them with pitchforks from the ledges.

Yeah, I know. Super cliché. But, hey, considering that the rest of Hell pretty much resembled many of the most stereotypical descriptions of the underworld found throughout Christianity, it wasn’t an unreasonable assumption.

The reality was a bit less gruesome, for which I was quite thankful.

No canyon-sized ditch with masses of damned souls crammed inside. Instead, each soul had their individual room, accessible from a maze of hallways. The soul could be restrained in some form or free to move, but they were clearly bound to the room, and the space itself appeared to operate in some sort of illusion-powered virtual reality.

The demon in charge of the torture could make the room seem endless, change it to resemble any other space, drawing on the soul’s memories to craft the illusion in a meaningful way in order to torture the ever-loving fuck out of the soul.

Because physical torture was only one aspect of the punishment in Hell.

As I’d learned when we’d rescued my dad’s soul, oftentimes emotional and psychological torture were even more effective, especially when the soul already felt guilt over what they’d done in life. Making someone live through their worst mistakes, repeating the situation over and over, each time making them think they might be able to change the course of what happened or maybe make amends to those they’d harmed, only to have them fail, again and again, helplessly reliving their shame…it was a very potent kind of pain.

The demon in charge would delve deep into the soul’s memories, the mind of the sinner, analyze the person’s individual vulnerabilities, the things they’d done in life to incur their damnation, and then come up with the best way to squeeze the most pain—whether physical or emotional—from the soul.

Some of this I’d learned from Azazel, some now from Lucifer as he led me through the maze of hallways before stopping at a dark metal door.

“Your assignment today,” he said, leaning with one shoulder against the black stone wall next to the closed door, “will be to watch a session of torture.”

I flinched. There was a reason I’d never enjoyed horror flicks such as the Saw movies. It wasn’t that the sight of blood made me queasy—as a woman, I’d had my fair share of bloody incidents. I’d been using a menstrual cup for years, and sometimes it would slip when I took it out, and the bathroom subsequently looked like someone had been butchered there.

So, no, blood I could deal with.

It was the severed limbs I couldn’t handle. The sheer brutality of the butchering in horror movies. Almost worse than that, though, was the psychological aspect of those films where a group of people were systematically broken down, mentally and emotionally, stripped of every last bit of civilized humanity, until they turned on each other and became little more than cornered animals who’d gnaw off their own limbs—or someone else’s—to get out alive.

I couldn’t stand to see someone get hurt. It hurt me, too, on a visceral level.

“Okay,” I squeaked, because what else was there to say? If this was Lucifer’s choice of how to punish me without laying a hand on me, then I’d just suck it up and endure.

Lucifer studied me for a moment. “The soul in here”—he jerked his head at the door—“is that of a young mother.”

I swallowed hard, my stomach turning over.

“Ah, no,” he said and tsked. “No compassion necessary for this one, I assure you. Not even your bleeding human heart could find a shred of sympathy for this wretched excuse for a soul.”

I doubted that.

“This woman had a little daughter. Only got to be three years old, because dear Mom here let the girl starve.”

What?

His gaze seemed to be lit by some inner flame. “Locked her in her room, in her crib, and systematically starved her over the course of several weeks. Brought her a banana every now and then as her only food. This mother sat in front of her computer for hours every day, playing games online with her friends, while her little daughter lay in the next room, in the dark—because Mom had also closed the shutters, you know, making it all pitch-black to better discourage the girl from crying—too weak to climb out of the crib, so hungry she tried to eat her own diaper.”

My eyes burned and my vision clouded over. My God. That callous cruelty…

“Dear old Dad was a truck driver and wasn’t home much during the week,” Lucifer continued. “When he came home on the weekends, he was too afraid of his dominant wife to push back and help the girl. So he just retreated to his own room and played games as well, ignoring the starvation of his daughter.” A cold, cold smile graced his face. “It’s not his time yet, but I’ve got a room for him down here as well once his mortal life is over.”

My breath hitched.

“The mom”—he patted the door—“came to me right quick. Not long after her daughter was found alive but not much more than skin and bones, the mother was admitted with aggressive cancer that killed her only shortly after her daughter breathed her last. She’d been sick for some time, but had ignored it.” He tilted his head in an eerily animalistic manner. “She never stood trial for her crimes before a human court.” A smile that showed some fang. “But she’s here now, and she will stay a long, long while.”

I shuddered. “Good,” I rasped.

He raised a brow, a hint of his feral smile still lingering. With a glance at the door, he said, “Cases like hers are my favorite. Humans such as this woman do not feel empathy. They lack the emotional understanding for what they have done. Lock them away and let them stew for a hundred years, and still they will not grasp the gravity of their sins. You can torture them physically, make them live through what they did to their victims, but they won’t understand. Not truly.” He shook his head. “What we do, with someone like this, is flip the switch for them.”

I blinked at him.

There was that feral smile again. “We give them a conscience. We make them feel. Their lack of empathy allowed them to walk through life with comfortable aloofness. They were a step removed from the emotional reality of their cruelty. When we drag them to that place where they feel everything, every last drop of pain and suffering they caused, it’s the emotional equivalent of being hit by lightning. Of all the damned souls”—he leaned forward, his gaze intense—“their screams are the loudest. No one suffers more than them.”

He straightened and threw open the door. “So, in you go. Enjoy the show.”

I stared at the black entrance to the room. It was like a mouth of darkness waiting to swallow me.

“Someone will be by to pick you up later,” Lucifer said and unceremoniously pushed me into the torture chamber.

The door fell shut behind me with a clang that reverberated in my bones. I jolted and suppressed a whimper.

The darkness was stygian, all-encompassing, with a weighted presence of doom. After a few seconds, though, my eyes adjusted, and slowly, shapes rose out of the gloom, forming the shadowy outlines of furniture. Up ahead, a sliver in the form of a rectangle cast the tiniest amount of light in the room, and I realized it was a window—blocked out by heavy shutters.

My breath was the only sound in the room as I turned, ever so slowly, and looked around. Behind me, another small sliver of light close to the floor indicated where the door was. When I turned back, I saw it.

The crib.

My heart stuttered. I wanted to close my eyes, avert my gaze, but I couldn’t. I stared, my pulse racing, at the shape inside the crib that I could just make out.

No. I don’t want to see this. No, please.

Frantically, I tried to turn around, back to the door, out of here, anywhere else—only to run into a large body.

I screamed.

The telltale energy of a demon brushed up against my senses seconds before whoever I had run into grabbed me by the shoulders and turned me back around.

“Watch,” the demon said. “We’re about to start.”

He forced my gaze back to the crib, and I realized with a start that it was actually several times too large for a regular baby bed. And that the shape inside it…was that of an adult, a woman.

In the dark of the room, I could just about see her gaunt face, the signs of starvation hollowing her cheeks, stretching her skin. She lay as if sleeping—until she opened her eyes.

“This is when,” the demon said from behind me, still holding me by the shoulders, “we flip the switch.”

A pulse of his power vibrated through the room, and the woman flinched as if struck by an electric current. For a moment, she was still, her breath coming faster and faster, her bony chest rising and falling in rapid movements as her eyes scanned the room.

Then she screamed.

And screamed.

And screamed.

The sound tore through me, slicing into me like a scalpel, over and over, until I wanted to sink to my knees and curl into a ball.

But the demon held me upright, making me bear witness.

The woman writhed on the bed, sobbing, wailing, crying out a name that I assumed was her daughter’s, as the full weight of what she’d done crashed upon her like the unstoppable wave of a tsunami.

Inside me, the rising nausea that wanted to spill from my stomach battled it out against a grim sense of satisfaction at seeing the woman’s well-deserved agony. Something fierce and righteous bared its teeth in the depths of my being.

Still, the nausea won out.

With a giant heave, I lurched out of the demon’s grip and puked the meager contents of my stomach out on the floor.

The woman kept screeching.

I kept puking.

Even after my stomach was entirely empty, I couldn’t stop retching. The taste of suffering in the room was too visceral. Like some corrosive poison absorbed through the air, the woman’s pain seeped into my pores, deep inside, tainting everything it met until I wanted to turn myself inside out and scrape it all off with a sharp blade.

Kneeling on the floor, I trembled all over, my throat aching, hot tears wetting my cheeks.

“Please,” the woman sobbed. “Please, make it stop! Make it stop, make it stop, make it…”

I almost joined her in her chant.

The demon, however, stood steadfastly behind me, his dark presence the unyielding specter of an unlikely instrument of postmortem justice. He watched, unaffected, as the woman kept pleading for mercy she never showed her daughter in life.

I had no idea how long a “session” of torture usually lasted in Hell, but it felt like hours to me. Days? Time eluded me as I sat there on the floor, rocking back and forth on my heels with my eyes closed and my hands clapped over my ears, which did little to block out the auditory signals of someone dying a thousand deaths of agony.

I only knew that by the time large hands hauled me up and dragged me outside the room, I was raw and numb at once. Inside me, a storm of violent emotions brewed, while on the outside, I shuffled through the corridors barely aware of my surroundings. If the demon escorting me hadn’t kept dragging me along, I’d have just sunk to the ground somewhere and not moved again.

At some point, my demon escort pushed me through a door and into a room that I’d have found cozy under any other circumstances. A huge fireplace spilled light onto a carpeted floor, and small lamps between tall bookcases lit the rest of the room with warm ambience. Massive armchairs were grouped throughout the space, looking for all the world like they’d give you the equivalent of a sedentary hug if you sat in them.

“Your Grace,” my demon escort said from his position next to me. “The human, as you requested.”

“Lady Zoe,” Lucifer corrected him without glancing up from where he lounged on one of those damn comfy-looking armchairs, cleaning a blade. “She outranks you, Parachmon.”

“Forgive me, Your Grace.” The demon bowed low, then murmured to me, “Apologies, my lady.”

I just stared at him. My lack of reaction wasn’t because I was mad at him. I just couldn’t muster up the energy to do anything else but stare.

“How did you like the session?” Lucifer asked.

I swung my gaze back to the Devil. “It was riveting,” I said, my voice hollow.

He wiped the gleaming blade with a small cloth and smiled.

“Your Grace,” I said tonelessly. “May I go home now?”

“Home?” His eyes the color of Caribbean seas flicked up to meet my own. “Do you think we’re done?”

A flicker of panic inside me. “We’re not?”

He laughed softly before he addressed my demon escort. “Take her to her room.”

My room? As in, I’d stay here? I mean, I’d known it was possible he’d keep me for longer, but to actually face that reality made me break out in a cold sweat.

“Wait,” I rasped as the demon grasped my elbow. “Your Grace, h-how long will I be here?”

“For however long it takes.”

“Takes to what?”

He leaned back in the armchair, his eyes glowing coldly. A chill spread in the room, banking the flames of the fire. “For fury not to overtake me anymore whenever I look upon your face.”

When the demon dragged me from the room, my breath frosted in the air.