~~Day 73~~

  ~~David~~

  He sat up, wiped the sweat from his brow, and looked around at the pile of bodies. Sexy, naked bodies.

  Caera purred into his ear, pushed him onto his back, and cuddled into his side. Daoka cuddled into his other side, and she chirped and smiled at him and kissed his ear.

  Jes y on the Las, literally. In a strange twist, the little dies had jumped her and filled her with tongues, rendering her defenseless. Apparently, the story of how she’d stabbed Silvain had impressed them.

  David had dug a ditch for them, wide, with tall walls. Plenty of space. The demons had killed the remnants, too, so they had peace and quiet. Not really. There was still the endless choir of hundreds of thousands of remnants around, past the walls of their ditch. But whichever demons took watch kept any remnants from growing inside their little fortress.

  With no risk of nearby demons, and thus probably no nearby angels, David was free to py the music and craft them a small fortress. It was nothing but ditches and walls of rock, and if they wanted to get from one room to another, they had to climb over the walls; he sucked at building, but he’d get better. With him in the current room were Caera, Daoka, Jes, and the Las. Laoko, Timaeus, Acelina, and Moriah had rested in another room.

  He’d asked Acelina and Laoko if they’d wanted to join, but they’d said no. Strange, considering how much they’d enjoy the night in the spire, but whatever reason they had, they didn’t share it, and he didn’t press it. Timaeus had no interest in fucking the dies, apparently, and Moriah…

  “Moriah,” he whispered, and Caera and Daoka cuddled in closer, ears near his mouth. “You think she’ll join us someday?”

  “You want another girl wrapped around you?” Caera asked.

  “Not sex. Well, I mean… that’s not what I was thinking. I just meant she’s alone. She could be sitting with us.”

  Jes climbed off the Las, got up, stretched her wings, and pulled her tail around in front of her.

  “Give her time. I’m sure you’ll seduce her.”

  “I’m not trying to seduce her.”

  Daoka giggled and rubbed her nose into his ear.

  “Maybe,” Jes said. “But if this journey is going to take months, and it probably will, sex is a good way to make sure we don’t break.”

  “Demons and angels can break like that?” David asked.

  The gargoyle shrugged, picked Lasca up by her legs, hung her upside down, and swished her left and right so she swayed like a pendulum. Lasca giggled and let her arms, tail, and wings go limp with the swaying.

  “Maybe not like humans,” Jes said. “You can lock up a demon in a hole in the ground for a million years and they won’t break. Angels too, I assume. But that doesn’t mean this trip isn’t going to get hard.”

  Nodding, Caera nuzzled into his neck, opposite of Dao, and she kissed his earlobe. “Use your aura and make her fuck you.”

  “Uh… I’d prefer to not do that.”

  She chuckled and licked his neck, cat style. “You’re so sweet.”

  The benchmark of being ‘sweet’ in Hell was, apparently, not raping someone.

  “You wouldn’t—”

  “I haven’t,” Caera said, chuckling again and rubbing her cheek on his. “But this is Hell. Demons enjoy doing what they want to souls, and that often includes sexual things. That’s just a part of how Hell works.”

  He frowned. “Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

  Daoka sat up, smiled at him, and trailed some cws down his naked chest as she clicked.

  “Dao’s right,” Jes said. She scooped up Laara, and dangled her upside-down from a leg, one La in each of the gargoyle’s hands. “You can be all sweet and romantic, and I bet that works on some girls. But sometimes, a man’s gotta be aggressive. You ever see Rocky? He had that girl—”

  “Adrian,” he said.

  “Right. He practically had that girl pinned to his door! And she melted right into him.”

  He rubbed his face. Never did he think seeing such an old movie would provide valuable information for a conversation in Hell.

  “That’s… I mean… I don’t know. I’m not Rocky. I can’t imagine doing that. And besides, he knew the girl when he did that. And…” Navigating the nuances of romantic intentions was something he’d never understand, let alone the very problematic topic of when being aggressive was a good idea or a bad idea, when it was romantic and exciting, or just abusive. It was a tough thing to figure out for normal people on the surface, let alone him in Hell. Why couldn’t people just say what they want, directly, with no fluff? Preferably in an e-mail, in bullet-point form.

  “Girls like aggressive guys,” Jes said, and she dangled Laara and Lasca over him. “You got Daoka and Caera here spoiling the fuck out of you, doing all the work. Next time, I want you to turn on your aura, come up behind him, choke me, spank my ass, and body sm me.”

  He gulped. “Uh… I don’t think I can lift you like that. Or reach your neck well enough to choke you.”

  “Grow more.”

  “I’ll get right on that.”

  Laria and Latia giggled, crawled past their dangling kin, and sat on his legs.

  “Rough sex!” Laria said, and she bounced on him a couple times. He would have said ow, but rge, jiggling breasts on the short-stack’s tiny body spped his brain stupid.

  Daoka chirped, scooped the girl up, set her on her p, and hugged her. Breasts on breasts, squish. David stared.

  “No no,” Jes said, and she poked Dao’s horns with her tail. “Rough.”

  “Both,” Caera said, and she licked his neck again.

  Was that the party dynamic? Jes was rough stuff. Daoka was sweet and gentle. Caera was a mix?

  With a heavy groan, a set of horns poked up over a stone wall, and Acelina eyeless-ly gred at them.

  “Must you always, always talk of sex?”

  Jes pointed up at the spire mother and grinned at her. “The fuck you doing over there, anyway? I was looking forward to a drink.”

  Acelina snorted. “My breasts are not yours to drink from whenever you desire.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “And if you must know, I was speaking with Laoko privately.”

  Jes tilted her head. “That conversation took hours?”

  “Yes. It did.” Laoko’s voice. Her horns poked up over the wall, expression serious. “And we spoke with Timaeus. He will be joining us, but it is best we give him space.”

  David sat up. “We were concerned he was leaving?”

  The tetrad nodded. “I was. But he understands the importance of the mission.”

  Demons might not have had the special ‘something’ human souls had, but that didn’t mean they didn’t have their own struggles. At first, Timaeus had seemed like a smart-but-goofy sorta demon. Now he was full on brooding.

  “Timaeus no join us?” Lasca asked. “Sex! Rough sex!”

  “Timaeus has little interest in women,” Laoko said. “And David has little interest in men, correct?”

  He nodded. A lot.

  “But that is not the reason Timaeus is upset.” Sighing, she hopped over the wall. For just a moment, David thought she was naked, and he stared, hoping to admire the copious amount of jiggle guaranteed to follow her nding. As, wearing her armor. “But the fact he is well fed, as am I, is definitely a boon.” She held out her bad arm. Not so bad anymore.

  “Indeed,” Moriah said. The angel hopped over the wall and joined them. She flexed her little wing, winced, and rotated her bad shoulder. “Hellfire is slowing my regeneration, but I do feel much better. A few more weeks.”

  “Awesome,” David said.

  Moriah smiled. A little thing, but a smile. She wiped it away quickly and gestured out of the fortress pit.

  “Let’s go. Arm and prepare, demons.”

  Daoka shook her head and pulled David into a tight embrace. Cum oozed between her legs.

  “We can fuck ter,” Jes said. “If David’s gonna keep us this well fed across Hell, I’m sure we’ll be fucking every night.”

  Caera nodded agreement and stretched out, cssic cat style. David stroked her head, and she pushed it into his hand. If not cat, why cat shaped?

  Daoka sighed and clicked, but Jes picked her up and shoved her toward the pile of armor.

  “David, stop encouraging her,” Jes said.

  He put up his hands. “Me, encourage her? She’s worse than me!”

  Armor in hand, Jes rolled her eyes and strapped on her breastpte. “Daoka is a sweet, innocent little girl. You’re taking advantage of her.”

  He blinked and stared at Daoka. The satyr licked her fangs, spent a few moments massaging her heavy breasts, and stuck her ass out as she strapped on bits of her armor.

  He pointed. “She’s a succubus!”

  Caera ughed. “Never seen a succubus with curved horns.”

  Nodding, Daoka put on her breastpte, and chirped and gestured out of the pit, the direction Moriah had pointed.

  Whatever she said, it earned a groan from Moriah.

  “Is that how our trip through the Scar will go?” the angel asked. “This boy — young boy, barely a man — will drown in succubi?”

  Laoko checked her swords, tested the mostly blunt bdes with her fingertips, and grinned down at David.

  “That could be useful. It is a province of vo, and vo use sex to manipute each other, and stronger demons. If David can use his aura, and that delightful cock of his, to control the vo instead, he could become quite powerful in the Scar.” She ughed and sheathed her weapons. “And if he could seduce all of them, he could rule the province.”

  Everyone looked at David.

  He put up his hands in surrender. “Uh, that’s… what, a hundred thousand succubi and incubi?”

  “More,” Acelina said. “A province used to have about a hundred thousand, and another hundred thousand imps and grems. But for many years now, the Scar, Death’s Grip, and likely the Bck Valley have been trying to grow their numbers. It could be twice that. Maybe more.”

  The idea of an army of absurdly sexy demons all following his command was too unreal to even grasp. The horny part of his mind immediately had some ideas involving orgies and pleasuring the girls with him now. But the logical part of his mind came in a second ter and kicked him in the balls.

  “I uh… don’t think I’d make a good ruler.”

  “Probably not,” Caera said, putting on armor. “But we’d help.”

  “Sure,” Jes said. “I mean, I expect a dozen incubi to satisfy mine and Dao’s every whim as payment.”

  Dao nodded, clicked, and made some phallic gestures.

  “Dao!” Jes ughed and shook her head. “You couldn’t fit that many. And besides, David’s a human. You know how they are.”

  David scrunched up his nose. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Greedy assholes. You don’t want to share.”

  He opened his mouth, and closed it. She was right. Sharing did not come easily, especially where sex was involved. Demons weren’t like that, though.

  “I… I mean… I—”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Caera said. “Demons know what souls are like. Problem is, souls don’t really know what demons are like.” She towered over him, pulled him up to his feet, still towered over him, and kissed him. Her subtle cat-ish snout always made kissing an exercise in caution, his lips brushing against her fangs. And a little tingle worked down his spine when one of her fangs lightly caught on his lip.

  Moriah rolled her eyes, but didn’t disagree, either. From the look she gave Caera, she could have repced ‘demons’ with ‘demons and angels’. But she didn’t say anything.

  Everyone got dressed. The girls still had David’s cum dripping down their thighs, but it’d fade soon. And from the way they spped on their armor like it didn’t matter, they were used to wet stuff on their skin between the armor, probably blood.

  David snuck a few gnces Caera’s way as she crawled out of the little fortress, back into the Dead Lands. He’d made the walls high and thick so they blocked a lot of sound, but once the group was back in the thick of remnants, the endless choir of screams came right back. If he ever got good enough and strong enough with the music, he’d make a proper home; assuming living a life in Hell was an option. He’d craft a castle, and—who the fuck was he kidding? He sucked at that stuff. No patience. Mia could craft it for him.

  And Caera could live in it with him. The girls could live with him, too, but he definitely wanted Caera with him. Would she? The fuck did it even mean that demons and angels were different from humans? How did that affect things? He needed definitions, rules, something to tell his brain what to expect, what course to follow, how things worked. Figuring out romance between humans was fucking impossible, so how the fuck was he supposed to figure it out with demons?

  Mia would tell him to stop thinking about it so damn much and actually get up off his autistic ass and just talk to her. Easier said than done. They never got a moment’s privacy, and… he was terrified.

  Timaeus led the group again, still ahead, but not so great a distance. Laoko followed behind him, then Jes, Dao, and Caera, side by side. David walked behind them, Las behind him, Moriah behind them, and Acelina in the back. It was a formation they’d grown used to, and it worked.

  There were no demons in the Dead Lands, no souls, and probably no angels. If there was ever a safe pce to split up so he could talk to her privately, it was now.

  Deep breath.

  “Caera,” he said. “Can I talk to you? In private?” She looked back and raised a brow, and Jes did the same, but he gestured behind them. “Just a bit behind the group.”

  She shrugged and nodded, and the two slowed down until everyone passed them. The Las looked back, curious, but Acelina shooed them on ahead, and spared a gnce back at him, too. Unreadable. Whatever the spire mother was thinking, he still couldn’t figure out.

  “Something on your mind?” Caera asked. They were back far enough the group was still visible ahead of them, but with quiet voices and the endless screams of the Dead Lands remnants, it was as close to private as they were gonna get.

  He took a deep breath and stared at the bloody ground. A path of remnant guts was hardly the pce to have this conversation, but it was Hell, she was a demon, and he had to get over it. And he was just looking for any excuse to not have the conversation at all.

  “I wanted… to talk about us.” Like a band-aid, rip it off.

  Caera froze for a moment. “What do you mean?”

  He took another deep breath. It didn’t help.

  “I’ve never dated anyone. I don’t know how to date. I don’t know anything about romance, except what I’ve read in stories, and none of that shit was realistic.” Rambling, David. Get to the point. “I like you. I like that you like talking about history and stuff. I like that we get along. I like that you were willing to talk with me about personal stuff. I like—”

  Caera half choked on a ugh, walked closer to him, and nudged her head against his hip; she was on all fours.

  “Us? You wanted a private conversation about us?”

  “Y-Yeah. I mean, I thought we were getting close. Are we… not?” He stopped breathing entirely.

  Caera sighed and shook her head. Ice filled his guts. But the tiger lifted her head, smiled up at him with her single eye, and rubbed the scarred eye into his side.

  “Did what Moriah say spark this?”

  “I… Yeah, it did. A bit. If you were human, I’d still be saying the same things, still tripping over every word, but… but I…” He rubbed his face. “Fuck me, I don’t know what I’m saying. I just know that I like you, a lot.”

  “You don’t like the other girls?”

  “I do! I do like them. Jes and Dao are great, and they were my first and—”

  “And Acelina?” Caera’s grin was unrelenting. “You like her, for more than her tits.”

  “I like her, too. She acts like a bitch, but there’s more to her than that.”

  “And Laoko?”

  “She’s… crafty, isn’t she? She’s smart and crafty.”

  “The Las?”

  “They’re adorable and fun.”

  She nodded. “And Moriah?”

  “I… I hadn’t really thought about her that way.”

  Laughing again, Caera nudged into him harder. “Of course you have. Yeah, you met her in rough circumstances, but that was then. I’m not mad at her for this.” She aimed her ruined eye socket up at him. “And she’s pretty different from us, isn’t she? She acts differently. You could trust her with anything and you know she’d never betray you.”

  “I mean, yeah, she’s an angel, but it’s not like…” Where the fuck was this conversation going? “Wait. Is this something you’ve been thinking about?”

  She shrugged, while prowling. “Yes, but… I don’t know. I think about it, but it’s not like humans would. I see you with them, and I think ‘he looks so happy’. And I like that.”

  He finally took a breath. Then stopped again. There was ambiguity in that statement.

  “I’m… happiest when I’m with you.”

  Caera stared up at him. “Why? W—You just expined why. I’m dumb.”

  He blinked back down at her. That was a nervous reply. She was nervous! A bit.

  “I like the other girls, I do. But I… I don’t crave talking to them, you know? I like talking to them, a lot. Every day I wake up happy to be traveling with you girls. But… But it’s you I wanna stay up all night talking with.”

  She ughed. “We’ve never done that. We always do shifts.”

  “We should stay up all night! If we were on the surface, it’d just happen. On the surface, you can’t fall asleep when excited. We’d stay up and talk about stuff. You’d talk about all the things that make you happy. I’d talk about all my nerd stuff.”

  “You sound like you’ve dated before.”

  He shook his head. “I haven’t. Maybe it’s just a human thing, you know? It’s something we crave.” Fingers out, he counted off three. “Mia was talking about it, and one idea really clicked. A complete romantic”—he half choked the moment the word was out of his mouth. It was a scary word—“connection, needs three things. Emotional, intellectual, and sexual connection. I’m sure it’s more complicated than that, but that was pretty good, right? It’s how humans can really connect when in a pair; sometimes more than a pair, but that’s rare. We bond, and… and… and I’m ranting.”

  The tiger ughed again and nudged into his side. “I like your rants.”

  “I like your… you.”

  A little shiver worked through the tiger, and she rubbed up against him a little harder. He almost fell over.

  “Kia and Marquez were my friends. We enjoyed talking with each other. We enjoyed fucking each other. And we were attached to each other. We liked each other. But…” She looked down and scratched lines in the ground as they walked. “When I lost them, I wanted revenge. You know all about it. But before then, when I was together with them, it was wonderful. It was like with Jes and Dao. Maybe not as bonded as them, but it was close. We were close. But… it’s different when I’m with you.”

  “It is?”

  “Yes. Jes and Dao probably feel the same. Moriah said it herself, that angels rarely get romantically involved with each other. What she didn’t say, but I think we can fill in, is that angels prefer romance with souls.” Sighing, Caera looked around, single eye taking in the nearby remnants and endless fog. “The only souls we get down here are assholes, but there’s a reason many demons watch scrying pools so often. I hadn’t pieced it together until Moriah said it. We want what only humans have.”

  “I don’t get it. You telling me demons can’t love each other?”

  “I’m saying there’s… a spark missing. I liked Kia and Marquez, a lot. Maybe even loved them. But…” She shrugged. “I don’t know. There’s just something not there. We all know it. We all see it in the scrying pools, and Moriah confirmed it. You heard Jes say it. There’s something not there, but… but when we’re with a human, it’s different. It’s there. We can almost taste it.” Despite the screaming choir around them, the air was cold and quiet. He was holding his breath again. But Caera smiled up at him and nudged into him more, melting the ice. “I just know that when I got you in my arms, I feel different, David. I want to wrap you up, hold you, eat you, and—”

  “Whoa, eat me?”

  Like a child admitting a lie, she looked down and away. “Yes. Me, the others, I bet we all fantasize about it, about… absorbing that spark in you. Literally. Maybe in a bloody mess, with teeth, and meat.”

  For a human, fantasying about someone that hard probably involved lots of sex and hugging and desperate kissing. For demons, it apparently included eating. Gulp. No wonder some demons did some really nasty stuff with their prey.

  “I’ve never thought you were going to eat me.”

  “You’re safe with us. But, I guess, it’s what demons crave, because that spark is something we can see, and I can feel it when I’m around you… like now.” She nudged into him again. “But I can’t have it on my own.”

  He put a hand on her head. It almost felt wrong to pet her, to treat her like she was his dog or cat, but she nuzzled her head under his palm, and he ran his fingers through her demon dreadlocks.

  “And angels?” he asked.

  “Moriah said they’re obsessed with human souls. Always want to be around them. She said she can’t eat a human heart. So maybe for them, it transtes as protecting instead of devouring. I don’t know.” Another nudge. “So, you brought me back here, to ask if we’re dating? Or could start dating?”

  “I… uh… yeah?” It sounded so hiriously, ridiculously stupid now. Dating meant hanging out, watching TV, going out for dinner or long walks, or all those normal things. The fuck did the word even mean in Hell?

  Apparently Caera could read his mind, because she ughed and shook her head hard enough her short dreadlocks bounced.

  “I’ve seen enough scrying pools to know what dating means, David. It’s not something demons do.”

  “Oh.” Arrow. Heart. The bad kind of arrow.

  “That’s not what I meant. I meant that…” She tilted her head. “I don’t know what I meant. This is what I’m talking about. Demons aren’t like humans. I just know that I like you a lot more than I thought I would, you pipsqueak. A lot more. I don’t want to let you go. But it’s not like with Kia and Marquez. It’s… different. There’s something in you, in any soul I’ve met, that…” Growling, she swiped at the ground again. “I hate losing the words.”

  “I know the feeling.”

  “I knew a betrayer named Hannah. I knew her demon, a vrat named Adron, big and strong for a vrat, almost as big and strong as me. Smart, too. He cared for that soul like a pet, but also like a… lover. They had a bond that looked normal on the surface, but below that, under the skin, it was more. Demons know it, and we can feel it from humans, but we never talk about it, admit it, or even really know what it is.”

  He looked down at her. “I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”

  “I’m trying to expin, but it’s hard. Like Moriah said, a gabriem could probably expin it better, and I’m just talking in circles. What I’m saying is, I want with you, what Adron has with Hannah. I don’t know what that is, but I want it. I want more, and I want it with you, not other souls.”

  He took a deep breath. He’d expected the conversation to go one of two ways. Either she’d agree to date him, or she’d not. He hadn’t expected a third option, that demons — and angels — simply didn’t feel romantic attraction like humans did. What they felt was inhuman. But she wanted to be with him, anyway.

  He gulped. “I don’t know what it means, either. I just know that I like you a lot, and… I don’t want to lose that.”

  Rumbling, almost a purr, she rubbed up against him until he had no choice but to pet her head.

  “You wanted to talk about this? I thought this was happening already.”

  “It was! I just… I dunno, I get worried when I don’t have something in writing.”

  “But we didn’t write anything.”

  Despite his efforts, he couldn’t help but ugh.

  “And… And there’s, um, the other girls. Are you really comfortable sharing me?”

  “Of course.”

  “Really?”

  She nodded. “Really.”

  “But—”

  “Demons can get possessive, but that’s not really what we feel when it’s about a soul. It’s different. It’s more like… when humans build fires to keep the cold away. Sure, maybe some humans would push others away so they could fit around the fire, but if everyone could fit around the fire, they wouldn’t need to do that.”

  He blinked. That was so very different from how humans thought of romance. With people, it was a back and forth, a chain that binds, two people in a car, other dumb metaphors. What Caera described was very much not that.

  “I… don’t know how to feel about that,” he said.

  “Stop thinking. Stop worrying.”

  “You know me, right?”

  Laughing, she nudged against his shin. He fell, and she got under him. Back to riding the tiger, then.

  He squeezed her back spikes and sighed relief. Okay, that hadn’t gone how he’d expected. In fact, she’d kinda shot him down in a weird way. And also said she wanted him to be her pet. And also said he’s a bonfire that she, and the other girls, could share. And also said she wanted to eat him, literally, as if she could absorb that fire.

  Not even Mia could navigate this social maze.

  “Acelina likes you, too,” she said.

  “Wait, what?”

  “Acelina. She likes you more than she likes to let on.”

  He winced. “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  He looked ahead at the group. Acelina walked in back, stomping on a nearby remnant every so often. Unnecessary, with Laoko and Timaeus ahead clearing a path for them, but the Las were rambunctious and drifted from side to side, and Acelina took steps to keep them safe.

  “I mean, I could see a girl like her enjoying crushing my balls, but ‘like’ like me?”

  “She’s lowered her guard around you a few times. I bet she’s never done that, ever, in her entire life, and she’s old. Many centuries old. But when she’s around you, she rexes.” Caera looked up at him, smiling. “And I bet she loves the idea of bossing you around.”

  He gulped. “And the others?”

  “What about them? You know them. Jes likes you, like a friend she gets to fuck, and a pet. Daoka likes you in the same way, though she definitely wants to take care of you, baby you, spoil you. And the Las, they look at you with awe, like you’re a big, big fire they can sit around.”

  “A bonfire.”

  “That the word?”

  He nodded. “That’s… really hard for me to wrap my mind around. Humans usually do things differently.”

  “You’re in Hell, surrounded by demons, and angels. I think you might need to adapt.”

  Adapt. He could do that. It wasn’t like he’d been married for fifty years and only knew how to be a romantic one-on-one. Still, it was weird hearing that he was a fire, and people were gathering around him. But Moriah confirmed. Angels gathered around humans, desired to be around them, and apparently found more satisfaction from that than with other angels.

  Which meant… what? He could have multiple girls around his fire? Was that why Caera didn’t mind other girls touching him? Or didn’t mind thinking Acelina liked him more than she let on?

  Mia was probably hating this. She’d always wanted a proper, one-on-one, heavy romance. If things were going for her the way they were going for him, she probably had a bunch of demons surrounding her at once, with no regard for one-on-one romanticism.

  Well, maybe she wasn’t hating it?

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  ~~Mia~~

  She hated this. Did he like her? Did he hate her?

  She looked back at Vin and frowned at him. Special effort made to make sure he saw how upset she was with him, too. But all that got was a quick flick of his eyes before he looked past her into the endless smog.

  At some point, Vin had decided to be the rear guard, and despite being mostly healed, it stayed that way. He could guard the group from there, so that was fine, but it irritated her to no end that he wouldn’t tell her more about what was bothering him. She was, apparently, but it had to be more than that!

  She could figure him out ter. Right now, she had a dinosaur dragon between her legs — riding, not sex — and he was far nicer than Vin.

  “Ka—”

  “So,” Romakus said, “Mia. Next time you make a cave, make it bigger. Maybe with a divider.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because I have a sexy angel I pn to fuck, and unless you want to watch, you’ll want a divider.”

  Yosepha rolled her eyes, elbowed the giant in the leg, and kicked off some muck stuck to her shins.

  “The journey is more important,” the angel said.

  “We’ll crack if we don’t get some stress relief, Yos.”

  “No, we won’t. We are not humans. Stop watching the scrying pool.”

  He shook his head. “You don’t understand. I’m special. Different from the other demons. I’m a sensitive soul, and this journey is draining me. I need to recover, and I can only do that by getting a piece of that ass.”

  How did a demon as old as Romakus, a gorujin tetrad wearing armor and trophies that must have been centuries old, get so ridiculous?

  “I’ll try,” Mia said. “I don’t know if I can. Maybe if I didn’t need the roof. It makes shaping things tricky.”

  The demon would not be denied. Chuckling like a quiet little maniac, he drifted closer to Mia and poked her with his wing cw. Such massive wings.

  “Your carpenter skills need work.”

  “It’s not carpentry! It’s music. I have to shape a sound. The more complicated the shape, the harder it is.” Which was why she’d been practicing, summoning little spikes and stuff. Asmodeus was far behind them, now, not a concern. Probably. She was free to practice sounds, and learn more about the subtleties. Which was draining, but in the Bck Valley, it was easy to grow fruit and eat as much as she wanted.

  He shrugged. “That’s fine. I don’t mind if you watch. Or join in.”

  “Romakus.” Yosepha gred up at him, and Mia waited for the inevitable rebuttal or compint or something. She said neither. She did squirm a little, probably embarrassed by her asshole boyfriend, but Mia saw the look in her eyes. The teasing, the taunting, getting her boundaries pushed, she liked it.

  Back in the cave where Mia met all the Damall, Romakus had mentioned something about demons sometimes joining in. Mia’s mind wandered.

  “I wouldn’t mind some stress relief,” Julisa said. “And all Mia needs is to witness a little skin, and she’ll drown us in her aura.”

  “I would prefer you didn’t,” Azreal said. Through all the talk, he kept walking, steady and unmoved.

  Unperturbed by the mean angel, Julisa came up behind him and gently dragged four sets of cws down his two wings, combing his feathers.

  “It’ll happen eventually, angel. But from the stories Galon told me, it would hardly be an issue if you joined us.”

  “In Heaven, perhaps,” he said. “Down here in the filth? No thank you.” He shrugged her cws off and kept walking.

  Julisa was persistent. “The filth fades once we have a clean spot. And I can make sure your time is well spent.” She leaned down closer to the back of his head. “I wouldn’t mind tasting the man who nearly killed Vinicius.”

  Vinicius snorted, but said nothing.

  “Julisa,” Yosepha said. “Your addiction to power is annoying.”

  Sighing, Julisa shrugged and drifted back to the center of the group with the rest of them, while Azreal led the charge.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “It won’t be long before the unmarked gives into her desires, and we’ll all get sucked into her aura.”

  Azreal gnced back, set his hard eyes on the huge woman, but flicked his gaze to Mia for a second, too.

  “Not true,” Mia said, and she folded her arms across her useless, skimpy clothes. Stupid potram rune. The angels weren’t exactly well covered in their white silks, tarred bck at the moment, but they were still more covered than Mia. “I can control the aura now. Back then, I didn’t really know how to py the strings, or mute them. I can now.”

  Julisa grinned. “I bet, given a proper sight to witness, you’ll crack. And when you do, there is little any of us will be able to do about it. Your aura is like a spire’s aura. It vibrates through the ground, the air, and permeates everything. It will break even the strongest demon, given time.”

  Mia groaned. Why did Julisa have to turn everything into a battle?

  Kas lifted his head and aimed his eyeless gaze up at Mia. “I would.”

  She froze. “You would what?”

  “Break.”

  Oh. She gulped, squirmed, and clutched her egg. That was dangerously close to flirting from Kas. Did the man even know the word?

  Quick, topic change.

  “Do angels have retionships?” she asked.

  “With demons, they do,” Romakus said. “I’m more of a catch than the pretty boy. Look at me.” He leaned down over Mia, close enough he breathed on her and she could have touched some of his big teeth.

  “Do you mean with each other, or with demons?” Yosepha asked. “We do, but both are rare. Far more common is a retionship with a human.”

  “Because of that thing you said angels were missing?” They’d already talked about it, but with the bomb Azreal had dropped on them yesterday, she had a little more context to work with.

  “Yes,” she said. “Janiya could expin it far better than I. Angels revolve around the humans out of an innate desire, a desire I suspect demons share.” She tugged on Romakus’s tail, and the titan relented and backed off from Mia. “It is rare for angels to find soce in each other. Genuine soce.”

  “Same for demons,” Romakus said, shrugging. He grinned down at Yosepha, and the moment she got back to the march, he whipped her ass with his tail. She gasped and turned around, gring. “I’m no philosopher, but I’ve been around a long time. I’ve seen way more demons get involved with betrayers than each other.”

  “Is that why angels are… you know?” Mia couldn’t even say the word. Suicide.

  Yosepha sighed and shrugged. “I don’t know. Azreal is far older than I. Azreal?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, without the shrug. “I am not old enough to have suffered what ails them.”

  Mia raised a hand. “That actually brings me to my next question. Demons die all the time, but angels only die if there’s a war, and now this new… problem. Does that mean there are angels millions of years old?”

  “There are,” he said. “But they have been reborn many times. With each rebirth, an angel changes. Some memories are lost and go to the core of the Great Tower.”

  “We hope,” Yosepha said.

  “We… hope.” Eyes aimed down, he nodded, slow and heavy. “But as to your nosy and unwanted question, I have known many angels to become romantically attached to humans.”

  “Often more than one angel per soul,” Yosepha said. And the badass warrior queen snuck in a small smile for Mia’s sake. “Even for us mikalim, the presence of a soul, especially one we are close to, is… fulfilling, in a way we cannot find anywhere else.”

  Mia looked up at Romakus, expecting to find hurt in his eyes. But the demon met her gaze with his usual, confident-if-slightly-psycho demeanor, set his hands on Yosepha’s shoulders, and followed behind her.

  It almost sounded like Yosepha was admitting she didn’t care for Romakus. But that wasn’t true. Yosepha patted the man’s cws on her shoulder, gnced back for a quick smile at him, and followed in Azreal’s path.

  There was something getting lost in transtion. Angels loved. Demons loved. What was it they thought humans had that they didn’t? Why were they all so desperate to get as close to humans as possible?

  It was a little easier to understand with demons. They were obsessed with humans, too, in a predatory way. And dominant way, if Adron and Hannah had the typical demon-human retionship. But it was hard to imagine Azreal being in a retionship with anyone.

  Ask him? No. He didn’t like the line of questioning. In fact, if she was reading him right, he had a retionship with a human that ended terribly? It made sense for his behavior, if he was a human, but he was an angel. Who the fuck knew what was going on in his head?

  They traveled in silence for a while. Mia kept sneaking gnces at Yosepha and Romakus, looking for any sign that the conversation had hurt them; it’d definitely have hurt Mia, if she’d been told her retionship was cking the special ‘something’ humans had. But they looked fine. Romakus continued to tease her, and Yosepha continued to be annoyed-but-not-really by it.

  Julisa looked wholly uninterested. Either she didn’t give a shit about finding romance, or getting that ‘spark’ only humans had, or she was pretending she didn’t. Not exactly an uncommon view for a human to take, either. Just give up on something like that, and become a bitter asshole. Or maybe she’d never wanted it in the first pce, and being a cssic demon, someone who cared only for violence and power, was all she was? And if that was true, were there angels out there who didn’t care about the human spark, and only cared for their duty? Maybe Azreal?

  She needed her ptop, or at least a notepad. And years of research materials, interviews, diaries, and anything else she could think of. Maybe then she could figure this out, and maybe why angels were killing themselves.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  She really was pying with fire.

  “Tell me about yourself,” she asked the angel.

  The group sat in her little cave, hiding under the muck. Despite her efforts to make better caves, she’d hit a wall. Doing it quickly, shoveling out remnant guts first, getting it deep enough she could make a roof and a chimney, but not so deep she risked the cave colpsing or the chimney breaking, everything led to her just making a sphere in the ground with its ceiling only a few feet below the surface.

  Everyone was asleep except Azreal and Julisa. And Mia. She wanted answers.

  “No.”

  “I thought you might say that.” She smiled up at him. “You might as well talk to me. I’m going to talk to you until you do.” The longer she spent with the angel, the more obvious what his weakness was: he was an angel. Unlike the demons, he wouldn’t get violent with her. And if she was reading him right, he couldn’t even raise his voice. Well, maybe he could, but he wouldn’t, not with her.

  “No.”

  “My patience knows no bounds, Azreal.” She teased her neckce with her fingertips. “I’ve got a quiet, grumpy sarkarin for a friend.” She nodded Kas’s way. “And you know Vin. He doesn’t talk about himself, but I’ve made him talk.” Woops, that almost sounded like a threat.

  Azreal closed his eyes, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and drew his feathers in around himself like a shield wall bubble. It’d been hours since they’d bunked up for the night. Any muck remains had faded away, meaning his giant wings were pure, beautiful white, and soft.

  She got on her elbows and stuck her head in through the feathers from the ground and beamed up at him.

  “I bet you’ve been through a lot,” she said. “I bet you’ve got some great stories.”

  “If you want stories, speak with a gabriem. They are storytellers.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not looking for an exciting story, a weaved tale, or anything like that. I just wanna understand you better. And angels better.”

  “There is nothing to understand. We are warriors of Heaven. We are dedicated to protecting its walls, and to serving its souls. Our lives have one purpose: to ensure the souls of Heaven enjoy their afterlife before they move onto the Great Tower and flow into its core.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.” He spread his wings and squinted at her like an upset teacher.

  “Yeah, well, that might be it, but that’s not it.”

  “It is.”

  “Is not.” She smiled brighter. The angel made one cssic mistake: he argued with her. The obvious choice to get her to leave him alone was to ignore her, but he didn’t. The fool! “There’s more to you than just mindless servitude. Tell me things! Tell me about your friends. You and Noah seem close.”

  “We have worked under Captain Jaron since our birth, early on during the Spires War.”

  “You were born adults, right?”

  “Yes, with the intellect and maturity of an adult, but we must learn knowledge, and we do so in the great libraries of Heaven.”

  She stroked her non-existent beard and nodded sagely. “I won’t ask about the war. I bet that was pretty nasty. But how about after? I bet you and Noah came back to Heaven and made lots of friends with souls, right?”

  He closed a finger and thumb against his eyes. “Yosepha told you mikalim and rapholem spend time with souls?”

  “Yeah. I mean, she said gabriem dedicate their lives to it, but mikalim and rapholem join in, too.” She sat next to him and beamed up at him. As much as she really liked her demon buddies, angels, even scary ones like Azreal, felt more human to talk to. “And if it’s been two thousand years since the Spires War ended, I bet you met all kinds of souls!”

  “I have.”

  Bingo. Poor angel, completely oblivious to her devious plot. A gabriem like Galon could probably see what she was doing, but Azreal was an unsuspecting victim.

  “Tell me about the most interesting human you ever met. Someone you were close friends with, or more.”

  He blinked at her, but she recognized the twinkle of memory in his purple eyes.

  “I… knew a Catholic woman, who died of the pgue.”

  Mia sat upright and stared. The treasure trove of knowledge in this angel’s brain, the things he’d seen and experienced, the people he’d met! Full listening mode, engaged.

  “She could neither read nor write, and while such things are not needed in Heaven, she desired to learn. I expined that, in the afterlife, everyone can read and speak Estian, but she insisted she learn French. She wanted to read the bible for herself, in the nguage the priest taught it to her congregation.”

  “That must have been an enlightening experience. I heard priests weren’t exactly forthcoming with information back then, when most people couldn’t read.”

  “It was a shock for her, especially as she looked around Heaven and saw all the things that weren’t accurate. To suggest that pursuing a life of good, of spreading good, of cooperation and aid and growth and creation, was more important than mindless devotion, took some time for her to accept.” From the way he squinted and gred at his sandals, the angel wasn’t too happy about the mismatch in ideologies. “But what shocked her more was Heaven’s view of sexuality. She was a virgin, had never kissed another, and found herself paralyzed by Heaven’s pleasures.”

  “Paralyzed?”

  “She drifted around the adult areas, and watched. All gabriem knew she was the sort who simply needed a push, and she’d enjoy sex as much as any soul. But they gave her her space. She needed to process.”

  “Is this where you come in?”

  He sighed and nodded. “She retreated from the sexual sights and drifted toward more militant sections of Ravid where we mikalim and rapholem watch and monitor the city. I think she needed the quiet. She stood with me upon rooftops, and we watched the city, watched souls py and swim and dance and create. We watched gabriem fly from room to room, nding upon balconies and surprising souls with offered ideas, with pns of games in the sanctums, or orgies where everyone could watch.”

  She gulped. That was quite the whipsh. Imagining a soul sitting on their bed, reading a book or something, and an angel or three shows up on their balcony and offers to have an orgy? Gulp turned to giggle. Knowing her, once she was comfortable with the craziness of it all, she’d have dove headfirst into that life.

  “I stood and watched the city, and she kept me company. She spoke little, simply sat next to me, and hours would go by in silence.” Against all odds, the angel smiled, just a little one, but it was there. “It took a year for her to finally open up. But instead of opening up to a gabriem, she opened up to me. And I…” He turned his head and looked away. “We spent many years together.”

  “Oh.” She’d hoped he’d have told her a romance story, but now that she got what she wanted, she wasn’t sure she wanted what she got. He looked sad. “You didn’t stay together?”

  “No. Angels never do. Whatever it is that makes souls so special, it also means they change with time, dead or alive. They were good years, and I do not regret them. Joys of all kinds were had.”

  “All kinds?”

  He set his stone gaze back on her. “If you must know, mikalim and rapholem have sex with souls. But no, we do not usually engage in rampant indulgence like the gabriem.”

  So the warrior types rarely got involved in the crazy stuff. Good to know. It also made Yosepha unique. Romakus had clearly corrupted her.

  “Odette and I were not together at first. I helped her get used to Heaven and its pleasures. I enjoyed her mind and body, she enjoyed mine, and she regurly came to my perch to spend more time with me.” Not even the stoic asshole could hide the hidden meaning in ‘spend more time’. “After, with encouragement from me, she tried the pleasures of the gabriem. She even convinced me to join her on several occasions. But after a while, she grew to dislike the constant orgies. She wanted a quieter afterlife.

  “She came back to me, and I was… gd. An angel knows to not get attached, and we have little issues sharing a soul with others.” He frowned. Something pinged in his brain, because he netted his fingers together and stared down at the ground and his sandals. “Share isn’t the right word, and yet it is. For an angel, souls are a glowing star, and we congregate around them. There is plenty of room around a star for its light to illuminate us all.”

  She stared. “A star? I’m a star? I uh, I mean, I don’t know if I’m a soul, but—”

  “You are a soul,” he said. “I can see it in your eyes, hear it in your words, notice it in your body nguage. That… spark, that we angels and demons crave is there in you.” He sighed again, amethyst eyes still locked on his sandals. “If a demon were asking me these questions, I would not answer them.”

  “Oh.” She smiled. No wonder demons and angels were giving her special treatment. It wasn’t just because of this unmarked thing. They all wanted a piece of her, kinda literally, because she was a soul.

  “Odette shared her light with me and only me for many years. I told her, many times, that I am an angel and she should share her presence with far more than just I. But she refused.” Another sigh worked through him. Not rexed. Still sad? It was hard to tell with the statue of an angel. “She moved on centuries ago.”

  Mia nodded and sat a little closer to him. If she had to be the one to push past his asshole aura, like this Odette probably had, she could do that. She’d done it with a couple demons. What was one more?

  Purely for friendship, though.

  “Thanks for telling me.”

  “Have I satisfied your curiosity, unmarked?”

  “No, but you put a dent in it. Thank you.”

  Another sneaky little smile cut across his lips before vanishing. “It is rare to hear those words in Hell.”

  “What? Thank you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I noticed that. Demons don’t really care for please or thank you, or you’re welcome.”

  “They are brutes and nothing more.”

  Frowning, she sat in front of him and faced him. “That’s not fair.”

  Azreal looked past her at the sleeping Vinicius. “Is it not?”

  “No, it’s not. Sure, demons can be cruel and harsh, but they grew up in this world. They’ve never, ever, in their entire lives, have met a kind human. And no souls down here are giving up their hearts willingly, unlike Heaven. It’s an eat-or-be-eaten world down here, and that’d make anyone awful. Have you seen how hatching pits work? I have. From day one, they’re born and have to fight each other for a meal.”

  “I—”

  She spped his foot. “And despite all of that, just because they have mean attitudes doesn’t mean they aren’t good. Sure, some of them are murdering assholes who do nothing but get off on it, but some are willing to put their lives on the line to save Hell.”

  “They risk their lives because if they do not, they die anyway.”

  “Well, that’s still better than being a mindless brute.” She folded her arms across her chest and gave her best princess gre. “So be nice to the demons.”

  He rolled his eyes, but kept his mouth shut and slowly nodded.

  She beamed up at him, sat back down beside him, his wing behind her, and she reached around and idly tugged at some feathers.

  “Know any other interesting souls?”

  He sighed, but she didn’t look to see if he was looking at her.

  “I knew a soul who bested a rapholem at a game.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. He was a sneaky soul.”

  She ughed. “A sneaky soul got into Heaven?”

  “Yes, somehow. He challenged the rapholem to a game of archery dodge, a game angels often py with souls. They attempt to shoot the angel with a blunt arrow, and the angel dodges by flying. This rapholem did not normally py games, but he was committed. He wanted her. He tricked her, had a friend distract her, and he shot her. He won the game and his bet.”

  “Strange to hear about a person like that, doing sneaky, devious things in Heaven. What was the bet?”

  “He wanted access to her breasts whenever he wanted, to do whatever he wanted.”

  Mia facepalmed. What else would a sneaky guy want?

  “I… gotta admit, I’m really struggling to imagine that kinda behavior in Heaven.”

  Azreal grunted. “He was a good soul. He made Dancheva happy. At first, she wanted nothing to do with the boy, and that was why she agreed to the bet. If she won, he’d leave her alone.”

  “What a dick.”

  Another momentary smile snuck across as Azreal’s lips. “As I said, he made her happy. Many rapholem struggle to join the gabriem in socializing with souls, even more than mikalim. We are—”

  “Self-destructively stoic?”

  He eyed her. “Reserved.”

  “Close enough.” She grinned up at him and pyed with his feathers more. So soft. “Well, you’re stuck down here with me now. And I can’t stand people being super reserved. We’re all gonna get along like a big, happy family.”

  Julisa chuckled, sweet and quiet, and Mia almost squeaked. She’d forgotten the demon was awake.

  “Knowing the unmarked,” Julisa said, “she will do everything to make her protectors comfortable. It won’t be long before she has her lips around your cock, angel.”

  What a bitch. If they weren’t trying to be quiet and not wake the others, Mia would have thrown something at her.

  Azreal looked over Mia’s head to the side of the room near Kas. Her egg.

  “That egg,” he said, “moved.”

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  ~~Day 74~~

  ~~David~~

  The Amisius Forest. He knew what it’d be like before he even saw it.

  “I think I’ve read horror stories about forests like these,” he said, and he touched one of the tall, sharp trees. “I’m pretty sure every horror story ever written about a dark, creepy forest, was talking about this forest.”

  Timaeus grunted, nodded, and pushed forward. He got five steps, took a step back, and gestured to Laoko. Without a word, his fellow tetrad chuckled softly, drew her four swords, and marched forward swinging. The sharp branches of the trees shattered, and she took lead.

  There was grass, except it wasn’t grass. Thicket, all branches tiny, bck, and sharp. Brittle, too, so any branch touched broke off against demon skin. Their skin was tough enough most of the branches fell off harmlessly, but any soul sent to Hell would walk through this and die from blood loss before they reached the other side of the forest. It also meant anyone with wings went second, and the wingless went first. Laoko, Daoka, and Caera took the front, Timaeus and Acelina in the back, and everyone else between.

  A perfect opportunity to talk to Timaeus. David slowed until he walked with the big tetrad, Acelina in front of him, Timaeus behind her.

  “Timaeus,” David said.

  Timaeus snorted and said nothing.

  David tried again. “I just wanted to talk.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I can tell you’re… you know, upset?”

  Timaeus snorted louder, reached out, and broke an errant branch that got too close. Much as the Amisius Forest was simir to the other woods David had seen in the Grave Valley, this took the cake. It was dense, the fog was dense, and it wasn’t just the trees. The ground was covered in sharp rocks, each pebble and pit of gravel armed with a nasty edge.

  David had made sure everyone was full to the brim, stuffed bellies, before they left the Dead Lands. He’d eaten plenty, though after a certain point, he knew eating more wasn’t helping him. No matter how much he stuffed himself, he never felt full, but after a half dozen hearts, something inside him said it was pointless to keep eating. Everything eaten after that just… dispersed, like he wasn’t absorbing it at all. Like, eating too much fiber, except without the diarrhea.

  But he knew he was full of energy, and the demons were, too. Healing minor injuries wouldn’t be too bad.

  “You expect me to not be upset?” Timaeus asked.

  “I… don’t know, honestly. Laoko says you’ve both lost a lot of stuff, and it’s kinda because of me. And—”

  “Only a fool kills the messenger.”

  “Leonidas was no fool!” He kicked at the air, and waited for some kind of ugh from the tetrad. Nothing. Okay, Mia-esque jokes were not going to work on this guy.

  “What?”

  “Uh, never mind. So I guess I am the messenger, that’s true. But those alien things do seem to be after me, not demons.”

  “If they’re after you because you or the other unmarked are going to save Hell, then bming you makes no sense. How stupid do you think I am to bme someone battling a foe for the foe’s intentions? I might as well bme a… firefighter, I think is the word, for being where fires are, as if they started the fire.”

  “Oh. Then you’re… not mad at me, for… all the things you’ve lost?” Fucking christ, David. Couldn’t think of a better way to word that?

  “I’m livid.”

  “Oh…”

  “But not at you.”

  “Oh.” David risked a smile. “That’s… good. Honestly, from some demons I’ve seen, and from what the girls have told me, not a lot of demons would be that conscientious.” Did the tetrad even know the word conscientious?

  “You’re right. They’re not. They can’t see past their noses.” Okay, wow, the dude was smart, too. Laoko wore her intelligence on her sleeve with all the sneaky gnces and quiet rumination. Timaeus had been a bit goofy and pyful on first meet, which apparently worked as a better disguise. This man was intelligent and dangerous. He probably had to be, to be a bailiff.

  “So, you’re gonna stick with us all the way to False Gate?”

  “If we make it that far, yes, I suppose. But do you even have an idea of what you’ll do when you get there? Your goal is the Forgotten Pce, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  Timaeus gestured right, toward the inner edge of Hell. “So instead of finding a way to cross the river Styx from here, you think it can be done at False Gate.”

  “That’s what I’ve heard. That’s what the girls believe. It was a thing, right? In the First War, Lucifer and his armies moved back and forth across the Red Sea between False Gate and the Forgotten Pce?”

  “It was billions of years ago, child. What could any of us possibly know about it?” Timaeus looked behind them and growled. “So consider my position. I’ve lost my rank, my closest allies, my friends, my fuck buddies, all so I can help a boy cross Hell, in some ridiculous pn to cross the Red Sea by a pathway or tool he doesn’t even know exists. And my boss apparently had a pn she considered more important than that, a pn she didn’t tell me, one of her bailiffs, or Laoko, one of her oldest friends and allies.” He leaned down over David and gred at him with demon eyes. “So you tell me, should I be angry?”

  David tried to gulp, but his throat was paralyzed. “Y-Yeah. You should.”

  “And unlike you and the girls, I got no one to fuck to take the edge off. I like men, and no one in this harem you’ve collected is a guy. So unless you want to fuck me”—he poked David in his bare shoulder—“I suggest you just leave me alone until I feel like being my usual chipper self.”

  David put up his hands, and jogged back to Jes and the Las.

  “Mission successful?” Jes asked.

  “I uh… I’m not sure. He’s still angry, but I don’t think he’s going to kill me.”

  “The fuck were you expecting? A happy conversation to solve your issues?”

  The gulp finally came and he swallowed it down. “Yeah?”

  “Fuck me, I thought you were smart?” She wrapped a wing around his shoulders and pulled him in. “Is Mia like that? She think she can make anyone suddenly be ‘better’ if she talks with them long enough?”

  “A little bit, yeah. She wanted to be a psychologist, and that’s sorta what psychologists do.”

  “They fix people’s problems in a single conversation?”

  “No, they don’t.”

  She spped him on the back of the head. “Then don’t be a dumbass.”

  Daoka turned and clicked at her lover, but her loud clicks disappeared under the endless cracking of branches, and the thickening fog.

  “So, um, chances of us getting spotted?” he asked, looking left and right.

  “High,” Laoko said without looking back. “The mountains rise along the edges of Hell where the Grave Valley meets the Scar. We will be funneled into the Scar, and that canyon is only a mile wide.”

  “A giant canyon that spans an entire province hundreds of miles long, is only a mile wide?”

  “Yes,” Caera said. “It goes very deep. You’ll see when you get there.” And, of course, demons refused to expin things ahead of time, even Caera. Damn it. “Which means this forest funnels to that entrance point.”

  Laoko nodded, smmed four swords down, and shattered a rge branch. “Several factions hang out near the entrance, here in the Grave Valley, but they are careful and usually stay hidden. Hellbeasts roam this forest.”

  “Hellbeasts? What kind?”

  “Fallo spiders.”

  Right. The vos — succubi and incubi — of the Scar harvested fallo silk, made clothes with it, and traded it with the Grave Valley and the Red Pits. Which, now that David knew a little more about how demons thought, made more sense. If demons and angels were obsessed with humans, then dressing like them, even if it meant flimsy silk scarves and stuff, was reasonable. He knew they did jewelry, especially demons like Acelina, and more than just trophies. Earrings, neckces, piercings, that was all fashion, and humans were obsessed with fashion.

  “There are other creatures,” Laoko continued. “Fassi spiders. Much, much rger than fallo spiders.”

  “How much rger?”

  “Twenty feet across from leg to leg.”

  He shivered. Either they’d look like daddy long-legs spider, all leg with tiny bodies, and a twenty-foot leg span wasn’t all that scary, or they’d look like tarantus, thicker, stronger. And because it was Hell, he already knew the answer.

  They pushed forward. Remnants grew from the trunks of the fatter trees, each partially merged with the dark bark and its roots. Faces pushed up from between roots, screaming, thorns cutting into cheeks, eyelids, eyeballs, but never deep enough to kill the remnant. The crew didn’t stick around to find out, but David knew from the way the remnants shifted with their cries and desperate attempts to free themselves, they’d die by a thousand cuts.

  A giant tree blocked their path, and Laoko chopped around it. Dao and Caera followed close, chopping and cwing nearby remnants. Remnants were squishy and weak, but a dozen were not. If they got their hands on someone and yanked, the unlucky person would get a face full of sharp branches and sharper thorns.

  Lasca hissed and chopped a remnant down with her sword. “Remnants dangerous! Kill imps and grems, all the time.”

  “Yes,” Laria said, hacking apart a remnant with her axe. “Imps and grems scavenge. Remnants only have little resonance, but better than starving. We scavenge. Sometimes make mistake.”

  Latia and Laara nodded, faces locked in hard frowns, and they chopped down remnants nowhere near them, as if out of spite or revenge. Which led to Latia snagging a wing on a branch, and she squeaked and yanked it back.

  Acelina crouched down with her and checked her wing. “A minor scratch. The membrane is not pierced.” Sighing, she patted the little dy’s head, and then thumped it. “These are not your tunnels from Death’s Grip. You must be careful.”

  “Yes. Latia’s mistake.” Latia pouted and checked her wing, too. A little blood, but nothing more.

  “I’m surprised,” Timaeus said. “Why are we working with impas and grems?”

  “They’re our friends,” David said. “They helped us in some Death’s Grip tunnels.”

  “They’re not exactly reliable.”

  Lasca turned, marched up to the much, much bigger demon, and gred up at him.

  “Las reliable! We strong. Beat angels.”

  “Beat angels?”

  “She exaggerates,” Moriah said, and she set her ruby eyes on the tiny demon. “Do not test the truth, mini demon.”

  Mini demon. David looked back and ughed.

  And caught his arm on something long, thin, and white, a fabric that wrapped around his limb and stuck to it like a fucking burdock seed. Sharp. It did more than wrap him. It cut into the skin, stabbed into it, and refused to let go. He yanked on his arm, but it went nowhere. The thing wrapping him cut into his skin, and he opened his mouth to scream.

  He didn’t scream. He took a deep breath and fought to keep his conscious thoughts above the panic, like kayaking water rapids. Blood dripped along his arm, a hundred tiny lines turning red, some deep enough to run little streams of blood down to his elbow.

  “A fallo spider’s web,” Caera said. “I’m surprised you didn’t yank your arm back.”

  “So am I.” Because every instinct inside him was screaming to do just that. On another day, he’d have been happy with himself. Right now he stared at his arm wrapped in extra fine, white fishnet stocking, and tried to ignore how much he could feel each strand cutting into him.

  The Las approached and stared. “Dangerous,” they said together, eyes wide.

  “Very,” Laoko said. “Do not move.” She joined him, looked around, and cut a few branches. The threads were skinny, invisible in the fog and darkness, but they loosened as their base branches crumbled. “There is a reason other provinces do not collect this thread, and it is not the fallo spiders themselves. They are manageable. But the thread is complex, and if you stumbled into a net of it, it would cut through a struggling human soul in minutes. Even demons can find themselves trapped if they collide with multiple overpping webs.”

  “Fucking christ,” he said. “S’like… death by pushing through razor wire. Super tiny razor wire. Vos work with this?”

  She nodded. “They are skilled. No one in our province can manage the web, and even if we could, it takes precise fingers and exact minds to work it.”

  Daoka clicked once, stood with David, and got to work. Fine cws slid along the sharp, prickly threads, and under groups of them like pushing a thumbnail under an orange peel. Pop pop, the threads snapped, cut by her cw, and the web fell off once she’d cut a straight line from wrist to elbow.

  “Thank you,” he said, leaned in, and kissed her cheek. She chirped at him, returned the kiss, and gestured ahead with some clicks. “Okay, yeah, I guess I’ll stay on the path. I mean, I was on the path. I only strayed a foot.”

  “A foot too far,” Jes said, wearing a sassy grin. “Precious unmarked, destroying entire regions, but can’t handle some fallo thread.”

  He held up his arm. It looked like someone had drawn a super, super fine fishnet pattern on with red pen, and a few more drops of blood fell from his elbow.

  Jes ughed and gestured past the web. Sure enough, half hidden in the bck and white gravel ground, a collection of bones blended in. Human bones.

  “Hellbeasts hunt humans just as much as demons,” she said. “You know demons don’t bother killing hellbeasts; they got no resonance for us to eat. But they hunt us. We all gotta worry about this shit.”

  “And, um, fassi spiders?”

  “They do not use webbing,” Laoko said. “They lie in wait and pounce.”

  “Oh god. Lie in wait where. Under a rock?”

  The tetrad pointed up.

  Up. Fuck up. He looked up anyway, and sucked in a breath. So damn concerned with looking ahead, he hadn’t even fucking thought of it, and he sucked in a deeper breath.

  The branches above connected into a high canopy, blocking out most of what light the burning sky normally pushed through the fog. A dark forest, with thousands of sharp branches above.

  “Fassi spiders,” Laoko said, pushing ahead again and leading the group into a nightmare, “crawl on top of the forest, literally. They blend in, idle near clearings, and pounce on souls and demons who seek refuge from the sharp trees and its webs.”

  He stared at his arm. Hell was fucking cruel.

  “Amisius forest,” he said. “A child of the Old Ones lived in this forest?”

  “Supposedly,” Caera said. “Some runes I found say she was a girl, a child of Apollyon, maybe.”

  “I heard the same,” Laoko said.

  A child of Apollyon.

  “We know what those looked like?” he asked. “We’ve seen a bunch of statues of the children of the Old Ones. We know which one was Apollyon?”

  “I don’t,” Caera said.

  “I do not,” Laoko said. “You’ve seen statues of the children?”

  Caera nodded. “Deep underground. We’re pretty sure the children all fought each other, probably millions of years ago. And probably because they wanted the spires for themselves in the aftermath of the First War.”

  “I suppose it doesn’t matter,” David said. “She had to have died forever ago, if this forest is named after her.”

  “Indeed.” Laoko pushed on harder, at one point literally chopping down a tree. No issue there. She was gigantic, strong, the trees brittle, and she pushed it aside. It sent a million thorns scattering on impact. “And the factions who live here do not care about Amisius.”

  “Demons never care about history,” Caera said.

  “Why would they?” Laoko shrugged and chopped down a rge branch. Dao pyed cleanup duty, staying right behind her and dealing with smaller things the rger demon missed. “What have we to learn from our elders? They fought each other, killed each other, ate each other, and nothing has changed since the First War.”

  “I suppose,” Caera said. “I read things were different during Cain’s War. He united the spires enough to actually fight Heaven, and probably make a push for the Forgotten Pce.”

  “Our goal,” Timaeus said, half ughing, half growling and stomping nearby remnants. “But this crew expects to reach the Forgotten Pce when Cain himself and eight spires could not?”

  “We won’t be fighting Heaven,” Moriah said. “Stealth will be our alley.”

  The gorujin tetrad didn’t sound convinced. “You say angels scour the skies, millions of them. Hell is a big pce, but if they know where you’re going, stealth won’t be an option.”

  “David will have pn!” Lasca said, and she pointed a cw up at the man. “David figures things out.”

  The Las nodded and all pointed at him. He winced.

  “I… I’ll figure something out,” he said, shrugging. “Maybe I can create a bubble for us to move through under the red sea?”

  “Then let’s head inward now,” Timaeus said.

  David winced again. “I probably can’t. Some things the music can change, others it can only feel but can’t alter. Kinda like… a body. It can flex muscles, but some things are automatic, or a part of the body but dead, like hair. Air seems to be kinda like hair, so I bet the water—”

  “Uh huh.” The tetrad rolled his eyes, drew his sword, and cut a nearby branch Laoko missed. “This is a suicide mission.”

  The angel glowered back over her shoulder. “If we don’t succeed, there is a chance all of Hell will be destroyed. So unless you have a better idea, gorujin, be silent.”

  Everyone grew quiet and waited. Timaeus was a powerful tetrad, and once a bailiff of thousands of square kilometers of Hell. And a single angel, one of millions, was bossing him around.

  Timaeus smiled and nodded. Not the nicest smile David had ever seen, maybe a little sinister, but better than starting a fight.

  Something skittered in the shadow, and David spun.

  It had red eyes. A lot of them. It hid behind half a dozen bck trees, and its long legs blended into the bck. Bck spikes stuck up from its dark red skin. A dog-sized tarantu, and each foot ended in a sharp spike.

  It climbed a tree and disappeared.

  “It’s looking for a meal,” Jes said. “Probably you, David.”

  He gulped. Spiders weren’t one of his phobias, but he doubted anyone felt comfortable around giant spiders, especially ones with sharp, spiky mandibles. At least it broke the tension between the angel and demon, and the group got back on the journey.

  More spiders showed up and skittered away. A dozen appeared and skittered away. A hundred appeared, and skittered away.

  David held up a hand. “That’s a lot of spiders.”

  “They see prey,” Laoko said. “Do not get stuck in a web. Or if you’re so inclined, carve a path for us.” She gestured forward with a sword. “I am growing tired.”

  He nodded, rolled up his non-existent sleeves, and joined Laoko. “I can try.”

  “Don’t drain yourself,” Caera said. “The angels know where we’re going. They’re probably patrolling province borders.”

  “I won’t py anything loud. Just, a quiet tune, something subtle.” He raised a hand, aimed it at the endless forest ahead, and listened. The hellbeasts, the webbing, the air and fog, it all existed on the body of Hell, but wasn’t Hell. He couldn’t manipute that. The trees, on the other hand, and the ground they grew from, he could control that. And the crew didn’t need anything big, no fancy explosions or fighting of any kind. Just a nudge, a little thing, to make the walk easier.

  He pyed a simple melody and guided the song forward. The trees groaned and twisted, lifting their branches or turning them enough to get them out of the way. Too brittle to bend a lot, but sturdy enough they could bend enough.

  And suddenly, it looked like a scene straight out of a horror movie, a direct and obvious path through the dark, creepy forest, where ghosts inevitably awaited. Great for walking into the awaiting mouth of evil.

  “Thank you,” Laoko said, and she sheathed two of her four swords. “You said when you py the music, you can py with a presence? Is that happening now?”

  “No. Bending a few trees a few inches here and there isn’t a loud enough song. Whatever the presence in the music is, it doesn’t respond to really quiet music. I think she… it, can’t hear it.”

  “She?”

  He shrugged. “I’m guessing it’s Hell. Like, maybe Hell’s alive, in the music, and listening? I’ve heard her say things to me in the music, strange things. And when I py the music really loudly, I can feel her pull me down. A piece of me gets left behind, like, on the surface of water, but another piece of me gets pulled deeper into the ocean, a… simpler piece.”

  “Simpler?”

  He smiled up at her. For all Laoko’s obvious intelligence, she didn’t mind asking questions. He loved that.

  “I don’t know. I just know that a part of me gets left behind, and something a lot simpler is driving, when I’m doing big stuff. Like, all the more complicated parts about how I think about stuff, it’s all gone, left on the surface. Something a lot more… primal is left controlling me. It’s hard to do anything nuanced when I’m like that. It just wants to destroy, or save, or protect, but always in a big, sweeping gesture.” He gestured to the trees ahead. “This is the opposite. This is all me, tiny movements, little melodies and runs and scales, nudging things.”

  Laoko walked with him, but she looked back at Caera with an eyebrow raised. The tiger shrugged and smiled.

  “Don’t look at me,” Caera said. “David does what David does. We all kinda just go with it at this point.”

  He grinned back at her, walked past a tree, and reached out with a hand. A hundred sharp twigs stuck out from the branches, but a small song was enough to bend them out of the way. Barely. Some twigs snapped, exploded, and filled the silence with little popping sounds.

  “It’s… not perfect,” he said. “I could break the trees, but that’d take energy. And it’d make more noise, and—”

  “This is fine,” Laoko said. “The journey will be—”

  Caera hissed and faced left. The group went dead silent. No one moved. David stopped breathing.

  Laoko turned, faced a thicket with brush jammed together, pointed her two swords, and redrew her other two.

  “They spotted us,” Caera said. They? David couldn’t see shit.

  Laoko rumbled, and fmes danced between her fangs. “Reveal yourselves before I incinerate all of you.”

  Why David was surprised even Laoko defaulted to violence, he wasn’t sure. At this point, it should have been expected. Everyone had their weapons out, even Moriah wielding David’s old dagger, and everyone was ready for a fight.

  David reached out, pyed the silent music, and told the brush to break apart. It did, and fell apart like dust. Not easy, and it took some energy, but it was either that or Laoko torch the forest.

  Three demons and three humans stood up from behind their destroyed thicket, blinked between each other, and stared at the group from maybe ten meters away. Close enough they could have charged between a few trees and attacked, and far enough they could have snuck away.

  “An unmarked,” the succubus said, eyes wide. She wore bits of bck meera armor, a few scraps tched down with leather straps, enough to cover her breasts and privates, but hardly enough for battle. The incubus with her was in the same boat, not well protected at all. Vos from the Scar, maybe? No need for armor on the brute, and the eight-foot-tall spikeless juggernaut of muscle stood behind the two beautiful demons, tiny eyes gring ahead.

  The three humans hid behind them, two women and a man. Each had 666 etched onto their foreheads. Betrayers. Demon pets.

  Jes took a step toward them, stopped, and hissed at the sharp branches.

  “David, they’re a free meal. Open a path for me.”

  “Fuck that. We’re not going to kill them.”

  “Uh, why not? Who the fuck you think we’ve been killing when we go out on our hunting trips without you, David?”

  “I hoped you only killed aggressive demons, or Cainites, or maybe humans who really fucking deserved it. You—”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” She swung her sword and shattered a nearby branch. The three demons and three humans flinched; well, the brute didn’t. “You think we’re just gonna stumble onto nice guys out here?”

  “I stumbled onto you, didn’t I?” He gred at her and came closer, into sword-swinging distance. “It’s not like you and Dao and Caera are the only demons out there who can see past their stomachs.”

  The succubus raised a hand. “We’re seeing past our stomachs, very clearly these days. We have no quarrel with you.”

  “No quarrel,” the incubus said. “Just trying to get to the Scar and away from these maniacs running around.”

  “Maniacs?” Caera asked.

  “Maniacs! They didn’t care about the truce, and tried to eat us while we harvested silk! They cimed we were stealing from the Grave Valley.” The incubus gestured around. “Hardly.”

  David aimed a hand and told the branches, twigs, trunks, everything to move aside. He was not gentle. The trees couldn’t bend much, but that was fine. A stronger melody told them to bend too far and they snapped, creating a pathway between him and the six strangers. They covered their eyes, blocking the shattering twigs, and they all stepped back from the skinny open path David had created.

  He wasn’t stupid. Just because these demons and humans were being reasonable, didn’t mean they weren’t awful and just looking for an opportunity to stab prey in the back. Better to scare the shit out of them now.

  The humans stared at the broken trees and the spread trunks with wide eyes, and in the silence following the snapping wood, they gulped.

  “Come out,” David said, and he pointed at the ground on the path. Without a word, Laoko cut a few branches down, spreading the safe area. “Run and I’ll kill you the same way I broke those trees.”

  The brute growled and came first.

  “Not you, devorjin,” Laoko said, sword pointed. “You stay there, for now.”

  David nodded. Good pn. If the brute came first, the other five might think they had a leg to stand on, someone who could do violence. Better to get the five weaklings — retively speaking — so they would feel like they’d surrendered completely.

  Fucking christ. How easy it was to think like that, cold hard math for preparing for murder, either stopping or doing.

  The incubus, succubus, and three humans joined them on the path. While the two beautiful demons wore a bit of armor, the humans wore none. Reasonable, considering how heavy it was, and David was damn happy to not need it anymore. But they had a few pieces of leather on, loose skirts and some straps that barely covered their breasts, the shit he’d worn when he’d come to Hell and first got some clothes from Dao and Jes.

  The succubus and incubus looked like the ones he’d seen in Azailia’s spire, ridiculously sexy, beautiful, and handsome. He was tall and muscur, she was tall and curvy with a tiny waist. Both had long, skinny bck tendrils for hair, skinnier than the other demon breeds did, almost like real hair. Both had short bck horns and red skin. Both had no spikes of any kind, but did have cws on their hands and feet, and had long, skinny tails that ended in spades.

  “Names?” David asked.

  “Zazee,” the succubus said.

  “Tacharius,” the incubus said. “That’s Koralex.” He gestured back to the demon. “And this is Naoko, Fuad, and Natalie, our betrayers.”

  Surprisingly civil, even for an incubus. And from the way Jes snorted and snapped her tail, she noticed, and probably assumed it was a manipution tactic.

  Naoko looked Asian, maybe Japanese, and was a skinny, dainty little thing with hair to her shoulders. Fuad looked Middle Eastern, with short hair, a full beard, and decently muscur, tall, and lean. Judging from the gre in his eyes, he’d been in Hell longer than the other two. Natalie had short red hair and freckles, average height, and an average but healthy build.

  Thank god for the Estian nguage they were all speaking.

  “Which group did you run into?” Laoko asked.

  “Telmer’s,” Tacharius the incubus said. “We were avoiding the angels, had to run deeper into the forest, and Telmer was waiting.”

  Laoko snarled. “Of course. The deluded bastard is convinced he can wrestle the spire from Azailia, and he cares not for the Scar or Tarkissa.”

  “I vote we avoid Telmer then,” David said. “All in favor?” Everyone raised a finger. “Wonderful. Thanks for the information.” He nodded to the five, and took a half step toward the path, but the incubus stepped in and held up a hand.

  “You’re an unmarked?” Tacharius asked. “You’re truly unmarked? Are you involved in the war?”