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“What aren’t you telling me?”
Hunter pointed at the ravine. “Normally we’d take a path down there, cross it, then follow a cave system on the other side. It would let us bypass the cities, including Styx.”
“But…?”
“You see the movement.”
Even as I tried to ignore the way when I stopped forcing just a little, the entire ravine looked a bit like hands moving along the ground, I couldn’t forget it.
“Jerrod said there were creatures.”
“There arealwayscreatures, but this is different.” Hunter hopped to his feet and grabbed a large rock from behind us. He hurled it, and it took a long time to fall to the ground beneath. I lost track of it, my vision not good enough to see where it landed below, but I didn’tneedto see to know.
The floor of the ravine went wild. Things I couldn’t fathom much less identify moved in the sudden chaos. Some were so small I couldn’t make them out, but some had to be the size of elephants, slithering among the trees and crawling from the red river.
“Fuck,” I whispered.
“This isn’t an accident. For a concentration of beasts like this to happen, someone did it on purpose.”
“How?”
“A lure. You can’t see it, but Ismellit. Someone placed a lure at the center of that ravine to attract all those things into such a small area. If we can’t use the pass, we won’t have a choice but having to go through the more populated areas. More beings cluster around the center of hell, so if we have to go that way, we can’t avoid them. The pass was the easy, safer way, but someone blocked it. Someone wants us to have to go through the cities.”
“Who? Jerrod?”
“Probably. He’s the only one who knew where we were going. Still, he usually couldn’t resist setting a lure.”
I froze as I stared down, thinking about everything Hunter had said, a shiver as the pieces fell together, the thing he hadn’t said. “What exactly is the lure, Hunter?”
“There is only one thing that can call that many creatures, one thing that beings from hell want more than anything else.”
“Something mortal?”
He nodded, then took my hand and helped me up. “There’s nothing we can do about whoever they tore apart down there to make it, but I swear, I won’t let the same happen to you.”
A weak laugh left me, the sort that people did when overwhelmed and without options. “How do they even get mortals here?”
“They fall this way now and again. Sometimes they’re snatched by the creatures that can pass through, sometimes they are unlucky enough to slip through a crack that can occur. I’d say there are perhaps a dozen or so a year.”
“Have you ever brought one?”
He shook his head. “Hellhounds can pass, but we can’t bring anyone else with us. You’re looking at wardens, mages, Lucifer or some of his kids. It isn’t easy and the creatures that can do it aren’t the ones who crave mortals, so it doesn’t happen much.”
I blew out a breath when there wasn’t anything to say back. “So, I guess we’re going to go through the cities, then?”
“It looks that way.”
“And here I thought I wouldn’t get to see any sights.”
He didn’t even bother to laugh at the stupid joke, but I couldn’t blame him for that.
There was something working against us, something forcing us toward the cities, and there was no way it could be good.
If someone in hell wanted something, it was a good bet it wouldn’t be something I liked.
Not that I had much of a choice…
