Hell at Her Hands Book Three

By Odette C. Bell

As the fight for everything heats up, so does Bella. And it’s not because of Zane. Her eternal touch can no longer be held back. As her fateful powers rise, so does the mortal danger enveloping the third realm.
Bella can fight it. But she can’t fight it alone.
Zane could help her, but he can’t get to her. He’s too busy dodging banned ghosts, monsters, and Giuseppe’s freaking father.
There’s every chance Zane will lose and Bella will lose hold of her powers and destroy all.
But when you’re a demon bound by a Ring of Satan, statistics can go hang. Because devil boys make their own luck.
...
A light-romance urban-fantasy, Hell at Her Hands follows a demon oracle and a new witch fighting fate. If you crave your fiction with action, humor, romance, and fun, grab Hell at Her Hands Book Three today and soar free with an Odette C. Bell series.
Hell at Her Hands is the 3rd My Better Devil series. A witty, action-packed, light romance world where Satan’s sons must find love, but only after it sticks a ring on their finger. If you like your urban fantasies packed full of charming smiles, arrogant demons, and sprinkles of romance, dive in today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Odette C. Bell
• Release date: Jan 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215830024

Book preview

Chapter 1

Zane

The city, you wouldn’t be surprised to know, was not going to Hell. How great would that be? I wouldn’t have to do a thing, wouldn’t have to lift a claw or a tail. I’d just wait around for dad and his army to sweep in and save everything.

Nope. Something terrible was happening to this town. It was being squeezed.

It didn’t take much longer for me and Banjo to make our way down the stairs and out of the archive office. All right, Banjo did most of the navigating. He just dragged me along for the ride.

Never once in my great life prior to this day had I ever assumed I would have to rely on a middling cat demon to save the world.

But destiny is not meant to be predictable, even when you are the Oracle.

The cat demon scratched the final lock on the front door of the archive office, and we spilled out through exploding shards of wood onto the street. Banjo didn’t have the bravery to say a thing. He locked his lips together and hissed, the wheeze almost mesmeric in its frightened quality.

Demons are meant to be a tough bunch. If you listen to us, we’ll tell you we can face most things. No one had ever been forced to face this, however.

You didn’t get the sense that the sky was actually falling. Instead, it felt like it’d been completely replaced by clouds. They billowed wildly as if someone had shoved wind machines up them. Perhaps they were being pushed on by miniature tornadoes. Or, more likely, disassembled demons.

I thought I saw a wingtip disappearing into one of the thickest banks of clouds to my left. I didn’t have time to tilt my head up and pay much attention. Banjo hissed. You feel that, demon lord? The sense of sins in the air is thick. He didn’t deliver that with a smile, though he ought. A shudder passed across his shoulders, and his whiskers became limp.

I felt it. I smelt it. I heard it. Every single one of my senses was alive with the fact that sins weren’t just being committed. They were being encouraged, too.

Different meteorological phenomena can lend themselves to different experiences. A nice bright sunny day by the pool is a well-known way to relax. It is perhaps less well-known that when storms reach violent crescendos, it’s a great time to go out and party. When the skies are lit up with true, natural drama, it can lend to most events, especially if they’re magical.

Though we were roughly in the middle of town, there were many branching streets from this point, and I barely had to articulate my head to the left to watch expensive cars zooming around town and parking near the best clubs. Clubs I had once frequented myself to search for sinners and criminals.

Banjo did it again, shuddering, even pressing closer to me as if he was seeking comfort. What could I bring? What could I possibly do? With no wings, no hope, and no magic, I was a sitting duck. Then again, even sitting ducks have wings.

I thought I felt magic gathering in the storm directly above me. Banjo didn’t think. He knew. He launched forward, twisted midair, planted his back paws against my shoulder, and thrust me out of the way as a well-placed strike of lightning slammed down into the pavement, tearing it asunder. Heated chunks of asphalt blasted up everywhere. A few dashed across my face and the tip of my shoulder, and they cut me easily. Once upon a time, anything made from the human realm could never hurt me. Times had changed. Times had become dangerous.

Run, I uselessly encouraged Banjo as I scooped him up.

He rode on my shoulder, his paws close to my ear as he hissed, Left. No, right, he changed his mind at the last moment. His head was twisted all the way back so he could watch the storm.

He kept changing his mind, but not because he couldn’t read the weather. He was a full Hell creature. Instead, the clouds were changing their mind, strikes of lightning following me until the last moment.

I leapt behind a green dumpster, a fork of bright lightning smashing into the lid. It ripped it off, and the unmentionables substances within were flung everywhere. A banana skin – an actual banana skin – flattened itself on my face with a squelch.

Banjo, despite his previous proclivities, clearly didn’t find it funny. Run, he roared. Try to get underground.

Do you really think that’s going to save me? I have a feeling that Giuseppe has already claimed that area, I said, voice bottoming out low. It was less of a feeling and more of a direct intuition.

I could feel this thumping vibrating up through the asphalt beneath me. It rhythmically pounded into my feet, up into my knees, into my hips, into my pointed teeth as I pressed them against my lip.

I’d never fought with so few resources. My wings, aside from being magical batteries and very comfortable blankets, were also there to magnify magic. They could sharpen my senses, somewhat like a small insect’s antenna can allow them to direct their sense organs to where they need to go.

Now I had to deal with a tenth of my power and a cat demon with limited skills.

Head through that basement door, he proclaimed. I didn’t make the mistake of following his orders. I knew that particular basement door.

Painted this drab, non-offensive blue, it had a tiny little brass plate that claimed it was a storage room. Perhaps unsuspecting people thought it was a small archive office. It was not. It was a storehouse for woes.

A scream museum was kept in there. The owner was a purveyor of darkness who’d never broken enough rules to be dragged in by either Hell or Heaven.

The guy was half human, half something else. He didn’t actually murder people, didn’t really break the rules of either Heaven or Hell, so there was no reason to go after him. Instead, he collected memories from unsuspecting people he passed on the street. The recollections of whatever had made them scream the loudest throughout their lives. He copied them and kept them in his museum. If people wanted a novel thrill, they could head in there, walk through the shadowy, dusty, cobweb-lined halls, and hear what real fear sounded like.

I might’ve told you I wasn’t stupid enough to go in there, but my chances were limited.

The storm had realized we were too nimble to be struck by lightning. Why not interact with the environment instead?

A massive fork suddenly sliced down, caught the tip of the building above, and sent it hailing down toward us. Bricks exploded out, and fire shot up into the heavens.

There was a club not so far away, and patrons paused on the corner of the street, actually giggling and clapping their hands as if this was mid-time entertainment.

They couldn’t all be so messed up to think such a violent storm was fun.

Unless they had chemical help. Even from here, I could see their glassy eyes and limited attention. They’d become instinctive beings, and I knew precisely who’d helped them. It wasn’t a coincidence that Giuseppe was the greatest drug dealer in town.

Bastard, I roared as I was forced forward, right toward the museum of screams.

Things started to rain down from above us. Some of them were bricks, legitimately. Others were junk. There was even that dumpster from before. Somehow this storm was grasping up random objects and hurling them in my path.

We’re goners, Banjo hissed in a moment of weakness.

Not just yet, I said, and weirdly, I intended it to be a hopeful comment. But I was struck in the back by a speeding brick as I said just. It came out as this vocal explosion, as the most forceful point of all.

We were only just still alive, weren’t we? Tell me how long we could possibly stay alive as the city descended further into Giuseppe’s greedy grip?

I opened the museum door easily. It yielded under my touch without me having to waste a scrap of magic. The heavy brass handle twisted, and there was a suspicious clunk from within. It sounded like someone tightening the screws on an iron maiden.

I’d been inside this museum once. I’d found it quite passé at the time. But that had been 10 years ago before this city had descended quite as far. If there was any place you wanted to keep a museum of screams, it was this Hell hole. The kind of horrors it’d seen over the years would likely even scare my father.

The door swung closed behind me. There was another dull click as it locked itself.

We found ourselves in a long stone corridor. It was squat, and once upon a time, that would’ve bothered me. It would’ve reduced my ability to fly. Now it was irrelevant. I might never fly again.

This is… Banjo began. Whatever he wanted to say died on his little lips.

This was just the beginning. From far off down the dusty corridor, I watched a wind slowly push down toward us. I watched it, because I saw its effect on the cobwebs. They clung to the corners of the room, between the walls and the ceiling, but now they moved gently toward us.

It was the same effect you’d get if you walked right up to somebody’s fringe and blew on it softly.

Then softly ended with a shriek.

I winced, eyes closing of their own accord as a full-throated scream ripped out right by my ear.

Banjo wasn’t expecting it like I was, and he startled, his claws digging into the tender flesh just above my collarbone. What the—

It’s the museum of screams, I’m afraid, I explained without explaining anything at all. Why would somebody want to collect such things? The purveyor of this not-so-fine establishment was fascinated by what made people truly afraid. Not what they thought made them afraid, what made their bodies afraid.

I had to admit, if I were deranged myself, I could see the appeal. People tend to layer incorrect psychological theories on top of their own body’s actual experiences. A flutter of a heart caused by an undetected arrhythmia might be mistaken for anxiety. Then one can build an entire story about it if they’re not careful. The museum of screams ignored all of that. It drilled down to people’s base memories and ripped out what really made them afraid.

But in the end, it was just a museum, right? They were just screams.

No. Apparently not. As I took another step, I realized that the purveyor of this place had upgraded it in the past decade. As a scream rushed past my ear, sounding like some terrified person strapped to a train cart, I saw a flash of what had caused it.

Banjo didn’t suddenly lurch down and bury his face against my bare shoulder. So maybe he didn’t see it. Maybe this was a peculiar feature of the Oracle. And maybe you just wanted me to get around to what I actually saw. As the shriek hurtled past me, I watched a man slipping off the edge of a roof.

These weren’t death memories. As I’d already told you, the guy who owned this museum had collected them from people he passed on the street, skimming them with magic they’d never been able to feel.

So this guy in my vision, whoever he was, would survive.

I felt the absolute terror grip him as his fingers slipped off a rain-covered concrete lip. I saw a flash of the sky above him, felt his heart catapult into his jaw. Then the moment when weightlessness took him and gravity grabbed him a second later.

I never found out how he survived. Another scream hurtled in from the other side. This time I watched a woman witnessing her child running toward a busy highway. The little toddler ran toward it with glee, having no clue what was there.

The woman clutched her chest, screamed with all her heart, and lurched forward – and again, I never got to see what happened next.

Banjo was now gripping me with tight claws, and I thought he was hissing in my ear, but I was too consumed by the visions.

Have to… out… here… I caught a few fragments of what he was saying, but I couldn’t put them together in a coherent narrative.

Another vision beset me. This time it involved magic. Not that the poor person knew that. They came home to hear a terrifying crash from their bedroom. They ran inside to see a shadow-encased hand pressed against the glass—

Somebody bit my nose. There was only one person here who could do it.

It ripped me out of the visions, if only for a few seconds. I watched as blood beaded down from the injury, watched as Banjo’s eyes flashed up toward me, his teeth still embedded in my skin. Without removing his bite, he spoke around it, Move. Something is gathering under the city. Something is pounding on the door. Giuseppe is looking for you. Something’s… happening.

Yes, something was happening – my Oracle skills were unwinding.

I started to see more and more disconnected flashes as screams echoed out from every direction. I was like a cat madly batting at whatever came close. It wasn’t coordinated. I couldn’t hold onto anything. Instead, with every vision, my mind became more and more discombobulated.

But Banjo was not the kind of demon to let me sink for too long. Something’s happening with the storm, he roared. Something’s happening to Bella.

One word. One word held me. One word focused me. One word pulled me out of my fracturing Oracle visions. One word that was wrapped around my ring finger.

Bella.

I’d barely known her for more than five or six hours. I’d lost count. She was just a person. Just a slave I’d bought. She was just so many things, but for something so apparently insignificant, she had such a grip on my heart, I couldn’t turn from it.

Bella, I began, and I felt precisely what Banjo had warned me of. The force in the storm was gathering. A force like no other.

Storms, if left to their