Demon Bound

the weakness had gone. “Very well.” She studied him, aware of a difference that she couldn’t pin down. He looked older, perhaps—but she didn’t think his features had changed. He hadn’t become rugged or developed any lines. “Are you well?”
    “Yep. I have an earworm, but other than—”
    “A what ?”
    Jake rolled his toothpick from one corner of his mouth to the other. His expression told her that he was laughing, but trying to hold it back.
    Her heartbeat slowed again. “You don’t have a worm in your ear,” she guessed.
    “Nope. A song stuck in my head.”
    “Oh. Yes, that can be quite annoying.” His scrutiny of her features continued even through his amusement. Unsettled, she struck out in the direction he’d been heading before she’d woken. When he came abreast of her, she asked, “What song?”
    “Just one about a guy who walks five hundred miles. Then five hundred more. I have it on my 1980s playlist.” He shook his head, looking pained. “There are days I wonder why I bother catching up on that decade.”
    “I’ll be certain never to borrow that list from you, then.” Five hundred miles? She frowned, and watched as he turned, began walking backward so they wouldn’t have to keep glancing over their shoulders. “How long did I sleep?”
    “Not quite sixty hours.”
    Astonishment dropped her mouth open, and she slowly closed it. She had nothing to say in response. And she was well now—there was no reason for her chest to be squeezing with fear and uncertainty.
    She tilted her head back. The sky was a burning red that bordered on night, like a bruised, rotting pomegranate that had been split open. No moon, no sun.
    “I wish there were stars,” she said quietly.
    “I wish there was a Gate to Caelum.”
    She laughed, and lowered her gaze to his. “Jake, there is no immediate threat. Do you think that you could anchor to this spot and teleport—”
    “No. If Mommy Hellhound shows up, and you run—then we don’t find you again.”
    “I could fly into the air.”
    He pointed into the eastern sky. “I think those are bats.”
    Alice saw the dark cloud, and clenched her teeth in frustration. “Damn Lucifer for not leaving well enough alone,” she muttered. If not for the danger these creatures posed, she had no doubt that Jake would attempt to seek help.
    “So says the woman who feeds vampire blood to her spiders.”
    With a narrowing of her eyes, Alice turned to stare at him, and found his hands held up in surrender and his mouth curved into a smile.
    “Hey, I’m not complaining—by the time the first sentinel hit your web, I loved those spiders as much as you do. In any case,” he continued, “I think the ‘damning’ part is pretty much a given. For Lucifer, that is.”
    “Yes.” Hopefully not for her, though.
    “And there weren’t as many as I thought there’d be.”
    She was becoming accustomed to his jumps during a conversation. “In the Pit?”
    “Yeah. Considering how long there have been people—and how many people die a year—I thought there’d be more. A lot more.”
    “Yes. Perhaps they were somewhere else,” she suggested, although that didn’t seem right.
    She had seen the edges of the Pit, the black cliffs that had risen all around it—but more than that, she had felt them. And she’d been disoriented, but thinking back, she couldn’t recall seeing many more humans in the Pit than demons on the battlefield.
    She related the same to Jake, and he nodded his agreement. “Did you see who was screaming outside the prison? Screaming before you freaked them all out with the spiders.” When she shook her head, he said, “They were demons, not humans.”
    Alice considered that. If Belial was to be believed, he had just taken over Lucifer’s territory. “Torturing the enemy for information?”
    “Or for fun.”
    She glanced down at her hands. Despite the heated air, she could still feel the burning cold against them. “And the frozen field?”
    “I couldn’t count them all,” Jake said. Then he added quickly, “But, Alice—most of them must be demons.”
    She looked up at him, curious. And, she acknowledged, eager to think of anything but humans in that field. “How do you suppose?”
    “Well, they promised to serve Lucifer after the First Battle. So all of Belial’s demons reneged on that bargain when they rebelled against Lucifer’s rule—and as soon as they die, they’re in that field.”
    The image of all those killed