She’ll figure it out. In about five years when she’s shoving somebody up against a wall in a bathroom, this’ll all finally sink in.
I wished I could shut my brain off. Just ten seconds without having to listen to its shit.
I pushed Scout’s head to the side and bit into the artery in her neck. She moaned and rubbed against me some more.
Just drink. Don’t fuck her. Just drink.
My good intentions lasted about two swallows. Then I fucked her. Put it on my tab.
Colt
The air felt like razor blades made of fire on my skin, scraping upward everywhere at once, burning and flaying me alive. Every breath shredded my throat to ribbons, then charbroiled the ribbons to ash. Every step I took felt like the sharp edge of a white-hot tin can shoved into my foot, scooping off the meat of my heel, the ball of my foot, the pads of my toes—anything that touched down.
The Gatekeepers hadn’t followed me into the Pit, and now I knew why.
I could feel the blood running down the back of my neck, my stomach, my forehead. It pooled in the hollows of my collar bones, dripped into my eyes, slid down my throat into my stomach and lungs. Wherever it settled, I felt it immediately dry up and turn to dust.
But when I looked down, there was nothing. Other than the cuts and bruises I’d gotten from the Gatekeepers, my body was untouched. My skin still glowed just enough that I could see that the feeling of physical pain wasn’t being inflicted on me physically at all. It was a torture of the soul.
Therein lies true Hell. The soul never died and the torture never stopped.
In the little bit of light coming from my skin, I could see cells lining the Pit to my left and right, going down, down, down, into infinity. Humans, fallen angels, and other creatures laid or curled in various parts of their cells, either silent with their eyes closed or screaming with their eyes open. There were no doors. No locks. No chains. No one made an effort to leave.
White hot razors slashed at my eyes. The corneas became brittle and burnt. The fluid inside boiled until the pressure was unbearable. They were going to explode. I had to shut out the pain just for a second so I could go on.
I closed my eyes.
*****
Mikal shouted orders at the foot soldiers, pointing out my position on the second floor of the abandoned ice house across the street from Seventh Circle. Not like I was trying to hide, though. Even without whatever angel senses she had, and an immortality’s worth of experience in battle, she would’ve seen me. I had purposely skylined myself after getting off those shots.
The foot soldier leading Kathan’s security detail bolted toward the ice house, grabbed a corner of a busted-out window frame and scaled the wall. The rest of the detail fanned out, surrounding the building.
I hugged the rifle to my chest and ran for the back of the ice house, hopping over the piles of junk some hoarder had stashed up there, and trying to avoid the obviously rotten patches of floor. I wasn’t going to get away and that was fine. This plan wouldn’t work if I escaped, anyway. And even though according to the newly integrated non-person legislature Kathan would be well within his rights to retaliate, the press and paparazzi were still all over him. Executing a sixteen-year-old human in the street—who, admittedly, looked like he might even be a couple years younger—wasn’t going to win Mayor Dark any favor in the eyes of the human public, self-defense or not.
Which, Ryder had pointed out when we came up with this plan, was basically just me and Sissy saying, “Let’s hope Kathan wants favor in the eyes of the human public.”
That logic hadn’t deterred Sissy or me. This had to be done. Dad should’ve thought of it during the war, but he’d been in too much pain to think straight. He had a daughter who could banish demons from the face of the earth and he didn’t even consider using it on Kathan?
That wasn’t right. We should’ve known Dad wouldn’t have made a tactical error like that. Even out of his mind with grief and guilt, Dad never would’ve been that stupid.
This was a memory. I recognized it by the constant stream of thoughts. While I’d actually been running for the ice house’s mostly torn-out staircase the only things on my mind had been not tripping and carrying out the plan. It was later that I’d been unable to keep myself from replaying everything leading up to Sissy’s death, going over and over the things I should’ve done differently, hating myself for not having the brains to see that Dad would have tried banishing Kathan first thing if it were possible to banish him.
The security detail leader smashed into me from behind, knocking me into a wall of decomposing newspapers and books. I hit my head on something, but managed to come up slashing with the knife from my belt. Just a little game knife we’d found in the cabin, but
