Now, however, every question I asked had some open-ended answer that meant nothing to me, that left me no better off after hearing. You’re mortal so you don’t get tired for some complicated reason that makes no sense.
My foot caught something, pitching me forward when I was too distracted by my frustration to notice the rock buried in the road.
Wait… It wasn’t a rock.
A skull stared up at me, buried partly in the road and cracked at the top, as if heavy things had stepped on it for years. The eye sockets were large and empty, and it mocked me.
“There’s a skull,” I said, voice flat.
Kase came up beside me, as though he’d spotted my pause and wanted to check in. When he saw the skull, he frowned. “And?”
“Nope.” I shook my head, crossing my arms.
“Nope?” Troy walked up alongside the others until all of us stood in a circle, even Hunter, who usually disappeared for long periods of time.
“That’s right. Nope. Not doing it.”
“Doing what?” Grant asked.
“There is a skull in the road like it’s nothing. It’s too much. This is stupid, all of it.” I gestured at the skull, then around us. “There shouldn’t be random skulls just chilling in the middle of the road. I don’t care that this is hell, I don’t care what is normal here, this is ridiculous.”
The men all looked at me as if I had lost my mind, which annoyed me even more. How was I the unreasonable one when my complaint was corpse parts just hanging around. That was a basic boundary for most people, right?
Hunter answered carefully. “You’ve seen plenty of bodies before.”
“Yes, but they’re not in the middle of the road. They’re in shallow-dug graves like decent dead bodies should be. This thing has been run over for years and no one cares. Do you not understand how fucked-up that is? What sort of place do you have to be in for people to just ignore the skull in the middle of the path?”
“Ava,” Kase started to say, but I lifted my hand toward him.
“No. I’m done.”
“You can’t be done,” Grant said. “We’re stuck here until we see Lucifer, in case you’ve forgotten. It isn’t the sort of thing you get to be done with just because you feel like it.”
I walked away and yelled over my shoulder, “Done!”
Okay, so I wasn’t done forever, but I needed a moment. I needed a chance to reset again, to take back my own sense of normalcy. Damn it, I needed to feel like I was in control, even if it was just of this hissy fit.
“Ava,” Troy called out, his let’s be reasonable voice. It seemed that my hissy fit was enough for him to talk to me.
I turned and stomped my foot on the ground. “No more. No more blood mist, no more weird drugs, no brimstone or wardens or anything else.”
The men stared at me, their eyes widening, and for a moment I thought they’d taken me seriously.
Then their gaze moved up, above my head, and I realized…shit.
I turned to find a large, misshapen figure behind me. He was huge, easily eight feet tall, with fangs that dropped below his chin and skin covered in burn scars.
So I shouldn’t have walked away from the men. I remembered one of my foster mothers telling me that having tantrums never made anything better.
One point for her…
The man lifted an orb, then slammed it down, the ground disappearing beneath me as I fell into a darkness that swallowed me up, and the sounds of familiar roars distanced, grew fainter, until everything went black.
Chapter Seven
My head pounded when I came to, but my eyes wouldn’t open. It was as if my entire body refused to come to get with the program of being conscious.
Eventually, I shifted, rolling to my side, then pushing up to sitting. When my eyes finally opened, I didn’t recognize anything around me. I was inside, but it didn’t seem like a house. Plank walls and a dirt floor made me suspect some sort of shed.
On my wrist sat a steel manacle that hooked to a large metal bolt in the floor.
Which was a really bad sign.
No one woke up cuffed and thought, Yes, this is a positive turn of events. Everything is going according to plan.
I yanked at the chain, grasping it with both hands and planting my feet against the ground for leverage.
It didn’t even budge, though the metal groaned.
As my head cleared, I realized more things, and each one painted a worse picture. None of the men were around—I couldn’t remember anything after that sinking sensation—something sniffed around outside the wooden walls and the ground beneath me had big splotches of red which could only be blood.
Or someone was really aggressive with their finger painting…
Whatever stalked outside was large, and when its shadow played against the wall, it gave me a glimpse of black and red.
Why was everything black and red? It was like hell had no other colors to use.
Then again, maybe obsessing over a small color palate wasn’t the right thing to focus on at the moment, especially when something chuffed right next to the door, as if it knew I was in there.
Which made me realize yet another bad thing. My cloak was gone. I never figured I’d miss that smelly, damp piece of cloth, but I sure did.
I reached for my throat, and at least the string still rested there.
If Grant’s even still alive…
The thought made me swallow hard. The idea that anything could have happened to Grant, to any of them, felt like something entirely impossible. They were bigger than life. Nothing could take them out.
Except…I’d also learned that life wasn’t so easy.
Heavy steps thudded against the packed dirt outside, something a lot larger than the creature who sniffed around the door. When the new figure approached, the creature let out a loud yelp after a thud of flesh on flesh.
Anything that could send that thing running wasn’t something I wanted
