Inferno Read online

  Inferno

  Valos of Sonhadra XI

  Nancey Cummings

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Epilogue One

  Epilogue Two

  Thank you for reading

  Also Available

  About the Author

  Copyright

  The story so far:

  When an orbital prison is torn through a wormhole and crashes on an unknown planet, it's every woman for herself to escape the wreckage. As though savage beasts and harsh, alien climates aren't enough, the survivors discover the world isn't uninhabited and must face new challenges—risking not only their lives but their hearts.

  Welcome to Sonhadra.

  Amber fled the ruins of the prison and, with a small group of survivors, did her best to make it in the wilds of Sonhadra. It wasn’t easy or pretty, and no one got by without scars. When winter arrived, they were hungry and tired enough to accept the hospitality of another former inmate, Lucie (read her story in Blazing), in the volcano city.

  Amber is done surviving, and she’s ready to live.

  Inferno is not a stand-alone and is best read after the event in Blazing, book 3 in the Valos of Sonhadra series.

  Chapter One

  Then

  Amber

  Fire lit the wreckage of the Concord against the night.

  So that happened.

  Amber ignored the sobbing and hysterics around her. Guards attempted to maintain order, using brute force to make the finer points of crisis management. Shouts penetrated the chaos, but few listened with those injured too busy screaming and those able to crawl too busy escaping.

  Escape.

  She should do that.

  Amber scrubbed the soot from her eyes and looked up at the sky. Despite literally having been in space for the last two years, she hadn't seen the night sky once.

  Two moons glowed softly.

  Well, fuck.

  Pel

  Fire flowed through his body. Pel gasped and lurched forward. Awake again. Instinctively, he squeezed his brothers' hands.

  Only one squeezed back.

  He remembered everything in a rush.

  He remembered the years spent in the service of his Creator, Sheenika. He remembered the lost, those who did not survive the transformation from free people into Sheenika’s toy soldiers, and those left behind because Sheenika’s toys were disposable. Numbed to emotion and lacking free will, he had to leave his brother, Flin.

  Without his heartstone, he could not feel upset at abandoning him. Likewise, without his own heartstone, Flin could not cry out for rescue.

  Pel felt it now. Agony roared through him. He struggled to his feet before falling to his knees. His hand clawed at his chest, at the source of the pain, as his fingers scrabbled over the smooth crystal of his heartstone.

  “Peace,” a familiar voice said. Sarsen, his commander. “It will only hurt for a moment. Do not struggle.” Ever the Soldier, Pel obeyed the source of authority. The hurt came in waves, connections reforming after a thousand years of absence.

  Worry replaced pain. Pel turned, searching for his triad brothers. Mishal sat to one side, still unconscious and fires cold. “Help him,” he croaked, voice rough from decades of disuse.

  A strong hand slapped him on the back. “Soon. I’m glad to see you revived, warrior.”

  Mishal

  Pel dragged him from his slumber. Too old and too tired already, he did not want to wake. What waited for him? Endless seasons of emptiness and numbness?

  He could not bear to face that alone.

  He would not let his brother face it without him.

  Mishal woke.

  Flin

  Flin dreamed.

  He dreamed of a female who fell from the stars. She had hair the color of ripe grain ready for harvest and warm eyes the color of aged wood. She was not valo or a Creator but something new altogether.

  Starved for air, the fires of his body cooled, and he drifted, lost.

  Chapter Two

  Now

  Mishal

  Breathing grew easier with every step that took Mishal and Pel from the Ventos’ territory. No longer suffocated for air, his fire burned brighter. The Fire Valos did not need to eat, drink or sleep, but breathing was non-negotiable. The biological fact made them susceptible to the Ventos, who could manipulate air. Mishal never harbored any unkind emotions toward the Ventos—indeed, he had been numbed to all emotions until recently—but his Creator, Sheenika, forced her Fire Valos to battle the Ventos, often ending with massive casualties.

  Flin had been such a casualty. Centuries ago, Flin had been caught in a Ventos trap. Deprived of air, his fire sputtered to nothing. No other Fire Valos had been able to safely retrieve him without falling victim to the same trap.

  That was the past.

  Pel carried Flin across his broad shoulders. While Mishal struggled for breath, Pel showed no outward signs of distress. Mishal knew his brother well enough to know he put on a stoic face and refused to show weakness. Soldiers were a stubborn lot.

  "You cannot carry him the whole way. Let me help," Mishal said.

  "I will carry him," Pel said, voice decided.

  "Let me make a cart, at least. There is ore in the ground and plenty of trees. I can fashion a sturdy cart in no time."

  “A cart will jostle him, and I will not risk damaging his form.”

  “He will be secured and will not suffer damage during transport.”

  Pel kept his eyes fixed ahead of him, focused on the journey. "We cannot afford to waste time. We must return to the City in the Caldera."

  "He will grow heavy and slow our journey."

  "I was made for such a task," he said, stubbornly.

  Obstinate, inflexible Soldier. Incapable of deviating from orders.

  The journey to the Ventos territory took them a moon of hard walking. No matter how the Creator designed him for warfare and endurance, Pel could not carry Flin's unconscious body the entire trip.

  “An hour will make no difference,” Mishal continued. “Time spent in preparation now will save us time on the journey.”

  Pel adjusted his grip, one hand on Flin’s leg, the other on an arm. He frowned, and his fire flared before settling into a decision. “I hate that you are correct,” he said.

  “But you do hate?”

  The frown increased in severity. “I do. It’s odd. I don’t like it.”

  Since their revival through the return of their heartstones, emotions long forgotten slowly came back. Sarsen had warned them it would be so. He advised them to stay in the City in the Caldera and grow accustomed to their new state of being. Pel refused, not while the Ventos still held Flin captive.

  Not so inflexible, after all, Mishal mused.

  Sarsen had advised them to stay but Pel found he had the ability to ignore his former commander. They struck out as soon as their fires stabilized. With only their hazy memories to guide them, they searched for the Ventos territory in the east. Perhaps a long trek was not the ideal time or place to learn how their bodies functioned with the heartstones, but they chose to retrieve Flin as quickly as possible.

  Their choice; no one’s suggestion or command.

  “I do not
find hate a pleasant emotion,” Mishal agreed, “but I am glad to experience it.” After a lifetime of numbness and void, he thankfully greeted every emotion, no matter how bitter.

  “We will clear the Ventos’ territory before you build your cart,” Pel said.

  Mishal nodded. He did not enjoy being in another valos’ territory, even one as receptive as the Ventos.

  Strange.

  The tribes had once been enemies. Mishal, as a Builder, never experienced the battles firsthand but he built many of the tools of war.

  Pel, as a Soldier, had been on the front lines. Flin, a Hunter, had no business being caught in battle. After all this time, Flin still didn’t understand why or how. It didn’t matter, in the end. What happened, happened.

  “You are brooding,” Pel said.

  “I am not,” Mishal replied sourly. He thought. Deeply. He did not brood.

  “I had forgotten that about you.”

  “I had forgotten how chatty you were.”

  Pel laughed. “I had forgotten that about myself, as well.”

  Mishal nodded. His memories of life before Sheenika had come and transformed his tribe were hazy. Other memories were stark in their clarity but devoid of feeling. It left him with the odd sensation of falling and being firmly planted in one place.

  “The Ventos had a human,” Pel said.

  He grunted in affirmation. The Ventos tried to conceal their human, but her curiosity got the better of her. He caught a glimpse of the female with long dark hair and scars crisscrossing her face. Sarsen’s mate also had scars. Were they from the same tribe? Did they decorate their bodies with scars?

  Mishal had never really given the female human’s body a second thought. Now, curiosity pricked at him. Of course, to have such thoughts of another triad’s mate was wrong, but he could speculate about an unmated human female.

  When Sarsen revived him and Pel, he warned them that they mated a human. She looked like a Creator but was not. Mishal had to admit, the uncanny resemblance surprised him, but he did not feel any strong curiosity toward the human female.

  “I wonder how many humans there are. Did they really come from the stars?” Pel mused.

  “At least two,” Mishal said. “Not enough to be concerned.”

  “I am not concerned. I am intrigued.” Pel adjusted Flin’s weight again. One human had wandered into the Fire Valos territory. Perhaps more arrived after he and Mishal departed the City in the Caldera. “Come. We have some distance to go before we can stop.”

  Amber

  Amber never thought she'd be glad to feel the cold again. After frigid nights shivering in a prison cell, freezing nights in the forest, and nights spent huddled around a fire in the roofless stone huts, she’d finally swallowed her pride and took up the offer of shelter in the City in the Caldera. The endless heat of the volcano city sounded like paradise; a warm, bubbling paradise.

  Unfortunately, paradise stank like rotten eggs.

  Sure, it had running water, toilets, and showers. Bathtubs sized for people a little larger than the average human acted more like bathing pools than tubs. The City had soft beds, clean clothes, hot food, and heat. Glorious heat. She'd never be cold again.

  It also had a small population of local aliens—the valos—organic beings somehow also made of stone and lava.

  She stood sandwiched between two enormous valo men while another two argued in the dirt about plumbing and all the things that human bodies required.

  She tried not to stare at their stone-looking skin. Amber had never really touched one to find out. She left the touching of aliens to Lucie. The lava part was undeniable, though. They glowed with it, like smoldering coals or cracks at their joints.

  Ertale ignored her blatant stares, but Maar looked down at her and smiled. “Like what you see, little human?”

  “No. You’re standing a bit close. You’re warm.” Heat radiated off the valo like a furnace. Sweat rolled down her back.

  “Do not be shy. I am considered particularly handsome for my people,” Maar said with authority.

  His frankness stunned her. Alien or not, Amber had noticed his unquestionably masculine and attractive form. The way he shamelessly flirted made it impossible not to notice.

  Honestly, it flattered her how blatant he made his intentions. Amber hadn’t exactly been a blushing virgin before prison, but never had men so obviously hit on her, either. Then again, he chased after every woman in the Caldera, as far as she could tell.

  “You are speechless,” Maar said with a knowing nod.

  His attitude killed any attraction she might have felt toward the valo. He was hot—literally—but arrogant. No thanks.

  Ertale rumbled with the sound of tumbling gravel. He laughed at them.

  “Good-looking or not, you don’t have to get all up in my personal space.” Amber stretched her arms out to demonstrate.

  “I am guarding you.” He clasped his hands behind his back like he served in the military.

  “Sounds great. I’m going to stand over there.” She pointed at the well in the center of the village. “And you keep guarding me here.”

  She moved to the well.

  Maar followed.

  “Seriously, stop.” Amber held out her hand in what she hoped was the universal gesture to back off.

  Maar blinked, his glowing eyes shifting from her hand to her face and back again. “You will grow cold.”

  “Maybe but you’re making the ground soft. I’ll get mud all over my shoes.”

  His intense gaze shifted to her feet. She wore slippers crafted from delicate material. They were gorgeous and felt like walking on a cloud, but they were not made for tromping through the muck. “You require boots,” he said.

  Amber turned to Ertale. The large male did not speak, but she knew that nothing escaped his notice. “Can you help me out here?”

  Ertale made more of his tumbling gravel noise.

  “I just wanted a break from the heat,” she said. The comforts of the City in the Caldera were great, but after a long winter, she wanted fresh air that didn’t stink of rotten eggs and cold. Glorious, bone-chilling cold.

  Ertale pointed to a location near the perimeter of the village, where it met the forest. Maar nodded and assumed his position.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Months ago, Amber and the other five Concord survivors—or escaped convicts, depending who you asked—made camp in the abandoned village until cold winter rain and sleet drove them in the City in the Caldera. By that point, they had been on Sonhadra for a few months and learned a bit about the locals.

  They called themselves the Fire Valos. They all had some type of fire manipulation ability. As far as Amber understood, they were the original people of this planet, Sonhadra, until other aliens arrived with superior technology. They were captured, experimented on, and changed.

  She totally understood how that felt.

  Amber managed to escape the worst of the experiments, i.e., torture, on the Concord. She proved more useful keeping the computers running than as a test subject under a scientist's knife. She witnessed her fellow inmates being taken to the labs, often crying and pleading for mercy. Sometimes they didn't come back. Those were the lucky ones.

  She saw Lucie often enough, being escorted in and out of the labs. At first, Amber thought Lucie was the subject of an experiment, but quickly realized that the dark-haired woman had been coerced into helping the damn corrupt doctors on the Concord. The prison probably threatened to kill her family if she didn’t comply, like they threatened Amber with her mother’s life.

  She understood why Lucie did the things she did. Really. Amber had been in the same position. The Concord staff held her mother’s life over her head. Her options were to keep the computer networks operating or live with knowing she could have prevented her mother’s death. She knew they would do it. No question. The things she’d seen on the Concord, the unspeakable things done to the prisoners...

  Yeah. Killing one civilian meant
nothing to those monsters.

  Trusting Lucie, though, that'd take a minute.

  Or a few months.

  Jealousy drove Amber’s mistrust, as petty of a person as that made her. She had struggled to not only keep herself alive on an alien planet but other people, too. None of them were exactly the outdoorsy type. They had zero supplies and even fewer practical skills for wilderness survival. Everything on the planet seemed to find humans tasty and delicious. If a critter didn’t try to eat them, then they were allergic to the plants or picked up an infection.

  Amber mentally scolded herself because her jealousy wasn’t fair to Lucie. They both had been in sucky situations. Amber found herself with other inmates and a few guards who were about to become monster chow. Lucie had been stuck with a particularly nasty guard, Halliday, who would have raped her, beaten her to death, or fed her to the monster. Probably all three.

  Lucie just got lucky and found her Fire Valos. Then she went and searched for survivors, which she didn’t have to do. She brought much-needed food, weapons, and supplies. Then, she convinced the valos to take the human survivors into their home. If Lucie had truly been a selfish person, she could have lived the life of a queen in her volcano city without a single worry for anyone else.

  Sonhadra was a new world. Everyone had a fresh start and the opportunity to leave behind their sins and be a better person than they had been on Earth.

  A fresh start was the reason Amber’s imagination kept returning to the village. With its crumbling stone walls and roofless buildings, it provided the first real safe haven for Amber and the other Concord survivors. Far from perfect—constant exposure to the elements sucked—the village felt like a good place. A place that offered fresh water and partial shelter. With a wall to the back, Amber had her first night of true, restful sleep on this godforsaken planet.