Page 73 of Hell Bound

And this was going to be bad.

It was on the tip of my tongue to beg Asmodeus to stop, to—gag—apologizeto him for all the shit I’d said. Anything to get him to release me.

I didn’t get the chance as we reached a door at the foot of the stairs.

No, no, no. Bad door, very bad door, don’t want to go through there.

I wasn’t going to be able to stop him from dragging me through it, but it was do or die. I struggled against his hold, yanking my arm as hard as I could.

“Wait, just… okay, wait, don’t. I can’t… don’t take me out there.”

That was the reaction he wanted. A satisfied smirk spread over his revoltingly handsome face, but his grip never slackened.

“There’s my wife. A mewling bitch who knows better than to challenge me. I’d begun to wonder if she was gone forever.”

“Yup, that’s me, mewling and bitchy, you win. Just let me go, I won’t say anything else, I—”

“Oh, please, keep begging, wife.” He leaned in closer as his hand landed on the doorknob. “You know how much I enjoy it.”

The door swung open, and I cowered, angling behind him like something was coming for me through the opening.

Nothing happened.

And yet my fear continued to climb.

A sharp tug on my arm and I was over the threshold and in a walled garden. I’d never seen it in my minimal exploration of the castle, but it settled into my soul with a decidedly unpleasant perfect fit.

My eyes snapped shut without my prompting, but Asmodeus was having none of it.

With a hard jerk on my arm, he snapped, “Open!”

I did, his rough motion causing me to lose my footing. This time, however, he let me go. My foot caught on a protruding root and I went sprawling.

By some miracle, I missed smashing my head on a large stone in front of me.

One with a very recognizable shape.

A gravestone.

As far as I could see when I pushed up to my knees, gravestones were scattered through the walled space.

Graveyards were inherently creepy, but this one oozed a grizzly sense of the macabre, from the unburied bones to the horribly posed statues.

Terrible things had happened here, and they were clamoring at my consciousness to be let in.

“How does it feel to be home?” He loomed over me, more imposing than he’d ever been. “Back where you truly belong.”

My temper flared through my fear. I might be at a disadvantage here, but I wasn’t about to stay on the ground and let him look down on me like this.

I must have twisted my ankle when I went down; the second I put pressure on it, I gasped in pain and reached for anything to support my weight.

My hand found a headstone.

The world spun around me. Red flooded my vision, but it wasn’t in the metaphorical sense.

Blood washed over my eyes, obscuring my sight as I screamed for help. For any reprieve from the agonizing pain of… what was that?

I looked down and saw the skin being flayed from my body, bare muscle exposed to the stinging bite of the air.

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