I’d reveal my presence? I knew better than to push my luck. The risk of running into Azazel or someone else who knew I shouldn’t be out here was already high enough. I didn’t need to increase it by poking at doors.
I walked for what seemed like an hour. Without my phone or another clock it was hard to track time, but it got more and more difficult to keep the gash on my arm open to extract more blood. I’d gotten so used to the never-changing appearance of the hallways that I stopped dead in my tracks when I came upon a wholly different sight.
The open doorway I’d just walked through led into a much larger hall. Instead of walls all around, this time there were windows on one side. If you could call them windows.
Huge pillars made up the entire left side of the hall, the space between them allowing a view of the outside. There seemed to be panes of glass between them too, but not just that...a pattern of bars stretched between the pillars, like a giant grid of what looked like wrought iron. Like a prison, to keep someone in. Or...the fortification of a castle, to keep someone out.
In a daze, I moved closer to the windows. I hadn’t seen the outside since Azazel flew me here, and even then I’d only caught glimpses.
It was still dark outside. Or yet again? Maybe this was the permanent state of Hell, no change from day to night, just relentless, ever-same twilight. It would be a sort of torture in itself, I mused. I knew that locking someone in a room with the lights always on was used by some secret agencies as a way of breaking people. We’re not made to endure monotony like that.
The sky lit up in red and orange hues, streaks of purple lightning flashing for a few seconds before the gloom returned. Somewhere in the distance sparks erupted as if from a volcano. When the next lightning broke up the darkness, I spotted flying shapes, moving fast across the sky. Even though they were thousands of feet away, I could tell they were bigger than regular birds.
I shivered, yet I couldn’t wrench my eyes away from the view. The bleakest sort of landscape, an apocalyptic tableau come to life. My mind still struggled to understand this was real, wasn’t a scene from a movie. I saw it, and yet I didn’t get it. Not truly. It would probably take me wandering through that dismal scenery, touching it, smelling it, feeling it on my skin to fully understand—and I had no desire to be out there.
A commotion to my left jolted me out of my trance. The sounds of someone approaching from the direction I’d come. Shit. I needed to keep moving.
Heart in my throat, I rushed to the other side of the hall, skidded around the corner of the open archway there, into the next hallway. Behind me, deep growls and the rapid clicks of claws on stone.
I almost stumbled. Those noises...the gremlin demons had sounded different, even when they chased me down. Their snarls had been higher-pitched, their footfalls softer, no claws, just the muted slapping of fabric-soled feet.
Whatever was behind me seemed a lot more animalistic, primal...predatory.
My sneakers squeaked on the floor as I rounded another bend. No time to mark the walls here. I hadn’t yet dared to cast a glance over my shoulder to see what was hunting me, but my gut told me that if it caught me, the result wouldn’t be so benign as a horde of goblin demons hog-tying me and carrying me back to my room. Our human gecko brain survival instinct was there for a reason, and right now it blared at the highest setting for me to run for my life.
I listened without even thinking twice.
The growls came closer. Panting, I ducked my head and ran faster, pushing myself to my limit. I had no idea how long I could keep this up. What was my exit strategy here? I couldn’t run forever, in fact it was likely the things chasing me would catch up soon. If they were anything like most predatory species on Earth, they’d be faster than a mere human.
The walls flew by as I raced. I could swear something was literally snapping at my heels. Suppressing a shriek, I scrambled around the next corner, right into another large hall, bigger even than the one I’d seen before. Statues lined