Page 313 of Caelum

“Eve!”

We roared her name over and over, screamed it, but to no avail. A thousand times we yelled it, but she never answered. The creature she’d turned into, some kind of beast that belonged in a nightmare, had turned against us, allowing her to fall into the endlessness below.

As I watched Frazer run around the pit, peering down as far as he could without toppling in himself, I knew we were running around like headless chickens, knew it but also knew we couldn’t stop ourselves.

“Eve!” I roared over the water and the fire, and suddenly, neither were there.

The silence was deafening. Louder than even the screams of earlier, than the roar of the fire and water combined. I shot my brothers a look, knew they felt my terror, and without fear of being hit by the duality of good and evil that guarded the pit, I knew I had no choice.

Calling on mygouille, I felt my skin turn to that dull leather and my senses become a thousand times keener, and I backed up from the pit that Eve had dived into.

As the others stared into the endless darkness below, I knew I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t follow her. Praying that thegouille’swings would make an appearance as they had back in Mexico—something they did rarely—I took a running jump and dove into the pit.

Behind me, my brothers screamed my name.

“Nestor!” was Dre’s hoarse cry, and it echoed around the tunnel, thesound a comfort as it circled me, cosseted me, as I tumbled down into the pitch darkness.

My heart sank as I realized mygouillewasn’t about to help me, and almost as though thinking about it was all it took, my wings appeared, piercing my skin, and sending acute waves of agony through me.

I roared as the pain hit my nerve endings and, for the second time, I flew with muscles that were still new to me. But this was different than Mexico. There, I hadn’t flown, more like glided. This was flying.

With the wings, my descent was more controlled than before. If I hit bottom, wherever the bottom was, maybe I wouldn’t just be a splat now… Although, if I was a splat, then what the fuck was Eve?

The tunnel seemed endless, and only me and mygouille’sneed for our mate kept us from turning upward, from getting the fuck out of here. It was creepy, and the deeper we went, the narrower it became. The heat made my blood bubble in my veins, with only my creature’s tough skin shielding me from death itself.

And just as the fear hit me that I’d never reach the bottom, I saw her.

She lay there, a tumble of arms and legs. Her body limp, lax in a way I recognized. In a way I dreaded. Beside her, there was a pile of ash, and though I didn’t understand what I was looking at—had she collided with Erlik and that had stopped the fire and the water?—all I could understand was that I now walked in a world without Eve.

Agouilleshed tears for the loss of a Pack member, for its mate, and for the birth of its fledgling. As I stared at her, my face was wet from the tears that fell as I dropped to my knees so I could gather her in my arms. Her body was heavy with its lack of life. I squeezed her to me and released a roar that was loaded with my pain. My agony.

When I heard two more, the bear’s call and the Hell Hound’s wrathful, keening bellow, I knew the message had been received and understood.

My brothers knew she was gone.

My wings led me, not my head. A part of me recognized that the pit that led to Hell was now open. If Erlik had spoken the truth, did that mean the devil could come wandering out of wherever he was hiding and soar onto Earth?

I’d just lost my mate to save a bunch of ungrateful humans from Ghouls. The prospect of welcoming the devil to this realm was just beyond me.

I didn’t look around, didn’t see the inner workings of the entrance to Hell. I just flew. For some reason, the flight was shorter on the way up than it was on the way down, and when I reached the mouth of the tunnel and Isaw my brothers, their faces as wet as mine, as they took in Eve’s limp form, I felt my heart cave in on itself in my chest.

How could anyone live with this pain?

How could they endure?

It didn’t matter that I’d just entered hell itself to get to her.

The second Eve had passed over, Earth had become my living hell.

THIRTY-ONE

REED

Silence.

There were no words, no reasonings or justifications. There was only pain.

The exquisite pain of knowing she was gone. That she’d dived into the pit of Hell because we’d made our wish, taken her free will from her when she’d wavered in her path.

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