Dire Blood (#5) (The Descent Series) by SM Reine Read Free Book Online

with swirling gas.
    James had no idea what it was, but he definitely didn’t want to find out.
    “Faster!” he yelled, even though he couldn’t move faster. He was too weak to gain any speed in the dense atmosphere.
    A leg swept through the trees and swiped at him. It whistled through the air.
    Rough skin brushed his neck. The skin sizzled.
    James tried to dodge and stumbled through the trees, breaking out of the forest into empty space—and almost fell off a cliff.
    The ground crumbled beneath his feet. He threw himself backwards, landing hard just as the place he had been standing vanished.
    A vast desert wasteland filled the space between James and the sliver of black mountains on the horizon. Gashes in the ground exposed bleeding, flaming pits that guttered red flames and spewed smoke.
    To his right, the skyline of a city loomed high over plains, as though they had grown out of the earth and had been baked into black arches and peaks. It was hard to tell at that distance, but the city had to be huge—bigger than Reno, bigger than Denver, bigger than both of them combined. He could only see the farthest edge of it. It stretched endlessly beyond the mountains.
    And at the center stood a palace. A single tower rose above it all, surrounded by rings of spires and a wall of sleek, towering stone that looked utterly unclimbable.
    James had seen illustrations of that palace in ancient books, but never expected to make a firsthand visit. Or, more accurately, he had hoped that he would never visit.
    Hannah and James had been sucked into Dis—the sixth level of Hell.
    “James!”
    He twisted. The blimp-like creature had descended, and one of its long, twisting appendages had curled around Hannah’s arm. The touch of its rough red flesh seemed to burn her. It pulled on her arm and jerked her off of her feet.
    “No!” he yelled, scrabbling onto his knees.
    He leapt and caught her feet, wrapping his arms around her legs. Hannah’s scream reached a new pitch. But he couldn’t hold on. He slipped and fell.
    James hit the dirt again.
    He fumbled at his pocket, trying to pull out the notebook. He didn’t know if he had a spell that would help—he didn’t even know if magic would work in Hell. Then he heard shuffling footsteps. Someone approaching from behind.
    James rose to his knees, twisting and lifting his fists in defense, but something heavy connected with the back of his skull.
    He blacked out before he hit the ground.

II
    I n the center of the Palace of Dis, on a platform raised above the courtyard, stood the torturing room.
    Its current occupant was a megaira. Slender, beaded serpents draped from its skull and hung limply over the demon’s shoulders. Black brands marched down its bony collarbones and imprinted on its sagging breasts, including two centered directly over its pale brown nipples. Though watery blood coursed over its flesh and needles had been driven underneath its thumbnails, it was still trying to laugh.
    Unlike their frail cousins, the succubi, megaira couldn’t bleed to death, and they delighted in the taste of aggression, rather than sex. Torturing them required someone who didn’t get aggressive, emotional, or angry while inflicting pain.
    Isaac Kavanagh was perfect for the job.
    He paced in a circle around the megaira, cupping a fistful of silver needles the length of his hand. He had started the day with forty-eight needles; now he held thirty-six. The others were buried in the megaira’s various body parts. Two in the thumbs, of course—that was a given. One in the hollow of the collarbone. One through the navel to pierce its shriveled womb. One for each toenail—that was another eight.
    What next? The underside of the jaw was always a good place to pierce, but it made speech difficult, and pain was only the secondary goal of the interrogation.
    “Weak,” said the megaira. “You are weak and puny.”
    Isaac didn’t reply. He could feel it attempting to probe him with its energies,