Page 53 of Hellfire & Tinsel
Kassel stroked a thumb down his cheek, gathering the tears on his clawed fingers.
“You want to honor the summoning more than you want to keep me, though,” Kassel said, and Beau sobbed again, feeling like he would fly apart as he nodded miserably. “Too good for this world.”
Beau broke.
He fell into Kassel’s arms, crying his heart out as he gathered up the courage to say what he had to say. Forcing himself to find the evil inside him and make Kassel stay. Hating himself for even thinking about it. Hating that he couldn’t do it.
Surging up, he glued his lips to Kassel’s, the kiss messy and wet with tears, desperate and bruising. He wanted to climbinside Kassel’s skin so he’d take him with him. To Hell, to wherever he was going, just as long as Beau got to come along.
He poured everything he had into the kiss. Everything he was and everything they could have been together.
“Don’t forget me,” he pleaded against his lips. “At least for as long as I live. Can you give me that?”
“Beau,” Kassel said, his voice strangely shaky.
“It’s not long by your standards,” Beau said, breathing him in. “I just want to live knowing somewhere out there, you’re thinking of me sometimes. And then when I’m gone…”
“I won’t forget,” Kassel said, gripping his face with both of his hands now. “For as long as I live… I won’t forget.”
Beau found there was nothing else to say.
He kissed Kassel one more time. Wrapped himself in his arms and hid his face in his neck. Inhaled the ash and fire from his skin.
“You made me feel less alone,” Beau said, before whispering the words that would take Kassel from him. “Your summoning is complete.”
He felt lips on his temple. Claws on his back.
And then nothing but his empty bed, smelling of Kassel and loneliness deeper than ever before.
10
Kassel
“Kassel?”
“Kasseeel…”
“KASSEL!”
Kassel blinked into reality, the familiar pink-tinged fires of the second circle of Hell flickering into view and framing Zorun’s unimpressed figure standing in front of him.
“You with me, Mr. Hell?”
“Yes.”
“Glad to hear it.” Zorun snorted. “And what about him?”
He jerked a thumb at the suspended human soul dangling from his entrails over the pit. Kassel wasn’t sure exactly how long he’d been hanging there. It could have been an hour, it could have been a week. He’d stopped screaming by this point and kind of just looked… mildly confused.
“I know this is torture, but Uriel’s balls. You’re just being a tease at this point.”
Zorun let him down from the hook and sent the soul along with a pat on the shoulder. “Make sure you don’t get entrails on the new carpets!”
The soul nodded and waddled along, cradling his insides. Kassel frowned after him as Zorun turned to face him with his arms crossed. “That’s the third time this week. Your turnover is through the floor for this month’s quota, I’ve had to spread out your numbers by transferring them between circles just to make sure everyone gets their torture time.”
Kassel pressed his lips together. “Since when have you cared about statistics?”
“Since the imp disguised as a human came down to Hell and reinvented the system. I don’t know, asshole,” Zorun grumbled. “Just… get it together so I can report in that everything is ‘hunky dory’ and I don’t have to sit through another management course.”
