Page 49 of Heavensent & Hellbent

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Entering the Underworld was akin to being shoved into ice-cold water, head pressed down, for just long enough that you think you might drown. My bones froze, skin throbbing, the lack of air insufferable. I could barely feel Zain, though clung to him anyway. Unable to open my eyes, I gasped forair.

And then we were released and thrown to the ground. Quite literally—we fell through the portal out onto the other side. The force of it sent us flying. I landed on top of Zain, and we were a mess of limbs. With our chests together, my heart hammered out of my body. I avoided looking into his eyes. Zain quickly got up, collecting me in the process. He held me up like I weighed nothing, and I leaned against him for support while I caught my breath.

It took a while before feeling returned to my body, and when it did, I faintly felt Zain rubbing my back in soothing circles,gently in the areas that were already messed up from yesterday, like he somehow knew the pain lingered.

“The first time is always the worst,” he said, bent over so his lips were close to my ear. His breath was warm against my neck.

“You don’t say,” I grumbled.

He laughed softly, straightening. We stood in an alleyway again, but this one was different from where we’d begun. For one, it was dark, the sky a dim gray. The walls on either side of us were brown, worn, and crumbling. The only thing here was the door we had entered from. Like before, it was unassuming and weathered. On the wall across from us were words carved in a script I didn’t immediately recognize. Despite this, though, the meaning was clear.

“Fire to Earth,”I read aloud.

“You can read that?”

I shrugged. “I guess so. Can you?”

“Yes, but only because we’re taught the jinn language in training. Maybe Rabiya knew for some reason?”

“Maybe,” I said quietly.

He frowned, putting his hand on my shoulder. “We should go,” he said, leading the way toward one end of the alley. He stopped right before it led onto another road, distracted by a motorbike that was chained to a lamppost. He paused for a moment before he reached over and in one swift move crushed the chain attaching it to the post with his bare hand. The remaining metal cascaded and clanged to the ground. I gaped as I was reminded of his strength. It was eerily quiet, like there was no one here but me and Zain.

“What are you doing?” I hissed, surveying the area. Though it was deserted, stealing a vehicle seemed risky. I knew little about jinn, but the ones I had seen arrived out of nowhere, silent and stealthy. I thought we’d be keeping a low profile here, not asking for trouble.

“How do you think we’re getting to the seer?” he asked, stepping over and onto the bike. “I’ll return it on the way back, maybe. It’s fine.” I stood next to it, gazing from Zain to the bike. Suddenly, this all felt like a terrible idea. Entering a portal to another plane? Fine. But getting on a stolen motorbike, especially without a helmet, apparently crossed a line for me.

“You can’t fly us there?” I hissed.

“Angels can’t just fly around the Underworld. We need to go undetected. And anyway, judging by how your body reacted to the portal, I seriously don’t think you could handle me flying us there at the speed we’d need to go to stay undetected. We’d need to be much quicker than we were at Red Rocks.”

Despite everything, I couldn’t help but narrow my eyes at him. I resented the way my body was considered weak and fragile just because I was human. “I was fine, it was just cold.”

“Cold?” Zain queried, frowning. “You should have felt—”

But he was interrupted by a voice shouting from the other end of the alley. I didn’t know what the woman was saying, but I knew it wasn’t friendly. Zain reached his hand out, and I took it, flinging myself onto the back of the motorbike.

“Hold on to me,” Zain said, and I obeyed immediately. He grabbed something out of his pocket and fiddled with it at the front of the motorbike. The bike roared to life as the hissingvoice drew closer. We flew out of the alleyway, Zain making a sharp right.

We entered a long dirt road, the shadow of mountains looming large in the distance. The area was mostly deserted as we rode farther out, with sparse trees on either side of the road. Zain accelerated, and we shot out, dust shooting up around us. I wrapped my arms tighter around his waist. The jinn’s yelling was no longer audible, so I let myself believe we had escaped her. Zain wove through the streets, turning left and then winding up another dirt road that led upward to the mountains. I squeezed my eyes shut. I had never been on a motorbike before, and being so exposed while we climbed the steep road made me think of the many ways we could die.

“Breathe!” Zain shouted.

I hadn’t realized it was so obvious that I was holding my breath. I let it out before sucking new air into my lungs and holding it again.

I was suddenly very thankful I’d worn jeans today, rather than my usual skirt.

It took another ten minutes for us to reach the peak. Once we did, a village lay before us. It reminded me of the ones I had seen in old photographs of my grandparents, from my dad’s side, in Iran.

I wasn’t expecting jinn to have ordinary jobs. There were street vendors selling fried corn and roasted nuts. Those scents filled the air now, whereas before all I could smell was gas from the old motorbike. The vendors seemed normal, human, but I’d been tricked before.

The homes here were built into the mountains, the exteriors smooth and tan, the small different-colored doors and window-like gaps the only indication that people lived there.

“What is this place?”

“Ghadimi Kaufa. ‘Old Mountain.’ One of the oldest villages in the Underworld. The jinn here lead regular lives, or at least as regular as they can be for jinn. That’s why they’ve chosen to be so secluded up here. I would never take you to some of the other territories in the Underworld.” He shuddered at the thought.