Darkness & Lies: A Brotherhood Novel (#1) (31 page)

He’d never thought Persephone would show herself to a human let alone interfere with his
 
space. Why should he? She’d never done so before. Seph was more a spectator in the human
world. She
hated getting
her hands dirty,
and she abhorred interacting with anything she considered b
e
neath
her.

Why she felt the need to complicate his life was b
e
yond him. Except the woman enjoyed torturing others, so that might be it.

It piqued his ire that he was going to have to do damage control over female jealousy issues. Women would forever be the bane of man’s existence. Cheyenne being the only exception, of course, but why, he didn’t know.

Christ, he was in a foul mood. After that meeting he’d had to endure with the Prince of Darkness, he’d come to two realizations: One, he would do anything for his woman, including giving up his own life to protect her. And two, after he rescued her, he was going to have to fi
g
ure out a way to break it to her that they could never be t
o
gether.

The best part of the whole deal was when Hades handed over the Helm and informed them to use it wisely. “As I always settle my debts, consider this my payment for keeping your hands off my wife.” Then he went on to say, “I have spelled the Helm. You have one shot.
One
chance to be invisible to your enemy. After that, the Helm will r
e
turn home, to me. Use it wisely for you will not get another opportunity like this.”

Erias had already made his decision. They wouldn’t use it until it was absolutely necessary. And this was ne
i
ther the time nor the place. Not just yet. From his exper
i
ence, he knew the worst of it would come
after
they got Cheyenne back. Then, they would need all the help they could get.

Slipping down another hall they passed a few cells and torture chambers. Souls being torn to shreds and rebuilt only to repeat the process. Blood, guts, and other such gore. The usual stuff. The biggest thing was to maneuver the halls silent and unnoticed.

Sliding a peek around a corner, Erias gestured to Behr. One guard stood watch at the end of the passageway in front of the very door they intended to breech.

Unfortunately, they weren’t given the time to plot out the next course of action because Kris’s bumbling idiot routine caught the attention of the eight foot, iron clad se
n
try when he slammed Erias from behind causing him to lunge forward and drop his
dagger,
which skittered across the stone floor with an echoing
clatter.

Meeting a glowing yellow-eyed stare, Erias cut an impetuous glare Kris’s way then scooped up his weapon and faced the enemy, Behr bringing up the rear in a fierce standoff.

The men had never cowered in the face of adversity
before,
and they weren’t about to start now. The ogre had a good foot and a half on both of them and about a hundred pounds more muscle, but they had taken on worse and come out fairly intact. This time would be no
different.

Hopefully. 

But the beastly man had one disadvantage that Behr
and him
didn’t. Erias quirked a smile and looked at Behr to see a similar one playing on his lips that told him he had noticed it
too.

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Erias asked him.

“Already ten steps ahead of you, old man.” Reac
h
ing over his shoulder, Behr extracted a thick metal chain from…somewhere. “Don’t ask,” he muttered as he wrapped one end around his fist, allowing the other end to hang freely, scraping gently across the stone as it swayed back and forth.

Erias admired the leave–no–prisoners stance he’d taken up
and raising
his sleeves to reveal a set of leather vambraces on either wrist equipped with throwing stars rigged to shoot at any
target; he
assumed one of his own. He mentally ran down the list of weapons at his disposal, flexing muscles in his thighs, arms, and back, feeling the curve of two blades snug against his shoulder
blades; a
bowie knife at his calf, and two Berettas tucked under his arms just inside his leather jacket…just to name a
few.

Rolling his head on his shoulders, he felt his mu
s
cles bunch under the excitement of what was to come. He was like a horse at the starting gate, ready to kick some ass.

Remembering the pale–faced Kris, he shot him a warning glare. “Stay,” he commanded, then nodded at Behr to start the ritual countdown.

The ogre, intent on crushing skulls, strode toward him, his
eight-foot 
body framed in thick black shadows. He cracked his meaty knuckles against his palms, the air of menace radiating off of him in waves. Intensely luminous red eyes burned through the dark, the only way to accurat
e
ly measure how close he
was.

Behr’s lips moved as he silently counted down. E
r
ias gripped his swords in anticipation. He felt the heat building inside
and his gums swelling with blood lust as his body prepared for the meet and greet in a way that was a
l
ways triggered by being around the demons he hunted.

As the beast closed in, Behr glanced over at Erias and glimpsed the deep crimson glow of his now demonic eyes. Being several hundred years older than he was, Erias had reached a point that Behr knew he would eventually meet but hoped he could somehow avoid.

With each
kill,
they absorbed a little bit of the evil the demons housed inside them and were brought a little bit closer to the Hell realm they served. And eventually there would be no turning back. There would come a day where all
the
members of the Brotherhood would have to return to their maker, the owner of the soul they bartered for the r
e
venge their hearts sought, and serve out the rest of etern
i
ty never experiencing the warm glow of the sun or the love of a good woman or
family.

By the way his muscles
bulked,
and his skin qu
a
vered between shades of human peach and demonic red, he could tell that Erias wasn’t far off and Behr silently mourned the loss of his
friend.

The man towered over them, the dim light flicke
r
ing over what Erias could now see was not shadows but darker than night skin, the only source of color being his deeply hateful, red eyes that fixated on each of them in kind.

Silence fell over the small group as they sized each other up; Kris’s labored breathing that told of his building hysteria the only sound besides distant moans of torture, they could hear. Behr’s only signal was that of his thick length of chain reaching out to grasp their
enemy's
neck, but
before it could get there, the demon caught it in his fist and began wrapping the chain around his fist at an alarming rate. Behr was pulled off his feet and lunged forward, tr
y
ing to regain his
footing.

In a flash, Erias could see the events unfolding in his mind’s eye before they even happened. Behr falling against the demon’s chest before he could catch himself. The demon spinning him around to face Erias, and as he reached out a hand to save his comrade, one large hand slapped down on his head and twisted.

Erias shrugged off the vision of Behr’s lifeless eyes staring back at him as he fell in a heap at the demon’s ove
r
sized feet.

He knew it was just a
vision; however, and acting fast; he
spun out, snaking
the
blade of
his
scimitar
between
Behr
as
he careened
forward
and
loped off
the
hand
th
e
demon was
about to
grab
him
with
.

Letting out a roar of pain, the demon stepped back as he brought the stump to his mouth and cauterized his wound with his tongue, giving Erias notable pleasure at yet another weakness the demon unintentionally conveyed.

He wasn’t a
higher-
level demon
who could regene
r
ate. He was a lesser on the totem. The only reason he was holding guard duty would have been because he packed one hell of a punch. Which Erias experienced as he swooped in for the kill only to be slammed back into a
wall.

He’d been hit so hard it took several tries to pull himself from to his feet.

“Are you alright?” Behr asked, having abandoned his chain in favor of a pair of heavy, elaborately carved steel swords and began hacking at the creature, driving him back through the passageway and closer to the door they’d come for.

Running his tongue over his teeth to be sure they were all there, Erias scooped up the scimitar, sheathed it at his waist and reached inside his coat, snapping the Berettas from their holster. “Never better,” he ground out, cutting a hot path down the corridor.

“We’re going to have to team up,” Behr grunted as he swung the blade at his thigh and was quickly deflected. “Come at him from both sides.”

He was tired of playing
games,
and he was sick of being in this place. With a quick lift of his arms, he leveled the barrels over Behr’s head and pulled the triggers, raining bullets on the behemoth and dropping him like a ton of lead. The stone splintered and cracked beneath him when he
collapsed.

Behr stood there; staring at the solid mass of charred flesh and shook his head in disbelief. “Or we could just do that.”

Erias wanted to laugh at the disappointment playing on his
face,
but he was too focused on the heavy steel door barring him from the hall of cells just
beyond.

Stepping over the lump of dead demon flesh, he shouldered the door open and leveled his gun inside the opening, knowing nothing but prisoners were beyond the door, but not willing to chance it this late in the game.

Tilting his head, he motioned for Behr to follow him inside. Behr waved his hand to
Kris,
who cautiously stepped out from his hiding place, looked around briefly, then nearly bolted for the
door. 
 

The smell of stale urine, blood, body odor, and d
e
cay hung heavily in the moist air, assaulting their senses. Kris covered his nose and mouth, growing even whiter when he caught sight of what lay in one of the cells—if that was even possible.

Erias scanned each of the cells as they passed, growing more anxious with each one that didn’t turn up Cheyenne. It was the last one that finally stole his breath and made his heart race.

“In here.” He grunted, forcing the
metal
bars aside. It took two seconds. One for him to see her and one for him to assess the situation and the rage to explode in his
chest.

Bursting into the room, he wrenched the slight male figure that clung to her body away and tossed his sack of bones to the floor where a horde of ravenous rats swarmed.

Directing Behr to the torch that hung on the wall, he proceeded to break the chains that held Cheyenne captive while Behr lit a flame and burned a path through the
flesh-eating 
rodents trying to consume the
man.

She was covered in blood, a mixture of her own and the unknown male he had ripped from her. A part of his brain knew the guy had been using his body to shield hers, but the other part was still wrestling with the image of someone else’s hands on her
beside
his
own.

She had small bites over nearly every inch of her body, including her face. She was small and fragile looking from the enormous amount of weight she had lost, and to top it
off; he
could smell the cloying stench of that putrid animal, Leseot coating her and knew that she had been su
b
jected to horrors that she might never recover
from.

Using his sword to break through the last chain, he pulled her into his arms as she fell limply against him.

“We need to get her out of here,” he said over his shoulder as he hoisted her into his arms.

“Um, E? I think you might want to see this.” Behr was crouched in the middle of the room hovering over the man’s body which had clearly taken the brunt of the attack. His face was gaunt, his body wafer thin and made even more wasted by his six and a half foot tall frame. His skin clung to his body revealing his ribs and spine. Even more telling, however, was the black blood that oozed from his gaping sores.