Hell at Her Hands Book Four

By Odette C. Bell

There are some things you want to avoid, even as a hell boy. Armageddon is one of them. But it’s not like Zane will have a choice.
The end is coming for him, and it’s going to use Bella’s eternal touch to end it all.
Zane could roll over and accept the inevitable. Or he could try to burn it. Because when you have wings, a forked tail, and eternal damnation in your eyes, the end can wait.
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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 Four 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: 9798215751541

Book preview

Chapter 1

Bella

I kissed Zane, because, dammit, now was the time to take the opportunity to try.

Time was about to slip through both of our hands. Speaking of hands, both of us now only had left hands.

It didn’t take me long to figure out Zane’s right hand was missing. And his gaze cut down and noted mine had been ripped off. Mouth moving around my lips, he muttered, He already got your pure time.

All I wanted was a moment of peace and passion which had nothing to do with Armageddon. I wasn’t going to get it. The ground around us was crumbling, great heaving chunks of stone falling away to reveal the guts of Giuseppe’s mansion. Something had happened to it – aging it on fast forward. I remembered this place. It would haunt my dreams for years. Now it looked as if it was 200 years old – no, 2000 years old. There was this sense that age was seeping through the cracks in the stone as if I could glimpse down to the very heart of the Earth.

Zane no longer had his wings, didn’t even have a tail. And as for clothes – he had trousers. Kind of. They were more like hot pants.

I didn’t know that much about demons, but there were the shimmering remains of a tattoo on his chest, and I just knew it was significant.

Another hit, and Zane would die.

Unlucky, because another hit came spiraling toward us through the storm.

It came from Giuseppe’s building. A slice of power smashed into the ground just above us.

Zane grabbed me with his remaining hand, locking it over my head and hissing in my ear, Hold on.

Kind of hard considering between us, we only had two hands.

The power propagated through the crumbling remains of the mansion, spreading out like a sonic boom. The guts of walls that had been exposed now turned to dust. That was good, right? Fewer objects to strike us on the skulls.

Not good. Because it meant there was nothing to block the attack. It smashed into Zane’s back.

There was nothing I could do, no chance I could grab from the maws of defeat. Giuseppe had my right hand, and while I was still an eternal witch, he was far more powerful. I still grabbed Zane and spun with him. But it was just as his back arched, his eyes widened, and his mouth opened in a terrified gape.

I can’t lose you now, he stammered. Not when I found you again.

It took me a moment. We didn’t have a moment, but I took one anyway. Zane was talking about me, wasn’t he?

The look in his eyes, the desperation in his groping fingers as they slid over my back – it was all for me.

And it would be for naught. For another terrifying attack spun from the building, struck the ground above us, and sailed toward us with all the lethality of a samurai sword heading toward a ladybird’s neck. There’d be no resistance. There’d be no chance to escape. And Hell, there’d probably be no blood, because the attack would disintegrate us.

This wasn’t fair. I’d told you that far too many times to count. You were probably sick of it. I sounded like a brat, didn’t I? It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t freaking fair. But guess what? Life is very rarely fair. Life is there to kick you in the teeth, slap you in the face, steal your wallet, and, if you’re lucky, keep you around long enough that you can have a painful death. It’s not there to grab you by the hand, lead you forward into paradise, and coo in your ear whenever you’re injured. If you want that – you’ll have to find it. Not in life, but in somebody you can hold.

My mother’s warning rose. I didn’t think I would ever remember another one of her stories now my right hand was gone. This one could punch through any fugue. It was the sharpest, most important story of all.

If I wanted to learn to be a true eternal witch – if I didn’t want to break everything I touched – I needed to learn how to hold eternity. And what’s eternity? All of time? All of space, too? Is eternity the sum total of the universe and everything that’s ever going to happen in it? Is eternity everything? Or is it something more?

You probably want to point out there’s a category mistake in that thought. Everything is everything. There can’t be something more than everything. If there is, then the original world simply expands to cover the new material.

But words, no matter how precise, can never capture the real world. And I knew, just knew with my eternal witch blood, that there was something more out there. That the heart of eternity wasn’t all time and space – it was something beyond, so mysterious, if you truly learnt to grasp it, you could learn to hold anything.

I couldn’t even hold Zane. Another strike of power blasted into the grounds, ripped apart a tree, and sent burning wood sailing toward him. It caught his shoulder – one of the only parts of him that wasn’t bruised and bloody – and spun him around.

His fingers, which groped toward my shoulder, with which he desperately tried to hold me still – were ripped back with the finality of somebody stamping on a forest.

He was thrown into one of the crumbling corridors to my side.

Zane, I roared.

There was no one to hear my voice. Zane soon disappeared amongst the raining storm of ash and destruction. And I was left to hear Giuseppe’s frigging laugh. I will give you one thing – it was very, very upset and tremendously unstable. And why wouldn’t it be? Zane had destroyed the past crystal.

So it was over, right?

What do you think? Giuseppe might no longer be able to hold the blood of the past. But he had the city in his choking grip, and it wouldn’t be long until he had me there, too.

He also still had my right hand. And with it, a glimpse of pure time.

Bella, he roared. His voice was laden with real anger. Not the kind of day-to-day rage modern folk experience all the time. Not the kind of middling rage you’d get if somebody cuts you off, steals from you, or bad mouths you. This was the kind of bloodcurdling anger that would kill. It would decimate everything that dared get in its way. It was the ego on a power trip. And there’d never been an ego quite like Giuseppe’s.

I could just glimpse the storm through the smoking, crumbling remains of the mansion basement. A cloud of dust wafted to the side, and I watched as the building raced toward us. I momentarily wondered what other people could see, then reminded myself they were either jacked up on the desire drug or very smartly at home with the covers over their heads. The only person to witness Giuseppe’s wild attack was me. And the only person who could do something about it was also me. I just didn’t have the chops to try.

Zane, Zane, I roared.

There was no answer. I couldn’t see him. There was so much destruction, it was like there was a storm of it. Great clouds of gray dust and magical particles swamped me. I thought I could hear more of the mansion crumbling, giving in to the age it’d once magically held back, but it could’ve been my imagination.

It was a distraction from Giuseppe anyway. I watched as a targeted blast of yellow-green magic sailed right toward my chest.

Giuseppe was too far for me to see. That didn’t matter. Giuseppe was the storm, remember? He might have lost control of the past crystal, but like I’d said – he had a strangle grip on this city and everything in it. Suddenly his face was magnified in the clouds. The billowing cumulonimbus twisted like somebody trying to strangle a painting until it formed his once handsome features. But cast in the gray of the storm, he was gaunt, disfigured, wild. He was his true self. And there was no escaping his ubiquity, nor size and power.

As the giant face of him was carved from the clouds, he opened his mouth wide and roared. His mouth spread so wide, he could consume most of downtown in a single gulp. Eating me would be like nothing more than a lion eating an ant.

I crossed my arms in front of myself. Weak. Pathetic. Useless. But it was the only thing I could frigging do. As sweat dribbled off my brow, as my back shook, I cast my gaze to the left where Zane had disappeared to.

I heard this thunderous crunch that suggested a massive section of the mansion had just crumbled in. Zane, I whispered through shaking lips. They’d never get a chance to form another word.

Giuseppe’s cloud attack was here. It rushed toward me. I was standing probably a good 10 meters below the surface of the ground. Lord knows what I was standing on – bedrock, old marble floor, the bones of Giuseppe’s enemies? It didn’t matter. It wasn’t stable, but it was unyielding enough that I couldn’t slip through it and hope to dodge.

The clouds raced around me. Just air and water droplets, right? Oh, so wrong. As they struck me, it was like being torn apart by the embodiment of every army that had ever assaulted the Earth.

So much wind smashed into my face, there was no point in opening my eyes. Do that, and they’d be pulled right out of my head.

I couldn’t even breathe against the assault of air. It was shunted up my nostrils, even through my ears, practically carving itself a path through the center of my chest.

All the while, I had to put up with Giuseppe’s laugh. It rang through the air, clearer than anything else, because it knew how to get rid of everything else so there was no competition.

The past’s blood might no longer be mine, but it doesn’t frigging matter. Nothing does. It’s over. I will strip you down for parts, use that blood of yours, and make a new crystal. This one will control all eternal witches that will ever be. It will be far more powerful than the past crystal anyway. Now, give me all of that blood. I will squeeze it from you like water from a sponge. On the word sponge, as it rang from his lips, I felt the storm sharpening.

It was as if every single suspended droplet of water created its own dagger and got ready to plunge it through my chest. As I was suspended there in front of him, I had a moment to appreciate this was it – it was over times by a thousand. I was an idiot for thinking I could stop him. I should’ve rolled over at the first chance.

But the end doesn’t come that quickly. Not when you’ve made a pact with a demon.

As my blood started to be ripped from me, I heard a roar. I swear everything everywhere heard that roar. Giuseppe’s hatred might be ubiquitous – it didn’t mean other things couldn’t be ubiquitous, too. And this was the sound of a demon son who would not give up. Zane hadn’t come this far, made this many deals, and fallen head over heels for me to lose me yet.

I felt a rush of wind, and my hair was plastered over my face. Then something slipped in beside me. A warm presence like no other. A presence that, even if you had to face the most terrifying thing, would cradle you through it, would distract you from the blood and rain and somehow pull a smile from your lips and love from your soul. As Zane reached me and wrapped his arms around me, he placed his one good hand on mine. It covered my ring.

His own ring hand had been cut off. It was still out there somewhere. I had a moment to appreciate it wasn’t on him, though. It was now presumably something else’s hand – the disassembled demon’s if I was a good judge. The connection that held us together, that made Zane want to protect me, in other words, was spent. But nothing could get in the way of Zane’s clear desire. Trust me. Do exactly what I say. And, Bella, don’t give up.

I twisted my head around, as my blood was being dragged out of every pore, and managed a smile as I stared at him.

There are different kinds of smiles in this world. I hadn’t appreciated that until now. Now I felt what it was to smile with every single part of your entire body, to push all of you into one move that had to be seen. Because smiles aren’t there for us. They’re there for the universe, there to tell it we’ve finally found the one thing we need.

Giuseppe roared again, and it was far more violent now Zane had reappeared. I could feel his need to get rid of Zane, to finally end this, once and for all.

The best way to do that would be to crush his heart. Look no further – because all Giuseppe had to do to stamp on the demon’s soul was to continue to kill me. I was already weak. But strangely, I’d never been stronger.

There is a point within all of us that is the point of no return. A moment when you realize it’s do or die. Where you must give every single thing you have or succumb.

As Zane nestled his hand on mine, grabbed my Ring of Satan, and secured it with his thumb, he whispered, This might… tickle. Okay, who am I kidding? It will burn. But you are an eternal witch, and I’m a demon. We don’t mind the flames.

I didn’t have time to clarify exactly what he’d do next. He went ahead and did it.

Zane somehow connected to me, connected to me like he was an extension of my nervous system, like we’d always been the same two people in different bodies. Connected to me and held on for dear life. It was just as Giuseppe became so eager to bleed me out, he pushed the full force of the storm into the task. If I weren’t being anchored down by Zane, I would’ve been lifted up.

But Zane held me harder, finding strength in his arms an ordinary creature couldn’t have. The son of the Devil isn’t ordinary. He can show you exactly what extraordinary is, though.

As Zane connected to me, my blood, which had been pouring out into the storm, lighting up the previously dull gray clouds until they were a luminescent red, changed color. It also, critically, started to burn. A lick of flame appeared in the first drop, rushed to the second, then went whoomph.

The blood was still connected to me. It was coming out of my own freaking body. You’d think, therefore, that I would explode in flames. But you were forgetting who’d just connected themselves to me. I felt Zane like nothing else. Because the feeling went beyond ordinary sensation to a realm that couldn’t be touched by the mind, that could only be felt by the keenest of the human senses.

We have senses so we can navigate the world, so we can understand it, so we can survive. But we also have senses so we can do more, so we can connect and find meaning in an otherwise cold universe. And every part of me that could find meaning found meaning in Zane’s soft touch, found it until it lifted me higher than anything had ever gone before.

I twisted