Chapter 21

~~Mia~~

Twilight came. Night wouldn’t be far behind, and the amber veins pulsed gently, announcing its imminent arrival. Mia, naked and alone save for her broken bodyguard, held a sharp bone in hand, for emergency self-defense stabbing.

A sharp bone wasn’t going to do shit.

Vinicius had found enough strength to sit up and move, but it’d been a struggle. She tried to help, but she might as well have been trying to push a truck with the emergency brake on. After some time, he’d managed to move away from the statues, the piles of bones, the torture devices, the corpses, and into the back of the giant cavern where there weren’t so many amber veins. Enough shadow that, as long as he didn’t move, he didn’t immediately stand out.

“I need ... to eat something,” she said, wiping the sweat from her brow with the one of the few unbloodied parts of her arm.

Vinicius, arms now limp at his sides and wounds healed over enough he wasn’t leaking blood like holes poked in a water balloon, did not turn his head. Turning probably hurt. It might even tear the wound. He did rumble, though.

“It’s weird, right?” she said. “I shouldn’t be hungry yet, but I am. Humans take a while to get hungry, down here in Hell.”

“You’re not human.”

She stood up and glared at him. But, before she could go on a rant explaining how unfair that statement was, reality ripped the wind from her lungs. She wasn’t human. But still, that didn’t give the biggest asshole in the world the right to be a jerk about it.

Sighing, she looked back toward the corpses. Guts, blood, and bones. The hungrier she got, the less the absolutely disgusting, visceral, gory nature of Hell bothered her. The more the aching sensation in her stomach and limbs grew, the more she didn’t care about the skeletons in the torture machines, and the smell of fire and iron that permeated everything.

“Do you hear anything nearby?” she asked. “Anyone?” She held her breath, held perfectly still, and waited.

Vinicius did, too, and after thirty seconds of nothing, he clicked once. Must have been a no.

“I’m ... going to get something to eat.”

“How?”

“Same way I fed you.”

Vinicius, head aimed down at her, said nothing, but the tiniest raise of his demon dragon eyebrows spoke volumes. Little her was going to cut up a wholly intact vrat body, save for the squashed head, so she could get another heart. Yes, she was, asshole. No need to say it, but she glared her words at him, anyway.

She marched back toward the mounds of bones near the more well lit section of the cave, grabbed the ridiculously heavy sword by the hilt, and dragged it toward her next victim.

The problem was the noise. Twilight hours meant hellbeasts on the prowl, and even though Death’s Grip was all messed up and hellbeasts were out hunting at unusual times, there was probably a good chance hellbeasts would still prioritize hunting at twilight. Unfortunately, she had no way of avoiding making noise.

So the tiny naked ginger girl swung the sword over her shoulder using every muscle in her body, earned a big splat of blood that hit her bare skin, and she made no sound. No grunts or groans, or screams of frustration, or sighs of disgust. She chopped and chopped, and quickly earned a new layer of blood and sweat.

At least this time, she didn’t have to literally yank the heart free. She had time to get surgical. Panting as quietly as she could, she got on her knees, and used her bone’s sharp edge to scrap away at the binding veins and arteries. It was a big heart, and filled both her palms, heavy and meaty and bloody and gross and all the things that made her very much not want to hold it. But the hunger wiped the feelings away.

As she walked back toward Vinicius, stepping around and over bones like a cat, she watched the huge hunk of meat in her palm, half expecting it to suddenly beat and jump for freedom. It did not. She reached Vin, stood in front of him, and held the huge meal with both hands as she watched the blood drip down her wrists.

“I won’t be able to eat all this ... I think. I’ll give you half.”

Vin said nothing. His eyes weren’t even on the heart. They were on her.

She caught his strange, curious glance, gulped, and looked back down at the heart. The last time she’d done this, memories had knocked her on her ass, memories she did not want or need. But she was tired, her body ached, little scratches on her skin had only barely healed enough to stop bleeding, and the journey was only going to get harder. She couldn’t afford to be picky. Next time Vin killed a hellbeast, she’d eat it. And right now, she was going to eat this demon heart.

She sat beside Vinicius, deep in the shadows of the cave, and bit into the meat.

She hated how good it tasted. She hated how natural it felt to push her incisors into it until the meat split around the sharpness of her teeth. She hated how the flesh, unnaturally warm for a corpse several hours dead, flooded her mouth with deliciousness as she ground the meat with her molars. She hated it hated it hated it.

It felt so damn fucking good. The warmth spread into her limbs, filled her with tingles, and she sighed bliss as the ache in her joints faded away. She’d never done heroine, but from what her psyche books told her, the feeling was similar. Pain, discomfort, they disappeared as the warmth of a dead demon’s heart filled her.

The memories hit her a few seconds later. Hands, around a throat. A sword, through the guts. Sex. A lot of sex. The vrat had a taste for men, too, and what could have been an enjoyable, erotic memory, was tainted by the screams of pain. Rape.

Mia growled as she lowered her head and glared at the ground. At least she didn’t pass out, this time.

“Kas was right. Demons are horrible.”

Vinicius said nothing.

She took another bite. More memories of the same vein, and a lot of them. Whoever this vrat was, he’d had more than a few years on him.

Another memory, a blurry thing, showed slaughter from the vrat’s eyes, and a rather angry bolstara tetrad that looked suspiciously like Zel yelling at him. Was she upset the vrat had disobeyed her dueling law? It might explain why a vratorin this old and strong was out here, in a random tunnel, and not at the spire or something.

She stared at her empty palms. Empty. Her hands were empty. Oh god, she’d eaten the whole fucking thing.

“I ... didn’t mean to do that,” she said.

Vin turned his head just enough to look down at her, and half rumbled, half chuckled as quietly as his gigantic chest and throat could get away with. And thank god he said nothing because right then she’d have probably punched him right in his wounded throat if he’d commented on how overpoweringly delicious a demon heart was, or that she had the appetite of a pig.

“I do not think hellbeasts will come,” he said after a few minutes.

“How do you know?”

He lifted a free hand and gestured out at the bones.

“No path.”

“There’s ... no path. Right.” Hellbeasts would have carved a path through the bones, especially that wurm thing. It and other hellbeasts must have used a different path, one of the forks they’d passed. “Only realize that now?”

“I’ve been distracted.”

She smiled up at him, got up, and stood in front of him. No hellbeasts didn’t mean they could afford to be loud and give away their position, but if she whispered, it should have been fine. Besides, after the noise she’d just made cutting up a vrat like she was chopping wood, anyone nearby was already on the way.

“Death’s Grip seems to have a lot of these ... groups, I guess, random demons going around hunting and raiding and shit.”

Vinicius clicked once, deep in his throat where the sound was low.

“How big do the groups get?” she asked. “I know there’s three big ones, with bailiffs. Diogo had one.” She shivered. “Tacitus has one, and he’s on this side of the canyon, right?”

He clicked once for yes.

“Think we’ll run into him?”

Another click, but with a different pitch. No. Hey, look at her, learning the language.

“Good. If he’s running a chunk of Hell, I can’t imagine he’s too nice.” Rolling her eyes, she gestured to Vin. “Not that you’re nice, either, but at least I can stop you from eating me.”

Vin’s eyes slowly looked her up and down, his tongue slipped out from between his crocodile teeth, and he licked them. He took another look, and a quiet, almost purring rumble flowed through his giant chest. It wasn’t the first time she’d heard that rumble. Adron made it a few times, and Kas made it often, when he was getting ready to...

She looked down at herself. Covered in blood and sweat, her long red hair stuck to her shoulders, and crimson dripped from her fingers. She looked ... kind of awesome, like she’d walked out of a Robert E. Howard story.

Groaning, she turned slightly and covered her small breasts with an arm.

“That’s not what I meant when I said eating me.”

He rumbled again, another long purr that bordered on earthquake, a rumble only someone — something — as big as Vinicius could make. If transport trucks could purr.

Yesterday, she’d have brushed him off, maybe thrown an insult or two his way. Right now, she had a fresh demon heart pulsing through her, and while the flood of new energy settled her aches and pains, it also brought something else with it. And now, the fact they’d just killed demons and barely survived the battle didn’t seem so horrible anymore. It seemed ... exhilarating.

The fingers inside her chest plucked the strings, and the silent music grew faster and louder as memories of Vinicius’s cocks — plural! — pouring cum onto her body resurfaced.

“No no, no. We’re not doing that.”

He rumbled and clicked twice.

“It’s not my fault!” It was difficult to whisper and yell at the same time, but she managed. “It happens every time I eat. Just ... like ... I don’t know, taking an aphrodisiac and energy drink at the same time. Not my fault.”

He said nothing.

“Stop looking at me like that!” She turned around and faced away from him, but of course all that did was put her bare ass on display. Her great, amazing ass. Her firm ass would definitely look even more amazing with one of Vin’s giant cocks—

Stop thinking like that. Stop letting the weird thing in your chest plucking strings immediately jump to sex. How much of that was because she was inhuman, and probably had succubus blood or something, or because maybe she was just a naturally super horny girl? She had no idea, but whatever the reason, it was something she had to deal with. Stop thinking about sex. Stop thinking about her small body squashed between two huge demons, filling her, stretching her, making her wriggle and squirm. Stop thinking—

She threw up her hands, grabbed her hair, and pulled on it as she stomped her feet a few times. Vin wasn’t using a sin aura, not when he needed every bit of resonance he had to fuel his recovery. Nope, this was all her, and that demon heart energizing her.

Back in university, as a gift to herself for doing really well on her exams, she’d bought herself some dildos. Some very big, very inhuman dildos. And because her horniness level had gone through the roof, to the point she’d seriously been considering seeing a doctor about nymphomania, she’d tried to fit both dildos into her at the same time. She’d only been partially successful. But down here in Hell, Kas and Adron had fit even larger things into her, all to the way to the base. They’d filled her up in ways that only worked down here in Hell, and she’d absolutely loved every moment of it.

She wanted that. She wanted more of that.

But her memories were cruel. She thought about Vinicius and his two cocks. She thought about Kas and Adron squashing her between their bodies. And then, she thought about Hannah.

It still hurt. Not as much as it used to, but it still did, and it ripped the desire out of her. Good. If she had to think of Hannah to keep her stupid sex drive under control, maybe she should. That was fucked up, very fucked up, but this wasn’t normal. She’d had a ridiculously high sex drive when she’d been alive, but it was even higher now, and it was going to be a problem.

What did David do? David apparently had a very attractive gargoyle at his side, and judging by what Mia saw of her, she was awesome. And if David had the same issue Mia had, he was probably sleeping with her frequently.

All Mia had was Vinicius, a giant asshole.

A giant asshole who’d saved her life.

Sighing, she relaxed and let her arms hang at her sides. Vinicius rumbled, clicked once, and tilted his head slightly.

Chuckling weakly, she turned around, and gestured to Vinicius. The fingers in her chest didn’t pluck the sex strings anymore, and for a while, plucked the cold, heavy strings she felt every time she thought of Hannah. But she calmed those, too, and muted the strings as best she could. She succeeded.

“You can look all you want, but injured like that, you couldn’t get hard even if you wanted to. And if I don’t use my aura on you like last time, would you even want to, if you were healed?”

His dragon gaze stayed on her as she walked up to him and stood between his giant legs.

“I would.”

She squinted at him, even as she blushed. According to Adron, demons were attracted to humans pretty much by default, and a lot of demons took that too far. Way too far. Hell was a horrible place for a human. It was one of the many things Kas absolutely hated about his own kind.

“I’d be flattered, if I didn’t know what demons were like. How many of the humans you fucked weren’t willing? How many did you eat after?” Her horrible imagination changed ‘after’ to ‘during’ and she winced. But she didn’t close her eyes. She kept her eyes on Vin, and waited.

“Why do you care?”

This again. So much for sexiness a moment before. Maybe she didn’t need her memory of Hannah to squash her sex drive, not when all she had to do was think of how horrible a monster Vinicius was. A horrible monster ... who’d saved her life, when he didn’t have to.

“I don’t understand you,” she said. “I really don’t get you at all. You could have let me die, but you didn’t. So I start to think maybe you aren’t so bad. Then you say something to prove otherwise! Unless Adron and Kas were lying to me, you have a history as one of the most violent demons in Hell.”

“You underestimate other demons and their desires.” Sighing, he released a slow breath, and warm — thankfully mostly odorless — air flowed over her. “I have power. They do not.”

“So the only reason most demons don’t go around on mass killing sprees is because they aren’t strong enough?”

“Yes.”

She folded her arms across her chest. “I don’t believe you. Adron wouldn’t do that. Kas wouldn’t.” Wouldn’t. Not wouldn’t have.

“Weak.”

“Weak what? Weak mind? Bullshit. You didn’t see Kas and the sort of demon he was. And you saw Adron fight the rider, even stab him. After you burned him!” There it was. Anger. Anger was good. She was okay with being angry right now. Better than being horny, or sad. “Why did you save me? Be honest.”

Vinicius rumbled and watched her with a strange, almost passive expression. Curiosity? Intrigue?

She gave the flat of his big raptor foot a kick. Without shoes, the best she could manage was a light kick with the side of her foot, barely hard enough to move a soccer ball.

“I want you to tell me about yourself.”

Nothing.

“I want you to tell me about the things you did before Zel locked you up.”

Still nothing. She kicked his foot again, not hard enough to mean anything, but still, it seemed like the right thing to do.

“I rescued you from Zel’s dungeon. You owe me.”

“You did that for yourself.”

Oh, that’s how it was gonna be. She glared up at him, walked closer until her shins were almost pressed to his — thankfully flat — crotch, and with his giant legs on either side of her, she reached out and poked him in the sternum.

“I wanted to save myself, sure, but the first time I saw Zel hurt you, I felt horrible for you. Adron and Kas told me about you, and I still felt horrible for you. When I realized maybe I could save you, that was the tipping point. I wasn’t just saving myself, I was saving someone who’d been suffering torture for so long I couldn’t even wrap my mind around it.” She turned, face his right leg, casually grabbed the big black spike coming off his knee, and tugged on it meaninglessly. Almost as hard as steel. “See, here’s what I think. I think you’re a horrible monster that’s raped and killed tens of thousands of humans and demons. Hundreds of thousands, with how old you probably are. But I’m the first human you’ve ever dealt with that wasn’t a horrible person, aren’t I?”

He growled, but said nothing. His stoicism meant she got to talk as much as she wanted, and as long as she was quiet about it, she had no reason not to. Besides, the demon heart had her brimming with energy, and she needed to let some out.

“You don’t really know how to deal with me, do you? I’m the first person you’ve ever dealt with that genuinely doesn’t want to hurt people, or want to use others to get ahead, or any of that.”

After a rather abrupt growl, he turned his head slightly and looked away. Bingo.

“You’re stumped.” She leaned in toward him, pressed her hands against his giant abs for balance, and checked the gut wound Zel had given him. Healed. “You probably think I’m going on this journey to save my life, right? Or my second life or whatever.”

“You are.”

Another piece of the puzzle, found. Figuring out the sort of person Vin was wasn’t easy, but she was getting there, and her poor, helpless victim didn’t even realize it.

“You think?” She stepped up onto his leg on the same side as his wounded neck and lifted his fingers. Surprisingly, he let her. She had him on the ropes, stunned and confused. “Then it’ll surprise you to know I’m going on this journey because the idea of everyone dying hurts me. That’s how empathy works. Yes, I’m terrified of dying ... again. I’m horrified of the idea of becoming a remnant, and I’m terrified of the idea of who I am, my thoughts, my memories, all that disappearing. But I’m going anyway, because yes, I want to save myself, but I also want to save everyone else. Knowing that everyone could die if I don’t do something? It hurts me, right down in my fucking soul.”

Sighing, she lifted the wrap that covered his neck enough to check the wound. Not bleeding anymore, a paper-thin layer of new, bright-red skin growing over the gashes. He was healing rapidly. Nodding, and even giving the giant asshole a smile, she climbed back down, stood between his bigger-than-Mia-sized legs again, and met his eye; with his head turned, she could only see the one.

“Don’t get me wrong, Vinicius. I’m no hero. I’d love to go find Kas and Adron, mourn Hannah, and spend the rest of my time enjoying great sex. Fuck, if I could actually live again, that’d be even better. Just spending my days reading my psych books and trying to fit oversized dildos inside me while I read shitty monster porn stories? That’s what I want to be doing, not this fucking trip across Hell, risking my neck. But I’m going anyway, because I don’t want to die again, and because I don’t want everyone else to die, either.”

No response, so she pointed up at him, and poked him in his sternum.

“You still don’t believe me, do you?”

“No.”

Rolling her eyes, she poked him as hard as she could, but a solid wooden wall would have yielded more.

“Well, I’m dragging your ass across Hell, whether you want me to or not, so you’re gonna get to see a whole awful lot of this tiny little ginger girl crying her heart out every damn time something bad happens.” Nodding, she sat down on his leg, both her feet on the ground between his thighs, and she folded her arms across her small breasts. “Because I am an overly empathetic, sensitive mess of a girl who can’t help but cry when I even think of a sad movie. I can already guess there’s probably going to be really stupid situations where I try and help someone I shouldn’t, my naiveness nearly gets me killed, and you’ll have to save me.”

He sighed, but at least he didn’t growl. He even looked at her again, turning his head so he could use both eyes.

“I should let you die.”

“Maybe. But then you won’t get to see what happens.”

“What ... happens?”

She tilted her head. “You’re not curious about what’s going on? A female version of the rider shows up and tells me I have to get to the Forgotten Place or we all die? You have to be at least a little curious.”

That got something out of him. He rumbled, his eyes drifted up in thought, and eventually he nodded.

“Exactly,” she said. “You want to rule Death’s Grip, right? Can’t do that if it’s gone. And what ruler doesn’t want to know more about what’s going on around their land?” She nodded again and wiped away the mix of thoughts going through her mind. Don’t hate him. Don’t fear him. Don’t be attracted to him. Work with him. “Once we’re sure Adron and Kas are alive, we move onto the Black Valley.”

“And how do you plan to learn that?”

“I’m ... not really sure. How do demons usually figure things out? Like, if Alessio wanted to march her demons from the Black Valley to Death’s Grip and take it over, how would she know when it was a good time?”

“She wouldn’t.”

Mia gulped. “She’d just ... send thousands of demons to fight, without knowing?”

“Tens of thousands.”

“Fucking yikes.”

“And there are some unreliable ways. Scouts and spies, or the imps and grems, who take months to report back.”

“Imps and grems?”

He nodded. “The infernal pests chatter with each other incessantly, and travel around Hell frequently.”

“Oh, so ... gossip. We can catch an imp or grem, and figure out what they’re saying on the grapevine?”

His turn to tilt his head.

She laughed and shrugged. “Never mind.” Smiling, she patted his abs. Woop, nope, don’t do that. Abs are sexy and Vinicius was twelve feet tall. His abs were almost as big as her whole body. “And hey, it’s not like I don’t understand this is Hell, the people here are awful, and demons do demon things.”

Somehow, miraculously, that made the big asshole chuckle, quietly anyway.

“No demon cares what a human thinks of us.”

She frowned up at him. That wasn’t true. Adron proved that.

“My point is, if something comes up that’s particularly ... something you know I won’t enjoy but you want to do, I’m not going to stop you. Probably.”

He grunted.

“I mean it! I mean, it’s the least I can do since I’m forcing you to help me, right? Demons do demon things. As long as it’s not to someone who doesn’t deserve it, and I don’t imagine we’ll run into those people often, you can ... be ... demony.”

He eyed her, a slow, gentle rumble flowing through him, and the vibration reached down through his leg right up her butt. What she was saying might be a problem in the future, but she did mean it. Much as it would hurt seeing Vin murder and ... do other things, to demons and humans, she had to accept that she was in Hell and her whole morality code didn’t really apply down here. Different world. Different rules.

“I’ll hold you to that,” he said, and licked some of his crocodile teeth.

~~Day 34~~

Finally! Sunlight! Or, firelight. Whatever. The sky of swirling amber and deadly flame looked beautiful compared to rock and stone walls.

Vinicius walked ahead of her, but walk turned to climb when the only way out of the tunnel turned into a literal wall. At least the way up was a tunnel, too, so Vinicius had rocks in front and behind him to grab and pull on. A tough climb for any demon. An impossible climb for a short human without claws, so she rode his back and stood on the many giant spikes there.

Lifting his own bodyweight must have been an insane challenge, and sure enough, Vin’s wounds reopened and leaked blood down his body. Mia wore her torn and half ruined sash toga thing again, permanently red now, and she was tempted to take it off and wrap it around Vin’s neck again as it started to bleed again. She couldn’t do it while he climbed, though, and now that he was mostly, kinda, sorta healed, he wouldn’t accept her help, anyway.

Four arms made the climbing easier. He might not have been able to do it without them. His muscles bulged, a lot, and Mia had to force down a squeak as she watched them practically pulse with his heartbeat with each foot he climbed. His back, his arms, his legs, they were all just so ridiculously huge, and all of them, even his tail, worked to keep his weight on the grooves in the rock wall.

He got them out of the hole, and Mia climbed down his body.

“Finally!” she yelled in her whisper voice, and jumped a few times, hands in the air. “We survived!”

Vinicius grumbled, put a hand on each of his wounds again, and walked toward the edge.

Edge? Oh shit, they’d come out on a mountain. She shouldn’t have been surprised, since all sense of verticality had been lost after wandering around tunnels for a week. After a healthy dose of vertigo had her tilting and swaying for a couple seconds, she followed Vinicius to the edge of the mountain.

The spire was in sight, barely. Judging from the shape of the mountains, Vin and Mia had moved counter-clockwise around Hell — because otherwise they’d have hit the ravine again — and toward its outer edge a bit. Unfortunately, the winding tunnels meant for all their walking, they hadn’t covered much ground.

Unfortunate if her only goal was to get to the Forgotten Place. She had another goal.

“Okay,” she said, “so we find an imp or grem, and ask them if Adron or Kas are...” Vin’s silence was like a steel knife through the guts.

He stared out to the valley below where the spire and the ravine were, dragon snout aimed up slightly at the spire’s tip. It wasn’t tilting as much anymore, but they were too far to see if it’d repaired any of the damage caused by the ravine. That wasn’t what Vin stared at. He stared at the giant amber beam shooting out of the spire straight up into the fire sky.

“What is that?” she asked.

Vin rumbled, and his two free hands flexed, as if crushing another gargoyle’s rib cage in his giant grip.

“Someone has begun the trial.”

“Trial?”

“To become the new spire ruler.”

“Oh. I didn’t know that required an actual trial. A—oh you mean, like, a struggle or something.” The image of a bunch of demons sitting in jury seats, while a demon judge wielded a wooden hammer, made her smile. She wiped it away quickly. “How does that work?”

“Someone must engage the book of Lucifer in the depths of the spire, and be challenged.”

“Right, that book. That was a scary book.”

Vin looked down at her, eyes donning a new intensity, and waited.

“Um, it talked about Lucifer. Or rather, Lucifer talked about his goals. You know, fighting, taking down Heaven, taking back what’s his—er, theirs. It borderline read like a military leader’s speech before starting a ‘righteous’ war.” She air-quoted righteous. “It talked about Belial. Rise Belial this, rise Belial that, attacking Heaven, and it gave me the names of the nine spires, the nine heavenly islands, and ... and ... stuff.” No need to talk about the runes floating around in her skull. “I didn’t read anything about a trial.”

“Not all that the book knows is shown to the reader.”

“Not...” Okay, magic book that obeyed its own rules? Whatever. If it was written by Satan, she could accept that. She gestured to the spire. “Does this affect us at all?”

“Only if the new spire ruler is concerned with us. They could summon the horde, and tear this land apart looking for us.”

“Fuuuuck.”

He shook his head. “Death’s Grip is in chaos. The new spire ruler will have two concerns: defense, and creating a bridge for the ravine.”

“A bridge?”

“Yes, perhaps one crafted using the spire.”

“Oh wow. A spire ruler can do that?”

He half grumbled, half growled, and the vibration of his heavy voice flowed through the ground.

“I ... don’t know.”

She had to be careful. Each time she indirectly mentioned that Vin wasn’t the spire ruler, the muscles in his body flexed, and his tail twitched slightly. If it wasn’t for the brute heart he’d eaten before the body dissolved before they got moving again, he wouldn’t have had the strength to climb the hole out of the tunnel, and he was bleeding from his wounds again. He was drained, probably still hungry, and injured. And she was still terrified he might freak out and go on a rampage if she said the wrong thing. He might hurt her, but more likely, he might hurt himself, and she needed him.

And she didn’t like seeing him hurt.

“Let’s find somewhere you can rest up, somewhere safer than the tunnels.” She gestured at the mountain beside them. It looked like they were halfway up it, and only a gap between other mountains let them see the spire valley. Mountains everywhere, jagged and sharp and mean. A couple of them had bits of lava leaking down their sides, too, small streams that disappeared into tunnels. If their tunnel had met one of the newly formed lava rivers, that would have not ended well.