Burn

PROLOGUE

He'd never believed in Hell.

Even as a young boy, sitting through the religious education classes he and his elementary school classmates had been offered, he hadn't bought a word of it. How could a place so searingly hot, so god-forsakenly evil, exist right below his feet, waiting beneath layers of earth to devour the sinners of the world?

It just didn't make sense to him. And when his Mum would clench her fists as she watched the news, hissing at every murderer and thief, "I hope you burn in Hell," he'd merely stare at her, wide-eyed and baffled.

Hell wasn't real, of this he was certain.

So how could anyone burn in it?

But as he stood now in his darkened room, lit only by faint shards of crisp moonlight, and stared into those blood-red eyes, Carter began to think he'd been completely wrong.

Hell was real, and he was looking straight into it.

"So."

There was something so unnervingly inhumane about that voice. It slithered over Carter's spine like a fragment of ice. It squeezed between the fixtures of his ribcage and settled, chillingly, around his pounding heart.

"Do we have a deal?"

A pair of fangs flashed silver in the moonlight, hovering over the edge of a deceptively human mouth, and a hand shot forward, blackened claws unfurling to reveal a crimson palm.

Carter's own hand shook fervently as he held it out, pale and stark against the shocking red of the other's skin. A smattering of freckles ran down its bony, slender shape, and as those claws enclosed Carter's wrist, he was struck by how unremarkable it looked, that pale, unassuming hand.

"We do."

The words were a breathy rasp. Carter's voice sounded as though it had been taken apart and clumsily reconstructed, all jagged edges and ugly syllables.

"We have a deal."