That unpleasant thought didn’t go away as the dragon landed on what I honestly saw as a dragon landing pad.

Coyote dismounted. “Okay. For now, we brazen this out.”

I nodded and fell in next to him, Kanesha on the other side, Hans behind us. It didn’t feel like a bad position to be in.

Except we were in the depths of Hell. A prison. An unpleasant prison. The air seemed to carry the clang of closing gates and doors with it.

I shivered, having the sudden feeling that we might not escape.

Brazen it out. And Coyote was heading for the dungeons. Of course he was. That was where you looked for a prisoner. But it didn’t… “He’s not in the jail.”
Coyote turned, and I got the impression of an ear twitch.

“I just have a feeling.”

The ear twitched again. Coyote was listening, but he wasn’t sure. “Where, then?”

“I don’t know.” I closed my eyes, but all I could sense was the oppressive weight of Hell. A heaviness that beat down on us.

That heaviness was what kept the damned souls damned, and now I was feeling it. Everything I’d ever done wrong weighing down on me; even the things I couldn’t remember.

Hell was a prison of guilt. Guilt about rebelling. Guilt that bound mortals here. I knew how to resist Tyz’vel now.

Which was good, because he came stepping out onto the platform while we hesitated. “Coyote.”

Ear twitch. “You have me. But you can’t hold me.” He turned into fog, then, dissipating.

Kanesha blinked.

“Don’t worry,” I murmured. Despite all reason I did sort of trust Coyote.

“Find him,” Tyz’vel instructed the war demons that flanked him.

Then he stepped forward. “I prefer your normal appearance.”

I let the glamor fall. “I don’t prefer yours. I’m here for my father.”

“Oh no. I meant him as bait, but he’s…” A pause. “He has enough guilt, see, to power a world. Sure, you don’t see it, but it’s there.”

And it made a difference. For all that he claimed he did only what he needed to do, for all that there was a reason.

For all that there was a reason, he regretted it. And that guilt had freed him from his prison in Asgard, but was what held him here.

“So, what?”

“I take Hell, and then I take Heaven. And then there will be nobody to stop me taking you.” A pause. “Kill the mortal,” he instructed another of the war demons.