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Ihad no way to know if this is what it felt like to simultaneously break every single bone in my body, but I had a pretty good idea it was. Skull crushed, my head rested on the ground like a sack of wet cement mixed with shards of glass and gray matter. I wasn’t sure if my body had exploded on contact. It felt as though it had. As my eyeballs were currently pressed against the back of my skull, I couldn’t look.

Except…this wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. There had to be a glitch somewhere in the matrix. I needed to look for—Cacophonous sirens and drums battered my brain, making me weep. How? How could this much pain dwell in one body? There was something important I was just thinking about. What was I—

Wait.Oppressive heat, deep underground, shadowy figures, unending pain. How did I end up here? And was this really my eternity, splatted face down on the floor of a cave? Damn, whatever I’d done to deserve Hell, it must have been epic.

“Ms. Quinn?” Someone was tapping my eyeballs, via the back of my skull. I didn’t know how to respond as I no longer had a working mouth. Or vocal cords and breath, for that matter.

“Why are you lying there? Get up, for evil’s sake.”

I tried to wiggle a finger. Shattered bones ground against one another, but the finger did wiggle. I tried with a foot. An avalanche of pain made me seize.

“Pathetic.”

I was yanked off the floor and righted on broken legs. Swaying, I tried to remain standing and was mostly successful, though I did require the stalagmite I was leaning on to stabilize me. The darkness began to take shape, my vision returning. Everything was drenched in red, although that may have had more to do with the blood in my eyes than anything else.

Spine splintered, my head fell forward, chin resting on my chest. Two polished black shoes appeared within my limited view. “What do you want?” is what I intended to say. Unfortunately, the noises leaking through my crushed face sounded more like, “Mmuuhh.”

“I want you to be more interesting than this. If I’d wanted a broken meat puppet, I’d have asked for one. Snap out of it.” He slapped my face, causing my head to spin around backward.

“Now, you’re just being grotesque. This is it. You’re dead. Do you really want to spend your eternity flopping about like a carp?” He grabbed my hair and yanked my head around. “Now, listen. All this wet noodling about is ridiculous. That’s your mind telling you how it thinks a broken body should behave. Look over there. That bloody heap of flesh is what remains of your mortal life. Now, stand up straight and speak properly. I have no desire to spend the next few millennia listening to garbled grunts and watching you slide down walls.”

I couldn’t tear my eyes from the carnage that was my life. It was really over. I’d never see my bookstore and bar again. Dave, Owen, Helena, Meg, Liam, all gone. Clive. Cool gray eyes and strong, safe arms. That elusive grin that felt like it was mine alone. And kisses. Kisses that made me forget every painful memory because there was no room for anything but Clive when his lips touched mine. It was all gone. But…he wasn’t gone. He was waiting just on the other side of this vision. They all—BOOM! A bomb detonated in my head, scattering my thoughts.

Heart shattering, I forced my gaze away from my own remains and turned back to my tormentor. Standing straight, cold numbness taking the place of pain, I realized I was talking to one of the demons who had been playing poker in that strip club. It was the male model with the golden-brown skin and the predator’s eyes.

“I am Irdu. I’ll be your orientation guide this evening.” He threw out his arms, grandly taking in the whole fire-lit cavern. “Welcome to Hell.”

“This is Hell?” God, how did I end up here? No. Seriously, God, I’m asking.

“Hell is vast. This is little more than a way station. We scoop up the souls and assign them to the circle of Hell they’ll least enjoy.” He winked. “We have a reputation to uphold.”

Looking up, he pushed me to the side. “You’re in the splash zone.”

A strange whistling sound grew in intensity. Following the demon’s gaze, I looked up and saw a man falling, heading right for where I was standing. I scrambled back ten feet right before the body hit. It was every bit as gruesome to watch as it had been to experience.

“The quiet ones have already accepted death. Come on. Lots to do.”

He led me toward a tunnel cut into the side of the cavern. As I glanced around in the gloom, I noticed many similar tunnels, some larger, some smaller. Did they lead to different layers or circles of Hell?

“What did I do to deserve this place?”

“Hmm?” He looked over his shoulder at me and shrugged. “I’d have to check the paperwork and I don’t actually care. Maybe because you’re a werewolf. Aren’t you guys soulless monsters? Like I said, though, don’t care.” He turned into a dark passage. Torches were scattered about the long tunnel, too few to light the way properly.

Soulless? Was I—it felt like I had a soul rattling around in there. Wait. Wasn’t this my soul following the demon deeper into Hell? And why the frick was I doing that? Why had I accepted my death and damnation as though they were my due? This was not the time for quiet politeness. There were no perks for good behavior in Hell. At least, I didn’t think so. He hadn’t come to that part of the orientation yet.

Irdu was walking with his head down. When I glanced around his arm, I saw a phone in his hand. Huh. Phones apparently worked in Hell. Dave had mentioned that demons had ADD problems, never finishing one threat before wandering off to stir up other shit. Maybe, like Irdu, they were too busy tweeting to focus. Perhaps this was where the internet trolls lived.

I stopped walking to see if he’d notice. When he continued on without me, I began walking backward. If he turned around, I’d look as though I was still following him, while actually going in the opposite direction.

“Wrong way,” he called, without breaking his stride. “Although, if you wander off, I won’t have to finish this orientation. So, ta!”

He turned a corner ahead, and I was left standing in an endless, deserted tunnel. Confused, I assessed the situation. Shouldn’t they be goose-stepping me to a demon with a whip fetish? Was the fact that I had been abandoned due to a short attention span or were they confident there was no way out, so I was free to wander until I stumbled into a random hellscape of my own choosing? Maybe the fact that I mattered so little, could be so easily forgotten, was part of my punishment.

But this wasn’t real. This was a vision. I needed to find a way to fight my way ou—Screeching nails on a chalkboard tore through my head. The pressure behind my eyes was unbearable. Oww. Wasn’t there someone with me a minute ago? Spinning in a circle, looking for a clue, I decided to walk in the direction of the way station. Maybe there was a way out of here.

When I passed a side tunnel on the right, I paused to look in. The smell that hit me was horrendous. I peeked my head around a pillar of rock and found a sea of people eating in a crazed frenzy. I watched the emaciated man closest to the entrance and realized he wasn’t actually eating. He was trying to eat. Every time he opened his mouth to take a bite of the loaded burger in his hands, it disappeared and reappeared on his plate. Looking around, I realized it was true of everyone. The harried, unwashed people were different, the food varied, but the maddeningly frustrating inability to eat was the same. Hell, indeed.

Ducking out, I continued down the main passage, looking for the way back. I found the spot where it should have been but wasn’t. I had an excellent sense of direction and spatial awareness. An entrance should have been carved into the rock on my left. I looked up and down the passage and saw no tunnels on the left side. There was no way back. Which explained why Irdu didn’t give a shit if I wandered.

A murmur of shouts came from a tunnel on the right. As I got closer, I started to make out words. The question, ‘How do you like it?’ echoed over and over in the deafening din. Silently ghosting in, I saw men, mostly men, huddled on the ground while women with rage in their eyes used their shouts and over-large fists to beat and berate the men whose impotent cries filled the cavern.

Stomach roiling, I backed out and found myself again in the main passage. At least I wasn’t being trapped in these side caves. I needed to check each of them for a way out, but I worried that if I stumbled into a hell tailored to my sins, I might not escape.

I walked the passage for hours—maybe days—listening at cave entrances, becoming more and more depressed by all the ways in which we hurt ourselves and others. The more Hells I passed, the more a pattern began to form. Self-loathing. They hated themselves and that hatred was either directed inward in horribly self-destructive ways or it was directed outward in horrifically cruel ways. At the core, though, were people mired in pain and anger because they felt themselves worthless. They had been taught they were worthless by others afflicted with the same hopelessness.

Something dripped on my shirt. Glancing up at the dark rock above, I saw nothing. Belatedly, I realized it was coming from me. Face awash in tears, I shuffled down the endless passage to nowhere.

I’d wasted so much of my life hiding in fear. My mother had trained me early, moving from town to town, apartment to apartment. She was trying to protect me. I knew that. What I’d learned, though, was to disappear. Hide in my hobbit hole, hide in my books, hide from emotions that scared me. Look what happened when I’d reached out to my uncle. I’d been attacked and mutilated, and so I’d hid again.

And yet there had been wonderful people in my life, people who’d cared about me, even when I’d kept them at arm’s length. Passing another cave entrance, the sound of sobbing trailing me, I wished I’d chosen differently. In life, I’d found some twisted comfort in isolation. And now here I was, cut off from the rest of the world, this endless, lonely passage my Hell.

Cold saltwater splashed against my legs and pooled at my feet. I spun, looking for the source and realized that the passage was thigh-deep in seawater. How had I missed the tunnel flooding? Where was it coming from? Gasping, as the water hit my waist, I looked for a side passage with higher ground. The side passages were all gone, the rock walls smooth and unbroken. Torches sputtered out as the water rose. No! Damnit, this wasn’t real! Cymbals crashed in my head again. Alone in the dark, ears ringing, the freezing water hit my chin and splashed over my face.

A shout sounded nearby. I couldn’t make out the words, but someone was with me in the black teeming water. Another wave capsized over me, knocking me off my feet. Disoriented, I couldn’t determine up from down. Kicking and struggling, I was trapped beneath the water.

A strong arm wound around my body and yanked me into the air before slamming me against the ground. Around me, Hell was drowning, but I felt cut off from it, adrift. My eternal isolation was complete.

Blood filled my mouth. I blinked, and the stone passage receded, open air and moonlight taking its place. Clive leaned over me, concern etched on his beautiful face. Reaching up to touch his cheek, to brush my fingers over his perfect brow, I pulled him down, kissing him with all the hope and joy left in my battered heart.