by Leia Stone
Never give up. Don’t even blink, just act fast. Lincoln’s words of training rang true now.
The blue magic had faded, and I was face-to-face with a livid Prince of Darkness. I didn’t think, I just reacted. White light exploded out of me as I landed on Lucifer. Straddling him and pinning him to the ground with my legs, I wrapped my hands tightly around his throat, my chest heaving as the hatred boiled inside of me.
I hated this man. He’d taken everything from me, and now I was going to kill him while his little demon bitches watched.
“Brielle!” Raksha shouted. Her voice held partial scorn and partial wonder.
Could I actually kill him?
Just as I thought it, black smoke began to swirl around me while it rose off his body, and clouded my face, making it so I couldn’t see. Then that invisible force slammed into me again, and I went flying. It felt like a truck had hit me, and I heard a few of my ribs snap. The pain exploded in that area of my body. I was picked up into the air once again, then slammed to the ground and pinned there, unable to move. When the smoke disappeared, a disheveled-looking Lucifer was standing over me with a terrifying look on his face.
He wanted me dead.
The facial expression was gone in an instant, and he pasted on a plastic smile, clapping as he turned to his minions. “Haven’t I taught her well?”
Everyone clapped nervously, even the stoic Abrus demons.
I went to stand and found I couldn’t.
“Let me help you with that,” he cooed, then lifted his fingers, causing my body to lurch into the air, jarring my ribs, and sending a fresh wave of pain through it.
I cried out as the hot pain sliced into my abdomen.
He walked forward with me in his control, my body floating back toward the double doors in mid-air. Raksha ran alongside me.
When we were out of earshot, he met Raksha’s gaze. “Put her back on the medication. A full dose.”
“No! Please,” I begged. I wouldn’t be able to talk to Sera, and I’d be all weak and sleepy again.
Reaching out, he smacked me across the face. “When you learn who is in control and mind your manners, you can go off them again.”
Then he released me, and I fell hard onto the floor. A fresh wave of pain ignited throughout my whole body, and I struggled to catch my breath through it all.
Raksha hooked me under the arm harshly, and hauled me up, dragging me inside. The second the door slammed behind me, she grabbed me firmly under the chin, forcing me to look at her.
Something was alive in her eyes that hadn’t been there before.
“You stupid girl,” she whispered in awe. Peering over her shoulder, to make sure we were alone, she then faced me once more. “That was amazing.”
I grinned. I was injured, going back on meds, and had probably just lost his trust, but I’d just kicked Lucifer in the throat in front of all of his friends.
Totally worth it.
Chapter Nine
That night, no amount of begging would convince Raksha to give me no meds, or even just a half dose. She lived in constant fear of Lucy, and wouldn’t disobey him.
That being said, she was softer to me. She definitely hated the Dark Prince, and being down here. She’d even admired the ass-whooping I’d laid on him. After giving me the drugs as he asked of her, she’d stayed with me, patting my back softly until I fell asleep. Like a mother would her child.
After a drug-filled sleep, I awoke to a light slap on the face. I groaned as the meds pulled my limbs deeper into the bed. Sera had left my head last night when the drugs kicked in, and she wasn’t there now.
‘Sera,’ I tried again.
Nothing.
Another slap. I felt my consciousness returning, along with the pain in my ribs that wasn’t allowed to be treated by a healer demon. Mending bones with my own powers would take a long time, and expend a lot of energy that I couldn’t afford to use at the moment.
Forcing my eyelids open, I found Raksha’s smiling face hovering over mine.
“You were right!” she whisper-screamed.
I groaned. “What are you talking about?” The room spun as I tried to focus on one spot. I hated these damn meds. I was never taking another pill if I got out of here alive.
She slowly helped me sit up, and handed me some water. After taking a few mouthfuls, I tried not to focus on my pain, which was damn difficult.
Raksha was absolutely beaming. “Your Celestial healer friend, Noah, healed my son for free. No questions asked!” She bounced on the balls of her feet.
Tears slid down my face.
Noah.
Sweet, winking, flirty Noah, with a heart the size of Texas. I knew he would never turn away an innocent child.
Raksha looked down at her hands, uncomfortable with my crying, no doubt.
“That’s wonderful. I’m very happy for you,” I told her honestly.
She sat at the end of the bed, and placed a hand on my arm. “You did me a favor, and now I’ll do one for you. You want some ice cream? I know where the Abrus demons keep it. Or we could do half meds today, so you can talk to your knife friend?”
Bless her heart. I was kidnapped, drugged, and stuck in Hell, and she thought I wanted ice cream.
I put my hand on top of hers. “I want to go home. I want to see my mom, my fiancé, my best friend. I want you to help me get Sera, and then we can get the hell out of here. Together.”
She ripped her hand away from mine and stood. “Don’t ever say that again.” Her breathing was erratic, as if my words had physically shocked her. “I’ll be back with the ice cream. Extra cherries.”
When she turned to leave the room, desperation fell over me, sucking me into a deep depression. Everything felt hopeless; everything hurt. Shoving my face into the pillow, I screamed at the top of my lungs. I let all of my anger out, beating at the pillows, crying, doing anything I could not to swallow this dark feeling that was threatening to take hold of me.
I didn’t want it, but it wanted me.
When I awoke, some time had passed, though I wasn’t sure exactly how much. Raksha was knitting in the corner in her chair. A bowl of melted ice cream sat untouched next to her.
As I started to sit up, she looked my way. “You wouldn’t wake, figured you needed sleep. Ice cream melted though,” she said sadly.
I didn’t care.
“That’s okay,” I croaked. My voice was raw from screaming.
Raksha sighed and set her needles down. “I’ve parked the wheelchair outside. The Dark Prince would like a quick word with you.”
Fear trickled through me fast and hot, but then it was quickly absorbed by my numbness. I had no more fucks left to give.
She helped me stand and get into the chair, not bothering with cleaning up like we normally did, or getting breakfast. Instead, she took me straight to his office.
I was dirty, weak, and had barely any will left.
Just as he wanted me, no doubt.
“Enter!” his strong deep voice called out beyond the door.
The moment Raksha opened the doors, I saw her.
Shea was sitting on Noah’s couch, looking fiercely at her man with her fists clenched. Lucifer had opened a viewing portal, and was looking in on them. Raksha wheeled me into the room as I gazed up longingly at my best friend.
“I know she’s alive. I feel it,” Shea declared.
I was shocked to hear her voice in the room. I guessed Lucifer had control over that too.
Noah’s face fell and he cupped her cheeks gently. “Baby, you need to let her go. She’s gone.”
Before Shea could respond, the scene dissolved, and Lucifer spun around. “Oh, hello. I was just checking in on our friends.”
In that moment, he was the personification of evil. He knew I’d be coming, and he knew I’d see and hear that. He wanted me to know they’d given up on me.
I looked up at him, unable to keep the tears from falling. “You wanted to break me? Congratulations, you did it. I’m br
oken. Please just leave my friends alone.”
He rolled his eyes. “Don’t be pathetic. You’re not broken, you’re just a bit more pliable.” He gave me a handsome grin, and I imagined ramming nails into his nose.
I was sure he was waiting for an apology. He wasn’t going to get one. I simply crossed my arms and stared him down.
His eyes hooded, and suddenly the screen on the far wall was back up. My mother was dicing onions in Lincoln’s apartment kitchen.
“Mom!” I shout-sobbed, but she didn’t turn. Instead she just continued chopping, like a robot with no emotion.
Where is Lincoln?
Lucifer waved and my mom’s knife slipped, slicing her finger deeply. Blood gushed out and she swore, holding her hand to her chest.
“You motherfucker!” I roared, falling out of my wheelchair and onto the ground. My body hit the stone floor with a smack, and fresh pain laced throughout my rib cage. Rolling over to check on my mom, I saw the projector was off once again.
“Raksha, you may leave,” he dismissed my keeper.
To her credit, she stood there so long that he had to tell her again, but she eventually left without a backward glance.
Being helpless was a horrible feeling. Lying there on the ground in pain, unable to walk, not knowing if my mom was okay was one of the most awful feelings I’d ever felt.
Lucifer took slow steps toward me, until he was standing on my fanned-out hair, looming directly over me.
He said nothing, only stared.
I lied before when I said I was broken. I wasn’t. At least not then. Not until this moment, when I’d lost all fight left within me, did I truly feel broken.
“I’m sorry for fighting you like that. It won’t happen again,” I caved in, giving him what he wanted.
He crouched down, shifting closer to me. “You’re welcome to fight like that against the Celestials guarding the heavenly gates, but if you ever attack me with light magic again, I’ll kill your entire family.” His voice was laced with so much hatred that it gave me chills.
The threat was real. I knew it, felt it in my heart and soul.
“I promise,” I whimpered.
He nodded and stepped back, allowing me to sit up. Crouching on his heels, he met my gaze. I must’ve looked so pathetic: splayed out on the floor, too drugged to get up, hadn’t even showered.
“You are my pet,” he told me. “And as my pet, you will do as I say, when I say, and if you break a rule, I will punish you.”
I chewed my lip, desperate for Sera’s voice in my head. I felt so alone.
Finally, I nodded. “Yes, sir. I see that now. I got carried away in the moment. I’ll be better.”
He raised one eyebrow as if he thought what I was saying was horseshit. “It doesn’t matter either way. You made a soul pact. You will use the seraph blade key, and open the gates of Heaven for me, and you will fight by my side.”
Bile churned in my gut. I’d made a horrible mistake in agreeing to that deal. I’d literally lost everything.
Craning my neck, I looked at the blank wall, the one where he’d projected my friends and family. “I will. I will do that, but could I… just this once… could I see Lincoln.”
He seemed to think on it.
I was pretty sure I looked like a pathetic druggy, and he saw this as a chance to give me a little of what I wanted, so I would in turn give him what he wanted. And it was true. I would give him what he wanted.
I was done fighting.
“No more light magic,” he warned.
I nodded. “I promise.” It would be black whips and neckties from here on out in every fight. I just wanted to see Lincoln. Those blue eyes, that dark hair…
Lucifer stood, seemingly staring off into space. “When your lover boy is in that trailer, I can’t see him—Raphael has the school locked up to scrying—but you’re in luck. He’s not there.”
The trailer? Didn’t he mean the apartment, where he lived with my mom?
I’d deal with that information later. In that moment, I just wanted to see him.
The wall lit up with a scene. It was a dark parking lot, and under the streetlamp, slumped against a brick wall, was the love of my life.
“Lincoln!” I sobbed, knowing he couldn’t hear me.
He was hunched over, holding an empty bottle of liquor.
“Grey!” Noah’s voice cut through the night.
Lincoln looked up as the Celestial walked into view.
“You gotta stop doing this, man.” Noah bent down and tried to haul Lincoln to stand.
When he did, Lincoln dropped the bottle, which exposed his arm.
A sob left my throat when I saw the scars on his wrists.
“No!” I cried out, punching the ground.
Lucifer simply looked down at me, as if I were a circus animal doing a trick.
“I just let him take her!” Lincoln slurred. “She was right in front of me and—”
Noah reached out and squeezed Lincoln’s shoulder. “Man, we were all there. There was nothing any of us could’ve done. She would want you to move on. You can’t go on like this.”
Lincoln looked up into his best friend’s eyes, a fierceness flashing in his own. “I can’t go on without her. She was my family.”
Was.
Noah’s eyes grew misty. “I’m your family too, bro, and I’m still here.”
The edges of the scene started to fade away, and panic gripped me.
“No, please! Just a little more?” I pled desperately.
Lucifer ignored my cries, and dissolved the scene while I burst into a puddle of tears.
“Raksha!” the Dark Prince bellowed.
The double doors swung open and Raksha scooped me up, ignoring my sobs as she sat me in my wheelchair.
“Keep her on the medications for a week, then wean her off,” Lucy ordered. “We’ll see if she can behave herself then.”
I couldn’t stop sobbing. Those scars on Lincoln’s wrists, the fact that he’d try to take his own life, it tore me into a thousand pieces, and every piece was still madly in love with him.
When we reached my room, Raksha wheeled me inside before shutting the doors, and crouching in front of me. Leaning in, she grabbed both sides of my face and put her lips to my ear.
“I was you once. In order to survive here, you have to play the bad girl. The Dark Prince wants to surround himself with the most evil beings alive. He doesn’t trust good or light, so you need to find that darkness. That darkness is what’s going to get you out of here alive.”
I didn’t need to be told twice. Letting go right then and there, I immersed myself inside of the rage and hate that were simmering in my soul.
Chapter Ten
The next two weeks passed slowly. I was like a shell of a human. I felt numb, and I’d completely accepted my fate.
After a week of me being back on the drugs, the Dark Prince finally allowed me to be weaned off. I was able to talk to Sera again, but it didn’t feel the same; I gained no happiness from it. I’d fallen into a deep depression, where nothing mattered anymore, and I didn’t care whether I lived or died. I’d started my walks back up again with Raksha to the red door. I ate meals with the demons and demon gifted, and I spent a lot of time alone in my room, just staring at the wall.
Raksha had become my only saving grace. She brought me special snacks or desserts, and she tried to visit me in my room, and have conversations so I wasn’t alone all the time. She spoke to me about her time at Tainted Academy, about her wife, Elodie, and their son. I considered her a friend. She and Sera were my only friends in the world.
One day, when we were walking back from the red door, she side-eyed me, clutching the letter her wife had sent her.
“You’ve been different these past few weeks,” she stated.
She mentioned that a lot.
I just nodded, too deep in the depression to explain my feelings. Nothing mattered and everything hurt, yet I couldn’t feel anything.
She st
opped me in the long, lonely hallway, and forced my chin up so I was looking at her.
“I asked my wife to do me a favor, to bring you something that would repay the kindness of healing our son.” She opened the letter, and my heart started to hammer in my chest.
For the first time in weeks, I felt something. Anxiety, excitement, trepidation.
‘What is it?’ Sera asked.
‘I don’t know yet.’
Maybe it was a letter from Shea or Lincoln. I would faint if she’d told them I was still alive.
“Now, I couldn’t get you a letter because… well, you know. But I got this.” She thrust two small photos in my hand. A sob lodged in my throat when I saw the images.
My thumb brushed over the picture of Lincoln in his academy uniform, my heart beating wildly in my chest. I’d forgotten how handsome he was. He looked younger in the photo, but still like my Lincoln.
Switching to the other photo, I smiled as tears dripped out of my eyes, and fell onto my shirt. Shea’s school picture. Her brown curls, that sassy smile.
Raksha had given me a great gift. My depression burst like a balloon, and suddenly a yearning, a flaming desire to leave this place and reunite with my family flooded through me.
“Thank you, Raksha,” I managed to croak.
She was watching me with a small smile of her own. “My wife hacked the school admissions website and was able to get their ID card photos. I thought it might bring you some happiness.”
I nodded, caressing the pictures like they were made of gold. “It has.”
“Now hide them. I could get into a lot of trouble for that,” she ordered, returning to her snippy self.
“Of course.” I tucked them into my pocket, following Raksha down the hall with a new bounce in my step.
‘I’m going to kill the Dark Prince and get the hell out of here,’ I declared to Sera. If I died while trying, then that was just the price I was going to have to pay. I had to try.
‘Oh it’s about bloody time you said that!’
I frowned. ‘Since when do you say ‘bloody’?’
‘Since now.’
I’d had a lot of time to think in my weeks of drugged bed rest, and one thing was for certain: my light magic not only scared the Devil, but it had hurt him. It physically hurt him. There was nothing that made me happier than knowing I had the ability to cause harm to that man.