Descent - Tara Fuller Page 0,1

nothing more than a flickering light at the end of the tunnel. A flickering light you hoped like hell you could get back to.

I wasn’t even past the gates, and this place was already worming its way inside my mind. Stealing my memories. Picking apart the worst ones and bringing them to life. Like the image of two girls standing against the far wall of the cave, brought to life to make me squirm. Embers glowed from their once-smooth black hair, burning holes through their already-tattered dresses. Their necks were raw and torn from the fresh burn of a rope, and the coppery scent of blood was thick in the air.

“Helfen Sie uns, Bruder.” Ava’s voice cracked, and Seline fell to her knees. Her small, trembling hand reached for mine.

I held my sisters’ gaze, as I always did, for seven seconds, then looked away. They weren’t real. I wasn’t sure where my sisters’ souls resided, but I knew it wasn’t here. They had been too pure in life to be condemned to this kind of hellish forever. I could only hope they were living out eternity behind the gates I wasn’t worthy to touch.

I stared at my boots, taking a moment to seal up the wall around my heart. Hearing Ava’s voice had made a crack just big enough for tiny slivers of pain to seep through to strangle the freshly beating heart that crossing through the gates of Hell provided. Gritting my teeth, I squeezed the scorching scythe at my side, letting the blade usually reserved for reaping souls slice into my palm to replace the pain inside with something more manageable. If I’d been the kind of man my mother had once believed I was, I would have stood in that cave and cracked myself wide open to every horrific memory of my former life. But that was just it. I wasn’t the man she’d thought I was. I’d never been that man. I was a coward. I’d paved roads in blood for my family trying to erase it. But it hadn’t worked. It didn’t erase the fact that I’d failed them, that they’d died because I couldn’t…didn’t protect them.

I forced down the storm of panic and pain swelling in my throat as blood began to drip between my fingers. Each drop throbbed as it escaped the skin Hell had given me. It was pain that I needed, that I deserved, and as it spread across my palm, the calm finally came.

Cold. Numb. Necessary.

“Best two out of three?”

The imp’s voice snapped me out of my thoughts. I collected myself and pushed up from the stone I’d been using as a seat, ignoring the sound of Seline’s sobs.

“Sorry, Cyril.” I twisted my scythe around in its holster. “I’ve got work to do. A deal’s a deal.”

“But—”

“Now, Cyril, you want me to come back and play, don’t you?”

He nodded warily, weighing his options: lose the small bit of companionship I offered, or risk torture when he crossed the gates. He knew as well as I did that after making those demons salivate for an hour, there would be no bartering with them. They would take the soul and then they would make Cyril pay for making them wait. I should have felt guilty, but that would require feeling. I didn’t do feeling. Not anymore. He finally reached a clawed finger out to beckon the soul in front of him. The man I’d had to practically scrape from the floor of a prison cell looked back and forth between us both. He held up his hands and took a step back.

“No, no, no, no! I am not going with him.”

“You think old Cyril here is something to fear?” I shook my head. “You really should have made better decisions while you had the chance. This time tomorrow you’ll be praying for his company.”

“I’m sorry!” he wailed. “I take it all back. Give me another chance. I’ll do anything!”

“What you’re asking for is above my pay grade. I’m not God. Besides…” I peered past him at the horde of demons waiting on the other side, salivating with the need to inflict pain. “It’s already been written. You belong to them now.”

I blocked out his pleas, brushed the ash from my duster, and raked my fingers through my sweat-dampened hair. After four centuries, I’d learned to endure a lot—flames, torture, the constant choking cloud of despair that polluted the air of Hell. It’s what made me the best reaper there was. But this