Chills raced up my spine and my heart skipped a beat, right as Ray shouldered the door again. He pushed his weight against it and there was a snapping sound as the door finally moved in a few inches.
“What was that?” I asked, moving reluctantly out of my mate’s grasp to investigate.
He growled his displeasure, but let me go.
“I don’t know,” Tyler said. “It sounded like broken bones to me. I can’t really get a good look.”
Ray changed positions with Tyler and glanced into the opening. “I have no idea what the hell that is, but we need to start referring to this entire place as the Mad Fucking House of Horrors, because there are no explanations for what goes on here.” Ray grumbled, peering into the doorway again. “I think that’s… a remnant of a human being of some kind, but I can’t tell either.”
Ray stepped aback and I moved in. It actually resembled a mummy, of all things. “What”—I paused as Ray pushed the door open a little more, ignoring the crunching sounds, to expose what appeared to be a withered-looking human—“is that thing?”
Lili cleared her throat from behind us. “That is a golem. A human golem.”
We all stared at her.
“It’s like every time you speak, it’s in tongues,” Ray snipped. “What exactly is a human golem?”
“The Prince has taken a liking over the last century to necromancers. He’s lured quite a few to the Underworld with promises of riches and as many dead souls as they’d like. But he ensnares them and makes them do things… such as this.” She gestured at the mummified broken thing behind the door.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I muttered. “That dead human was resurrected as some kind of guard? Looks like it did a band up job. It broke into pieces at the first attempt to get through the door.”
Rourke shook his head and moved into the doorway, examining the golem. “No, it didn’t break because of that. It broke because it was linked to the door spell. It was a two-for-one combo.” He glanced at Selene. “Did you know you were disarming this thing when you broke the passageway spell?”
“I didn’t know what it was specifically,” she countered with some hostility. “I felt something back there, so I did what any witch would do—I sent a spell backward to fry whatever it was.” She raised her eyebrows. “It didn’t really have any brains to fry, but it worked anyway.” She looked smug.
“It sure did,” I commented. “But that thing doesn’t look like it would’ve put up much of a fight anyway.”
“It’s only the watchdog,” Lili said. “It was supposed to alert its master if someone broke through the spell.”
“Well, Selene seems to have circumvented the alarm,” Ray snorted, “so what are we waiting for? Let’s go.”
Rourke led the way through the narrow chambers. Tyler stayed behind and made sure the passageway door was firmly shut. We traveled through several short tunnels before we ended up in a small atrium. It held a huge bed in the center, draped in ornate cloth. The color scheme in here was decidedly feminine: the room was decorated in rich gold and yellow hues. The walls were covered with tapestries that appeared to be from our plane, and likely priceless at that.
I raised an eyebrow at Lili. “Is this space yours?” The bed was made. It appeared not to have been touched in a while, so that was a relief.
“Yes,” Lili said. “It was… ours.”
Doing the nasty with the Prince of Hell sounded like the most detestable thing I could possibly think of. But I reminded myself I wasn’t a demon. Or even a half demon. I needed to get some perspective or I might start gagging. “How do we get to the Prince’s rooms?” I asked.
“These rooms are mine,” Lili answered. “We have to travel a bit farther to get to his quarters. Down the next hallway we’re going to come up on a big door made of iron.”
Rourke moved through the room, pacing around the huge bed, motioning for us to follow. We passed through another beautiful space decorated in plush scarlet couches, and chandeliers that hung from smooth stone ceilings.
I noticed something peculiar about this space that made it different from the others I’d seen in the Underworld. “The interior here looks like it was made from human textiles and furniture, not like the other smooth, glossy stuff I’ve seen,” I said. “Whatever is manufactured in Hell is all weird and shiny.”
“Our raw materials are much different from those found on your plane.” Lili nodded. “We use pure minerals only found here. Everything that grows in Hell is alive, even the metals, and it makes them smooth and somewhat moist.” She glanced around her old rooms wistfully as we passed through. “I much prefer human decorations, so the Prince spared no expense. They were last updated a century ago, but I will miss them.”
“How far underground are we, by the way?” Ray asked as we entered another hallway, this one with walls resembling polished granite. “These walls are solid rock.”
I hadn’t thought about that much. The buildings I’d first seen were obviously on the top, but my suspicion was we were deep underground.
“Demons have always lived below the surface,” Lili answered. “We are cave dwellers by nature. The sun above burns our skin, so it is out of necessity as well. We are about six levels under right now. This level is called the Hodoseod Dyjyd and is reserved for Demon Lords and their accommodations only. That’s why you don’t see any low-level demons milling around. Only their servants are allowed to come here.”
Rourke finally stopped in front of an imposing door.
“Sweet, another door for us to bust through,” Tyler quipped, coming up behind us. “That one looks easy enough.”
“Once we open this, it will alert… whoever resides in there,” the demoness said quietly. “The doors and walls are very thick, so they likely can’t hear us, but once we break the seal they will be able to both hear and scent us.”
“Unless the Prince has spelled the area,” I countered. “Or has it booby-trapped.”
Selene interrupted, surprising me by shaking her head and saying, “There are no spells here.”
“How can you be so sure?” I asked. I didn’t want any golems to jump out at us.
Selene looked at me like I was a moron. “I may be dead, but I know how to detect a spell, especially if it was one of mine. I sense nothing in the air or on the door.”