by Leia Stone
I just bobbed my head. “That was a portal to Hell,” I stated matter-of-factly.
He looked down at my chest and frowned. “Brielle, I’m very sorry I wasn’t able to remove your mark. It looks as though the dark prince has… a security system of sorts on it.”
My gut tightened with fear. “You mean… you tried to take it off and…” I couldn’t say it.
He looked utterly gutted. “And it opened the portal, which means I won’t be able to remove it. I’m truly sorry.”
A mental fog rolled over me, bringing with it a deep depression. I’d been totally stoked that I was going to be rid of the mark. I’d even told Lincoln and Shea to get ready to throw a party for me if it worked.
“I’m glad we didn’t trigger the demon alarm. I’m sorry to have gotten your hopes up.” Now he seemed to be taking all of the responsibility on himself. I wasn’t about to let that happen.
I plastered on a fake smile. “Hey, it’s all right. It doesn’t hurt or anything. I’ll be okay.” I grabbed my bag and shouldered it.
“Go in peace,” he whispered.
I left the room to find Shea and Lincoln across the hall, waiting expectantly. One look at my chest and their faces fell.
Go in peace, I did not.
Chapter Six
The first two weeks of school passed pretty smoothly. I had pretty much the same classes as last year, but instead of two hours with my Celestial master teachers, I had only one hour— alternating with the boys—and I had a new class called war strategies.
My brother was still in his wolf form and living with Clark on his land, which was God knew where. I’d called to check on him a few times, and they’d been brief thirty-second conversations where Clark informed me that Mikey was progressing fine, and then was silent to the point of awkward.
My mom was absolutely freaking out. Mikey was the baby of the family, and she just couldn’t take it. She texted me daily, asking if I’d heard anything. I’d started lying and giving her more information than I’d received, like he was doing so well that he was no longer needing to hunt, he’d made friends, he’d be human again soon. None of that was true, of course, but I would say anything to give her peace.
“Okay, it’s almost done,” Shea announced.
Chloe, Luke, Angela, and I were all huddled around Shea’s desk in our dorm room. She was finally brewing Tiffany’s payback potion.
“Is this going to throw her in the healing clinic?” I asked.
Shea nodded. “It better. Bitch nearly made us all fail by taking out Luke.”
If she went to the healing clinic, she might rat us out. We were Fallen Army soldiers now and had signed a code of conduct form on the first day. I was guessing this was against the ‘respecting fellow Fallen Army soldiers’ bit.
“Is there any way one of the Mage teachers could trace this back to you?”
Shea looked off to the side of the room, seemingly lost in thought. “Good idea. I’ll do a scent masking spell on top of it.” She reached for a few jars of powdered God knew what, and threw a pinch in the potion.
“Whatever. Even if we get two weeks’ detention, it’ll be worth it,” Chloe proclaimed.
We were all fond of shit-talking Tiffany—it’s what had brought us closer. I just wanted to make sure I could keep my cushy job, now that I had my mom and brother to worry about.
I pulled out my phone and texted Lincoln.
Brielle: Hypothetically, if we spelled Tiffany to shit her brains out as payback and got caught…
His reply was immediate.
Lincoln: Delete this text, dummy. You’ll get a week’s community service.
Community service didn’t sound so bad. I deleted the text and then looked at Shea. “Let’s do it.”
Shea grinned before snapping her fingers, and the potion puffed into purple smoke. Reaching in, she pulled out a small blue wafer-thin piece of paper.
Luke held out his hand. “I will have the honors.”
Shea dropped the wafer onto his palm. “Just slip it in her drink or on her food. It’ll dissolve and do the trick.”
He gave a mischievous grin and nodded his head. “I’ve waited months for this day. You distract her,” he told us, closing his meaty hand lightly around it.
We nodded.
Operation “Make Tiffany Crap Her Brains Out” was in full effect.
It wasn’t too hard to slip her the spell—we just asked her questions about herself and she blabbered for ten minutes, then dismissed us like cattle. Now we were sitting at our table on the demon-gifted side of the dining hall, watching her intently. With every bite of soup she took, Luke grinned wider and wider.
“How many months until Fight Night?” he asked, never taking an eye off his prey.
“Six more. Lincoln’s upped our training to insane levels.” I groaned at the thought, but I was definitely going to be a well-trained assassin by the time we were done with all of it.
Shea rolled her neck; she’d mentioned it was kinked the day before. “Yeah, Noah’s riding me hard.” The second the words left her lips, her face took on a bright red hue. “I meant in training.”
We all busted out laughing. Their Wednesday make-out sessions in his car had turned into “movie nights” at his place.
“Have you slept with him yet? I hear he’s amazing.” Chloe took a bite of her apple.
Shea grimaced. “No, and for the exact reason you just said. I’m not letting that dirty car park in my pristine garage.”
Her garage was hardly pristine, but thank God we weren’t saying ‘wee wee’ anymore. We’d finally grown to adult metaphors, and I couldn’t be prouder.
“Oh come on, that’s not what I meant,” Chloe said, looking regretful.
Is now a good time to drop the truth bomb on my bestie? Probably not, but here goes.
“He totally, genuinely, cares for you, Shea. Loves you, even. If you don’t reciprocate that—and I don’t mean sexually, but emotionally—he’ll leave.”
Shea shot me full of ice daggers, and opened her mouth to speak when Tiffany shot out of her seat, clutching her stomach.
“You bitches!” she shouted across the hall at us, clenching her butt cheeks.
We all burst into fits of laughter as she ran out of the room. I laughed so long I was starting to worry I might actually piss myself.
“Revenge feels good. Next time, let’s replace her toilet paper with sandpaper,” Luke declared.
When I could finally breathe, I held my hands up. “There will be no next time. We got her back. Now we need to focus on school.”
The last thing we needed was a raging Tiffany prank war.
Luke rolled his eyes. “Yes, Mom.”
I blew him an air kiss, and focused on his sister instead.
“Angela, this weekend is our first Fallen Army gig. Can you tell us what they’ll have us do, or are you magically gagged?” I asked, the fourth year.
Angela leaned forward, looking each of us in the eye. “The first time you go out, it’s just to get you used to the outside war zones. Desensitize you, so to speak.” A dark look crossed over her face, and she swallowed thickly. “But as the months dredge on, you’ll start to do missions,” she confessed.
I stared at her with rapt attention. She was gone a few weekends last year, but I’d never thought anything of it, and when she got back, she never spoke about it. She’d said she helped the Fallen Army out a bit, but she’d never said that the gauntlet was their admissions tool. Now that I knew everything, I was seeing those missing weekends in a whole new light.
“What kind of missions? Girl, you can’t leave it at that,” Shea pressed her, putting extra sass into the word ‘girl.’
“Most of it is just bringing aid to those who are trapped out there, food and water and stuff. Sometimes we’ve smuggled people out of hot zones, or fought down some serious baddies.”
My breathing slowed. “Hot zones?”
She nodded, looking dejected. “Places where the demons have…
captured humans, and other free souls.”
Captured. She said captured.
“But they only ask for help with those missions from upperclassmen, third and fourth years. Only one time my second year, when they got low on soldiers, they asked us to help,” she amended.
Chloe took a sip of her water, brushing back a chunk of her bright red hair that had popped out from behind her hood. “I can’t wait to be a badass fourth year, ferrying free souls across the hot zones and into Angel City.”
Luke laughed. “You have a hero complex.”
She shrugged. “So what?”
Shea held up her hands. “All I care about right now is that Tiffany is stuck on a toilet somewhere.”
As I laughed, I looked around at my friends. I’d totally grown attached to this crew and to my new life. Worry for Mikey and my mom, and the fact that this devil mark was permanent nagged at my insides, but overall, I was counting my blessings.
After all the fuss we’d made, Tiffany never ratted us out. It might have helped that Shea slid a note under her door that read, ‘snitches get stiches’ in red paint that looked like blood, but the fact that she didn’t tell on us actually scared me a little. Was she plotting revenge? Either way, we’d made it through the week, and were now minutes from leaving on our first weekend out in the war zone as Fallen Army reserve soldiers.
“Got you a present,” Lincoln told me as we stepped out of his trailer. He had somehow snuck a box into his hands that I hadn’t seen before.
“A prezzie? For me?” I spun, and ripped the shoe box out of his hands. It wasn’t wrapped, which was so Lincoln. But he’d put my name on the top in pen with a small heart to dot the i. Again, so Lincoln. He was super romantic without trying too hard.
We hadn’t really gotten each other presents before. For my last birthday, he’d bought Shea and me dinner. Then for Christmas, he got me a glitter unicorn phone case, and drew black angel wings onto the horse with a Sharpie. I’d gotten him guitar picks.
“Eager much?” he laughed, as I ripped the lid off without fanfare.
When my eyes fell on the steel cuffs, I gasped. “Are these…?”
“Custom battle cuffs. Made with the same stuff as our shield armor, so you can stop a sword with them if you need to,” he confirmed.
My heart thumped wildly in my chest as I gazed at the man before me. Lincoln was my family. He’d lost his family, and moved out into this lonely trailer, until I shoved my way into his life, and now here we were. Whether he liked it or not, he was stuck with me.
“I’m going to marry you one day,” I said suddenly, then winked to make it more lighthearted than I truly meant it. But seriously, I needed to lock this dude down before he realized he could probably do better.
“Hey, I’m supposed to be saying those things,” he answered with a grin.
I scoffed. “Don’t be sexist.”
He rolled his eyes. “Woman, try them on. Do you have any idea how hard it is to measure your arms while you’re sleeping? You shove them between your legs!”
My laughter rang out, filling the air around us as I popped on my tiptoes to plant a kiss on his lips.
My mom told me once that your first love was dangerous. First love could make you, but also destroy you. If Lincoln was to be my destroyer, I was okay with that—it was worth the making of me.
I finally reached in and pulled the cuffs out, letting the box fall to my feet. Tilting my arm to the side, I slipped the cuff over it and then straightened it so it fit neatly in place.
“Like a glove,” I told him.
They were exquisite. The front had an engraved pair of angel wings on each cuff, with my name underneath. They shined in the sunlight, showcasing their fresh silver polish.
“They should save your ass on Fight Night.” He ran a hand through his hair, smoothed his shirt, and tucked it into his pants. We’d totally just had a quickie in his trailer, so he was trying to tuck in his uniform, hiding the evidence.
I smoothed my hair as well. “So, third year I get to move into the Fallen Army barracks, and I can keep those living quarters even after graduation?” I asked. I’d read the salary package with an eagle eye. Mostly because it was the best job I’d ever had, and I was going to need to take care of my mom and Mikey.
He ran a hand down the side of his trailer, looking at it fondly. “Yeah. Some students like to stay in the dorms if they have younger siblings there, like Angela and Luke, or you and your brother. I used to share an apartment in the barracks with Noah, but…”
I knew this shit was painful for him to talk about, but I wanted to know everything about him. Like why he was the only guy who lived on campus in a trailer.
“After my family died, I didn’t want to step foot in our family home. It was like a memory crypt. But this was our camping trailer. Just enough good memories that it wasn’t overwhelming.”
Oh God, I felt bad for asking.
I placed my hand over his. “It’s a pretty sweet little pad,” I told him.
He smiled, looking down at me with those crystalline blue eyes. Visually, Lincoln and I were opposites. Where my hair was blonde, his was dark; where my wings were black, his were white. But we couldn’t be more perfect for each other. When I didn’t want to kill him, I was madly in love with him. That was the most anyone could ask for, right?
He stroked my hair and tucked it behind my ear. “My mom would have loved you. She always told me, ‘Don’t settle. Wait for a strong woman and she’ll raise strong daughters.’ You’re the strongest person I know, Brielle.”
My heart melted at the compliment, and my stomach did flip-flops at his reference to his mother’s approval of me. He barely talked about his late parents, and never about his little sister, so it meant even more that he’d shared that part of himself.
“She was kind of a raging feminist.” He laughed, seemingly lost in the memory.
“Sounds like a smart woman. How did your dad keep her locked down?” I joked.
A genuine and open smile stretched Lincoln’s lips, one I’d never seen before. “He didn’t. Said that was his secret. Never try to cage the free bird.” He winked.
I’d officially lost count of how many winks he’d given me.
I wished I could have met his parents. Lincoln had only met my mom a few times when she’d come to visit, and while he was polite, I knew his cautious glances at her forehead meant he’d never fully trust her. Not until I could free her.
Before I could say something sickeningly lovey-dovey, the walkie-talkie on his belt loop squawked.
“Grey, you coming?” Noah urged through the device.
Lincoln smoothed his hair one last time, then leaned forward, and kissed me chastely. “See you soon. You’re on my team tonight,” he declared before he started to jog away.
“Do I have to call you, sir?” I screamed after him.
“Yes!” he yelled, and then he was gone.
Dammit. He was going to milk this ‘sir’ thing for a while.
I ran my fingers along the wing engravings on the cuffs and smiled.
We could pretend all day that he was in charge, but I knew the truth.
Chapter Seven
Shea’s face was pressed against the glass, looking out the window as we left Angel City, and made our way into the war zone.
“Tonight is just a drive-by. We want you to see what we’re up against, get a sense for the terrain. To hear the noises, see the risks, and then come right back,” Lincoln told us as he paced the aisle, holding onto the handrail above him intermittently. “You’re rookies. You won’t be doing missions for a while, so don’t ask,” he barked to our small group of nine second-year rookies and Noah, plus the driver.
Luke raised his hand. “So people, like, live out here? Why don’t we just ferry them into Angel City by the busload?”
Lincoln’s face took on a hardened expression. “Unfortunately it’s not that easy. A lot of the people out here are slave bound. Those who aren’t are trapped into some
kind of deal with a demon that keeps them here. The demons out here run the war zones like a mafia. If you live in their territory, you have to pay protection money.”
“Oh,” Luke said and looked out at the desolate landscape. We were passing the area we’d done the gauntlet in. The broken-down neighborhoods and shelled-out buildings, some still smoldering, were depressing to say the least.
“Another issue is resources,” Lincoln continued. “Angel City is only so big, and we only have so much to go around. The demons outnumber us greatly, and they’ve taken so much of our land. We try to push back and take back certain parts, but when we finally do, they look like this.” He gestured to the windows.
Geez, I was very fortunate to be living in Angel City. They didn’t cover the war on the news or anything like that. The news was still run by the humans, and they mostly talked about things going on in Angel City, with an occasional story about Demon City, or beyond the wall. I’d never seen a news crew out here, or heard a Fallen Army soldier interviewed. We knew the war with the demons was ongoing, but we were safe in our little city and we had enough to worry about with the Awakening and all that stuff. I felt kind of selfish now, and was glad I had joined the cause.
“Now we’re going to be entering Inferno. It’s a town run by demons that’s unstable, but we’re close to taking it back. They don’t have walls up or guarded checkpoints, so we’re able to infiltrate it easier. Some of the more outlying towns, deeper into their hold, are much more secure,” Lincoln explained, as our bus crawled deeper into the smoky black night.
I raised my hand and Lincoln nodded in my direction.
“Inferno?” I asked.
Lincoln smirked. “We’ve named all of the local demon strongholds after the levels of Hell in Dante’s Inferno. The city of Treacherous, formerly San Francisco, is the most powerful demon stronghold in the world.”
I wanted to chuckle at the silly names, but his statement gave me chills. It reminded me that we were a small part of a very big problem that extended all over the world. Every major city, in every state, in every country was divided—Angel City on one side and Demon City on the other.