Demon Bound

finally reached the head of the mother. The twisted, hairy legs stretched more than a kilometer in front of them. There was desert here, red sand studded with sharp boulders. Behind them, at a distance too far to calculate, a tower speared into the crimson sky. Lucifer’s tower, she thought, remembering the descriptions she’d heard. His cities and the frozen field surrounded it. Somewhere, Belial had his own—smaller—towers, his own cities. She hovered, uncertain. “Where do we go?”
    “Alice.” Jake’s voice was grim, and she looked in the direction he pointed. Not on the ground, but into the air. Alice’s stomach fell as she made out the dark shapes. A company of demons flew in precise formation. The one at the front radiated a brilliant light. “Belial.”
    A psychic probe pierced her shields. Alice dropped several feet, gasping at the pain in her head.
    Her arms tightened around Jake’s bare chest. He was his full height now, but she knew he’d shift into a smaller size again if she had to fly quickly.
    “He’s seen us,” she said. “Shall we run?”
    “We wouldn’t get far.” Jake’s hand clenched over hers. The pressure of his fingers felt oddly flattened by the scales that were her skin, as if a thin sheet of glass lay between them. “Alice—do you think Belial meant that you can’t jump out of the realm, or that you can’t jump at all?”
    Did they dare risk teleporting? Jake was putting the decision in her hands. Her heart pounded. She stared at the quickly approaching light.
    “Surely . . .” Panic lifted through her chest, almost flew away with the words. She battled it, and finished, “Surely he meant the realm.”
    “Okay. Think of Hell, then. Think of Hell ... just think of anywhere in Hell but here.” He tugged her left arm up, so that she supported him with her right, and he pressed his lips to the soft scales of her inner wrist. “And listen—don’t freak out, but I’m going to bind you to me as close as I possibly can.”
    “How—”
    Shock stole her breath as his teeth— his fangs —sank into her wrist. Like a vampire’s.
    But he didn’t drink; his Gift tore through her, into her, as if her veins were strings that he knotted together—and used to drag her along behind him.

    How very odd. Jake was shouting her name, others were screaming, and she was falling—
    Oh, dear God.
    Alice snapped her wings open, and it was the sharp slap of demon wings instead of her softer feathers. Jake’s hand was wrapped around her wrist, and he dangled beneath her . . . over a river of bubbling lava.
    The heat thickened the air, made it waver and dance, distorting her vision as if she were peering through old glass. And when she saw, she wanted to take it back, to forget.
    The humans were being tortured—with contraptions, at the end of demons’ blades, with fire. All of them, screaming in anguish, for forgiveness, for it to stop. There was rot here, the acrid stench of burning blood, burning flesh—and a deep psychic stain, evil and dark and agonizing, worse than anything her physical senses took in. She couldn’t block it out.
    “Alice.”
    She tore her gaze from them, looked down at Jake. Not just the air wavering—the moisture in her eyes, too. But even the tears were heating, steaming from her cheeks.
    “Try again,” he said, and his voice was hoarse. “Think of anywhere in Hell except for the Pit.”
    Nodding, she closed her eyes. Not the Pit. That was where the murderers went, the humans with black marks on their souls. This was not where she would—

    Her hands and knees burned with cold. No sound met her ears, but inside her head they were screaming, screaming.
    She was afraid to open her eyes. Her palms lifted to her ears but she stopped before covering them, fearing that she’d trap the screaming inside. The tears on her cheeks were ice now, and she felt one crack and fall, but though she was kneeling on the lumpy, frozen ground she didn’t hear it shatter when it landed.
    She knew the lumps were faces. She knew their eyes were open, that they could see her. She knew that in the Chaos realm, their bodies dangled from a ceiling of ice, and dragons devoured them.
    She knew they were all humans and demons who hadn’t fulfilled their bargains.
    Then there was warmth against her cheek, a thumb that brushed away a trail of ice. She opened her eyes, but didn’t look down. She looked into Jake’s face instead, saw his eyes, the bleakness there.
    He’d