But I had to keep going for Lilith.
Wait, no, Eve. Eve was the one I was doing this for,notLilith.
Lilith.
Her name filled my mind until there was nothing else centering me but those two syllables and the gravity of her body in my arms, weighing me down.
I closed my eyes for the longest time. It was Lilith’s blood-curdling screams that snapped me back into awareness, and that’s when I realized I had stumbled and dropped her in the mud. Both of us must have dozed off.
“Lucifer! Something’s got me!” Her voice splintered with panic, and she flailed through the mud, reaching for me.
Something was dragging her down!
I stumbled through the mud toward her, sheer terror driving me forward. I couldn’t lose her. I couldn’t let anything take her away from me. I didn’t let Abaddon pry her away from me. I certainly wouldn’t let any sort of foul beast that lurked in this noxious cesspool take her.
I lurched for her outstretched hand, her cries swallowed by the mud as whatever was holding onto her dragged her down below the surface. My fingers grasped hers just in time, but she was too slippery. She was jerked out of my hold and disappeared completely beneath the surface.
“No! Lilith!”
Without a second’s hesitation, I gulped down a huge breath of air and dove beneath the surface. The Glutton’s Mire wasn’t like any swamp, bog, or mire on the surface. This place was filled with more than mud. It was completely and utterly horrifying. Objects prodded me, and I wasn’t certain if it was sticks or bones, bark or rotten flesh. I wasn’t sure if it was mud or feces in my nose and ears. It all stunk like death, clogging every pore, invading every orifice, intent on dragging me down forever.
The fucked up thing was, I wouldn’t die, nor would Lilith. We couldn’t suffocate. The mire would simply swallow us whole, and it would serve as our tomb, encasing us in bile and waste, forever to suffer that excruciating pain that was the cusp of death but to never know its merciful embrace.
And that just wasn’t a fucking option.
I grabbed onto something, and the second I touched Lilith, I knew it was her. My beast knew the kiss of her skin against mine; it knew the comfort of her touch. I pulled on her, kicking at whatever was dragging her down. Whatever it was, it wasn’t as strong as the son of God. I slammed my boot down on the arm holding her leg, and its gurgle of pain echoed through the mud.
Swimming through the mud wasn’t exactly an easy chore. In fact, it would take an act of God himself to see us to the surface. But God wasn’t here, and I wasn’t exactly one for miracles.
Through the suffocating murk, a thought reached me.
“Lucifer, the crown!”
Lilith was communicating with me through her mind. I had forgotten all about the crown I’d taken from Abaddon. The iron crown was tied to my belt because I hadn’t been able to bring myself to wear it, hadn’t wanted to wear it. But now wasn’t exactly the time for modesty. With one hand still clamped firmly around Lilith’s wrist, I shoved my other down through the sludge toward my hip and ripped the crown free of its leather tie, securing it to my belt.
“Place it on your head, command them! If they recognize you as the King of Hell, they will obey!”
All sorts of hands were now groping at us.
Bleeding Almighty, I had walked us straight into a tangle of souls. And these ones were more lively than the random body parts we’d waded through on the outskirts. They tore at us without mercy, and it took every burning fiber of my strength to pry my arm up through the mud despite the creature clinging to it and shove the crown on my head.
“Listen to me, creatures of the Underworld. Release us! I am your king, and you will head my command.I am your new king!”
My command was hardly more than inaudible gurgling through the thick sediment, and for a long heartbeat, nothing happened. Everything fell still. Then the hands released us. Something rose up beneath our feet as if the very floor of the mire was lifting us up, mud bubbling all around.
We broke through the surface, and suddenly, the putrid air wasn’t so putrid. It filled our lungs with sweet relief. I wrapped my aching arms around Lilith’s gasping body, clutching her tight against me.
“You’re safe. You’re fine.”
Lilith’s gaze dropped to our feet, and her jaw fell. “Lucifer!” I followed her gaze to see what it was that had lifted us out of the mud. The scene was horrifying, almost enough to make me wretch if I had anything left in my stomach.
We had indeed waded through a tangle of decayed souls that had somehow become fused together in one big, terrifying mutant of a creature clothed in tatters of ancient garments, shreds of loose flesh, and dripping filth. It began to move through the mire at an incredible speed, carrying us through the wastes at a pace I could have only dreamed of on foot.
“Where is it taking us?” Lilith asked, clinging to me.
“I don’t know.” I shook my head, my attention on the passing corpses of the gluttonous as they blurred by. They moaned a disturbing symphony of wails and screams that clawed under my skin, shaking me to my very core.
Here in Hell, I had grown accustomed to all sorts of terrors that I could have never had imagined in my wildest nightmares. My heart settled at the pit of my stomach, as heavy and unwieldy as the corpses that sat at the bottom of the mire like sediment.
