No, to rule—that power ran so much deeper, and my brothers respected it, sensed it, from the moment we reconnected in Pandemonium’s gladiatorial fighting rings eons ago, no longer the wild brats of pampered demonesses, but warriorsof doom stuck counting down the days until the real apocalypse began.
Geralt towered over just about everyone at seven feet three inches, but his overt brutishness belied the heart inside, his softness our best-kept secret. Meanwhile, Aedan was the leanest among us, gifted with subtle strength and a sharp tongue. Ivory flesh and eyes like hellfire, his inky black waves were starting to look greasy. Lithe and lethal, he looked mostly human courtesy of the golden cuffs, but his leviathan horns, gnarled and twisted like demented buck antlers, gave him an extra two feet in a place where they all thought size mattered.
Shame, to look so like the guards glowering from the other side of the bars. Cuffed as we were, our demonic sides had been stifled for days, cowed by the runes and magic in the gold. Weakened, instruments of war blunted, some pureblood demons managed to keep their black eyes whenever gen pop was allowed to mingle and stretch our legs, but for the most part, we resembled men.
At a demon’s most basic form, after all, they were but men’s tormented souls made eternal in the pit. Twisted and ruined, molded into terrors, they could shift and change form on a whim.
No more.
Not until the volcano dissolved these fucking cuffs, anyway.
Some preferred the predatory advantage of beauty. Humans fell willingly into our arms when we were lovely, but where was the fun in that?
For the hybrids, prison guards kept a closer eye. While our demon side surrendered to the sigils, the leviathan in our blood fought the magic. Geralt’s claws, Aedan’s antlers—all paired with the grace and intrigue of sinfully handsome fallen angels, men who looked like gods. Flesh grey as old ash, straddling the middle ground between Geralt’s brawn and Aedan’s sleekness, even I kept a piece of my apocalypse self, a shadowy horned crown hovering around my skull that intake had tried to rip away, only to realize it was another part of me, a bone on the outside they couldn’t take.
The crown itself caused occasional uproar during gen pop outings, but it was nothing we couldn’t handle. Beating the absolute fuck out of each other had always been a way to pass the time, no matter how these guards despised the dark legion’s antics. Demons warred for rank, desperate for a crown, for a smattering of Lucifer’s attention and praise.
Dull, really.
Life had become so boring down there, and now, up here, it was more of the same.
I strode right up to the fellow in our cage door, his nose barely reaching my chin, and cocked my head, waiting until the height difference forced him to look up.
“You pull some shit, monster,” he sneered, blanching when I bared my sharp canines, “and I’ll shove this poker so far up your ass that we’ll watch the sparks fly at the back of your fucking throat while you scream.”
“Eloquent,” I mused. Aedan and Geralt fell into their usual positions, flanked on either side, Geralt expressionless, sick of incarceration’s tedium, and Aedan snorting—not because he found it funny, but because he loved to make the humans flinch and twitch for their weapons with the slightest sound.
I, meanwhile, kept my eyes on this little rat’s gaze, coppery brown, the amber flecks suggesting fae, maybe even elvish DNA, somewhere in his lineage. Pity their beauty and brains didn’t extend down the family tree. “You know, your soul might just claw out of the pits. Maybe.” I eased closer, forcing him to inch back so that nose didn’t kiss my chin. “And maybe, just maybe, they’ll let you torture once you’ve suffered enough—”
Lightning seared up my chest, the cattle prod jabbed between my pecks. A mercy—and a surprise—that he didn’t go straight for the appendage dangling down my thighs, but maybe he had a gentlemen’s code. While the sizzle stung, it paled compared to all I’d suffered before.
I held my ground.
Endured it.
Then grinned when he backed off, leaving a scorched black burn on my chest, and gestured for us to step out already. I glanced left to Aedan, right to Geralt, then sniffed and gave this lot a dismissive up-and-down sweep. Fine.
They swarmed us in the corridor, a pair of armed guards assigned to each, then a man between us as we marched by cells of hellions and demons. Some alone, the poor fuckers, others in pairs and groups. Some sleeping. Others howling. If only these bloody holding cells had been soundproofed however many centuries ago they were forged; what I wouldn’t do for just one night of silence, a quiet we could only dream about in Hell, the dark legion’s cacophony of unrelenting noise dragged topside.
“You boys ready to get some of that testosterone out?” one of Aedan’s guards asked. The figure to my left snorted while the one to my right rolled his eyes.
“Seriously, fucking animals,” he muttered. “Gotta breed ’em like stallions to get some peace in here.”
My smirk sharpened; if they thought allowing the biggest, baddest, meanest fighters in gen pop to fuck some poor magpie a few times a week would bring them peace, they were in for a rude awakening.
The prison—nay, the isle as a whole—operated under some deluded theory that if they took the most violent prisoners and allowed them conjugal visits, they might stop fighting. Little did they realize that swinging at other demons, chomping off fingers that would grow back in a day or two, slicing throats that would maybe heal before the fucker bled out—all fun and games. A way to pass the time. Sport. Alphas clashed, sure. Lords and minor princes from the upper echelon of Hell’s complex social strata had something to prove—win or lose your title—but it was nothing compared to the savagery we faced below.
Here, in the two hours of mingling outside our cells the warden allowed the legion, fights erupted constantly. The powers that be learned fast we might ride under the same dark banner, but we weren’t brothers in arms. We still had needs. We spilled blood to entertain ourselves. We cracked skulls for a laugh. But most of all, here, waiting to be shunted back to Hell, we were all just fucking bored.
And no one ever wanted a demon or hellion bored.
Kings of the Shit Heap: an affectionate title gifted upon me and the boys because we didn’t lose. Not one bout. Seldom did we go looking for fights, our leviathan heritage a completely unfair advantage against even purebred demons, but we sure as shit finished them. When we were through, there were always fewer inmates to escort back to the hellmouth. These fuckers ought to be kissing our feet in gratitude.
They led us up and out of the underground holding area, same as they did during rec time, and while our guards shot the shit, their drawling conversation instant white noise, I hunted for windows. Squaring my shoulders, I peered through the barred panes any chance I got, starved for the untapped coastline beyond the prison walls, the miles of greenery down to white sand and choppy waters. An endless black horizon greeted me tonight, potential in the thick salty air. Eager as we were to end it all, before the apocalypse bells tolled, Earth had a great many possibilities to explore.
We’d never admit it aloud, but Hell had gotten a bit… stale.
My brothers and I, we yearned for more these days. Eternity was just such a long time to suffer stale.