Latham shakes his head slowly. “I was born into the Realm of Hell. And the people I bring here are runaways. Already Hell bound.”
“Same here,” Aric says, his gaze passing over the bizarre room with a hard line tensing his brow.
Torben stays quiet though. Latham releases me as we all turn to look back at the man who hasn’t answered.
“Yeah,” is all he utters.
“Care to enlighten us?” Aric shoves his arms across his solid chest.
The silence that slips in where Torben’s explanation should be leaves an unsettling restlessness inside me. This is bad. If a warrior of Hell doesn’t want to talk about how dark this part of Hell is, it has to be tortuous. Unimaginable horrors slice apart my thoughts with blood and gore.
The moment I turn back around to assess the wide-open span of the room, a busy chatter of noise falls across the music that I’ve only ever heard in elevators in the human world. The open space springs to life with desks of workers all typing furiously. And fax machines. I’ve never seen so many fax machines in all my life.
I didn’t think people used them any more since the age of email. It’d be quicker to send a message by raven, to be honest.
A digital dial up of an error rings louder and louder through the room, assaulting my ears and thought processes as I try to take it all in. It’s all noise layered on top of other noise.
“Take a number, please,” a woman calls out like an angry crow.
I glance at Torben. The line between his brows is so deep it looks like his head might split wide open as he rubs the spot tenderly.
“What is this place?” I ask in a hushed tone, conspiracy edging into my voice. Aliens and Bigfoot and the proper spelling of the Berenstain Bears all have to be tied together with this shit, right?
Torben shakes his head slowly like it pains him to remember.
“It’s the DGE: The Department of Good and Evil.” His words are a rumble of grunted syllables, but his gaze narrows on the desk straight ahead of us.
“I said take a number!” the woman squawks at us.
“Fucking hellhole,” Torben grumbles before jerking a little tag of paper off of a machine and plopping down in one of the many chairs that line the wall to our right. He practically dwarfs the small seat.
I quietly lower myself into the chair next to him. The plastic bites into my thighs, and an older woman at my side holds a little slip of paper in her fingers as well.
“How long have you been waiting?” I whisper to her as I shift in the hard chair.
I push my hair back to fully look at her. Her mouth hangs wide open. An empty stare straight ahead consumes her gaze. A buzzing sound flits in just as a small black fly lands on her lower lip.
And she still doesn’t move.
“She’s dead, Love,” Aric tells me casually before pushing harshly at the ash brown hair atop his head and spinning in an astounded circle to fully take in the dozens of workers typing furiously.
But ultimately… doing nothing. And helping no one.
“Excuse me!” he barks out so loudly the small blonde woman at the desk closest to us nearly jumps out of her seat.
“Yes?” she answers politely.
“Could you assist us? Get us the hell out of this fuckin’ section of Hell, by chance?” His manic gaze pins her in place, and she shakes her head, her long hair quaking as she does.
“I’m not actually qualified. Karen is the lead processor of souls. Not me.” She shrugs her delicate shoulders, and I note the fearful glance she tosses toward the woman at the desk straight ahead.
“Oh, come on,” Aric whispers rather sweetly, and the tilt of his half smile is enough to make her breath fall hard from her lips.
I fucking know it. When that deadly man smiles, my ovaries take on a heartbeat of their own. They take on a brain of their own too. And I’m left stupid and pussy pulsing while he gets anything his little black heart desires.
And he knows he has that effect on women.
“Please?” he asks with big demonic puppy dog eyes.
