Page 253 of Evil Hearts

Chapter 7: Mortal Choices

T he choices I’d made in life had led me into a lot of strange situations—each one of them my own doing, of course.

But in all my life, I never once anticipated Balraxas or the way he caught me in his intricate web.

He finally slid his second phallic limb into my pussy, filling me up deliciously and fucking me the way I had learned to like it. The way I deserved.

Sprites hopped around the room, their dark little bodies phasing in and out of the realms as if they were at an amusement park and not watching a demon ravage me.

I moaned around the limb that was fucking my mouth as Balraxas edged himself to the point of self inflicted torture. We were both gluttons for punishment it seemed, even though he told me once that was a different demon altogether—one he warned me away from him, jealousy seeping through his pores like they were now.

He pulled the limb from my mouth as he took a bite out of the corpse beside us in bed, leaning down to feed it to me. It was disgusting and I wanted to vomit…but for some reason, the seductive way Balraxas did it made me want nothing more but to submit to his every desire if it meant getting him off. If it meant, pleasuring his debauchery.

He groaned against my lips when he observed me swallow his offering. “Lena. Lena. Lena. You make me want to worship at your feet.”

“I’d rather have you filling my holes like you promised, demon. Unless you can do that from down there…” I sassed back, making him cackle with genuine mirth.

“You take my seed so well. Look at how your belly swells with me inside.”

I didn’t have to look. It was a kink he unlocked within me and he knew it, constantly adding fuel to the flames.

“Can you imagine the legion we would create,” he sighed with satisfaction as one of his phallic limbs released in my ass, making me squirm. “Can you imagine a life of eternity together in hellfires?”

I bit my lip in frustration, scratching his thinly ribbed chest, leaving a streak of blood behind. “The only thing I can imagine right now is how I’m going to kill you if you don’t get me off the right way.”

He grinned widely, increasing his pace, forcing all his extremities to overload my senses until I couldn’t see straight. It was the sulfur I smelled first, then the heat at my back as he fucked me on a bed of coals. I screamed at the pain right before he forced the biggest climax of my life out of me, with waves of pain and pleasure that followed in its wake.

His seed gushed out from between my legs, making the coals hiss, my own blood cooling the cinders from behind. The corpse was still beside us, his flesh beginning to char, the scent of cooked meat clogging my nostrils.

I slapped Balraxas’ chest, shoving him off me. “Ugh! You could have at least left his body behind. That’s disgusting!”

Balraxas fell backward with a raw laugh and I got to my feet, still naked, walking away from him, his release dripping down my thighs. Sprites skipped and hopped beside me, their chitter chatters adding to my annoyance of the moment.

A few minutes in and a black dress appeared on my body, something cleaning up between my legs, making me physically stop. I pinched the fabric right as Balraxas appeared beside me, nuzzling the crook of my neck as if we were taking a normal stroll across the beach…if the beach looked like a hellscape with lava.

“You irritate me,” I deadpanned, thinking about how to get back home without his help.

“And you adore it. I can smell your arousal from here, little mortal.”

I walked faster, hoping to leave him behind. “And you smell like a bad barbeque. What’s your point?”

He fell into step beside me, but I ignored him, opting instead to give myself a tour of the very place he’d been tempting me to stay. It was a twisted landscape. Every step I took felt like a violation of my very soul. The air was thick with heat, and the screams of the damned echoed in my ears, relentless, maddening. I could see souls twisted in agony, bound by chains of their own making, burned by fire, their flesh boiling and peeling away in horrific displays of torment by varying demons.

“Do you like what you see?” Belraxas asked in an almost hopeful tone. “I am not a ruler here, but I have power. More than you could imagine.”

I couldn’t take my eyes off the suffering. The people here, their faces contorted in agony, were beyond saving. They were broken, consumed by their own sins. But even as I felt a twinge of disgust, a strange fascination began to bloom within me. There was something beautiful in the destruction. Something raw and powerful.

“I don’t think I could ever do this, Balraxas,” I admitted. Yes, I was a serial killer. Yes, I doled out my own form of torture in the human realm. But this? This was something so much more.

Belraxas’s eyes glittered with something darker. “You could, Lena. If you chose to. You could be here with me. I could show you how to wield power... true power.”

I didn’t answer him right away. His offer hung in the air, heavy with promise. And for the first time in a long while, I felt a tug—an allure—toward the very thing I had always run from.

The place I knew I would end up at regardless of my current decision, and him .

As we continued through the horrors of the underworld, Belraxas spoke of what awaited me if I chose to stay. The power, the freedom. He promised me an existence without limits, where my darkest desires would have no boundary. Where I could be more than just a mortal killer.

But the words, the promises, they lingered in my mind like tar with a bitter aftertaste. Could I ever truly let go of my life—the one I had carefully built in the mortal world. Was I ready to leave behind everything I knew, the dominion I created for those who deserved the worst possible death for an eternal darkness of Hell? Where would I truly even stand down here among the others who were probably more wicked than I was?

“Balraxas,” I said, my voice barely audible over the screams in the distance. “I’m not ready to give up everything. Not yet.”

Belraxas stopped walking and turned to face me. “You don’t have to decide now, Lena. But know this—a decision will have to be made.”

I met his gaze, the weight of his words sinking into me. And for the first time, I wondered if I could accept his offer if a specific demon didn’t come with it.

Our walk blurred into a strange mix of intoxication and horror. Every time I took a step further into his world, I felt both trapped and free. The underworld, with all its torment, its suffering, became something I started to crave. And I blamed Balraxas for it.

The screams, the wailing souls, the endless fire—each step through the underworld felt like a slow dance with madness. Wasn’t I already teetering on the precipice anyway? But there was something else, too, something darker—a presence that clung to me, pressing against my chest until I could barely breathe.

I’d always thought I was comfortable with death. I’d taken lives with the cold precision of a surgeon, carving through the world with a calm, steady hand. But the longer I was with Belraxas, the more I began to question the comfort of my mortal existence and the apathy that began to creep into my soul after each kill.

Bloodlust was a craving, an itch that no mortal indulgence could soothe. But now, in the grip of this hellscape, I found myself faced with a far darker, deeper hunger.

“Lena,” Belraxas whispered against my ear from behind, his voice low and filled with a strange reverence. “You were never meant to walk among the living. You belong in the underworld, where your darkness can truly thrive. Beside me, with my cocks buried in you for all eternity.”

I closed my eyes, the weight of his words settling over me like a suffocating blanket. I had lived in the shadows, feeding off the fear of others, but I had always known there was something more—something waiting for me in the abyss.

But there was still something tethering me to the mortal world. Something unfinished.

“Belraxas,” I said softly, my voice trembling from vulnerability I finally acknowledged, “what happens when we’ve consumed it all? What happens when there’s nothing left to destroy?”

He smiled, a twisted grin that barely touched his eyes. “There is always something to destroy, Lena. The world is full of broken things. Full of souls crying out for their reckoning.”

I stared at him, his words sinking deep into my bones. Was I ready to leave behind everything I had ever known? To become a part of something so much bigger, so much darker?