Page 47 of The Malevolent Seven

‘Call me Shame,’ she said.

‘Stupid name. Anyway, yes, and “Shame”. On my oath, my vow, my bond, all five of you will pass through the Infernal Lands without harm, free to leave at your will to return to a place of safety in your own world. This bargain has been made, and so will it be fulfilled.’

‘No less than three miles up the Jalbraith Canal,’ I specified, glancing at Corrigan for confirmation. ‘That’s where we’re meeting our next recruit, right?’

Tenebris groaned. ‘Fine, fine. I’ll dump you off at least three miles north of this river so you can have a little tea party with your next recruit . Satisfied?’

‘Everyone, go through!’ I shouted as the first tingles of lightning began crackling all around us.

Galass hesitated. ‘But how can we—?’

‘Once a diabolic has struck a bargain, they never break it.’ I gave her a push towards the portal as the winds inside the cabin began to buffet us. ‘Go.Now!’

Corrigan and Aradeus went next, followed by the angelic, with me right behind her. Just before I left certain death behind, I hesitated. Everything I had known about the way the world worked told me something worse surely had to be in store for us once the price of safe passage was paid.

‘How did you get him to agree?’ I asked. ‘What bargain could an angelic make to change the mind of a diabolic?’

She took my hand and pulled me into the portal, and as we shifted from one world to another, she whispered in my ear, ‘I switched sides.’

Chapter 23

Walks in the Dark

We walked one by one behind Tenebris, through horror and chaos, past torment and the tearing-apart of souls. The road upon which we trod was made from the diabolic’s own silvery-blue blood. Every few steps, he’d dig one clawed fingernail into his wrist and a few more drops would spurt out before him, pool and expand to provide us with a path above the damned. On either side of the road beneath our feet, an ocean of bodies writhed, limbs splayed unnaturally, mouths gaping one moment, clamping shut the next with such ferocity that we could hear teeth breaking apart inside their mouths. Screams and groans swirled around us, circling like sharks in the water, and all the while we listened to the clank and clang of the Infernal engine.

‘Oh, Cade,’ Corrigan chuckled, pretending to swoon. ‘You always bring me to the nicest places.’

From anyone else, I might have taken heart from those glib words, but in my experience, when the toughest, most fearless and belligerent war mage you’ve ever met starts nervously making lame jokes, you know you’re in trouble. I think even Corrigan recognised how unfunny that one was.

‘Don’t stray from the path,’ Tenebris warned us, not turning to look at us. ‘Not even an inch.’

‘Aw, can’t we?’ Corrigan asked. ‘Because I was really looking forward to taking a little swim among the damned.’

He twisted his head and caught my gaze expectantly.

I nodded. ‘That one was a little better.’

What else was there to do but joke when the nightmares which drove artists mad and stole the voices from poets were staring up at us, eyes wide with anguish, begging for pity– or more likely, longing to drag us down among them?

‘Why do they quieten as we pass?’ Galass asked. ‘They stop moving– only their gaze follows us.’

I came up behind her and pointed to Tenebris, who was digging deeper into his vein to extend the road ahead. ‘Diabolic blood, in addition to making excellent paving throughout the Infernal realm, has narcotic properties. It pacifies the damned and keeps them from climbing up to drag us down with them. Instead, they watch us pass and wonder why we’re allowed to go free while they suffer.’

‘What purpose do such torments serve?’ Galass demanded, holding the shivering Mister Bones in her arms. She glared at Tenebris. ‘Does Mortal agony so delight you and your kind?’

I really, really wished she hadn’t said that. It’s not that Tenebris would go back on his promise to guide us through the Infernal realm to somewhere we could leave and be far away from the prince’s pleasure barge– breaking contracts is not something diabolics ever do. But now I’d have to listen to him rant the whole rest of the way.

‘You know what, little girl?’ he began, dropping into his customary patronising tone. ‘My people don’t give a shit about your suffering. We don’t “delight” in your misery. We don’t get hard-ons over your emotional angst or the tears you shed after your kitty died or the last fight you had with some farm boy because he danced with a prettier girl at the local. . . hay party.’

‘Hay party?’ I asked.

‘Whatever. I’m sick and tired of listening to Mortals moan on and on about how vile we Infernals are, how we tempt you in times of need and then steal your souls. Fuck me, you actually use the name of our realm as a synonym for evil! How would you like it if we used the wordMortalto mean “useless piece of shit who blames all their problems on other people because they’re too lazy to sort out their own wasted life”?’

‘You do,’ I pointed out. ‘Youliterallysaid that to me a few months ago, when referring to a particular Lord Devilish. “Cade, you won’t believe what aMortalthat guy is. All he does is whine.”’

Tenebris paused to sneer at me. ‘Using a pal’s words against him is a real Mortal thing to do, Cade.’ He resumed his steady march through the hellish maelstrom of suffering and said to Galass, ‘Listen, lady. You end up in our house? It’s because you made a deal to come here. So don’t go getting all weepy because you don’t like how that deal turned out. You’re not our arch-nemeses. You’re barely cattle.’

‘What Tenebris is trying to say,’ I explained to Galass, ‘is that each plane of existence has its own physical laws, its own forms of matter. Most of that matter is worthless to those on another plane, but souls are different. They’re created from ecclesiasm, the raw essence from which the universe itself first formed.’

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