Page 87 of A Serpent in the Garden

I’m sure that would go over very well. I tried to picture myself living here; failed miserably. It was like incorporating a soppy, frilly-dressed girl from a portrait into a hellscape.

We’ll figure something out. I’m not going to let villagers with pitchforks kill you, I’m not going to let you wander around out there without knowing where you are. Let’s just… he trailed off like he had a headache, like he’d gotten much more than he’d bargained for. He’d expected to tease me about a dream but wound up with arguments and almost-tears. Why don’t you just go back to sleep, it’s the middle of the night. We don’t need to plan anything right this second. I can feel how exhausted you are.

I tried, but I couldn’t fall back asleep.

It had to be before dawn when I finally dragged myself up and out of Remy’s bed, thinking there was hardly any point in flopping around for a few more hours.

Remy was more careful with me than usual, as if he expected me to burst into floods of tears at any moment. He said little as I washed up (which in itself was rather startling; since arriving at Hell, he’d tried, with the limpest of suggestion, to get me to tilt my head this way or that, to drop my chin so he might have a better view, laughing when I never budged, drawing back from his window in cheerful defeat) but while I stood at the looking glass in his washroom, combing through my wet hair, I felt him looking back.

You’re quiet, I said, staring into my own eyes.

Just thinking.

It must be terribly hard for you, if you need utter silence to do it.

I don’t think, he said, and here I could hear him try his best to sound his most demonic, I’d let you get away with saying such things if you weren’t so pretty.

I stopped being afraid of you a while ago.

He made a dismissive gesture up there in his cell. I don’t think you ever truly were. You’ve always had a bit of a mouth.

That wasn’t right, though. I must have been a little afraid; why else had I always pictured him as a beast? And when, exactly, had I turned those talons and claws into hands; when had the forked tail disappeared, the wings melted away? I couldn’t recall.

I felt him watching me as I began a braid at the back of my head.

I wonder if you would do something for me, he said as my hair slid through my fingers. It might be hard for you.

In the mirror, one of my eyebrows dipped low. What is it?

I want to go to Fang.

I thought it was a joke for a second or two, though I felt no humor in his words.

My lips parted as my hands fell away from my hair. I shook my head, momentarily too stunned to answer. And when I was about to argue, he said, I want you to see John Dale. I want you to know he’s where he belongs. I can tell you that he is, but you won’t believe it until you see him. If he’s there it’s because he gave a full confession up in a judgement session.

A one-second flash of Fang had been more than enough for me. Its laughing, bloody aura, sparkling torches and screams, the bodies shackled to the walls, hordes of flesh, ash-white succubi with smiles like open wounds—no. Remy—

I can block your ears.

But I can’t just wander around alone. Wouldn’t someone stop me?

It’ll be quick. In and out. The crowd in the antechamber will be at its thinnest so early in the morning. There would be a guard at the door if we weren’t allowed out of this apartment.

I grimaced at myself in the mirror, unconvinced.

Some part of you still wonders that I might have been wrong about him, and it’s no good denying it, he said, when I’d been about to interrupt, because I can feel it whenever his name is mentioned. I won’t make you go, but I want you to. To let you leave here thinking I’m some monster, that I did it for some sick pleasure of my own—I don’t want that.

Had he not sounded so earnest, I probably would have refused him. It felt as if he were undoing me, unwinding me string by string, tatters collapsing around me until all that was left was a helpless yes.

The moment I agreed, he elbowed me aside and took control. In seconds we were out the door of his apartment, off and moving down the hallway, torches streaking past in orange blurs.

A thin straggle of damned milled in the antechamber, but if they called out to me, I didn’t notice, cosseted away in my own mind. My hearing bled away until nothing perforated the fog. My feet, under his control, were sure and quick as they descended the spiral stair, and though I couldn’t hear it, I felt the dull roar of noise from Fang vibrating beneath my boots.

A minute later, he pulled me up short on the landing beneath the archway.

Fang was a confusion of blood and flesh and merry light. The air was stuffy and close, smelling of sweat and metal and fear, the musk of hounds. Steel flashed from every corner. Firelight danced over naked skin. Hounds prowled and demons stalked. It was as gruesome as I remembered. Perhaps more so, for the newest decorations that even Remy seemed surprised by.

Pallid figures swinging in midair, their toes a few feet off the ground. Their heads lolled but their limbs jerked horribly, monstrous marionettes caught in some vigorous dance. Their bodies were oddly loose, as if every bone had been dislocated. I followed the leather straps which coiled around their wrists and ankles up to colossal iron chandeliers overhead that had been pulled and shaped into elaborate whorls and coils. Perched like carelessly elegant nymphs upon each chandelier was a pale-skinned, red-lipped demon, eyes flaming in the torchlight. In their hands, cross braces that controlled the damned.