Page 63 of A Serpent in the Garden

I caught only a flash as we passed the open stone archway, a loud blast of horror, but that was more than enough. Dense air heavy with sweat, the tang of blood, the crack of bones and an unearthly, terrible scream rising above all the limp moaning. Lit by an absurd number of torches, as if the demons wouldn’t like the damned to miss a thing. Bodies shackled to the wall like sconces or some macabre decoration. The sound of flesh tearing as a hellhound ripped into a flabby stomach like it were butter and unspooled a nauseatingly long link of intestines in a shower of gore, blood freckling black fur. Tangles of lurid, naked human flesh. Long, lean demons striding about with inhuman grace. A sheet of smooth copper hair obscuring the face of what had to be a succubus bending over the prone form of a beseeching man; it looked as though she were speaking to a lover but she held a black whip which graded into red the closer it got to the ragged end, and just before I shuddered away, she flicked a glance up at my face. Scarlet eyes and lips to match, one suggestive eyebrow lifting in the split second we spent looking at one another. A little cat smile pricked the corner of her mouth. Blood stippled the steel-cut arches of her collarbone like a rash. Then she was gone as I kept moving.

The next staircase curved to the right, turning in ever more claustrophobic spirals, but at least the screams from Fang bled away the lower we descended. Shadows long and ghoulish flickered along the walls, flames igniting the metal of the guard’s helmet. We had the briefest spell of silence, only a minute or so as we corkscrewed down, where nothing but the crazy echoes of our footsteps gonged against the stone. The stench of blood still hung in the air but soon the sounds of raucous, reckless laughter careered around the corner.

Laughter and blood, I thought dully. These two things don’t mix.

They do in Fury.

Though it sounded far from furious. The dull, tavern-like roar swelled with every step and sounded like a party. Animal carousing, lively and wild. Light spilled like ink up the stairs, brighter and brighter until the next landing appeared around the corner like a mirage and the noise nearly blew out my ears.

I felt a throb of something almost tender that hadn’t originated from me. It stared through the windows of my eyes as if at a memory.

A great, bright rhapsody of activity, the atmosphere charged and rumbling with laughter like claps of thunder. Shouting, jeering. I stopped there on the landing for a moment in a muddle of confusion as the stench of mud and blood and ale reached out and slapped me across the face.

Sprawling and cavernous, illuminated by merry torchlight and bonfires, it may have seemed almost friendly if not for the humans, naked and sweaty, grappling each other’s slick limbs. Waves of entangled flesh, bloody mouths snapping and snarling like beasts. Rainbows of bruises, black and violet waning into phlegmy greens and yellows. Muddy pits and scattered fires and humans fighting everywhere. Demons were grouped around them, shouting and screaming and cheering, fingers funneled around their mouths as if calling insults or advice. Tankards were held in careless hands, ale sloshing and dripping to the mud, where it frothed in puddles.

As they loved to fight in life, so they’ll continue the fight through eternity, It said. Malicious people wind up here. The violent and the wrathful can tear each other apart forever for the amusement of the demons. They bet on the outcomes. Fury loves gambling. Fighting, too.

Not all the humans are fighting. I had noted many mud-slicked bodies wallowing at the edges of each pit. I had taken them for lumps of muck until a demon passing by stomped, to a gale of laughter, on one and the protuberance gave a reluctant sort of jerk.

Those who wallowed in unspent rage can continue wallowing for eternity. There are many types of wrath, sweetheart. Some spent their lives seething in silence. You see the bubbles in the mud? The breath of those who sunk so deep they’ll never have a hope of getting to the surface.

I hadn’t noticed until he’d pointed it out, but now I saw bubbles everywhere. Pop pop pop from every angle, from the corners of my eye, at the edges of the demon’s feet. Pop. Glug. How many gagged beneath the surface?

You’re looking for someone. I’d noticed the subtle way he’d been guiding my eyes.

My uncle. I spent a lot of time here with him. But I don’t see him.

They had blades at what seemed like every inch of their bodies, the demons. They wore no armor or even shirts but decorated themselves with steel, belts slung round hips and crisscrossing the hard muscles of their backs, their hair shorn close to their scalps. Each bore evidence of fighting, scars thick and ridged as adders or neat white slices. They paid not a whit of attention to those of us lingering beneath the stone arch of their circle, and I flinched when something poked me in the back.

“Move,” the green-eyed demon barked. “Unless you’d like to join them in the mud?”

I didn’t answer but I moved, guiding Jessa along with me toward the next staircase.

What finger did he jab you with, It asked idly. I want to cut it off.

You hate him that much?

He’s a pathetic asshole who doesn’t have the talent to work in a circle so he lords what little power he’s got over whoever he can, he reeled off. I don’t love the damned but that’s hardly a reason to knock them around the antechamber. And he’s not even good at his job if we managed to get to Jessa in the first place. He accused me of murder not long before I was cursed and I gave him that scar across his face.

Murder?

Do I need to say it? he huffed. I didn’t kill anyone.

The temperature grew colder during the descent. The torch flames shivered in icy drafts; the stone walls gradually began to glitter with frost. Gooseflesh coated my exposed skin and it wasn’t long before the rest of me pricked up with it, too. My teeth started to chatter well before the noise of any Frost activity floated up the staircase. But we had been descending for a while, hadn’t we? Why had no sound reached us yet?

You won’t hear noise from Frost. The damned are denied even the release of weeping in that circle.

The cold felt like needles; needles or knives or fire tearing through my thin layer of insubstantial mortal flesh. The kind of cold that sank into marrow, nestling deep. A bitter chill I didn’t think I’d survive much exposure to.

I doubt they’ll let you freeze.

That seems the most elegant solution. I won’t last fifteen minutes in there. I’ll drop dead and Jessa will be free.

Jessa would be free, but her power may be forever weakened. She might never know the scope of her own magic. It forges a strange bond, when a demon’s true name is known to a mortal. She’s vulnerable now in ways demons rarely are, and if you die in there from spite that bond will turn on her somehow. You’ll release the girl once you and I are separated. That’s your barter. It’s the only play you have, and it’s a good one.

But she’ll never be truly free if I know her name.

Do you plan on ever using it to bring harm to her? To make her do anything at all?