Beelzebub crushed me to his chest, bending his knees as I clung to him. He jumped into the air, the massive expanse of those bat-like wings spreading wide. They caught the wind as demons reached for us—for me, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt. They had no interest in Beelzebub, only trying to go through him to get to me.
His wings flapped, sending a burst of air toward the ground. The demons closest to where we had been fell to the ground as wewent airborne. Beelzebub flew even as blood dripped down from his wing to land on the ground below us, the tear in his wing forcing us to fly a crooked path. He grimaced through the pain but never stopped, taking us past endless rolling hills of deep red earth. Lost souls moved along the surface of the dirt in writhing piles. They looked like bodies, though I knew they wouldn’t have come to Hell with a physical form the way I had; they still managed to hurt and maim one another.
Lava poured down from the mountaintops, spilling out of craters at the highest peaks as chunks of volcanic rock flew through the air before falling down to the ground and crushing souls beneath it.
Fire and brimstone dominated this place, the scent of burning and charred flesh potent in the air as Beelzebub flew.
Only when we put distance between ourselves and the gate to the realm of the living did the landscape below us begin to change. Demons became less frequent, their red flesh fading into memory. The souls who remained this far from the gate wandered aimlessly, with space to move freely without the violence of another interfering.
“The First Circle,” Beelzebub said, his voice loud enough to drown out the sound of the traveling air. He stopped beating his wings, settling into a smooth glide that hitched every time he needed to move his injured wing as the silence and peace of flight overcame him.
Some of the tension left his features, replaced by a calm I’d never seen on the tense male, making him look so much less harsh. His square jaw softened as if he lived in a constant state of gritting his teeth, his red eyes roaming the ground below.
“Limbo,” I said, nodding my understanding. I hadn’t known what part of Hell the seal opened into, but it made sense that it would be the outermost boundary. While it was the circle for those awaiting judgment and sorting into the circles that claimed their sins, it was also home to those who had not swornthemselves to God but lived otherwise virtuous lives. Limbo was the least severe of the Nine Circles.
It was a circle I would not be permitted to stay in when I died because the sin of my magic would condemn me elsewhere, like all witches. We each had our home within Hell, where our magic resided like a mirror.
The ground below us became more hilly than mountainous, the ebb and flow of the land feeling more natural than the even, flat plains of red earth beneath the seal itself and the harsh volcanic peaks that surrounded the plain. A building loomed in the distance, onyx stone jutting out of the hillside. The tops of the palace were pointed like spires, reminding me of the gothic architecture of churches like Notre-Dame.
The windows at the front shimmered with the light of stained glass, reflecting off the red earth in the front. Beelzebub veered to his left in a sharp turn, gliding toward the palace. We descended slowly, crossing over the gate that lingered in the front of the building. Beelzebub shifted me, drawing a startled gasp from me as he quickly moved a hand behind my knees and cradled me in his arms.
He landed smoothly, not even pausing as he shifted into an even gait and strode toward the doors of the palace. A male demon thrust them open, his skin a darker shade of brown than Beelzebub’s medium olive.
“Beelzebub,” the demon said, stepping aside to hold the door as the archdemon carried me in. Jonathan jumped down from my hold immediately once we were through the threshold, shaking off the dust that had settled on him during our flight. He twisted his body immediately, licking at the three slash marks on his chest.
“Stop that,” I scolded him as Beelzebub set me on my feet. Squatting down, I bopped him on the nose. “Bad kitty.”
He glared up at me with his eerie purple eyes, a look of pure disbelief as he swatted at my finger defiantly.
“The cat might need stitches,” I said, interrupting Beelzebub where he spoke to the demon. Reaching out with a cautious hand, I waited until he turned to look at me. “May I?” I asked, gesturing with my chin to his injured wing. When he nodded and turned to give me his back, I wrapped my fingers around the edge, pulling it out so that I could examine the tear in the membrane. I swallowed, thinking of the cost of all the physical touch we’d both had no choice but to allow in the urgency of survival. “As might you,” I added, stroking a tender finger over the tear to brush dirt away from the wound.
Beelzebub made a sound that was half groan and half growl—anything but menacing—and turned his head to look at me slowly over his shoulder. I swallowed, pursing my lips together as I held his intense dark stare.
The other demon cleared his throat. “Should I try to send for a healer? It could take some time to track one down,” he mused, eyeing the place where I still held Beelzebub’s wing in my fingers.
I released it, taking a step back and averting my eyes. The way he eyed that touch made it feel like something intimate.
“The cat will only need a couple of stitches. You’re capable of tending to him, and do it quickly before he licks himself raw,” Beelzebub said to the demon, but his stare never left my face. I felt it from the corner of my eye, but couldn’t bear to meet it. Not when I had the distinct feeling I’d just committed some sort of fucking foreplay.
In front of another man.
“What about you, sire?” the demon asked, reaching down to scoop Jonathan into his arms. The cat hissed, sinking his claws into the male’s flesh, but the demon didn’t so much as flinch.
“I’ll manage on my own. Waiting for a healer will take too long, and the wing will heal wrong if it isn’t stitched together quickly,” Beelzebub said, shrugging his shoulders.
“There is truly no healer in Purgatory?” I asked with a sigh. I hated the very notion that we would be delayed by waiting forone, but also didn’t see a way for Beelzebub to twist his body in the right way to do it himself.
“People don’t come here hurt. They come here dead,” the demon said, answering my question with a raised eyebrow.
“How do you expect to be able to stitch your own wing? Can you even see what you’re doing?” I asked, pinching my nose between two fingers.
“Not particularly well, no, but unless you would like to volunteer to do it for me, I haven’t got much choice,” he said, the casual ease with which he dismissed help from any others taking my breath away.
“I’m no healer,” I argued, raising my gaze to glare at him finally. He smirked at the ire in my face, that weird response I always got when he finally pushed me past my limits. “Is there no one else who can do it?”
Beelzebub pursed his lips, seeming to think over the question before he finally answered. “No one I trust not to fuck it up intentionally. I don’t care to have to tear it open all over again, and you’ll quickly learn that asking favors of demons comes at a price that is often far worse than the initial problem,” he explained, pausing as if choosing to give me a moment to allow that information to sink in. “Satanus and Asmodeus will be here shortly!” he called to the demon who’d greeted us. He turned his back, gesturing for me to follow him as he made his way to the stairs.
“I don’t know how to do stitches,” I admitted, following after him. In Hollow’s Grove, his presence had felt dangerous, but here, it was a comfort. He was the one familiar thing I had to cling to when my entire world had been torn away.
