For a moment, everything was dim, blurry and distant. She heard voices—Ash saying “I’ve got you, it’s all right.” Riam telling him to hurry—he didn’t have much time. There was no opportunity to get accustomed to the strangeness of it. Suddenly she was falling. Wind rushing all around her. The longer it went on, the more aware she became of his arms locked around her, holding her to the steady anchor of his body in the maelstrom. So fast, they were going so fast, surely when they hit the bottom…
It seemed as if it would never come, as if she’d go on falling forever. In truth it probably lasted only a few minutes. Then, all at once, it stopped. Everything…stopped.
“Madeleine, look,” Ash said, his voice near her ear—did she have ears? Did she have eyes? How could she look? It was all dark…
He pulled away from her and she realized it was dark because her face had been crammed against his chest. Here, she felt solid, she felt real again. That stood to reason, she supposed, if a soul was capable of feeling the torment promised in this place.
Madeleine obeyed Ash’s command, looked around—and fought not to shove her face back into his chest.
Horror all around her. They stood on a craggy outcropping in the vicinity of a huge…castle, she supposed, though she’d never seen anything like it in her life, even in art. Impossible architecture, a hodgepodge of could not be, with its stairs and doors leading to nowhere.
Above it all, black clouds seethed. Lightning flickered orange and red. Below them…fire. Only fire. The landscape beyond the keep, as far as she could see, was made of charred rock and what appeared to be lava, and…
The faces in the mirrors. The dead-eyed souls, as she’d described them to Ash before. The things she’d been afraid were going to get her someday. They were everywhere, crawling, trying to escape the flames, being pulled back in by some unseen force.
It was every nightmare she’d ever had, come to searing life.
“This is my home,” Ash said, his voice sharp. She looked at him and saw his eyes did reflect the light here, such as it was. It glowed and flickered, a perfect reflection of the inferno around them.
She tried to take a deep breath and found that she couldn’t. What was there to breathe here, anyway? The fumes had to be toxic, but it didn’t matter, because try as she might, she couldn’t suck it in. Desperately, she clawed at her uncooperative throat, a resurgence of panic overtaking her.
Ash noticed her distress and grasped her hands, pulling them away and holding them. “Madeleine, you don’t have to breathe. You have no functioning lungs, you have no beating heart. You have only the memory of these things. Just relax, let go. You aren’t going to suffocate. You can’t.”
You’re dead, she finished for him. Oh, dear God, she’d really done it, she’d let him kill her. How could she trust him that much? What if it had all been some elaborate ploy?
She couldn’t let herself think like that. This was Ash, this was who he was, where he was from, and she loved him. He’d had the courage to show her everything. She loved him even more for that.
“Who are they?” she asked over the bubbling, boiling noises around them. She was watching the ghastly spirits in the flames.
“The damned,” he answered simply. “The worst of the worst.”
“They’re the ones I always saw haunting me.”
“I figured.”
If she were honest with herself, she’d know she wanted to stand there clinging to him from now on out of fear if she moved, something out there would get her. But she straightened and lifted her chin, looking up at him. “Ash, it’s terrible here. You’re right about that. But it’s not enough to scare me away.”
A muscle clenched in his jaw. “You haven’t seen everything yet.”
She would’ve swallowed, if her throat had worked. He stepped backward away from her, desolation in his orange-black eyes. Maddie held on to his hand until he’d moved too far away, and she let hers drop.
“What haven’t I seen?” she asked, not liking how small and tinny her voice sounded.
“You haven’t seen me.”
The very air—or whatever there was here—seemed to shudder around him, dark smoky tendrils forming and encircling him like a slow whirlwind. Finally it engulfed him fully, until he was a pillar of what she could only describe as black light. It grew, stretching upward another foot or so over his regular height. It spread outward, forming vast winglike shapes on either side of his shoulders. When it slowly began to dissipate…
Her knees wanted to give. She wanted to fall to them and weep. Tell him that was it, she’d had enough, take her home now. The thing he’d become before her very eyes was something she didn’t think human eyes were meant to behold. She received only a mere impression: blackened scales, leathery webbed wings, terrible black claws for hands…and she had to look down.
“Madeleine,” he said, and though his voice was deeper, growling, distorted…she still heard Ash in there. He stepped closer. “Look at me. Look at what you were prepared to spend eternity with.”
She found something she could still do was cry. Maybe demons left them that ability for a reason. Maybe they liked to see the tears of their victims. The droplets fell from her eyes, sizzling and smoking where they landed on the scorched earth under her feet. Capturing her lower lip between her teeth, she lifted her gaze back to him. She owed him that much.
Just as she’d heard the Ash she knew in his voice, she could see him in his face too. The brow she’d caressed, only heavily ridged…and sprouting curled horns like a ram’s. The eyes she’d looked into, only bigger and darker. The mouth she’d kissed. And now she noticed his wings were torn…part of his torture? Dark wounds striped his broad, heavily muscled chest.
Anger simmered bright and hot in her chest. They’d taken this strong, indomitable creature and humiliated him, tormented him over her, and he’d taken it. He’d let them. Because she couldn’t fathom how they had overpowered him, no matter how many of them there were.
Regardless of how he appeared to her now, he was still the being who’d held her when she was afraid. Who’d laughed with her and made her feel better. Who’d chased away the nightmares—even though he’d been the reason for them in the first place.
“Just let me go to my fate,” he said. “Let me take you back. Forget about me and live your life, as I told you before.”
She closed the distance between them. It wasn’t easy, looking up into the face of a seven-and-a-half-foot demon, but she managed. She put her hands on his chest, leaned forward and kissed one of his terrible wounds. He growled out her name despairingly, and rested one of his huge hands on the top of her head with such gentleness it only made her tears come harder. She tilted her head back and looked up at him.
“I’m not running yet,” she said. “So what else have you got?”
With a strangled sound, he dropped to his knees before her. As big as he was, that only put his head in the vicinity of her throat. “Please,” he said, gripping her arms. She never would have thought to see such an expression of heartbreak on the face of…of a monster, but there it was. It wrenched everything within her. “You can’t stay here.”
“Ash,” she whispered, gently touching both sides of his face. His skin was hard and rough but sensitive; the muscles jumped under her fingers. “I have to save you. It’s not about me. Don’t you understand? If it’s even possible that your bringing me here will spare your life, I have to try. I’m going to. There’s nothing you can say, nothing you can show me, that’s going to change that.”
She pulled his head toward her, wrapped her arms around it and leaned her cheek against him. Slowly, his hold on her relaxed, and his arms went around her waist so tightly she could hardly…well, she couldn’t breathe anyway, could she? And it was a good thing, because his grip wouldn’t have allowed it. All the fight seemed to go out of him and resignation settled in its place. She could see it in the droop of his mighty shoulders.
“I love you,” she whispered, her tears dripping onto his head. She swore the very ground beneath her trembled when she said it.
Chapter Seventeen
That Madeleine should see where he came from, that she should see him, was insufferable. He should just seize her and take her back to her waiting body, which Riam was helping keep animated for her return. He’d insisted upon that much. But it didn’t buy much time—maybe an hour or so. And time was so unpredictable here. If he didn’t get her back soon, their entire debate would be moot. It would be too late.
He knew all of this. Still, he hadn’t done it.
What if it worked? What if she could stay here and be his? If she’d seen it and she was willing to face it, to give up everything for it—what arguments were there left to make?
He stood and led her wordlessly toward the keep. The only way this would work was for Metos to see her, approve her admittance and declare Ash spared. Funny how all of Hell was around him and his heart felt like a chunk of ice rattling in his chest. He’d be lucky if Riam didn’t put his little amulet to use and seek him out to give him a good trashing. The thought made his lips quirk. He’d probably let him, at this point.
Conditions didn’t improve on the inside of the keep; if anything, they were more deplorable. All he could do was steer Madeleine straight ahead, keep her moving, try to prevent her from examining any passing chambers too closely. If she insisted on being here, he would do his damnedest to protect her from as many of the horrors as he could.
If they let him live.
Screams sounded in the distance, and she started with each one. Even he didn’t like the sound, imagining the time he’d spent hanging helpless and blind in the dungeon. They would have to kill him before they stuck him back in there. He hoped Metos was ready for a fight if their plan didn’t work.
They reached the massive doors that led to Metos’s chamber, and Ash turned Madeleine to face him. “This is it. Are you ready?”
“No, but I don’t have a choice.”
He managed a smile for her. Here she was a faded image of herself, but still so beautiful he ached. At the moment, he could not even fathom that there had ever been a time when he wanted this for her.
He had so much to make up for. And he wanted to get started.
“Let me do the talking. Whatever I say, go along. Show as little weakness or fear as you can,” he told her. “They feed on it, thrive on it. They’ll be like bloodhounds picking up a scent, understand?” She nodded. “Then let’s go.”
He took her arm and shoved his way through the doors. Metos, sitting on his ridiculous throne, was holding court with a number of the other Masters. Saklon, that bastard, was one of them. Madeleine’s step faltered as she spied him and, as much as Ash wanted to reassure her in some way, he kept her moving. A tiny sob escaped her, but she complied.
His superior’s chamber was dark and vast, like almost every other room in this place. The corners dissolved into the flickering shadows cast by the torches and fire pots. Their steps echoed through the hall, through the absolute silence that had descended upon their entrance. All eyes turned toward them, some humanoid, others beastly. Madeleine ground in her heels and he pushed her ahead of him, wanting more than anything to jerk her into the safety of his arms. But they had to hold it together these first few minutes or they might not make it another step.