This was not working.

Deep down in the anus of Hell, where her captured souls were kept in flypaper walls, and the still air echoed with the oily moans of her servants, Devina was suffering from a serious case of buzz kill.

Which was why she'd sent everyone away.

Hanging back, she regarded the piece of meat wired to her table. In the candlelight, Jim Heron was Jackson Pollocked with blood and black wax and other liquids of various descriptions, and he was having trouble breathing through his swollen, cracked lips. On his stomach, there was a road map of carvings she'd done with her own claws, and his thighs were marked as well with her name and her symbols.

His cock had been used until it was as raw as the rest of him.

And yet he hadn't cried out or begged or even opened his eyes. No curses, no tears. Nothing.

She wasn't sure whether to be pissed off at herself and her minions for not working him hard enough . . . or to fall in love with the bastard.

Either way, she was determined to get a piece of him. The question was how.

She was well aware that there were two ways of breaking someone. The first was from the outside in: You whittled away at the inpidual's skin and bones and sex until the physical pain and exhaustion and shame annihilated their inner mental core. The second was the inverse: Find the fissure inside and tap it with a proverbial hammer until everything crumbled.

For her, usually the first was enough, given all the tools at her disposal--and it was also more fun and therefore always where she started. The second was trickier, although no less satisfying in its own right. All people had keys to open their interior doors; she just needed to sort through and find the one that got her inside a given inpidual's head and heart.

In Jim Heron's case . . . well, it was clear he was going to make her work for it. And didn't that give her Adrian some competition for Favorite Toy.

What to choose, what to choose . . .

His mother. His mother was a good one, but Devina wouldn't be able to get ahold of the real thing, and he might just be smart enough to figure out she was faking it.

Fortunately, there was another solution that happened to be under her control.

Outside of the pools of candlelight, trapped in her viscous walls, the souls of those she'd captured writhed. Hands and limbs and feet and heads made undulating appearances that never quite broke the surface of the suspension, the tortured ever searching for a way out.

The satisfaction of seeing her collection distracted her, but also made her hungry: She had to have Jim in and among her trophies. Was desperate to get him into her. At first it had been merely a case of the game; now, after this session, it was so much more than that.

She wanted to own him.

Refocusing on his face, she found his calm expression nearly impossible to comprehend. How a man could have gone through so much . . . and there wasn't even a grimace. And no fear of what was to come, either.

She would fix that, however.

And she liked to think this power in him came from that portion of his makeup that was hers. Those bleeding-heart angels with their holier-than-thou morals and strictures--weak, so weak. To the point where she didn't want to lose the game against Nigel not only because she could rule the earth and the heavens and all that was betwixt the sun and moon . . . but because what an ass slap to be bested by that bunch of pussies.

Jim, however . . . he was better than that. He was more like her at his core.

What a tragedy that he had to be sent back up to Earth soon; but play, after all, had to be resumed. Before he went, though, she was determined to make an imprint on him, give him more of a taste of what their Hell Ever After was going to be like. After all, the cuts in his skin were relatively shallow. Marks on the mind, however, went far, far deeper.

And immortals were especially satisfying in this regard because, as the brain persisted, so did memory--and that meant she could leave eternal scars in her wake.

Glancing at her wall, which stretched upward for miles, Devina thought of her therapist and the work they were doing together. This was one domain that was off-limits to her "recovery" and this situation with Jim was proof yet again of how her little hoarding problem came in handy.

You never knew what you'd need.

Extending her hand, she pulled down from the upper reaches one of the more slender shapes, moving it in and around the other souls, calling it to her. When it was by the floor, she summoned forth the soul and clothed it in the corporeal form it had worn on Earth.

Devina smiled at it. So much utility in such a bland and forgettable little package.

Turning to her table, she said, "Jim? I have someone here who you'll want to see."

As Jim lay on Devina's table, he doubted that. Very sincerely doubted that.

Besides, at this point, vision was probably a no-go.

Nothing hurt anymore, which made shit so much easier. The trade-off for that blissful numbness, however, was that his consciousness had receded into a dim corner of his inner house. It hadn't quite put its head down for a nap, but it was getting there: Hearing had hit the cotton-wool stage where everything was muffled, and things were pretty fucking cold inside his skin.

The classic signs of shock made him wonder if she did in fact have the ability to kill him.

She hadn't finished off Adrian, but had that been a whim of affection?

"I'll just leave you two to get acquainted."

Devina's satisfaction was not good news, considering she'd done everything inhumanly possible to break him down for the last . . . how long? Hours? Had to be.

Footfalls. Retreating.

A door. Shut.

Silence.

Something was with him, though. He could sense the presence to the left of him.

From behind his closed lids, he knew two things for sure: Devina couldn't have gone far, and whatever she'd locked him in with was close by.

The breathing was the first thing he noticed. Soft, hitched. The kind you drew when you were in recovery mode. Maybe it was his breath?

Nope. Rhythm was different.

He turned his head carefully toward the thing and drooled, his mouth clearing of what he couldn't swallow because of the wire around his neck.

Whatever was with him let out another hitch of breath. And then he heard a subtle clicking.

What the fuck was that?

Curiosity eventually got the best of him and he cracked one of his lids . . . or gave that a shot, as it were. Took two tries and he had to push his eyebrows all the way up into his forehead before the fucker opened-- At first, Jim couldn't fathom what he was looking at. But the blond hair couldn't be denied . . . that long blond hair that fell to fragile shoulders.

Last time he'd seen it had been just days ago. In Devina's bathroom.

It had been streaked with blood.

The girl who had been sacrificed to protect Devina's mirror was dressed in a stained sheath, her thin arms covering her breasts, a small hand protecting the juncture of her thighs. She appeared to be miraculously unmarked, but the trauma was there: Her eyes were wide and horrified. . . .

Except they were not on the room. They were on him . . . on his body and the glossy, sticky remnants of everything that had been done to him.

"Don't . . ." His voice was too damn weak, so he forced more air through that wire roadblock at his throat. "Don't look . . . at me. Turn away . . . for God's sake, turn away. . . ."

Shit, he needed more oxygen. He needed to make her--

Her eyes met his. The shock and terror on her face told him more than he needed to know, not just about what had been done to her by Devina, but what the sight of him was doing to the poor girl.

"Don't look at me!"

As she flinched and cringed away, he reeled his temper in. Not that there was much to throw reins on--he'd used all the strength he had on that yell.

"Cover your face," he said hoarsely. "Turn away and just . . . cover your face."

The girl put her hands up and pivoted around, her delicate spine standing out against the sheath as she trembled.

Jim had pulled at his binds involuntarily during Devina's little exercise session. Now he yanked.

"You're hurting yourself," she said as he grunted. "Please . . . stop."

Pain cut off his capacity for speech and it was a while before he could say anything. "Where . . . where does she keep you? Down here?"

"In . . . in the . . ." Her voice was so very reedy, and in between the words, her teeth chattered--which explained the clicking he'd heard. "In the wall . . ."

His eyes shot toward the darkness, but the candlelight formed a luminous blockade his eyes couldn't get through.

"How does she do that?" Not chains, he hoped.

And fuckin' A, he was so going to get Devina for this one.

"I don't know," the girl said. "Where am I?"

Hell. But he kept that to himself. "I'm going to get you out of here."

"My mom and dad . . ." She choked on tears. "They don't know where I am."

"I'll tell them."

"How will--" As she glanced over her shoulder, her eyes locked on his degraded body and she paled.

He shook his head. "No looking. Promise me . . . no more looking at me."

Pale hands went back up to that beautiful face and she nodded. "My name is Cecilia. Sissy Barten--with an `e.' I'm nineteen. Almost twenty."

"You live in Caldwell?"

"Yes. Am I dead?"

"I want you to do something for me."

Now she dropped her arms and stared at him hard. "Am I dead."

"Yes."

She closed her eyes as another wave of shaking shot through her body. "This isn't Heaven. I believe in Heaven. What did I do wrong?"

Jim felt something hot at the corners of both his eyes. "Nothing. You did nothing wrong. And I'm going to get you there."

If it was the last fucking thing he did.

"Who are you?"

"I'm a soldier."

"Like in Iraq?"

"Used to be. Now I fight that bitch--er, female who did this to you."

"I thought I was helping . . . when the lady asked me to carry a bag for her. I thought I was helping. . . ." She inhaled sharply as if she were trying to compose herself. "You can't get out of here. I've tried."

"I'm going to save you."

Abruptly, her voice got stronger. "They hurt you."

Shit, she was looking at him again.

"Don't worry about me--you worry about yourself."

A sound, like something dropping or maybe a metal door shutting, echoed up, startling her and focusing him. Undoubtedly, Devina was going to come soon enough and put Sissy back wherever she had been so he had to act fast. He didn't know when he was going to return here or how exactly to free his girl.

Sissy, that was.

"Is that her?" Sissy asked tightly as footfalls sounded from far away. "It's her, isn't it. I don't want to go back into the wall--please, don't let her--"

"Sissy, listen to me. I need you to calm down." She had to have something to focus on, something to keep her head together while he figured out how to get back to her. Searching his mind, he tried to pull an image out of his ass, something to ease her. "I need you to listen carefully."

"I can't go back there!"

Fuck, what could he give her to concentrate on? "I have a dog," he blurted.

There was a beat, as if he'd surprised her. "You do?"

As the footsteps drew closer, he wanted to curse. "Yeah, I do."

"I like dogs," she said in a small voice, her eyes locking on his.

"He's gray and blond and he's shaggy. His fur . . ." The footsteps grew ever louder and Jim spoke quicker. "His fur is kind of rough--like it's made up of old-man eyebrows, and he has little paws. He likes to sit in my lap. He has a limp that comes out if he runs too fast and he likes to eat my socks."

Sniffle and a hitch of breath. Like she knew what was approaching and she was going to do her best to hang on to the lifeline he was trying to give her. "What's his name?"

"Dog. I call him Dog. He eats pizza and turkey subs and he sleeps on my chest." Faster. Faster with his words. "You're going to meet him, 'kay? You're going to take him out onto a patch of grass and . . . You know how you can tuck one sock into another?"

"Yes." Urgent now. Like she wanted as much as he could give her. "A sock ball."

"Sock balls--that's right." Fast, fast, fast. "You've got a sock ball and you're going to throw it and he's going to bring it back to you. Sun is out, Sissy. You can feel it on your face--"

"When are you coming back?" she whispered.

"Soon as I can." He was talking at a blur now, the footsteps so close he knew they were stilettos with sharp, pointed heels. "You remember Dog. You hear me? When you feel like you're losing it, you remember my dog--"

"Don't leave me here--"

"I'll come for you--"

Sissy's face was slick with tears as she reached out for him. "Don't leave me here!"

In an instant, she morphed into the condition she'd been in when he'd seen her over that tub, that sheath disappearing and leaving her naked, her body desecrated, her blond hair tangled and matted with blood.

Abruptly, her eyes shot to the far corner and her stained lips trembled. "No!"

She put her hands up as if to ward off blows, bowing away--

Just like that, she was gone. And Devina, beautiful, evil Devina, walked into the candlelight.

Jim fucking lost it.

Snapped in half.

Broke like a motherfucker.

As he screamed bloody murder, it was all about the girl. The innocent girl who had been taken from her family by a demon, and pulled into a shithole, and imprisoned here . . . and forced to see the aftermath of a grown man defiled.

Rage was a nuclear blast that went off inside him--

White light poured forth from his eye sockets, exploding in the room, illuminating the glossy black walls that ran upward into infinity. The release consumed his physical form, freeing him from Devina's constraints, carrying him around the space in a rush-gust of loose molecules that blew out the candles and knocked over their stands.

Coalescing, he whirled around . . . and went gunning for Devina.

Now she was the one bracing for impact, her brunette hair stripped back from her scalp under the hurricane blast of him, the skin on her face flapping against the bone structure underneath as she lost her balance and went over onto the stone floor.

Just as he reached her, Jim pulled his new form together into a spearing lance and hurled himself right for her chest.

He entered her body and blew that bitch away, all of her parts going flying, pieces of her skin and tangles of slippery innards and pounds of dark red meat spackling the walls of her dungeon.

What was left was a black hole of equal mass and energy as that which made up him--and he was ready to go at it with her.

Except, evidently, she wasn't up for a head-to-head fight: Her warping shadow shot out of the room and down a hall, making an escape.

Fuck. That.

Jim rushed forward after her--

And slammed into the metaphysical equivalent of a brick house.

The shocking impact of the nonvisual barrier sent him backward and he became corporeal once again as he skidded over the stone floor on his raw ass.

He had one brief moment of what-the-hell, before his body's Game Over sign flashed and he fell flat on his back in utter exhaustion.

With his anger spent, there was nothing left in him, and a fatal fatigue bled out from his wonky-beating heart and spread through him sure as a weed taking root and thriving. No longer able to hold his head up, he let the thing rest on the stone and just breathed, dimly noting that the air was saturated with both the copper scent of fresh kill and the acrid pinch of still-smoking candlewicks.

"Sissy," he said into the darkness. "I'm right here. . . ."

He had no clue whether she could hear him and there was no response. Just an eerie, molten sound . . . no doubt the souls trying to get free of their prison.

He hated the idea that his girl was trapped in there.

Hated that she had seen what he'd looked like.

At that thought, pain bored into him as surely as if he'd been stabbed with a crowbar. Oh, God . . . that poor child . . .

A sudden surge of emotion fell upon him in a tidal wave: Naked and broken and filthy, Jim curled onto his side and wept in great heaving gags, his tears hot and salty on the broken skin of his face.

He had never cared about any damage to himself. Ever. But his failings . . . his failings were unsupportable. And now there were two women he had not been able to save, his beloved mother and Sissy. . . . Both times, he had walked into a room too late; both times the damage had been done before he'd arrived.

With horrid acuity, he saw his mother on their kitchen floor at the farmhouse, all but slaughtered . . . and Sissy over the tub.

Sissy just now as well, trying to ward off the demon.

It was too much to bear, the weight of his failures too great for him to withstand, much less go on fighting--

The sound of his name opened his eyes and slowed the raw sobs.

With vast effort, he turned his head and looked up.

Far, far, far above, a galaxy away from where he lay, a pinpoint of light gathered and grew stronger, starting first as the tiny flicker of a blinker on a Christmas tree . . . and then growing to a twenty-five-watt, then a sixty-watt, then a hundred-watt bulb.

The illumination drifted down to him with all the speed and efficiency of a feather falling through still air . . . of dandelion puffs blown from a child's mouth . . . of milk-weed caught on a gentle breeze. . . .

The disconnect between his epic despair and the delicate path of the light was a span too great for his mind to straddle. Closing his eyes, he stopped watching and gave himself over to the random shudders of his beaten body.

"Jim."

A male voice. Above him.

He cracked his lids to see that the light had become a dark-haired man with magnificent golden wings.

Colin.

The archangel. Nigel's number two.

"Hey, mate," the guy said as he knelt down. "I've come to get you out of here."

From somewhere, God only knew where, Jim called up enough energy to speak. "Take her instead. Leave me . . . take her instead. Sissy. The girl . . ."

"That I can't do. I shouldn't be here even now." The angel leaned forward and gathered Jim's broken form into his arms. "But you're going to need some recovery time before you can so much as sit up, much less drag ass out of here. And the war is proceeding without you."

No argument there on his energy level, but God, he'd rather have Sissy a million miles away from here.

"Leave me," he moaned.

"Not on your life. You want Sissy free? You beat Devina. That's how you unlock this nightmare for your girl."

As they began to levitate, Jim's head lolled to the side and he watched as up, up, up they went, past yards and yards--hell, miles--of the black walls. Along the way, Colin's glowing form illuminated the shifting, churning surface, and faces pushed against the opaque, liquid barrier, as if those trapped were trying to see them, get to them, join them in the escape. From every direction, hands reached out, contouring into grotesque shapes as the tensile strength of the prison proved too hard to get through.

Where was his girl? His beautiful, innocent girl who . . .

Jim's brain ran out of gas, the weave of his thoughts unraveling, consciousness giving up the ghost and going in for a deep lie-down in the hard-walled crib of his skull.

As he passed out, his last mental missive was a prayer--that Sissy would remember Dog in this hellish place and hold on until Jim could get to her.

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