Page 88 of Caelum

TWENTY-NINE

EVE

After the harsh scraping sound of stone grinding against stone, the intense quiet that followed was enough to make my heartbeat sound loud in my ears.

All around me, I could hear my men breathing and I took comfort in that, used it to ground me as I prepared to face a situation I had no control over.

Pressing my hand to the wall, the light appeared then sputtered out. “Great,” I grumbled.

“Means we’re in the right place,” Dre whispered at my side, his body close to mine.

“I guess,” I said on a sigh.

My vision as a creature enabled me to see into the dark cave, but it wasn’t comfortable. I wanted the light like I’d never wanted anything in my life—even my men—and that was saying something.

As we hesitantly stepped farther in the darkness, I heard another scraping sound, and the flickering noise that came from fire.

I’d heard the latter enough these past few days to be wary, and the narrow tunnel we found ourselves in, all craggy walls and rough floors that I kept stubbing my toe on, suddenly opened up once more.

What I saw stunned the shit out of me.

In a million years, I never could have anticipated the large pit in the center of the cave, nor would have I envisaged the Ghoul who hovered nearby on a throne that was far too pretty for him. Gilded and bejeweled, the seat was grand enough for any king, but the beast atop it? Only knowing his name was Erlik and not Satan told me he wasn’t the devil himself.

But if he roamed the land above, no wonder Satan had come to be described as bright red with a whippet tail, horns, and a snout.

Erlik was vile, revolting, and so other that nausea swirled inside me.

There was a forced languor about his pose, like he was making himself look relaxed, but I knew he had to be aware of the loss of his Ghouls because there were piles of ash in here too.

The pit was the size of a small house, and it had two falls in it. One of water that gleamed black—the one that had so concerned the men as we’d been trudging down to this cavern—and another of fire that burned blue. The contrast was disconcerting, and I had to wonder why it was open that way. Did it lead to Hell? Was this truly Tamag?

“I know you’re there.”

The voice was ragged, but not from fear, but because no words should be formed by a creature like that.

“You’d have to be deaf not to have heard the door opening,” Dre, ever ebullient, called out as he stepped into the chamber.

The blue fire lit the creamy red walls with an unearthly light, and the heat in here, though combatted by the waterfall, was ungodly. Sweat beaded on my brow and dotted my lips and the small of my back. It was enough to rival a sauna, and I wasn’t sure how Erlik could stand the heat when it was this suffocating.

“Ah, a straight talker. Good.” Erlik grated out a sound that could only be a laugh. Still, it was like nails down a chalkboard and had me wincing. “I have a proposition for you. I’m not sure who sent you, but they didn’t tell you something important.”

We fanned out, heading from the tunnel and deeper into the cavern.

I hadn’t anticipated a board meeting before we got down to proceedings, but I’d admit, I was curious as to what he had to say.

Why?

Because I wasn’t entirely sure humans deserved to live without fear.

Horrible of me? Perhaps. But the fact that some bastards had taken advantage of the world’s disarray to set off a bomb in Ankara? And that similar scenarios would be happening the world over as evil people manipulated this situation for their own gain?

Better the devil you knew than the one you didn’t.

I knew I had no say in that. My Jannah , guided by God’s hand, had brought me here for a purpose. Coming to terms with Erlik wasn’t that purpose, but still, I listened .

“What’s so important that I can’t kill you now?” Dre mocked, and I wanted to elbow him for being so damn cocky—it would be the death of him, and that was my major fear.

It didn’t matter that not all of them had told me they loved me. They showed me every day. With their hugs and gentle touches, their belief in me, their faith in me as their woman and as an equal in this fate we found ourselves in.

Sometimes, actions spoke louder than words, but before we’d met our destiny, I had to tell them all. Had to let them know what they meant to me.

I’d never loved before, and now, I had seven loves worth fighting for. Dying for. Killing for.

“This pit is a portal. It takes you straight to Hell. If you think the devil isn’t gathering his legions to counter the billions of Ghouls you’ve struck down, you’re a fool.”

“Billions?” I choked out, drawing Erlik’s attention my way.

“Yes.” He grinned, and it was so disgusting, the maw that appeared when he smirked had me barely holding on to the toast I’d had hours before. Now I knew why he was considered the original Sin Eater—that open-ended jaw? It was exactly like Frazer’s when I’d seen him kill those Ghouls in the parking lot. “Our numbers are more than even Nicholas’ spawn managed to quantify.” His sneer made me wince, and I realized that he and Nicholas were related—damn, Nicholas was his uncle .

He couldn’t always have looked like this, could he?

How could Nicholas be so beautiful and Erlik so… not ?

I knew they’d gone through the evolutionary process with mankind, but what on earth had happened to this grandchild of Adam and Eve?

Frazer took a step closer, drawing Erlik’s attention away from me and onto himself. Damn his hide. I double damned him when he neared the pit, standing opposite the throne but so close to the rim that my stomach sank. “I’m assuming you’re telling us this for a reason. What do you possibly have that you think you can bargain with?”

“How about the key to Hell’s gates?” He pointed to the water and to the fire. “Those two together keep Satan locked inside his fiery home.”

“Why?” I questioned, reaching up to rub my temple where sweat was pouring into my eyes. I stared at the source of the fall which, if Erlik sat at twelve o’clock, the water ran at three.

“This is the joining of the rivers Pishon, Gihon, Chidekel, and Phirat.”

My mates frowned, but I knew of what he spoke. “How is that possible?” I demanded. “Rivers converge into an ocean, not into a cavern.”

“They fed the Garden of Eden, child, and are nourished by God himself. Why wouldn’t he want to control the pit of Hell by containing it with his own holy waters?”

God had made a deal with this monster?

Erlik laughed, and it grated on my nerve endings. “Yes, child, even monsters like me deal with Him.”

He got to his feet, and I saw they were cloven hoofs. The sight had me gulping. “What happened to you?” I asked in horror.

“You spend enough time down here and even the annals of time forget you,” he rasped, his beady black eyes glittering at the unintended insult in my words. “But I am the gatekeeper. Would you like to guard this place for eternity? Or would you like to leave it in my hands?”

A hand clamped on my shoulder, and I turned to look up at Samuel. “Eve, he might not be Satan, but he’s tempting you at that bastard’s hand. Don’t fall for it. How many more Ghouls are out there if we’ve already killed billions of them?”

I heard the uncertainty in his voice, the fear, but all I could think about was this pit… would we have to man it if Erlik died? I couldn’t bear it. Living down here in the constant dark. In this heat. This unbearable heat.

My mouth quivered as I thought about the fact that humans didn’t deserve to walk this Earth freely with no fear. They had been liberated twice over and chose to discard that sacrifice. Using it to their own purpose.

Ridding the world of Erlik would mean that this pit, these gates , was unguarded unless we manned it. And God had seen fit to throw eight adolescents into a battle against a scourge that numbered in the billions.

Why wouldn’t he have us guard it?

Why wouldn’t he expect another sacrifice of us?

“I can see you’re thinking with a clear head, child,” Erlik rumbled, and if he was trying to tempt me with a sultry voice, he failed. He just reminded me of how alien he was.

“Don’t let him tempt you. He lies. He is sin incarnate.”

The voice came from within, and though I hadn’t called upon the Jannah, it was there. As loud as day. As clear as a bell over the roaring waters and the soaring flames.

“Stay true to yourself, Eve. Stay true to this path.”

I didn’t want to listen, and that was the most terrifying thing of all. I simply didn’t want to, so maybe it was good that my men took the option away from me.

Maybe it was good that, without any prompt from me, they took the onus and, as one, cried, “We wish to make this Earth an Eden again.”

As their words spilled free, the power moved from inside me, surging through me like a lightning bolt. I’d never shifted. Had never felt that power within me like my men, but I knew what that felt like now.

With a scream as the power enveloped me, I felt my body turn, felt my souls converge just as the waters that fed Eden had, and my limbs turned, changing and morphing into something else. Something other .

I didn’t know what, didn’t understand it, but I knew my purpose.

Before, I’d wavered. My human mind had been distressed by the evil inherent in man. The wickedness.

But this creature who was sin incarnate, born from the first sin itself, had me soaring across the pit with wings that had torn through my shoulder blades.

I didn’t look down. Didn’t need to. I knew where I was, hovering above a pit that spat water and fire at me equally. My eyes, those of the Hell Hound, focused on Erlik who gaped at me and was as frozen as my men while I soared toward him on a wind fed by the Almighty Himself.

With strength that came from the Were, I grabbed Erlik and hauled his bizarrely furry body into the air, and with the gouille ’s wings, I hurtled us toward the pit.

Erlik squealed like the beast he was, and with the Lorelei’s song, I lulled him into restfulness. For a second, I let my gaze flitter over my mates who’d spread out around the pit.

I heard them. Calling me. Begging me to come to them, but I couldn’t listen.

My purpose wasn’t to be with them now. It was to end this.

As I hovered over the center of the pit, touched neither by Eden’s waters or Hell’s fire, I spun in a circle and looked at them, simply looked, and hoped they knew I loved them. That my words from before resonated as I let my wings cease their flapping and allowed gravity to take over.

Their screams had my ears ringing. The Vampire’s attuned senses roared as they railed at me, begged me, pleaded with me to stop this, to come back to them, but there was no point.

Erlik was in my grasp, and God wanted me to be down here. Wanted me near Hell.

The pit was wide at the mouth but gradually grew narrower, and I traveled and I traveled farther down, deeper into the Earth’s core until the temperature from before felt like a balmy fall day. This heat was intense, so ferocious that it was a wonder the gouille ’s leathery skin didn’t bubble and blister as Erlik’s did.

There was a black hole at the bottom, something that not even the creatures’ senses could see through. At this point, I knew I could kill Erlik with the Sin Eater’s talents or even the Succubus’, but that was not God’s will.

I knew we neared the bottom because Erlik began struggling as though he were aware of something I wasn’t, like he knew of a secret that I was in the dark about. The Lorelei’s voice ceased lulling him to sleep as it became overshadowed by the rustling sounds of the flames that licked ever nearer and the water that rushed down, harder and faster as though it knew it was about to reach its end.

As I fell toward my fate, I regretted my obstinacy, chided myself for forgetting that I was God’s hand, and instead, embraced the path he’d lit up for me.

His Will be done.