We walk for what feels like forever, bats flying from one tree to the next over our heads until finally, in the distance, the reflection of water catches my eye.
The woman runs toward it and slams into an invisible wall, bouncing back into the forest like a boomerang. She leaps to her feet, brushes off the black sludge coating her hands and tries again, yielding the same result. She’s not allowed to leave. Banished to the Black Forest, where she will wander lost for eternity, her futile attempts will be endless.
How do I know that? I don’t know how I know, but I do. I walk directly to the wall and step right through it. The massive lake, rimmed with fire, bubbles like boiling tar, popping and bursting intermittently.
Above it, a man stands on a high, pointed cliff, crying. His body launches forward, and his arms and legs flail as he screamson the way down to the water. He hits it hard and fire envelopes his body.
I’m not afraid, though. It’s like I don’t…care. My breathing doesn’t quicken, and my heart no longer pounds with fear. It all seems…normal, like I’ve always lived here in this land of sin.
I lean over the water’s edge and gaze at my reflection. My hair and eyes are the same, except for a small set of pointed horns protruding from the top of my head. I run my fingers over them before tapping their sharp, pointed tips. My skin is ashen with shadows darkening the space above my eyes like a heavy powder, and my lips are a bright cherry red, sultry and seductive. In that moment, I realize I’m naked. Clothes and modesty are pointless in hell, I guess.
Another body drops into the water and disappears into its depths. I extend my finger to one of the ripples created by a third body dropping and touch the surface of the lake. To my surprise, it feels cool to the touch, and suddenly I have the overwhelming urge to swim. I raise my claws to the sky and leap into the lake of fire.
When my eyes adjust to the darkness in its depths, bones appear before me, covering the bottom of the lake like a creek bed after the blazing hot surface bleaches them clean.
I return to the surface, lie on my back and float as another person is pushed to their death by a horned man-like creature, their souls filling the basin with chilled water.
“Little Sinner?”
I sit up and tread water.
Mastyx stands on the shore, his brow furrowed in confusion. “Get out of the lake.” He extends his hand to me. “It’s not safe.”
Not safe for him.
Again, how do I know I’m allowed? How do I know it wouldn’t drag me to the bottom, my bones joining the rest?
I swim in the opposite direction. Who does he think he is? He fucking killed me and now expects me to take his hand and walk by his side? I exit the water, the sheen of souls draining off my skin like an oil slick. I walk toward a massive empty throne. Its seat comes up to my hips, and the entire thing is made from stacked human skulls charred by fire. On either side of it are arched doorways, leading somewhere unknown.
A spine-tingling sensation encapsulates me from behind and oversized claws rest harshly on my shoulders and heat up, forcing me to the ground. I kneel before the throne as the devil steps over me and takes his seat.
I shudder for the first time since my arrival, his power radiating outward around me like a swirling tornado of fire. A long fingernail hooks under my chin, lifting it. I keep my eyes closed, afraid to look, afraid of what I may think, say, or do.
“Open your eyes, Conteeeeeeessssssaaaa.” His voice filters into my head like a hundred hissing snakes.
I force them open and find nothing but black smoke that floats away from the throne and disappears inside one of the archways. I rise and walk slowly toward it. Flames launch from torches inside the entrance, lighting my way.
The smoke drifts side to side, dancing its way down the long corridor before disappearing inside a room. When I step inside, multiple chandeliers light up with hundreds, if not thousands, of candles, illuminating a gigantic library. Rows and rows of books fill the shelves. In the center of the room, a single stool sits.
“Sssssit,” the devil orders.
I move my tail to the side, sit on the stool and gaze around the room. The smoky figure floats down a long row of books and vanishes. Water trickles down the cave-like charcoal walls, and unfamiliar symbols decorate the floors. Smoke fills the room, blinding me, and when it dissipates, a scroll sits on a tablethat wasn’t there before. Beside it is a book rimmed with what appears to be gold, held closed by twine.
“Reeeeeeaaad.”
The room falls silent and empty. The devil has given me my first task. I wonder if there will be a quiz.
I tug the twine holding the book together and open it slowly. In ancient lettering, there is one name.
Mastyx.
Holy shit, this is Mastyx history, his story. I flip through the pages, caring little about the beginning and more interested in the period from when we met to the present. When I find the page, that’s when the handwritten words change.
Contessa.
It’s about us, everything about Mastyx and me. From the time he pulled me from the car to the moment he sav—.
Wait a minute. What the fuck? It’s all right here in his own words, that fucking bastard. He never fucking saved me. Joshua did. Mastyx pulled me from the car, but he admits that by leaving me, he may have risked losing me for good and voiding the contract. But when I survived, thanks to the doctor finding me at a young age and the paramedics bringing me back, the contract remained intact. He was there the whole time, watching them save me through the flames.
