Page 61 of A Serpent in the Garden

Footsteps pounding over, fast and frantic. Hounds howling, voices shouting, everything bright and loud and petrifying except for the demon shrinking back inside my mind, his voice that said, Jessarine. Whisper that to her.

I did, my lips kissing the rim of her cold ear. Her bizarrely beautiful eyes frosted over, like ice against a window.

The demons were upon me now, tall and terrifying, their faces lost behind helmets wrought into the likenesses of some sort of creature, but they didn’t grab me like I’d expected, and it was the hounds that scared me most. I looked up and beheld the future of that curious pup in the wood. Hellhounds with pointed ears and raised hackles and red eyes, froth boiling at the corners of quivering black lips; hounds that rose level with the shoulders of the guards and ducked their colossal, wolfish heads to fix me in their gazes. I felt their snarls reverberating in my body, the ground quaking beneath their clamor. Teeth like wet daggers bared around me from all sides.

Tell them to take you to Frost, It said, in a voice of such cold amusement that it sent a bolt through my stomach. Tell them you have the regent’s daughter. She supposedly loves her children. Shall we test that theory?

Something slid from Jessarine’s lap as I struggled to stand and drag her with me in the center of a heaving circle of furry black bodies. I repeated what It had said to total silence from the guards, though the hounds continued snarling, snapping. I felt the heat of their rasping breath all around me, captive and spellbound by their red eyes, the slitted pupils.

Careful with the blade, It said. Don’t cut her.

My heart lurched when I saw what lay at our feet. She had been making some sort of flower crown in the meadow, twisting ivy and moonflowers into a circlet. Damp spots from the grass on her pale blue dress, moonflowers behind her ears, the slender, kittenish body of a ten-year-old human child. She was the demon, but I was the one holding a blade against her acquiescent throat.

What are you doing? I asked. She’s just a little girl.

She’s full Frost and the daughter of its ruler. You want the curse broken? Her mother did it.

And you think she’ll be inclined to lift the curse once she hears I’ve held a blade to her daughter’s throat?

You see how she doesn’t fight you? You see how the guards hesitate? You know her true name. She’s in your thrall. You own her. Forever. As long as you live, she’s yours. You can lift the thrall but the second you say her name again, she’ll slip right back under the spell.

Then they’ll kill me to break her out of it!

It doesn’t work that way, It said testily, pressing a hand flat against his window. I know you think we’re monsters but the demons of Hell have rules, and murdering living mortals on a whim isn’t allowed. They’d need a full vote from the council if they want to kill you. We’re not God, smiting at any impulse. They’ll know it’s me behind this anyway.

Jessarine’s wintry little head fit snugly beneath my chin as I held her against me, her hair like cold water against my cheek. She smelled like sharp air just before the sky rips open with snow, the kind that makes your eyes pop open and your brain instantly awake. Did some piece of her know what was happening? Was she scared; did this veneer of forced serenity hide a terrified little girl?

If she’s anything like her mother, afraid is the very last thing she’s feeling at the moment.

“You’ve cocked this up, girlie,” the closest guard said to me. “You haven’t felt pain until you’ve been to Frost.” And to the guards grouped around him: “One of you get down there and tell the regent what’s happened.”

I hate this asshole, It said, as the guard flipped up the visor of his helmet to reveal a white diagonal scar worming across his face. He hunched to look into my eyes. I felt It glaring through his window as the guard aimed a terrible smile right back, like he knew exactly who lurked within my mind.

“Take her,” the guard tossed over his shoulder as he stalked back toward the gates I could hardly see through the hounds.

I caught only quick flashes from between their rigid limbs. Sweeping wrought-iron arches, stones that looked like hot coals. When the hounds broke ranks to make room for the guards, I found what seemed to be a massive dome built upon the earth, so huge the top was lost in clouds. The grasses nearest it were a tattered blonde, as if the building emitted too much heat and drained them of their pigment. They grew greener the further they spread from the building. My fear felt like a living, gasping thing, something that possessed me in the same way It did. Half of the guard fell behind me, the other half in front, the hellhounds closing ranks from the sides.

Calm down, It intoned. Breathe. Walk. The hounds won’t follow you inside. They’re angry because we sneaked up on them. It’s their job to keep the riffraff from reaching the meadow. They watch over the children and make sure unauthorized parties don’t breach the gates. You confuse them. Their eyes tell them you’re human but their noses tell another story. A smart-ass arc in his pitch as he scuffed one foot against the floor of my mind. They usually kill things that confuse them. The fact that they haven’t is a good sign.

The air was rent with their hostile breath, their panting. My head barely reached their elbow joints as they chaperoned me to the gates. Jessarine walked with me in tranquil indifference, as if blades were held to her throat all the time. Mutters from both the front and back guards reached me but I couldn’t glean any meaning through the panting of the hounds.

Don’t concern yourself with the mutters of this lot. If they were any good at all they wouldn’t be stuck on guard duty. It isn’t a job most demons would kill for. Boring. Except when it isn’t.

I ran a hand up and down Jessarine’s bare arm in an absurd attempt to warm her until I remembered where she came from. I’m not going to hurt her. I couldn’t.

I don’t want you to, either, It said, as though it were so silly he hardly needed to state it. I wouldn’t have given you her name if I thought you might.

The hounds shrugged off with a battery of furious snorts when we hit the gates, though one lingered, stopping me between its massive front legs and dipping its head low enough to meet my eyes. I could have steered Jessarine straight between its legs if I had a wish to, but I was suspended in its gaze, trying not to blink, not to breathe, not to infuriate it any more than I already had.

One of the guards snapped something rumbly and foreign but still it stared at me, nostrils quivering, as if it were trying to divine something from my scent. Its black lips trembled around a growl I heard curdling at the back of its throat. And then its red eyes disappeared when it blinked and wrenched its gaze off mine. It turned tail to stalk off across the dead grass, shoulders undulating.

Could gates possibly look this wicked? Ten feet tall, glowing with inner heat. In the center, the iron was contorted, furled and coiled into the shape of a snarling hellhound’s face, which split into two as it was pulled apart and drawn back into its grooves. All seemed dark just beyond the gates but for a dull gilt glimmer on the floor. I slid a little when I made it inside, nearly taking Jessarine down with me before I caught myself.

Torches lit the place, great gouts of flames licking up the stone walls, throwing shivering shadows everywhere, and suddenly I couldn’t see for the crush of bodies. Humans of all sorts, dressed like tramps and lords, ladies and harlots, people so different and so similar, because most wore the same look of crushing horror.

I slipped again. Looking down at what had caused it, I found a carpet of coins beneath my feet.

“Get back,” the guard It didn’t like was roaring into the cringing mob, knocking aside a human as if he were a gnat.