by Lucy Auburn
They tried to stop me from fighting her, but I broke free, and ordered them not to die for me. I had the lives to spare, after all, and they were forced to obey me. In the end I killed her, holding her stolen phoenix heart in my bare hand as she died. But I could still feel what almost happened in the back of my throat.
I almost lost them.
I won't lose them. I won't. Fuck spells.
"I'm sure you read the inscription wrong." Advancing on Auerbach, I cross my arms and stare up at him, trying to seem menacing despite the fact that I'm inches shorter than he is. "There's no way a gate to Hell would just open because a bunch of demons bleed on it. That's as good as having no lock at all. It's fucking stupid."
Ezra clears his throat; I don't look at him, afraid of what he's about to say, but I can't close my ears off to his voice. "He said lifeblood, Dani. In my experience, demons are loathe to kill themselves, even the ones who'll come back. Something must be driving them out here."
"Or someone," Lynx adds. "Trickster demons don't just pull their bullshit with humans. I worked with one once, and it wasn't very pleasant, to say the least."
Which makes me wonder what the fuck was happening while I was gone that this was even possible. "How did this trickster demon get to Ari, anyway?"
"I'm not sure," Auerbach confesses. "We barely had time to speak before she succumbed to her magical coma and her consciousness was pulled back to the spirit realm. But she said something about a ghost, and her mother."
Hair prickles at the back of my neck. It was the Husk's poltergeist, coming to me in my mother's form, that tricked me into freeing him. Something about Ari being tricked in the same way, around the same time, makes me feel like chess pieces are being played on a board where I can't see my opponent's moves.
Sebastian speaks, drawing me back to the present problem. "If our deaths—which aren't even permanent—can save everyone on campus and prevent demons from running over the mortal realm, then it's a sacrifice I'm more than willing to make."
"No way." I shake my head vehemently. "You can't just give up that easily. We don't even know if Auerbach is right, or if there's another way."
Thankfully the mage himself steps in to agree with me. "Dani is correct. No one should be sacrificing anything in order to close the gate to Hell until we know what works and what doesn't. I admit, I only got close to the gate for a brief moment. My reading of the inscription could be wrong. Or the runes on the gate itself could be so many years before my time that their meaning has changed. Which is why I summoned this book from a well-guarded library in Morocco: to dot and cross everything. Until we're sure what happens next, no one should take any definitive action."
His words soothe me, for a time. But I can't stop the butterfly-wing-fast beating of my heart. The thought of a life without my guys, one where they don't remember our love or our time together, is more terrifying than any enemy I've faced since dying on that cliffs.
I'd take on the White Phoenix, Meyer, Lainey, and all seven of the immortals at the same time if it meant not losing the four of them. They mean so much more to me than I thought anyone could—least of all anyone human. I can't let the idea of self-sacrifice get into their stupid, brave, foolish heads. We have to find another way before it comes to that.
"Read that book quickly, Lynx," I tell him, walking over to stare down at the crinkled pages, squeezing his muscular arm. "There's gotta be something in here that'll help us."
"I'll figure it out," he says, though he doesn't promise that I'll get the answers I want. "There's no way Hell is pouring out of that door into this place. Not as long as you're here."
Auerbach tells me, "It shouldn't take long for us to figure out how to close the door. Plenty of time before the wards fall."
How reassuring.
In the meantime, demons are beating at the gates and walls of this place, their bodies and souls stuck between here and Hell because the door isn't all the way open just yet. It must be enough to frighten even the least attuned first year student, and I'm supposed to see the situation in person, with Headmaster Towers, Yohan, and a few of the other teachers.
Staring at Lynx, I frown. "I guess I'll just... leave you here to do the research while we go to the gates to see the situation in person."
"Sounds good." His eyes briefly flick up to meet mine, and he smiles softly, though I can tell he's eager to get back to the fascinating rare book at hand. "Let me know if you need me."
I want to ask him: how? But of course, I could still summon him. I could tug on our bond like a person tugging on a leash. I just don't know how to feel about the fact that he's fully here, corporeal and everything, talking to Auerbach and waving his hands in the air—and he'll be here even when I'm not in the room anymore.
It's a different kind of bond that we have now. A solid one, still. I just can't help the queasy feeling in my stomach as Mateo, Ezra, Sebastian and I head out of Auerbach's office and I close the door behind us.
Mateo quips, "So, do you think we'll see any familiar faces out there? Oohhh, maybe that jerk Engelbach is around. I'd like to shoot him in the balls."
"I doubt it's upper level demons," Ezra points out. "They can't exactly be controlled. It's probably all gross, weird, terrible lower level demons, with their scent glands and everything."
Sebastian says, "Can't smell worse than Mateo's unwashed balls."
Rolling my eyes, I head down the corridor and out the Great Hall, towards the front gates to the school.
Time to meet the demons knocking at our door.
Chapter 10
Undulating bodies. Spitting mouths with hundreds of sharp, yellow teeth. Claws that rake the ground and scrabble at the gates. They desperately try to break through the magical wards, some of them getting mangled in the process, blinking in and out of being corporeal. The propped-open door to Hell is in their midst, arms and legs and tentacles trying to pry it open.
At their backs are the second set of wards, ten feet tall and undulating with magical power. Auerbach put them there to keep the demons from turning around and heading out into the wide world of mortals. That means all these demons, every single one of them, is in the part of campus that's both in San Diego and in the Northeast, in between here and nowhere, Hell and Earth.
"They stink," I mutter, staring at them through the wrought iron gates, which is the only place other than the watchtower where you can really get a good look at them. "You'd think, being partially incorporeal and all that, they wouldn't be able to smell so much. But I swear it's like I'm standing in the middle of a trash pit."
Sebastian helpfully tells is, "That's probably their diet and their refuse you're smelling. Half these demons feed on corpses." I shoot him a horrified look, and so does Olivia, who's here along with a group of other battle-hardened students.
Shrugging at our disgust, Sebastian points out, "I'm not the one eating the corpses. I'm just saying, if you smell anything, that's probably it. They use a lot of these demons down in Hell to eat the flesh suits they stuff human souls into for torture purposes. Once the bodies are no longer useful, they tend to rot, and even the middle managers of Hell have noses. So these guys chomp through them like Pac Man eating all those little snacks."
"And you thought that daeschund smelled gross," Mateo observes. "These guys could make a grown man faint."
Yohan says, "We could burn them. That'd take care of the smell." Turning towards my demons—the three of them who are here, at least—he asks, "Will fire kill these abominations?"
Ezra is the one who answers. "Most of them are susceptible to certain forms of magical fire. Plain fire won't do the job though—they've been forged in Hellfire after all. But that, and a Hellfire-forged blade or two, maybe some explosives... we could beat them back. Force them through the door to Hell again, and kill the ones remaining."
Headmaster Towers' sounds despairing as she observes, "To do that, we'd have to be able to close the door behind them. And Auerbach says that isn't possible with simple
elbow grease."
I observe Ezra and Sebastian through my eyelashes, certain that if any among my quartet is going to lead the charge for self-sacrifice, it'll be one of the two of them. If they're thinking about throwing themselves down to close the gate and save us all, they don't show it on their faces. But they've also been tight-lipped about whatever the poltergeist showed them when it invaded their minds. For all I know, the guilt of whatever supposed memories he plucked from their hind brains might be enough to make them pour their lifeblood out.
So we'll need to find another way. Clearing my throat, I throw an idea out there. "If demonic lifeblood really does close the gate, then maybe killing enough of them will work."
Ezra raises a brow in my direction. "It's meant to be self-sacrifice."
"Yeah," Mateo grumbles, "magic has a real cruelty streak. Blood, guts, self-sacrifice. Why can't a spell ever require something easy to produce? Like bodily fluids."
I don't dare venture a guess which bodily fluids he's thinking of that are easy to produce. "I'm just saying, as long as we're slaying demons, maybe this is a way to get it to work."
Liam frowns in our direction. "Demon blood closes the gate? That's pretty gnarly."
"It's a gate to Hell, L," Sam says. "Of course only blood closes it. I bet the thing eats newborn babies, too. No offense."
His last two words are aimed at my guys. Sharing a glance, Mateo and Sebastian smirk in Sam's direction.
"Oh, blood is nothing," Mateo says lightly. "Down there in Hell is a demon who likes to pluck eyeballs out of human heads, eat them, puke them back up, and feed the vomit to people."
"Yeah, Hell is inventive." Sebastian's blue eyes are dancing with cruelty-tipped merriment. "Spiders in buttholes. Eating your own dick. Listening to NPR for eternity. You won't believe the things they force you into down there."
Sam looks back and forth between me and the guys. "Are they fucking with me?"
"I have no idea," I admit. "I'd say the chances are about fifty fifty."
Ezra sighs. "We spent most of our time in Purgatory, which is just outside of Hell, not in the actual inner circles itself. While we've had our dealings with the demons there, and escorted doomed souls to their eternal damnation, Hell was never our home. If it had been, Dani wouldn't have been able to summon us so easily—getting demons out of Hell is difficult."
"Which is why these guys are so strong and scary." I jerk my chin towards the slavering, barely-controlled horde just past the gates. "They actually did come from Hell. And while I can try, I'm not one hundred percent certain that I can banish them back there."
Fisk, who's been standing here the whole time with his arms crossed and a peeved expression on his face, makes a grumbling sound at this bit of information. "Great, just great. We waited for our one Grim to get back from assignment just for this, and she has no more answers than the rest of us. No offense Dani."
"Some taken?"
But it's hard to pick a fight with such a huge, scary man. Given all the hoops Fisk has made me jump through in Group Combat, I would bet on him in a fight against the demon horde. Even if he lost the battle, he'd win the psychological war—whatever torture Hell comes up with, they've got nothing on the likes of Jared Fisk.
I'm about to say as much, when one of the scaly many-legs demons thrusts and arm through the wards and scrabbles its hand towards us. Surging forward, Ezra pulls the sword he got from Kade out of its sheath and whirls it down on the leg in a brutal cut. Then he kicks the thing's body back and falls into a fighter's stance, eyes roaming the wards from end to end.
We all watch, nerves fraying, waiting for another to break through. But the spells hold. For now.
Not for much longer, though.
Headmaster Towers paces in front of us, her eyes filled with resolve, mouth tight at the corners. "Whether we want to or not, we'll have to fight these things back. So gather all your supplies and weapons. Evacuate the students who aren't prepared to fight, and instruct the ones who are. Hell is at our doorsteps, people. We can't pretend otherwise anymore."
While Ezra and Mateo gather weapons from Kade and work on selecting students to fight, Sebastian and I head back to Auerbach's office, a strange silence filling the air between us. I want, more than anything, to ask him what he saw when the poltergeist was in his head. To demand he tell me what secrets he's keeping from me, and why.
I could order him. I'm still a Grim, and he's still a demon bonded to me. But using our bond in that way would cheapen and twist it into something I don't want.
"You guys could always pop back to Purgatory," I tell him. "Ezra needs a new Hellfire-forged blade, after all. He's been complaining about that one he got from Kade."
Sebastian's eyes flick to me and back. "I suppose we could. I still don't understand how those tattoos Gaugin gave you work exactly. It feels like our bond is... different. More settled."
"Unbreakable?" I murmur aloud, daring to wonder what that means. "Unless we die, of course."
"Death does typically mean the end of most relationships, Dani." His voice is soft, but there's sorrow beneath his words, and my heart squeezes at the sound of it. "None of us can expect to live forever."
Reaching over to brush my fingers against Gaugin's bracelet, I reassure myself that it's still there. "Even the immortals didn't live forever, in the end."
"Exactly."
"But..." I stop in the hallway, chewing my bottom lip, and turn to face him. "There's the afterlife. The Great Beyond."
Sebastian's shoulders tense, and he doesn't turn towards me, his hands clenched at his sides. In a low, bitter voice he says, "Demons don't get to go there, Dani."
"What happens when your contract is over?"
"We're free," he says. "Beyond that, I don't know."
"How could you not know?" Grief wrenches through my voice; I'm so frustrated at the lack of answers. Grabbing his shoulder, I pull him towards me, but his eyes drop, looking away. "You have to know something. I can't—I can't bear the thought that when I die, when I'm actually dead, we'll be separated by an entire ocean of impossibility."
Sebastian's mouth tightens. "Most people don't know if they'll ever see their loved ones after they die, Dani. Even mortals—some go to the Great Beyond, some make it to Purgatory like us, but plenty wind up in Hell. We wouldn't be the first two people to love each other and yet be torn apart by death. It's the great equalizer."
"Death and taxes," I mutter. "But I don't plan on letting my life be ruled by things that are out of control."
"Really, Dani? How narcissistic of you." His blue eyes flash, and he stares down at me, face resolute. "You can't control everything. Least of all what happens to me when I die. Maybe you should quit this wild goose chase and actually try to enjoy what time we do have. Or do you plan on going through with all this foolishness even if it's doomed to fail? You haven't even asked us what we want, not really. It's selfish."
I jerk back, feeling as if I've been slapped. "Are you telling me that you don't want to be with me when we die?"
He blows out a frustrated breath, running a hand through his dark hair. Then his gaze meets mine, and his eyes soften. "I do, Dani. I just... if the cost is too great, I'm afraid you'll be willing to pay it, even if you shouldn't. Sometimes you just have to let people go."
I grab onto his collar, shaking my head. "I don't want to let you go."
"I know." He places a hand on my cheek, blue eyes staring into my very soul. "I know."
Then he kisses me, lips scorching, full of as much passion as the first time we touched. I can feel the raw energy, the wounded emotion, in his tongue and lips. Returning it with my own passion, I kiss my beloved Poisoner until the breath is drained from my lungs and my lips burn.
When I step back, we lean our foreheads together, completely silent. Just breathing. Simply being.
In a low voice, I tell him, "I want to free you. So you can be with me forever."
"And I want to be with you forever." Groaning, he presses another
kiss to my lips, his touch claiming and desperate. Against my mouth he says, "Just promise me that you won't do anything rash without discussing it first. The time for diving into things without looking is over, Dani. We have to be more patient. More deliberate. There's so much on the line here—the entire world, it sometimes seems. So don't do anything without talking it over. And don't go anywhere we can't follow. Promise?"
"Always," I tell him, though it hurts my heart to think that he, and the others, might deny me if I ask to free them. "I'm going to find a way to do it. Malavic can't be the only one without a contract—the bastard. I should summon him again just to wring his fucking neck."
Sebastian chuckles. "One thing at time, Dani. Now. Let's go talk to a couple of nerds about another goddamned book."
Based on the expression I see on Lynx's face, nothing he and Auerbach found was good. But I still have hope. I need to have hope.
"Don't tell me. Let's wait for the others. And keep reading," I insist, though Auerbach has an expression on his face that's pure pity. "Maybe there's something you haven't found yet."
"Of course," he says, though the book isn't very thick. "You never know what you might find going through an old tome a second or third time."
Lynx murmurs, "In this case, I'm not sure there's anything to find."
I find myself without words, because I'm afraid that if I open my mouth, the only thing that will come out is a sob of horror—or a scream of frustrated anger.
"Dani..." Ezra is looking at me with those sweet green eyes. "We can at least try to fight the demons off first. Maybe the door will close on its own."
Maybe. But we both know that it won't. I wonder what this weight that's pushing down my chest is. It feels like it might be something like grief or foreboding. This must be what it is to stare down the barrel of inevitability and know you're doomed.