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Our footing continued to be perilous, but Hudson couldn’t push back the mists with his arcane air magic while we were moving.
“It is the true threshold between your world and ours.”
I stared at the little hellfox. “So you’re saying that the threshold we already crossed is…”
“This is merely where our realm overlaps yours. In this moment, we travel through a periphery zone between your world and ours. The earth beneath your feet is your world’s land, but one day it will belong entirely to this infernal realm.”
“And Ty?” Mel asked. “Do you know where he is?”
“The being you call Andras is deep within the realm he rules. Ty is his vessel.”
On occasion we heard movement, groaning, or the sizzling sound of something burning, but Tempest always steered us clear of it. I turned down our sensitivity to heat, making our run more bearable. Eventually, though, the sound of crackling flame turned into a roar, and the mists around us became cloying, full of smoke.
“Tempest…” Mel warned.
“We’re almost there.”
Suddenly the smoke around us lifted. Tempest paused at the edge of a long trench, a groove cut into the ground like bottomless moat full of black flames. This trench stretched as far as the eye could see in either direction. Where the smoke at our feet fell into the fiery moat, the dark flames seemed to consume it, and thus the flames burned higher on our side than the other.
“This way,”Tempest said, following along the edge.
As we continued walking, all of us in awed silence, I never once caught sight of the bottom of the moat, filled as it was with flames instead of water. My stomach lurched, as I imagined what would happen if any of us fell over the edge into those black flames. Something told me they could burn more than our flesh… maybe our souls, as well.
All this time we’d thought the threshold opened directly into the infernal realm, but now I knew better. Gazing across the moat to the far side, I got my first view of the true infernal realm.
To my surprise, the infernal realm wasn’t filled with smoke like this ‘periphery zone’ was, and the dark flames of the rift between realms stopped at the edge of the trench. Dark vines covered the infernal realm’s ground, but a clear road had been cut leading from the pit to deeper into the darkness of the infernal realm. It also seemed strangely devoid of demons.
If my coven-mates had held any hopes of mounting an assault of the infernal realm itself, they had to be having second thoughts now. The moat stretched into the darkness ahead and behind us without any evident way to cross.
“What would happen if we tried to cross the rift between realms?” I asked, eyeing the dark flame-filled moat between us as the other world.
“Without demon blood? I doubt even a vampire could survive. The rift between realms is as far as I dare take you.”
“But where is my mother imprisoned?” Mel asked, her voice holding a tremor of fear for her mother’s fate.
“The devil has ordered all souls to be placed in the pit. It is what powers the expansion of our world into yours.”
“The pit?” Hudson asked.
“We’ll arrive there in moments.”
Ahead, I noticed deviation in the moat… something seemed to rise from the dark flames. As we approached, I noticed they were smooth vines that undulated with a life of their own.
When we got close enough, we could see what Tempest had meant by ‘the pit.’ The pit was enormous, the size of a football field, situated in the center of the moat. Unlike the rest of the moat, the pit wasn’t filled with black flames, and we could see tan earth at the bottom.
Hundreds of yellowish vines with an orange tinge ringed the pit on all sides, their roots deep beneath the black flames of the moat, yet they were untouched, unblackened. The tips of the vines waved at the edges of the pit like a sea anemone.
If anyone still held any insane ideas about crossing to enter the infernal realm, this would be their best bet. The nearest vines rooted so close to us on this side of the moat it almost looked like I could hop over the dark flames onto their roots. What the vines’ response to someone walking on them would be was impossible to guess, however. They moved with a life of their own.
In the center of all the vines, I caught sight of movement deep inside the pit. When I inched closer to look down, I realized dozens, maybe hundreds, of souls floated around down there in the depths.
“Mamá!” Mel’s voice rose as she charged toward the pit. “We’ll get you out!”
Nico and I lunged after her, grabbing her and pulling her to a stop at the edge of the pit. A dull yellow vine snaked out and tried to snag Mel’s ankle, but Nico and I bodily dragged her to safety, backing away from the rift between worlds.
“We have to help them!” she cried.
“We will, Mel,” I promised.
