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“Hell’s teeth, that hurts!” Ayden Royce cursed.
The once proud warrior angel hung suspended by thick iron chains in the very same spot for eons while the fires of damnation tormented his soul and seared his flesh. He had been there since the very day that Satan had been defeated and the Devil had been cast into the deepest pits of Hell, his punishment to forever be devoured by the relentless flames of his master’s defeat.
Ayden had once attempted to measure his eternal damnation by the strikes of the fiery lash that bit into his skin. Somewhere in the billions, he’d lost count and had to start again. After which, he’d lost count again, and again, and, well…
He supposed that if he had bothered to keep track of just how many times he’d lost count by now, it would have numbered in the billions as well.
Ayden twisted in his chains as another tongue of fire licked at his chest and curled around his waist.
Another thing the angel had come to realize over the centuries was that no matter how much pain he endured, part of the punishment of Hell was that you never really got used to it. Each strike of fire against skin was as agonizing; each rendering of the muscle from the bone was the same excruciating torment as the very first assault. Nothing ever changed, and the immense sameness of it all never ceased to amaze him.
To make matters worse, his flesh never seemed to char away as it would have in the physical world. His body just reformed and instantly became healthy once again, ready for the next horrific touch of his relentless torture.
This was how he’d suffered ever since his one error in judgment had consigned him to endless agony in this godforsaken place.
“What’s the very worst thing about being condemned?” Ayden’s demon keeper, Blalock, asked during an especially long session of the angel’s punishment. The ancient creature often attempted to pull Ayden into one sort of pointless debate or another to break the monotony of their damned existence.
“I’ve been cursed for all eternity,” he groaned as yet another lash of fire seared his tender back. “And eternity is an awfully long time.”
“How true, fair Ayden, but I must say, I’ve known no one to suffer it as nobly as you.”
A minion of the Devil, Blalock settled himself into what had been their routine since the dark day when Ayden had begun his exile in the underworld. Covered with scaly, crimson-colored reptilian skin, the beast stretched his thickly muscled form once and yawned.
An unpleasant fellow to look upon, the demon had a wide, flat forehead, a warty, uneven face, and a skull adorned with at least twenty bony protuberances. The entire rest of his body was pretty much the same, although somewhat shaped like a man’s, complete with chest, arms, and legs.
Like all the other beings of his kind, Blalock had no sex, but then such creatures weren’t born of male and female procreation, but rather created from the slimy ooze that coated the floor of Hell.
What he did have was a terrible, fetid rotting odor that assaulted the senses almost as much as the view of his hideously twisted, misshapen form.
“Go to bloody Hell, Blalock,” Ayden bit out as another burst of flame assailed him.
“Too late. Already there,” Blalock retorted as he took his usual place at a huge stone desk, his malformed face scrunched in what passed for a demonic grin, “But then, aren’t we all?”
Ayden grunted as another lash lit a white-hot path across his back and legs.
“I do love to jest,” the demon confided. “You should try it some time. Just because one is burning in eternal damnation doesn’t mean one can’t have a sense of humor.”
Reaching into a corner of his workspace, the demon pulled out a pair of reading glasses, and mounted them precariously on his multi-ridged nose. “One wouldn’t guess there is so much record keeping involved in torturing the damned.”
Ayden twisted in his chains as a tongue of fire licked at his chest and curled around his waist.
“You know,” Blalock glanced up from his tasks. “You never scream anymore. Why is that?”
Ayden took a few moments to allow the pain of the last strike to recede before answering. It was simple, really. It was the screaming that Blalock liked best, what he’d called the beautiful music of human and non-human torture.
Well, too bad. Ayden had long ago decided to suffer in silence. In all the time of his damnation, he had never been beyond his small cubicle, but he knew that there were many levels to Hell. The angel had spent an eternity listening to the endless cacophony of ear-piercing screams, the pitiful cries of desperation, and the heart wrenching pleas for mercy. Hell was full enough of shrieking and wailing. Though he had no control over anything else in his miserable existence, he was determined to withhold at least that.
“Doesn’t seem any point to it, now does it?” He gasped once the breath had returned to him.
Blalock gave him a sideways glance. “Point? You think there is a point to any of this? Some hidden meaning to what we’re doing here? Ha! You sir, are confused. There is no reason for any of this except that your misery delights our master. Why else would you be here?”
“We both know why I’m here,” Ayden said through his clenched jaw. “I made one small mistake and I shall spend eternity paying for it.”
“Small mistake? You call showing mercy during the most important battle of all time a small mistake? You may as well have spat in Satan’s warty face.”
True enough. There wasn’t a moment that passed that Ayden hadn’t regretted his action. One small slip in his judgment and here he was, burning in Hell forever.
“No matter,” he gasped when another fiery lash bit into his side. “What’s done is done. There’s nothing I can do to change it.”
“My point exactly. So, I see no reason to withhold what little pleasure I get from hearing your magnificent voice.”
Ayden spit out blood that had pooled in his mouth when he’d bitten his tongue. “You’ve had pleasure enough as it is.”
Blalock smiled. “Well, I suppose I do enjoy my work.” He turned back to his desk, shuffling the papers before him.
“Exactly,” Ayden said.
“What’s this?” Blalock asked as he held up a charred piece of parchment.
Had his chains allowed, Ayden would have shrugged. Instead, he waited in silence as the demon studied the peculiar document.
“Well?” Blalock crossed his warty arms.
Ayden didn’t think it possible, but when Blalock looked up, his face was twisted in shocked surprise.
“It’s a summons. For us both.”
“Perhaps you and I will be trading places,” Ayden barely breathed. That had long been an unfulfilled wish—that the demon could suffer at least the smallest fraction of pain that he’d inflicted upon others.
“Not hardly,” the beast answered. “But it does appear that you’ve come into a bit of luck, my boy.”
“What?” Surprise bit into Ayden’s mind so hard that the next lash of fire took him completely unaware. He jerked in response, the thick metal bands of his manacles slicing painfully into his wrists and ankles. He hated when that happened.
“You have been summoned to an audience with the grand one himself.”
Without warning, the two were transported to the most fearsome place in the many levels of Hell—The Great Hall, where Satan himself resided.
A huge cave, its walls were made of thick stone formed from melded ash and bones of the damned. The chained, bloodied bodies of once human creatures doomed to suffer endless degradation covered every inch of the floor.
Blalock clutched Ayden’s thick chains, pulling him forward as though he were leading oxen across a muddied field. Stumbling several times, it was all the angel could do to remain upright.
Ayden choked as the horrific sulfuric stench assaulted his senses.
The wretched souls fixed to the floors and walls strained against their chains, their long, bony hands grabbing at Blalock and Ayden as they passed.
“Come, come, my boy. We mustn’t keep his Lordship waiting. He gets very angry when he’s put off.”
“Pardon me, but being chained in the same position for centuries makes it difficult to move at all.”
“Don’t be impertinent,” the demon growled, jerking the chain and nearly pitching Ayden to the floor again.
Ayden briefly glanced at the creature that sat enthroned before him. The minute his eyes registered Satan’s supreme hideousness, the pain of the sight struck him deeply. The old Devil had changed greatly over the centuries. Once, he’d been the most beautiful angel among them. One whose form had not been unlike Ayden’s own. Satan had been the most favored among the angels.
Now, he was the substance of terrifying nightmares.
A huge, gelatinous creature, Satan was a constant, stirring boil of ruddy slime and fire. Ayden caught a glimpse of his black, necrotic core; a twisted and misshapen remnant of the most stunning creature ever created was nothing now but a fetid stew of death and decay.
“On your knees, you worthless, mangy, pox-ridden cur!” Satan’s voice boomed, causing the poor souls around them to shrink back into the tarry quagmire of the cave’s floor and walls.
Ayden immediately dropped to the floor, desperate to return to his chamber and his painful torture. Anything was better than this.
Even Blalock fell to his knees. “Your Greatness. You have summoned us?”
Satan snarled at Ayden. “That disgusting pile of flesh and bone no longer entertains me.”
“What would you have me do, my lord? Cast him into the pitch, perhaps? Strip every measure of flesh from his bones and throw them into the fiery pit?”
“And ruin the texture of my domain? Hardly,” Satan sneered. “I have another task for him.”
Startled, Ayden looked up. “A task?”
“I grow tired of my subjects’ pathetic whining. I need you to fetch me another soul to appease my appetites—a woman pure of heart for me to feast upon. You must find such a being and lure her here. Please me, and your damnation will end, your debt erased. Fail me and you will spend the rest of eternity beneath my heel, burning in the magma of my hatred for all humanity.”
Ayden swallowed. Suspicion curled around his spine.
“Why me?” He asked.
In the next instant, Blalock raised the thick chain, striking Ayden across his back.
“How dare you question our master?” Leaning toward Ayden, he whispered, “Are you trying to get us vaporized?”
“Silence demon!” the Devil commanded. “I chose you because of your magnificent beauty. After all these centuries, your spirit still retains its angelic loveliness. Why waste my precious energies to create such a glorious countenance when it already exists?”
Ayden hadn’t glimpsed a reflection of his own outward appearance for eons. He quickly glanced down at his body and was stunned by what he saw. His smooth skin covered perfectly sculpted muscle and bone. His arms, hands, and legs were well formed, unmarked and appearing the very same as the day he’d been damned by the Heavenly Council. Any scars from his sojourn in the fiery pit must have been only on his soul, because his physical body showed no sign of it.
“You have but one chance to earn your release, angel. Do not disappoint me.”
Ayden paused as the meaning of his master’s words stirred in his mind. He had one chance for freedom.
It was more than he had ever hoped for.
One simple task and he could leave this place forever. Never again would he feel the fire upon his skin or suffer the cries of the damned constantly ringing in his ears. At last, he would rest without pain or regret.
It was almost beyond imagining.
When he’d first been condemned, he’d prayed for redemption, begged for sweet mercy. It had made little difference in the end. The ears of the creator of all things were deaf to the cries of the damned.
For the first time in centuries, Ayden felt the stirrings of hope burn in his chest.
When he spoke, there was no hesitation in his voice.
“I will not fail.”
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