Dante's Inferno: A Spicy Retelling of The Divine Comedy by Charlotte St. James

Author:Charlotte St. James [St. James, Charlotte]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CSG Publishing House
Published: 2023-09-26T16:00:00+00:00

Canto VI

Dante woke to the sound of glass breaking. Not that her dreams were fragile, delicate things disturbed like an eggshell on a blustery day. In fact they were heart wrenching. A communion of thoughts pregnant with doubt.

If God loves all, does He love me? Does He love Lucifer? Does He love sin?

If God didn’t love you, then you wouldn’t exist!

Only a just God would say that He loves you, then watch as you wallow in preordained torment…

Preordained…

The voices laughed.

But as the lambasting meditations of the Hell Lords fell back beneath the veil of consciousness, Dante’s muddled thoughts collected in the wake of shattering glass and foul roars of anger.

“Professor?” she called, pressing a palm to her forehead as she rose from the bed and gazed off towards the wall of jarred beings that wilted in pools of formaldehyde and blue colored ichor. Most of them had been upended, and their contents lay in a slush on the floor. The door to her cell had been closed, but in the tumult of Belial’s ire it had creaked ajar and through the space he raged, bisected by the bars.

His doublet was askew, torn open at the throat. Its golden pin with the five point star of Hell was stuck in his collarbone, pulling his shirt awry as it pinioned it aside and exposed his chest. As he upended a table, and his arm swept over the surface of another, compounds and blood speckled his face, and left stains to hiss on his clothes.

“Professor!” Dante cried, the chain about her torso constricting its length as she attempted to reach the door.

“Useless! Your efforts are useless!” Belial roared, “Nothing is worthy of you, because nothing can possibly show you the deference you’d offer them.”

She tugged at the shackle that bound her, and stared out from her cage, tears blurring her vision as she paid respects to his outburst. Her presence ignored, the Wrath Lord raged. He broke instruments, tables, pulled the legs from metal fixtures and ripped apart his books until he reeled to regard her.

His hair screened his features, but amidst the ruin of his laboratory he wept, and she was stunned to see that her attention startled him.

“Professor…” the chain fell slack against the back of her calf, and with mouth agape, Dante left her cage to approach him. She stopped as he spoke, and his jaw tensed as though in effort to contain his bite.

“Your descent is cursed by a scorned sovereign. He could usher you to your throne, but won’t, because you left Him for the devil…” Belial turned his head aside, and his nostrils flared as he withdrew his syringe from his pocket. “You love Lucifer.” He spat the declaration like it was a curse, and looking up, his eyes were hard and vicious.

“Don’t you, Dante?”

Dante’s hands were a writhing knot of nervous fingers. “I love him.”

“You left Heaven for him?”

She nodded. Belial chuckled, though the sound was void of mirth. “You sought Heaven… in Hell,” he said, his conclusion incredulous.

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