Page 69 of A Serpent in the Garden

I can’t see Fang. I struggled to my feet and up to the bars. It makes me sick to even think about it. I can’t handle actually walking inside.

I felt It waffling, biting back my lip; he wanted out of this room but didn’t want to terrify me in the process. Fury’s all right?

I thought about the laughter, the revelry. The admittedly horrific violence, but nobody got torn apart by beasts there; nobody hung from walls like ghoulish works of living art. And Its uncle was there…I couldn’t refuse him that. I could close my eyes and pretend I were in a tavern for the first time in my life. Don’t get caught. Please.

He was on my feet, flinging open a dusty wardrobe, and digging for a cloak before I could blink. “Fury,” It called over my shoulder to Valic. “I want to see Radax.”

“We’ll have to go the roundabout way. I don’t want to pass through the antechamber with you. Even in that cloak someone with a big mouth might see you. Nobody in Fury will talk but we’ll still have to be quick about it. It’s one thing to knock out your guard because I wanted to see you but I don’t want to get tossed in a Frost cell over a field trip.”

“Scared of my mother?” It asked, turning to face his brother, pulling a hood up over my head.

“I’d be a fucking fool not to be,” Valic said, as It rummaged through a chest of drawers and unearthed a few pairs of wool socks.

So you don’t freeze on the Frost staircase, It said, when I wondered vaguely what he was doing.

The hallways were cumbersome. The hood may have obscured my identity but my height couldn’t be disguised, and though It kept my face angled away from the demons coming and going from their own apartments, their stilted footsteps and loud, curious silences had me worried.

There are demon children who live here, Des, It said, and not every demon is tall. We’ll be fine.

That was all very easy for him to say, I thought as I paced his well-worn steps in the cell of my mind. It wouldn’t be he who died if his mother decided we’d caused enough trouble.

The hallway dead-ended into a flight of stairs. With It steering, the steep decline didn’t slow us down much. You’ll hear more screams soon, he warned, when tendrils of glowing orange crawled like fingers across the stone beneath our feet. We have to pass Flame, and that’s the loudest circle of them all.

He hadn’t been lying.

A blinding, red-gold inferno, an orchestra of screams above the crackling and popping of the flames. Blood and fire and scorched meat blasting into my nostrils. A world of black and flames; my eyes had little time to adjust to see much else as we passed by, and long afterward, bright spots of orange swam across my vision.

Up the next staircase, which grew colder after a time, frost spreading across the walls like gangrene. I was at least a few steps removed from the bitter chill as we approached Frost’s silent landing, and It spared it no glance as we passed.

Laughter tumbling down to meet us as we continued our ascent, the echo of the bonfires spreading across the stone walls. We turned onto the landing and into Fury, where a pleasure that wasn’t mine burst into my heart. Even beneath the archway, it was fever-hot, enough to make my head rush. The swirl in my brain and the joy I felt from It were enough to knock me breathless, lightheaded on the precipice of a Hell that clearly wasn’t, not for him.

My eyes started streaming as soon as we entered, overwhelmed by the heat, the smell, the smoke. I could taste the bloodlust in the air, the fresh wounds, the sweat brackish on my tongue. Squeals of pain, ripping flesh, battle cries and primitive howls of victory bled into the backbeat of the demon revelry. A carnival of gore and bruises and gushing, pulsing wounds, and the only winners were the demons.

These were men who beat their wives, sweetheart, It said grimly, sparing a contemptuous glance at the damned. People who beat their children. Violent bandits, lords who kept slaves. Don’t spend your pity here.

What is it the demons bet? If you’ve no use for coin?

Bragging rights. Unpleasant chores, stupid stunts, work shifts. Anything, really.

Keeping close to Valic, It scrutinized the crowds of demons, the naked, fighting humans fading into the background. Despite having skin of all colors, they looked identical from behind, strapped with weapons, close-cropped hair. There were women too, some with shorn scalps, some who wore their hair slicked-back and secured with bits of leather string. I had never seen women like this, loud and brazen as any of the men, and I watched them with a frightened sort of awe.

And then It pulled up short on the center path and threw off the hood.

I’m told every human has a funny uncle, he said, settling my eyes upon a man with a fuzz of black hair, a body riddled with scars and backlit by a spitting bonfire. The irresponsible kind you shouldn’t leave your children alone with. Well, he’s mine. The lift in his mood turned me a little drunk with residual elation. Amusing man. Barking mad. He let us play with knives as children. Let us wrestle hellhound pups. My mother nearly killed him once when I came home with a split lip and my first gash. The wounds were already healing, but she threatened to freeze him solid, kick him over and let him smash to pieces.

“Oi!”

In the dark room of my mind, I leapt to my feet, startled, but It was unaffected by the volume of Valic’s roar. Valic slid a palm upon my shoulder as their uncle looked around in a crackle of red sparks. I expected a bit of astonishment to break across his face, maybe for his lips to round into an O of surprise. He reached us in a few long strides, the blades against his chest gleaming in the bonfires. His shoulders bulged, his coarse cheeks apple-red, cords running all over his arms.

“You took your time about it,” he yelled over the racket as his hands found my shoulders. “Almost thought you’d forgotten the way home.” He glittered in the flames as they played across his scars, both hands in my hair, slicking back the strays. “We’ve missed you.”

I wondered for a moment if It would even be able to summon words, the way my throat thickened. “I missed you, too.”

“At least you made a friend during your exile.” His uncle tipped his head to the side, as if from that angle he could find me in my cell. “Or did you compel her all the way back?”

“She needed no convincing.”

“What,” Valic shouted suddenly as he gazed off at a demon who had his hands splayed across a woman with skin so dark she shone like obsidian in the firelight, “is Belson doing with my mother?”