Page 81 of To Crave Deeply
We were stopped from taking the conversation any further because the sky chose that moment to erupt into a thousand forks of lightning. The air crackled and the ground shook.
Torsten reached out a hand to steady me before shrieks of laughter filled the air and monsters filled the skies. Black shapes swarmed through the thick dark clouds and headed straight for us. I ran over towards Fenris, with Edwin and Torsten close on my heels.
“Don’t let them leave the square!” Fenris barked. “Try and contain them here. We don’t want them spreading.”
Men and women sprang into action around us, some of whom I’d barely even met before. I knew some of the secondary teams, but not all. And there were faces I didn’t even recognise. Shit, were they townsfolk?
I caught a flash of bright purple hair in the melee before me and recognised Indie, the owner of the Pumpkin Patch coffee shop. Had it really been only a few days since I had coffee there? God, it felt like a lifetime ago. So much had happened since then. So much had changed. I’d died, we’d lost Cassian, Hell was falling apart, and now we were overrun with tortured souls who should be back in Hell.
I could feel the demon pacing beneath my skin. She wanted to be let loose, to consume those wayward souls and punish them for escaping. Torsten was the same. I could see it in the way he held himself. All that power tightly coiled, his shadows flittering around his feet, just waiting to be set free. He’d told me once that this was fun for him. That chasing down souls escaping punishment was his idea of enjoyment. A shiver travelled its icy hand up my spine at the thought of watching him in action.
“Lori. Torsten.”
Fenris’ sharp bark pulled me from my darkening thoughts and back into the battle that was starting in front of us.
“Send them back to Hell.”
Torsten grinned wolfishly, and I couldn’t help the thrill that vibrated through me with all that danger and violence just waiting to be released. It called to me, and awakened the demon inside of me. The dark energy swirled deep in my core, and I felt the demon push at the cage I kept her in.
I pulled the scythe from my back and opened the door to allow her to step into my skin. Shiny black claws erupted from my fingertips and my senses instantly sharpened.
I turned to Torsten and matched his grin, cracking my neck in anticipation of a good fight. “Let’s go have some fun.”
***
My chest heaved with the effort of breathing as I paused for a moment to regroup. Bodies littered the town square. So many shapes and sizes. Demons. Wings. Limbs. It was chaos. We still hadn’t figured out where they were all coming from, how they were getting through the wards. What if they’d had inside help? That was a terrifying thought, that one of us would have given someone the key to the wards to break in. Who would do such a thing?
I’d lost sight of Torsten, but I could still sense him near, which meant he was probably chasing souls in the shadow realm. It was strange how my shadow magic recognised him, even when he wasn’t physically here.
Edwin was doing some seriously cool shit with his magic on the other side of the square. I couldn’t wait to learn from him. An actual shadow mage. My insides gave a little squeal of delight at the thought. I was so excited to learn how to actually use my magic. Elissa was great and all, but she wasn’t a shadow mage.
A wet rasp sounded behind me and distracted me from my inner thoughts. I was going to learn from Edwin; we just had to get through this catastrophe first.
A demon dropped out of the sky in front of me. Here we go again.
He lunged for me, but I sidestepped quickly before turning and arching my scythe upwards. He yelled out as the blade connected with his flesh. My own demon preened in satisfaction at his pain. Jeez, she really enjoyed this.
The demon turned back to face me, his black eyes narrowing in his ragged skin. He was disgusting to look at, like someone had carved up someone’s skin and stuck it to his skeleton. This was not a normal demon. He was definitely one who belonged in the Pit.
Maybe I’d been right. When we’d got to the point of finding Selene, it had been so silent that I’d thought that perhaps we’d only scratched the surface of the Pit. What if the original three weren’t merely prisoners? What if they were there at the top of the Pit, guarding the rest of the really bad souls? Had we unleashed Hell by removing Selene?
Was this my fault?
I’d have to ask Lucifer, but first I needed to deal with this guy.
“You should join us, Sin Reaper,” he said with a wet, raspy voice. “We needs you. We wants you. You have power and we wants freedom.”
“I’ll take a pass, thanks. I’ve already got a team here,” I replied, but the demon just smiled.
“If you won’t come when we ask, we will simply take.”
“Not likely, pal. Have you seen what I’ve done to your friends?”
His shoulder jerked. Wait, was that supposed to be a shrug?
“We do not have friends. We do not need them.”
“Who is this ‘we’ you keep referring to?” The guy seemed happy to talk. I might as well try and get some answers out of him.
