Satanic Fortitude (Doomed Cases Book 4) Read online

  “Everyone be quiet,” the Watcher shouted.

  Suddenly Dominica appeared next to me. Tears were streaming down her face. I really didn’t need this right now.

  “I’m sorry, Maxine. I didn’t know that this was going to happen. They told me that they could get me to my lover if I bring you in,” she was saying. My jaw dropped and I stared at her with utter disbelief. Dominica wasn’t hiding in the forest—she was waiting for me. Fuck, I had been a fool to trust her. I opened my mouth to tell her to get away from me when I was hit from behind again. My knees turned into paper and I went down, feeling like someone had split my head in two.

  Moments later the darkness in hell shaded me completely.

  Zach

  “We have to do something!” I shouted at those bloody morons, wanting to get some kind of reaction out of them, I had no idea how long we had been stuck in Purgatory, but we had already wasted so much time, sitting and debating on what to do. We all realised pretty quickly that the time in hell worked much slower than on earth.

  “Maxine said there is nothing that we can do. Lucifer has her soul,” Paul told me, shaking his head. “She made a deal with him, and that means she now belongs to him.”

  We were all sitting in his pub for almost an hour now. Apparently Ricky and Emma were on the way here too.

  I fucking loved that girl. Maybe this was crazy, but I had fallen for her. Hell existed, and demons had been living amongst humans for centuries. This was crazy, and yet I kind of accepted it.

  I got up, kicked the chair and stared at Maxine’s friends, not quite believing that they were ready to just give up.

  “So that’s it. She’s gone forever. What about the prince? The body is still there, while the whole country is looking for him.”

  “Ricky will know what to do. The head of the faction needs to be informed,” Paul continued. The man had locked the pub so no one could walk in. His sword was still on the table, covered with blood. I stopped trying to be reasonable about what happened out there.

  The fact was that I needed to get Maxine out of hell on my own if that was necessary.

  Then the door burst open and a second later Ricky and Emma stepped inside.

  “Rodriguez is refusing to get involved. The old coward!” Ricky shouted, and violent sparks of energy escaped from his hands.

  “So you know what happened to Maxine?” I asked, slowly losing control of myself and everyone around me.

  “The Watchers told me. Only Maxine would have been that stupid to agree to make a deal with Lucifer himself. What the hell was she thinking!” Ricky shouted. His whole face was red. Emma tried to calm him down, but I had seen that look of resignation on her face before. She didn’t believe that Maxine could still be saved.

  “Did you tell him about the prince?” I asked.

  “Yes, he drilled me for an hour after that,” Ricky explained.

  “So now he knows about Maxine’s daughter—”

  “He does and he was more interested in tracking her down than getting Arthur’s body back. The old bastard wanted to keep me in the palace, but then he had an urgent message from downstairs. I had no idea what was that about.”

  “So the guards are retrieving the body as we speak?” Nameless asked and Ricky nodded. He finally flopped back on the chair.

  “I was just telling Paul that we have to do something. Rescue her,” I urged them all, pacing around the empty pub.

  “Ricky, Zach is right. We can’t leave her alone there,” Emma added.

  “You’re humans so you guys don’t understand what hell really is. The dark lord can wipe us all out in a matter of seconds. Even if I could get there, I wouldn’t be able to get to Lucifer. That part of hell is off limits for anyone.” Ricky hid his face in his palms.

  I swore loudly and everyone else flinched. My pulse was pounding in my ears. At first I’d thought that what happened between Maxine and me was just a fling, but I wanted her more than I could fucking admit.

  Max was too proud to ask for help. She’d always been that way.

  “Take me to the palace or those Watchers,” I insisted, pushing not to lose it. “This isn’t right. We all know that she doesn’t deserve to be stuck there.”

  Ricky, Nameless, Paul and now even my sister. They were all magical, they could use whatever voodoo crap they had and get her out.

  Zara was sitting by that guy not saying anything. There was so much that we needed to discuss. Cornelia was waiting; so was Max’s little girl.

  “Mate, I can take you to hell, but you will burn. You’re not even supposed to know what was happening. You’re not in the system.”

  “What happened to Matilda and Max’s daughter? Why isn’t she here?” Emma asked.

  “She needed to disappear again. Rodriguez knows that there is royal blood in her veins. He’s already looking for her,” Ricky explained, shaking his head, like he was blaming himself for everything that went wrong that evening.

  “So what, are we going to just give up? That’s it. Maxine is gone and I have to accept that?”

  “No one has said we’re giving up. I have a plan, but it’s complicated,” Ricky said, looking like he was going to pass out.

  The man had nearly died, but that demon Morpheus had saved him. I was still amazed that he was amongst us.

  “We’re listening to you, man, we are all listening …” Paul muttered.

  Chapter 5

  “As sunlight trembles in enfeebled eyes, calling to mind how sweet to me her smile was, itself deprived my mind of memory.” ― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

  My head throbbed with pain. How many times had I been knocked unconscious in the past hours—or according to hell standards—days?

  So far I’d lost count and I hated waking up again, feeling like I had been hit by a racing truck. Things were getting from bad to worse, but I wanted to lift my spirits up telling myself that at least I was still alive. My mind seemed foggy, limbs were stiff and I tasted blood in my mouth. No one in hell would pity me and no one around here was my friend.

  I opened my eyes and then found myself in yet another prison cell or some sort of chamber.

  Hell must have welcomed a new day, because my stomach felt empty again. There were only so many days I could go without food or water.

  Then I remembered my dream and that made me feel a little better. I was in Zach’s head and he admitted that he was in love with me. All my friends gathered in Paul’s pub to discuss my situation. Zachary didn’t want to accept the fact that no one was willing to rescue me.

  I didn’t believe that it was just a dream. Maybe in some way my subconscious had taken me back to London, to my beloved friends. They were hoping that I was still alive somehow.

  Grief shattered my demonic soul. Only now it hit me harder than before that Arthur was truly gone. One tear dropped down my cheek and sadness spread through me like a poison. Memories from the past were vivid and I was reliving them over and over again. I knew that this wasn’t the right time to break apart. I was determined to survive in here and get back to earth, then later on tell my daughter that her father was a great man.

  Ricky was right. Zach and the rest weren’t able to do anything for me. Hell had me and now I was most likely in the hands of Asmodeus. The Circle of Lust was full of surprises. I knew that hell treated mongrels like dogs, but what I saw earlier was a punch below the belt.

  My dream ended when Ricky revealed that he had a plan. I didn’t want him to put himself at risk again. Zach was right: he only just recovered from that deadly curse. I could only hope that Ricky wasn’t intending to make some sort of deal with someone important down below, because we both knew how badly that ended up for me.

  Lucifer knew about Summer from the very beginning, but he left me to live my life. I didn’t understand why he suddenly changed his tune. There was a reason for it and I just needed to figure it all out. Morpheus had all the answers and I needed to find him. I wasn’t prepared to die without finding out first what
kind of mess I had gotten myself into.

  Torches lit the chamber, and there were Roman columns around and a large slate marble floor covered every square inch of this space. Several metres away from me there was a pool filled with water, the steam drifting around it.

  I wiped the sweat off my face and tried to lift myself on my feet. Some sparks of electricity escaped through my fingers, but I felt weak. My left leg looked fine, although back in the hell town I was certain that I shattered my bones when the Watcher dropped me down. I hit the ground pretty hard. Maybe someone took pity on me and healed me when I was knocked unconscious.

  I concentrated on the energy around me, tapping into my source. I needed to be ready for anything. Ricky’s ex-wife had tried to lie to the Watcher. I hoped the bitch paid for it.

  I noticed that whoever left me in here didn’t chain me up. I was free to walk around, and for a split second I considered taking a dip in the pool. The water looked so tempting and I was sticky with sweat. My clothes were dirty, first covered with dust as I walked miles from one circle to the other and then from the ash in the forest.

  Right now, I had no idea where that Watcher had taken me. In some ways I was done with surprises. I thought about Dominica. She said that no one in hell was free, that all demons had roles, jobs to do. Maybe I had prejudged them all too soon. Life on earth was certainly easier.

  Moments later the large door in front of me opened up and a few demons walked in.

  “Impossible,” I whispered to myself.

  “Oh, Miss Brodeur, we were wondering when you were going to wake up,” the demon that approached me said. I recognised him, and I wasn’t even surprised that he looked the same as in the drawings. Demonic books were filled with pictures and drawings of all the demons, from the six circles of hell, apart from Lucifer. No one knew what the prince of hell really looked like, and some of the descriptions were misleading and over the top. One author pictured him a lone wolf with three heads, another as an old man with a beard.

  Asmodeus was much better looking than Mammon. He was tall, slim and dressed in black shirt and slim-fitted trousers. He had a square jaw and bright green eyes. For a demon he was very good looking and I felt this urge inside me. I wanted to be lost in his arms, and I needed him to kiss me.

  Get it together.

  The voice of reason told me that he was using his power to get me to submit to him. I found it off that Asmodeus took time from his busy schedule and showed up here to deal with me. First Mammon, now him. I didn’t like this sudden attention, because these demons were standing directly below Lucifer. They were like gods in hell: each represented their faction, each was important in their own way.

  “What do you want from me? I’m not like other mongrels in here. I don’t belong to anyone,” I insisted, as the heat from his stare was making me uneasy. I needed to control my own urges. I heard once that he had never left hell and he tortured humans by unleashing their biggest desires. His energy was tingling in my system and I was getting shamefully aroused.

  He smiled and a sudden throbbing between my legs made me realise that I desired him. I needed to run my finger over his jaw, touch his lips. He was handsome but his energy became suffocating. I felt like my throat was getting smaller, and the oxygen wasn’t getting into my lungs. I had tossed Berith to the pits, but right then I was losing complete control of myself.

  “You’re more valuable than you think. Someone lost you there in Purgatory,” he stated, caressing his smooth jaw and assessing me with his eyes. His irises were gold, not green like I thought before.

  I sucked in a deep breath, telling myself to get it together. I couldn’t be fooled by his power; it was all a game to him. Asmodeus was one of the most sadistic of all the seven demons in hell.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I told him, swallowing hard.

  No one knew that Morpheus was on earth, guiding me and helping me to destroy Alexis’s power. On top of that, Purgatory was inaccessible for humans, and yet Arthur had died in there.

  “Of course you do, Miss Brodeur, and I’m here to find out how useful you can really be,” he said, not losing that enigmatic smile. “Word in hell travels fast.”

  “I’m just a mongrel girl. We both know it,” I insisted.

  “A mongrel girl that everyone is talking about, a mongrel that escaped from Mammon’s castle. Everyone is nervous about the upcoming election. You’re the person that can change the fate of many demons.”

  I wanted to disagree with him. If I was so important then why wasn’t I standing in front of Lucifer right now? He asked for me, and I didn’t believe for one second that he could just lose me in hell.

  Magic rose within me, causing my heart to pound even faster than before. Tingling intensified, and warmth began spreading everywhere. I really wanted to kiss Asmodeus, but that tiny bit of self-control kept me in line. His energy was influencing me quicker, because his chamber was so humid and I was extremely thirsty.

  “Well, I’m no one important, so they shouldn’t be concerned about me,” I said, not knowing if I meant to talk about that deal that I made with Morpheus back in London.

  “Come sit with me,” he suggested and a Watcher with the giant wings of a bat pushed me forward.

  Two chairs appeared by the steaming pool with a small table. Asmodeus sat down and gestured for me to do the same. He black shirt was tight and I noticed that his body was well defined, his strong muscles showing through his shirt. Maybe it was just an illusion, but from my point of view he was handsome, less creepy than Berith at least.

  “You must be thirsty, Miss Brodeur,” he said, and a second later a pitcher of ice water appeared on the small able with two glasses. I greedily watched as Asmodeus poured some ice water into the glass and then handed it to me.

  I grabbed it and drank it in one go. I had never tasted such amazing water. That made me feel a lot better, although the invisible attraction to Asmodeus was concerning.

  “You’re a beautiful demon, Miss Brodeur. Your human mother must have had good genes,” he pointed out, watching me intensely. “I would like to take you as a lover, but I’m aware that you’re much more valuable than that.”

  “Are you kidding me?” I asked, thinking that the whole world had gone crazy. He didn’t just tell me that he wanted to have sex with me?

  I shifted on the chair as heat shot down my chest. This was bad. I needed to keep myself in line. It was his magic. I didn’t really want him.

  “That’s a human expression, I presume, but no. I don’t joke when it comes to serious matters,” he stated. All right, it was crazy that I was seriously feeling the sizzling attraction between us. My heart belonged to Zach, and the past few months we grew really close. Arthur and I had drifted away from each other, but there were still feelings between us when he died.

  “So, will you let me go? I have a daughter and I need to get back on earth to her,” I said, trying to be straight with him.

  “Of course,” he said. “But under one condition.”

  Right, of course there is a condition.

  “What is it?”

  “Tell me, what are Lucifer’s plans? There are rumours that he’s preparing for an uprising, that he acquired other allies in hell?” Asmodeus asked, leaning closer to me. He smelled like fire and a fresh summer day, pleasant and soothing. I really needed to stop fantasizing about what could happen between us, because he was just about to decide my future.

  I had made a deal with Morpheus, not Lucifer, so how was I supposed to know what his plans were? Someone had saved me in that cave in the underworld when Watchers were just about to toss me down to pits. Maybe it was Lucifer, but I’d never met him.

  “His plans? I don’t know anything about that. A female demon in a different part of hell had been plotting an uprising against Lucifer, but as far as I know that demon is now dead.”

  “No, Maxine, dear, I’m asking about his plans towards me and the other six demons. Watchers like talking about what is
happening around here. They spread rumours. Lucifer must be aware that his system is not working anymore. I have been serving him loyally for centuries.”

  “I don’t know anything about his plans. I have never even spoken to him. How—”

  “The pits are awaiting, Miss. Brodeur. I’m a patient individual, but we both know that your magic is much more advanced,” he pressed, drilling me with his beautiful eyes. There were a lot of things that I knew, but Asmodeus was wrong. I was from the outside. I knew nothing. Morpheus didn’t talk about his boss.

  “You might as well send me there then, because I can’t tell you something that I don’t know,” I snapped, losing hope that my time in hell was going to be extended.

  “Call the Eurynomos, Ariel. I need to test Miss Brodeur’s magical skills,” Asmodeus announced. Eurynomos, was that some kind of magical weapon that he wanted to use on me?

  I was just about to find out.

  Seconds later the chairs disappeared and I was alone again, standing in the middle of the chamber. Asmodeus was gone.

  The fear inside me started growing like vines that had crawled their way up the building. There was no warning, but I knew that shit was just about to hit the fan.

  A cold shiver passed down my spine when I heard a loud raspy sound coming from the corner of the chamber. There was someone watching me from there and I was a hundred percent certain that it wasn’t a demon.

  “Asmodeus, get a fucking grip. I don’t know anything,” I repeated, thinking that Lucifer’s buddy actually gave a crap about my life. My body started to shake when the creature, who presumably was Eurynomos, took a few steps towards me. Its body was covered with shiny, sticky dark skin. Some kind of oily substance was dripping from him down on the floor. I backed away to the wall, glancing around but failing to see any way of escape. The being opened his mouth wide, then screamed and that shriek was agony to my ears. Its smell was horrendous too and it reminded me of a body that was left to rot in the heat. It had large white eyes without any irises.