“Ummm. Lucy?” Ashliel stepped in beside me, electronic clipboard in hand.

“Yes, Ash?” I knew she had a long list of requests, meetings, messages. As CEO of Hell, my days were busy. I’d built my torturous dimension to great heights over the last few hundred millennia. In the last two hundred years alone, attendance of lost souls entering Hell has risen over two hundred percent, and that number looked to be on the rise.

“There’s a man who wants his punishment of having a buzzard constantly pecking his eyes out to be lessened, a man whose memories have been wiped and he wants to know who he was, and a woman who wants to warn her sister on Earth about the afterlife.” She spoke fast, knowing my time was limited.

“Buzzard man, no can do. This isn’t a negotiation. His punishment was set when he entered Hell. He knows this. Deny future requests. Memory man…good point, how can he atone for his sins if he can’t remember them? See to it that his sinful memories are returned. Only his sins, mind you. And no to the woman who wants to warn her sister—they get plenty of warnings. It’s not like this place is a secret.”

Ashliel’s fingers flew across her clipboard. By the time we reached my offices, she was done. Before stepping out of the glass box I looked down, into the fiery pit where the most heinous of sinners resided. It was eerily beautiful from this vantage point. Sighing, I turned my back on the bubbling pit of fire and exited the elevator, stepping into the opulence of Hell HQ.

I greatly admired the skyscrapers on Earth and had modeled Hell HQ on them. Over two hundred floors, soaring high into the red and orange sky, built from gleaming black marble. My offices took up ten floors alone; the very top floor was my penthouse. Yes, I lived in luxury, but I damn well earned it. Running Hell was hard work, never a moment’s peace. And now this. A breach. It niggled me. Security was tight. It couldn’t have come from the pit; I was just there. Had it come from one of the cell blocks housed on the other side of Hell HQ?

I crossed to the floor-to-ceiling windows and looked out on the cells. Row upon row of fifty- story skyscrapers, all housing sinners. They spanned as far as the eye could see, each one providing different levels of punishment. Wingless Demons patrolled the streets, their black skin and red eyes clearly identifying them. Their winged counterparts took to the skies, massive wings spanning over twenty feet, soaring around and around the buildings. Who could escape this? That is if the breach had even come from Hell in the first place. Earth was my brothers’ responsibility. They were charged with watching over the humans. I was annoyed I was being dragged into it, yet I liked the humans. I didn’t want to see them destroyed by some other dimension creature. Not if I could stop it.

A ding on Ashliel’s clipboard caught my attention. I arched a dark brow at her.

“You have a delivery.”

“Probably from my brothers.” I sighed. Had they heard the news and were already poking fun?

“They might have sent something nice,” Ashliel suggested, ever hopeful.

“Knowing my brothers, I doubt it.”

Stepping through the glass doors into my office, I spy a huge gift-wrapped parcel on my sleek black desk. Here we go.

“Thank you, Ashliel. That will be all.” I waited for Ash to leave the room, then approached my desk cautiously. What were they up to? Gabriel and Michael were archangels like me, but when Father chose me over them to head up the Hell Division, to say the boys were a little prickly was an understatement. We hadn’t spoken in over a hundred years. Why now? Today? Were they connected to the breach? Did they instigate it? I wouldn’t put it past them. They’d do anything to see me fail.

Hoping I was wrong, and that maybe, just maybe, the box on my desk was an olive branch, I tore open the wrapping and cautiously opened the lid. Inside was a single piece of paper. On it was written the name, “Emily Barlow.” Who the hell was Emily Barlow? Was she a lost soul? I reached to pull the paper from the box, but the whole thing went up in flames. Great.

With a wave of my hand I put out the flames and cleaned the debris from my desk before crossing to the giant screen across the room, one so big that I had to stand in front of it, or if I preferred, recline on the leather couch a few feet away. I could split the screen into hundreds of smaller screens and monitor Earth and Hell at the same time if I so chose. This time I raised my hand and halved the screen, keeping an eye on my own dimension on the left, and scanning through files searching for Emily Barlow on the right. There were several humans with that name and I flicked through until one caught my eye.

There. Emily Barlow. Human. Alive. Her dossier flashed across the screen, a mini movie of her life so far. She was young, a teenager, seventeen and a high school student, blonde hair, blue eyes, pretty. She was a bossy little thing, liked to be involved in community events and social activities at school. She wanted a career in Public Relations or the Media. As I watched, the screen glitched, froze, then resumed. Emily was in a graveyard. Something was there with her. Something dark. I leaned forward, watching intently as Emily was clasped in a tight embrace, held for a matter of seconds, then let go. Glowing red eyes looked up, directly at me. Then it was gone, leaving Emily’s body on the ground drained of life.

The screen flickered, a brief moment of static, before settling again. This time I no longer saw Emily, but a man. He was sitting at a table, one hand resting on the table, palm up, and in the center of his palm a deep azure blue rock. He sent the message. Did he mean to send it to me I wonder? His eyes sprang open and he flopped back in his seat as if exhausted. I looked into his eyes, magnified the screen so it focused on his face. A very handsome face: strong jaw covered in a light beard, full lips that held my attention for slightly too long. I wondered what they looked like when he smiled.

Then I wondered…why am I wondering about his lips? Okay, seriously, he’s a human, I scolded myself. But it had been a long time since I’d…you know. Had any fun in that department. Maybe a dalliance with a human would take my mind off the stresses of running Hell. As much as I loved my job, I’d yet to have a vacation. I shifted my attention from his kissable lips to his eyes. A combination of hazel and gold, they were striking with their dark lashes. And the way he was looking directly into the screen, it was as if he were looking right at me.

Decision made.

Anya screamed and ran to Richards. Grabbed him by the back of the jacket and pulled.

“You have to help me!”

The freezing air buffeted her in the face when she looked up and saw a man only vaguely resembling Armand Scott pounce to the ground from on top of Connor. Snowflakes blew sideways past him and stuck to the walkway between them. His cranial deformity was identical to that of the remains she’d unearthed in Russia, only the physical expression of the flesh was for more terrifying than she could ever have imagined. She’d envisioned its face as being similar to that of modern man, but there was nothing remotely human about Scott’s appearance. Everything about him was alien, from the grayish cast of his skin to the way he twitched and moved in lurches, as though unfamiliar with the mechanics of motion.

Fissures crackled as they raced through the Plexiglas.

The creature scuttled forward and cocked its head, first one way and then the other. Blood dribbled from its mouth when it issued a hiss that sounded like steam firing from a ruptured pipe.

Anya screamed and threw herself to her knees.

“Come on!”

She grabbed Richards underneath his arms and shouted with the effort of lifting him. He found his feet, but couldn’t seem to take his eyes off the creature.

“It’s magnificent,” he said.

“Hurry!” Friden shouted.

The stairwell echoed with the drumroll of footsteps hitting the iron steps.

Anya looked back and saw several silhouettes bounding down the staircase toward them. She jerked Richards so hard she nearly sent him sprawling once more, but he regained his balance and stumbled backward with her. She took advantage of his newfound momentum to drag him away from the creature, which lunged forward, cutting the distance between them in half.

A scream from behind her.

She whirled to find Kelly in the opening to the Skyway, her hands clapped over her mouth. When Anya looked back, the creature was within ten feet of them and tensed to make another advance.

More popping sounds from above her. The cracks spread through the walls in her peripheral vision. Chunks of Plexiglas fell to the ground between her and the creature, which released a series of clicking sounds and retreated into the blowing snow.

A loud snap and a cable sang past to her right. The entire bridge shuddered.

“Hurry, Anya!” Friden shouted.

“There’s another one behind us!” Jade screamed.

“Start barricading the stairwell,” Evans shouted.

“And then what?” Jade asked. “We’ll be trapped in here without light or heat or any way to signal for help.”

Anya pulled Richards toward them. If she could just cross the threshold at the end of the Skyway, they could seal the creature on the other side.
Another cable snapped and the floor dropped.

Anya hit the ground on her knees and barely scrambled out of the way before Richards landed on top of her.

The walkway sloped downward toward where the creature crouched. The domed Plexiglas shattered and dropped enormous shards between them. The storm raced through the gap, creating a moving wall of snow between them that nearly concealed the creature as it approached, low to the ground and coming up fast.

A resounding thud.

The Skyway slanted downward, so steeply that Anya started to slide. She grabbed Richards by the back of the jacket with one hand and reached for anything at all with the other.

“Hang on!” Evans shouted and dove for her. He caught her by the wrist and halted her slide.

Another cable snapped and whipped the frozen glass beside them hard enough to shatter the glass and impale her cheek with tiny fragments.

Evans groaned and pulled her up toward the doorway, the seal around which was already buckled and peeling away from the building.

“Give me a hand!” he shouted.

Friden tentatively crawled to Evans’s side, grabbed Richards, and pulled hard enough on the back of his coat to pry him from Anya’s grasp, lightening her burden enough that Evans could drag her up the slope and over the fractured edge.

She scurried past Evans, turned around, and helped the others pull Richards into the stairwell.

Bolts snapped and structural rings disengaged. Bits of Plexiglas cascaded down the bridge toward where the creature crawled toward them.

A chasm opened behind it. Connor’s body slid through, tumbled out over the nothingness, and vanished into the storm.

“Close the door!” Anya screamed.

The creature slapped at the floor with its bare hands as the bridge grew steeper, digging its fingernails into the tiles in an effort to gain traction.

Evans pried the door from the recess until the others were able to help him drag it across the entryway.

The creature shrieked and scrambled uphill, blood dribbling from the gunshot wounds on its chest.

Ten feet.

Five.

It was nearly upon them when the Skyway broke away from the building.

The creature’s eyes widened. Its nails tore from the cuticles. It screeched and flailed.

The last thing Anya saw before they sealed the door was the expression of sheer terror on its face as it plummeted into the blowing snow.

“Someone help me!” Roche shouted from the landing at the top of the staircase, where he struggled to jerk the door from its slot in the wall. “It’s right behind me!”

Anya rushed for the stairs and hit them behind Kelly and Jade, who were already halfway up. She barely had the strength to climb and had to use the railing to pull herself higher. She nearly lost her balance when her hand slipped in something wet, but she managed to stumble forward and made it to the landing, where the others already had the gap down to a mere foot. A dark shape streaked straight toward the opening from the foyer on the other side, the light reflecting from its inhuman eyes.

“It’s coming!” Anya screamed.

She threw herself against the face of the door and used her shoulder to help the others drive it closed with a resounding thud.

The creature struck it from the other side, hard enough to knock her backward, but she braced herself and leaned into it again.

Kelly screamed beside her as the creature hurled itself against the steel door, over and over.

Until, finally, it stopped.

Anya desperately listened for any indication of what it was doing on the other side but couldn’t hear anything over the combination of their heavy breathing and whimpering.

She pictured Arkaim, with its twin fortified rings, a veritable fortress that should have been able to withstand any siege, reduced to little more than scorched rubble in the middle of a field, and the strange remains she exhumed near its outskirts. She’d made a terrible mistake in assuming that the coneheaded species represented a terminal branch in the human evolutionary tree rather than an off shoot from modern man, one facilitated by something lacking in humanity, something subhuman, the outward physical manifestation of which looked an awful lot like the alien species referred to as Grays.

Only there was nothing fictional about this being.

The creature shrieked and threw itself against the door one final time. It released a torrent of guttural clicks, then retreated into the station. The sound of its footsteps diminished until she couldn’t hear anything from the other side at all.

Anya stepped back and looked at the door. Her hand had left a smear of blood on the steel. She glanced down at her palm, expecting to find a laceration, but the skin was intact.

She took Roche’s flashlight from him and traced the railing down to where she’d slipped. There was blood on the rail, and even more on the wall above it, leading up to a hole in the exposed ductwork. Her heart sank when she gave voice to what they were all thinking.

“We’re going to die in here.”

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