by Helen Scott
“You foolish child, I—” His voice cut off as I summoned the darkness, which quickly surrounded him. I was willing it to have mass, to be a snake instead of a tendril. I wanted it to crush his bones and send him back to Hel where he belonged. When I heard a crack, I wanted to whoop with joy. For the second time in one day, the darkness was doing what I wanted. Or at least, that was what I thought until the pale, almost translucent hands of the agent of Hel tore through the darkness. The thick python of darkness I had created almost disintegrated at his touch, as though it hadn’t even been there to begin with.
“As I was saying”—he dusted off his clothes as the weird ash left by the darkness disappeared—“you are a foolish child. I’m older and more experienced than you can imagine. If you give yourself over to me, I will make the judge’s death quick.”
The vision of Shadow’s throat being slashed flashed through my mind with disturbing clarity. I wouldn’t be giving myself to anyone except my guys, but I wasn’t about to abandon Shadow to a grisly death, either. A familiar cool sensation brushed at my skin, reminding me of all the ghosts in the space between realms. I had called ghosts before after a brief trip, but this time, I knew I would need more. I needed a small army. The idea of calling the darkness and risking it putting me back somewhere else was dangerous. It would leave Shadow exposed, and he could very well die before I would even be back in the mortal realm. There had to be another way.
I wasn’t expecting it when the agent slashed out with his knife, having allowed myself to become too wrapped up in my own thoughts. After narrowly avoiding the strike to my abdomen, I ducked out of the way of the next attack before shoving my whole body weight at him. We landed in the plush green grass that could only come from chemical treatments, his body absorbing most of the impact. I couldn’t prevent the grunt that escaped me, though.
He knew I was injured and was trying to figure out where. I couldn’t give him a chance to find my weakness, though, so I did the only thing that popped into my mind. I dragged us both into the space between realms.
Chapter Eighteen
Nolan
When I saw my princess vanish with that thing, I almost lost it. If Knox hadn’t been there with me as we watched and waited for an opportunity to get to Shadow, I would have just blindly run forward and completely ignored the semi-conscious man lying on the ground. This was our opportunity, and we had to take it whether or not we were both going mad with worry.
Poppy wasn’t even supposed to be there, let alone confront the leader of their little attack party. As soon as we had sensed her presence, Hunter and Emmett had peeled off to try to find her, or at the very least, prevent her from getting surrounded.
The main problem was we had no indication of numbers. The attack in the hallway had turned into wholesale slaughter as the four agents faced off against four hellhounds. Thankfully, we’d been able to get the kids out, although the teacher had vanished. Emmett had scouted ahead and warned us that there was a high-level agent there, but we weren’t sure how many others he had brought with him.
Shadow was most likely concussed as we picked him up, each of us slinging an arm over our shoulders as we carried him away from the courtyard area. The man was ripped even compared to Knox and Emmett. The idea of him just judging souls seemed like a waste of his natural talents, but then, who was I to question the plan of the fates?
We were back in our small corner before either of us took a deep breath. Shadow was secured, and even though we were hurting from some injuries, it wasn’t the end of the world. The only thing we needed now was to get our princess back. How would we retrieve someone from the space between realms, though? Was that even where she was? She could have gone anywhere and taken that bastard with her.
Either way, it didn’t matter. We couldn’t leave until we either heard from her or retrieved her.
Knox pulled out his phone and texted an update to the other guys. When he turned to face me, he asked, “Do you think you can get back to the hotel on your own? To our rooms?”
I nodded. When we’d traveled to the school, I’d paid attention to the way Emmett manipulated the dark and the shadows. It took a much gentler touch than I had initially thought. “Can you take Shadow back to the hotel? I’m going to send Cass and Derek back, too.”
I nodded and placed a hand on Shadow’s shoulder. I pulled the shadows away from the building and wrapped them around us like a cloak. In my head, I wove an image of our hotel rooms. The view from the windows, the mess on the floor from Knox and Emmett that I had tripped over earlier, the scent of Poppy still lingering in the air. I poured every detail I could into the image and prayed it would be enough to get us there. What I had picked up from Emmett dictated that the more details I visualized in an area, the higher the likelihood that I would end up where I wanted to go.
When the dark faded from my vision, I found an empty room. Fortunately, it was one of our rooms. Part of me had been hoping that Poppy had just come back to the hotel, and when Knox had asked me to bring Shadow here, I was more than happy to run that errand since I was hoping to find my princess. Moments after I got Shadow onto the unused bed, Cass and Derek appeared. It seemed I wasn’t the only one to pay attention to how the whole teleportation thing worked.
“Can you guys wake him every couple hours and try to get some fluids in him?” I asked, wanting to head back to the action.
Cass nodded. “Goin’ back?”
“Yeah, I feel bad just leaving the three of them and sitting in a room, not that keeping an eye on Shadow isn’t important. It’s just—”
“You want to check on Poppy. I get it.” The judge grinned. “Go, we’ve got him.”
I gave Cass and Derek a curt nod before whisking myself back to the school. What I found when I got there was the last thing I had hoped for. Knox, Emmett, and Hunter were fighting off a group of agents, and by the looks of things, they were losing. Red streamed down Hunter’s arm, while Knox’s face looked as if it had been used as a punching bag, and Emmett didn’t seem able to stand up straight.
The only thing I could do that I knew might help was let the hound inside out. The magic washed over me, and for a split second, it felt as if I were standing on the beach on a summer day. I blinked in the light, and when my eyes opened again, my point of view had shifted. My hound was tall and deadly, but it still put me lower to the ground than I was used to.
I took off toward the fight, lunging at the closest agent I could get my teeth around. My unique gift was that my saliva as a hellhound was poisonous, so one well-placed bite could bring an enemy down. I didn’t want to get caught by one of them, so I kept moving around, dodging and weaving through the mess of bodies, and of course, biting ankles and knees every chance I got. A couple of the attackers started to fall, their legs giving out on them as my poison worked its magic, leaving them at the perfect height for one of the others to take them out.
We were developing a pretty good strategy, which was going to be handy when Poppy took the throne. I knew Hel wouldn’t give up that easily, not after what we had already seen of her dedication to her cause, and I was completely expecting a full-out attack once we got to the Underworld.
When the air around us became milky with fog, everyone paused. Even the agents of Hel weren’t sure what was going on, and that made me even more nervous, especially since according to my hound, death was on the wind. It was getting harder and harder to see even a few feet in front of my face, and when I heard another body hit the ground a few feet away, I had to make sure it wasn’t one of the other hounds.
No hounds were injured. Instead, what I found was Poppy’s limp form, along with that of the head agent. Both of them were down and out for the count. I let a small yip escape me and knew that would bring one of the still-human hounds to my side. Hunter was there a moment later, scooping Poppy up into his arms.
I pantomimed biting the leader in his neck, and Hunter grinned at me. It wasn’t a happy smile; there was something decidedly evil behind
it, but when he nodded, I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Before either of us could change our minds, my jaws locked around his throat. My saliva seeped into the wounds as I tore at his rotten-tasting flesh. It wasn’t enough, though. I wanted to make sure this bastard wasn’t coming back. I scraped at his chest for a moment, shredding his shirt with my claws before I began drooling right over where his heart should be. I had no idea if location mattered or not, but I figured better safe than sorry and started thinking of anything that would make me drool more. A perfectly cooked steak. A good microbrew. My favorite rib place. Poppy’s kisses. It all amounted to a huge puddle of saliva on the asshat’s chest, one which would soon be absorbed through his skin and guarantee his death. Part of me wanted to dance with glee at the thought, while the rest of me was already focused on Poppy and safely getting her back to the hotel.
As Knox and Emmett finished dispatching the remaining agents of Hel, Hunter backed away from the fight with Poppy safely tucked in his arms. I stood guard. I knew with the way he was holding Poppy that he wouldn’t be able to defend the two of them if someone attacked. When an agent lunged for us after being mostly sliced open by Emmett’s blade, I got to leap into action. My fangs pierced its neck, and I tore. Black blood washed over me, and I let out a vicious snarl. No one was going to touch my princess. Not if I had anything to say about it.
The body slumped on the ground before me, and as I looked around, blinking the blood from my eyes, I could see that the one at my feet had been the last agent of Hel still standing. Emmett and Knox were doing some cleanup work, and as each body around us turned to ash, I shifted back into my human form, needing to communicate with them what my hound side was hearing.
“We should get out of here before the police show up,” I said as the sirens wailing in the distance became audible to the human ear. With a nod, each of us wrapped the shadows around ourselves and headed back to the hotel. My only thought was Poppy. I hoped to whoever had control over those types of things that she was okay and that we were all able to make it to the Underworld soon, which was something I had honestly never expected myself to think before.
Chapter Nineteen
Poppy
The fight played over and over in my mind. When I had dragged the agent of Hel with me to the space between realms, I had hoped it would kill him as it had the potential to do to me, but it didn’t. As soon as we arrived, the ghosts surrounded me, trying to separate the two of us, which I was fine with until I realized he wasn’t dying at all. Not even a little bit. Meanwhile, I had to hang out with the ghosts so I didn’t die.
He started laughing and was doubled over with his fit of giggles when he said, “You thought this would kill me? I’m already dead, you idiot. This is just another place for the dead, like any other. Whether I’m in Helheim or the space between realms, or even the Underworld, it doesn’t matter. Now, all I need to do is kill you and return to Hel for my reward.” By the end, he was grinning from ear to ear as though this were going to be the easiest thing in the world. What he didn’t realize was that the ghosts here liked me. As he began to move toward me, all the spirits in the area got in his way, each one becoming a barrier that he had to fight through.
“We can help you,” a voice said in my mind. I startled as a spirit moved in front of me. She was looking directly at me, and I was thankful that they were more solid in this space than in the human realm. Her facial expressions changed as she spoke as they would if she were speaking aloud, but instead, her voice just seemed to manifest in my mind. “If you can get us a real afterlife, then we can help you realize your powers that will protect you from him.”
I considered what she was saying. Part of me knew that I could lie to her, that I could take advantage of her offer, but I couldn’t bring myself to do that. These spirits had suffered enough. “I was already planning on figuring out how to get you to the Underworld once I claim the throne,” I said with a shrug. “You don’t need to owe me anything for that. I just don’t want to leave you here.”
“You are kind, daughter of Persephone, but the task will be harder than you think. If you promise to try, then that is the best we can ask for and more hope than most of us have had in centuries.”
“I promise to do everything I can to get you out of here.”
The spirits around me seemed to coalesce even more for a moment, forming a solid wall between me and the agent of Hel. The woman who had been speaking approached me, and I felt the temperature drop about twenty degrees. Her hand connected with my forehead, and I felt the coils of her cold energy weaving through my mind like vines through a trellis. “Daughter of Hades, Daughter of Melinoe, you have made us a promise that we will hold you to fulfill, but our half must be filled first. Let your powers come forth, let the madness reign, and let the ghosts of the realms unite under your banner. You have the power to spread madness through the land and to control the dead with a thought. Your ancestors gave you everything you need to face those who threaten you. All you need to do is embrace it.”
When her hand pulled away, I felt heat rush through me, but I also felt a cool certainty take up residence within me. Those powers she had listed were mine. My ancestors had bequeathed them to me through their genetic material, and I’d fight like hell to be worthy of them.
She moved away, as did the spirits standing between me and the agent of Hel. As soon as I could see him clearly, I reached out with my will, my control over the dead, and just held him like that for a moment, letting him feel his powerlessness to its fullest extent.
“You think you can control me?” He laughed.
I stood and waited, but nothing happened. When he wasn’t able to break my hold on him, I just smiled, showing too many teeth as I let my intentions leak into my gaze. “I know I can control you. I could have you do a dance, make you scratch your skin raw, attack your own people, anything I damn well want to, because you are mine to control as long as you’re with me.” I couldn’t help myself and had him hopping and skipping and dancing while my words sank in. It felt as if I were controlling a puppet in a way, but I knew if I just gave his body a command, it would follow that, and I didn’t need to hold the strings the whole time.
“You little bitch! You really think that Hel will take kindly to you controlling one of her generals?”
“I don’t care what Hel thinks of anything. She’s not my concern.”
“She will be so—”
I cut him off. “Stop talking.” Part of me wondered how far I’d be willing to go with this course of action, but the descendant side of me knew there was only one end to this. He would die by my hand, and it wouldn’t be a quick death. He had threatened me and mine, and now he was going to pay.
“My queen,” the spirit’s voice echoed in my mind once more, “your health is deteriorating. You must leave if you wish to stay alive. We can only keep you from death for so long.”
I knew she was right. I could feel my fingers and toes going numb, my breath rattling in my chest. He stared at me with a fury in his eyes that burned so bright, I could almost feel its warmth. The warmth I wanted, though, was that of my hellhounds, and there was no way I was going to experience that again by staying in the space between realms. I snaked my power through his body, feeling the sludge that they called blood pumping through his veins. All that needed to happen were a few of the arteries and veins to be opened up inside him, and I was sure he would die from internal bleeding. It wasn’t enough, though, so even as I opened a hole in the vein leading to his heart, I was twisting the bones in his neck and severing his spinal cord. I wouldn’t let him hurt anyone ever again. I could have left him there, and he would have suffered in eternity, stuck between realms, but that wouldn’t be as satisfying as sending him back to Hel like a broken toy.
“Go now, my queen!” the spirit’s voice sounded, and I could feel my body seizing up as I felt a mental push. The next thing I knew, the darkness and shadows were wrapping themselves around me and the agent of Hel.
/> When I woke up, I was back in the hotel room, curled around Knox and Emmett as they lay next to me. They weren’t asleep, though; their breathing told me that much. As soon as I stirred, their hands were on me, helping me, holding me, and just touching me. I breathed them in, luxuriating in the sensation of being with them.
“Welcome home, angel,” Knox whispered in my ear before placing a tender kiss on my temple.
I pushed up into a sitting position between them. “Hey, how long was I out this time?”
“Just a couple hours.”
I nodded. Emmett picked up my hand and placed a kiss on my knuckles.
“You are an amazing woman and will be a phenomenal queen,” he said as he placed another kiss on my hand.
“Is everyone okay? I felt you guys in pain, but I couldn’t tell who it was.”
“We are all fine, just healing some flesh wounds, that’s all.”
“And all the agents of Hel?”
“Dispatched.”
I nodded again. “And everyone’s safe?” I asked, unable to voice my concern that dragging the agent of Hel who had held Shadow captive into the space between realms had meant leaving Shadow for dead.
They laughed. Emmett called out, “You guys want to come in?”
“They’ve been waiting for you to wake up,” Knox whispered in my ear.
Nolan, Cass, Derek, and Shadow all filed in. A grin was plastered over Nolan’s face, while a tentative smile was on Cass’s. Derek and Shadow looked more wary than anything else. If I was honest with myself, I was sad that Hunter wasn’t in the group.
“He’s healing in the Underworld after getting some nasty stab wounds. I know if he were feeling better, he would be here,” Emmett said quietly.
I nodded and tried to shove the sorrow away, but I had wanted us all together, at least for a moment. “Do they know?” I whispered to the two men I was currently sharing a bed with.