Free Hell's Menagerie by Kelly Gay Page A

added another layer of intimacy and loyalty when it came to the breed.
    â€œWe look around,” he reminded her, sticking close in the crowded city street. “If we find them, we let the authorities know.”
    She didn’t answer. Just kept walking down the dark avenue, in the direction of the three big-top tents they’d spied from Telmath Station’s high vantage point.
    Charbydon was Rex’s place of birth, where he’d fought as a jinn warrior long ago in the war with the nobles. But that was before he died and spent the next few thousand years as a spirit, before he met Emma’s father and made a deal that would change both their lives.
    The familiar scents of warm tar and stone were heavy in the hot Telmath air. The old city was tucked inside a gigantic cavern in the mountainside. Its buildings were made of thick timber beams and beautifully carved gray stones, and they clung to jagged out-croppings along the cavern walls or were packed together on everyavailable surface where the cavern floor didn’t drop off into nothingness below. Bridges linked one area to another, and high above in the cavern ceiling, veins of raw typanum ran through the rock, casting its violet glow onto the gray city below.
    This world was the basis for humanity’s notion of hell. The beings here—ghouls, goblins, jinn, darkling fae, and nobles—had been the inspiration behind legends of monsters, demons, dark gods, and fallen angels. Heaven and hell had come out of the closet over a decade ago, and now all three worlds—heaven, hell, and Earth—existed in what was usually a very lawful coexistence.
    Usually.
    Rex glanced up to the sight far across the cavern where an enormous spear of rock jutted up from the cavern floor. Its height was dizzying from where he stood. He’d once stood upon that rock, a place called the City of Two Houses, where the houses of Abaddon and Astarot ruled this world from their dark obsidian temples and palaces.
    A cold shiver snaked up his spine as they moved deeper and deeper into the heart of Telmath. He could feel Emma’s excitement and awe, but, wisely, she kept silent; she was already in enough trouble and did not need to be enjoying this little excursion.
    No longer able to see the tents, they followed the music, a slow, beckoning melody that flowed down the streets and alleys like a cool refreshing welcome—tempting the mind and heart. Come. Come to the carnival . It wound through the congested avenue, a marketplace where open fires burned in barrels, goblins hawked their wares, cloaked ghouls kept to the shadows, and darkling fae moved their lithe gray bodies in and out of the throng. Rex spotted a few humans and mages, a noble or two, and a small group of jinn warriors standing around a fire.
    Brimstone stuck by Emma’s side, his hairless gray back coming to her elbow. She placed a hand on his thick neck. Thousandsof years ago, hellhounds had trained as warhounds, companions to the hulking jinn warriors who once ruled Charbydon. Then the nobles came, fought for dominion, and the use and training of hellhounds was forbidden. The warhounds were killed and the young ones were turned out into the wild. It wasn’t uncommon to see the beasts lurking around populated areas, hunting for scraps of food, or the weak . . . Having Brim with them drew some curious looks, but not enough to slow them down. Not yet, anyway.
    Above the crowd, they caught sight again of the tents. They loomed in the distance, their dark, ragged flags limp in the stale air, their black and white stripes dirtied with the dull, dusty gray that made up much of Charbydon’s landscape.
    â€œHurry,” Em said over her shoulder, increasing her pace, darting in and out of foot traffic, not stopping until the avenue ended and a massive square opened up. She found a spot under the eaves of a corner shop. “That’s it. That’s the carnival.” Her voice