by Lana Kole
She pulled out stacks of letters rubber banded together, along with the thin leather book.
“Chaopadós... For a cult that’s existed thousands of years, you’d think the book would be bigger.”
“Yeah, well, the cult has done the same thing for thousands of years. No use in repeating what’s already been said,” Death pointed out.
Daria sucked in a deep breath. “If that’s true, why did they… kill her?”
No one answered, and she sighed before tugging the letters closer. “Fine. I’ll find out myself.”
The alarm on her phone was the only thing to pull her nose out of the letters when all she wanted to do was keep reading.
“How bad do you think it’d look if I called in on my second day?”
“It depends, are you really dumb enough to stick around and find out? You read what your mother wrote. You need to get the fuck out of here,” Betrayal growled.
She ignored him and refolded the most recent letter, tossing it and the book into her messenger bag, then rushed to her bedroom to get ready.
“Was it really a jar?” she asked again.
Hope sighed loudly in her head, and she almost laughed as she pulled appropriate work clothes out of her closet.
“For the last time, yes! Pandora didn’t keep us in a stupid box.”
“Then why do you use it like a curse word?”
“Because it’s worth cursing over. It’s preposterous, the thought of her locking us in a little box on a shelf somewhere,” Death mumbled.
“So, instead she put you in a jar in her pantry?”
Oh, she’d done it now. She could practically see them glaring at her, and she laughed at her own joke as she continued getting ready.
Of course, she’d read the book—which even contained images of what the original jar was presumed to look like—so she was mostly teasing the demons. She almost laughed to admit she’d been picturing something along the lines of a mason jar, but ancient Greek ceramic jars actually looked like vases. No one had asked her, though, so she accepted it as fact.
The book had taken no time at all to get through, it truly was short. Apparently, the cult had been around since Pandora herself. Unlike the popular myth most people believed today, the book had told a different story about a jar, not a box. From her mother’s letters, Daria had always known it was Pandora’s husband who’d opened the jar, not Pandora herself. However, what she hadn’t known was her husband had been a plant from the cult, sent to infiltrate her life and release the evils into the world.
His mission accomplished, little did he know Pandora’s blood held a dormant curse, one to keep the demons locked away no matter what. Once she’d seen what he’d done, all she’d had to do was bleed on the lid of the jar, and the demons who had yet to escape were imprisoned once again. Her blood was the lock and her mind was their prison, locked tighter than any physical object. The world was safe once again, for millennia to come, because even in the twenty-first century Daria carried on the curse.
Now dressed, Daria took a look in the mirror and tucked a tendril of hair away into her bun.
Forget superwoman. I’m Pandora’s motherfucking jar.
The satisfaction of the demons in her head lit her up like a Christmas tree as she rushed for the door, grabbing her messenger bag and keys.
“See,” she couldn’t help but tease them one last time, “it just doesn’t have the same ring to it as Pandora’s Box.”
At the last second, she snatched the switchblade from the drawer in the side table. She might be living her life on her own terms, but she wasn’t going to be stupid about it.
It was hard for her to think about the demons as a burden, or even as… evil.
They didn’t seem so bad to her.
“Well, you’ve only known us for a few days,” Misery interjected into her musing.
“True, but from what I’ve seen so far, you guys don’t seem so bad. Even my mom referred to you as brothers. And if your inflictions are so terrible, why don’t I have the urge to kill people constantly if Death is so big and bad and scary?” she teased, trying to lighten the heavy atmosphere that seemed to follow her like a rain cloud. A blue car cut her off and she yelled at them before flipping them the bird.
“Classy,” Betrayal chuckled.
“You haven’t seen me scary, little girl.” Death’s voice trailed through her mind like a caress and she swore she felt a smooth finger glide over the flesh of her arm with the daring words, pulling goosebumps to the surface. Thunder rumbled in the distance and she narrowed her eyes at the timing.
“Alright fine. But my question still stands, why don’t I have the urge to reflect your evils?”
“Simply because we don’t want you to.”
A frown pulled her lips down as she slammed into park behind the bar and climbed out with her bag in tow. Maleston was a smaller town, so it didn’t take her long to navigate the almost non-existent traffic. “So if you wanted to, you could make me?”
“We could make you do a lot of things, Daria, if we wanted,” Betrayal answered her, and his voice was sticky like caramel, clinging to her and sweet on her tongue.
Nodding to Allegra as she ducked behind the bar and down to the hallway, she gulped and tried to collect herself from the racing thoughts and the demons with voices like candy.
“Okay, I have to work now, but I’m tabling this discussion for later. I’m assuming Truth wanted me to speak the truth in that first interview? I want to know if there’s a reason he didn’t want me to get that job.”
The steel in her tone must have scared them, and she had an image in her head of a blond-haired figure slinking down into couch cushions. It brought a smile to her lips as she locked her messenger bag away in her locker and found a nametag on the break table.
It was time to get to work.
Andrew, the hot guy, came back to the bar that night, and Daria tried not to wish it was because of her. And failed. Failed in the way her cheeks heated every time he glanced her way.
It’s your life. Live it to the fullest.
This time he wore a dark blue collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up, revealing muscled forearms. His hair was chaotic messy in that sexy, I-just-woke-up way that he definitely did not wake up with. He ordered the same drink and sat in the same spot and smiled the same smile at her. It was busy, so she didn’t get to flirt like she so wanted to, but when he left halfway through her shift; he’d left a sizable tip in his absence. She grinned and tried not to be disappointed.
The night rumbled on with the storm outside as patrons sought solace in the bottoms of their glasses to escape the rain—and whatever else ailed their lives.
Her feet hurt when she returned home, and she smiled as she fell asleep that night.
The rest of the week remained the same, and she established a routine for herself as she grew accustomed to the later hours. Working until three in the morning wore a girl out.
Waking up each afternoon was easier. The gnawing pain in her chest from her guilt lessened with each word she read in her mother’s letters. What Daria had once seen as the ramblings of a crazy person, she now saw in a new light. The letters were nothing but attempts for her mom to share her life with Daria in the only way she knew how. The only way that was safe. If anything, it made Daria even more determined to carry on with her new perspective—to live her life the way she wanted it.
Daria held a letter in hands that shook from her laughing so hard, her mother recounting a story of Death and Truth embarrassing her in front of prospective dates.
“Sound familiar?” she’d teased them.
The entry brought a question to her mind, and Daria gave into her curiosity that evening.
“Did she ever say anything to you about who my father is?”
An uncomfortable silence had settled in her mind before they’d admitted that she’d never brought him up.
“We were already with your mother by the time you came along. She... ah… ” Death trailed
off awkwardly, and the panic in his voice brought a smile to Daria’s lips.
Truth took over. “She didn’t hook up a lot, is what Death is trying to say. But when she did, we made ourselves scarce. I’m sorry Daria, but we have no idea.”
Andrew came back every night, and she learned a little bit about him with every drink she served. Their interactions went a little further each night, Daria growing empowered by the two feet of armor the glossy bar top provided. It wasn’t until her final night of work before her off day, just when Daria felt her flirting was for naught, when he grabbed her hand across the bar, his palm warm on her wrist where he rubbed across her racing pulse at his proximity.
“Go out with me.”
It wasn’t a question, and that made it all the more appealing. Daria was a sucker for bad and broody.
Live life to the fullest.
“Thought you’d never ask. I get off at midnight tonight.”
He winked, left another tip, and said he’d be back to get her.
Butterflies raced in her stomach, almost cramping with the force of the flutters, and she grinned through her whole shift, unable to hide the excitement flushing under her skin. When the clock struck midnight, she’d be damned if she didn’t feel like turning into a princess. Instead, she had to settle for wiping away the smudged eyeliner from a hard night’s work in the blindingly bright but small bathroom of the bar.
A tiny can of travel hair spray helped tame some of the frizz of her not-so-curls, and a dash of lip gloss made her look almost like she didn’t just get off work.
It would have to do.
“Or you could, oh, I don’t know, wait until a man asks you on a proper date? You’d have all the time in the world to get ready then, if you’re so concerned about it.” Death’s sarcasm rang heavily in her ears and her smile twitched in her reflection, the gloss glimmering on her lips below the light as she grabbed her bag and headed for the door.
“I could, but then again where’s the fun in that? Let’s be spontaneous.”
“Once again, no choice here… ” Misery groaned.
Daria chuckled before asking them to leave her alone for a bit. She had a feeling she’d need a little privacy for the evening.
“Fat chance of that. Dude could be a psycho.” Truth’s voiced curled through her mind, lacking his usual breeze, and she frowned.
“Are you sensing something off about him?”
She could almost see the pout in her mind, big blue eyes blinking at her. “No. He hasn’t told you a single lie so far. But I think I’ll hang around a while longer until we know his motives.”
Daria snorted, ignoring the glance from the group of girls she passed as she headed for the back door, waving goodbye to Allegra. “Motives? Please, I think we all know his motives are to get in my p—”
“Hey!” Andrew grinned at her from where he waited for her, across from the alley door, and effectively derailing her train of thought.
“Hey,” she murmured, struck by the way the streetlights accentuated his cheekbones in the night.
“Ready to get out of here?”
“Absolutely.”
His slow grin eclipsed even the moon. “Great, I’m parked a few streets over, do you mind walking?”
It had rained earlier in the week, but all signs of the storm had long passed, and now only the warm summer night remained. A slight breeze warded off any lingering humidity.
“Not at all. It feels great tonight.”
“That it does. Especially with a pretty girl like you on my arm.”
Swoon.
“Oh please, he can do better than that,” Betrayal muttered, and she ignored him.
Her nerves fluttered, settling into a tension behind her rib cage. Warmth enveloped her when he wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling her into his side and slowing his steps to match her gait as they walked side by side, first past one alley, then two. Their idle chitchat was soft as the breeze that ruffled her curls, but nothing could distract her from her nerves. His warmth seeped into her skin where he pressed against the entire left side of her body.
She got so caught up in his presence, his energy, she didn’t even notice how far they’d walked. That pressure tightened, and she rubbed a hand over the spot that hurt.
“How close did you say your car was?”
He sighed, his arm tightening around her and he flashed her another smile, but this one she knew very well.
Fake.
“Run, Daria,” Death whispered through her mind in a voice hushed by revelation.
Pressure burst in her chest, and with a release of energy, she listened, tore herself from Andrew’s grasp, but only stumbled away when his hold proved tighter than she first thought. Her bag fell to the ground as she caught her balance, and she took off without looking back, leaving it there in the alley.
Feet slapping against the pavement in her black tennis shoes, Daria flew down the alley, brick blurring in her peripherals as she ran for her life.
The demons had gone silent in her head, but she felt their hope, their worry, and their urgency like a physical wave.
One that fell short and dissolved into nothing, while footsteps grew too loud and something crashed into her, the pavement rushing up too quick to stop. Her hands scraped against the ground as she scrambled, but the person on top of her was too heavy, too aggressive. Her head bounced on the asphalt, helped by the palm on the back of her head, and the world around her swam as the breath left her lungs. She rolled over, ready to reach for the switchblade in her pocket that she’d started carrying.
Andrew’s face still eclipsed the moon, but in a way so different than when the night had first started. Now his grin was replaced with a flat line of anger, the lines in his face bunched up in hatred and a mocking victory denting his features.
Before she could even dream of reaching for her pocket, a gleam of silver reflected in the moonlight and death screamed in her head.
Not death… Death. His cry of outrage.
Echoed by the others in her mind, and for a split second she wondered what they were so upset about, but then the agony hit, and her body jerked when Andrew’s fist met her side, the blade gripped in his hand slammed into her. She gasped, wetter and heavier than when she’d hit the ground, and Andrew withdrew the blade to plunge it in again, her blood spattering across his neck and getting lost in the midnight blue fabric of his shirt.
The breeze still blew and the night was still warm, and it rained again, not drops from the sky, but streaks of her own blood as the blade sliced through skin and organs and muscle and—her life.
The demons in her head went quiet and so did the rest of the world.
Darkness took her.
TRUTH
Truth had always wondered what it would be like to feel gravity hold his feet to the ground again. To feel the breeze on his skin or the humidity in the air. The moonlight shining down from above.
Spoiler alert: it was fucking terrible.
Yeah, sure, the night was cool and it was fucking awesome to feel the breeze again, even buck-ass naked, but what pissed him off? The dead beauty left on the pavement like the trash around the alley.
Fury flooded through him, lighting him up from the inside out, and his fingers tightened into fists.
His brothers, by experience, not by blood, stood by him for the first time in millennia, and those cult bastards surrounded them. None of their powers had manifested yet.
Fuck.
And not only that, but his body was heavy. After millennia of existing as a thought, suddenly he had weight and flesh and blood and it felt awful at first.
For only a split second was he able to study his brothers’ familiar faces. The dark defiance in Misery, the dangerous intensity of Death. His fury palpable in the night, Betrayal ground his teeth together. The scrape was audible from where Truth stood beside him. A blank emotionlessness was carved into Hope’s golden-brown features, while his namesake was far from their minds as the cult swarmed the alley
.
Double fuck.
In the next second, the assholes surrounding them attacked. One launched at Truth, and he barely stumbled back in time as the fucker swung a leg out in some move practiced more in a gym than an actual life or death situation. It was only this reason Truth was able to grab his extended leg, twist around and pull forward, before shoving an elbow back into his face and knocking him out. He dropped the guy’s leg like dead weight, met Misery’s eyes where he took out another one, and darted off down the alley, grabbing up Daria’s purse as he ran.
He needed Daria’s car if they had any hope of getting out of there. They were too… fresh in the world. Truth’s fucking skin hurt, too sensitive with the new form. The emptiness in his chest from their missing powers weighed him down even heavier than the body itself.
His muscles cramped as he ran, but thankfully Daria wasn’t parked too far away, just a few streets down, next to the bar. The employee parking area was empty, so he hunted down her car and slid behind the wheel, tossing her purse to the floorboard. His adrenaline was off the charts, and it felt good as the leather of the wheel warmed under his hands. Sitting behind the wheel through other bodies was nothing compared to his own, but it had been enough to teach him how to operate a car.
God, it’d been too long since he was able to feel his blood rushing through his veins, his heart pounding in his chest. He floored it, tearing through the side streets and empty alleyways, until he found the same one they’d been fighting in. The headlights illuminated the dirty scene before him. His brothers fighting for their newfound lives, their poor Daria discarded on the ground with sightless eyes and rimmed in a pool of blood.
His gaze turned to the bastards overpowering Misery, and Truth gunned the car forward, blowing the horn until Misery jerked his head up. Just in time, he leapt out of the way, but the two assholes who’d been beating on him weren’t too lucky, and Truth slammed on the brakes right before he hit them. Their bodies thudded on the hood of the car before rolling off into the alley.