“Um.” I coughed. “Yes, that does make some sense now that you mention it. You’ll have to forgive my total naïveté about the Underworld. I’m pretty much befuddled that I’m actually here in the first place.”
“While you’re gone investigating the other prisoners, trying to find someone more reputable and trustworthy to help you, I’m going to take a nap and finish regenerating from a nasty bazooka blast to the chest.”
She was shrewd, I’d give her that.
My wolf snarled, still unimpressed. She wanted us to leave the way we’d come. We can’t do that. I can still hear the guards out there. She’s intelligent, but she wants something from us. I’m going to use it to our advantage.
“I’m not leaving,” I said after a moment. Her nonchalant attitude didn’t fool me. She needed my help as much as I needed hers. “Although it sounds very tempting, I’m not going to investigate the other prisoners.” Lily gave off a strange vibe that made my wolf hyper-aware. “I realize you’re playing this all very cool, but you need me more than I need you.” She gave me a bored expression, which I ignored. “As I see it, I’m your only ticket out of Hell. And if the demons are willing to blow a hole in your chest, which didn’t even seem to harm you, and you can tell them to fuck off and they scurry away, it means you’re über-dangerous. I may find another way out of here if I go searching, but you clearly don’t have that option.” I folded my arms across my chest, satisfied.
“I already told you I am dangerous. I’m not trying to hide it.”
“If you want my help, you’re going to have to tell me why you’re in here.” I glanced around the tiny room to remind her where she was stuck. “And I want the truth this time.”
“I’m residing in this cube because I’ve tried to kill the Prince of Hell”—she paused for effect—“often.”
“Why are you still alive? I would think the Prince would obliterate you as quickly as possible.”
Her eyes flicked to the wall and back. “Because he… secretly enjoys the challenge of holding me prisoner. When he can.”
“But this time you went too far? Is that why you can’t escape?” I was grasping at straws, but it made sense. She’d surprised me with her admission, and she held a quiet desperation about herself that told me something had gone very wrong with her last attempt. “You did something so bad the Prince decided to give you no more chances, and you’re biding your time until you’re to be executed?”
“Yes.”
That was all she was going to give me.
“I know I agreed to give you a fair appraisal, and possibly take you back to my plane in exchange for your help, but I have to set up some ground rules before we move forward,” I said. “If didn’t, I’d be a fool. You’re too dangerous and I don’t know you.”
She sat up. “If you want my cooperation, you must agree to take me back to your plane if I prove worthy. There is no other way I will aid you. If you agree to consider this request, I will guide you to your brother, and once we have him, I will lead us to a portal.”
“I have a way back with the witches.” I couldn’t be that dependent on her or this wouldn’t continue to work in my favor.
She shook her head. “A circle will not work. If they haven’t found the way you entered the Underworld already, it means we are the only two left in Hell. They will have masked all communication by now and cut the witches off. But there are three portals on this plane. A regular demon cannot pass through any of them. They are for imps and… others…” Admitting that she was, in fact, other. “We will have to use one of these.”
There was no way to know if what she was telling me was the truth or not, but with nothing else to go on, I said, “If I end up agreeing to bring you back, you would have to swear an oath to me at that time. You would be my responsibility once we arrived in my world, and mine alone. You would stay voluntarily under my control and follow my rules, no questions asked. If you broke that oath, I’d have the right to have the witches send you back here, and you’d suffer your fate at the hands of the Prince.”
Her eyes flickered, the pupil pulsing almost too quickly for me to see. “If that’s what it takes, I will agree to bind myself to you. For a time.”
“Wrong answer. You will bind yourself to me until I decide to change the rules.”
“What exactly would you have me do? Give you my blood? I will follow your rules. I will behave. I am willing to do this because I need to be free of this land or I die. I have no other choice, it’s that simple.”
There was more movement in the hallway. The demons hadn’t stopped the hunt. If anything, they’d ramped it up. And if they were smart, they’d charge right back in here with heavier artillery, like rocket launchers.
“If you end up saving my life, or my brother’s, you will agree to swear an oath to me, whatever my terms in the end, or there is no deal.”
The demoness knew she was running out of time. “Fine. I will swear an oath, like you do in your world. Will that satisfy you?”
“Yes, for now.” My wolf growled. We don’t owe her anything yet and she’s agreed to help us. It’s the best I could do.
There were noise coming from outside. Lily’s head turned toward the curtain. “They have come back with reinforcements. They did not believe I wasn’t harboring you.”
A strange roaring, keening noise erupted right outside the door. “What’s making that awful sound?” I asked.
“That is the hellhound, it is part of the beast horde. It will devour us whole once it enters. Its piercing teeth skin you alive, and then it laps your blood until you take your last breath. It is the worst beast we have and it is rarely used because it’s so hard to control.”
“So how do we get out of here?” I asked.
“Through the floor,” she answered.
I immediately glanced down. The floor tiles fit together like a big puzzle, some of them with notches that fit exactly with the pieces they lay next to. I squatted down. Do you smell that? I asked my wolf. Air was flowing up from between the two tiles beneath me and it smelled peculiar. I shot my power into them and picked up on something, not attached to this room, but down below. “There’s a catch, right?” I asked Lily, nodding my head to the floor. “It’s like the veil. This room is completely spelled against you, including the floor.” I crouched down and brought my nose close and sniffed, smiling. “But I can get through it no problem.”