Guardians (Chosen Trilogy Book 2) (17 page)

Ken wanted to shield his eyes, but the horror of it all would not let him.
Naked forms lay everywhere, their limbs entangled with snakes’ bodies, held and wrapped in such a way that they were rendered immobile, effectively tied, the snakes being their bonds. The humans could not move a muscle, but screamed in agony, their bones, sinew and very flesh crying out for relief from the terrible positions. But they would not be given relief or shown mercy, and they would never die, the torture was forever.

Ken felt his courage
dwindling. The quest was now hopeless. Even though they had snagged both artefacts, one was in the hands of a young girl they’d just met; a young girl from hell. And the other was buried somewhere, at length to be found by the hierarchy demon that would be drawn to it.

What next?

Eternal torture and damnation. This wasn’t a damn prison they were trying to escape from. As if to clarify, the road ahead dipped slightly and Ken found himself at the rim of a fire pit, a dazzling, simmering volcano. Lava boiled and popped at the surface. Sulfurous gases writhed lazily through the air.

Around the far side of the fire
pit he saw a platform clinging to its side, barely raised three feet above the boiling hot magma. Dementia shoved a claw into his back.

“Walk around the rim. Meeeet your fate. Meet Luciferrrrr.”

Ken’s legs almost locked up. It took every ounce of his will to make them inch forward. The rim was narrow, barely a meter wide. Molten rock flicked and splashed over the edge. Ken fixed his eyes to the path, swallowing hard. The going was grim, requiring all his concentration. As much as anything he prayed that the demons holding his friends would not slip. So far, they’d been anything but reliable.

His flesh burned. Sweat ran from his brow to his face and dripped off his chin in rivulets. His entire body was coated. As he rounded the
fluctuating, precarious edge he began to distinguish a little more detail of the platform.

It was much more than that, and much bigger
than he’d thought. It was an enormous shelf of rock, seven-tiered and adorned with all manner of nefarious features only the Devil himself could imagine.

Thirteen black altars stood in a semi-circle around the first level, their
slabs having to endure the human sacrifice that had been tied to the top. Blood ran freely from many puncture wounds, flowing along grates and funneling around so that a red shower sprayed constantly over the hot pit, crackling and snapping as it came into contact with the lava.

As for the other levels, they only became more and more depraved. Ken eyed each one as he drifted closer. No one forced him ahead; it seemed nobody, even Dementia, wanted to hurry to the next part of the journey.

The final part.

Ken’s eyes rebelled, mutinied, involuntarily closing to block out the horrors and almost sending him over the side. With a
heavy winch of deep, deep courage he forced them open again.

T
he horrors remained.

T
he second level was full of torture devices, every one of them in use with lines of pitiful humans waiting dejectedly for their turn. Once broken, battered and almost dead, they were returned to the back of the line to be repaired and returned to the queue.

On t
he third level, humans, demons and other creatures were partly walled up, their rear halves set into the rock wall and their front halves hanging over troughs filled with leaping fire, spitting snakes or jumping spiders the size of dinner plates. Other horrors lurked in the troughs: flesh-eating parasites, tiny worms that sought out ear and eye sockets, and tethered bats that flayed flesh from bone.

On it went. The fourth level was overflowing with men
that had been fused to men, head to head and head to back; women that had been fused to women the same way, and then in threes and fours until one being didn’t know which arm was their own and which leg would move for them.

The fifth and sixth levels were made up of the roasted ones, those condemned to burn in hellfire and then be put on show for all the masses to see, their sinful flesh burned away and their corrupt eyes boiled from their sockets. They stood there until they
were healed, and were then doused among the fires again. The lowliest circle of hell was reserved for rapists, child killers and paedophiles. It was the one thing Ken and the Devil agreed on.

And finally, as he passed under its shadow, Ken got a look at most of the seventh tier. In truth, its purpose was not hard to make out. It was the lair of Satan, the Devil.

An enormous throne sat up there, obsidian, its arms carved into obscene figures. To its left and right rose high pillars, similarly carved and topped with obelisks. Behind and around its huge frame, demons and humans had been nailed to the rock wall in the inverted crucifix position, their mouths sewn shut to ensure they suffered their eternal torment in utter silence. Along the floor lay many forms of demon, all prostrate or on their sides, faces down. Even the steps leading up to the throne had trails of fire carved into the sides, fire that ringed the whole tier, leaping higher occasionally as if in sport to cook the legs of even more humans and demons that hung from gallows above.

Ken gaped. He shuddered in terrible awe. He stared with eyes tainted forever and fought with all his might to hold onto his faculties. Never
—never in a hundred years could he have expected this. The pain, the suffering, the degradation and dishonor. In that moment he regretted everything.

Aegis. The Chosen. Miami Beach. This outrageous trek through
hell. Even Felicia; he even regretted her.

Then
a trickle of hope worked its way through the cloying mud. The tiny voice.
Her
voice, thin but tough.

“Stay strong
,” Felicia said. “Be confident that there is a future for us yet.”

Ken turned, saw her squashed
-up face near his shoulder, the way she was crammed harshly into the tiny box. He saw the leering demons and Dementia’s pitiless face. And then he knew—unbelievably, he was still in the right place at the right time. The game was still on, everything to play for.

“You will run free again
,” he said.

And turned
. . . .

To face Lucifer.

Ken’s heart almost stopped.

As he was led forward, a figure appeared. It seemed to glide out of the shadows at the back of the throne, moving swiftly until it stood on the lowest step. As Ken was pushed up to the throne tier itself, sent among the penitents, the sufferers and the worst of the damned, passing so close to the roasted ones that he could feel the appalling heat radiating off their crackling bodies, spattered by the endless shower of blood, picking his way through curled-up bodies, the staggering truth overrode everything.

He was face to face with the Devil.

It was said that Satan could adopt many forms, and often did. But today he was all of them. The shape in front of Ken flickered rapidly—shifting from a tall man clad in black to a gigantic, terrifying serpent, tongue flickering and eyes blazing with hate; from the horned-devil visage to the bowler-hat wearing businessman; from a bare-chested, fury-filled drunk to a spectacular dragon, rearing back with wings fully spread and fire jetting up from a mouth the size of a building. Every few seconds the Devil transformed his image, but the words that came out of his mouth were stable and strong.

“You seek to thwart me at this, our eleventh hour. It has been thousands of years in the making, millennia in the planning. A
nd you, puny man, seek to obstruct your future master? The eternal fires of damnation are too good for you. I will watch you all torn to pieces for my pleasure.”

Ken braced himself, looking to left and right. Nothing moved. Only the Devil could issue orders around here, and it seemed he hadn’t done so yet.

“Where are the artefacts?”

Ken cringed. He really didn’t want to talk to the Devil. The sound of his friends being brought to the tier still in their cages
didn’t help matters.

The Devil read him easily. “You are afraid. It will only get worse. You are mine now. And I will find the artefacts without your help. Spare yourself more agony and tell me now.”

“I’d rather die,” Ken said finally.

“Die?”
the Devil returned. “Die? We have no death here. Only suffering.”

Dementia stepped past Ken for a quick second. “Your daughterrrr hassss one artefact, my Lord.
He
had the otherrr. Must have hidden it near the house on the hill.”

Fury raged from the Devil, fires leaping from all his hundreds of mouths. Ken barely noticed it as he tried to wrap his head arou
nd the demon-bitch’s words.

Daughter? What
—?

“Lilith is your daughter?”
he blurted. “For real?”

The Devil ignored him. “We can track the artefacts by using the
hierarchy,” he blazed at Dementia. “But it will take time.
I will not wait! I will reduce their world to ashes!
”

He swung back to Ken.
“
Where are the artefacts?
”

It was a devastating bellow, rampant with
hate and anger, so strong it pushed Ken back a few steps. Ice paralyzed his entire body, the chill of pure terror.

“I
. . . I told Lilith to—”

“No!” Eliza and Milo cried, and Felicia shouted at the same time. “Say nothing.”

The Devil, instead of acting crazy, merely turned and plucked the head from the nearest supplicant. As he drank from the upended skull he fixed Ken with a speculative glare.

“Solidarity? Camaraderie? I find the notion repulsive, but quaint. A human condition, if I am not mistaken. ‘Fight to the last man’,” the
Devil mocked. “‘Leave no man behind’.”

The serpent screeched. The businessman doffed his hat. The drunkard struck out with hard fists. The dragon roared. All in a split-second.

“Then fight you will,” the Devil said in a surprisingly quiet voice. “It will not take long.”

He ordered that Felicia and the vampires be released. As they stretched and moaned he trod the stairs to his throne and took his seat with a flourish. A black-robed priest now, he stared over his domain with patient reverence.

“All mine. Everything you see. My own work. Cast out from heaven, a fallen angel, I started with nothing. Now, I have conquered worlds. Every demon in my hierarchy is a former priest. Do you see the depths of my vengeance? Do you? I will have vengeance on all of you and the rest of the so-called Chosen, but first we will allow you to enlist in our favorite sport.”

Ken helped Felicia to her feet, supporting more of her weight than she could on her own. He wanted to say
increasing energy bills
or
investing in the people’s future
, and was quietly pleased to realize his sense of humor had returned. It felt good, having Felicia, Eliza and even Milo at his side.

“Initiation
,” the Devil said.

Dementia and her demons moved away, leaving the tier to its original inhabitants and the Aegis team. Ken still struggled with the concept of Lilith being the Devil
’s daughter and the thousands of questions it raised. Chiefly . . . why was she trying to escape?

“You will fight. In a knock-out tournament. Aegis versus the
lords and bitch-queens of hell. The winner—” a shrug, “—if it is one of you. Gets to go free.”

“How do we know that?” Eliza asked.

The Devil shrugged again. “I am a man of my word.”

Ken gawped. Was that humor? Or a bare-faced lie? It had been said with the same tone and commitment used by clever liars all over the world.

“Can we use our weapons?” he asked.

“Whatever you came here with.”

Ken tried not to reveal an ounce of emotion. His sword—the so-called Lionheart blade—had once killed the Devil. Soon, it would be back in his hands.

The Devil stepped down from his throne. “Let the games begin.”

*

Lilith
fought against weariness, longing and terrible guilt. Her new friends had been captured, and even now might be dead or being tormented. Her clever lifeline out of this place had been severed. Now, alone, she found herself yet again struggling through the desolation and decay up toward the surface.

The artefact was secure in her belt. This thing had so much meaning for the humans, so much significance. It had been the tone in Ken’s voice alone that had resolved her mind, not to mention the look of desperation on his face.

She would take it to Miami and seek out Aegis, and then she would disappear. And hope that Aegis defeated her . . . her father.

How could she think that way? That creature, that form of ultimate evil, surely could not be her father. Why hadn’t he tried to corrupt her? To force her into his evil ways? What was his agenda?

Lilith knew only one thing for certain. She could never see her mother again.
To save and help the ones we love,
she thought,
we sacrifice our own needs, our own desires. We fuel their own.

Well, she could not be close, but she could help in the only way she knew how
—by keeping her distance. Maybe . . . if Aegis won the day . . .

Maybe.

Lilith crawled and crept upward, through all the hells. The constant fear of the searching Samael hung over her like a guillotine. If the constant changes in direction had any plus side, though, it was that they would throw the demon king off her track.

Miami sounded good. She
’d always wanted to go there.

But still, the schemes and plans of her father, the ploys and intrigues he used to manipulate and influence all living things, crawled like a parasitic warning across the base of her skull, scuttling on spindly legs, warning her that even this was part of his diabolical plan.