~~Mia~~

  God, her feet hurt.

  Caera helped her climb the wall up into the alcove. Alcove turned out to be a tunnel, and Mia froze in its entrance as she waited for Caera to climb up and join her. The smell of blood wasn’t as thick up here, but she had no intention of moving forward without her bodyguard.

  “Keep walking,” Caera said.

  “Remnants. They—”

  “Not many in this tunnel.” Caera gave her a gentle push on the back, and Mia walked down the twisting path, almost identical to the one she’d taken to get into the cave’s deepest pces. “You really have no mark.”

  “No.”

  “Crazy. Never seen that before. But strange shit’s been happening for a while now.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep.” Caera walked beside her, and fell forward, earning a small squeak from Mia as she jumped aside. Which of course just made the huge tiger demon woman ugh as she continued walking on all fours. Prowling, more like.

  “I’m… Mia.” Might as well share names and test the waters. Caera didn’t seem to like Diogo, and that could be useful. Then again, none of the demons seemed to like each other, so making a friend or ally might not help her at all.

  Caera grinned at her, and licked some of her fangs. Apparently demons did that a lot.

  “You looking to become a betrayer?”

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  “Guess not, then. You talk like one.”

  “Sharing my name?”

  “Yeap, that’s a lot more than most fresh meat can do. They often shut down and can barely talk for days, sometimes weeks. Just saying ‘boo’ is enough to get them to freak, panic, run, all the good shit that gets a demon’s blood pumping.”

  “Oh.” And here she thought she’d been handling this horribly. “I—”

  She stared into one of the alcoves, and froze. More sex, but this time it was a human girl. A thin one, taller than Mia, on her back and lying on a demon’s chest. A vrat demon like Brennus, giant compared to the girl, was on his back, one huge hand wrapped around her throat. Another vrat demon was squatting down over his legs, with the girl’s legs up and pulled around his waist. And Mia had found just the right angle to see… everything.

  The girl managed tiny, weak mewls, arms limp and dangling off the sides of the big, muscur demon underneath her, as the two demons fucked her. The bulge on her slender stomach shifted and moved with their pace, clearly showing the demon squatting over her was fucking her fast and hard, while the demon underneath her was happy to mostly hold still while staying fully sheathed inside her. Deep. So very deep. A glimpse of between their legs was enough to have Mia’s mouth drop open. How could she fit those things inside her? They were as thick as Mia’s arm.

  The demon on top of her turned his head, looked to Mia, and grinned. Slowly, he pulled himself out of the girl, stepping back and letting her squeezing lips drag and milk on his length, until his long cock fell free of her insides. White cum dripped from his huge shaft, and so did the girl’s juices, as the demon got up onto his feet, and walked over to the alcove entrance. He leaned against it, tail swaying left and right behind him as he grinned down at Mia.

  Again, the aura of sex buried her, and this time she could feel it so clearly, she could almost see it pouring off the two demons. But, as much as she wanted to bme it for all the thoughts currently running through her head, she knew damn well part of it was just the fact the naked demon in front of her was absolutely gorgeous. Yeah sure, he was a demon, but not a gross one; none of the demons she’d seen so far had been gross.

  The vratorin looked mostly human, almost eight feet tall and standing on raptor feet that only made his muscurity all the more intimidating. Abs, very defined abs. His demon face had skull-ish features, but it wasn’t a skull, more like a hyper masculine face with extremely defined eyebrow ridges and a jawline. Even the giant bck horns looked appealing.

  And try as she might, she couldn’t help but look down at the huge thing hanging between his legs. She’d seen some other vrats naked, and they didn’t have a hint of genitalia, but they’d all been quite bck. This vrat, like his companion, was red all over, with only the thickest skin still dark, now a bck-ish red instead of full bck. The thing hanging between his legs was very red, throbbing, dripping, and had to be almost a foot long. No wonder he’d been having trouble getting the whole thing into the woman.

  A mewl ripped Mia’s eyes away from the demon in front of her back to her fellow human. The demon underneath her pushed his hips up into her, and sank every inch of his length into her ass. Whoever she was, her limp legs spread around the demon’s, leaving everything exposed for Mia to see. The distension sliding back and forth on her stomach. Thick, white cum, flowing out of her. Her empty slit, clenching on nothing and squirting a couple tiny spshes down onto the stones between the demon’s legs.

  “Wow,” the now unoccupied demon said, licking his lips as he looked at Mia. “Cute little thing, isn’t she?”

  “She is,” Caera said. “But you’re not touching her.”

  “Cimed her?”

  “No. Diogo’s taking her to Zel.”

  “Taking a betrayer to Zel? Why—holy shit.” He leaned down, and Mia froze for a different reason as his fangs got within inches of her face. “She’s unmarked.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Never seen that.”

  “No one has.” Caera shrugged, and gave her fellow demon a gentle push back with her tail. “No touching.”

  “I’m not touching! But, I mean, she is pretty hot.” The vrat squatted down in front of Mia, putting him at eye level with her. “What do you say, fresh meat? Marge back there is getting pretty worn out. Wanna repce her?”

  Caera snorted. “I just said—”

  “Oh come on, I’m not forcing anything. Just asking.” The demon licked his fangs again as he grinned at Mia, stood up, and again leaned against the wall of his alcove’s entrance. He wrapped one of his big hands around his girth, and stroked it, squeezing it and milking heavy globs of cum from the tip. “She’s small. And gorgeous.”

  His words went through one ear and out the other, barely registering. All Mia could do, was stare at his wet cock, and how its mostly human shape had a few bumps and grooves on it that looked… really nice.

  Wait. He called her gorgeous? Her? She never considered herself ugly, but she was nothing compared to the succubi she’d seen. Why weren’t they fucking them, and not the human girls?

  “I’m not babysitting her while she fucks the two of you.” Caera neither looked impressed by the demon’s penis, or surprised he was interested in Mia.

  “Join us then, Caera?”

  “You know I’m going to say no. Why do you always ask?”

  The demon chuckled and rolled his eyes, but shrugged after a while, and walked back over to the human woman. The demon already fucking her was taking a short break, holding her hips and keeping her ass balls deep on his length, but otherwise he wasn’t moving anymore. It made it easy for the demon who’d just been flirting with Mia to guide his cock back into the girl’s empty slit again, and slowly sink himself into her. He made sure to angle his body to the side a bit too, so Mia could see everything, especially the now bigger bulge on her slender belly slide up to her navel, and past it, as the demon slowly but consistently sank inch, after inch, after inch, into her body.

  The poor girl quivered, let out a tiny squeak when the demon bottomed out inside her, and melted into a whimpering mess as the demon took his sweet time forcing more of his length into her. That, was very very deep. Mia had pyed with her toys before, doing deep penetration, and the only time going deep like that didn’t hurt was when she was out-of-her-mind horny and dripping all over herself. This demon was going deeper, and the woman was cumming and cumming hard.

  Something took her shoulder, and pulled her away. And even when Caera got her past the aura of sex and lust, the image remained. The woman, squashed between two tall, lean, muscur, handsome in a terrifying flesh-eating demon kinda way demons, filled to the limit. The demon wanted to do that to her.

  The tunnel continued for a while, and Mia did her best to forget what she just saw. She was in Hell! She shouldn’t be thinking about demons fucking her into a coma! What the fuck? What the ever living fuck? It had to be the weird aura they put out, just like the stairs of Heaven did.

  “Careful with demons like him,” Caera said.

  “You think… he was lying?”

  “About wanting to fuck you? Not in the least. Those two would have fucked you until you couldn’t walk. But that doesn’t mean some post-nut crity wouldn’t end in him ripping out your heart for an easy meal.”

  Oh god. She shivered as she rubbed her arms, and did her best to ignore how hard her nipples were.

  “Demons are—”

  “Horny? Violent? The usual questions from fresh meat.”

  “I mean, I guess I expected that. I just didn’t expect it to be so… so…” Fleshy. Biological. Real. No greater-than-life entities with wisdom beyond knowing and abilities beyond grasping. So far, all she’d seen, were flesh and blood demons looking to fight, fuck, and eat.

  Caera ughed quietly as she shrugged, back on all fours and now walking beside Mia again. It was like walking next to a giant, spiky tiger, covered in metal and skulls and leather straps.

  “Well unmarked, I have no idea how to treat you, so I’m just going to treat you like a betrayer. Zel’s betrayer, considering that’s where we’re taking you. No one gets to touch you.”

  “Oh. Good.”

  “Be careful of the succubi and incubi though. Their sins are very strong. They can pull you in.”

  “Sins?”

  “You felt it with those two vrats, right?”

  “Oh, the… aura thing.”

  The huge demon beside her nodded as she rounded the next corner.

  “You’ll get used to it. Assuming Zel doesn’t eat you.”

  The ease she suggested demons would eat her was horrifying. It brought the images from the shore back to her, the screams, and the blood, quickly ending the arousal she’d built up.

  Every so often they passed some dangling chains, or a bunch of spikes on the walls, or a remnant cwing at the stones as if they could pull themselves free. One time, they came across a wall of stacked stones, and several remnants were trapped inside between the stones, like mortar for bricks. Hell was a horrible pce, and she didn’t belong here. The demons knew it, too, from the way they looked at her.

  She could only hope demons found David and thought he was too valuable or interesting to kill, too. Or maybe he escaped and joined those Cain cultists Caera had mentioned. Whatever happened, she had to believe he was alive, and she had to find a way to get out of here. That probably meant killing demons.

  After what she saw at the river, named Adam’s Blood apparently, she doubted she’d have trouble killing one. Not psychologically, at least. No guilt for killing bloodthirsty monsters. Physically was another matter.

  A few more alcoves showed some sights. One of them was a horrific dispy of a demon torturing her next meal, and Mia forced herself to look away. She felt it, the aura of hunger and malice coming off the big demon, another one like Caera. It made her sick to her stomach.

  Just around the next corner was another alcove, and Mia almost fell from the whipsh. A human man, 666 on his forehead, lying on his back on some leather while two succubi and a gargoyle sat on him, fucking him and each other. One of those little imp demons was in there too, and a demon Mia hadn’t seen yet, something that looked like a minotaur, was trying to fit his huge length into the imp’s very tiny body, big belly bulge and all. The minotaur was bigger than a vrat, and the imp was smaller than a human. And the imp was loving it.

  Demons fucked each other and fucked humans, too. And from the looks the little imp demon gave the human only a few feet from her, she was more interested in him than the minotaur behind her rearranging her insides.

  That was weird. The man was attractive, sure, but the succubi were utterly gorgeous, and the other demons were attractive too, again in that scary but sexy kinda way. Why were all the women in there focused on the human? Even the minotaur demon was giving the human man interested looks.

  This pce was going to make her go insane. From sickening violence to orgies in the span of fifty feet. Just ignore it. Just ignore it.

  Caera jumped up, earning a squeak from Mia as the huge woman and her huge tail disappeared into a hole above. A moment ter, one big red arm came down, palm open.

  “Grab on.”

  She hesitated. Grab the big hand with the big bck cws, or run away? No one was watching her.

  No, dumb idea. Caera could probably run her down in seconds, and Caera was also the only demon who was going to protect her. And she did seem slightly less horrible than the other demons.

  Mia took the hand, and Caera pulled her up into another big alcove. Chains dangled, dozens of them, plenty with skulls hanging off them, and plenty of those skulls were demon, not human. Caera pushed them aside so Mia could walk through unscathed.

  A big room, with some of those weird dark red leather bnkets. Caera gestured to it, and Mia sat down on them as Caera stood between her and the chain curtain. It was a big, tall alcove, to let someone eight feet tall stand up like that. And the bnkets were definitely leather like, but thicker, and oddly, a little softer.

  “So, unmarked, you really saw the gates of Heaven?” Caera undid the leather strap holding one of her metal guards covering a part of her arm. Then another for her leg, and another for her shoulder. She was stripping.

  Mia stared. Yeah sure, she considered herself straight, for the most part, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have eyes. As the demon woman revealed more and more body, muscur but feminine, a slender ft stomach, a big firm ass underneath her thick tail, and big breasts, Mia gave up on trying to not look. The demons didn’t care she was naked, and they didn’t care when they got naked. No reason to not look as much as she wanted.

  Caera’s skin was mostly bck with some dark red where her skin was probably the softest, like her breasts, stomach, inner thighs, and her throat. Maybe it’d get all throbby red and soft if she got aroused? That seemed to be the pattern. Her breasts might as well have been made of pstic for how little they moved as she tossed the st bit of armor aside, and y on the floor, still blocking Mia from the exit. Or protecting her from demons who might try and sneak in.

  “I… I saw the gates of Heaven, yeah.”

  “That is weird as fuck. That’s… never happened, not far as I know. Not far as Diogo knows, either.” Caera settled, lowering her head until it rested on the backs of her hands. Cssic cat lying position.

  “I don’t suppose the demons will, uh, consider unmarked off limits?”

  “Nope. They’ll eat you or try to use you.” Caera shrugged, like it was the most normal thing in the world. “And you said that like there’s more than one of you.”

  “I mean, there could be, right? Right before the portal sucked me down, one of the angels said ‘not again’. Maybe it happened before?”

  “Sounds like. Not really my problem I guess. I just gotta keep you alive until tomorrow, and then it’s fucking Diogo’s problem.”

  “You… don’t like Diogo?”

  Snarling, she shrugged again and turned her head a bit to look at Mia more straight-on, body still perpendicur to her.

  “No. I don’t.”

  “You’re pretty blunt about that. You won’t get in trouble?”

  “Demons kill each other all the time, fresh meat. Zel wants us to stop so she can bolster her forces, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Diogo’s got a giant target painted on his back, and the only reason he’s not dead is he’s strong enough to kill anyone who challenges him.”

  Well, fuck.

  “Can I… ask some questions?”

  Caera smiled at her. “Yeah sure. I like you.”

  “You do?”

  “You got spunk. Lot of fresh meat can’t handle Hell.”

  “I… I’m not handling it.”

  “Sure you are.” The demon shrugged, her huge tail’s tip slowly wagging. “Py your cards right and you could end up as one of Zel’s betrayers.” Despite her attempt to sound positive, for some reason Mia couldn’t guess, Caera said Zel’s name with even more bitterness than she said Diogo’s.

  “What’s a betrayer? One of the people with 666 on their foreheads?”

  “Yeap. A demon can y cim to you, feed you a piece of themselves, but you have to accept it, hence the name. There’s a lot of benefits to being a betrayer, but…”

  “But it means the longest possible sentence in Hell. Six hundred and sixty-six deaths…”

  Caera grinned. “You put things together quick. Useful trait to have. Good for making sure you don’t get stabbed in the back, or your throat slit while you sleep.”

  Mia stared. “Does that happen a lot?”

  “It does.”

  Wincing, Mia let herself fall back until she y down. Legs spread, arms out, she took deep breaths, tasting the metal scent in the air, before eventually rolling onto her side, facing the beautiful, scary tiger dy beside her, parallel, head to head and only a few feet apart.

  “I’m still hoping an angel will show up and take me back.”

  “There has been a lot of angel activity these past few years. Last time I got close to one though…” Growling, Caera looked down at her cws, hands on top of each other, her chin on top of them. She dug her cws against the stone underneath, leaving scratch marks against the dark rock.

  “Something happen?” Why, the fuck, would she ask that?

  Because so far, Caera was the only demon who didn’t act like she was looking to eat her, or stab her in the back. Trusting her was a bad idea, but at least Mia could test the waters.

  “You want to know what happened to me?”

  “I mean… yes?”

  Caera chuckled quietly. “Christ, you really don’t belong in Hell, do you?”

  “Because I asked what happened to you?”

  “Fresh meat, you—”

  “Mia. I said… my name is Mia.”

  That stunned the giant demon, but she ughed a few seconds ter, nodding.

  “Mia. You’re in Hell. You think any of the fresh meat we deal with down here aren’t absolutely horrible people? Selfish fucks who’d do anything to survive? It doesn’t even cross most fresh meat’s minds to ask anything about other people, let alone a demon.”

  “I…” Mia looked down. Caera was right. On the river, the other humans hadn’t just panicked, some of them had actively used each other as bait so they could get away. “I don’t belong here.”

  “You don’t. But if you’re unmarked, I wouldn’t be surprised if you only had to die once to go back to the Great Tower. Consider yourself lucky. And no, I don’t know shit about the Great Tower, so don’t ask.”

  “Oh.”

  “And I lost my friends. Killed, by those Cainites or whatever they’re calling themselves these days. Angel showed up, stirred a hornet’s nest, lot of chaos.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Ceara shifted from confused to surprised to angry to depressed in a matter of seconds, and she nodded again as she resettled her chin on the back of her hands.

  “I think you’ll survive, if only because you’re so unusual. Zel wants to get strong and get there quick, but she’ll probably consider you more valuable as an asset than a meal. An angel might actually come and investigate, which Zel will no doubt try to capture and eat.”

  “She could eat an angel?”

  “She’s a tetrad demon, and a spire ruler. She could definitely manage it.”

  “Scary.”

  “Ha, you’re telling me.” Caera rotated her closer shoulder a couple times, drawing Mia’s eyes to the burn mark there. It looked like a rune. “Night’s here. Sleep.”

  “Night? I don’t—”

  The amber veins that gently lit the room dimmed, until the room was plenty dark, and her eyes had to adjust to see anything. The lines pulsed too, very slowly and consistently, like they were plugged into something’s lungs or heart.

  “I expect you’ll survive longer than most souls, Mia. So sleep for now. Your feet will heal, and you’ll wake up hungry. Diogo or me will find you a forbidden fruit. Or, you know, some goort flesh to tide you over.”

  That was a lot of information that Mia couldn’t contextualize at all. David could. But for now, she had to do what she could. Her feet would heal over night, and she’d wake up hungry? Fast healing, inducing hunger? She hadn’t felt hungry since she’d died.

  The rules in the afterlife were different. She’d have to learn them.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  ~~Day 17~~

  ~~David~~

  He woke up to the sounds of moans.

  The amber veins grew in brightness slowly, like a sunrise, pulling his eyes open with far more gentleness than he expected from Hell.

  Oh, right, Hell. Wow, that hadn’t take long to remember after waking. Probably a product of not dreaming, not having to get his brain realigned with reality anymore.

  Arms, still bound. Ass, still on stones. Feet, feeling surprisingly better, so at least he had that. But for the first time in seventeen days, he was hungry. It didn’t feel like normal hunger, or thirst, but something deeper, something in his bones that ached and told him he had to refuel or he was going to starve. Maybe not immediately, but it’d happen eventually.

  Hopefully there was something to eat in Hell, then. And hopefully it wasn’t the hearts of other humans, or demons.

  More moans. He lifted his head and looked to the only source of movement, and more memories flooded his brain as he put yesterday’s events back together. Two demons had rescued him purely by accident, but had decided to keep him around when they’d realized he was an unmarked soul. Two dies, at that, tall and fit and scary and sexy and…

  And currently having sex on the weird leather sheets, less than ten feet away from him. He stared, frozen, eyes wide, mouth dropped, as he devoured the sight of the two naked women. Their bodies were much redder than yesterday, the bck parts now dark red, and the dark red parts now red, and soft. Very soft. Daoka was on her back, legs spread, and Jeskura was between them, head between Daoka’s thighs.

  It was almost hard to tell who started where. Jeskura’s wings were rexed and loose, half spreading out over her back and the bnkets, while her tail slithered over her legs. Her arms were hooked underneath and around Daoka’s muscur, curvy thighs. The satyr held her gargoyle friend’s… lover’s two bck horns in her grip, and she quivered from head to hoof, her own four bck ram horns rubbing against the bed as she quivered. Her dolphin clicks came out slowly, deep, mixed with quiet gasps and moans.

  Each time a tremble pulsed through the voluptuous satyr’s body, her huge breasts rippled over her chest. David gulped, eyes locked on the satyr, her open mouth, her beautiful eyeless face, and the way her massive breasts jiggled, hitting against the sides of her arms since she was holding onto the gargoyle’s horns.

  She turned her head, and aimed her face directly at David, as she came. He said nothing, made no noise, did absolutely nothing. He just stared at her, hypnotized. She knew he was awake, watching her. She said nothing, or at least her clicks didn’t make Jeskura stop eating her out.

  And as she came down from her orgasm high, she smiled at David, let go of the gargoyle’s horns, and cupped her breasts. Careful of her cws with the grace of someone who’d had them her whole life, she squeezed and massaged the huge pillows, causing the soft mounds to spill over her fingers. For him. She was showing off for him.

  Movement drew his eyes down, to something between his legs, something long.

  “Holy shit!” He snapped his head back, and everything went white. His brain rattled around in his skull, and a wave of pain flooded him. Hitting his skull against the wall behind him was not his smartest move, but he managed to force open his eyes again long enough to see… his penis, shrinking back to its usual size. Arousal gone in a puff of nauseating head pain.

  Both demons hopped up, and Jeskura spun and faced him with hands up, cws pointed toward him, her eyes wide with surprise. Ready to slice him or anything open at the drop of a dime, apparently. He stared at her, gulped, and waited for her to pounce him and bite him like a panicked cat.

  She didn’t. Slowly, she stepped off the bed, and lowered her hands as she came out of her fight-or-flight mode.

  “Dude, you scared the shit out of me. The fuck you screaming for?”

  “I… I thought I saw…” He thought he saw a snake, a big one, between his legs. But, nope, just his penis. His regur, perfectly normal, average sized penis, defting. Right?

  Maybe hitting the gate of Heaven with his face had actually given him some of that ‘prime’ body the angel had talked about? He didn’t feel like he’d gotten one of Heaven’s prime bodies, but that thing between his legs was nowhere to be seen. So, it was… his… body? No, not a chance. Maybe it had been a snake, that’d just happened to be between his legs, and slithered away when he banged his head? And yeah sure, he’d been aroused, watching one beautiful demon eat out another beautiful demon. But… it was so weird.

  “Ha, sorry about that,” Jes said. “Saw us moving around in the dark, right?” Shrugging, Jes came over to him, her body still throbbing red, rge breasts rippling lightly with her hopping steps. They swayed gently underneath her when she leaned down in front of him, and undid the binds holding his wrists. “Just got really fucking horny. Came out of nowhere, too, like really weird. So Dao and I had some fun.”

  “Oh.” He forced himself to look away from her breasts, though she didn’t seem to give a shit if he stared right at her. Even her vagina looked so much more… vagina-like, compared to how it’d looked yesterday, barely existent and as hard as the rest of her.

  And as she undid his second binding, he could see the red flush of her skin fading away. Her breasts stopped shifting with her movements, hardening. Her skin darkened, the red areas becoming dark red, and the dark red areas turning bck.

  That, was an interesting physical property. Demons showed physical arousal through their whole body? And their whole body reacted? Very interesting.

  Daoka clicked softly a few times, eyeless face looking at him. She was calming down, too, body darkening, but it took a bit longer than her gargoyle lover. She grinned. He squirmed.

  “Wouldn’t normally just fuck like that in front of fresh meat,” Jes said. She picked him up, set him on his feet — oh, they were healed — before she spent some time walking around the cave. Looking for signs of an intruder, probably. “Just, damn, got super horny for no damn reason. Couldn’t help myself.”

  Daoka clicked and nodded, and once her skin had fully darkened, she half walked half hopped into another area of the cave beyond view. David watched, hoping to see her huge breasts jiggle some more, but nope, they were firm as stone. Once they weren’t aroused, the busty demons like Dao had nothing to worry about when it came to running, or hopping, which must have been especially important to a satyr.

  Hell was proving to be strangely… real. It wasn’t a mess of chaos and insanity, where nothing made sense. There were rules, some that seemed like they could have been evolutionary, and some that felt like divine ws passed down from God or whoever.

  If it was a system, with rules and concepts that could be understood and used, then it was a system someone could learn to exploit. That included him. And he was damn good at figuring out how things worked. Shit at finding the balls to actually do shit, though. That was Mia’s domain.

  “You’re probably hungry, right?”

  “I… I am.” He looked down at his naked body and checked the bottom of his feet. Healed, mostly, and they felt tougher too, calluses aplenty. At this rate, his feet would be ready for trekking across Hell all day without issue in just a few days. But Jeskura was right, he was starving.

  “My tree has a couple tiny fruits growing. You can have one, and it should tide you over until the next time you hurt yourself. Assuming you’re still with us.”

  “I don’t need to eat every day?”

  “Humans don’t, sometimes going months without food. Demons usually eat once or twice a week.” She grinned at him as she leaned in close, only inches away from him. “Dao doesn’t want me to eat you, and I won’t. But damn, you are a cute little thing, aren’t you?” She ran the blunt side of her cw down his chest, grinning at him. “Maybe I’ll eat you anyway, and I bet you’d enjoy it.”

  He stared at her, and gulped. That was too close to flirting and a death threat for him to tell which was which.

  Dao hopped back, clicking loudly and quickly, and she gave Jes a gentle shove away from David.

  “Oh come on, I’m only kidding. He’s your pet, I know!” Laughing, Jes hooked her wings around her shoulders, and stepped around the curving wall of the cave where Dao had just come from.

  Dao nodded, clicked happily, set her hands on David’s shoulders, and guided him to follow. The fact they were nude meant nothing to them, but he had a damn hard time not staring at Jeskura’s ass and the tail swaying above it as she walked ahead. Her raptor feet and slightly forward posture only meant it was even harder to ignore. The only reason he didn’t have a boner, was pure nervousness at this point.

  There was a tree. A ruined, withered thing, but a tree, much bigger than the bushes outside the cave, and conveniently, not on fire. A couple small pieces of red fruit dangled from some of its dark, thin branches, no bigger than plums. The color was way too close to blood.

  “A tree grows here?” he asked. “I… I suppose if burning bushes are growing everywhere, and don’t burn away, this is normal.”

  “They’re normal, but rare,” Jes said. “This little cave of ours is pretty awesome. If you tell anyone about it, I’ll rip your dick off and make you eat it, got it?”

  He nodded hard and fast enough to make his body shake.

  “Good. Yes, forbidden trees exist in Hell. No one really knows how they work, but hey, it’s Hell, a lot of shit is like that. You want answers, ask Lucifer.” She shrugged as she reached out, and plucked one of the blood plums. “These are full of essence and resonance, probably Hell sucking it up from the little bits that don’t get eaten. Hell’s a bitch, but she throws us a bone every now and then.”

  She tossed it to him. He managed to catch it with both palms, and he stared down at the strange thing. It was warm, and it was soft, a texture he recognized from the many steaks he’d eaten in his life. If Jes’s theory about how it was created was true, biting it would be like biting into a juicy piece of regrown human and demon and whatever else existed in Hell.

  But he really was hungry, in a strange way deep inside him he couldn’t ignore. And holding the forbidden fruit sent a tingle through his skin that told him this was for him, that it was special. He didn’t believe in any of the stories in the bible, at least not at face value, but considering where he was, he’d have to start reevaluating his views. This was forbidden fruit, and it was important.

  “You’re letting me eat this?”

  “I am. If you screw me over on the pn though, I’ll do more than rip off your dick. This cave is important to be, but killing Diogo is more important. Get in the way of that and you’ll wish I just killed you.”

  Eyes wide, he slowly nodded, and looked down from the gargoyle’s intense gaze. But Daoka reached around him and pushed up on his hands, guiding them toward his mouth. He managed a smile, and bit into the fruit.

  It was blood, and it flooded his mouth like he’d just bit into a juicy grape mixed with a juicy sb of meat. He’d had a feeling it might though, and he made sure to not spill a drop, all of the warm liquid squirting into his mouth. The first thing he’d eaten in seventeen days. It tasted good.

  It tasted great.

  He blinked down at the second half of the fruit. No seed inside it. He tossed it into his mouth and chewed, and let the meat-like texture remind him of his favorite restaurant as he devoured. Better to think of eating a cow than another person. The flesh went down his throat like he’d eaten these things a thousand times before, and within seconds, he felt good. He felt whole, and full, and alive; it took some effort to not ugh at that.

  “Okay. Pn time,” Jes said, and squatted down by the tree. Maybe perched was the better word, with how she put her hands down on the floor between her raptor feet, perched like a carved gargoyle hanging out on a stone wall. “Tacitus, a bailiff in Gazra Crag, wants Daoka back. It led to problems, since Daoka is my friend. Diogo found out, and questioned Leos, a friend of ours. The stupid bastard didn’t say anything, so Diogo killed him.”

  “Stupid bastard? He—”

  “He should have given us up, told Diogo where we’d been hiding.” Jeskura spped her tail against the floor and growled at him. It didn’t sound human. “He knew Daoka and I could escape. He knew…”

  Daoka clicked slowly, squatted down beside her lover, and nuzzled into her side, rubbing the sides of their horns together. Jeskura returned the kindness, and pat the satyr on the knee before looking back to David.

  “I’m telling you this because I’m going to need your help. We need to trick Diogo, so you’ll need to be able to think on your feet. I could leave you in the dark, but you seem like the nerdy type.”

  “Nerd?”

  “What, you’re not a nerd?”

  He groaned and folded his arms across his chest. Apparently he was comfortable enough with his two demon rescuers to be grumpy.

  “I am, but how do you know? How do you even know the word? And why do you talk like a human?”

  “Oh, I get you. Right.” Nodding, she got up and took him around the other curve of the cave wall. Three big alcoves then, one for the bed, one for the tree, and another for a big cup made of metal and stone.

  It was innocent-looking enough, a big circur ptform about three feet high and four feet wide, and on it was a cup, just as wide, and only a few inches deep. No bones or skulls or weird hellish designs. Just a big block of metal with a dark metal cup on it.

  The surface inside was reflective, and apparently liquid. It shifted around slightly, like a breeze was hitting it despite the still air, and when he leaned over it, the reflected image twisted over the small waves in the liquid. It almost looked like mercury.

  “This is a scrying pool. Tell it what you wanna watch, and it’ll show you.”

  “Tell it?”

  “Yes, dumbass. Speak. Use words.” The gargoyle shrugged. “Too complicated?”

  “No, I just…” He touched the edges of the cup with his hands. No reaction. He watched his reflection bounce around a bit more. “Can it show me my sister?”

  “She’s in Hell, right? Then no. It can only show you what’s going on on the surface right now.”

  “Oh.” Then what was the point of the bowl? What use was it to anyone if they couldn’t use it to look around Hell?

  “It’s a torture device,” Jes said. She smirked at him, probably reading the confusion on his face. “I can tell you’re wondering what the fuck, right. It’s a torture device. Scrying pools are pretty common, and fresh meat use them to look at the world they used to know. Nothing hurts quite like looking back at the things you used to have, right? Or all the things you could have had.”

  “That… is cruel.” For most. What did he miss? His computer? The internet? Shit TV and only a handful of good books? The sex he never got to have? His dream of being a nerdy game developer, sitting in his room with his porn and sex toys, living a quiet life?

  Damn, he really did have shitty dreams.

  “Show me…” He tapped his chin. Show him what? Maybe he could catch up on some TV shows he’d never got around to watching? Nah. “Show me… the shower room, at my university dorm.” He half expected the bowl to not respond at all, considering he hadn’t specified where that was, just said ‘my’. But the image changed, and sure enough, it showed him the shower room he’d peeped on a few times the first few days he’d been a ghost, from an overhead angle that let him see into the stalls.

  Lucky day, there were a few people showering.

  “Show me… Oh, that’s Lindsy Lebnc. Show me her.”

  Without hesitation, the image moved into the girl’s stall, and showed the beautiful woman showering. Tall and slender, she washed her long dark hair, humming quietly to herself. Damn, nothing sexual.

  Wow, ten seconds with a magic mirror and he was using it to spy on someone again.

  “I’m going to Hell for this,” he said.

  Daoka and Jeskura stared at him, looked at each other, and burst into ughter. Daoka clicked rapid fire until she had to grab the bowl for support, and Jeskura opened her wings to catch some air and so she didn’t fall over. They ughed, and ughed, and ughed.

  He ughed, too. Quietly, but he did.

  “You are fucking weird!” Jeskura came up beside him, wrapped an arm around his neck and head, and gestured to the bowl with her other arm. He did his best to ignore her nudity; being surrounded by two hot naked demons had his mind on porn, evidently. “I mean, better that than looking at something that’d hurt. Some humans stare into this thing, watching the shit they don’t have anymore, or the shit they never got, until they starve to death. And if you’re not getting injured and burning essence to recover, starving to death takes fresh meat years.”

  Years, staring into a bowl that was nothing more than a window to the surface? Self inflicted torture. Fucked up, and understandable. He’d known people who put their whole identity on the things they owned, or the things they’d accomplished. None of that meant anything down here.

  Daoka clicked a few times, gesturing to the bowl.

  “She wants to know why you didn’t look up something more personal. Fresh meat always does.”

  He shrugged, gncing between Dao and Jes before looking back down at the bowl again, and the beautiful woman showering.

  “Nothing personal to look up. No family, no close friends, nothing like that.”

  Dao clicked softly as she stepped around the bowl, and she slipped an arm around him, repcing Jes.

  “Dao, stop it. He’s not actually a puppy, you know.”

  With a scrunched up nose, Dao frowned at Jes, before rubbing David’s head with her other hand. He didn’t mind.

  “Anyway,” Jeskura said, “scrying pools are how demons keep up with the surface. We watch them all the time.”

  Dao clicked enthusiastically, nodding a few times.

  “Agreed. Demons were pretty surprised by the whole television invention. We watch movies, TV shows, everything.”

  “Demons watching movies is… difficult to wrap my mind around.”

  Dao and Jes ughed, before Dao nodded back toward the bed with a few clicks.

  “Good idea,” Jes said, and she wiped a hand through the silvery liquid. The image disappeared, and Dao guided David away back toward the red leathery bnkets. She sat down with him, and Jes squatted in front of them, elbows on her knees. “The only reason Dao and I are telling you all this shit is because we need your help. Yeah, try and screw us and I’ll make you suffer. But I’m not so stupid to think I can just bully you into doing what I want. You’d flip the moment you saw the opportunity.”

  Dao clicked a few times.

  “Okay, maybe you wouldn’t. Any other fresh meat would. So, the deal is, you help us, we help you. I mean originally I was just gonna throw you to Diogo and figure out a way to make it work. But it looks like you got a head on your shoulders, from the way you handled yourself at the river. And Daoka likes you. Do right by us and we’ll try and make sure you don’t die horribly.”

  He took a deep breath, and nodded.

  “Okay.”

  “Okay? David, I’m going to use you as a tool to get at Diogo so me and Daoka can rip out his throat. And he’s probably the strongest devorjin in all of Death’s Grip. If we fuck up at all, I die, Dao dies, and you die.” She sounded like his sister, getting frustrated with him because he wasn’t appreciating the emotional, or ‘real’ aspects of the problem, intellectualizing. “I don’t care about you, okay? Dao might, I don’t. I just need to make sure you’re all-together in the head, because I’ve seen a lot of fresh meat like you break down when they finally accept this shit’s real. I can’t have that happening at the worst time.”

  It was partly true. Right now, everything Jeskura said was words without weight. He kept sliding in and out of ‘things are happening, take notes, analyze ter’ and ‘oh shit I’m in Hell panic scream cry’.

  He looked down and squeezed the edges of the bed. Focus. Pay attention. Think about what you’re actually agreeing to. Think about what happened on the river. You’re going to be surrounded by those sorts of demons, and you’ll have to rely on these two to keep you alive. If they fail, you could end up dead, or worse. Think about all the people you saw die, the screams you heard. That’s your new reality.

  He ground his teeth, and let the shit reality in. The flood of misery pulled at his eyes, demanding tears, but he would not cry. Somewhere, Mia was alive, he knew it, and this was his best chance of finding her. Enough crying. He could cry when Mia was safe.

  “I have to find my sister. She’s unmarked like me, and if the first thing you guys thought when you saw me was to show me to Diogo, then that’s my best option to find her.”

  Jes smiled. “Alright. We’ll do what we can to make sure you’re rewarded for this. If you find your sis, maybe we can drop you off with the Cain cultists?”

  Daoka clicked a few times. Not happy clicks, either.

  Jes shrugged as she stood up. “Not like we can just drag him around with us, Dao. If we kill Diogo, Zel’s gonna come looking, and I don’t pn to be here when that happens.”

  Nodding, Daoka leaned in toward David and rubbed the side of her horns on top of his head, clicking quietly. She was warm.

  “He’s not a puppy! If we go to The Bck Valley, he’s gonna die in the swamps, or Alessio will find him and do whatever Zel would.”

  More clicks.

  “Grave Valley won’t be much better, Dao, for us or for him. I’ve never been there, and Azailia isn’t gonna be happy if she learns we fucked with one of Zel’s bailiffs.”

  So many names and pces. He did his best to absorb them, but he had limits.

  Jeskura sighed and shook her head, ignoring some more of Dao’s clicks as she sat beside David, opposite of her.

  “We can talk about it ter, Dao. For now, the pn. We’re gonna give you to Diogo, David, and he’s probably gonna decide to take you to Zel.”

  “You think?”

  “Standing orders from Zel are to bring her any angels someone might catch alive, probably so she can eat one. With Zel keeping a close eye on everything, Diogo won’t be stupid enough to try and sneak something like eating an unmarked when everyone will see you. All of Gorzen Eye will know you exist when we show up with you, which means Zel would find out sooner or ter.”

  He gulped. He had no idea how many demons that was, but it’d be more than two.

  “Alright.”

  “He’ll head counter-clockwise, to the spire. Zel—”

  “Counter-clockwise?”

  Jeskura ughed. “You saw Hell on the way down from the portal, right? Big donut shape? We don’t have a North or South down here. No setting sun or North star of any of that shit.”

  That, was confusing to think about. They had no way to orient a map. Just clockwise and counter-clockwise.

  “Got it.”

  “He’ll take a handful of demons with him. A couple devorjins, tregeeras, probably an incubus and succubus, some—”

  “Devorjins?”

  “Big tall fuckers. No spikes or wings or tails or anything. All muscle. Will rip you apart with their bare hands. Humans call them brutes.”

  “Oh.” And if Diogo was the biggest, baddest brute, that was not good. “Tr—”

  “Tregeera are almost as big as brutes, but not quite. Big horns, bigger tails. Often walk around on all fours. Big tits.”

  Daoka reached around David’s back and shoved Jeskura, hard enough she almost fell off the bed and had to fp her wings to stay sitting. Laughing, Jes reached around David, but instead of shoving, she stuck her head out, and the two demons kissed over top his head.

  “He’ll probably have a couple vrats and gorgas with him. Maybe a couple betrayers if he’s feeling horny.”

  “But, if he has a succubus and incubus…”

  “Demons usually prefer humans over other demons.” Before Daoka could shove her again, Jeskura jumped off the bed, grinned at her girlfriend, and kissed her again, from the front.

  “Really?”

  “Really. It’s a big reason lots of demons recruit betrayers. The main reason.”

  He blinked at her, and then at the satyr who was grinning at him. Maybe it really was attraction, and not just an owner adoring their new puppy. And that was scary. Not because Dao wasn’t attractive; she was very attractive. But David barely knew how to talk to real women, let alone demon women who were as likely to eat him as help him.

  “My point,” Jes said, “is there’s no chance we can win a fight directly, either at Gorzen Eye or the path to the spire. So instead what we do, is set up an ambush. I know the path he’ll take, and I got some ideas for setting up a traps. Boulders rolling down hills, shit like that.”

  Daoka clicked a few times.

  “Yes I know. It’ll take a few days, and we’ll have to watch out for fucking imps and grems, but I know just the spot.”

  More clicks, faster, and excited.

  “Right, right. You know the spot.” Nodding, Jeskura stretched out her wings as she walked around and scooped up the pieces of armor. “And you’re gonna help, fresh meat.”

  “I am? You mean with Diogo, and—”

  “That. But help me set up traps, too.”

  Daoka clicked rapid fire as she got up, and grabbed some pieces of armor. Without missing a beat, Jeskura held up her arms, and Daoka strapped on the biggest piece over Jes’s breasts. David watched.

  Chuckling, Jes waved her tail in front of him, making him roll back to avoid getting whacked in the face.

  “You really do got a pervert’s eyes, you know? Couple pairs of tits out and it’s like your whole world’s turned upside down. Shock of Hell starting to wear off?”

  Daoka clicked a few times, hugged Jes’s side with face pointed at David, and grinned. Warning bells went off in his head. That was a dangerous grin.

  “I… guess.”

  “Well, I know a few succubi who’ll happily fuck the shit out of you, especially once you help take down Diogo. They’ll love that,” Jes said. Doa got her belt, and tied the skull-covered leather around the woman’s waist. “Plus you’re in a great shape for a pipsqueak. Lot of people who come to Hell look like shit, you know?”

  He squirmed. Succubi? Into him? He was already having trouble managing the looks these two were giving him. A few succubi flirting with him would probably kill him from the nosebleed, cssic anime style.

  Nodding, satisfied with the armor, Daoka stepped back and held up her hands. Jeskura returned the favor, strapping on the sbs of bck metal on her body, over her breasts and limbs.

  “Alright, let’s get to it.”

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  ~~Mia~~

  Another night without dreams. She didn’t really miss them when she’d been a ghost, wandering the real world, but down here, any sort of escape would have been nice. But, nope, she woke up to Hell, and without dreams, she didn’t have to come to the painful realization on waking. She just knew, the moment her eyes opened, she was in Hell. Maybe REM sleep didn’t exist for ghosts, or dead people, or whatever she was now.

  She sat up. Naked. Shit. That hadn’t really bothered her before, when all she could think about was falling through fire, the red river, the violence, the screaming. She had a moment to think now, and she covered her breasts with one arm as she sat up and looked at Caera.

  Caera was already awake, looking at her with a weak smile as she sat up, too. And she of course made no effort to cover her big boobs.

  “Don’t,” the demon said, gesturing to her. “Get used to being naked. Covering yourself like that makes you look vulnerable, which will set off most demons.”

  “Set off?”

  “Weak, vulnerable human? Any demon sees you acting like that and they’ll pounce you and fuck you on the spot. So unless you want two brutes to impale you on their cocks, at the same time, don’t act like you’re soft and human. Act tough and hard, like a demon.”

  “Alright.”

  She squirmed. Okay, yeah, that made sense, but the thought of two of those muscur juggernauts grabbing her and forcing huge lengths into her, at the same time? Yeap, she was fucked in the head, because that scared her, but it also sent a tingle down her spine she did not like that she liked.

  She lowered her arm, and didn’t try and angle her pelvis away from the tiger demon anymore. It’s not like she was all that concerned about nudity, but some part of her told her to cover her bits when around big, dangerous, deadly things. But Caera’s warning made sense, so she’d have to break the habit.

  Caera raised a brow, looking at her, head tilted slightly.

  “There is something weird about you,” Caera said.

  “Well thanks,” Mia said, a bite of sarcasm in her words. “I am unmarked, apparently.”

  “There is that. But… “ Caera watched her for a bit, red and bck eyes looking her up and down. There was more than curiosity there. “I don’t know. I’ve been around a long time, Mia, but I’ve never seen an unmarked. It’s got to mean something, right?”

  “I just figured Heaven made a mistake.”

  The demon shook her head. “Not a chance. No, something is happening. Diogo knows it, and that’s why he’s taking you to Zel. You’re special.”

  “Oh fuck no.” Mia stood up and put up her hands. “No thanks. I’m not special, and I’d like to keep it that way. Just a girl who wants to get back to Heaven and enjoy centuries of having sex with handsome giant angel men.”

  Caera ughed and stood up with her. Damn she was tall when she stood on her hind legs, almost as tall as those big brutes.

  “Whether you want to be you’re not, and whether or not it’s your own fault, you’re special. Everyone’s going to want a piece of you. Control you, own you, fuck you, maybe eat you.” Shrugging, Caera scooped up some of her armor bits and strapped them back on, soon covering her body in bck metal and some giant skulls again. “That’s better than most fresh meat get. Py your cards right and Zel might keep you around.”

  Mia scrunched up her nose, and stomped around. “Fuck me, you’re right. Okay, enough pussying around. I need… weapons! I need some weapons, some way to defend myself. I need armor. I need—”

  Apparently she was hirious, because the big demon clutched her stomach as she ughed, and shook her head.

  “You’re just a human, Mia. Even an imp or grem, even a succubus or incubus, could overpower you. Even a betrayer could. And unless you didn’t notice, all the betrayers here are naked. We don’t let humans wear clothes or carry weapons.”

  God damn it, Caera was right. Mia couldn’t just suit up with armor and weapons without the demons taking issue. And it wasn’t like she could stick a knife up her ass and keep it out of sight.

  “So what do I do?”

  Caera sat, like a big cat, arms straight down in front of her, and she plucked at the big spikes on her bigger tail.

  “You die. That’s what all fresh meat does. Either you die, or you become a betrayer, and die ter.”

  “Fuck that.”

  “Your only other option is to make friends. Or, you know, allies.”

  “Oh no.” She wasn’t good at making friends. Straight up, she hated people, one of the few things she had in common with her brother. Okay, one of the many things. Why she was so interested in people and wanted to work with them for a living, she still didn’t know.

  Caera licked a fang, like a hungry cat, and it awoke Mia’s hunger with a snap. Fuck, it was enough to send a jolt of hunger up through Mia’s guts, and out into her limbs. But at least her feet felt fine. Good even! She could tell they were tougher, stronger, as if she’d been hiking around barefoot for months, maybe years. But the strange hunger pulsed through her straight into her bones.

  “Hungry?”

  “Yeah. Very.”

  “Let’s go see Adron. He might have some fruit.” Caera pushed the chains dangling in front of the door aside, and motioned for her to go.

  Caera was either a nice demon, or very good at making Mia think she was. And Mia was too fucking tired and scared to throw away the only chance she had at making some kind of friend in Hell. She smiled up at Caera as she walked past, and looked down the hole they’d climbed up. Not a big hole, five feet deep, and then a ten foot drop, just high enough to risk breaking her ankle.

  With an almost pyful chuckle, Caera slipped an arm around her waist, picked her up like she weighed nothing, and climbed down the hole reverse, tail first. It was nothing to her to use her talons and one hand’s cws to grab grooves in the rock, and make the descent easy. Even when her legs dangled from the hole and she only had one hand to work with, she let gravity drag her down, cws cutting into stone so the descent was slow and controlled.

  She nded as quietly and smoothly as a cat.

  “Graceful,” Mia said.

  “Heh.” Caera grinned at her, set Mia down, and lowered herself down to all fours. “Come on. Diogo will want you feeling fine before seeing Zel. If something happens and you starve, he’ll be pissed, and he’ll bme me.”

  Nodding, Mia followed alongside the big cat-ish demon.

  “I wanted to know, what kind of demon are you?”

  “Tregeera.”

  “That… sounds kinda like tiger.”

  “Betrayers call us tigers.”

  “Oooh, that makes sense.”

  Ceara nodded, chuckling. “The tigers I’ve seen in scrying pools look pretty awesome, so we never argued.”

  “Scrying pools?”

  “Zel will probably show you, or you’ll find one on the trip.”

  They rounded a corner, and another corner, and another. Winding paths that forked into new paths every twenty or thirty feet. Stone, chains, skulls, the occasional remnant, and lots of amber veins, that was what it was like in the giant cave. And much as it sucked, fucking majorly sucked and was scary and disturbing and dangerous, it wasn’t as bad as some of the imagery she’d heard Hell described with. At least she wasn’t buried head first in shit and covered in boils. Then again, if she died and became a remnant, it would have been just as bad, if not worse.

  Caera pulled up to one alcove, and Mia stood in its entrance beside her, doing her best to stand tall and proud and not cover her naked bits.

  Maybe she should have.

  A vrat sat in the back of the alcove, one hand behind his head, showing off the amazing muscuture of his chest and arm. His tail stuck out to the side, its pointed tip gently swaying, and his other hand was out in front of him, fingers combing through the hair of the girl kneeling between his muscur legs. A naked woman, not as short as Mia but still short, with a simirly slim and fit physique. And the vrat demon caressed her short blond hair as he smiled at Caera and Mia.

  Mia was mostly looking at the woman’s — probably a betrayer’s — back, but she stood at an angle just to the side enough she could see a bit of their profile, and the huge length the girl held in her hands, its tip against her lips. The vrat, nearly eight feet tall and a bit bigger than the other vrats Mia had seen, purred quietly between deep breaths, and winked at Mia before looking back down at the small woman struggling to fit the head of his shaft in her mouth. She couldn’t. The best she could manage was to bury it in licks and kisses, while sliding her hands up and down the throbbing, red length.

  “Hannah still alive?” Caera asked.

  “She is,” the vrat said. Must have been Adron. “I take good care of my things.”

  “Uh huh.” Chuckling, Caera sauntered over, and sat down beside Adron. Directly beside him, close enough her legs brushed up against him. “Taking it easy on her today?”

  “For now. She got her hands on a knife again, so I’m punishing her.”

  “A blowjob is hardly punishment.”

  Adron grinned. “We’ll get to the better stuff ter.”

  Mia couldn’t see Hannah’s eyes from where she stood, but with the girl on her knees, she could see underneath her butt. Whoever this Hannah was, giving her master a blowjob thoroughly turned her on.

  “Mia,” Caera said. “Come here, say hello to Adron. I’m tasking him with keeping you alive when he goes with you and Diogo.”

  Adron raised an eyebrow. “I’m going somewhere?”

  “Diogo’s going to visit Zel, gonna show Mia to her.”

  “Right right, the unmarked girl. And you think he’s going to take me because—”

  “Because he trusts you.”

  The vrat ughed. “No he doesn’t.”

  “True. He wants to keep an eye on you.”

  “Better.”

  “And he knows you’re good in a fight.”

  “Very true.” With a satisfied nod, Adron let go of the woman’s head, and let both his arms settle on the ground around him as he rexed back against the stone wall.

  “Mia, get over here,” Caera said, gesturing to Adron’s other side.

  Oh god. With a heavy gulp, Mia walked over, eyes locked onto Adron’s body and its red tint. Muscles, abs, not a hair on him anywhere except for hair tendrils, and for some reason his demon-skull face looked less terrifying, and more hyper masculine. Maybe a day in Hell had desensitized her to how unusual some demon faces looked.

  And of course, once she got close to Adron’s arm, Mia couldn’t help but look down his long stomach, past his arg-so-fucking-amazing adonis belt, to the ridiculously massive shaft sticking up from the base of his pelvis. Despite being thicker than Mia’s wrist, it looked mostly human, but it had a few bumps and ridges in convenient, no-other-reason-than-to-feel-good pces. And Hannah, with 666 written on her forehead, gred up at Mia with half angry, half horny blue eyes, before looking back to Adron. Her grip couldn’t quite reach all the way around his shaft.

  Mia stared, eyes locked on Hannah, and how she squeezed her hands around the huge cock, just hard enough to make the malleable, firm flesh bend under her fingers slightly, before she shifted her hands up and down. His cock was wet. Some of it had to be saliva, but a lot of it was white, too. He’d cum once already? Oh god, the woman was massaging his cum into his cock, and working him toward another climax.

  “Mia,” Caera said. “Mia. Mia!”

  “W-What? What?”

  “I said, Adron’s a friend. He’ll watch your back, okay?”

  “Um, okay. Y-Yeah. Hi, nice to meet you.”

  The vrat ughed, licked one of his scary sharp teeth, and looked back to Caera.

  “That all you need?”

  “Nah. Need a fruit for her. She’s fresh meat, you know the drill.”

  “Oh I see. Anyone needs a fruit, they just come to Adron.” He rolled his eyes, but shrugged a bit as he nodded toward Hannah. “You got a couple hidden away, right?”

  Hannah grumbled, nodding, but didn’t lift her head or say anything. From the angry gre she gave Adron, she was under orders to not stop pleasuring her boss. And she didn’t. Her tongue snuck out, and ran a few ps around the demon’s swollen gns, before disappearing into her mouth again so she could kiss and suckle on the bulbous tip she couldn’t quite manage to fit into her mouth.

  “I’ll make sure she gets one before we leave,” Adron said. “Though I think I deserve a little compensation.”

  Caera chuckled, rolling her eyes before grinning at Mia. These two were friends. It was good to know demons could become friends, if only so Mia could maybe make one like Adron to keep her alive. And, because maybe, demons weren’t super awful? Maybe not all of them.

  Caera reached out with one of her cwed hands, and slowly, teasingly, wrapped her fingers around the base of Adron’s girth. Mia almost gasped, but forced it down with a heavy gulp, as she watched Caera join Hannah in stroking the man’s length. She had much bigger hands than Hannah, but Adron’s cock was very, very long, more than long enough for both of Hannah’s hands and one of the tregeera’s.

  “Well that didn’t take much convincing,” Adron said. “Figured you’d still have a stick up your ass.”

  “Yeah yeah fuck you. I’ve been feeling horny tely, ever since the unmarked arrived. Be happy I’m in a good mood.”

  Ever since Mia arrived?

  Mia slowly slipped an arm around her breasts, and used the other to cover her slit, as she watched Hannah and Caera both bring Adron up to orgasm. They took their time, lots of slow strokes that used his cum so their grip could slide up and down his skin. Lots of massaging squeezes, from Caera in particur, who took some joy in occasionally squeezing Adron a bit too tight and earning a half panicked purr from the demon.

  Adron set his eyes on Hannah, and smiled at her as a heavy rumble flowed through him. Hannah’s cheeks puffed, and Mia squeaked — quietly thank god — as white cum squirted out of her mouth. It spshed against Adron’s abs and thighs, but most of the heavy white yers of cum flowed down over Adron’s cock, soaked Hannah’s hands, and eventually Caera’s hand. The tregeera made no attempt to remove her grip either. She continued squeezing, stroking, and milking the vrat’s cock until another heavy wave of it flowed out of Hannah’s mouth onto his length. And another, and another.

  Demons came for a long time, and they came a lot. A lot lot. His cock visibly pulsed as his muscles flexed, earning another wave of cum that flowed down his length’s skin until it reached his pelvis. And Caera, grinning at Mia now, finally let go of the demon’s cock, ran a soaked finger through the thick cum along Adron’s pelvis, and traced it up onto his abs.

  “I think the unmarked is quite the horny little thing,” she said.

  “Looks like,” Adron said, looking up at her as he reached out, and slid his fingers back into Hannah’s hair.

  Mia refused to think about how amazing that must have felt, a huge handsome demon man’s fingers running through her hair while she made him cum. But a gnce down at Hannah betrayed her. The blond woman clearly had an angry side, but her expression had softened. Slowly, she slid her hands up and down all of her master’s length now that Caera had let go, and continued to gently kiss the huge gns still leaking cum into her mouth. She enjoyed this. And with how her eyes were locked onto Adron’s body, his abs, his chest, and his face, she particurly enjoyed seeing the demon in pleasure.

  “We got a deal?” Caera said, wiping her hand on Adron’s chest in a less than sexy manner.

  “Of course. You know I would have helped anyway.”

  “I did. But like I said, just been… tingling tely, ever since she showed up.” Caera gestured to Mia as she got up. “Diogo will want to leave in an hour or two.”

  Nodding, Adron reached down, scooped up the small woman between his legs, and set her on his stomach. The girl’s dripping slit pressed against the underside of his cock, pinning it to his abs. Hannah tried to keep up the angry face, but when Adron dragged her back and forth along his cock, massaging and stroking the underside of his length with her spread lips, she let out a little moan. The vrat made sure her clit pressed down against his length with each stroke.

  He was still hard. How much sexual stamina did demons have?

  “I’ll make sure we’re ready,” Adron said, nodding. “Hannah, where’d you hide your fruit you stole from Brennus?”

  “Like I’m telling you, or them.” Hannah gestured to Mia and Caera, resuming her angry eyes, despite what Adron was doing to her. “I earned those.”

  Rolling his eyes, Adron took the girl’s waist into one of his big hands, lifted her like a toy, and used his other to aim his heavy cock up toward her slit. And with a casualness that could only be found in people who were very familiar and comfortable with each other, he lowered her slowly, spreading her tiny, smooth pussy apart. She groaned as she looked down, eyes full of frustration as droplets of her juices leaked out of her onto his already drenched length.

  The huge head of his cock opened her, wide, and slipped into her. Mia gulped and stared, as a visible bulge formed on the girl’s skin, right above the pubic bone, as Adron lowered her writhing body onto his length. She was thin and fit, a ft and slim stomach that now distended slightly with the thickness of the demon’s cock stretching her insides apart. And deep. When he’d lowered her enough he’d only barely managed half of his length, he stopped, Hannah’s eyes opening wide.

  “Hannah,” he said, voice deepening into a growl. “I asked, where did you put those fruit you stole?” He put both his hands on the girl’s hips, and pushed down, gently, grinding her back and forth as he forced her to sink another inch onto his length.

  With her feet on the floor, knees unable to reach it, Hannah put her hands on her master’s chest, and gred at him as she tried to keep herself from sinking deeper. Adron ughed, and pushed her down more anyway, making her tremble as more of his thick girth disappeared into her, only to make the bulge pushing against her belly reach higher.

  “They’re mine. I’m not—” Deeper. “I’m not… going… to share…” Deeper. “M-Mine…”

  “You’ve spoiled this girl,” Caera said, and she prowled around Adron’s legs, knelt between them behind Hannah, set her rge hands over Adron’s on the girl’s hips, and pushed down.

  Poor Hannah. She let out one of those deep groans Mia made when she was dying of arousal, and finally filled herself with her toys. Getting stretched and penetrated deep felt great when you were a dripping mess and everything was super swollen. Mia didn’t know if she’d enjoy getting penetrated that absurdly deep, but Hannah sure did, and her animal groan morphed into a weak whimper as Caera forced her down and down, until her lips spread around the base of the vrat’s huge girth.

  Satisfied, Caera leaned forward, looking down over Hannah from overhead as she slipped one hand around the girl’s throat, squeezed it, and pulled her head back until it was pinned against Caera’s breastpte. It forced Hannah to arch her back slightly, putting her stomach and hard nipples on dispy, and the bulge reaching from her pubic bone all the way past her navel.

  “Hannah,” Caera said, grinning down at the woman. “If you don’t do what your master tells you, I’m going to tie you up and leave you for Diogo to fuck until something breaks, and Adron can’t stop me.” She leaned down closer, and half growled half purred at the quivering betrayer. “Adron treats like you’re made of gss. Diogo won’t.”

  This, was gentle? Mia gulped as Caera’s threat nded, and Hannah’s eyes opened wide.

  “Okay! Okay, I… I had a few, hidden in different pces. One’s right here.” She gestured to the bnkets, in a specific corner.

  Adron ughed. He knew one fruit had been there, but he’d made a sexual game of making Hannah say it out loud. Mischievous.

  Caera chuckled as she let the girl go, prowled around toward Mia, gently nudged her aside, and lifted up the corner of the thick leather bnkets. Sure enough, there was a divot in the rock, just big enough for what looked like a small piece of red fruit, spherical, and without the shine of most fruit. The more Mia looked at it, the more it looked like a hunk of flesh in the shape of a plum.

  The tiger demon motioned for her to come as she prowled out of the alcove, and waited at its entrance.

  “You bringing her on the trip, Adron?”

  “I think I will,” he said, earning a small groan of annoyance from Hannah.

  “Well then don’t break her.” Nodding, Caera started down the tunnel again, and Mia jogged after her.

  But she did manage to get a peek back into Adron’s alcove before it vanished from sight. The big, handsome, scary demon turned Hannah around, id her against his chest, and wrapped a hand around her throat. He choked her, pinning her head to his sternum, while his other hand reached between her thighs and caressed her clitoris. No hard thrusting. Maybe that’d come ter, but for now, it seemed clear Adron was going to focus on Hannah’s pleasure, making her squirm as he buried her bliss. And from how her eyes rolled up and her body went half limp on him, she really, really liked his huge hand around her throat.

  It looked amazing.

  Mia gulped as she forced herself to look away and caught up with Caera. If this kept up, she was going to have to masturbate before she did something really stupid. One day in Hell and already the insanity of it all was fading into background noise, and the only thing she could think of was sex. The aura Adron had been radiating certainly hadn’t helped. The only reason Mia wasn’t dripping down her thighs, was thankfully enough leftover Hell-shock to keep her body from getting too horny. Horny, but not too horny.

  Ceara, still walking on all fours, tossed the fruit back to her, and Mia snatched it out of the air. It did feel like a chunk of meat instead of a fruit, and it was warm, too. Blergh.

  “Eat.”

  “It’s…”

  “Yeah, I know. Just eat it, before a demon takes it from you. Unless you’re happy going on a four day trek through the mountains hungry like you are?”

  That was the other reason Mia wasn’t tripping over herself horny after watching Adron. The damn hunger deep in her bones and gut was not pleasant, and she couldn’t ignore it, either. It felt like she was starving in a pce food wouldn’t be able to fix.

  She took a deep, heavy breath, and popped the fruit in her mouth. Sure enough, it tasted like meat. Good meat. Really good blue rare meat. Meat and blood so warm, it sent pleasant tingles out through her limbs, and filled her up. A tiny fruit that settled her hunger in a matter of seconds.

  “Good, right?” Caera asked.

  “Very. Very weird, and very good.”

  “And very rare. You find a forbidden fruit, you eat it or hide it. You might not need to eat essence except to heal, but us demons need resonance constantly. Fruit has both. Understand?”

  “Not in the least.”

  Laughing, the big tiger dy gestured at Mia.

  “You’re a human soul, right? Even unmarked, you’re still a soul. You’re filled with resonance, something you gathered, or attuned really, while alive on the surface. Now you’re in Hell, and the resonance is sealed inside you. It stays there, in your heart, ripe and ready for a demon to come along and snack on.”

  She put a hand on her sternum. “Oh…”

  “Demons turn their resonance into essence. Essence is how you exist. Run out of essence and you wither away and die. Unfortunately for humans, demons can’t absorb essence. We have to keep hunting for new resonance, from humans or other demons. And, fortunately and unfortunately for humans, you can’t turn resonance, yours or anyone else’s, into essence. You have to scavenge for essence itself, munching on the bodies of demons, other humans, or the beasts of Hell if you’re strong enough to take one down.”

  Oh god, that was one extremely fucked up circle of life.

  “Thanks, for telling me.”

  Caera grinned up at her. “You have no idea how strange you are, saying things like ‘thanks’. Be careful or you’re going to grab someone’s attention.”

  It was Mia’s turn to ugh. “I’m already being dragged to see the ruler of Hell, right? I—”

  “Of Hell? Fuck no. Zel is ruler of the Death’s Grip spire, but that’s just Death’s Grip. There’s nine spires.”

  “Oh… Hell is a big pce. Er, I mean, is it, actually? How big is a country here?”

  Caera shrugged. “Hard to know, hard to measure. No one’s run the ring of Hell since Cain, tens of thousands of years ago. And that’s just what some of the runes I’ve found say. They could be lying. My friends and I, we found…” Slowly, the tregeera lowered her head, shaking it.

  That was as very human reaction. The way Caera lowered her eyebrows and looked down. The way her shoulders slumped, even walking on her hands. The way her head hung, as if someone had just thrown a weight around her neck. That was a sad demon. More than that, that was a demon who didn’t want to talk about some shitty things in her past.

  The vrat had said she had a stick up her ass. Caera didn’t seem like she had one, but if bringing up memories of her friends — probably dead considering her reaction — reestablished said stick, it might not be a good idea to bring them up. Yet.

  Maybe Mia’s psych csses would come in handy? The more they talked, the more it was obvious the demon had a fully functional, human-ish brain inside that skull. Communication was possible, and that meant making friends, enemies, and who the fuck knew what else.

  Time for a distraction, then, and talk about something they’d both find interesting. First step to a friendship.

  “Hannah,” Mia said. “She um… she… fit all of… Adron inside her.”

  Caera chuckled as she lifted her head, happy for the change in topic. Point for Mia.

  “Yeah well, a few years of a demon stretching out your pussy with an even longer tongue, you’ll get used to taking a dick like that.”

  Tongue. Giant long tongue, that deep, stretching? Mia shivered.

  “Hell is horrible,” she said, “and… really fucking horny.”

  “It is. Though I gotta admit, ever since you walked in, something’s in the air. Can’t quite put my cw on it, but… yeah, there’s something going around. People are extra horny.”

  Couldn’t have been because of her. Not like Mia was drop dead gorgeous or anything. Yeah sure, she was fit and lean, and despite being tiny, she had a great ass. But the succubi she’d seen were breathtaking, and every so often she spotted a betrayer who looked better than her. Maybe Hell just really liked gingers? Nah, that couldn’t be it.

  Caera climbed down the wall of the big cave room with the throne, and helped Mia do so too. Diogo stood by the throne, and with him stood another brute, not quite as tall but still taller than Caera, who was already eight feet tall. Brutes were massive.

  “Watch your back,” Caera whispered, “and stay close to Adron. He’ll keep you safe.”

  “Thanks,” Mia said, smiling.

  “Still alive,” Diogo said. Damn that voice was like an earthquake it was so deep. Slowly, he squatted down, and motioned for her to come toward him.

  She did, doing her best to hide her heavy gulp as she closed the distance. A gnce back at Caera showed the tregeera nodding and gesturing for her to continue. But once Mia reached Diogo, Caera left, gncing back over her shoulder too, and smiling at Mia before she disappeared up into her tunnel. Caera didn’t have to go so soon, since they were still waiting for Diogo’s group to show up, including Adron. Maybe she had somewhere to be? Or maybe she just hated Diogo that much.

  Either way, Mia was with Diogo now, just when she’d started figuring out Caera. But Adron seemed like a nice guy—er, demon. He seemed genuinely interested in making Hannah enjoy herself, so there was that at least.

  Diogo was a question mark, but probably a bad guy, full of himself, convinced of his superiority, and more than willing to sacrifice others for his own personal gain. Cartoon vilin. She had to be careful.

  “Still alive.” She stood proud, and made sure to not cover her breasts or sex, like Caera said. Diogo reeked of the sort of beast who’d only get turned on if she looked vulnerable and shy, likely leading to her getting pinned down and fucked.

  Diogo didn’t look as unattractive as she’d originally thought he did. Huge, muscur, and the demon skull face, definitely more menacing and scary than Adron’s, didn’t hit her with an immediate ‘ah run away!’ impulse anymore. The defined jaw and eye sockets were actually kinda intriguing.

  For just a stupid second, Mia pictured herself in Diogo’s hand; he’d only need one. He’d be sitting on his throne, and using her body like a toy, slowly lifting her up and down on something even bigger than the shaft Adron had used on Hannah. Mia, squirming, wriggling, writhing, drenching the huge demon while other demons watched. Little her, the toy of the big bad demon everyone else was scared of, getting pumped full of cum until it flowed down her thighs and dripped off her toes.

  She snapped her eyes down and frowned at herself. It was official. Hell really was getting to her, in the weirdest way possible. Was there one of those weird sexual auras around? Didn’t seem like it.

  “It’s a four day trek to the spire,” Diogo said. “You will stay near the group, unless you wish to die to a hellbeast, Cain cultists, remnant hordes, or what have you.”

  “Alright.” So outside the cave, it was a deadly pce even for demons. Maybe she could side with the Cain cultists, or trick a hellbeast — whatever that was — into attacking the demons? And there had to be sharp things she could find so she could stab. Stabbing was good.

  Diogo nodded as he stood back up, gave her a ‘shut up and wait’ snort, and turned back to face the other demons. Mia stepped back as the other demons worked to put armor on Diogo. Not a lot of armor. Too little armor, actually. Nothing to cover his stomach or throat or the insides of his thighs and arms. The only armor they gave him was some gauntlets for his wrists, a big sb of metal for one side of his chest, and a chain belt dangling with at least a dozen skulls, some human, many not.

  He didn’t think he needed armor. Considering his skin was nearly obsidian from bald head to toe talon, and he was bigger than other brutes by almost a foot in height, he was probably right.

  Over the next thirty minutes, more demons and humans came. Adron and Hannah came, Hannah still naked but Adron in armor. Two other brutes. Two other tiger demons, not as big as Caera but still damn big, nearly eight feet tall. Another vrat, not Brennus. One gargoyle, Loria.

  Most surprising were the two human men, the succubus, and the incubus. That brought up the tally of probably useless people to six: Mia and Hannah, and the two men and two sex demons. Were they sex demons? They had the bodies for it, though the incubus didn’t have a penis, which looked extremely strange. He’d probably grow one when aroused.

  Male demons. Female demons. Did that even make sense? The brutes all looked male. The tigers all looked female. The vrats all looked male, and the gargoyles all looked female. Coincidence? Not a chance. Hell was a strange pce, and she’d have to work hard to figure out the rules.

  If only David were with her. Figuring out how things worked, defining them, and arranging everything nice and neat was what he did best, not her. If it hadn’t been for Caera, Mia would have been in the dark completely.

  Adron came up to Mia and squatted down in front of her, a persistent, cocky grin on his face.

  “You’ll like Zel,” he said. “She’s a bitch who thinks she’s strong enough to take on Hell, and Heaven.”

  “That… doesn’t sound like someone I’d like.”

  “No?”

  “No. And she might eat me, right?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “But I think she’ll want to keep you alive, instead. An unmarked? Never seen one of you before. I’m sure you’ll find a way to surprise her and convince her you’re worth keeping around. Not like you’d make a good meal, with so little sin in your resonance.”

  Sin. Resonance. More words. Christ, she missed her ptop. She wanted to write things down, and maybe google them; Google would obviously know what terminology Hell used.

  “I… I guess I’ll think of something.”

  He nodded as he stood up. “Plus, just being around you is… strange. You might not have noticed since you only met her, but Caera’s been a depressed, angry demon since those Cainites killed her friends. Only reason she’s working for Diogo now is she thinks he’s the key to getting some revenge.”

  Oh, Caera didn’t always work for Diogo?

  “Come,” Diogo said, voice ending everyone’s chatter. “Let’s go.”

  Mia nodded, and looked at the fellow naked woman beside her, Hannah, before falling in behind the demon group. They took the tunnels, past chains, and past remnants the demons sughtered to clear the way, before they were outside once again.

  A sky of fire, mountains of red and dark stone, and who knew how many kilometers of walking awaited her.

  Yay.