Even stranger, the headstones, all different sizes, shapes, and materials, were unmarked. At least, they weren’t marked with names or dates. Some had been carved with what appeared to be graffiti, and others were scarred by writing, mainly in the universal demon language, Sheoulic. Several were warnings to not enter any of the five mausoleums that seemed to be randomly placed around the sprawling cemetery.
Unfortunately, she’d heard enough about the Inner Sanctum to know that the mausoleums were the gateways to the five levels, or Rings, as they were officially called, that housed the demons Hades watched over. She had to enter. But which one? None were marked in any way that would indicate which Ring they led to. Was she supposed to just choose randomly and hope she’d picked the right one? Ugh. Yet another reason she wanted to go back to Heaven. There, everything was clearly marked.
She eyed the five mausoleums and finally decided on the closest one. Before she entered though, she found a heavy piece of wood she could use as a club if needed. When she’d lost her wings, she’d lost all innate defensive weapons, but they wouldn’t have done her any good down here, anyway.
She really should have thought this out a little better.
Your impulsiveness is going to get you in trouble someday.
Her mother’s words rang in her ears, and so did her siblings’ echoes of, “Told you so,” uttered just before her wings had been sliced off.
Cat stared at the mausoleum’s iron grate door. Apparently, not even losing her wings had taught her a lesson.
Cursing herself—and throwing in some choice words for her siblings—she pushed open the door, cringing at the rusty creaking noise that made the things in the graves screech. The inside was dark and dusty, but anything was better than the foul dampness of the graveyard. It was also smaller than it appeared to be from the outside, about the size of a phone booth.
The door slammed shut behind her, and she nearly screamed at the clank of the metal hitting the stone. An instant later, it swung open by itself, and she stepped out into a featureless, sandy desert. There was nothing but pale yellow sand and gray sky. Nothing moved. There was no breeze, no sound, no smell...what the hell was this place?
Okay, this might have been a mistake. She spun around to go back to the graveyard and a different mausoleum, but like earlier when she first left Azagoth’s library, she found nothing but empty air where the doorway should have been. Panic rose up, but before she could form a coherent thought, she heard a noise behind her. A chill shot up her spine as she slowly turned.
Heart pounding, fingers digging into the wood club, she squinted into the distance, and that’s when she saw it—a shimmer in the air that slowly solidified into a number of blurry shapes. And then the shapes took form, and her heart slammed to a sudden, painful stop at the blast of evil that struck her.
At least fifty demons of several different species formed a semicircle around her, a wall of fangs, claws, and crude, handmade weapons. The crowd parted to allow one of them, a seven-foot tall, eyeless thing with tiny, sharp teeth and maggot-colored skin, to come forward. In his slender, clawed hand, he held a chain, and on the other end of that chain, crawling on all fours like a dog, was a human male, his hair matted with blood, his skin bruised and bleeding, one ear missing.
This was the very human she’d come for. Relief quickly gave way to guilt and horror at what had been done to him. And at what might still be done to him. To both of them.
“Aren’t you a tasty thing,” the maggot demon slurred, his voice mushy and sifted through sharp teeth.
Terror, unlike anything she’d ever experienced, clogged her throat. Oh, she’d been afraid before, plenty of times. But this was different. She’d never faced so many demons, and she’d certainly never done it while holding only a stick of wood as a weapon.
Raising her club, she found her voice, shaky and squeaky as it was. “Demon, I am a fallen angel on a mission from Azagoth himself,” she lied. “You are to hand over the human immediately.”
Maggot-man laughed. “Foolish kunsac.” Her Sheoulic was rusty, but she was pretty sure he’d just called her a rather nasty slang term for a demon’s anus. “You bluff. And you will die.” He grinned, flashing those horrid teeth at her. “But not before we get what we want from you.”
Another demon stepped forward and made a sweeping gesture toward the others. “What we all want from you.”
What they wanted from her? How had they even found her?
They came at her in a rush. She swung her club, catching one in the jaw hard enough to knock a few teeth out, but as she swung again, something struck her in the head. She tasted blood and heard a scream, but only later did she realize that the scream was hers.
“My lord.”
Inside one of the hundreds of tiny cells in the Rot’s lowest dungeon levels, Hades turned away from the broken body of one of the two demons he’d captured three days ago. Silth, the fallen angel commander in charge of the 5th Ring, stood in the doorway. “Tell me you’ve located the rest of the insurgents.”