Dark Hope (The Devil's Assistant)

by Smith, H. D.

  Mab sat on a high throne, watching as we approached. The quads and Quaid bowed as they greeted her. Quaid yanked me down. She walked over to where I knelt. The temperature around me dropped further as she neared.

  As if this was the first time we’d met, she tipped my head back and studied me. “Oh, look,” she said gleefully. “You brought me a new toy.”

  I swallowed a sour taste in my mouth. She raised me to my feet.

  The others stood, but she ignored them. Her eyes were so blue they were almost black. “You must be freezing, dear. Let me fetch you a warm drink.”

  Mace tensed beside me, but he didn’t say anything.

  I had no intention of eating or drinking anything. I remembered Jayne’s warning—I couldn’t believe I was actually giving the voice a name. “No, thank you,” I said before Mab had a chance to summon a servant.

  “I can see you’re cold. Would you not like something to warm you?”

  “No, thank you. I’m fine.”

  Her angelic face hid her true evil, but her shell was starting to crack. Fine lines appeared around her mouth as her lips formed a twisted smile. She hadn’t expected me to refuse her.

  Without so much as a twitch, she wrapped her will around me so tightly I could barely breathe. She lifted me a few inches off the ground to her eye level. “I must insist.”

  Mace hadn’t been able to force me to eat the Pagan cake in the bungalow; I had to eat it willingly. I assumed the same rules applied to her. “I doubt it will have the desired effect if you force me.” My voice was strained. I barely had enough air to get out the words.

  Her hold tightened, suffocating me. She crowded closer, practically nose-to-nose. My lungs burned with the lack of oxygen.

  In a lowered voice, she said, “You’re in no position to refuse.”

  My eyelids drooped. She was very clearly proving her point. She smiled, then dropped me to the floor. I gasped, sucking in air as fast as possible. I was still trying to steady my breathing when Quaid put me on my feet.

  “I’m sure some time to yourself will improve your attitude.” She had a wicked gleam in her eyes. Waving her hand in a dismissive gesture, she said, “Take her to the Deeps.”

  Two of her guards, men I hadn’t noticed before, came from behind her throne.

  “Stop,” Mace commanded before I could back away.

  As if glued to the floor, with no real desire to move, I was stuck. Mace had commanded me to stop—a simple voice command—and now I was unable to move. Oh, god. Complete control. This was what it meant?

  He bowed his head and went down to one knee. “May we speak first, Aunt, before you send her away?”

  He looked up; his eyes were wide—hopeful—but I knew there was no way she was going to give him what he wanted. She had a smug look of indifference, but all I saw was death in her eyes. She wanted me agreeable. Apparently, whatever awaited me in the Deeps would make that happen.

  She smiled. “She will go to the Deeps while we talk.”

  No longer arrogant, his dejected gaze met mine. Quietly, he said, “Go with them.”

  Without any conscious effort, I walked over to the guards. I wanted to run, but my body wouldn’t obey. Not when Mace gave the order in Purgatory. Complete control sucks.

  “You have your orders,” Mab shouted at the guards. “To the Deeps with her.”

  The men led me from the great hall, taking me along a series of corridors to the back of the castle, then winding through another long corridor and into a spiraling stairwell that appeared to have no end. We went further and further down until finally it ended so deep in the ground it felt like a grave. My pulse quickened as we reached the bottom. A single dark door lay ahead.

  Twenty One

  In China, the Taklamakan desert was said to mean, “go in, and you will never come out.” The Deeps, as Mab called it, was nothing like the dreams Mace trapped me in or the nightmares controlled by the Keeper. The Deeps, as it turned out, was its own world, an endless Taklamakan, designed by Mab to make anyone go mad.

  There was no mean foster father or sociopathic hellspawn here to torment me. There was nothing. Nothing but me and the wind or the rain or the snow or the searing hot summer sun on a vast, endless desert. So hot one’s mouth was dry from the lack of water, and one’s lips cracked and bled. This was the Deeps, the endless hell of nothingness that went on for days, then weeks, then years.

  Aimlessly, I walked around. There was nothing to find or do or see. At first, I thought the desolate isolation would cause me to forget and drive me mad, but the spell I’d done made that impossible. I hadn’t heard from the voice again, but images, the movie of my life, were relentlessly played over and over in my head. I couldn’t forget—anything. This might drive me mad faster than if I was losing them.

  The time of this place was different. The days ticked past like marks on a ruler. I watched them turn into weeks, then months. Forward and back, ending and beginning, as if I could somehow control time itself. Maybe in this hellhole I could.

  I stumbled over a rock and fell to the ground but got back up quickly. Resting wasn’t an option. Nor sleeping, sitting, or stopping. The elements would attack if I did. I would wind up in the middle of a raging storm or a freezing wind.

  I groaned as the wind picked up. I hadn’t gotten back to my feet fast enough. The dirt started to swirl. A sand storm was coming. I ran, trying to get ahead of the gale. Trying to get out of its way, but I was too late. Raging wind slammed into me, knocking me to the ground.

  After too many times of this happening, in frustration, I cried, “Stop!”

  Instantly, everything stilled. I pushed myself to my feet and looked around. I was in the middle of the storm, but it wasn’t moving. Millions of tiny specs of sand were suspended in the air. Amazing. I spun around in all directions, gawking at the contained chaos. Raw power, suspended in time. It was beautiful.

  A moment later, something struck my cheek with a sharp sting. Then another. The sand. As I studied the suspended particles, they moved, vibrating slightly before flying off on their former trajectory.

  I had some control but not enough. I reeled around, searching for the best way out. A small patch of blue sky beckoned. I ran for the clearing as the storm roared again, the sand swirling faster and faster. It was getting harder to see. I kept going, running for the bright beacon of blue.

  “Faster,” I screamed at my legs.

  Without warning, time jumped ahead, and I wasn’t in the desert anymore. Instead, I stood in the frozen tundra, the storm long gone. Winter again.

  “Four months,” I said, knowing that was the time that had passed. It was strange how I could sense the time here. I could see it as if it were laid out before me in a timeline.

  Of course, I didn’t actually believe it was real time—dream time perhaps. I wasn’t completely sure.

  I walked for another two days, making comments about the weather—talking to myself—actually wishing the voice would talk back.

  “Jayne,” I said hesitantly. I was so starved for interaction, I would gladly welcome her conversation. She remained quiet. “Please talk to me.”

  “Finally,” she said in an exacerbated tone. “So, did it just occur to you that you had to give me permission to speak?”

  “Um—” I wasn’t sure what to say. I hadn’t realized that at all.

  “Fine, you’re forgiven.”

  I’m losing it.

  “You’re not going crazy,” she said.

  “I’ve been here for seven years or two months or two seconds, depending on how you want to look at it. I’m tired. I can’t sleep or rest. I’ve been watching a continuous loop of my life in movie form, and I don’t know how the hell to get out of here, or when it will end on its own. So, yeah, I’m fairly sure I’m going crazy.”

  “You could shut it off.”

  The movie already felt like someone else’s life, but I couldn’t switch it off. “I have no idea how long I’ll be here. If I switch it off, I could
wind up forgetting my own name. Which is not a better option.”

  “Just a suggestion.”

  “You’re talking to me now. Maybe I’ve already tipped the crazy scale.”

  The voice was silent.

  “Fine, let’s say I’m not crazy. What are you? Who are you?” I asked, realizing I had no idea how to phrase the right question.

  “I’m Jayne,” she said as if that explained it.

  I wanted to beat my head against a wall. “Well, Jayne, what the hell does that mean exactly?”

  She didn’t say anything.

  I sighed. “Where are you?”

  “Trapped in you, somehow, I don’t know,” she admitted.

  “Have you always been there, just silent? Which is creepy, by the way, if you have.”

  “No, I only regained awareness after you entered Purgatory the first time. I decided to use the spell you cast as a way to talk to you.”

  “So why did you shut up?”

  “You commanded me, and for some reason, I couldn’t talk to you after that.”

  I thought about that for a minute. Did my words have that much power? Was it like the suggestions I’d made to Mace and Sage?

  “Yes, I think so,” Jayne said.

  “Right, you can hear everything I’m thinking.”

  She was quiet.

  “I think we need to get past these secrets. Especially if I have none from you.”

  “I don’t exactly understand it myself, but it’s like I am you, but I have no control of the body.”

  A split personality?

  “No, that’s not it,” she said quickly.

  “How do you know?” That would explain a few things—wouldn’t it? I’d seen a special on TV.

  “No, look, I know I have memories that aren’t from your life. I can’t access all of them, but I know they’re there. And I don’t have the ability to take control of your body. If I were an alternate personality I’d be able to do that, and we couldn't have a conversation.”

  My head hurt thinking about it.

  “Look out,” she said, before I almost tripped over another rock.

  I was so tired, I just wanted to sit down for a minute and do nothing.

  “Maybe we should try to get out?”

  “I’d love to. Do you have any ideas?”

  “We could let the storms kill us?”

  “That’s an interesting thought, but what happens if it doesn’t work? She may be planning to keep us down here forever.”

  “I doubt it. What fun would that be?”

  “I assume you mean for her since she wouldn’t have the gratification of screwing with us on a daily basis.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  I had no response to that. Sadly, I was sure she was right.

  “You could try stopping things again.”

  “What good will that do? It didn’t last very long the first time.”

  “Maybe try fast forwarding.”

  “Yeah, and sometimes time reverses. Plus we don’t know if that will help us get out.”

  “Okay, this is getting us nowhere. Are we going to talk about the real problem then?”

  I snorted. “Which one?”

  “The baby. Jack and Junior. Don’t act like I don’t know what you’re thinking.”

  “I don’t want to think about it. If it’s real and Mace takes it—”

  “If the baby is real and it’s Junior’s, will you want it?”

  I’d been ignoring my concerns of what really happened with “boyfriend Junior” in his hotel room, and whether or not the baby could be his. Mace hadn’t sensed it until after I’d come back from Fight Night, but that might not mean anything.

  “Do you know what really happened?” I asked.

  “No, I only know what you know.”

  So not helpful. “Yeah, and I was in that hotel room—alone with him—pretending to be his girlfriend. I have no memory of what really happened.”

  “Death was there.”

  “The bathroom floor was wet,” I added.

  “You could have slipped, fell, and hit your head.”

  Was that before or after I let Junior fuck me?

  “I think Jack would understand if you did.”

  I brushed away a tear.

  “Junior’s a big guy,” she said. “He could have hurt you if you’d resisted.”

  “Then why don’t I remember?”

  She was silent.

  I started to run. From what I wasn’t sure. I studied the vast desert before me, considering time as I ran. I imagined the seasons passing in front of my eyes. And they did.

  Without knowing how I’d done it, Winter bled into Spring, which bled into Summer, then into Fall. The seasons rolled around in a continuous loop as I ran through the desert, thinking of the next season to come.

  ~ * ~

  “Seven years,” Jayne said, as if I couldn’t sense the passage of time.

  I’d figured out how to speed up time. Four or five times faster than normal, but there was still no end in sight. I’d been in the Deeps for almost a hundred years. Because of my ability to manipulate the time, it felt like a mere seven years, but even that was an eternity. My body moved on autopilot now, my mind a constant stream of Lifetime movies and talks with Jayne.

  Dropping my gaze to my hands, I stopped. “We’re getting older,” I said, seeing the signs of age in front of me.

  “No. Keep moving,” she said. “Time’s not moving on the outside.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “Yes, we do. There’s no way this is real. And quit thinking forever, we’ll get out.”

  “Something will get out, but I don’t know any more if it will be me.”

  She was quiet.

  “I’m hungry,” I mumbled.

  “I know. I wish you’d stop thinking about it,” she admonished.

  “It’s not like before. I’m actually hungry. I have been for months.”

  “We can’t eat anything.”

  “I know.”

  “I know what you’re thinking. Stop it. We can’t let her have that power over us. Mace is bad enough. You know what he did to us. Complete control. We will die of hunger before we give that to her.”

  “I know,” I snapped.

  Time started moving faster. The seasons were whipping by us at a rate so fast it was dizzying.

  “Enough,” Jayne snapped.

  “I’m not doing this.”

  “Stop it.”

  “I don’t know if I can…the storm is coming.”

  “Start running.”

  “It won’t help.”

  I sat, then laid down on the ground. My hands had withered as the years passed. Now they were old and craggy. The clock was nearing a hundred. I wanted it all to end.

  “Don’t give up,” Jayne said.

  I was ready to die. The wind started to howl. The dust and sand began to swirl. Beetles crawled up out of the ground beside me. I hadn’t seen another living thing for a century, and now there were scary flesh eating bugs about to attack me. At least, I hoped this meant the hell was ending.

  Within seconds, the beetles swarmed me and engulfed my entire body. They chewed at my flesh relentlessly. Mab would be disappointed I wasn’t screaming, but I’d learned to ignore the perceived pain of this place long ago.

  My body was a shell by the time the storm struck. It ripped the bugs off me before the sand finished the job of removing my flesh. In minutes, my bones were exposed to the elements, and bit-by-bit they were pulverized by the debris. I was conscious through the entire process, until the last part of my body was ground to dust and blew away on the wind.

  That was the Deeps.

  ~ * ~

  I bolted upright with a loud intake of breath. Rolling off the slab of rock, I rushed over to the tray in the center of the room. It overflowed with fruit so luscious they seemed unreal.

  I salivated, eager to eat everything before me. Ripe bananas, tender strawberries, succulent peaches, and j
uicy apples called my name. I could smell their heady aroma. I picked up an apple. The skin glistened with beads of moisture. I could already taste the crisp sweetness as I brought the fruit to my lips.

  Stop, Jayne cried.

  “What?” I said, lowering the apple just as a droplet of water fell and splashed onto my chin.

  Are you insane? Put that down, right now!

  As if it burned, I dropped the apple and wiped the water off my hands. “I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry.”

  Quit talking to me out loud. Do you want the guards outside to hear us?

  “Sorry,” I said, then, Sorry.

  The smell of the food made my stomach roil.

  Get away from it. Go check the door.

  There was a large wooden door at the front of the room. I ran to it.

  We should check with our presence.

  I know. This isn’t my first rodeo. And before you say anything, yes I’m okay.

  I wasn’t sure how true that really was, but I wasn’t going to try to eat anything else. The movie had stopped, but the life it showed no longer felt like my own.

  I closed my eyes and thought about the great hall. I was there instantly.

  Cinnamon, Sage, and Sorrel were sitting by themselves gazing blankly into the room. Cinnamon slowly pivoted her head toward me, and although her lips didn’t move, she said, wait. Her face became strained. She closed her eyes and more clearly said, I will not let Mab sense you, but I will not be able to hide you for long.

  Why?

  You’ll owe me.

  I snorted. Technically, you already owe me.

  Quit arguing, Jayne admonished. She can’t hide you forever.

  Fine, I’ll owe her a favor.

  I cautiously moved into the room. Mab and Mace were talking on the other side, but I couldn’t understand what they were saying.

  I looked at Cinnamon. I can’t understand them. When she didn’t offer any suggestions to solve my problem, I added, Mace destroyed the translator.