questions.
“It’s manageable.”
That…didn’t sound very reassuring. I squirmed a bit in his hold, dread pooling in my stomach. My mind swirled with ideas of what kind of “accommodations” would await me, and none of them settled the unease churning inside me.
Sounds echoed in the semi-darkness. Like a dirge, mournful and slow, a chorus of wails rose from somewhere beneath us. It took me a moment to identify the sound—I’d never heard human voices like that, but human they were.
We must be flying over some form of torture pit then.
Bile crept up into my throat. The wails were so full of suffering, such sharp pain and despair, it tore at my soul. The one time I’d heard something remotely similar was when I’d watched a documentary on slaughterhouses. The pigs’ screaming had rattled me so much that I’d gone vegetarian that same day.
But these here were people. Human souls, each one of them once alive and now still sentient and feeling. And I could taste every one of their painful emotions like a cloying perfume in the ash-flecked air.
A horrible thought flashed through my mind. The demon could simply drop me here. He might—might—not be allowed to kill me as per the nebulous contract between us, but what would stop him from opening his arms, prying my fingers loose and simply letting me plummet into whatever pit of writhing bodies in pain? As long as I was still alive, he wouldn’t have violated the covenant, right?
It probably wouldn’t even be a big deal to him. He’d shrug and go on. Because how much could someone who came from a torture dimension care? Making people suffer would be in his nature.
I shivered despite the searing heat. It hit me now, worse than before. Back when we’d walked away from the bar, the realization that I was at his complete and utter mercy had been more of an abstract one. The fear I’d felt had been more subtle, my mind not quite grasping the full details of the mess I’d gotten myself into.
Now, that fear morphed into bone-chilling panic. Faced with the very realness of this dimension, confronted with the acoustic proof of others being tortured, my earlier realization of my powerlessness became so very tangible that it threatened to arrest my breath.
I’d provoked him so much. I wasn’t sure how much worse I could have made the beginning of this sham of a marriage. I supposed I could have puked on his shoes or tried an actual Catholic exorcism on him, but even so, I was now likely high on his shit list.
High enough to warrant the treatment of a damned soul? I didn’t know. And that uncertainty shook me to my core.
I should have bargained for another contract, one that stipulated he couldn’t hurt me, when I still held a grain of leverage over him. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Why hadn’t I thought of that? I totally could have made him agree to certain terms under the threat of not marrying him and thereby dooming him to lose his powers.
I had nothing left to bargain with, and I’d missed my chance at securing a modicum of a civilized existence for myself down here.
There was a reason I hadn’t gone to law school…
All that was left was to hope for some form of leniency from a being that had probably slurped sinners’ suffering for breakfast for thousands of years.
I couldn’t undo what I’d done so far, but I could try to be more agreeable and less...me from now on. Maybe, if I just made myself small and invisible, didn’t draw his attention, I could get by.
My mind firmly settled into gecko brain mode. New goal: survive, appease, avoid pain.
The demon banked, and the lights below drew closer. A howl rent the air, making me jerk in the demon’s arms. I’d heard wolves howling before, an eerie enough sound to unnerve any human with a bit of a primitive survival instinct.
This was nothing like it. As if a thousand screams were trapped inside it, the sound changed and audibly oscillated, rising and falling, whispering and roaring, the primal aggression of it raising the hairs on my arms and neck, making my muscles twitch with the urge to run.
I had an inkling, still I asked. “What is that?”
“My hellhounds. They patrol the grounds.”
He had hellhounds. Of course he did.
A desperate sound between a laugh and a sob wanted to wrench itself out of my throat. I swallowed that sucker down. Survive, appease, avoid pain.
“Lovely,” I croaked.
We