Page 59 of Hellbound

“Creed,” Stellan interrupted. “Show her.”

Marian winced as another harsh light switched on. Metal scraped metal. Black Blazer—Creed, she assumed—lumbered into view from behind her dead cow neighbor to hang another body beside her. But it wasn’t an animal.

It was a naked woman with short auburn hair and pale skin marked by clouds of freckles reaching from her shoulders to her bare breasts. A ladder of surgical staples curved over her hip to her navel like a zipper. The flesh around the metal was red and inflamed. Freshly-cut.

Marian’s stomach bottomed out as the woman stirred.

Aisling. The poacher from Hell.

She was alive. Barely, it seemed.

It all raised too many questions, and Marian was in no position to deal with them there. She needed to get through this, preferably with her face intact.

The diver beside her slowly lifted her head up, her eyes glassy and unfocused. A strange, guttural moan spilled from her parted, bruised lips.

“You sent her after me,” Marian growled. She still couldn’t see Stellan or his goons.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Stellan replied out of view. “I paid her to bring me an artifact, which she failed to do. Just like you failed me a few weeks ago. She’s new to Hell-diving, and I thought I’d have better luck with fresh blood, but alas. She came back a drooling mess and is useless to me now, but a deal’s a deal.”

Marian’s eyes flicked over the diver’s slack face, the life extinguished from her blown-out eyes. The girl muttered the same senseless sounds under her breath.

She’d never seen firsthand what happened to divers who’d revived after fully succumbing to Hell’s traps, but Greg had. He spared no details, but only one mattered to Marian.

You’ll live, if you can call shitting in diapers and blowing spit bubbles for the rest of your life “living.” Whoever you were before Hell, though, doesn’t come back.

“Why’s she all cut up? What did you do to her?”

Stellan stepped back into view. This time, Creed and a second goon followed. One she’d not seen before.

“Only what we agreed on,” the demon chided. “Now, I believe you owe me an eye.”

“Stellan, come on.”

“I’m told it hurts like hell, but I wouldn’t know. How about a demonstration? Aisling seems to have a working nervous system, so this should give you a good idea of the pain level.”

Stellan strode around to the table laden with instruments, picked up some of the scariest-looking surgical utensils Marian had ever seen, and snapped his fingers at his goons.

Creed and two other nameless slabs of men lowered Aisling, maneuvering the girl until her knees touched the floor. Creed grabbed her by the hair and yanked her head back, wrenching another automatic groan from the catatonic diver.

Stellan stepped toward Aisling with what looked like a tiny ice cream scoop.

“I have a buyer for hers, but yours I think I’ll keep. Did you know gray is the rarest eye color? A shame everything else about you is so disgusting.”

Marian belched up a mouthful of stomach acid as Stellan approached the diver and snapped on a latex glove. Creed sided up to Marian and grabbed her by the ponytail. Marian swore loudly as he forced her to face Aisling.

Aisling gaped vacantly at the ceiling. Saliva dribbled down her chin to the floor.

Marian began to tremble. She tried so hard not to. What was a little viscera from a stranger to her? Not only a stranger, but a poacher.

Then it’d be Marian’s turn.

“Stellan, wait.”

But a ravenous intensity had come over the demon, his vile aura expanding. He gripped Aisling’s face, angling it back as he aimed his little scoop. Every voice in Marian’s head screamed in terror.

Then something buzzed loudly in Creed’s pants. Stellan’s hand hovered over Aisling’s face.

“Creed, shut that fucking thing off.”