AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Wrath’s demons are everywhere.” Yesterday put a sensible distance between himself and Xerxes. “If you don’t get moving, they’ll have you surrounded.”
Cronus snuffled and yawned. Eddie got an up close and center of rows of serrated, long teeth that reminded her she was using a monster as a bed.
He opened one eye and looked at her. “You are rested?”
And hungry, but Eddie kept that to herself. She wasn’t up for another hard lesson in hell this morning. “Yesterday says we should get moving.”
“He is annoying but not wrong.” Cronus shifted to stand, and Eddie clambered out of the hound circle and stood.
Despite a night sleeping rough, her muscles felt fluid and powerful. This morning, the bite had disappeared into a faded red mark. She rubbed the spot. “My bite’s gone.”
“You have power here.” Cronus got up and did a downward dog stretch that was flat out adorable. “It will be interesting to see how it manifests further.”
Eddie wasn’t sure she and Cronus shared the same definition of interesting.
Xerxes stood, shook himself and stretched, and then padded out of the cave.
As she scrambled into the new day, a breathtaking dawn of lavender and rose greeted Eddie. It struck dew droplets on the vegetation around them and filled the air with tiny rainbows.
“Here.” Yesterday tugged at her shirt. He held up a handful of scarlet berries. “You can eat these.”
Not prepared to take his word for that, Eddie hesitated. They looked like an enticing cross between a blueberry and raspberry, but given her location, she wasn’t taking the chance.
“They are safe,” Cronus said. “For once, the imp has proven useful.”
Xerxes disappeared through the thicket ahead of them and Eddie fell into step with Cronus. The berries were eye-wateringly tart with a slight spicy sweetness that wouldn’t make them her first breakfast choice, but they certainly stopped the low complaint growling from her stomach.
She had no idea of time here, and plants blurred into a confusing jumble as they trudged on through the jungle. Occasional bursts of gloriously bright flowers broke the greens, blues, and purples all around her. The hounds had told her the demesne reflected the hell prince, and the jungle did make her think of Shade. If she was the sort to stage the odd orgy, the jungle surrounding her would be a great choice.
She spared a thought for her theatre and what was going on back there. Dee would have it all well in hand, but she did worry. She had no hope of Rodders actually wielding a plunger himself, or Lillian finding a sympathetic ear in Dee. Chris Fellows must have recovered consciousness by now, and she wondered what Dee had done with him.
“Hide.” Xerxes dropped out of a tree beside her and nearly scared her to death.
Eddie dived behind an indigo bush that resembled a rubber plant.
She heard them before she saw them and held her breath as a small procession of hooves, claws, and feet passed her hiding spot and disappeared into the jungle.
“Wrath’s.” Yesterday confirmed for her as they got moving again. “They’re everywhere. They even attacked a settlement yesterday and are now occupying it.”
Eddie wasn’t about to take Yesterday’s word on that, so she looked at Cronus.
He nodded. “Xerxes confirms what the imp says. We will need to avoid settlements until we find the master. He will deal with the interlopers.”
If Shade was in any condition to deal with anyone, and that was a big if in Eddie’s mind.
As the sun rose like a giant opal in a crystalline sky, the heat and humidity of the day increased. Eddie’s usual choice of black leggings and a black T-shirt felt like they were boiling her like a lobster in a pot. Her hair had turned into a thick, frizzy mass and clung to her sweaty face and neck. Despite sweating like a cheese at a picnic table, Eddie wasn’t overly thirsty. They stopped occasionally at streams or water pools to drink, but other than being hot and grumpy, she didn’t seem to need much.
Cronus told her which fruits she could eat, and she ate those as they trod on through the forest. It might have been a nice hike, if not for the constant ducking and hiding to avoid roving bands of demons. It seemed like the longer they walked, the more regular the groups of demons became. Some were Wrath’s, but others, Cronus and Xerxes were confused by. Demons, she learned, stayed loyal to one hell prince but some of the groups they encountered were a mix of hordes. Neither the hounds nor Yesterday knew what to make of that.
It was another thing to add to Eddie’s growing list of stuff she didn’t like. She didn’t like the heat, she didn’t like the hiding, and she didn’t like them making her life difficult. Her mission was to find Shade, sort out whatever was wrong with him and get back to her theatre. Her lovely, air-conditioned theatre.
Xerxes’s disappearing act was getting annoying as well. She wanted to hang a bell around his neck so he’d quit scaring the shit out of her every time he reappeared. And Cronus never stopped talking. Yakkity, yak, yak in her head all the time. Like she cared which part of Shade’s demesne they were in, or how far from Wrath’s border his demons had traveled. As for the mixed hordes, she didn’t know why he insisted on remarking how odd it was, and then going on an endless warbling of speculation. She also didn’t need the fucking botany lesson he had going on.
And where was Yesterday? She didn’t know why the little turd had bothered showing up in her life at all, if all he did was disappear for large portions of the day. Well, if he got himself in trouble, he could damn well get himself out of it. The hounds were her hounds, for her protection, not taking care of some annoying yellow squirt with a flexible relationship with the truth.
Xerxes was scouting around them, looking for danger, between sessions of reappearing suddenly and scaring years off her life.
She huffed a tendril of hair out of her eyes. Damn thing drifted back and tried to Velcro itself to her skin. Giving it a yank hard enough to threaten its roots, she tucked the tendril into her ponytail.
