Page 7 of Deliver Us from Evil

Aye dios mio, what was wrong with me? I was chained up in a cellar, and this guy was clearly my captor or someone who works for him. There was no telling what he was going to do to me, and the unknown should've frightened me.

I opened my mouth to say something, anything, but the minute I tried pushing for words, all that came out was hacking. I coughed profusely, my throat feeling my sandpaper. I didn't realize how dehydrated I was. I noticed the man stepping closer before kneeling so we were at eye level.

"Here." I didn't notice until now that he was holding a black cup with water inside. He held it out for me to take.

Normally I'd be hesitant to take any offered drink that a strange man would try to hand me, but if I had any hope of asking even a quarter of the questions I had, I needed to drink something. I nodded my thanks as I took the offered cup and guzzled it down in one gulp, relishing the feel of the cold liquid running down my throat.

"Thank you," I finally got out in a strained voice.

The sexy man grinned down at me. "You're welcome, Antonia DeLuna."

My body stiffened at the sound of my full name coming from his plump lips. "How do you know my name?"

"I know a lot of things."

That was not comforting in the slightest. He knew a lot of things? Did he mean he knew a lot about me? "Then do you know where I am, or why I'm here?"

"I do," he said. "But if I tell you where you are, I'm sure you wouldn't believe me."

"Try me," I challenged.

The man's eyes grew intense as he uttered a single word from his full lips. "Hell."

I snorted out a laugh. "Yeah, I'm sure it'll feel like I'm in hell but where exactly am I?"

"No, you don't understand." The man shook his head. "You're literally in Hell, Antonia."

I stared at him like he grew a second head. "Seriously? I'm in Hell, liketheHell. As in Satan's domain, that Hell?"

"The one and the same," the man said.

I didn't know whether to laugh or to believe he was insane. There was no way I could be in Hell. Not when I was still alive. I shouldn't have been alive, but that didn't change the fact I still had a pulse and could breathe air into my lungs. I didn't know much about Heaven and Hell, but I was pretty sure only the souls of the dead could travel to one or the other, depending on what kind of person you were in your life.

"I sense your disbelief," the man stated flatly.

"Can you blame me?" I asked, not bothering to lie and say I believed him. The man was gorgeous to look at, but there was still the matter of me being chained in a secluded room with no way of running away or having any hope of overpowering him if he chose to jump me.

The man leaned closer which had me gasping as I tried to push further back against the wall, hoping it would magically open and swallow me whole. He didn't do much else other than move further into my personal space, thankfully. He didn't reach out to touch me or anything. It had me confused at first, wondering what the point was of him getting closer to me. That was when all sense of reality vacated my mind. Looking into his eyes, I saw it change before my own. One minute it was a pool of green with flecks of gold, and the next his entire eyes glowed red with flames flickering out. I paled as I stared into the fiery depths, my mouth slack and my heart racing. Such a thing shouldn't have been possible. There was no way someone's eyes could morph into tiny flames.

Nobody that was human, anyhow.

The demonstration lasted for ten seconds before his eyes returned to normal. One corner of the man's lips curled upward. "Do you believe me now?"

I nodded slowly, not bothering to feign ignorance since it wouldn't do me any good. "Who are you? What are you?"

"My name is Helios, and I'm a hellhound shifter."

I had to pause for a moment to let that sink in. I heard the words, but I found it difficult to process. "A-A hellhound... shifter? You mean like Cerberus?"

The man—Helios—rolled his eyes. "Yes, but unlike Cerberus, I only have one head."

"Thank God for small miracles," I muttered under my breath, then sighed. "Okay, so I'm in Hell and you're a hellhound. Why am I here?"

"How much do you remember about what happened to you?" Helios asked.

My brow furrowed in confusion at this change of subject. "Um, my husband and his colleagues tried to burn me alive but somehow I ended up here. What does that have to do with anything?"

"Is that all you remember?"

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