Page 18 of Hell Sent

Annoyed, he jerked the shovel from the man’s hands and threw it across the room. The house was made of brittle wood, and the blade of the shovel stuck in the wall like a dart.

Instead of cowing them like he’d expected, this only seemed to spur the mortals into action. From his other side, there was a rush of footsteps as someone approached, and then something hit him.

He cried out as agony pulsed through him. It siphoned the strength from his body, making his legs shake and his vision blacken. He looked down, and dread filled him. A long, metal bar protruded from his side. Its rough surface had made a jagged rip in his skin, tearing instead of cutting.

Iron.

It was like acid, like teeth, like razors and ice inside him. Soon he’d be on his knees, perhaps unconscious, perhaps dead. His summoned arm flickered as he struggled to maintain concentration on the spell.

He grabbed the stick of iron. The surface of it touching his hand was like frostbite, and he fought the instinct to immediately let go. Sharp, liquid pain burst across his fingers and up his arm. His hand shook.

With a jerk and a cry, he wrenched it out and threw it far away. Blood poured from his side, his natural healing slowed by the poisonous metal.The mortals were screaming and shouting and darting around him in panic. Their emotions were so thick that they were almost suffocating. He shook his head, struggling to keep his senses straight.

They would attack with iron again. He had to stop them now.

He lashed out half blindly, knocking the younger man across the room, then he grabbed the man who’d stabbed him and raised him into the air. Dark emotions vibrated throughout the room, sinking into him in invigorating waves. The mortal stared into his eyes. There was utter hatred in the man’s face right alongside the fear.

Azreth had been a fool to lower his guard. Mortals were just as vicious as demons, just as filled with hate, just as devious and self-serving.

Something was weakly but insistently pulling at his arm. “Azreth,” said a voice that seemed oddly distant though the sound of blood pulsing in his ears. “Azreth!”

Dragging his attention away from the man, Azreth looked down. Raiya was at his side, her small hands wrapped around his arm and tugging at him as hard as they could. She flinched when he looked down at her, as if she thought he would strike her next.

Her expression was desperate and filled with worry. She wasn’t trying to fight him—she was begging.

“They’re just afraid!” she cried. “They’re only farmers. Please let them go!”

Let them go?

She made it sound as if he were holding them hostage. He had been perfectly willing to leave them alone before they attacked him.

A piercing wail cut through the air, and Azreth started. It was unlike anything he’d ever heard.The sound was coming from a bundle of cloth in the arms of the woman huddled against the wall. To his shock, he saw a tiny, scrunched-up face within the bundle, like a little fat grub with a human face. It was screaming.

It was a human baby. He stared at it, disconcerted. The sound it made was a perfect natural defense mechanism. It would have been defenseless otherwise, being so small and soft, but he would have done nearly anything to get away from that sound.

The mother was crying silently, and when Azreth looked her way, she clutched the baby tighter against her chest to shield it from his gaze. He’d seen the same behavior in animals in the hells. A nyra would defend her hatchlings even at the cost of her own life.

The idea of being so small and helpless, completely dependent upon others for survival, was so horrible he could hardly bear to think about it.

It was then that he noticed several of the other humans were too small to be fully grown, too. This was a mortal family. A wife and husband and their children. After Raiya’s interruption, they’d stopped attacking him and had gone back to cowering and screaming.

For a moment, he imagined what another demon might have done in his place. He thought of the man in his hands ripped in half lengthwise until his guts unraveled to the floor. He thought of the baby pulled from its bundle and smashed against the stone hearth. He thought of the mother screaming while her children were killed slowly. He imagined how their pain would taste. He tried, experimentally, to find the thoughts appealing.

It didn’t work. The sounds of their cries grated on him like claws on slate.

He did not enjoy being the cause of this suffering. It did not give him the same pleasure he’d felt when he’d torn through the castle. He did not like this.

He didn’t like that he didn’t like it.

Raiya stood in front of him, lifting her hands placatingly. She spoke to him the way one might speak to a large, frightening, and not-very-intelligent beast. “They were afraid you would hurt them. They can do you no harm. You don’t have to do this. Please. Please, don’t kill them.”

Before he had come to this plane, he had imagined that he would enjoy hearing mortals beg him for mercy. But he found that he disliked this, as well.

He glanced up at the man he was still holding aloft. The man looked back with a pained grimace.

Slowly, Azreth lowered him to the floor. As soon as his feet touched the floor, the man backed away, stopping near the wailing infant. Azreth wondered if he meant to protect the child, or if he just hoped the horrible sound would ward Azreth away from them both.

Shaken, Azreth looked at them all as they stared at him. Gritting his teeth, he pressed a hand to the wound at his side, which was still bleeding freely and hurt like all the hells. He could still feel the taint of the iron inside him.

---