A Sanguinary Rose (Complete)

I had snapped.

My own body wasn’t under my control anymore.

It didn’t seem possible eyes could run dry. I was the last one to let go of Anja.

Royce shook Scarlett’s shoulder. She didn’t like that. I didn’t like it either. No one bosses me around. “Come on. Let’s go.” When she didn’t respond, the old man seemed close to losing his temper. “We have to get out of here. We need to find Melanie and get out before Mandala changes his mind.”

Scarlett and I made no move. Her grief had infected even me. The corpse’s weight still pressed against us.

It was Oliver who voiced our thoughts. He snatched the beanie cap from his head and balled it up, squashing it in his hands.

“He killed Anja. I will send him to the deepest circle of Hell for it. She can’t have died for nothing.”

I seconded his opinion.

“He’ll kill you, too,” Royce said, shuffling. “Please, reason with me, Oliver. I can’t lose another one of you, please…”

“What difference does it make? I have nothing to go back to, certainly not my family.”

The teacher turned to our guardian angel, his eyes pleading. “Alan, help me out here.”

He watched us for a few seconds, holding on tight to Scarlett’s dead girlfriend. Even the pretty boy hadn’t been immune to a couple of tears. “Right.”

Alan knelt beside us. We both felt the trembling hand he placed on our shoulder. “Come, we have to go. Anja can’t stay here, or Limbo will claim her soul.”

Scarlett’s nose was pressed against the back of her head, the sweet and gentle flowery aroma clinging to her blonde hair. It’d be the last time she smelled it. Scarlett didn’t want to lose her scent, or it’d ruin her even more.

“Oliver’s got the right idea…” Scarlett said, her dead stare transfixed ahead on the pavilion tent. “He won’t get away with it.”

Royce clasped a hand to his forehead. “There’s nothing you can do to him. Didn’t you see? He’s practically immortal.” He wiped his eye. “Scarlett, please don’t make me beg. Revenge solves nothing. It brings only more loss and destruction.”

Scarlett spoke exactly what I had in mind. “No. No half measures. We don’t turn tail. We came, we sacrificed, so we sure as hell are going all in, or it’ll have been for nothing.”

“Nothing in existence is immortal,” Morganne said, watching wisps of fog dance about her feet. “Not even gods. I guess what I’m trying to say is I’ve got an idea. A crazy idea.”

At least she was upfront about it.

Scarlett scoffed. “Thinking about dropping a meteorite on our heads?”

“Too crazy for me. But I like the way you think.” She steepled her fingers inside her overlong plum-colored sleeves. “The warlock may be nearly immortal against all our means. But what is he compared to an Archdemon?”

“You’re insane.” Royce snapped. “We don’t have the power to summon an Archdemon. Not only that, but you’d have to convince it to come. Besides, you don’t know how it might react to us bothering it. We are nothing but insects to them.”

“Oliver is Belial’s descendant,” Morganne said. “He could coax him to come to us.”

The devil’s skin went pale. “Oh no, no. No way. He’s right. You’re insane.”

There was a fire in our blood, and though I seldom agreed with Scarlett, we shared the same sentiment. Arguing led nowhere.

“I’ll do it.” By which she meant I would be the one doing it.

She lay Anja’s head gently on the hazy ground. The fog rose gently over her like a wave in the sea, shrouding her like a sleeping blanket.

Royce was gawking at us, his eyes pleading. “How? You can’t. Please, I don’t want to lose you, too.”

“This is how we’ll stop Mandala and the Witch Hunts. There’s no other way.”

“I will bring you before the Archdemon.” Morganne’s lips were quivering. “I can do it.” She took our hand. “For Anja.” Her eyes became dark pits of tar as energy fizzled around her frame. Her voice croaked out. “Nothing can tear us apart.”

“So be it then,” Royce said, casting a spell between his teeth and making gestures with his fingers. He tapped our back. “I’m anchoring you to this dimension. When it’s done, I’ll pull you out. For Anja.”

“I will be your guardian,” Alan said, grasping a light spear. “For Anja.”

“We will be your guardians,” Oliver said, standing side by side with the angel. “For Anja.”

The wormhole flashed before our eyes. The mouth to Hell tore open at our feet, a yawning, shrieking abyss.

Scarlett stepped forward. “For Anja.” For vengeance. “If Belial eats me, close the portal and flee.”

***

If Scarlett gave me more leeway, I might have objected coming to this circle of Hell. It had been an emotional impulse, nothing more. One doesn’t simply consider coming here is ever a good idea.

At first, the heat was a welcome change from the icy Limbo. A minute later we wished we were freezing in solid ice. Maybe it wouldn’t kill us like sunlight, but it was suffocating enough to make breathing a chore. The stench of eternal smoke and brimstone choking our nostrils made us wish we didn’t have to breathe.

Torrents of ash swirled in the red sky and forever sleeted over the redland. Poisonous fumes billowed up from the pits of fire as the howling of the tormented ripped through the air and into our ears.

Scarlett was afraid. I felt it in our frantic heart. Though her anger overpowered any fear. And logic.

We heard him before we saw him.

The titanic, grotesque being lumbered to his feet from the mountain of rocks, which had terraformed to become his seat. Belial stepped forward and his charred, red-skinned ankle smote the rugged, ash-and-bone strewn ground. The monstrous being knelt and bent down for a better look.

Scarlett gasped. His movement caused the world to shudder and groan, throwing us off our feet. She rose, looking into his smoldering black-and-gold slit eyes.

There was a deep, bass rumbling to his voice. “Ha.”

His mouth and throat were a gaping cavern of fire, a volcano simmering before its eruption. It looked as though the sun would rise from the bottom of his pharynx. A heat wave blasted from his lips when he spoke. “You come willingly to my domain?”

Scarlett barred our face from the intense heat. “Gladly, too.”

“It is not your time yet. Although I shall oblige if you will.” He hovered a finger above us.

Our heart jumped to our throat. She raised our hands over our head as the rock-like monumental finger pressed down on us, groaning and screaming as all our strength concentrated to push it back. Tears stung our eyes. The strain was too much. Its force buried us thigh deep into the ash and crunching bones of the lost. All the grime and soot slipped inside her shoes, like sand and broken shells between prickling our toes. Soon our bones would join the rest.

Belial’s touch was gentle though. Like a man pressing an ant against the gravel.

“There’s power of mine in you,” the titan said, removing his finger. “Not one in my lineage has dared visit my throne before.”

Our trembling hands grasped the ashen ground to push us out of it, coughing and wheezing. Scarlett allowed me to take over for her. “It pleases me I can break the monotony of your day, my King. I wouldn’t dare disrupt your peace unless there was something important you ought to know.”

“In Hell nothing is of importance.”

I staggered up as our knees threatened to buckle. Our palms were tainted black. “Not even your name? Your pride? Your dignity? Your legacy?” The titan listened, and I spoke. “What will the other Kings say? What about your subjects? They will say the grand, mighty Belial bows to lesser beings.”

The Archdemon bared his stalactites of teeth. The back of his throat glowed like a thousand suns. “Insolence to my name is what you are.”

“No. On the contrary, my liege, I come to your name’s defense. There is one who’d dare thwart your thriving legacy, one who’d destroy and sully all there is to the name Belial, one who’d claim immortality when not even you could. Your heirs and I plead that you wipe out this threat to your House once and for all.”

“I remain chained to this circle of Hell. If such foe exists, he will have to come to me.”

Scarlett’s lips curled to smile at the Archdemon. “Allow me to further break the monotony of your day. We can bring you to him.”

***

The visit to one of the deepest circles of Hell was enough to sober me up from the grief—if I kept it out of my mind.

Mr. Royce’s anchor pulled me back to Limbo. The wormhole deposited me among the rising and falling hills of chilly brumes. The funereal cold provided a sigh of relief on my skin. Soot and ash stained every inch of my body, as well as it filled up my jean pockets and sneakers. Cold sweat glued my bone-and-shell crusted, crimson hair to the side of my face.

Oliver’s bonfire had died down to crackling embers by now. Mounds of ash that used to be vampire thralls littered the encampment.

Mr. Royce helped me to my feet while patting my shoulders. “Thank goodness. Are you all right? Scarlett, are you all right?” He shook me, and then looked to the main pavilion. “There’s no more time.”

“He’s coming.” I turned to the witch, whose scleras were still midnight black in the middle of a formidable and exhausting incantation. “Morganne.” She winced in response, drawing in a large lungful of air, her body shuddering from head to toe.

“Who’s coming?” Mandala asked. His gruff voice sent a stab of anger through my core. Then another of panic as I realized he held Melanie as a hostage. One thing I knew for sure, Belial wouldn’t spare her if she got caught in his way.

Alan and Oliver stood before us like a pair of sentries, shielding us from the warlock.

Mandala’s hands rested on Melanie’s shoulders. “I found her rummaging through our intel.”

“I was looking for a way out—” She began, before the warlock wrapped a burly hand over her mouth.

“You had all this time to leave. Yet you’re still here. Why? Do you have some kind of… death wish?” He wore a brand-new trench coat. It was amazing how he seemed spanking new, almost unaffected by the previous fights and injuries. “Unless you’ve changed your minds about joining my cause, because otherwise… I pity you.”

I choked back the tears filling up my eyes. “If we allow you to continue, we’ll have nothing to go back to, except for death and chaos.”

Mandala pursed his lips. “I’m sorry for your loss, Scarlett. But I swear, this time I will kill all of you. I gave you a choice: Either join me, or leav—”

There was an explosion of heat. The ground quaked, shaking some of us off our feet. Claws of obsidian emerged from a quickly expanding wormhole as Morganne screamed from sheer exertion. A mountain of charred, crimson hide heaved itself up from the abyss, spilling roiling waves of darkness. From the pores on its skin, steam hissed in furious geysers. The brumes fogging the world became clouds of red and orange.

Morganne stumbled backward from exhaustion, eyes brimming with excitement and ogling after the Archdemon. “I did it. You guys, I did it.”

“Yes, you doomed us,” Mr. Royce said, yanking her back to her feet and dragging her after him. “Get away from it.”

Oliver watched with awe at his ancestor rising to its full mountainous height. “Is that thing where I come from?”

Alan shook his shoulder to snap him out of it. “Get Anja. We’re leaving.”

The devil slid to his knees beside her body and hauled her up on his arms. “What about Melanie? We can’t leave without her.”

“We’ve sacrificed too much. Too much risk. We have to leave now,” Mr. Royce said, casting terrified, fleeting glances at Belial. “Morganne, get us out of here.”

“But—”

“We. Can’t.”

There was a heart-wrenching scream. Melanie eyed the Archdemon trampling its way towards her and the warlock, shaking the whole world with each step. An expression of mad fright was etched on her face as colossal pillars of flame sprouted from the ground in Belial’s wake. Without thinking, my feet were already carrying me towards them.

Mr. Royce and Alan shouted after me as heat waves erupted from the ground all around and buffeted my skin, making my eyes sting.

Mandala was getting ready to jump into a portal when I slammed into his massive bulk, sending him sliding on his side across the reddening haze.

I took Melanie’s hand. “Come on, let’s get out.”

Before my feet gave two more steps, I felt a tugging in my arms, my legs, my neck, torso—it rooted me to the spot. The more I commanded my limbs to move, the more they hurt. Melanie turned to look at me, petrified.

“Go!”

“But—”

“Leave! The fire will kill you all.”

Melanie nodded and sped off, weaving her way among licking snakes of flame.

My body rotated by itself on the spot to face Mandala. He wobbled to his feet, an arm extended towards me. I felt the flames rising, dancing, a great sky-high inferno enveloping us in its sweltering heat. Mandala looked up behind me as the Archdemon’s shadow swathed us in its fiery darkness. “Together,” he said. The invisible bindings controlling my limbs dropped me to my knees. “We shall face the product of your determination.”

The Archdemon bent over us, stepping through the curtains of fire. The wrath in his demonic eyes were directed at Mandala. His guttural voice was like stone grinding on stone, like a roaring bonfire. “Let us test this ’immortality’ of which you speak.”

Mandala stood unflinching. Sweat rolled off the side of his face in streams. “For your sake, King of Flame, I hope one blow is enough to kill me.”

There was a sound of lava gushing over ice, as if chuckling. “It won’t be.” Belial’s cavernous maw opened wide. It glowed with the force of a star. Like a volcanic rim, fire spewed forth to engulf a whole mountain in its blaze.

The screams got to me first. I barred my face from the blinding incandescence, from the searing heat as a burning sensation took over my entire body.

The last thing I remembered before the heatstroke was Mandala howling in utter agony, and the world going black.