Chapter 2

~~Mia~~

God, her feet hurt.

Caera helped her climb the wall up into the alcove. Alcove turned out to be a tunnel, and Mia froze in its entrance as she waited for Caera to climb up and join her. The smell of blood wasn’t as thick up here, but she had no intention of moving forward without her bodyguard.

“Keep walking,” Caera said.

“Remnants. They—”

“Not many in this tunnel.” Caera gave her a gentle push on the back, and Mia walked down the twisting path, almost identical to the one she’d taken to get into the cave’s deepest places. “You really have no mark.”

“No.”

“Crazy. Never seen that before. But strange shit’s been happening for a while now.”

“Really?”

“Yep.” Caera walked beside her, and fell forward, earning a small squeak from Mia as she jumped aside. Which of course just made the huge tiger demon woman laugh as she continued walking on all fours. Prowling, more like.

“I’m ... Mia.” Might as well share names and test the waters. Caera didn’t seem to like Diogo, and that could be useful. Then again, none of the demons seemed to like each other, so making a friend or ally might not help her at all.

Caera grinned at her, and licked some of her fangs. Apparently demons did that a lot.

“You looking to become a betrayer?”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“Guess not, then. You talk like one.”

“Sharing my name?”

“Yeap, that’s a lot more than most fresh meat can do. They often shut down and can barely talk for days, sometimes weeks. Just saying ‘boo’ is enough to get them to freak, panic, run, all the good shit that gets a demon’s blood pumping.”

“Oh.” And here she thought she’d been handling this horribly. “I—”

She stared into one of the alcoves, and froze. More sex, but this time it was a human girl. A thin one, taller than Mia, on her back and lying on a demon’s chest. A vrat demon like Brennus, giant compared to the girl, was on his back, one huge hand wrapped around her throat. Another vrat demon was squatting down over his legs, with the girl’s legs up and pulled around his waist. And Mia had found just the right angle to see ... everything.

The girl managed tiny, weak mewls, arms limp and dangling off the sides of the big, muscular demon underneath her, as the two demons fucked her. The bulge on her slender stomach shifted and moved with their pace, clearly showing the demon squatting over her was fucking her fast and hard, while the demon underneath her was happy to mostly hold still while staying fully sheathed inside her. Deep. So very deep. A glimpse of between their legs was enough to have Mia’s mouth drop open. How could she fit those things inside her? They were as thick as Mia’s arm.

The demon on top of her turned his head, looked to Mia, and grinned. Slowly, he pulled himself out of the girl, stepping back and letting her squeezing lips drag and milk on his length, until his long cock fell free of her insides. White cum dripped from his huge shaft, and so did the girl’s juices, as the demon got up onto his feet, and walked over to the alcove entrance. He leaned against it, tail swaying left and right behind him as he grinned down at Mia.

Again, the aura of sex buried her, and this time she could feel it so clearly, she could almost see it pouring off the two demons. But, as much as she wanted to blame it for all the thoughts currently running through her head, she knew damn well part of it was just the fact the naked demon in front of her was absolutely gorgeous. Yeah sure, he was a demon, but not a gross one; none of the demons she’d seen so far had been gross.

The vratorin looked mostly human, almost eight feet tall and standing on raptor feet that only made his muscularity all the more intimidating. Abs, very defined abs. His demon face had skull-ish features, but it wasn’t a skull, more like a hyper masculine face with extremely defined eyebrow ridges and a jawline. Even the giant black horns looked appealing.

And try as she might, she couldn’t help but look down at the huge thing hanging between his legs. She’d seen some other vrats naked, and they didn’t have a hint of genitalia, but they’d all been quite black. This vrat, like his companion, was red all over, with only the thickest skin still dark, now a black-ish red instead of full black. The thing hanging between his legs was very red, throbbing, dripping, and had to be almost a foot long. No wonder he’d been having trouble getting the whole thing into the woman.

A mewl ripped Mia’s eyes away from the demon in front of her back to her fellow human. The demon underneath her pushed his hips up into her, and sank every inch of his length into her ass. Whoever she was, her limp legs spread around the demon’s, leaving everything exposed for Mia to see. The distension sliding back and forth on her stomach. Thick, white cum, flowing out of her. Her empty slit, clenching on nothing and squirting a couple tiny splashes down onto the stones between the demon’s legs.

“Wow,” the now unoccupied demon said, licking his lips as he looked at Mia. “Cute little thing, isn’t she?”

“She is,” Caera said. “But you’re not touching her.”

“Claimed her?”

“No. Diogo’s taking her to Zel.”

“Taking a betrayer to Zel? Why—holy shit.” He leaned down, and Mia froze for a different reason as his fangs got within inches of her face. “She’s unmarked.”

“Exactly.”

“Never seen that.”

“No one has.” Caera shrugged, and gave her fellow demon a gentle push back with her tail. “No touching.”

“I’m not touching! But, I mean, she is pretty hot.” The vrat squatted down in front of Mia, putting him at eye level with her. “What do you say, fresh meat? Marge back there is getting pretty worn out. Wanna replace her?”

Caera snorted. “I just said—”

“Oh come on, I’m not forcing anything. Just asking.” The demon licked his fangs again as he grinned at Mia, stood up, and again leaned against the wall of his alcove’s entrance. He wrapped one of his big hands around his girth, and stroked it, squeezing it and milking heavy globs of cum from the tip. “She’s small. And gorgeous.”

His words went through one ear and out the other, barely registering. All Mia could do, was stare at his wet cock, and how its mostly human shape had a few bumps and grooves on it that looked ... really nice.

Wait. He called her gorgeous? Her? She never considered herself ugly, but she was nothing compared to the succubi she’d seen. Why weren’t they fucking them, and not the human girls?

“I’m not babysitting her while she fucks the two of you.” Caera neither looked impressed by the demon’s penis, or surprised he was interested in Mia.

“Join us then, Caera?”

“You know I’m going to say no. Why do you always ask?”

The demon chuckled and rolled his eyes, but shrugged after a while, and walked back over to the human woman. The demon already fucking her was taking a short break, holding her hips and keeping her ass balls deep on his length, but otherwise he wasn’t moving anymore. It made it easy for the demon who’d just been flirting with Mia to guide his cock back into the girl’s empty slit again, and slowly sink himself into her. He made sure to angle his body to the side a bit too, so Mia could see everything, especially the now bigger bulge on her slender belly slide up to her navel, and past it, as the demon slowly but consistently sank inch, after inch, after inch, into her body.

The poor girl quivered, let out a tiny squeak when the demon bottomed out inside her, and melted into a whimpering mess as the demon took his sweet time forcing more of his length into her. That, was very very deep. Mia had played with her toys before, doing deep penetration, and the only time going deep like that didn’t hurt was when she was out-of-her-mind horny and dripping all over herself. This demon was going deeper, and the woman was cumming and cumming hard.

Something took her shoulder, and pulled her away. And even when Caera got her past the aura of sex and lust, the image remained. The woman, squashed between two tall, lean, muscular, handsome in a terrifying flesh-eating demon kinda way demons, filled to the limit. The demon wanted to do that to her.

The tunnel continued for a while, and Mia did her best to forget what she just saw. She was in Hell! She shouldn’t be thinking about demons fucking her into a coma! What the fuck? What the ever living fuck? It had to be the weird aura they put out, just like the stairs of Heaven did.

“Careful with demons like him,” Caera said.

“You think ... he was lying?”

“About wanting to fuck you? Not in the least. Those two would have fucked you until you couldn’t walk. But that doesn’t mean some post-nut clarity wouldn’t end in him ripping out your heart for an easy meal.”

Oh god. She shivered as she rubbed her arms, and did her best to ignore how hard her nipples were.

“Demons are—”

“Horny? Violent? The usual questions from fresh meat.”

“I mean, I guess I expected that. I just didn’t expect it to be so ... so...” Fleshy. Biological. Real. No greater-than-life entities with wisdom beyond knowing and abilities beyond grasping. So far, all she’d seen, were flesh and blood demons looking to fight, fuck, and eat.

Caera laughed quietly as she shrugged, back on all fours and now walking beside Mia again. It was like walking next to a giant, spiky tiger, covered in metal and skulls and leather straps.

“Well unmarked, I have no idea how to treat you, so I’m just going to treat you like a betrayer. Zel’s betrayer, considering that’s where we’re taking you. No one gets to touch you.”

“Oh. Good.”

“Be careful of the succubi and incubi though. Their sins are very strong. They can pull you in.”

“Sins?”

“You felt it with those two vrats, right?”

“Oh, the ... aura thing.”

The huge demon beside her nodded as she rounded the next corner.

“You’ll get used to it. Assuming Zel doesn’t eat you.”

The ease she suggested demons would eat her was horrifying. It brought the images from the shore back to her, the screams, and the blood, quickly ending the arousal she’d built up.

Every so often they passed some dangling chains, or a bunch of spikes on the walls, or a remnant clawing at the stones as if they could pull themselves free. One time, they came across a wall of stacked stones, and several remnants were trapped inside between the stones, like mortar for bricks. Hell was a horrible place, and she didn’t belong here. The demons knew it, too, from the way they looked at her.

She could only hope demons found David and thought he was too valuable or interesting to kill, too. Or maybe he escaped and joined those Cain cultists Caera had mentioned. Whatever happened, she had to believe he was alive, and she had to find a way to get out of here. That probably meant killing demons.

After what she saw at the river, named Adam’s Blood apparently, she doubted she’d have trouble killing one. Not psychologically, at least. No guilt for killing bloodthirsty monsters. Physically was another matter.

A few more alcoves showed some sights. One of them was a horrific display of a demon torturing her next meal, and Mia forced herself to look away. She felt it, the aura of hunger and malice coming off the big demon, another one like Caera. It made her sick to her stomach.

Just around the next corner was another alcove, and Mia almost fell from the whiplash. A human man, 666 on his forehead, lying on his back on some leather while two succubi and a gargoyle sat on him, fucking him and each other. One of those little imp demons was in there too, and a demon Mia hadn’t seen yet, something that looked like a minotaur, was trying to fit his huge length into the imp’s very tiny body, big belly bulge and all. The minotaur was bigger than a vrat, and the imp was smaller than a human. And the imp was loving it.

Demons fucked each other and fucked humans, too. And from the looks the little imp demon gave the human only a few feet from her, she was more interested in him than the minotaur behind her rearranging her insides.

That was weird. The man was attractive, sure, but the succubi were utterly gorgeous, and the other demons were attractive too, again in that scary but sexy kinda way. Why were all the women in there focused on the human? Even the minotaur demon was giving the human man interested looks.

This place was going to make her go insane. From sickening violence to orgies in the span of fifty feet. Just ignore it. Just ignore it.

Caera jumped up, earning a squeak from Mia as the huge woman and her huge tail disappeared into a hole above. A moment later, one big red arm came down, palm open.

“Grab on.”

She hesitated. Grab the big hand with the big black claws, or run away? No one was watching her.

No, dumb idea. Caera could probably run her down in seconds, and Caera was also the only demon who was going to protect her. And she did seem slightly less horrible than the other demons.

Mia took the hand, and Caera pulled her up into another big alcove. Chains dangled, dozens of them, plenty with skulls hanging off them, and plenty of those skulls were demon, not human. Caera pushed them aside so Mia could walk through unscathed.

A big room, with some of those weird dark red leather blankets. Caera gestured to it, and Mia sat down on them as Caera stood between her and the chain curtain. It was a big, tall alcove, to let someone eight feet tall stand up like that. And the blankets were definitely leather like, but thicker, and oddly, a little softer.

“So, unmarked, you really saw the gates of Heaven?” Caera undid the leather strap holding one of her metal guards covering a part of her arm. Then another for her leg, and another for her shoulder. She was stripping.

Mia stared. Yeah sure, she considered herself straight, for the most part, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have eyes. As the demon woman revealed more and more body, muscular but feminine, a slender flat stomach, a big firm ass underneath her thick tail, and big breasts, Mia gave up on trying to not look. The demons didn’t care she was naked, and they didn’t care when they got naked. No reason to not look as much as she wanted.

Caera’s skin was mostly black with some dark red where her skin was probably the softest, like her breasts, stomach, inner thighs, and her throat. Maybe it’d get all throbby red and soft if she got aroused? That seemed to be the pattern. Her breasts might as well have been made of plastic for how little they moved as she tossed the last bit of armor aside, and lay on the floor, still blocking Mia from the exit. Or protecting her from demons who might try and sneak in.

“I ... I saw the gates of Heaven, yeah.”

“That is weird as fuck. That’s ... never happened, not far as I know. Not far as Diogo knows, either.” Caera settled, lowering her head until it rested on the backs of her hands. Classic cat lying position.

“I don’t suppose the demons will, uh, consider unmarked off limits?”

“Nope. They’ll eat you or try to use you.” Caera shrugged, like it was the most normal thing in the world. “And you said that like there’s more than one of you.”

“I mean, there could be, right? Right before the portal sucked me down, one of the angels said ‘not again’. Maybe it happened before?”

“Sounds like. Not really my problem I guess. I just gotta keep you alive until tomorrow, and then it’s fucking Diogo’s problem.”

“You ... don’t like Diogo?”

Snarling, she shrugged again and turned her head a bit to look at Mia more straight-on, body still perpendicular to her.

“No. I don’t.”

“You’re pretty blunt about that. You won’t get in trouble?”

“Demons kill each other all the time, fresh meat. Zel wants us to stop so she can bolster her forces, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Diogo’s got a giant target painted on his back, and the only reason he’s not dead is he’s strong enough to kill anyone who challenges him.”

Well, fuck.

“Can I ... ask some questions?”

Caera smiled at her. “Yeah sure. I like you.”

“You do?”

“You got spunk. Lot of fresh meat can’t handle Hell.”

“I ... I’m not handling it.”

“Sure you are.” The demon shrugged, her huge tail’s tip slowly wagging. “Play your cards right and you could end up as one of Zel’s betrayers.” Despite her attempt to sound positive, for some reason Mia couldn’t guess, Caera said Zel’s name with even more bitterness than she said Diogo’s.

“What’s a betrayer? One of the people with 666 on their foreheads?”

“Yeap. A demon can lay claim to you, feed you a piece of themselves, but you have to accept it, hence the name. There’s a lot of benefits to being a betrayer, but...”

“But it means the longest possible sentence in Hell. Six hundred and sixty-six deaths...”

Caera grinned. “You put things together quick. Useful trait to have. Good for making sure you don’t get stabbed in the back, or your throat slit while you sleep.”

Mia stared. “Does that happen a lot?”

“It does.”

Wincing, Mia let herself fall back until she lay down. Legs spread, arms out, she took deep breaths, tasting the metal scent in the air, before eventually rolling onto her side, facing the beautiful, scary tiger lady beside her, parallel, head to head and only a few feet apart.

“I’m still hoping an angel will show up and take me back.”

“There has been a lot of angel activity these past few years. Last time I got close to one though...” Growling, Caera looked down at her claws, hands on top of each other, her chin on top of them. She dug her claws against the stone underneath, leaving scratch marks against the dark rock.

“Something happen?” Why, the fuck, would she ask that?

Because so far, Caera was the only demon who didn’t act like she was looking to eat her, or stab her in the back. Trusting her was a bad idea, but at least Mia could test the waters.

“You want to know what happened to me?”

“I mean ... yes?”

Caera chuckled quietly. “Christ, you really don’t belong in Hell, do you?”

“Because I asked what happened to you?”

“Fresh meat, you—”

“Mia. I said ... my name is Mia.”

That stunned the giant demon, but she laughed a few seconds later, nodding.

“Mia. You’re in Hell. You think any of the fresh meat we deal with down here aren’t absolutely horrible people? Selfish fucks who’d do anything to survive? It doesn’t even cross most fresh meat’s minds to ask anything about other people, let alone a demon.”

“I...” Mia looked down. Caera was right. On the river, the other humans hadn’t just panicked, some of them had actively used each other as bait so they could get away. “I don’t belong here.”

“You don’t. But if you’re unmarked, I wouldn’t be surprised if you only had to die once to go back to the Great Tower. Consider yourself lucky. And no, I don’t know shit about the Great Tower, so don’t ask.”

“Oh.”

“And I lost my friends. Killed, by those Cainites or whatever they’re calling themselves these days. Angel showed up, stirred a hornet’s nest, lot of chaos.”

“I’m sorry.”

Ceara shifted from confused to surprised to angry to depressed in a matter of seconds, and she nodded again as she resettled her chin on the back of her hands.

“I think you’ll survive, if only because you’re so unusual. Zel wants to get strong and get there quick, but she’ll probably consider you more valuable as an asset than a meal. An angel might actually come and investigate, which Zel will no doubt try to capture and eat.”

“She could eat an angel?”

“She’s a tetrad demon, and a spire ruler. She could definitely manage it.”

“Scary.”

“Ha, you’re telling me.” Caera rotated her closer shoulder a couple times, drawing Mia’s eyes to the burn mark there. It looked like a rune. “Night’s here. Sleep.”

“Night? I don’t—”

The amber veins that gently lit the room dimmed, until the room was plenty dark, and her eyes had to adjust to see anything. The lines pulsed too, very slowly and consistently, like they were plugged into something’s lungs or heart.

“I expect you’ll survive longer than most souls, Mia. So sleep for now. Your feet will heal, and you’ll wake up hungry. Diogo or me will find you a forbidden fruit. Or, you know, some goort flesh to tide you over.”

That was a lot of information that Mia couldn’t contextualize at all. David could. But for now, she had to do what she could. Her feet would heal over night, and she’d wake up hungry? Fast healing, inducing hunger? She hadn’t felt hungry since she’d died.

The rules in the afterlife were different. She’d have to learn them.

~~Day 17~~

~~David~~

He woke up to the sounds of moans.

The amber veins grew in brightness slowly, like a sunrise, pulling his eyes open with far more gentleness than he expected from Hell.

Oh, right, Hell. Wow, that hadn’t take long to remember after waking. Probably a product of not dreaming, not having to get his brain realigned with reality anymore.

Arms, still bound. Ass, still on stones. Feet, feeling surprisingly better, so at least he had that. But for the first time in seventeen days, he was hungry. It didn’t feel like normal hunger, or thirst, but something deeper, something in his bones that ached and told him he had to refuel or he was going to starve. Maybe not immediately, but it’d happen eventually.

Hopefully there was something to eat in Hell, then. And hopefully it wasn’t the hearts of other humans, or demons.

More moans. He lifted his head and looked to the only source of movement, and more memories flooded his brain as he put yesterday’s events back together. Two demons had rescued him purely by accident, but had decided to keep him around when they’d realized he was an unmarked soul. Two ladies, at that, tall and fit and scary and sexy and...

And currently having sex on the weird leather sheets, less than ten feet away from him. He stared, frozen, eyes wide, mouth dropped, as he devoured the sight of the two naked women. Their bodies were much redder than yesterday, the black parts now dark red, and the dark red parts now red, and soft. Very soft. Daoka was on her back, legs spread, and Jeskura was between them, head between Daoka’s thighs.

It was almost hard to tell who started where. Jeskura’s wings were relaxed and loose, half spreading out over her back and the blankets, while her tail slithered over her legs. Her arms were hooked underneath and around Daoka’s muscular, curvy thighs. The satyr held her gargoyle friend’s ... lover’s two black horns in her grip, and she quivered from head to hoof, her own four black ram horns rubbing against the bed as she quivered. Her dolphin clicks came out slowly, deep, mixed with quiet gasps and moans.

Each time a tremble pulsed through the voluptuous satyr’s body, her huge breasts rippled over her chest. David gulped, eyes locked on the satyr, her open mouth, her beautiful eyeless face, and the way her massive breasts jiggled, hitting against the sides of her arms since she was holding onto the gargoyle’s horns.

She turned her head, and aimed her face directly at David, as she came. He said nothing, made no noise, did absolutely nothing. He just stared at her, hypnotized. She knew he was awake, watching her. She said nothing, or at least her clicks didn’t make Jeskura stop eating her out.

And as she came down from her orgasm high, she smiled at David, let go of the gargoyle’s horns, and cupped her breasts. Careful of her claws with the grace of someone who’d had them her whole life, she squeezed and massaged the huge pillows, causing the soft mounds to spill over her fingers. For him. She was showing off for him.

Movement drew his eyes down, to something between his legs, something long.

“Holy shit!” He snapped his head back, and everything went white. His brain rattled around in his skull, and a wave of pain flooded him. Hitting his skull against the wall behind him was not his smartest move, but he managed to force open his eyes again long enough to see ... his penis, shrinking back to its usual size. Arousal gone in a puff of nauseating head pain.

Both demons hopped up, and Jeskura spun and faced him with hands up, claws pointed toward him, her eyes wide with surprise. Ready to slice him or anything open at the drop of a dime, apparently. He stared at her, gulped, and waited for her to pounce him and bite him like a panicked cat.

She didn’t. Slowly, she stepped off the bed, and lowered her hands as she came out of her fight-or-flight mode.

“Dude, you scared the shit out of me. The fuck you screaming for?”

“I ... I thought I saw...” He thought he saw a snake, a big one, between his legs. But, nope, just his penis. His regular, perfectly normal, average sized penis, deflating. Right?

Maybe hitting the gate of Heaven with his face had actually given him some of that ‘prime’ body the angel had talked about? He didn’t feel like he’d gotten one of Heaven’s prime bodies, but that thing between his legs was nowhere to be seen. So, it was ... his ... body? No, not a chance. Maybe it had been a snake, that’d just happened to be between his legs, and slithered away when he banged his head? And yeah sure, he’d been aroused, watching one beautiful demon eat out another beautiful demon. But ... it was so weird.

“Ha, sorry about that,” Jes said. “Saw us moving around in the dark, right?” Shrugging, Jes came over to him, her body still throbbing red, large breasts rippling lightly with her hopping steps. They swayed gently underneath her when she leaned down in front of him, and undid the binds holding his wrists. “Just got really fucking horny. Came out of nowhere, too, like really weird. So Dao and I had some fun.”

“Oh.” He forced himself to look away from her breasts, though she didn’t seem to give a shit if he stared right at her. Even her vagina looked so much more ... vagina-like, compared to how it’d looked yesterday, barely existent and as hard as the rest of her.

And as she undid his second binding, he could see the red flush of her skin fading away. Her breasts stopped shifting with her movements, hardening. Her skin darkened, the red areas becoming dark red, and the dark red areas turning black.

That, was an interesting physical property. Demons showed physical arousal through their whole body? And their whole body reacted? Very interesting.

Daoka clicked softly a few times, eyeless face looking at him. She was calming down, too, body darkening, but it took a bit longer than her gargoyle lover. She grinned. He squirmed.

“Wouldn’t normally just fuck like that in front of fresh meat,” Jes said. She picked him up, set him on his feet — oh, they were healed — before she spent some time walking around the cave. Looking for signs of an intruder, probably. “Just, damn, got super horny for no damn reason. Couldn’t help myself.”

Daoka clicked and nodded, and once her skin had fully darkened, she half walked half hopped into another area of the cave beyond view. David watched, hoping to see her huge breasts jiggle some more, but nope, they were firm as stone. Once they weren’t aroused, the busty demons like Dao had nothing to worry about when it came to running, or hopping, which must have been especially important to a satyr.

Hell was proving to be strangely ... real. It wasn’t a mess of chaos and insanity, where nothing made sense. There were rules, some that seemed like they could have been evolutionary, and some that felt like divine laws passed down from God or whoever.

If it was a system, with rules and concepts that could be understood and used, then it was a system someone could learn to exploit. That included him. And he was damn good at figuring out how things worked. Shit at finding the balls to actually do shit, though. That was Mia’s domain.

“You’re probably hungry, right?”

“I ... I am.” He looked down at his naked body and checked the bottom of his feet. Healed, mostly, and they felt tougher too, calluses aplenty. At this rate, his feet would be ready for trekking across Hell all day without issue in just a few days. But Jeskura was right, he was starving.

“My tree has a couple tiny fruits growing. You can have one, and it should tide you over until the next time you hurt yourself. Assuming you’re still with us.”

“I don’t need to eat every day?”

“Humans don’t, sometimes going months without food. Demons usually eat once or twice a week.” She grinned at him as she leaned in close, only inches away from him. “Dao doesn’t want me to eat you, and I won’t. But damn, you are a cute little thing, aren’t you?” She ran the blunt side of her claw down his chest, grinning at him. “Maybe I’ll eat you anyway, and I bet you’d enjoy it.”

He stared at her, and gulped. That was too close to flirting and a death threat for him to tell which was which.

Dao hopped back, clicking loudly and quickly, and she gave Jes a gentle shove away from David.

“Oh come on, I’m only kidding. He’s your pet, I know!” Laughing, Jes hooked her wings around her shoulders, and stepped around the curving wall of the cave where Dao had just come from.