To Hell and Back by L.B. Gilbert

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Three weeks later

Valeria blinked against the wind. She parted the sand, digging out the roots where Michael had directed. The coarse grains were like sandpaper against her fingers, but the roots Michael had instructed her to pick were too fragile to dig out with a spade.

Wiping her sweat on her brow, she flickered her lashes to shake off the grains. She had a cloth wrapped around her head, knotting it to keep it from flying off. The wind picked up a lot in the late afternoon, and her mouth would have been filled with metallic sand if she weren’t covering her head.

Hell had a longer day than Earth and a very short night.

Valeria had been here for over twenty-seven days and twenty-six nights.

Despite her fervent prayers, Rhys had not come flying to her rescue. Valeria was in hell, not in a fairytale. And she was on her own. Again. Only this time, she was a slave to a ruthless entity who insisted he was divine and infallible.

Her captor wasn’t some random everyday angel named Michael. No, he was the Michael, the archangel above all others. And she was supposed to feel honored to serve him.

“You’ve been given a rare chance,” he told her that first night. “Don’t squander it.”

He then proceeded to show her what had happened to the people who had done just that. Valeria had stared at the bones of her many predecessors, which were discarded in the basement, with undisguised horror.

“You’re welcome to try to kill me after we reach Terra,” he’d said as she pressed herself against the basement wall, trying to get as far away from the bones as possible. “That would be amusing.”

He’d said that last with a grin so terrifying she hadn’t been able to sleep that night after he dismissed her from his presence.

“Mierda.” Valeria pulled her hand out of the sand to examine her bloody fingers. Still no roots, but there were plenty of jagged little rocks buried out here.

If you’re going to be this distracted, go slower. Valeria tried not to think about the past. But sometimes in between tasks, she’d become aware of a sharp pain in her chest. This was distinguished from all the other pains and aches she felt because it was over her heart. But she didn’t cry. Instead, she put a fist over the spot and pressed hard until it went away.

Her dreams of rescue faded with each passing day. Valeria had been pulled too far, too fast. But she was sorry for all the things they wouldn’t get to do, for what she had never gotten a chance to tell Rhys.

I never slept in his arms. She had desperately wanted to do that. Damn. There was the pain again.

When Valeria has seen Michael unmasked, she had been sure it was a lie, some sort of illusion charm. Letting her sixth sense open, she’d squinted, intentionally making her eyelid twitch to see if she could break the glamour.

But nothing made the apparition disappear. It was still there—a face so perfectly formed it set her teeth on edge.

The archangel had golden hair so bright it glinted silver at the edges like the gold and silver alloy electrum. His head was a rising sun.

As if that weren’t unnerving enough, his eyes were the same reflective silver of mercury. The irises were liquid, beautiful, and perfectly opaque. Despite Michael’s usually benign expression, there was no emotion in them—not that she looked into his eyes. She could barely focus on them because they were just as toxic as the substance they reflected.

Valeria had never believed in any of the mainstream religions, but she was fairly certain that was one of the pacts humans had made shortly after crawling out of the ooze. Sure, the Greeks had gotten up to some tomfoolery but, by and large, the gods didn’t walk around smiting their enemies anymore so human brains didn’t explode.

None of the books back home had gotten the details right.

“How are you here?” she’d asked shortly after that first meeting, still having trouble believing what she was seeing. “Aren’t you supposed to be up in Heaven bossing all the other angels around?”

Instead, Michael was ruling hell. Wasn’t that Lucifer’s job?

Michael’s mercury-filled eyes flared with satisfaction. “So, you’ve heard of me,” he said in a booming voice. “Good. It will make things much easier.”

But he didn’t explain why he was here, ruling this wasteland. She was starting to realize he never would. Instead, he began to strip off the top layer of skin on his hand.

Openmouthed with horror, she closed her mouth with a tiny snap when she realized Michael was wearing gloves. The claws she’d seen were pieces of metal that had been sharpened beyond razor-blade sharpness. The air whistled faintly with their every movement as if each were slicing the air itself.

She slapped a hand to her chin, feeling the sting of a small nick. “You cut me.”

“I had to make certain you were the one promised. A drop of blood was enough to confirm. Those who sent you will receive their reward—once I return to Terra.”

Cursing every black witch she’d ever met Valeria shook her head. “How am I supposed to help you?”

“I need a powerful assistant, a witch of true strength to fulfill my needs. Your bloodline has been monitored for generations. Whenever a witch of sufficient power was born in your realm, offers were made.”

“To hunt us down,” she filled in when he lapsed into silence.

“Yes. Precious few pursued the bounty,” he said, sounding annoyed. “Fortunately for me, your clan has many enemies. More than one group decided to take me up on my offer.”

That last part made little sense. Aside from Ravenna, Valeria didn’t have a single living relative. She sighed silently.

Perfect. Just perfect.Trust her mother to have made enough enemies in one lifetime that an archangel trapped in hell had been able to track her.

Sheol. She had never heard of it before landing here. Michael hadn’t named this realm in her presence. It had been Slank who did that as she showed Valeria around the fortress.

Sheol was the closest hell dimension to earth and the place Michael had been exiled. By who, he did not say. But she’d gathered enough bits and pieces to realize he hadn’t come here alone.

There had been other angels, and some were still alive. But not well…most definitely not well.

They didn’t come here to this fortress, of course. Slank had made that clear while they scrubbed pots and cleaned mortars and pestles in the kitchen. “Fearr masssterr tey dooo. Is gudd. All other princesss are trashhh.”

Valeria had hidden her surprise. “Err. Okay. But I’m curious, why aren’t the other angels allies?”

Slank hadn’t known, but Michael himself had answered the question a week later during a long and very loud rant.

The master disliked them because they had gone ‘native’.

“You should see what Remiel looks like now—horns and spider legs,” Michael spat as he stalked back and forth in front of his throne. His mercury eyes darkened to gold in his anger. “It’s a disgrace.”

He’d gone on about the current appearance of the remaining angels long enough for her to gather that they’d gone through some form of de-evolution.

Sheol bent them, slowly reshaping them into a form suitable to the environment. Something more like Slank but infinitely more dangerous. Of all the Host, as Michael called his former compatriots, only he had stood firm.

Every other angel had surrendered to their circumstances, becoming twisted and deformed…like the sparse population she never got to see.

Everyone succumbed. It was just a matter of time before she followed suit.

Unless you help Michael get back to Earth. Not that she had a choice. He was her only shot at getting back home. That and he’d snap her neck if she dared disobey. And so her life of drudgery continued—bouts of mindless work interspersed with bone-chilling moments of dread and dismay.

She got up at first light, gathering things in the ‘garden’ Slank had planted just outside the fortress gates. Things only grew near the walls because of Michael’s grace. Ten yards out and the soil was barren. Slank had shared that in a hissing tone of warning as if Valeria were planning on making a break for it. As if she were stupid enough to run across a desert landscape on an alien planet.

After she finished the outside chores, Valeria would scuttle into the castle. Her tasks inside were varied. Sometimes, she would help Slank in the kitchen, a task that turned her stomach, but Michael never complained about the food they produced. Mostly she would work in the library, looking up things at the archangel’s direction or occasionally dusting there or in the laboratory.

This last was where Michael spent most of his time. It was directly across from the library, the long rectangular rooms built as mirror images of each other with the throne room just above them.

Large double doors built on an archangel scale were set in the middle of each room, facing each other across the hall. They were left open so Michael could shout summons or yell instructions.

In the evenings, he dismissed her to eat in the kitchen while he sat down to a feast in the throne room, where Slank attended him.

One night, she made the mistake of asking him if Slank’s smell bothered him.

“Her what?” he’d asked, looking at her blankly.

“Her scent. It’s, um, rather strong, isn’t it?” Valeria was grateful her mealtimes didn’t coincide with Slank’s because she was sure she’d never be able to choke down any sustenance.

The archangel had given her a look of such condescension and contempt in reply that Valeria had put two and two together. To him, she smelled just as bad. Humans, even un-mutated humans, were sacs of oil, sweat, occasional flatulence, and little more.

In Michael’s eyes, she and Slank were both insects. They were useful in their way, but intimately they were just bugs.

As for her diet, Valeria only ate things from the garden. Her favorite thing, or at least her least disliked one, was the bulbous roots that reminded her of radishes but had the texture of water chestnuts, only sour. Almost everything that grew in the soil was either sour or sickly sweet. Michael would only eat the ones Slank managed to combine, balancing those two traits together. It took a lot of time and effort, however, so only Michael was entitled to eat those dishes.

He also ate meat.

Every few days, the archangel flew away to hunt, returning hours later with unidentifiable bundles.

She didn’t want to know what it was that ended up on the banquet table, preferring blissful ignorance on this score. At least until Michael’s dinner attacked her.

It happened early one morning. She had been gathering at the edge of the arable land, digging below the surface for the twisted vegetables that would be her and Slank’s dinner—the farther from the castle, the worse their quality.

One second, she was adjusting the gloves that protected her from the coarse sand. Then she lifted her gaze and saw a face full of fangs inches from her head.