Hell Sucks: A Reverse Harem Urban Fantasy (Selena Pierce Book 2)

by Lucy Auburn

  Leon explained, “The symptoms of post-demon possession can resemble a sickness at times. We’ve been doing what we can to quarantine those we find here, so Tae Min can treat them, but we haven’t found them all. There have been isolated cases reported to hospitals across the world. They’re calling it the mystery pandemic, because more cases are being found in other countries where the fae have a less established presence and population is crowded. Seoul, Beijing, Delhi, and Moscow are all reporting at least two dozen cases each. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

  Selena had a troubled look on her face. “But what does this have to do with a key?”

  “Do you remember what that demon summoner told us while you were questioning him?” I knew that I would never forget, but from the look on Selena’s face neither would she—maybe because it happened right before she disappeared. “Right, well. He said that they were going to free their gods to walk the Earth. We have a theory, backed up by some of the research the dark hunters have been doing into the last time the hell gates opened, that they’re summoning demons in order to overwhelm the barriers between realms and force the hell gates open.”

  Looking down, Selena nodded. “Before I left,” she said, the words having a strange and heavy weight on her tongue, “I had this vision from the demon summoner. He was going to let someone, a goddess that he worshiped, free on Earth. That’s why he was doing what he was doing.”

  Though this news only confirmed our current theories, hearing it straight from the source added to my troubles. I explained to Selena, “The hell gates can open wide enough to let out demons, wildlings, and soul eaters if enough pressure is put on them. But there are veils between our worlds that prevent gods from walking the Earth, or the Realm of Light, or even the Shadow Realm.

  “Sometimes demigods get through, like that Beelzebub we have captured now. But the gods have their own worlds that they’re meant to stay in—they were banished from the Earth when their children’s children, the fae, took the reins of the supernatural, and it was decided that divine power and humanity don’t work well together.”

  “All this happened millennia ago,” Leon added. “Before the fae realms were built, even, the first gods created their own worlds and left the Earth. They took their divinity with them, which allowed humanity to flourish in a way it never had before—and stopped the god wars, which were destroying this world. The darkest of the gods, who lost the war, were forced into the Underworld. Other gods ascended to something like Olympus or Valhalla or heaven, depending on your preferred myths.”

  “Okay.” Selena looked like she was taking a lot in, and I didn’t blame her; most of this stuff was myth and legend for me, despite how much my mother liked to insist I follow the ways of the Black God. “What does a key have to do with all this?”

  “Not a key,” I corrected her. “The Key. As part of the treaty that banished the gods, a Key had to be made, to close off the Underworld. Afterwards, the Key was destroyed by the first dark hunters.” I left out the stories about Hades creating dark hunters from the ash of the wars and leaving us behind to keep evil at bay, right before he sacrificed his own freedom to lead Hell. “But something as powerful as the Key can’t be fully destroyed. There are legends—”

  “Prophecies,” Leon corrected me, and I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.

  “Yes, prophecies,” I grudgingly admitted. “All of them stuffy and full of terrible things, that say the Key will be recreated, or reborn, or manifested—all depending on how you translate ancient languages. And when it is, and the veil between realms is weak, the dark gods will use the Key to walk on Earth. Something something apocalypse, something something doom.”

  Leon glowered at me, and I shrugged. “Despite Naomi’s flippancy, the prophecies are a real concern to the fae. Our realms rotate around each other according to a celestial calendar, the way planets rotate around their suns. Every few centuries or so, Earth and the divine realms brush up against each other. When they do, it’s called Godspring, and if they’re weakened by all these demon possessions...”

  Selena filled in the blanks, bless her. “Then the Key could be used to open up the gates of Hell, and every single thing that lives down there will come back to Earth.”

  “That’s not all of it,” I added. “The Underworld is the biggest divine realm, but it’s not the only. There are others, where other gods live. And they may not have demons or doomed souls in their midst, but when the veils are lifted they’ll be able to walk the Earth, too. As soon as they find out the dark gods are loose they’ll want to fight them again. If they restart their war, the only thing left in their wake will be them.”

  “No more humans,” Leon said, an intense look on his face. “No more fae, either. Nothing but the gods will be left to walk the Earth.”

  Taking a deep breath, Selena shook her head ruefully. “And here I thought things couldn’t get more complicated while I was gone.”

  Leon smiled at that. “It’s not all bad. For one thing, we have some time before the next Godspring—it’s not predicted to occur until August. And for another, we have some clues about where the Key may be, thanks to the Elders. We know for sure that it’s on Earth, and we may very well be ahead of our enemies in the hunt for it. If we find it in time and put it somewhere for safekeeping, all of this can be averted.”

  “That’s part of the stupid prophecies too,” I told her.

  What I didn’t mention, to her or to Leon, is that my people had been sworn for centuries to destroy the Key. If we were the ones who found it, I wouldn’t hesitate. I would smash it back out of existence myself, and damn the consequences for breaking the rules. I wouldn’t let such a thing exist.

  And if the Black God put me on Earth expecting me to do his bidding and free him from his self-made prison, he had other things coming. Nothing in the world would make me turn dark—not even my mother’s batty myths about my creation. Screw fate; Iva would stay safe and sound, the hell gates would remain closed, and I would live a normal life like any other dark hunter, filled with demon killing, sexy women to drive me crazy, and enough knives for an army.

  “Before we find this Key,” Selena said, a serious tone in her voice. “There’s something I want to talk to you about. Or—someone. Whoever got out of the hell gate, I know you tried to find them with Elah, Leon. But I want to go look into it myself. Because I have the strangest feeling that I know who it is.”

  I traded looks with Leon, who didn’t seem thrilled. He said, “Elah is in the Realm of Light, putting in a report. When he’s back we can get on the trail again.”

  More than anything, I wanted to go with them—the three of them alone seemed like a bad idea. Grudgingly, I admitted, “I’m on demon possession duty today, since Iva and Crane are out. You three are on your own for this part.”

  This time, the boys got Selena to themselves. But the next time I had the chance, I would make good on the tension between us.

  For better or for worse.

  Selena

  It was all too much to deal with: more realms, more gods, a coming apocalypse, and a mysterious key we had to find in the next six months. I held my tongue about Persephone, but I sensed that the truth would have to come out one way or another, because I had the feeling she was messed up in all of this.

  And to think a few months ago I thought my biggest worry was deciding on a major so I could graduate on time.

  I still hadn’t gotten a text back from Talia.

  “This is the prediction we got from the seer,” Leon said, pushing a piece of paper across the table to me. “It’s all pretty standard stuff—hell gates opening, the Underworld, the Key.”

  I scanned the strange poem, my eyes catching on a certain line. “What does ‘to make the Earth Her own’ mean? Why did you capitalize Her?”

  Leon frowned. “Did I? I don’t remember doing that.” He took the paper from me and stared down at it. “Huh. I guess I did.”

  Next to me in the other chair, Naomi was play
ing with one of her knives, rolling it around on her fingertips. “There was divinity in Shuri’s voice when she said it. Some part of you must have sensed that and written it down.”

  “So?” Leon sounded frustrated. “I barely get all this god stuff, Naomi. You were the one raised in it.”

  She made a face, and I had the feeling she was the furthest from worshipful a person could get. “When gods’ names are spoken, or they’re spoken about with pronouns, the speakers are moved by divinity. At least, they are if they have a connection to the divine, like a seer.” She grunted when the knife dropped from her hand, her movement distracted by all the talking. “Or that’s what my mom always told me growing up. There was nothing she loved more than trying to make us believe the Black God could speak to us through His mouthpieces.”

  “There it is again!” Leon pointed at her, almost accusingly. “You said ‘his’ like it meant something.”

  There was a black look on Naomi’s face, and I sensed tension in the room. Not wanting this to turn into some weird religious fight, I interrupted. “What’s this clue we got about the Key? Maybe we should start there, instead of discussing nouns.”

  They both gave me a look, and I tried not to feel overwhelmed. Each of them had enough presence to fill a room; together, they were almost too much to take.

  “Right. The clue.” Leon moved on. “While they couldn’t narrow it down to an exact location, a group of five fae of the seer tradition managed to narrow down the Key’s probable location to Baton Rouge.”

  “Of course,” Naomi muttered. “Ours is the hell gate that opened. That kind of dark energy is exactly the kind of thing to draw an ancient key back to life.”

  Yet again, something for me to feel guilty about. I opened my mouth to say that I was sorry, but Naomi cut her eyes at me before I could. “Don’t even, Selena. None of us would’ve wanted you to stay in the Underworld if we had the chance.”

  “And it’s better that it’s here and not somewhere as populated as Beijing,” Leon pointed out. “We have a better chance of finding it in Baton Rouge, where the presence of the fae is a high ratio to the human population.”

  I felt comforted by the fact that they both short-circuited my guilty brain before I could start feeling bad about something new. “Okay, so we’ll find it. What else? Were there any other clues?”

  “Just one, that I was about to get to.” Leon pulled out a piece of paper with a hasty scribbled map on it. “It looks like there’s a good chance the Key is located somewhere in or around the old Heidelberg Hotel. It’s rumored to be haunted—the franchise that took it over wasn’t able to keep it in business for long because of the strange occurrences reported around the hotel. We’ve had our eye on it for being the possible center of some paranormal activity before this. It was built after the great flood, and there are rumors about its founder.”

  “Ghosts.” Naomi made a dismissive sound. “I hate ghosts.”

  “It’s definitely full of ghosts,” Leon added. “Lots and lots of ghosts.”

  This was quite possibly the biggest shock I’d gotten since discovering I was fae. “Ghosts are real?” I realized how stupid the question sounded as soon as I said it. The Underworld was real, and soul eaters were real. “Of course ghosts are real. Great, just great.”

  Leon summed it all up. “So we’ll go back to that trail from the mausoleum, and see if we can kick anything up the second time around. Afterwards, we’ll start on the search for the Key.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” I said, trying to ignore the intense heat I felt from Naomi’s gaze. “Let’s hope this time around, it’s easy.”

  “It’s never easy,” they said, voices overlapping.

  Despite myself, I had the terrible feeling that they were right. It would be too much to hope for that things would go smoothly; there were bound to be more surprises in store for me before everything was over.

  I just hoped that we got the Key without too much trouble before the deadline. Because if Hell on Earth meant a family reunion, I very much wasn’t looking forward to it. As far as I was concerned, estranged was the best state for the relationship between my birth mother and I, hopefully permanently. I would do everything in my power to keep us as far away from each other as possible.

  25

  Selena

  The beast crashed through the trees, his nose to the ground. Elah and I followed close behind, our eyes scanning the distance for any sign of what had come from the hell gate.

  Feeling the blackfyre knight’s eyes on me, I tried to concentrate on the task at hand, but it was hard. My heart felt pulled between two worlds: the Underworld, where I’d done things only Damen knew about, and Earth, where I had the chance to make all my mistakes right again. I wondered if I was desperate to find Damen because I wanted to make sure he was okay, or if I just needed reassurance from someone who knew what I’d been through, because I was scared to tell the men I was with the truth.

  They weren’t Petyr, I knew. They swore no oath to tell the Elders about my origins; if I asked them if they could keep it a secret, I had no doubt that they would. But that was worse somehow, because it meant giving them part of my burden, which should’ve been mine alone to carry.

  The beast stopped. Elah and I stood behind him, watching as he scented first the ground, and then the air, his great nose going a million miles an hour.

  “This is where he got stuck last time,” Elah said, his voice low. “He said there’s magic in the air here, and it gets in the way of the scent trail.”

  I frowned, watching Leon’s beast form pace back and forth. “Maybe if we sweep the air we can pick up the trail somewhere else.”

  “Maybe.” Elah sounded like he doubted as much. “His nose is the best in all the realms. If he can’t find the trail, no one will be able to.” Seeming to realize what he’d said, Elah hastily added, “But there is hope. Whatever it is—or whomever—can’t have gotten very far. Demons tend to leave destruction in their wake, and if it’s this friend of yours, he’ll need food or help eventually.”

  I couldn’t imagine what it would be like if Damen were out here somewhere, alone and uncertain, the powers of a demigod at his disposal. It was quite possible he’d leave his own wake of destruction, if he were lost enough and confused enough.

  Though I didn’t even know if it was him, something in my stomach felt so sure. Closing my eyes, I smelled the air like I was the beast, wishing that my nose could pick something up. But if there was any of Leon’s power in me, it was the double-creating kind, not the beast.

  Then for a moment I swore that I picked up a strange and coppery scent. It made me lick my lips, hunger growing at the back of my throat. I opened my eyes and blinked, wondering why it was that I felt certain there was a barbecue happening nearby.

  “Do you smell that?”

  Elah frowned at me. “Smell what?”

  “Cooking meat. Or... something. Food.” I whirled around, walking past the beast in the clearing, who’d stopped to stare at me with those big yellow eyes. “I swear I smell something. Don’t you?”

  The beast shook his big shaggy head, remnants of Leon’s personality coming through even in this form. I felt certain he was glowering at me with that signature Leon look on his face.

  But the scent just wouldn’t let go of me for some reason. I turned, eyes searching the forest, but of course there were no rising smoke plumes coming from an open grill, no distant restaurant sign pointing towards Louisiana pulled pork or dry ribs. It was all in my head, or in my nose maybe.

  I just didn’t understand why.

  “I have to figure this out,” I said, shooting Elah an apologetic glance. “Do you think we should split up?”

  “No way.” His voice was firm, his hand resting briefly on his ever-present sword, despite the lack of black armor encasing his body. “We’ll go with you, and when you figure out where the smell is coming from, we’ll come back here to try to pick up the trail again. Who knows—maybe they’re related.”


  “Maybe,” I echoed, though I didn’t know whose power could be giving me a nose for smoked ribs. Maybe this was related to Naomi’s dark hunter senses, or Leon’s walker skills, but there was no sense in figuring out whose borrowed skills might be latching onto me right now. The best way to solve the mystery was to find out its source.

  This time the beast took up position behind me, with Elah all the way in the back. We walked through the sparse woods, avoiding swampy areas that cropped up out of nowhere. This part of Baton Rouge was half wild; apparently the graveyard was meant to expand this way, before it was discovered that the water table was too high to put graves here, which meant it was only suitable for above-ground burials.

  Otherwise the coffins tended to float right out of the ground during the floods.

  With these pleasant thoughts in my head, I followed the strange scent swirling in my nose. Something about it made me hungry, even though it was a smell unlike any meat I’d ever gotten wind of before. I felt like a child catching a whiff of bacon for the first time, my mouth watering for salt and fat.

  So when the trees parted and I sensed that we were close to the source of the smell, I expected to see a restaurant of some sort. Not an abandoned church with a half-rotted roof and broken glass in the windows.

  “This is it,” I said, my voice puzzled as I led us around towards the front doors. “I don’t get it. I thought for sure I was smelling some kind of meat or food, but there’s no one—”

  I gasped as my eyes fell on the front doors of the church, which were wide open and hanging precariously off their hinges. A familiar figure was sprawled out on the ground, his front half in the church, legs splayed out behind him. Blood covered his body, marring the once-crisp lines of his shirt, staining the ground beneath him.

  I fell to my knees and reached for a pulse, heart in my throat. It was a relief when I found it there, thrumming beneath warm skin. Little shocks of static traveled up my arm and made my hair stand on end as I touched him, his electricity wild and alive.