Page 48 of Chaos
“Yeah, we don’t need to see his soul to know that. We can see his aura, and it’s just as black. I don’t like being in the same room with him. Can we get this over with?” Gabriel said.
Felix shuddered and glared at the man tied to the chair. Of all of us, he was the least okay with what I was going to do. He wanted to use his potion, and the only reason he was okay with me using my methods was that Ripley was. Or, maybe not.
“The vibe is just off with him in here. Even if his deal was to evade being captured, I don’t understand how anyone could stand being in the same room with him without ending him. Do your god thing, Reyson.”
I didn’t want to lay a finger on this warlock. It wasn’t just that his soul was so tainted. His physical body was greasy and unwashed. His hair was lank and oily. I could smell his body odor over the stench of his soul. The last time I walked this earth, there wasn’t this obsession with bathing like there was in this century, and people were still cleaner than this warlock. Gross. Ripley had a bathtub with jets in her apartment, and I could soak in it all day.
Still, I had to touch him to do this. I tried to avoid his greasy hair because it was so dirty, it wouldn’t shock me if he had lice in it. I laid my palm on his forehead and his entire body tensed.
I saw everything in a matter of minutes. He was thorough when he made his deal. He would never be caught or killed until his payment came due. This warlock had gotten up to some evil shit. He knew it too. He knew it was only a matter of time before the demon he made a deal with came to collect payment.
When he heard a rumor there was a way to get out of his deal, but still keep the perks, he jumped at it. He never met with Silvaria or Dorian directly, but word spread in the magical community for those who made deals in secret.
There was a way to get out of the deal and keep your soul. You could stiff the demon on payment, but still, keep everything they offered you.
I let go of him. I’d seen everything there was to see, and his brains were leaking out of his ears. I knew why Silvaria and Dorian went through the trouble to bring me back, and we had an enormous problem.
“Silvaria and Dorian think I can break their contracts with Hell but let them keep their gifts. This warlock hasn’t even met them. Word is spreading among the magical community that there’s a way out. Silvaria and Dorian are building an army. This isn’t good. When Hell hears about this, they will send their own military and start collecting payments.
“I can’t break a Hell contract, but Silvaria and Dorian have no way of knowing that. I could kill demons if I needed to, but they tend to take that personally. If any one of Silvaria and Dorian’s people kill a demon, or we do, they will attack this entire planet. That Hellhound needs to get his ass back on Earth so I can get him at the library. I suspect he’s one of us.”
Gabriel just frowned.
“Aren’t demons and Hellhounds bad? Shouldn’t we be avoiding them?”
An easy assumption to make. I wouldn’t say I liked them, but they were doing what people had been since my family created them.
“They aren’t bad, per se. They are business people, and their currency is souls. I don’t know what they do with them in Hell, but they provide a service in exchange for currency just like people have been doing since the dawn of time. They’d stop coming if there weren’t a market for what they are offering. You saw the number of people outside the library. It’s more common than you think it is. It’s just that people don’t talk about it.
“When payment is collected, it looks like natural causes, so the secret never gets out unless the person who made the deal tells someone or did something stupid to try to get out of their contract.”
Poor Gabriel looked so confused. I knew his lot in life had to do with an ancestor who made a deal ages ago, but it would never have been public knowledge unless the deal was for something awful and they went out of their way to break the contract. People died horribly if they fought payment. There were telltale signs the death was demonic.
He looked like he didn’t know what to say, and I didn’t know how to make this better for him. I couldn’t change how people treated him. I could only treat him with kindness and respect. He didn’t deserve anything that happened to him just because of his family.
Gabriel changed the subject.
“This warlock stinks of body odor and evil. And it’s gross the way his brains are leaking out of him like that. Can we do the rites and bury him? I don’t want his spirit lurking around here.”
We got our information, and I tried to do all I could to avoid an all-out war with Hell. But I’d just taken a soul due to a demon, so someone was going to come asking questions.
I just hoped it was this Bram and not an enemy.
Chapter 38
Bram
I
needed to be back on Earth but I was stuck in Hell waiting for a seer to have a vision. My master had gone to collect Dorian Gray’s payment. The pretty playboy had a long, decadent life. He’d seen way more than the average human would ever see. He’d experienced several centuries' worth of life. It was long time for his payment to be due.
My master was fair and kind. He bought me when I was just a pup and trained me to be a soldier. He never beat me like some of the other demons beat their Hellhounds. He let me come and go as I pleased unless he needed me for something. Talvath usually collected his own payments unless he was on vacation. He’d send me when he was kicking his heels up on the beach. Talvath knew I enjoyed Earth, so he let me take my time collecting the soul, and I didn’t have to hurry back with it.
But something went wrong when he went to collect Dorian Gray’s payment. Something horribly wrong. Since someone made the first deal with us, they fought making their payment when it was due. There were too many rumors about how Hell was supposed to be this place of eternal torment for souls that ended up here.
We didn’t torture anyone. The souls we collected powered our sun. This was ages before I was ever born, but Hell was dying. Our sun was dying, and crops wouldn’t grow.
Demons went to Earth to try to find a solution. They found that the beings there seemed to radiate with the same energy as our dying sun but they couldn’t just take the souls. This universe was protected by its own deities, just like Hell was.
