Page 31 of A Match Made in Hell
A quick glimpse into the room, now flooding with smoke as he sidesteps a two-pronged attack, tells me he won’t be coming any time soon.
Well, fine. I growl, both at the bat and the situation, and yank its ear. Its mouth loosens and I drag my arm free, diving to the floor and scrambling for my knife. My vision blurs as a fresh spike of pain shoots through me, but I don’t stop moving. I find the hilt of the blade.
The shadow of the bat looms overhead, and I whirl round, shoving the weapon straight into its belly. It meets resistance and I slam it harder, my teeth grinding together with the effort.Black blood spurts out the edges of the wound. I twist the knife, dragging it up and round its insides; it squeaks and squeaks and I don’t care, I have to kill it – tears run down my cheeks, but I can’t stop, not until it’sshut up.
Finally, it slumps forward. I pull the knife out and scuttle away, trembling. The blood on my hands is almost like tar, so sticky I can’t shake it off no matter how hard I try. I stare at the body, panting.
Something crashes inside the room. My knees threaten to buckle as I hobble over to check if I can assist in any way. Running would be the safer option, but, apparently, I hate myself.
The room is a replica of the previous: an empty cave, save for the iron maiden in the centre. Sath is battling the final bat, his arms aflame, shooting arrows of fire at its head. But it’s too quick. It ducks and dodges each attack, wings flapping furiously. Sweat gleams on Sath’s face.
He’s killed the other three, at least. Their heads are rolling around near the doorway, while their bodies twitch in the far corner. I avert my gaze in time to find the bat hurtling straight for me. I raise my knife – I shouldn’t have come back for Sath,whydid I come back for Sath? – but before the bat can reach me, Sath’s there, back to my chest, pressing me into the wall and shielding me from the oncoming attack.
The bat crashes into him instead, the tip of its wings slicing into his stomach. He shudders against me, and his flames go out. I check his hands: empty. His sword has disappeared.
But I still have my knife.
The bat rears, gearing up for another charge.
‘Sath,duck,’ I whisper.
He drops, rolling underneath the bat as it lunges, allowing me to plunge the knife into its eye. No hesitation this time. I don’t care. Not about the blood, or its scream, or the fact I’vetaken another life. It’s a demon. A monster. It deserves to hurt. I picture Aric’s face when he watched that man burn, and I want to stab the bat again. I want to stab it over and over and over – I’m breathing hard by the time I realise I’ve driven the knife so deep the bat is spasming around the weapon, like I’ve embedded it into its nervous system.
I gasp, squashing that lingering urge formore, and pull the knife out. The bat falls to the ground. Blood oozes around its body like an oil spill. I look away, feeling distinctly nauseous, my rage dimmed by the sudden silence in the room. The initial sting in my arm has subsided to a dull ache, and I flex it to check everything’s still working before looking over at Sath.
He’s coated in more blood than me – I guess from all the beheading he was doing while I was busy getting bitten – and it leaves streaks over his face, his neck, his hands. His cream jumper is ruined.
There’s also red pooling across his stomach.
‘You’re hurt,’ I say, fighting the entirely inappropriate instinct to reach out and inspect the wound. He does not need me to care for him. He probably doesn’twantme to care for him. But he did get that injury defending me, which is making me feel all kinds of inconvenient things like gratitude and guilt. I lock my arms to my sides, just to be safe.
Sath lifts his jumper to reveal a sliver of tanned skin with a deep cut sliced through the muscle. ‘It’s nothing.’
‘That is not nothing.’ My hands are pressed against his flesh before I can stop them. I pause. Look up at him. Touching the Devil is probably a massive no-no. But the wound is deep, and he isn’t doing anything to stem the bleeding. Instead, he’s staring at me, a muscle in his cheek ticking. ‘Will you heal, like, magically? Or I could try and . . . I don’t know, stitch it, or something.’
I say that like I have any ideahowto stitch a wound. Blood, fresh and red, coats my hands as it leaks over my fingers. It’sso . . . human. So different to what came out of those bats.
‘I’ll heal.’ He frowns, noticing my arm for the first time. ‘You’re hurt too.’
I wince as he lifts my arm, examining the twin puncture marks the bat left behind. His fingers prod my skin, his touch deft and light as he brushes blood away using his thumb. I step closer, like he’s a magnet, drawing me in. Beneath my hand, I can feel his stomach rise and fall with his every breath.
And I feel it stop moving when his breath hitches.
I peer at him, and something in the air shifts. I seem to have taken another step without knowing it. He’s dangerously close now, our chests almost brushing, and although he’s staring at my arm I don’t think that’s where his attention is. His eyes flare.
‘Why do they do that?’ I ask. ‘Your eyes. Sometimes they’re brown, and sometimes they’re like . . . molten gold.’
Sath inhales. When he finally meets my gaze, his eyes are brown again, but I’m sure something flickers beneath the surface, like a candle behind a curtain threatening to burn the whole building down.
‘My powers come from Tartarus,’ he tells me. ‘The flames of Hell itself, to be used at whim. You only see it when it comes to the surface. Sometimes it happens when I want it to. Sometimes it’s when I lose control of . . . certain emotions.’
‘And what happens when you lose control?’
His grip on my arm tightens. I return the favour by pressing harder on his stomach. We’ve just fought side by side – don’t I deserve the truth? There’s a beat, two, three, before he finally speaks.
‘It can be overwhelming, sometimes,’ he says in a hoarse voice. ‘It’s hard to know what’s real and what’s my power, whispering dark things in my head, encouraging me to do worse. The feeling of . . .’ He breaks off, shaking his head. ‘I should clean your wound.’
I narrow my eyes, debating whether or not to let him get away with that half answer, but am immediately distracted by his nail digging into one of my puncture wounds.
