I glanced around at them. They were so disgusting it was nearly impossible to see the people they might have been at one time without the influence of my father. Could they be redeemed? Many of them did have decaying skin, so clearly they had tried. What did they want? Could I speak with Satan about them? Would he care? If I stayed with them I wondered if I could help them change. Was my purpose here to undo the damage my father had done? Hell, was that even possible?
“I can speak to Satan for you,” I said.
“No,” a smaller Demon yelled. “He cares nothing for us. He associates us with your father and will show no mercy.”
“And you think I will?” I laughed and shook my head. What did they want from me?
“You have to,” Lance said. “You are our only hope. We have nothing left.”
“Look, Lance, I am sorry for the sins of my father, but I am not my father. I am not staying down here and if I have to kill each and every one of you to leave . . . I will.”
An excited murmur went through the circle. I could swear the sons of bitches were smiling at me . . . or they all had gas. Every single Demon dropped to their knees and leaned forward. Placing their hands on the ground they began to weep. Some shuddered and some laughed with joy. What the hell was happening?#p#分页标题#e#
“Thank you,” Lance said. “We cannot thank you enough.”
“For what?” I asked, completely confused.
“For killing us.”
Wait. WTF? When did I agree to kill them? “Um, Lance?”
“Yes, my Queen?”
“Not gonna happen. You guys can’t just ask me to kill you and then I kill you. I wouldn’t say that I want to hang with you, but I kind of like you and as alarmingly scary as you are . . . I feel sorry for you.”
“Show us mercy, my Queen,” someone cried out.
“Please,” another sobbed.
What was I supposed to do? This could be a trick. I could kill the fifty or so Demons and five hundred more pissed off Demons could show up and kill me or, God forbid, want me to kill them too.
“Is this all of you?” I asked in a voice I didn’t recognize. It was thin, tinny and far away. I was shocked I was even considering this. Did I truly need to atone for the sins of my father?
“The others are not here. They’ve been taken away,” Lance explained.
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted in his gravely voice. “One day they were here and one day they were gone.”
“Like gone, gone. For real gone?” I asked, wondering if an army would seek me out for retribution.
“Probably not.” Lance shrugged and forlornly laid his huge misshapen head back down on the floor.
Okay, think Astrid. You could right one of your father’s many wrongs and kill a bunch of Demons . . . which in turn could piss of the Prince of Darkness and set in motion a large bounty on my head. That would suck asswads. You could try to escape, but you have no fucking clue how to get back to the main level and there could be other areas of the Basement worse than this one. Hard to imagine, but this was Hell.
Glancing around, I saw the Demons peeking up at me. They reminded me of little children . . . disgustingly ugly little children. Fuck.
“Stand up,” I barked. “This feels like an execution and I am not at all happy about this.”
The Demons stood with their hands clasped in front of them and a sense of peace about them.
“My Queen, we have waited thousands of years for this day. What you are doing is merciful. I can never go back to those I love. I am ruined . . . tainted by so much horror and death, I am no longer worthy of love. Mind you, I do still love. Deeply. That is why I have never tried to escape. The threat of harm to my wife and children is something that even someone as lost as I’ve become cannot fathom.”
“But my father is gone. Why can’t you go back to your loved ones?” I asked, hoping I’d discovered the magic ticket. Maybe they could all work hard and grow skin and then go to the waiting room and get jobs and then be reunited with their families. And maybe Leprechauns could fly out of my ass . . .
“Oh, young Queen, it was too late for that hundreds of years ago. I stand here begging your mercy, but I am by no means free of sin. Heinous sin.”
“Open your mind, oh Queen,” a Demon begged. “Come inside and see.”
“Proof?” I asked.
“Indisputable,” Lance answered.
I closed my eyes and let my mind roam free. Dipping in and out of the Demons thoughts, it was all I could do not to fall to the floor and break. Memories of children and wives and parents intermingled with the horror they’d been forced to perform leading to horrors they’d chosen and willingly performed. Horrific beatings from my father that shamed me and then the names . . . names flew at me. Names of loved ones, names of those they’d killed, names of the victims’ families that they wished to beg forgiveness from, and then came their names . . . David, Michael, Josiah, Peter, Noah, Paul, and on and on. I didn’t want them to become more than what they were. That would make what I knew I had to do harder, but they had become inhuman faceless nothingness. They needed to be seen for who they were—for who they wished to be. James, Adam, Leonardo . . .