I started prying bigger parts away. “You said before that other than the wyverns, we were safe in the Sholls. But they feed on something huge. This bone came from a bruiser of a beast.” I yanked a large bone out and examined it.

“They consume something that resembles a rhinoceros in your world, but is too slow to be of harm to us, and they don’t live in this area. They are called xer tottod and they gather in small groups far from here. The wyverns only venture out when they have to. Mostly they just scavenge on the small beasts, ones that cannot harm us.”

Once we cleared away more of the nest, I spotted what looked to be an outline of a door in the surface of the clock. The hole we’d made was now big enough to enter, so I ducked my head and went in. The only light from outside was putrid gray and very little of it filtered in here. It was like picking my way through a thicket when I was a kid. Only back then I was actually having fun, now I was in Hell trying not to get eaten by a dragon.

The demoness gave a shrill scream behind me, knocking into my back, sending me sailing forward into more bones and twigs. “They have come back. Hurry—”

There was a terrifying screech as the thing landed and the nest above us quaked. I risked a glance behind me and saw more than one gigantic talon blink into existence.

“Go, go!” Lily pushed me again.

I raced forward as fast as I could, yanking things out of my way and crawling over bones that lay across my path like downed trees. “Am I going for the door?”

“Yes,” she said. “Put the palm of your hand in the middle of six.”

“Six what?” I shouted, confused.

“The number six! On the clock!”

“Will that activate the portal?”

“It will open the first door, and then I’ll do the rest.”

Above us the wyvern started to dismantle its nest by ripping it apart. Pieces flew everywhere, raining down around us between the gaps. It kept shrieking its anger and two beats later the roof bounced again as several more landed.

“There’s no more time left, Lily!” I yelled. “They will be on us in a minute.”

She shouted something in Demonish and a pulse of energy shook our small tunnel, collapsing it around us. She gave a frustrated howl of anger and grabbed my back, swinging me aside in one motion.

She was a lot stronger than she looked.

She took the lead, diving for the number six, and I was right behind her. She slammed both her hands into the bottom loop of the six right as the top of the nest sheared off.

My wolf was in overdrive, howling and barking. I had my magic at the ready, but if the wyverns became incorporeal it wasn’t going to help me. “That’s it!” I yelled, encouraging her. “Give it more power.”

“I don’t have any more to give. It’s stuck!” she cried.

I reached around her and jammed my palm into the same circle and blasted my magic along with hers, trying to focus on the dark demon essence I had incorporated into my own signature and pull it forward.

The wyverns gave a mighty howl. I glanced up. We were completely exposed. This was it, we had to open it or die. The portal wants the demon magic, I told my wolf. Pull only the black signature. Frantically my wolf siphoned off the darkest part of our magic and blasted it into the clock.

The portal shook.

One more time, I shouted. More magic came forward in a rush, and with a loud groan, the portal began to open. Lily went first, grabbing onto my arm as she tumbled through. As my body fell, I turned to see the roof one last time.

Right as a wyvern blinked into being, a millimeter from my face.

9

“If I never see another wyvern again, I’ll be a happy girl,” I declared once we’d landed. “I think the portal closed on that thing’s head.”

Lily lay next to me, looking spent. It was actually nice to see she wasn’t as invincible as she portrayed herself. “They are fearsome beings. With my luck, I’ll probably come back as one.”

“That wouldn’t be something to look forward to.” I stood up, clapping off the debris that had followed us in. “Just so you know, I’m not entering the Sholls again, so if we get cornered, you’ll have to come up with another plan.”

The demoness rose slowly next to me. We appeared to be in a large closet of some kind. I leaned over and fingered what looked like to be a bottle of cleaning solution on a shelf next to me. “Did we land in a storage room?”

“No. We are in what we call a mending cell, or a tyfkefr laat in Demonish.”

“A mending cell?”

“This is where we take a demon that has broken the law and try to ‘mend’ it—meaning we try to force it to think like the horde once again, and if that doesn’t work, we use that”—she pointed to the bottles I’d just been grasping—“to kill it.”

I snatched my hand back. “Do they make the demons drink this stuff?” For the first time I examined the space. We were standing behind a partition. I took a step and peeked around it, spotting an evil-looking cross between a bathtub and a bed sitting in the middle of the room. There were restraints all over the place, including ones for the head, arms, legs, and what looked to be… the groin.

Well, now I knew demons had all the working parts.

“No, they don’t drink it.” The demoness sighed. “We pour it over them and they disintegrate into a bubbling mass as it eats away at their hide.”

My eyebrows furrowed as I glanced back at her. “This is not what they’re planning to do to Tyler, right? If they decide to kill him, it won’t be in a torture chamber like this? Please tell me they are not going to tie him down and pour acid over him.”

“Likely not,” she answered. “But it’s hard to know. This room is only one of many and they all have particular ways to eradicate errant demons. These rooms are attached to our courthouse and are made especially for the demons who stand trial and are found guilty. But we have mending rooms all over She’ol, some of them very crude. One would be lucky to go this way.” She gestured to the bottle of solution. “It is painful, but it is over quickly. I’ve heard of some demons being ‘mended’ for years.”

I shuddered. “You know, this entire world is the worst. Is there any beauty or happiness here? Or is it just all horror and sadness?” There was a definite pall over the Underworld, like an ongoing depression nagging at me.