Magic - Chapter 59

This is the second book in The Godsverse Chronicles, a portal fantasy series with mythological roots and action-adventure tendencies. You can search through all my work on my website.

Ollie wasn't looking for trouble, but after she saved the Antichrist from being slaughtered, it came for her.

Ollie lived by one rule. Never get involved with anyone for any reason; humans, demons, fae folk, it didn't matter. They were all trouble. Keeping her distance was how she survived in the criminal underworld for so long.

Keep your head down and don't piss anyone off. That was her motto, especially since her clients all had access to powerful dark magic.

She thought she had a flawless system for keeping her nose clean, so how did she wind up in a stolen car, with a demon spawn in her back seat, driving away from her ex-lover and a gang of demons ready to skin her alive?

That's a good question.

And why did she agree to help save the demon's life so she didn't get sacrificed to open the gates of Hell?

An even better question.

She had one rule. One stupid rule. And tonight...it goes right down the toilet.

Now, the only way for Ollie to get her life back is to save the girl, prevent the Apocalypse, and track down the people who betrayed her.

They will pay. Oh yes, they will all pay.

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We had descended for miles before they finally threw Aimee and me into our cells. They had already separated us from the rest of our pack, tossing Igor and the other members of the swat team, including Blezor, in cells far above us. Millions of moaning monsters and souls called out from their own prisons as we passed, begging for salvation, but we were as damned as they were.

“You’re not going to get away with this!” I screamed through the bars on my cell as our demon jailers walked away.

“What are you talking about?” Aimee asked, still glowing with fire. “They already did. We’re trapped. I can’t imagine there’s any water down here, so we’ll be dead in what, three to five days, max?”

“I didn’t even think of that.” I turned from the bars. “I mean, I’m a half angel-half demon so I don’t have to eat or drink, but yeah, you’re kind of screwed if we don’t get out of here.”

She bounced her head off the back of the cell. “And then I’ll wind up back here, getting tortured in some other horrible way.”

I shook my head. “I’m not going to let that happen.”

She shrugged. “I mean, it’s bound to happen eventually, right? Someday I’m going to die, and then I’ll be right back here, maybe in this exact pit for all I know.”

I placed my hand on her knee, hoping it might reassure her. “On the plus side, maybe the Apocalypse will start by then.”

She laughed. I didn’t expect her to, and the laugh came from deep in the depths of her belly. She went on so long that a snarling demon banged on the bars. “Quit it in there! No laughing.”

But that just made her laugh longer and harder. In Hell, laughing seemed like an act of rebellion. Keys jangled outside, and the door creaked open. The demon raised his club in the air. “We must not be torturing you hard enough!”

He dropped the club to Aimee’s face. I wouldn’t let him get away with hurting her. I spun on my heels and grabbed his wrist with one arm and the club with the other. I smashed his hand over my knee until the club fell.

Aimee grabbed it and used it to knock the demon across the face. When he slid to the ground, she leaped on top of him and beat him until green blood oozed from his head, and he fell back, limp.

“That’s enough,” I said, grabbing the club. “Well done, though.”

Panting, she grabbed the keys from the demon’s belt. “I have anger issues.”

“Who doesn’t? Come on. We’re getting out of here.”

We covered the guard with the thin sheet from our cots and hoped it would buy us time to get some distance from the pits after we found the others. Once we were outside the cell, I closed it behind us and snapped off the key in the lock.   

I glanced around. “Where are the others?”

I don’t kn—” Aimee pointed about the gate. “Look.”

Above the cell were the numbers 9-7-8. It was where Charlie assigned us when we came into the prison. “Quick, what did he say about the others? It was like 4-9 or—”

“4-6,” Aimee replied. “And then Blezor was in 6-1-2, I think.”

“Let’s hope they are above us and not below.”

It took us about an hour to climb from the nine hundred level cells up to the seven hundred level. There were plenty of other monsters working the pits, and they were all wearing the same type of disgusting robes as we were, so it wasn’t hard to fit in with them. Whenever a demon passed our way, we ducked into the nearest cell or busied ourselves with some sort of menial chore. There seemed to be a lot of maintenance to do on an old, disgusting pit to prevent it from collapsing, especially one with such shoddy construction.

“We’re getting close to Blezor,” I said. The sign on the cage we were passing said 7-8-1. The horribly deformed man inside of it whimpered like a wet dog. His arms had been sawed off at the elbows, exposing the bone on his biceps.

“Go away!” He shouted to a rat trying to gnaw on his arm. “I said go away!”

“Quiet down over there!” a coarse voice grumbled. “Some of us are trying to sleep.” It was the first conversation I’d heard since we started to climb.

The occupants of each cell were going through a different type of torture. Some had their eyes gouged out, or their teeth pulled, or their fingers cut off. The prisoners were on a spectrum from screaming in agony to whimpering in pain to numbly resigned. The one who had yelled at the sawed man, though, looked barely gaunt and no worse for wear than any of the chronically homeless people that made Los Angeles their home.

“I’m sorry about him,” he said. “It’s hard—It’s hard.”

“Doesn’t seem that hard for you,” Aimee said.

“That’s because I’m at the end of a cycle. He’s in the middle.”

“A cycle?” I asked.  

“We are tortured until the edge of our sanity and then allowed to rest until—until we are whole again.”

“Why not just torture you forever?” I asked. “That’s what I would do.”

“Not a good idea,” the man said. “You can’t torture somebody at the same level forever, or they acquiesce. They give us a break to recover and remember that there is a world outside of pain, and then, once we are comfortable without the pain, that’s the moment they bring it back again.”

“Seems like you know a lot about torture,” I said.

He nodded. “I’ve been here a long time. And in my old life, it was a vocation of mine.” I heard the clink of demon armor coming closer, and the man’s cool demeanor changed to one of terror. “They are coming for me. Please, let me out. Please, please.” He grabbed at my clothes, and I batted him away. “PLEAAAAASSSEE!”

I turned from the man and continued up the ramp. I passed the demon, and it growled at me but didn’t say a word. I watched as it pulled the man from his cage and dragged him away, kicking and screaming.

We kept climbing until we reached cell 6-1-2. Blezor was on a cot, looking up at the ceiling. I opened the door to his cell and walked inside.

“Don’t you da—” He sat up when he saw me. “Ollie? You are a sight for sore eyes.”

“It’s good to see you, too. Quick, let’s go.”

When I locked the door behind us, I heard a loud growl behind me. “Stop!”

I turned in time to see the demon charging at us. We started to run, but it didn’t take long for the ruckus to alert other demons. They rushed toward us from all directions. What was it that Charlie said? The pits were a big honeycomb network. I pulled Aimee and Blezor into a corridor, hoping that it wasn’t just another one of his lies.

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This is the second book in The Godsverse Chronicles, a portal fantasy series with mythological roots and action-adventure tendencies. You can search through all my work on my website.

Paid subscribers can access the entire archive of this series from the beginning, along with other series and every article I’ve ever written.

If you are not a paid member, you can read everything with a 7-day free trial, or give us a one-time tip.