Page 34 of Hellbound

“Ready to die, string bean?”

Marian jerked as Lloyd Wertz’s head appeared at the top of the ladder. He hopped up to the platform as Marian clutched her chest.

Lloyd sauntered over to the anchor and scowled at the rope between her legs. He crouched down beside her, picked up the slack, and set to work succeeding where Marian had failed.

“That’s some knot you got there,” Marian grumbled. Lloyd released the thick braid of rope, pulled out another, finer coil of cord, and bound it around Marian’s wrists.

“Slip knot. Comes undone easily so I don’t have to cut anything off you.” The metal platform rattled as Lloyd stood and propped a foot on the anchor. “You ready?”

White blotches bloomed in front of Marian’s eyes. She blinked them away and tried to ignore the sudden wave of dizziness.

When are we ever? She squared her jaw and nodded, forcing some steel into her voice.

“Ready.”

There would be no screaming, no crying, no begging for her life. If Marian so much as sniffled before she jumped in, Lloyd would untie her, walk away without a word, and wouldn’t come back until she could look him in the eye and tell him she was ready to die. It ought to be a breeze after what Mr. Vale put her through.

She cleared her throat. “All set, Tori?”

Tori didn’t reply immediately, but when she did, her voice rang out strong and clear. “Good to go whenever you are!”

Lloyd crossed his arms as Marian stared at the water until her eyes unfocused. Six slow breaths later, she nodded again at no one and slipped off the edge of the platform into the water. With her ankles bound, she had to gyrate her whole body to tread water for the few seconds she had left to breathe.

Marian blinked through the water streaming down her face.

“Drop.”

The platform creaked as Lloyd shoved the anchor over the edge on her command. A loud splash marked the beginning of the rapid countdown. Marian blew out a breath, emptying her lungs in time for the anchor to drag her under. The drop was a short one, the weight pinning her barely a foot from the bottom.

She waited there, bound and floating a mere twelve torturous inches below the surface of the pool as she waited for death to claim her. It happened quicker than she expected, and with a sudden crushing sensation. Her vision split down the middle as every one of her internal alarms went off.

Fuck, it hurt. Marian thrashed in her bonds, convinced her body was moments away from exploding. Her death at Mr. Vale’s hands seemed so gentle by comparison.

Then the pressure vanished, leaving her with only the sensation of falling. Down, down, down. Always down.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Marian awakened in Hell with a gasping breath. She stood on the parched flat ground, the Tower in the distance. Its spires disappeared through the thick mist obscuring Hell’s trio of moons. She flexed her fingers in front of her eyes. Five on each hand, all intact and opaque. Whole again and standing in a place that looked nothing like the medieval paintings her stepfather had forced her to study when she was a little girl—the lakes of fire and horned devils tormenting nude sinners.

But Beksiński’s work came so close to truth that Marian was convinced he’d seen Hell for himself.

Focus.

She forced her hands to her sides as she swiveled around to look for Tori, anxiously searching for a sign that the traveler had succeeded where the last had failed.

The air was still and heavy with the same foul stench as always. A weak tug at her breast guiding her toward the Tower reassured her that her instinct endured, and that it still sensed the key.

But if Tori was here, she didn’t feel her.

“Tori?” Marian whispered to the vastness of Hell. A faraway rumble of shifting metal answered. Both noises quickly dissipated into Hell’s ambient buzzing.

“Whoa,” a bright, fuzzy voice crackled behind her.

Marian whirled around in time to see countless threads of amber light emerge in the space in front of her. They wove together rapidly to create a translucent humanoid shape. After a few seconds, a whole, golden, glowing woman stood before her. Not quite solid like Marian—the reddish cast of Hell bled through the traveler’s vessel—but phantasmal. A radiant ghost was born before her eyes.

Marian stared speechless as she realized she’d never seen a traveler in Hell before. They weren’t solid like divers. Greg sometimes called them “Lite Brite bitches.” Crass, but not inaccurate.

“You found me,” Marian said as she watched Tori’s glow fade and brighten in a measured cadence, like breathing.