Page 88 of Interior Design for Demons
“She hasn’t chosen the path to Hell yet,” he says. “Damned stubborn, that one.”
“Sounds like you’ve met your match.” I try for a grin, but it wobbles and turns lop-sided, and my tears start to flow again.
Rath gathers me into a side-hug. I flinch at first, and I think he notices. I can’t help it. He has hurt me so many times—kicks and claws, rough handling, and that one bitch-slap across the bar. Even now, when he has tamed his jealousy and he’s working on his behavior, I can barely sit this close to him.
“I’ll help you.” His voice reverberates through both of us.
I look up, into that handsome chiseled face I first saw in my philosophy class. The scent of cedar, cinnamon, and vanilla warms me.
But I can hardly believe his words.
“You’ll—you’ll help me?”
“Yes. I know someone with access to the other contestants’ personal feeds. I’m sure I can find something that disqualifies one of them. In fact, I’ve heard a rumor about Amanda—”
“No.” I squeeze his knee, hard. “You can’t sabotage someone else. Not Amanda, or Hisae—not any of them.”
“If it means saving you, I will. You can’t stop me.” He shakes me off and rises to his full height. “Don’t worry, little rebel. I’ll find some dirt on one of them. Something that will secure your passage into the final round. Something to keep you alive.”
More hammering on the door. “Miss Labelle?”
“Shut up, Melek,” Rath and I say in unison.
Twenty minutes later we leave the Hellscraper and hop onto a strange trolley sort of thing made of black metal and spikes. There are no seats, so I cling to one of the metal posts as we’re rocketed along at heart-stopping speed through the landscape of Hell. Good thing I didn’t take much time fixing my hair—any hairstyle would be completely wrecked by the hot wind streaming past my face. My eyes water and sting, and I breathe through my mouth as rocky vents release puffs of sulfuric gas.
I see a few places I recognize—the field of waving hair-grass, the chasm with the narrow bridge, the needle-sharp new buildings resting on the shoulders of ancient structures.
Immense as it is, the building where I’ve spent most of my time during this competition is only one of many such buildings in Hell. It’s one pod of activity among dozens.
Far, far away, under the gaping black sky that isn’t a sky, I can see a titanic structure far more enormous than any of the others. It wasn’t part of the tour—in fact, we didn’t travel this far into the Infernal Plane on that first day.
The shape of that faraway building disturbs me. I’m not sure why. There’s nothing overtly threatening about it, other than its massive scope. But something about the angles of its walls, the slope of its peaks, the odd glare off its reflective panes—something about it is twisted and wretched andwrong. Deeply, gut-droppingly wrong. Something horrible lives there, something immense and old, old, nearly as old as God Himself—
“Grace.” Rath’s voice startles me out of my trance. “You feel him, don’t you?”
“I—” I swallow, dry and hard. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Your connection with Apollyon is deeper than I realized,” he says. “That’s the only way you’d be able to feel the Infernal Sovereign’s presence, like all demons do.”
So I’m sensing the presence ofSatan? Of Lucifer himself?
“Yay me,” I say weakly, turning my eyes away from the Devil’s headquarters.
The trolley picks up more speed, slanting sharply downhill, and I bite back a scream. We streak down into a black ravine with upswept walls of glistening dark rock and a floor of what looks like hardened lava—rolls and swirls of volcanic rock in every shade of gray and ebony, in a million different coils and textures. The rock has cracked deeply in places, and a red glow emanates from the pit of magma far below—a truly demonic light source for this party.
For this event, the demons finally broke out the death metal—music that’s scarcely music but more like endless screaming and thunder. Every bone-shaking beat is like a spike being hammered into my brain. I am so getting a headache tonight.
The trolley jerks to a stop and I nearly fly headfirst out of it. Rath chuckles at my small shriek and steadies me with a broad hand.
Gingerly, curiously, I step out onto the textured rock. Several paces away, a throng of demons is dancing to the pounding beat. The impact reverberates through the hardened lava.
“Is this safe?” I ask Rath.
“Safe?” A cool musical laugh ripples much too close to me, and I shiver with the anticipation of seeing its owner. “Safe? What would be the fun in that?”
Apollyon is dressed entirely in black, with his hair braided in a garishly complicated style. He wears a spiked collar, ear-cuffs and earrings of ebony and bone, and a dozen or more black-and-scarlet rings. Through the cutouts in his black leather ensemble flash glimpses of his pale abs, chest, hip, and thigh. It’s the wicked-sexy goth version of him, and unfortunately I’m liking it. Weird that I chose to wear black tonight too—I was going for comfort, ease, and invisibility, but with my black “Poets of the Fall” T-shirt and skinny black jeans, I look like Apollyon’s date.
“Who put this shirt in my closet?” I whisper to Rath.
