Descent (Kissed by Death) - Tara Fuller Page 0,27

with one quick slice of my blade, his head tumbled to the ground beside me. Gwen’s cry echoed through the corridors, and the demons around us scattered into the shadows. The screams in my head wailed as one of their own bled out at my feet. I looked down at the severed head, the puddle of boiling black blood forming around my boots, and a sick feeling churned in my gut.

“We have to go,” I choked out. “Now.”

I left the soul I’d carried over standing, dazed and slumped against a wall, as I dragged Gwen down a dark corridor, leaving him behind.

“Wait!” she cried. “Your soul…”

“We don’t have time to drag him around with us,” I said, stopping long enough to holster my blade and pull a flaming torch from the wall to light our way. “He was a means to an end, Red.”

“What if he escapes? Won’t you be in trouble with my father?”

A blood-curdling scream echoed from the walls behind us. I looked down to meet her horrified gaze. “No one escapes this place.”

Chapter 10

Easton

The heat was unbearable. The walls stretched, and steam whistled through the cracks in the stone that surrounded us. The howl of the furnace could go off at any time. When it sounded, the air ignited, burning everything in its path to the ground. I had to get us some shelter before that happened. Gwen couldn’t go through that.

I wiped the sweat from my eyes and looked at the angel trailing behind me. Her once-glowing skin looked flushed with the first hint of a burn. Her shoulders sagged under the weight of flesh and bone she wasn’t used to carrying. Her first experience with a real body, and this was what she got. Guilt danced in my chest, mocking me, clogging my throat with unfamiliar emotions. She’d probably dreamed of what it would be like to be alive. All she was going to get here were nightmares.

“You and that special connection of yours getting anything yet?”

She shook her head, her eyes looking glassy and dazed. “No. Not yet.”

“Gwen…we need to find some shelter,” I finally said. “You can’t keep this up.”

“Yes, I can,” she said. “If Tyler can endure whatever it is they’re doing to him right now, then we can handle a little heat.”

“A little heat?” I laughed and raked my fingers through my sweat-soaked hair. “You have no idea…”

I blew out a breath and stopped to case our surroundings. We’d been moving for what seemed like days, but we were still trapped in the nightmare caverns. Pockets of light beckoned within the stone walls, offering the false hope of protection. I’d been in those caves. The only thing that waited there was the madness that eternal terror brought to life.

I’d trapped my own best friend within those walls. Stood outside and listened to his screams and torment for days. It may have been on Balthazar’s orders, but I would never forgive myself for putting Finn through that. Even if he had brought it on himself by getting involved with a useless human. God…what would he say if he saw me now? Bending to the whim of an angel who knew nothing of life or death. Finn always had a way of telling me the truth I didn’t want to hear.

“Can I ask you something?” Gwen spoke up beside me as she touched and tested the walls. Her fingers came back black and she frowned, wiping them on her pants.

“Depends on what you want to ask,” I said.

“How long have you been doing this?” she asked. “You know…coming to Hell.”

“As long as I’ve been dead,” I said, blocking out the memories that came with these types of conversations. “So…four hundred and seventy years, give or take.”

Her eyes grew wide, and I could see the horror there. “My father has been sending you here for nearly five hundred years?”

“Why do you look like that’s a bad thing?” I leaned against a wall, crossing my arms over my chest.

“B-because…it is!” she stammered. “This place is horrible! What could you ever have done to deserve a fate like this?”

Her words hit a nerve, and I clenched my teeth, weighing my response. She was looking at me like I was more than I was. She believed I deserved peace and happiness. She didn’t know me. But I could tell her now and end this ridiculous charade.

“I killed seventeen men,” I said, deadly calm. Cold. “Slit them sternum to chin and left them to rot in the streets.