The Valley of the Shadow of Death
As The Wolf, much of what was Oz was lost to the demon. Hell intensified the rage, made him blind and savage and
ravenous for blood.
Until he smelled her blood. When Oz caught the sharp, coppery scent of her blood laced with fear, the part of him
that was human began its arduous fight for control.
He found Nighna first, her body rent, her blood spilled and dried on the parched red soil. He knew that Anjelica was
near him then, but by that time, a chorus of other scents joined hers – the panicked, dull yellow scent of torture
and agony and death prolonged. His wolf senses strained to follow the trail of Anjelica’s blood, which led him out of
the ravine to the banks of the Lake of Fire, where countless of souls writhed in fiery pits of rank and steaming
pitch.
As Oz crept over the lip of the ravine, careful to conceal himself among the jagged stones, he became aware of a
droning din like nothing he had ever heard. He crested the ridge and saw that someone had gathered an army.
Army was putting it lightly, and Oz knew it. He shook the last of the wolf from his limbs and crouched naked among
the rocks, watching with a mixture of dread and disbelief.
It was Legion.
Oz scratched at his cheek. He knew, both from the lingering scent on the air and Nighna’s dead body, that Luxe
was behind the gathering force below. Didn’t matter, he thought. Anjelica was down there. And he was going to get
her out.
She put up a worthy fight, as was expected, as he had wanted. In the end, he spoiled her and would leave her to die.
Even if this girl had been a Slayer, she was worthless now.
Luxe circled her. She lay face down, unmoving, her bare back torn to bloody furrows from his claws.
“You want another go?” he asked Paolo. Luxe’s voice poured from his mouth like violet silk, and Paolo knew the
demon was pleased with himself.
Paolo’s face contorted like a candle gouged with a knife. He uttered a rusty laugh. “I think I broke her this last
time,” he said. “She won’t be no fun.”
Luxe knelt beside her. With the tips of his nails, he combed the curtain of hair from her eyes. Even still she recoiled.
“She may be yet,” Luxe purred. He bent to lick her ear with his coarse forked tongue and she spat at him. He took
her roughly by the shoulders and bore down on her, ready again to pound the fire from her blood, when he heard a
scuffling outside the flap of his tent.
A lesser demon, one of Raggoth’s captains, burst into the tent. Luxe craned his head at the disturbance, unwilling
to relinquish the hold on his prey. Anjelica squirmed beneath him, acting now on instinct and lacking good sense. He
pinned her under his weight, digging his nails into her palms.
“Oui?” Luxe snapped.
The lesser demon bowed low and scraped his bulbous knuckles across the floor. “Begging your mercy, Master,” he
gnarled, “but there is a man here to see you.”
Luxe glanced at Paolo, then back to the lesser demon. “And?” Luxe said. He punctuated the word with a stiff thrust
into the girl. This time she caved, her legs going slack at his sides.
“He is a man, Sire,” the demon said. “A living man. He is beyond our command.”
Luxe pressed against Anjelica, feeling the loathsome, soft warmth of her against him, before getting to his feet.
Every time he had her was like sumptuous revenge against Nighna all over again. Even so, the game was growing old.
She fought less, and would soon become tiresome and boring.
He wiped his hands on the torn cloth of her robe and tossed it beside her. To Paolo, he said, “She’s all yours.”
As he left the tent, he could hear Paolo tussling with the girl again and he grinned. Perhaps she wasn’t so useless
after all.
He could feel it. The Wolf lit a cold flame inside him, burning, consuming. Practiced though he was at controlling the
monster within, it had just been reigned in from wild, reckless freedom and did not sit well in its constraints. For
now, Oz held the Wolf with all of his waning energy. He lacked a plan. He also lacked time. Somewhere below in the
valley of the shadow of death, Anjelica was fighting, and losing.
He had to do something. She was dying and part of him was at fault.
The Wolf. Oz closed his eyes. He had one option left to him; one last thing left to barter. Bearing no weapons or
armor, Oz left the hillside, bound for the clutch of black tents that ringed the edge of the burning lake.
Never in his life had he felt such fear. Never had he felt the sound of his heartbeat in his ears. Every breath he drew
was a fight to stay on course, to not bolt back to the cover of the ravine. Yet he walked, never veering, thirty
paces now. And then twenty. Fifteen. At ten paces, the demons fell into eerie disquiet.
Oz continued. He swallowed down the fear that threatened to stifle him. A putrid, oily smoke poisoned the air,
making his eyes and nostrils burn. Six paces now. And then two. And then… he breached the outer perimeter.
No demon moved to strike him. Perhaps it was that they had never seen a naked man with gall enough to walk among
them. Regardless, Oz continued walking, eyes trained forward, blind but not unaware of the demons – thousands of
them – closing behind him as he passed.
Before long, a pair of thick-browed demons with skin like the scorched shell of a lobster barred the path before him.
Each carried an axe that was easily double Oz’s size, but even weaponless, their stubbed black hands looked large
enough to snap his body in half with barely a flex of their wrists.
Inside, Oz felt himself rattling apart in his skin. He knew it was likely that this would be the last moments of his life.
His passage thus far emboldened him, but even so, he reasoned that the best thing to do was keep things on the
down-low.
“S’up,” he said, nodding to the demons.
The demons exchanged looks of confusion, which Oz took as a good sign.
“Is Luxe here?” Oz asked.
The largest demon shrugged. “Yeah,” he grunted.
“I need to see him,” Oz said plainly. Inside, he felt the rattling subside to a minor tremor.
The demons considered for a moment, before one broke off from the dispatch and scuttled, gorilla-like, in the
direction of the tents.
Oz waited, the bile of tension rising like a geyser in his throat, while the demon delivered his message. For a
moment, he felt a ripple of rage under his ribs, and he knew that for now, Anjelica was still alive. The Wolf could
sense it.
The remaining demons closed in behind Oz, growing clamorous again. Oz had never before been so aware of his
vulnerability, of how his naked humanity left him entirely at the mercy of a multitude of monsters.
Soon, Luxe appeared, in his true demon form – fingers hooked into long talons, sharp spines protruding from his
shoulders and forearms, scaly black wings folded like a cloak over his back. He was shirtless, and Oz couldn’t help
but notice the hatch-marks of scratches across Luxe’s chest. In that moment, Oz thought the Wolf would rise
again, would bury him for good under a swell of broiling fury.
But he held on.
“I’ve come for Helli,” Oz said.
Luxe’s brows lifted. “You are a servant, petit loup. You have no grounds to claim her.”
All around him, demons surged, ready to grapple Oz at Luxe’s command.
“I’ll work a trade,” Oz tried again. “Me for her.”
Luxe sighed heavily and rolled his eyes. “I have no need for your services,” he said. He turned from Oz and headed
back toward the tent.
“Wait!” Oz cried. “I have one other thing to trade.”
Luxe halted, and raised a hand.
Oz bit down on his tongue. He warred inwardly. The one thing he could trade was what set him apart, made him
strong, made him more than a man. To part with it meant parting with both his destiny and his curse, and yet he
knew he had nothing else that would interest a demon.
“Take the Wolf,” Oz said.
Luxe turned fluidly around, his black wings flapping menacingly. As he closed the paces between them, the demons in
the crowd scattered backward, wary that Luxe would injure them if it came to a fight.
“That would be helping you, Little Wolf,” Luxe snarled.
Oz shook his head. “See, you’d think that,” he said. “But the wolf is what I am. Without it, I’m…” he lowered his
eyes, “I’m just a guy. No more Superman. No more hero.”
Luxe flexed his clawed fingers several times. “I have an army at my command. I need not another demon.”
“Still,” Oz said. “A demon for a servant. Not a bad deal.”
The demon’s yellow eyes narrowed to slits. Oz did his best to calm his breathing, but he knew that this was the
moment of truth; this would decide whether he and Anjelica would escape or die in Hell. The grating clamor of the
Lake of Fire with its billions of tormented souls eroded him bit by bit.
Luxe’s hand shot out and clamped over Oz’s throat. He dragged Oz from ground to look him in the eye. Oz felt his
flesh scorching under the demon’s palm, could smell the salt scent of his skin blistering.
“Burns, does it not?” Luxe asked, squeezing tighter. Oz struggled futilely, his feet dangling inches from the ground.
Only a strangled whisper answered the question.
“I can take la petit loup without your consent,” Luxe said. “Even with it, you are no threat to me, or my plans. And
your Slayer: she will be dead in an hour’s time at best.”
Oz kicked. He flailed. His hands flopped useless at his sides. Blood rushed in his ears and behind his eyes. He could
hear the snap of his tendons popping under Luxe’s tightening grip.
Yet, through all of that, Oz managed to utter one syllable. “No.”
“Ah, yes,” Luxe pulled Oz close, to within an inch of his face. “You would not believe the things we did to her,” he
said. “We bent her in new ways. We broke her body to fit ours. We burnt new holes in her flesh and…” Luxe pressed
his burning lips to Oz’s ear and carried on in a low tone, making certain that Oz understood every atrocity they
had performed on her.
At that moment, with The Wolf so near to the surface, Oz again lost control. He ripped free from Luxe’s grasp,
morphing as he fell through the air. He landed, turned and with canines flashing, leapt for Luxe’s throat.
It seemed for a moment that the demons in the crowd did not know how to react and stood, frozen and
dumbfounded while their leader was attacked. But Luxe was not so easily caught off guard. Oz lunged; Luxe caught
him with both hands under his ribs and threw him to the ground.
“There you are, Little Wolf” Luxe said, a smirk rising on his lips.
Luxe held up his hand. In his palm lay the charm that Oz had worn on his wrist, the charm he’d found in Tibet that
helped him keep The Wolf in check.
“I will collect my payment first, of course,” Luxe said. As he spoke, the charm began to sputter with sparks of
crackling energy. As a wolf, he could not reason, not the way Oz could, but he understood that the odd pins-and-
needles feeling in his paws meant that his life was draining away.
The last thing Oz saw was the swirl of ochre clouds gathering overhead.
When Oz awoke, he felt… normal.
He sat up, trembling. He was aware first of silence, when before the air had thrummed with the sounds of an army
nearby, and other noises that only The Wolf could detect. They were gone, as were the sulfuric pungency of the
Lake of Fire and its stinking swarm of damned souls.
He was normal. He was a man, after all.
Oz took another moment to get his bearings, confused as he was. He found that he was still naked. A cursory glance
told him he was still in Hell. And then, he had the sudden sinking feeling that he had been tricked. Luxe had tricked
him into lupine rage and left him on the rim above the Lake of Fire.
Panicking, Oz pulled himself upright. If Luxe had taken The Wolf, where was Helli? He searched the canyon wall and
the steep drop into the ravine behind him.
There. She was there, in the belly of the ravine, huddled under the shreds of her cloak. But no. He could not tell.
From where he stood, and by the way the shadows fell, it could have been a rock formation. Without his werewolf
sense, he could no longer tell. And so there was only one way to find out.
Oz scrambled down into the gorge. It became plain after moments of descent that the thing he mistook for a rock
was a human form. He hurried along the jagged path, arms out for balance, until at last he knelt at her side.
The flood of relief he felt at seeing her evaporated when she turned bonelessly in his arms. Luxe had made her into a
horror. Her sunken eyes had swelled shut. Her left ear had been gnawed upon; it dangled from a strip of skin beside
her bruised, swollen throat. Her lacerated lips peeled away from blood-stained teeth.
Oz couldn’t bear to peel back the sticky cloth of her robes, knowing too well what Luxe had done. The demon had
admitted it, had boasted of it, and now the pronunciation of death seemed all too certain. Luxe had killed her. Only
what will and breath she had left kept her lungs from collapsing, and it would not be long before those things
abandoned her as well.
Oz shook her. “Helli,” he whispered. “Helli. Wake up.”
She stirred in his arms. One eye opened just a slit and seemed to stare straight through him.
“I know you,” she answered.
“It’s me. It’s Oz,” he said, he voice no more than a gulping sob.
She wheezed. “He got you? Didn’t he? Got you, too?”
“No,” Oz said, cradling her close. She was like a bundle of broken sticks in his arms. “I got you. We’re gonna get
out. We’re gonna get home.”
Anjelica lay very still for a long while, until Oz thought she had to be dead, but she uttered a rusty croak of a laugh.
She said, “This is Hell, Oz. There is no going home.”
“No, there is,” Oz said. He scanned the area around him. All was empty bleakness, flat, without color, without hope.
“There has to be a way home.”
“Please,” Helli said. Her blood-red eye rolled in its socket, and she subsided from consciousness.
“Helli!” Oz shouted, shaking her.
She curled away from him, clutching the small parcel to her body. Through everything, it was all she’d managed to
hold onto.
Without the force of the Wolf to fuel his rage, Oz felt helpless, useless and utterly empty. “My God,” Oz whispered,
his throat tightening over the words. “What did they do to you?”
She said nothing. She scarcely breathed. After a long, still, comfortless moment, Oz got to his feet, pulling her with
him.
“Come on,” he said. “I’m going to get us out of here.”
As they started back down through the ravine, Oz walking and Anjelica shuffling painfully at his side, Paolo and a
demon – the same captain of Raggoth – appeared on their trail, skulking at a distance.
Paolo said, “Follow them. And if they find a portal, report back. Then we’ll inform our man in Sunnydale.”
Luxe had taken the Wolf and left them both on the ridge. Below them, the demon camp was empty. The Legion had
moved on, leaving him to wonder how long they had been there.
As The Wolf, much of what was Oz was lost to the demon. Hell intensified the rage, made him blind and savage and
ravenous for blood.
Until he smelled her blood. When Oz caught the sharp, coppery scent of her blood laced with fear, the part of him
that was human began its arduous fight for control.
He found Nighna first, her body rent, her blood spilled and dried on the parched red soil. He knew that Anjelica was
near him then, but by that time, a chorus of other scents joined hers – the panicked, dull yellow scent of torture
and agony and death prolonged. His wolf senses strained to follow the trail of Anjelica’s blood, which led him out of
the ravine to the banks of the Lake of Fire, where countless of souls writhed in fiery pits of rank and steaming
pitch.
As Oz crept over the lip of the ravine, careful to conceal himself among the jagged stones, he became aware of a
droning din like nothing he had ever heard. He crested the ridge and saw that someone had gathered an army.
Army was putting it lightly, and Oz knew it. He shook the last of the wolf from his limbs and crouched naked among
the rocks, watching with a mixture of dread and disbelief.
It was Legion.
Oz scratched at his cheek. He knew, both from the lingering scent on the air and Nighna’s dead body, that Luxe
was behind the gathering force below. Didn’t matter, he thought. Anjelica was down there. And he was going to get
her out.
She put up a worthy fight, as was expected, as he had wanted. In the end, he spoiled her and would leave her to die.
Even if this girl had been a Slayer, she was worthless now.
Luxe circled her. She lay face down, unmoving, her bare back torn to bloody furrows from his claws.
“You want another go?” he asked Paolo. Luxe’s voice poured from his mouth like violet silk, and Paolo knew the
demon was pleased with himself.
Paolo’s face contorted like a candle gouged with a knife. He uttered a rusty laugh. “I think I broke her this last
time,” he said. “She won’t be no fun.”
Luxe knelt beside her. With the tips of his nails, he combed the curtain of hair from her eyes. Even still she recoiled.
“She may be yet,” Luxe purred. He bent to lick her ear with his coarse forked tongue and she spat at him. He took
her roughly by the shoulders and bore down on her, ready again to pound the fire from her blood, when he heard a
scuffling outside the flap of his tent.
A lesser demon, one of Raggoth’s captains, burst into the tent. Luxe craned his head at the disturbance, unwilling
to relinquish the hold on his prey. Anjelica squirmed beneath him, acting now on instinct and lacking good sense. He
pinned her under his weight, digging his nails into her palms.
“Oui?” Luxe snapped.
The lesser demon bowed low and scraped his bulbous knuckles across the floor. “Begging your mercy, Master,” he
gnarled, “but there is a man here to see you.”
Luxe glanced at Paolo, then back to the lesser demon. “And?” Luxe said. He punctuated the word with a stiff thrust
into the girl. This time she caved, her legs going slack at his sides.
“He is a man, Sire,” the demon said. “A living man. He is beyond our command.”
Luxe pressed against Anjelica, feeling the loathsome, soft warmth of her against him, before getting to his feet.
Every time he had her was like sumptuous revenge against Nighna all over again. Even so, the game was growing old.
She fought less, and would soon become tiresome and boring.
He wiped his hands on the torn cloth of her robe and tossed it beside her. To Paolo, he said, “She’s all yours.”
As he left the tent, he could hear Paolo tussling with the girl again and he grinned. Perhaps she wasn’t so useless
after all.
He could feel it. The Wolf lit a cold flame inside him, burning, consuming. Practiced though he was at controlling the
monster within, it had just been reigned in from wild, reckless freedom and did not sit well in its constraints. For
now, Oz held the Wolf with all of his waning energy. He lacked a plan. He also lacked time. Somewhere below in the
valley of the shadow of death, Anjelica was fighting, and losing.
He had to do something. She was dying and part of him was at fault.
The Wolf. Oz closed his eyes. He had one option left to him; one last thing left to barter. Bearing no weapons or
armor, Oz left the hillside, bound for the clutch of black tents that ringed the edge of the burning lake.
Never in his life had he felt such fear. Never had he felt the sound of his heartbeat in his ears. Every breath he drew
was a fight to stay on course, to not bolt back to the cover of the ravine. Yet he walked, never veering, thirty
paces now. And then twenty. Fifteen. At ten paces, the demons fell into eerie disquiet.
Oz continued. He swallowed down the fear that threatened to stifle him. A putrid, oily smoke poisoned the air,
making his eyes and nostrils burn. Six paces now. And then two. And then… he breached the outer perimeter.
No demon moved to strike him. Perhaps it was that they had never seen a naked man with gall enough to walk among
them. Regardless, Oz continued walking, eyes trained forward, blind but not unaware of the demons – thousands of
them – closing behind him as he passed.
Before long, a pair of thick-browed demons with skin like the scorched shell of a lobster barred the path before him.
Each carried an axe that was easily double Oz’s size, but even weaponless, their stubbed black hands looked large
enough to snap his body in half with barely a flex of their wrists.
Inside, Oz felt himself rattling apart in his skin. He knew it was likely that this would be the last moments of his life.
His passage thus far emboldened him, but even so, he reasoned that the best thing to do was keep things on the
down-low.
“S’up,” he said, nodding to the demons.
The demons exchanged looks of confusion, which Oz took as a good sign.
“Is Luxe here?” Oz asked.
The largest demon shrugged. “Yeah,” he grunted.
“I need to see him,” Oz said plainly. Inside, he felt the rattling subside to a minor tremor.
The demons considered for a moment, before one broke off from the dispatch and scuttled, gorilla-like, in the
direction of the tents.
Oz waited, the bile of tension rising like a geyser in his throat, while the demon delivered his message. For a
moment, he felt a ripple of rage under his ribs, and he knew that for now, Anjelica was still alive. The Wolf could
sense it.
The remaining demons closed in behind Oz, growing clamorous again. Oz had never before been so aware of his
vulnerability, of how his naked humanity left him entirely at the mercy of a multitude of monsters.
Soon, Luxe appeared, in his true demon form – fingers hooked into long talons, sharp spines protruding from his
shoulders and forearms, scaly black wings folded like a cloak over his back. He was shirtless, and Oz couldn’t help
but notice the hatch-marks of scratches across Luxe’s chest. In that moment, Oz thought the Wolf would rise
again, would bury him for good under a swell of broiling fury.
But he held on.
“I’ve come for Helli,” Oz said.
Luxe’s brows lifted. “You are a servant, petit loup. You have no grounds to claim her.”
All around him, demons surged, ready to grapple Oz at Luxe’s command.
“I’ll work a trade,” Oz tried again. “Me for her.”
Luxe sighed heavily and rolled his eyes. “I have no need for your services,” he said. He turned from Oz and headed
back toward the tent.
“Wait!” Oz cried. “I have one other thing to trade.”
Luxe halted, and raised a hand.
Oz bit down on his tongue. He warred inwardly. The one thing he could trade was what set him apart, made him
strong, made him more than a man. To part with it meant parting with both his destiny and his curse, and yet he
knew he had nothing else that would interest a demon.
“Take the Wolf,” Oz said.
Luxe turned fluidly around, his black wings flapping menacingly. As he closed the paces between them, the demons in
the crowd scattered backward, wary that Luxe would injure them if it came to a fight.
“That would be helping you, Little Wolf,” Luxe snarled.
Oz shook his head. “See, you’d think that,” he said. “But the wolf is what I am. Without it, I’m…” he lowered his
eyes, “I’m just a guy. No more Superman. No more hero.”
Luxe flexed his clawed fingers several times. “I have an army at my command. I need not another demon.”
“Still,” Oz said. “A demon for a servant. Not a bad deal.”
The demon’s yellow eyes narrowed to slits. Oz did his best to calm his breathing, but he knew that this was the
moment of truth; this would decide whether he and Anjelica would escape or die in Hell. The grating clamor of the
Lake of Fire with its billions of tormented souls eroded him bit by bit.
Luxe’s hand shot out and clamped over Oz’s throat. He dragged Oz from ground to look him in the eye. Oz felt his
flesh scorching under the demon’s palm, could smell the salt scent of his skin blistering.
“Burns, does it not?” Luxe asked, squeezing tighter. Oz struggled futilely, his feet dangling inches from the ground.
Only a strangled whisper answered the question.
“I can take la petit loup without your consent,” Luxe said. “Even with it, you are no threat to me, or my plans. And
your Slayer: she will be dead in an hour’s time at best.”
Oz kicked. He flailed. His hands flopped useless at his sides. Blood rushed in his ears and behind his eyes. He could
hear the snap of his tendons popping under Luxe’s tightening grip.
Yet, through all of that, Oz managed to utter one syllable. “No.”
“Ah, yes,” Luxe pulled Oz close, to within an inch of his face. “You would not believe the things we did to her,” he
said. “We bent her in new ways. We broke her body to fit ours. We burnt new holes in her flesh and…” Luxe pressed
his burning lips to Oz’s ear and carried on in a low tone, making certain that Oz understood every atrocity they
had performed on her.
At that moment, with The Wolf so near to the surface, Oz again lost control. He ripped free from Luxe’s grasp,
morphing as he fell through the air. He landed, turned and with canines flashing, leapt for Luxe’s throat.
It seemed for a moment that the demons in the crowd did not know how to react and stood, frozen and
dumbfounded while their leader was attacked. But Luxe was not so easily caught off guard. Oz lunged; Luxe caught
him with both hands under his ribs and threw him to the ground.
“There you are, Little Wolf” Luxe said, a smirk rising on his lips.
Luxe held up his hand. In his palm lay the charm that Oz had worn on his wrist, the charm he’d found in Tibet that
helped him keep The Wolf in check.
“I will collect my payment first, of course,” Luxe said. As he spoke, the charm began to sputter with sparks of
crackling energy. As a wolf, he could not reason, not the way Oz could, but he understood that the odd pins-and-
needles feeling in his paws meant that his life was draining away.
The last thing Oz saw was the swirl of ochre clouds gathering overhead.
When Oz awoke, he felt… normal.
He sat up, trembling. He was aware first of silence, when before the air had thrummed with the sounds of an army
nearby, and other noises that only The Wolf could detect. They were gone, as were the sulfuric pungency of the
Lake of Fire and its stinking swarm of damned souls.
He was normal. He was a man, after all.
Oz took another moment to get his bearings, confused as he was. He found that he was still naked. A cursory glance
told him he was still in Hell. And then, he had the sudden sinking feeling that he had been tricked. Luxe had tricked
him into lupine rage and left him on the rim above the Lake of Fire.
Panicking, Oz pulled himself upright. If Luxe had taken The Wolf, where was Helli? He searched the canyon wall and
the steep drop into the ravine behind him.
There. She was there, in the belly of the ravine, huddled under the shreds of her cloak. But no. He could not tell.
From where he stood, and by the way the shadows fell, it could have been a rock formation. Without his werewolf
sense, he could no longer tell. And so there was only one way to find out.
Oz scrambled down into the gorge. It became plain after moments of descent that the thing he mistook for a rock
was a human form. He hurried along the jagged path, arms out for balance, until at last he knelt at her side.
The flood of relief he felt at seeing her evaporated when she turned bonelessly in his arms. Luxe had made her into a
horror. Her sunken eyes had swelled shut. Her left ear had been gnawed upon; it dangled from a strip of skin beside
her bruised, swollen throat. Her lacerated lips peeled away from blood-stained teeth.
Oz couldn’t bear to peel back the sticky cloth of her robes, knowing too well what Luxe had done. The demon had
admitted it, had boasted of it, and now the pronunciation of death seemed all too certain. Luxe had killed her. Only
what will and breath she had left kept her lungs from collapsing, and it would not be long before those things
abandoned her as well.
Oz shook her. “Helli,” he whispered. “Helli. Wake up.”
She stirred in his arms. One eye opened just a slit and seemed to stare straight through him.
“I know you,” she answered.
“It’s me. It’s Oz,” he said, he voice no more than a gulping sob.
She wheezed. “He got you? Didn’t he? Got you, too?”
“No,” Oz said, cradling her close. She was like a bundle of broken sticks in his arms. “I got you. We’re gonna get
out. We’re gonna get home.”
Anjelica lay very still for a long while, until Oz thought she had to be dead, but she uttered a rusty croak of a laugh.
She said, “This is Hell, Oz. There is no going home.”
“No, there is,” Oz said. He scanned the area around him. All was empty bleakness, flat, without color, without hope.
“There has to be a way home.”
“Please,” Helli said. Her blood-red eye rolled in its socket, and she subsided from consciousness.
“Helli!” Oz shouted, shaking her.
She curled away from him, clutching the small parcel to her body. Through everything, it was all she’d managed to
hold onto.
Without the force of the Wolf to fuel his rage, Oz felt helpless, useless and utterly empty. “My God,” Oz whispered,
his throat tightening over the words. “What did they do to you?”
She said nothing. She scarcely breathed. After a long, still, comfortless moment, Oz got to his feet, pulling her with
him.
“Come on,” he said. “I’m going to get us out of here.”
As they started back down through the ravine, Oz walking and Anjelica shuffling painfully at his side, Paolo and a
demon – the same captain of Raggoth – appeared on their trail, skulking at a distance.
Paolo said, “Follow them. And if they find a portal, report back. Then we’ll inform our man in Sunnydale.”
Luxe had taken the Wolf and left them both on the ridge. Below them, the demon camp was empty. The Legion had
moved on, leaving him to wonder how long they had been there.
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.Chapter Index.
Anywhere Out
of This World
Blood, Pressure
The Drawing Board
All's Well
Anywhere Out of
This World
Mourning Sickness
Welcome to Hell
Relative
Matters of Time
& Fishes
International Calls
Empty as Houses
Lusty Wrong Feelings
Enthralled
Thanksgiving
Seduced
Innocents Lost
Burn
Flashback
Not A Chance In Hell
Empty Rooms
Two Roads Diverged
Starfall
Blindsided
Not Her Own
Outta Here
The Valley of the
Shadow of Death
Comes the Rain
Smoke and Mirrors
Drawn to You
Team Angel
By Fire Reborn
Salvage
Ashes to Ashes
Life Is...
With A Little Help
Appearances Deceiving
Familiarity
Sweetness
Not All Who Wander
That Old Black Magic
For Lorne
Drawn Together
Lost to Sand
Fall of Triumvirate
Parallel Lives
The Lovers
Avenger
Double Cross
Pursuit
Ripper's Girl
Pandemonium
Negative Space
Raveled Threads
Asunder
Human Hands
Singular
Fragmented
Symmetry
Plans
Rogue Squadron
Legends
Anywhere Out
of This World
Blood, Pressure
The Drawing Board
All's Well
Anywhere Out of
This World
Mourning Sickness
Welcome to Hell
Relative
Matters of Time
& Fishes
International Calls
Empty as Houses
Lusty Wrong Feelings
Enthralled
Thanksgiving
Seduced
Innocents Lost
Burn
Flashback
Not A Chance In Hell
Empty Rooms
Two Roads Diverged
Starfall
Blindsided
Not Her Own
Outta Here
The Valley of the
Shadow of Death
Comes the Rain
Smoke and Mirrors
Drawn to You
Team Angel
By Fire Reborn
Salvage
Ashes to Ashes
Life Is...
With A Little Help
Appearances Deceiving
Familiarity
Sweetness
Not All Who Wander
That Old Black Magic
For Lorne
Drawn Together
Lost to Sand
Fall of Triumvirate
Parallel Lives
The Lovers
Avenger
Double Cross
Pursuit
Ripper's Girl
Pandemonium
Negative Space
Raveled Threads
Asunder
Human Hands
Singular
Fragmented
Symmetry
Plans
Rogue Squadron
Legends
Through me the way into the suffering city,
Through me the way to the eternal pain,
Through me the way that runs among the
lost.
Justice urged on my high artificer;
My maker was divine authority,
The highest wisdom, and the primal love.
Before me nothing but eternal things were
made,
And I endure eternally.
Abandon every hope, ye who enter here."
From the Divine Comedy
Through me the way to the eternal pain,
Through me the way that runs among the
lost.
Justice urged on my high artificer;
My maker was divine authority,
The highest wisdom, and the primal love.
Before me nothing but eternal things were
made,
And I endure eternally.
Abandon every hope, ye who enter here."
From the Divine Comedy
Warning: This chapter carries an NC-17 rating because it contains violent images and rape.