Every time I returned she would be sitting up, staring at the dirt wall. Bob would be prowling around her, like a kind of ward—whether she was still huddled in bed, sleepy in her stained nightdress, or perched on a carved dining chair dressed in the remnants of her angel garb. Seeing her teeter on the edge between sanity and madness was especially touching. Every day Mel tried to keep up the semblance of normality was like a ray of sunshine to me. Or not sunshine, more like a tiny flame of hope—that perhaps, despite everything, she was still fighting.
Her little rituals—her twice-weekly baths, her insistence on knowing what number day it was since her capture, imprisonment and servitude—had fooled me somewhat. Our perfect domestic situation couldn't last forever. I didn't have an inkling of when it would end until it was altogether too late, and even then I wanted to believe she would revert back.
It was a Thursday, the day after my angel had scrubbed herself clean for me. The smell of lilacs and summer wasn't as pungent as it normally was—I could only smell it once I was right outside my room. Before, it filled the corridor and lead to some heartfelt pleas from my mates to be let in. I half-wondered if she was dying, or had been rescued, but the situation was clear as I opened the door. Bob, my hellhound pup, lay cowering in the corner. By rights, he should have been twining around the legs of the chair Mel was perched on, the oiled teak with patchy blue padding I stole from the Tullys back in '21.
Her posture was different—that was the second thing I noticed after the whining hellhound. It was like she had been sleepwalking for the two years I'd kept her, and had only just woken up. Her movements—she tipped her head to the side as I came in—were performed with a sort of slow grace, instead of the quick, nervous motions she had appeared with before. And her voice—she had not spoken in so long, so I could forgive its rustiness—it was precise. Unashamedly sensuous. I felt suddenly small, looking at this goddess I had helped to create, unsafe and afraid.
She had spoken, and the meaning of the words had been lost on me. All I had heard was her sunny, husky tone, all I saw was her bone-white face against pale, dead lips.
"I said, let's go out walking." Her hands were unnaturally cold, colder than mine, as she took me by the wrist and led me past my whimpering dog. Bob stared after me, licking frantically at something in his side—a burn? But who could burn a member of Hell in his own domain—and made no move to follow. The thin door shutting made a louder noise than it had any right to.
"Wait—where are we going?" Mel had not felt the malice in the locking noise as I did, and was sweeping regally down the corridor. I was stumbling in her wake, slightly horrified at the sense of purpose in her walk. What had the angel found in Hell, to suit her? She knew where she was—and where she was going—and I hadn't taken her out anywhere. Was this what she'd been doing whilst I was away on Earth? Scoping out the place, exploring the ways no angel should go. And she moved away from the baking heat of my dormitory, to the cooler air of the lower levels with not so much as a shiver…
She hadn't answered me. She had only picked up her tattered skirt, hiking it up around her knees so she wouldn't trip as she walked the stone steps. I caught up with her and took her roughly by the arm, forcing her to stop. Stop she did, but Mel didn't turn around. I had to go down the steps to face the immovable girl and look her in the eyes. She looked so perfectly sweet and vacant, like a princess in a Disney movie, and smiled at something to the left of my ear.
"Mel, darling—" my voice was shaking, why was my voice shaking when she was the one so clearly in my power?—"We need to get you back to my room, so—" So I can figure this out, so I can put you to bed and get you to sleep and remember the night I claimed you.
She hushed me with a finger to my lips, a gesture that should not have made me shake the way it did, prised my fingers from her forearm, and continued on her slow perambulation down the steps. The stairs were worn out in the middle from millennia of demonic feet, and by rights should never have felt an angel's tread. If Mel was still an angel at all.
I followed her anyway. What else could I do? If caught, I was—exercising my pet. They had to believe I was still in charge.
The steps in Hell don't end, at least not that I've seen, and I consider myself fairly well-placed in the hierarchy. Not low enough to get myself noticed, just so I have some influence and am in a set-up place. So I know some stories, like the legend of Hell's steps bottoming out through the centre of the Earth to come out in Australia or wherever, because—guess what, kids—Hell mostly is other people.
I remember being in my first dorm. It was forever blustery, hot and dry. I grit my teeth, promised myself I'd get better at the demon shit, and get away from the newbies. Now I dwell in the heated places, only a level or so above the beginning of the cold dormitories, but I've been down a few levels before. Never as far down as Mel was taking me. I had to wonder, if the legends and myths about the steps weren't true, what she had found at the centre of Hell. How badly it had fucked her up. If the damage could be unravelled and her mind could be built again. If nothing else—I could at least break her in again. Get it right this time. Mel was my first time taking and training anyone, and I'd learn from my mistakes.
I didn't know if I'd get that chance again. Mel finally slowed and stopped, at a door I'd never noticed before, made of some dank-smelling wood, and lightly pushed at it with her four fingertips. It was a room filled with portals. Portals to Earth, I mean, and it was worlds away from Heaven's shiny thriving Departures area. But then Hell's like that—secretive, with places tucked away. Knowledge is a commodity here, and the person with the most of it—who knows how to use it—amasses power.
And there was a portal ready. It didn't glow in the darkness, but rather seemed blacker than the gloom surrounding it. Staring into it long enough gave you glimpses of colours, yeah, but not colours you'd use on a birthday card. You could fall into your own head there, slack-jawed and gaping, and not ever come out. Had it happened to her? I wanted to ask, but she took my hand—cool and dry—and brought us both into the portal. It was like stepping from a boiling hot day into a shadow. She didn't buckle us in, either, just twirled in the grotty nightie I'd bought her. We were going up, I could tell that much, to the mortal world. I didn't speak. Don't think I was able to. We have inner demons, as angels have their inner selves. He was just looking out for himself, now, would have thrown himself from my mouth if he knew how.
The whirling stopped. The odd colours faded, and the awful coldness let us both from its grip as we stepped onto the cracked street. The area itself was hard to date, seeing as how there wasn't much of it left. Flames crackled contentedly amongst the rubble, and I noticed for the first time the ash-smudge on Melanie's neck. There was no sign of life except for us, the two dead standing in the road. The buildings loomed solemn against the fires eating up the street around us, and no animal or human ran for safety. The place had been inhabited once. I could see cushions through windows, sad things without their stuffing, a painted sign half-blasted against a shop.
Mel sighed, throwing her head back, opening her arms out to her world, the grey clouds silent above us.
"Aren't you proud?" Her voice was so light and carefree, and I suddenly understood why Bob had been hiding from her. "Oh, Brice." She linked our arms as a rooftile cracked in two from the heat of the flames, and I stared at the girl who used to be an angel. "Look at what I've done."