The Dark Blooded Duchess. Ep1

‘Keep your voice down.’ I say, ignoring her question, and the spoken order hits her like a blind force. The magical strings in her head tighten and pull as the century-old spell’s magic forces her to do as I say.

‘Explain yourself!’ she hisses in a much quieter rage. Her eyes shone with malice and hellfire and I feel like perhaps, the extra decibels weren’t so bad after all.

She’s scarier when she’s whispery. My shadow whispers.

Run. The other urges. Run for our lives.

Stop it, she can’t hurt any of us. I say, annoyed.

Yeah? The first shadow says `then why are we scared of her if you’re not.

Because you’re irrational and I’m not.

Prove it the shadow says mockingly.

Yeah, prove it. The other’s tone is even worse. I wish I could skin them alive, but that would only hurt me.

‘Well?’ Cora stands with her arms crossed, and a silvery eyebrow raised.

‘What do you expect me to say?’ I snap at her ‘of course, I’m running. I will not be sold off like a prized whore.’ I almost spit in her face, but I remind myself that I am, in fact, a lady, even one from hell should have manners. Or try, at least. I always tried. To fit in, be a lady, wear those damned shoes. I collect my bag from my workbench and face her with all the grace, that I, as a demon dutchess who is about to abdicate her title can muster ‘So go and tattle to The Fallen if you wish, that way I can get a head start at least’

‘It’s really quite genius’ she says as I shove past her ‘Waiting until the ceremonial bride-to-be cannot be seen thing to escape?’ she says disbelievingly ‘only you would pull this stunt.’

Did she just call you a master of fuckups? My shadow asks.

Or the masterful fuckup? The other mused.

I roll my eyes at all three of them. How dare th-

‘And only you could pull this off’ she adds, interrupting my thoughts.

I pause for a second. Is this her way of saying she understands? Or is it merely a goodbye?

A second was all I had for that, to honor the years of Cora and I coexisting together and to say goodbye to this life.

I look at her, almost smile, and walk out the door.

Suddenly, twisting isn’t all that ails my insides.

Down the long, long hallway I go. Each step feels both like the longest stride and shortest step of all my life.

My new human heart is racing, beating like ceremonial drums and I tell myself it’s just the heat and the agony of hell, it would drive any heart to madness. Boom - boom -boom. But every thump of blood is like roaring thunder and my ears are made of glass.

The end of the hallway approaches and I know I need to say the words yet somehow it’s as if I’m choking on soot and soul dust.

I can barely swallow, let alone speak. And somehow, somehow the words still come.

‘Avert your eyes’ BOOM ‘bride to be coming through’ boom.

A hush falls around me as if time itself is slowing. The scrape of the shoes against the soot-covered rock floors comes into sharper focus. The veins of molten rock and fire that track across the rocky walls like angry nerves sear the retinas of my human eyes. But I still find them beautiful, in a terrifying sort of way. My lungs expand and release, expand and release. Again and again. I realize my focus has been set alight - everything burns brighter, clearer.

Something bright and shiny shook me loose from my heart-induced hypnosis. It was hope and it felt different from the raging heat of hell.

Cora stood a few feet ahead, with a spine so straight that at this moment I had to finally give up on ever having the stick removed from her ass.

My shadows cackle maniacally in my head.

Stop it. I suppress a smile. It’s not that funny.

That makes it worse.

‘I realize that you must be overcome to see me but how can you be smiling at a time like this?’ Cora demands ‘Wait. is that a smile? I can’t tell in this meat.’

’Do not call me meat’

She’s touchy about the suit. Says a shadow even though Cora can’t hear it.

’Really? That’s what concerns you at this moment? What I call, that and not your detrimental plan to get us both incinerated?’

‘Must you always hiss at me?’ I demand

‘Must you always drive me mad?’ she counters in a hiss, of course.

I open my mouth to answer, but she motions for me to keep quiet. Demons ahead, I suppose.

I glare at her. She glares back. And we keep walking.

She repeats the phrase as we walk and demons evaporate left and right, leaving the path before us abandoned. The no-sight right is no joke.

An intersection comes up ahead, one of the busy ones where 9 of the main roads of damnation collide - sometimes literally, most of the time just geographically, but even then there’s still plenty of chaos to go around.

Lost souls haunt the roads, hoarding like flies to a fresh corpse. Except flies have a purpose whereas the spirits’ lostness is part of their torture. Many of them hang around for centuries - so many shapeless, colorless entities of misplaced energy that refuse to pick a course for their misery.

Unlike the demons, the souls don’t turn away when we approach, sometimes I think they have no idea what’s going on. One of them, Ronald, has been around for forty-three years. His head has just started to form into something resembling a face. He sort of groans when he sees me and I wave at him.

Some demons usually sit around, poking fun at the spirits as most of them become dumber and dumber by the year, but they are long gone. Most likely they’ve been chased off by the looming danger that surrounds the bride on the no-sight right.

We start to cross the indivisible mess of roads, slowly, careful to avoid the reapers and angels traveling at mind-melting speeds.

’Remind me why we can’t just shift to wherever you’re going

‘This human body’ I say, nearly breaking my human neck trying to check for signs of oncoming death ‘it can’t travel by magical means. At least not yet.’ Not until my essence has had time to fuse to the body.

Cora snorts ‘And so putting it on now, serves what purpose exactly?’

‘It serves the purpose of having a human look when I get to earth, and not look like -’

‘A demon?’ she offers

‘Yes.’ I say and it’s like I can hear her eyes rolling.

The hum begins and not long after, two roads over two indiscernible blurs narrowly miss each other, careening in opposite directions. The force of their movement damn near knocks me over, instead, Cora gets displaced and hits the ground on all fours and my bag is nearly flung into the abyss.

‘Fuck me’ I curse, fumbling the bag back into a firm grasp and shoving it onto my back.

I saunter over to Cora. She is hunched over, and even then she was still taller than me in my human form. I realize she must have had her wind knocked out by the force of the blur.

‘Get up’ I tell her ‘take my hand. We need to move’

She doesn’t take my hand of course but gives me a healthy glare on her way back to solid footing.

Once we get up and moving, we dodge two more blurs but neither of us gets knocked over again. A few ghosts bit it though, not that I know what happens to them when they poof like puffy clouds getting hit by an airplane and I can’t actually bring myself to care.

On the other side, hidden amongst the mess of lanes, is the mouth of a cave that leads to an upper area. Cora and I stand at the entrance, feeling the cool air as it rushes from the cave, instantly dying to a mere wisp at the ferocity of the 9-cross.

‘What’s up there?’ Cora asks, winded.

’Our best chance to get out of here

‘A portal?’ says Cora with disbelief ‘guarded by the record twat and his slaves? Really?’

I shake my head ’It’s a dormant portal, so not guarded’ I correct her ‘and don’t be so quick to discount Metatron’

She rolls her eyes ‘He’s a pencil bitch’

’He’s not just a pencil bitch, he’s also an archangel. They are fierce as hell fire itself and he’s personally eaten more souls in a year than the torture chamber sees in a decade. Come on I say without giving her room to speak. ‘And for love of your ever resting soul just do it quietly’

‘Do what quietly?’

‘Everything’ I whisper.

I felt a small shift of energy as Cora turns herself invisible or rather camouflaged, and we ascend the mountain of stairs into the icy heart of hell.