“So how do we get you past the doors?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered. “No one’s ever done it.”
Chapter Four
Levi
Knock, knock.
I wish I could say it felt good to be back. The first time I passed through planes to land in Hell, I was just eight years old. Before long, bouncing back and forth took all the effort of blinking an eye. Since Dad revoked my authorization because I refused to kill my girlfriend, this hometown hero has had to find more creative ways to breach these boundaries. That meant sneaking in where I wouldn’t be seen, leading to me mastering breaking into the one place no one would suspect: the impenetrable dungeon of Hell, formally known as The Oubliette.
The double doors of the Oubliette stood twenty feet tall and wore white-hot flames that whipped and danced around its edges. Just in front of its entrance was a few simple deterrents to the already impossible-to-escape prison: a pair of petrified thousand-year-old oak trunks to lock its captives away from both the inside and outside, and a river of molten lava, all guarded by twin demons, Ozroth and Mechziel who had single-handedly held off Michael’s army for two days during the Last War. Dad didn’t play around when it came to punishment, and he didn’t want his prisoners escaping before they’d been reprimanded nearly to death. He also allowed only the warden and the guardians entry.
I stood just within the doors, brushing ash off my shirt and jeans.
Screams pierced the haze before me, the guttural shrieks of Hell’s Most Wanted. Those who misbehaved without permission, those who made Hell vulnerable by breaking the rules, those who disobeyed or defied Lucifer, or those who—directly or indirectly—tried to help the other side. I’d had my own cell here once, in the back where they stuck the truly forgettable. The burning chains around my wrists, neck, and ankles were a distant but still vivid memory, and that was decades before I was sent to Earth to redeem myself.
She was worth it.
The ridged soles of my boots crunched over the broken concrete and rock beneath my feet as I turned to face my former prison. The walls glowed red and orange, broken up only by wooden stall doors, the windows simple holes secured with crossing metal rods. The darkness painted the seemingly infinite ceiling. I covered my cough with my fists. Even the wind carried fire. My lungs were no longer accustomed to the Sulphur, nor the air that was almost too hot to breathe.
Excited whispers seeped in from every corner, some repeating the same inaudible words over and over. They only grew louder after I took my first step, the low rumble of the fire unable to drown them out.
I checked the first cell, the rusted metal lock as big as my head. Two female creatures sat inside on their haunches, one wearing the headdress of a nun’s habit, naked from the waist down, her misshaped ostrich feet flat to the ash-covered ground. The other had a peasant’s scarf over her head, bodiless except for shoulder and arms. She held up a heavy book, probably her punishment for whatever crime she’d committed against my father. Cracked eggshells were littered on the ground around them. My father particularly enjoyed punishment, and they were typically carried out in a theatrical manner, almost with deeper meaning than most could decipher other than the tortured.
The prisoners stared at me and then at each other, but did not speak.
Bones and pierced hide stretched, and rotting covered the walls; all demons, all tortured beyond belief before their deaths, only to rise again and suffer again before my father, or his generals would send them to task or end them permanently (if they were lucky). True death did not come easy in Hell. It was a mercy more than a punishment.
I closed my eyes and felt my surroundings for Eden. It was hard to feel anything in the dungeons except sorrow and pain, but her light was present, however faint. I could feel her, but she was far away. Cell after cell I searched, and my frustration grew. There were hundreds, each scene more horrific than the one before.
The last cell confined an enormous black figure, a layer of ash settling on his burnt wool-like fur. His wide shoulders the biggest part of him, his legs reduced to that of an alligator. He was slouched over in defeat.
“Surgät,” I said. “You’ve been here a while. I thought you were the one who could open all locks. Isn’t that what the Grimoires say about you, in all their fruity, pompous text? Guess not, eh?”
He huffed at me like a tired bull, but he was centuries into his sentence, and had lost any fight he still possessed a long time ago.
“Is there a girl here?” I asked. “A human girl. Surely that would catch your attention.”
He glimpsed at me, annoyed, then returned to staring at the crumbling wall. Something fearful was on the other side, but I couldn’t tell what. It wanted inside Surgät’s cell, though.
“Answer me,” I demanded.
“Never here,” he groaned, as if the words took all he had to speak.
“Where is she?”
“Deeper.”
I frowned. “Deeper than the Oubliette? There is nothing deeper.” I thought for a moment. “Except for the temple. Are you saying my father risked taking her there?”
He looked up me, his bloodshot eyes tormented and burdened with old knowledge. “The Keepers here say they buried her beneath to keep her hidden. To keep her bound.”
“She’s in the bog,” I said, dubious. Lucifer resided in the Ninth Layer of Hell, like the Oubliette, and beneath the deepest of many of its caverns was a pit filled with a darkness so thick not even my father frequented there.
I let myself relax and think of Eden. Surgät was right—she was there, but she was restless, confused. She was imprisoned in-status, curled into the fetal position, floating in nothing and nowhere. The temple was on the far side of the Ninth Layer in a valley, and not just any valley: The Prince’s Trench. I had to work fast; the soles of my boots were already melting.
“Damn it,” I hissed under my breath. There was a faster way to get there than sneaking or even the underground tunnels, and I wouldn’t have to set foot on the ground until I arrived.
I approached the dungeon doors and flicked my fingers. They obeyed, swinging open. The gargantuan demons guarding the other side were stunned only for a few seconds before attacking, the petrified trunks laying in half on the ground. Ozroth took one swipe, holding me against the exterior wall by the neck. With both hands I kept hold of his weapon, a u-shaped pitchfork that matched his horns. The razor-sharp edges were burrowing into the thin skin of my jaw, my blood dripping down the length of the dark metal and feet dangling six feet from the ground.
Ozroth’s black eyes focused on me, puffing mist from his snout. His face was a mixture of a goat and a rat, tar-stained hair matted in places, bloody in others. He shook his head, his thick coat from neck to pelvis latently rocking back and forth, ash flying in all directions.
“Take me to my father,” I said.
Ozroth glanced at his brother and then back at me, his eyes narrowing.
“Do it now, or I’ll kill you and Mechziel will take me.”
Ozroth’s eyes grew big. He finally recognized who he had pinned to the wall. He bleated, signaling for transport. With one yank, he pulled his pitchfork from the wall, and I fell to the ground, landing on my feet. I brushed off my clothes, blood from my hands smearing on the fabric. I rolled my eyes. “Great.”