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

by Lucy Auburn

  As he tugged me close, my hands hit his chest and I saw something glow on his skin: tattoos, so light they blended in with his deathly pale skin, just like on the dark fae Naomi and I saw in the abandoned warehouse. They hadn’t been there before, which made me realize with a start that there was a good chance the dark fae came here somehow and freed the demigod.

  As if I’d been thinking of her, the dark hunter herself strode into view over Beelzebub’s shoulder, standing at the edge of the hole in the floor. She narrowed her eyes and threw a knife right at him, sinking into the same spot in his shoulder that Tae Min had already stabbed. The demigod yelled in pain, and I took the opportunity to wrench my hand from his grasp and stumble away from him, dropping to the ground beside Elah. The beast was limping over to him too, on three pitiful legs instead of four; he shifted before my eyes, turning into a grim-faced Leon with a broken right wrist.

  “He’s gotten too powerful,” Leon said, as Naomi threw a second knife—only to be brought to her knees by the demigod’s wrenching powers. She fought his powers, standing back up again and pulling a third knife, which slashed his arm for a moment before healing. I watched the battle out of the corner of my eyes, desperately trying to figure out our next steps even as I felt Elah’s bruised ribs for fractures.

  Tae Min pushed me aside, “I can handle this.”

  I thanked him and looked over at Leon. “What do we do? Naomi can’t hold him off much longer. Our weapons have no effect on him.”

  “You have to get someone who can help—someone as powerful as a demigod. Or drain him somehow.”

  “My powers weren’t working,” I said, desperately wracking my brain for someone who could help. “He has these tattoos I’ve seen once before—I think they stop his energy from being drained.”

  Leon paled. “There has to be something.”

  Suddenly Tae Min looked up from Elah’s bruised ribs and said, “Damen.”

  A stab of hope went through me. Two demigods, equal in power—and Damen had fought Beelzebub before. “Where is he?”

  “My lab. I was running tests on him when the emergency lights flashed—I told him to stay in there because of protocol, but he’s not even hurt anymore. He could help.”

  “I’ll go get him,” I said. “You take care of Elah.”

  Tae Min looked at me and nodded sharply. “The door code is 4431.”

  Just then Beelzebub overcame Naomi’s strength and started pulling her towards the hole in the ground. She yelled in panic, and I got to my feet with more of Elah’s fire in my hands, throwing a small fireball at the demigod’s back. “Turn and face me, you piece of shit!”

  He roared as he spun on his heels, his wings torn yet healing, blood covering his chest and back from multiple stab wounds. Naomi pulled herself away from the edge of the hole in the floor, her eyes flicking out behind her, which was when I saw Maggie carefully creep into view and grab the dark hunter’s hand. My heart leapt to my throat, and I immediately looked back to Beelzebub, afraid of what would happen if he saw my foster mother.

  She was only human. He could hurt even powerful fae—I didn’t want to think of what he would do to her. I had to keep his attention on me. An idea formed in my head, slippery but quite capable of working if I just pulled it off right.

  I yelled at Beelzebub, “Catch this!”

  Then, turning on a dime, I ran towards the wall at the end of the hallway. It was a dead end without any doors, but I knew the Collective well from my time working here. On the other side of this wall was an interrogation room that let out into the hallway near Tae Min’s lab.

  I brought all of Elah’s fire to my hands, along with Naomi’s strength, and threw myself at the wall. The fire rushed along the path I sent it, scorching a me-sized blackness in the drywall. I held my breath as I pushed through, ducking a tangle of electrical wires and burning through to the other side.

  Now I stood in the interrogation room, covered in soot, staring at my reflection in the two way mirror. I heard Beelzebub’s roar behind me; he wasn’t far behind. His strength would rip through the wall just as easily as my borrowed fire had, but he would have to make a bigger hole to get through.

  I ran around the metal table in the middle of the room, hand slipping on the doorknob as I threw open the door and skidded on the tile on the other side. Reaching inside myself, I found the last of the borrowed strength I had left: Leon’s powers. I put a hand on my chest, just like I’d seen him do, and pulled out a double of myself.

  She blinked at me, tilting her head. I told her, “Go that way,” and pointed down the hallway in the opposite direction of Tae Min’s lab.

  “So I’m the bait?” She sighed then muttered resentfully, “Fine, have it your way.”

  I watched her run down the hallway, a sick feeling of something almost like déjà vu settling in my chest. But then I heard Beelzebub’s roar behind me and knew that he was close. Running down the hallway, I ducked into a door frame and waited for him to storm out of the interrogation room. He turned, saw my double, and headed for her.

  I counted to ten before I crept out and walked as silently as possible in the opposite direction from him. In the ceiling above me, red lights blared a warning; this must’ve been the emergency protocol Tae Min mentioned. I hoped it meant that people had escaped before Beelzebub could find them.

  The doors to the lab were locked. I punched the door code into the keypad, hoping I got it right: 4431. The light turned green, and I wrenched open the doors, relieved. On the other side, Damen was sitting on the exam table, wearing only a pair of sweatpants. A dozen emotions went through me as he turned and looked my way, his grey-blue eyes sparking like a stormy night.

  When I saw the look on his face, I dared to hope that he might remember me. He slid off the exam table and stared at me, his brows drawn low over his eyes, his expression deep and serious.

  A roar from the hallway reminded me that there was a battle on; I felt energy rush into me as my double’s clock ran out, and knew that Beelzebub had figured out he’d been tricked. Rushing forward, I grabbed Damen’s arm and looked up into his eyes. “We need you. Beelzebub is free.”

  He licked his lips, reaching up to touch my cheek, a spark of sensation coming to life where his fingertips touched me. “Selena? What—what’s going on?”

  I whispered, “Do you remember me?”

  Damen frowned. “Just from the other day. Nothing else.”

  I’d been a fool to hope. Squashing down all my inopportune emotions, I asked him, “Can you fight? The demigod is too powerful.”

  “Beelzebub. Persephone’s minion.” He nodded sharply. “Oh, I can fight. Point me to him.”

  Before I had the chance, the doors to the lab flew open, and a familiar pale form stood in front of us, his wings unfurled, his face twisted up in rage.

  “Finally,” he said, looking Damen up and down, “I’ll get revenge for what you did the last time we saw each other.”

  40

  Selena

  I stepped back as deadly power began to course across Damen’s skin. He faced Beelzebub, whose kinetic energy swirled around him like a storm cloud, and threw a bolt of lightning directly at the demigod. It sizzled and flashed across Beelzebub’s chest, blowing open the walls of the lab and ricocheting across the hallway. The blue-white light of it was so bright that I had to look down for a moment, darkness flashing across my vision.

  When I looked back up, Beelzebub was gone.

  No—he’d leapt into the air, propelled by his great wings, and was floating a few feet off the ground. This was a new trick, one I’d never seen before; his wings pushed kinetic energy around him and kept the electricity away from his body. Damen tried to throw a second bolt at him, but his powers coursed along the ground and the walls, pushed away from Beelzebub. Gusts of wind blew my hair from my face, and all around me every unbolted object in Tae Min’s lab was flying through the air to crash against the walls.

  “We have to ground him!” Damen said, shoutin
g to me above the fray of power. “He can’t attack us from up there, but I can’t attack him either without a conduit for my lightning. He can fly right out of the ceiling if he wants to.”

  And take out half the building in the process, no doubt.

  “I’m all out of power,” I said, desperately wracking my brain. “All out of knives too.”

  “Figure out something!”

  I reached down to grabbed Elah’s amulet, saying his name three times. His voice was weak when it came through. “Selena! We’re worried about you. Are you okay?”

  “I’m with Damen,” I yelled. “We could use backup.”

  “We’re on it. Selena, be careful.”

  I dropped the amulet as the force of Beelzebub’s power increased, jerking it from my hands. Behind me, glass vials in the lab began to explode, and I rushed out into the hallway with Damen. We moved down and away from Beelzebub’s tornado of destruction. He was gathering more and more force and energy to himself. Staring up at his face and arms, I saw the way the tattoos coursed along his body and wondered why he hadn’t done this when we fought before. Maybe he didn’t have the power; or maybe, in his desire to take me back to Hell, he was pushing himself to the limits.

  “Stay behind me!” Damen pushed me behind his back, power coursing across his skin in tiny sparks of electricity. “I’m going to try something crazy.”

  I didn’t have time to ask him what that was. Ozone filled the air, heavy and sharp. A terrible sense of foreboding filled me; it was like all my nerves were singing to me at once. As Damen’s power increased over and over again, I found myself stepping back from him, watching with rising horror and awe as his body began to lift off the ground, buoyed by his incredible power. He rose until he was on the same level as Beelzebub, demigod facing demigod in a dance of power and light.

  Then the air above us cracked, and a great bolt of lighting split through the building all at once. Damen’s body arched as he became its conduit. I cried out, holding a hand in front of my face to block the overwhelming light. I screamed out his name; I tried to look up to see what was happening, but light and power filled the room, and my skin danced with tiny sparks.

  A hand grabbed my arm from behind, and the world raced past me in an instant. Suddenly I was standing outside the Collective, the parking lot asphalt beneath my feet, only the light of streetlamps to see by. Spots danced across my vision; I sagged, and two strong arms held me up.

  “I’ve got you, Selena,” Petyr said grimly, his voice in my ear. “You’re safe now.”

  “Damen.” I stared at the building in front of me, vision swimming, as the heavens themselves seemed to open and the blue-white light of a god’s son seared across the sky. I saw the building tremble, walls crumbling inward, and knew that Beelzebub was giving as good as he got. “He’ll destroy himself trying to kill him.” I shook off Petyr’s arms, turning to him. I only knew it was him by his voice; my vision was still fuzzy from staring straight at lightning. “You have to do something, Petyr. Can’t you get him out of there? Or send Beelzebub right back to Hell? You have that ring.”

  “I can’t realm walk into the middle of a lightning storm,” Petyr said apologetically. “And only the Key can open up the gates to the Underworld. Which is why I had to get you out of there before he got you. But backup is on its way.”

  Bitterness rose in my throat. I was about to say something else when I heard Tae Min’s voice. “Are you okay?”

  His gentle touch on my shoulder let me know where he was. I turned back, blinking hard against the spots still dancing across my eyelids; things were coming into focus now, but not completely. “I’ve been better. I think I’m nearsighted now. I sort of stared straight into the light of a demigod’s lightning.”

  Petyr said, “I’d heal her, but vision is tricky. My powers work best on wounds.”

  “Here.” Tae Min leaned forward, and I felt his lips press against my cheek. “Take from me.”

  I reached up to brush my hands across his hair, then turned my mouth towards his, closing my eyes against the sweetest kiss I’d ever tasted. When he broke it off and I opened my eyes, there was something sad in his gaze. “Thank you.”

  Now that my vision was clear again, I could see Elah sitting in the back of white van while Sarah checked his ribs. He looked much better, though still bruised; no doubt Petyr had healed him as well as he could. His eyes flitted over to me briefly and he gave me a sad but determined smile. As I headed over towards him I spotted figures in the distance, hurrying down the stairs of the Collective and away from the destruction. Maggie was in the lead, Naomi taking up the rear with Leon; they were each carrying bundles of things in their arms that I couldn’t spot from here. Petyr had taken me to the furthest corner of the parking lot, away from the action, and it would take them a moment to get here. So I went to my blackfyre knight first.

  As soon as I was in earshot Elah said, “I’m sorry.”

  I stared at him, startled. “Don’t be.” Leaning forward, I pressed my lips to his, ignoring the way Sarah awkwardly cleared her throat. “You held him off for as long as you could.”

  “I still don’t know how he got out,” he admitted. “There was just this sudden... disruption. Like space and time itself were tearing apart. And then he was there. I barely managed to get Fira out of the stables, and I still don’t know where she is.” He looked out into the darkness around us with a sad expression on his face. “I think she escaped, but—”

  Just then I heard a whinny. Turning, I saw Fira limping her way to us through the parking lot. Leon intercepted her, taking her bridle and soothing her with low words. I smiled as Elah leapt to his feet, cradling his ribs, and walked over to press his forehead against his mare’s muzzle.

  Maggie ran up to me and threw her arms around me. I clutched her close, murmuring in her ear, “I was worried about you.”

  “I was more worried about you.” She stepped out of my arms and turned to Petyr. “We have all the stuff we need. I can imprison him again.”

  Just then another crack of lightning lit up the sky. I stared at the building with a lump in my throat as the blue-white light raced down to the ground. Entire walls of the Collective crumbled inward, until half the building was gone. I stared in horror, and I wasn’t the only one staring; at the other end of the parking lot, other survivors were huddling together in the darkness, barely visible in the light of the lightning’s energy.

  “I’m going back in,” I said, sure of myself as I said it. “I can’t leave Damen in there alone.”

  “I’m going too.” Naomi stepped up, determination in her voice.

  “We’re all going,” Leon said, glancing over at Elah, who gave him a sharp nod; even Fira seemed to whinny her assent.

  Maggie said, “I’ll stay out here and prepare the spell. This time, he won’t escape.”

  I nodded; as little as I liked having her in harm’s way like this, she was the only one who could do something to stop Beelzebub. Facing the ambassador, I tried to keep my voice level as I said, “We’re going back in. You and Tae Min should stay out here to heal anyone who’s injured.”

  He rose his eyebrows, a smile twitching his lips. “Just like that, huh?”

  “It’s my fault he’s here, even if I didn’t mean to let him out of the Underworld. I have to take him out. Also...” I glanced at the others over my shoulder before adding in a low voice to Petyr, “He wants me. Not Damen. He’ll be coming for me either way.”

  “I’ll take you in, then. First—weapons.”

  He gestured over to the white van Elah had been sitting in, where Naomi was sorting through several things in two black duffel bags. That was when I realized what was in the bundles Naomi and Leon smuggled out of the Collective: a few dozen knives, and even a sword or two among them.

  We’d be going back in well-armed.

  Or at least, the others thought that they would be going with me. Only I knew the plan forming in my mind, and what I would have to do to pull it off. As I
joined Naomi over the duffel bag full of knives, though, I kept it to myself.

  No one would get hurt because of me this time.

  I quickly palmed all the blades that looked small enough for me to use, while Naomi watched me out of the corner of her eyes. “Crazy night, huh?”

  I glanced over at her, hoping that my intentions didn’t show in my eyes. “It’s quite the battle.” I thought I had enough knives now, probably.

  “I just hope that we pull this off.”

  “Me too.” I tried to give her a smile, even as I knew it had to look strange and thin. “I just have to get one more thing out of my glove box.”

  “Sure thing.”

  She wasn’t even looking at me, so I felt sure that she hadn’t gotten suspicious. Heading over to my car, I grabbed my keys out of my purse, which was hung on Leon’s motorcycle handle parked nearby. I was almost thankful of the laziness that made me leave my car here in the parking lot, the battery dead. It made this easier. I slid inside the passenger seat, trying not to think about what I was about to do. The glove box was dark; I didn’t turn on my car’s interior light, afraid someone would see that I was up to something.

  I wasn’t even sure that this would work, but I had to try it. There was no way I could watch Leon, Elah, and Naomi throw themselves at Beelzebub again only to wind up being stitched back together. And I couldn’t leave Damen in there fighting him alone, when he didn’t even remember me, or know that he was only here in the first place because he’d chosen to help me.

  It was time for me to step up and accept my fate, once and for all. I flipped open the book to the well-creased page with the symbol and placed my hand on it. Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath and imagined where I wanted to go. I imagined myself walking there in the blink of an eye.

  Just as I felt my powers wrap around me, a hand grabbed my shoulder and a voice growled, “Like hell you will.”