I gazed upward. The sky was a strange, muted purple.
I didn’t want to admit it, but the color was sort of amazing and beautiful, even though it felt threatening and ominous at the same time. Oppressive energy pushed down on me as I studied my surroundings, trying to gauge what to do next. There’s enough light out here for it to be daylight, but I’m not sure if “sun” is the correct term on this plane. Let’s move slowly.
I stood, glancing around me like the fugitive I was, and tugged the portal door shut behind me. I made a mental note of where I was and knew I could find it by scent if I needed to. I couldn’t detect any movement anywhere. Daytime hopefully meant downtime for demons, but I didn’t want to get overly excited until I was sure. It was a lucky break I’d landed now and not in the middle of the night. I had a feeling night would be worse.
I crept forward, heading toward the edge of the building closest to me. There wasn’t a street at the mouth of the alley, instead a field of lemon yellow grass spread out as far as I could see with a lone tree positioned squarely in the middle.
Is the grass moving? I bent my head and narrowed my gaze.
It was in fact wiggling.
The tree was also strange. It was gnarled with no leaves. Instead it had blood-red flowers dotted all over its massive branches. And it was huge. Bigger than the largest redwood tree in our plane.
I slid to the very end of the building. Directly in front of me was the field of wiggling weirdness, and behind me and on both sides sat more buildings. All the same, row after row, for what seemed like miles.
I’d landed at the edge of the city.
The ground under me was paved with the same flooring as the dump, slick and perfectly flawless. It wasn’t concrete, it was something demon-made and totally foreign to me.
Tally had been right. This environment was extremely sterile. There was no dust, no dirt, nothing out of place—exactly how demons kept themselves.
Scenting the air, I couldn’t detect anything particularly strange, because it all smelled strange. The air held a lot of sulfur, but there were also many complicated layers on top. One of which was plum. Why would the Underworld smell like plums? Not normal plums, of course, but acidic, rotten ones. But my wolf wasn’t interested in debating the smelliness of Hell with me. She barked, urging us on. I know you hate it here. I do too, but we can’t leave until we find Tyler. Let’s try and scent him through all the rotten egg plum sauce. If he’s here, his signature should stick out like a wolfy sore thumb. Raw animal smell in the midst of demons should be easy to track.
With supreme caution, I peered around the corner of the building nearest the field. No one was around. Oddly, the sprawl of buildings reminded me of rows at the supermarket. Each building was the same size and the same distance apart as far as I could see in any direction.
Tally had referred to the main demon city as She’ol. And something tells me we shouldn’t walk on the grass. Yellow was never a good color. That grass was basically waving a danger flag in front of us that said: “Step Here If You Want to Die.”
We had no choice but to turn around and head through the buildings and into the city of She’ol. There wasn’t a better alternative. We just had to make sure we did it carefully.
I stepped out of the shade of the building and into a sliver of sunlight and sharp tingles raced along my skin. The light was intensely hot. I glanced down at my hands and watched as blisters began to form.
I ducked back flat against the building.
I brought my hands up. They were beginning to regenerate slowly, but they weren’t clearing up nearly as fast as they should. This is why no demon is outside right now. We’ll have to use the daylight hours while we still can. I don’t think the sun is going to do us any long-term damage, because our skin is already healing, even if it’s doing it slowly. There’s enough shade to weave our way through the buildings. I’m assuming eventually we’ll hit some kind of town center or hopefully a building marked Hostages, but regardless, we have no choice but to move forward.
I hadn’t felt my connection with Tyler at all since I’d landed. He had to be here, but I wasn’t picking up on anything from him specifically.
Tyler? I called in my mind, just to be sure.
Nothing.
Who knew how our mind powers worked on this plane? I wasn’t expecting anything to work right.
It was time to move. I ducked along the building, hugging the walls to stay in the shade. Once I reached the end of the first building, there was another one about ten feet away. I raced toward it, the sun barely singeing me because I moved so rapidly.
Once I was clear, I started to jog. I darted through the sun when I needed to, but it was easy to keep to the shade in between. None of the buildings I passed had any windows. That made it easier not to worry about being spotted. As I ran, I held my nose in the air and my wolf was on high alert.
Do you see that break up ahead? Looks like the buildings are coming to an end. There was a definite change of scenery coming. Once we make it to the last building, we need to gauge the sun and see how much more time we have left. We’ll need to find good cover by the time it goes down. That’s when Demonville must get active.
A shudder ran through me. I was not looking forward to seeing a bustling Underworld.
Once we reached the end, I placed my back up against the side of the building and stuck my head out. The alleys I’d been running through had apparently dead ended into a town square of some kind.
No yellow grass in sight, instead the entire square was covered in neatly clipped green turf, which I knew wasn’t real grass, but the demons were obviously trying hard to mimic what we had at home. Surprisingly, the open expanse in front of me looked remarkably quaint, but incredibly off at the same time. The town center, from what I could gauge, was roughly the size of two football fields. The far side was flanked by a much bigger building, which looked fairly official. It was about as long as five of the regular buildings, and twice as high, and held a clock tower. I was happy to see it. Official meant I was closer to finding Tyler. To the left and right of the square were more regular buildings, evenly spaced apart.
But the most interesting aspect of the square, by far, was the number of white gazebos it held.
There were hundreds of them dotted all over the place.