A man sat on a low fence that lined a shop, wearing nothing but a pair of ragged shorts, boils over his head that pulsed as if they might break open at any moment. His left arm was longer than it should have been, and burns covered his right side.
I tried not to stare, but we met gazes for a moment, and something sinister crept through that connection, as if whatever was inside him was powerful enough to cross the distance and threaten me.
Kase put a hand on the nape of my neck and shoved me forward, breaking the connection.
A dark laugh came from behind us, as if the man had enjoyed the little interaction.
“Don’t you remember Hunter’s warning? Avoid eye contact, Ava,” Kase scolded.
“What was that?” I asked.
“Beings in hell like their games, and whether it’s harming someone’s body or tearing apart their mind, they don’t much care.”
I might have argued, except I still felt slime covering me from that split second of connection, and I had no desire to repeat it. I shuddered to think what might have happened if Kase hadn’t kept me moving.
“What is he?”
Kase answered, though he kept his hand on my neck so I moved forward. “It’s a spirit. Most of the beings you’ll see here are spirits that were sent to hell.”
“Why does he look like that then?”
“Because hell twists things here. The longer spirits are here, the worse they are, the more hell changes them into things like that.”
The thought that the creatures I’d seen in the town were people—or at least had been at one time—made me grateful for Kase’s grip. Hell wasn’t the sort of place I wanted to go wandering alone in.
We went to the large building, a sign hanging outside I couldn’t read. At least, I couldn’t at first. After a moment, the foreign symbols shimmered, and after a moment, I understood it. Skull Point Inn.
I frowned, glancing around, finding that each other sign did the same thing. I couldn’t read the words, didn’t understand the letters, and yet after a moment it came to me, like some old instinct.
“Can you read that?” I asked, pointed at the sign.
Grant nodded. “I studied some of the demon languages when I was in the guild. I wouldn’t want to try and write love poems, but I can get by.”
“Why isn’t anyone speaking the other language?”
“They are. Hell isn’t entirely corporeal, which means language isn’t entirely spoken. It’s more fluid, like thought exchange. The language doesn’t matter, because it’s the meaning that is passed person to…” He hesitated, then added, “person.”
Troy pulled open the door to the Inn, surveying it before moving through the doorway and letting us enter.
I expected it to be more…hellish? Medieval? Instead, the inside look like a strip club, without the neon lights. Flames danced along the rafters to light the place, and tall tables and booths were set throughout. Center columns sat with people dancing on them, dressed in very little.
There were both women and men, but I didn’t feel the desire to give hell credit for gender equality in this. A woman was on one closest to the door, wearing nothing, her skin a deep purple, and with black horns that went from just above her temple to curl back, like a ram’s. Her nipples were black, matching her lips and nails, and a tail went from just above her ass, tipped with what looked like a black arrowhead.
She moved gracefully, reminding me of a rattlesnake—movements smooth but no doubt lethal.
Others sat around where she danced, leering, drinking, laughing.
If it weren’t for the monstrous beings there, I would have thought I was in any seedy strip club or bar back home.
Not that I had been in many, but I watched TV.
“He’s not here,” Troy pointed out.
“Let’s grab a seat and wait.” Grant nodded at a booth near the back.
We piled in, with me sandwiched between Kase and Grant, Troy at the end. They offered vicious looks to anyone who risked glancing our way, but it seemed to keep anyone from coming closer.
A waitress approached, and it was funny that she had the same tired expression all servers had. It seemed service jobs were the same no matter where a person was.
Grant ordered for everyone and tossed what looked like small pieces of bone on the table, which she scooped up happily.
At my look, Grant shrugged. “I’ve been to hell a time or two before.”
“Why?”
“There are some ingredients for spells you can’t get anywhere else. Plus, come on, look around.” He gestured to one of the other dancers, this one a male.
The man was lithe, his fingers longer than a human’s, tipped not with black like the woman’s but with flames. In fact, fire danced over his entire body like a pet, moving along his arms, down his spine, over his hips. He grasped the pole at the center of his platform and arched backward, and the sudden warmth in my cheeks outed me for never having spent much time in a strip club before.
Grant chuckled, then elbowed me. “They’re pretty good at controlling those flames, and a burn or two is a very worthwhile risk.”
I muttered beneath my breath, calling him a man-whore, and trying to pretend I was not at all jealous.
Food and drinks came, but before I took a sip from the cup set before me, Grant picked it up and sniffed it. He dipped a finger in, then whispered a few words. The liquid on his finger glowed blue, so he pushed it back toward me. “It’s safe. Well, safe enough. It won’t kill you, at least.”
Somehow ‘won’t kill you’ seemed like the best I’d get in hell.
I took a drink of whatever was in my cup and promptly coughed it back up. It felt like acid going down my throat, some strange and all together bad mixture of liquor, cinnamon and peppermint.
Grant slapped
