“It seems your newfound soul has weighed down your tongue.” She grinned wider, displaying fangs that looked sharp enough to rend steel. “Or perhaps you are just being rude.”
I felt the blood drain from my face. Insulting a Fury was a surefire guarantee for a very short life expectancy, so I quashed my fear as best I could and opened my mouth to speak. While I was—had been—close with Meg, I’d had almost no interaction with Alecto. I opted to go the formal route.
“Greetings, Alecto Erinyes.” My voice squeaked, but at least I didn’t stammer. Yay, me.
The snake sliding across her shoulders moved down to duck its head beneath her left breast. “Your manners are appropriate for a human,” the Fury said as the viper copped a reptilian feel. “But your timing needs work.”
Eek. “My apologies, Erinyes. I’d mistaken you for another.”
“Indeed.” She raised a clawed hand to caress tendrils of serpents dangling by her ear. They darted out miniscule forked tongues and tasted her fingers. Beneath the mound of her breast, the larger snake flowed down and around, wrapping her waist in a scaled girdle. “You saw me as my sister. As I wished.”
“Why?” The question was out of my mouth before I could call it back.
She leered, and her serpents paused in their finger-bath to hiss their scorn. “You, of all creatures, ask me why I parade as another?”
I bit my lip. Okay, she had a point. But it wasn’t exactly my fault that I’d taken Caitlin Harris’s form when I’d run away from Hell. Demons weren’t trained to do the ethical thing. And really, the witch hadn’t exactly complained at the time. (Then again, she’d been too busy experiencing the best orgasm of her life to bitch about me stealing her looks. And credit cards.)
“Besides,” Alecto said, her bloody gaze crawling over me, “I thought borrowing one of my sister’s outfits would be amusing.”
Amusing, she said. I called it sadistic. My eyes began to water from the stink of spoiled eggs. Bless me, had there really been a time when I’d relished that smell?
She folded her arms over her chest, watching me for a moment. The silence between us was palpable, broken only by the sounds of scaled muscle unwrapping itself from her waist and sliding up her arm. Finally she spoke. “You will come with me, you who were Jezebel.”
“Where?” My voice hardly cracked. Another point for me.
The blood in her eyes shone wetly. “Hell.”
My heart slammed against my ribcage and suddenly I couldn’t take a proper breath. Going to Hell as a mortal meant only one thing: torture. For the foreseeable future.
As I strangled with building terror, she stared at me, the blood streaming from her eyes as bright as a cherry’s skin. Her claws tapped out a beat as she drummed her fingertips against her forearm. The serpent draped itself over her shoulders, tucked its head beneath the muscle of its body. The Fury waited.
My growing fear paused, allowing me to take a deep, shaky breath.
Waited?
Since when does one of the seven most powerful beings in all of creation wait for anything?
Answer: When she needs something. Desperately.
“Will you come with me?” she asked.
Asked?
“I don’t know,” I said, confidence overriding my survival instinct, “ever since they changed management, the food is terrible. And the portions are so tiny.”
New York humor in the face of eternal damnation.
Her fingers froze on her arm. The snakes of her hair swayed and hissed; the enormous viper coiled around her neck arched its head up and stretched its maw wide, showing me all its pretty fangs. Gleep.
“You mock me?” Alecto sneered, her bloody gaze weighing me and finding me wanting. “You, a little human tempter girl?”
“Actually,” I heard myself say, “I prefer to be called an exotic dancer.”
Her wings snapped closed, the report as loud as gunfire. I flinched, then stared down at the floor. Worrying my lip between my teeth, I braced myself for her violent response. I’d pushed my luck. There was a reason why even the Almighty supposedly tiptoed around the Furies. You never, never, never piss off an Erinyes. Period. Now she was going to annihilate me, send pieces of me flying through the planes until they rained down along the rim of Creation like organic confetti.
I hoped Paul wouldn’t slip on my spleen when he came home from work.
I wished I could tell him goodbye.
“Your tongue will get you into trouble one of these days,” Alecto said. “Perhaps I should just rip it out and crisp it over the Lake of Fire.”
Gah.
“Now come along. Quietly.”
A cold sweat broke over my skin. But even as the fear washed over me and through me, one thought kept me from merrily bidding adieu to my sanity: A Fury doesn’t ask its prey to come along quietly. A Fury does whatever she damn well pleases.
And on the heels of that, a realization: Alecto was trying to psyche me out.
“Well?” Her voice steamed with impatience…and something I thought was uncertainty. “Are you coming?”
I raised my eyes to peer up at her through my bangs. She was drumming her fingers again, the clawed digits pounding her arm so hard they should have left trenches in her skin.
Holy fuck in Heaven, she was nervous.
Taking a deep breath, I said, “Sorry. I’ve already got plans for today.”
Her eyes widened for a moment—perhaps when you’re almost on par with God in terms of sheer power, you’re not used to meeting resistance. Then those bleeding eyes narrowed dangerously.
“Come with me.” Above her face, her hair tangled and untangled the snakes writhing and reflecting their mistress’s displeasure. “Now.”
Hmmm. Still not dead. She must need me pretty badly. “No.”
In the longest pause of my mortal life, I waited with my breath held. Beads of perspiration tickled my upper lip, making it itch. I fought the urge to wipe the sweat away. When one played chicken with a malefic entity, one did not acknowledge any physical discomfort short of decapitation.
After a small eternity, she spoke through clenched fangs. “Return with me to Hell, you who were Jezebel, and I will take you to your friend.” She spat the last word. As a rule, denizens of the Underworld weren’t too keen on the concept of friendship. It was bad for their image.
I echoed, “My friend?”
“I will take you to Megaera.”
The thought of Meg and I reconciling made my heart dance a jig. Then I saw Alecto’s fangs flash in a victorious grin, and I realized she hadn’t been offering a way for Meg and me to kiss and make up. “Where is she?”
“If you choose to come with me to Hell, you will find out.”
The Pit is a better place without you and your Fury friend. I swallowed thickly, then whispered, “Is she okay?”
“No, tempter girl. She is far from okay. She is in grave torment.” Alecto’s eyes gleamed as she spoke, reflected her hunger for violence. “If you come with me to Hell, I will take you to her. Perhaps your presence would offer her some small comfort. She suffers because of you.”
A pitiful sound escaped my mouth. Bless me, I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t go back to the Abyss…but I couldn’t leave Meg to suffer.
Alecto’s eyes flared like supernovas, and I shielded my face. Through the sound of her laughter, I heard her voice