I uncork the stopper and hand over the small silver tube. Bex grabs Kara’s hand, who in turn grabs Mad’s, all the way around the circle until we have enclosed Delaney and Anya again. There’s a charge in the air, and my breath catches in my lungs.
“I love you,” Anya says to Delaney, and tips the contents of the vial into her mouth. And almost instantaneously her eyes roll up into the back of her head and she slams back into her coffin, convulsing.
“Control it!” Bex screams, and the air around her begins to shimmer as she chants. The others join in, with Delaney squeezing both of Anya’s hands in hers, their palms glowing blue.
This is wrong. Terribly wrong.
Mad takes my hand and joins it with Kara’s, slipping herself out of the circle and moving to Anya’s coffin.
“She’s been dead too long,” I say. “Or Trivia draining her made her too weak…” I don’t know why this isn’t working. All I know is that this will shatter Delaney all over again.
Mad leans over Anya’s trembling form and places one hand on Anya’s chest and the other on her forehead. “I can feel the liquid trying to move through her veins. It just needs a little help is all.” Her voice is calm and soothing, and she is the eye of the storm for all of us.
She closes her eyes and her palms glow red, then her forearms, up to her shoulders, and soon her entire form is enveloped in a soft crimson light. I watch in astonishment as that glow begins to pulsate in a familiar rhythm. Slow at first, then steadier.
A heartbeat.
Anya stills.
The chant ends.
Delaney stands, her cheeks wet with tears, and stares down at her wife. I know that look. I’ve given that look. She is willing Anya to open her eyes.
And Anya does.
Her skin, once sallow, is pink with life. Her cheeks are no longer hollow, but round and dimpled when she smiles. Her eyes are clear and bright.
The red glow fades from Mad, and as it winks out she steps back from Anya. “How do you feel?”
Anya sits up and beams at us. “Never better.”
20
SLOANE
The brand on my wrist is on fire. It’s only a matter of moments before I’m ripped away from the Daughters of the Dead and sent back to Pandemonium to deliver the Dead Hex to Lucifer, and I am pissed.
I’m not ready to go, not nearly done with Mad and these necromancers and now that Anya is safe there’s something I have to ask of them but there’s no time now.
“He can’t know that I can touch the ring,” I say.
“He probably already does,” Kara says, sipping whiskey as she sits by the fire. She is completely unconcerned about this situation, and if she hadn’t been such a bad ass during this whole mission I’d be tempted to hurt her. “How else would he know to call you back?”
“I think it’s arbitrary,” Runner says. “As in, she’d better have gotten it now whether she’s done or not.”
Bex and Mad are the only two who can, or are willing, to help me. Anya had leaped out of her coffin and dragged Delaney back to the estate, practically sprinting across the cool, damp grass. They’d retired to the room they used to share and now share again. We haven’t seen them in an hour.
“So let him see,” Bex says, sitting back in the overstuffed leather armchair. “The stronger you are, the more valuable you are to him.”
“Or the bigger threat,” Runner adds. Always the cheerful one, that Phantom.
“I need something to put it in!”
Mad dashes from the room. “I have something!” she calls over her shoulder.
“Faster, please.” My jaw is clenched so hard my teeth ache, and I can feel the pull of Pandemonium in my core.
Moments later Mad reappears with a small leather pouch with a thin drawstring. “This has strong containment wards. We use it when we carry our most dangerous tools. He’d believe you’d use it to protect yourself from the ring.”
Snatching it from her, I drop the ring inside just as I begin to feel myself tearing apart. “Runner, I’ll meet you…”
“It’s all good, Gray, I’m used to this by now,” he says.
“We’ll keep the Phantom occupied,” Kara says, cackling, and the last thing I see is the thrill and fear that war on Runner’s face as the room disappears around me and I’m sucked into a void as black as pitch.
***
“Tell me you haven’t failed me, Gray,” Lucifer says around a mouthful of steak. He’s dropped me into a high-backed chair at the opposite end of a dining room table that must seat two dozen, and the jolt as I hit the seat compresses my spine and makes my teeth clack together. “Failure causes me to lose my appetite and this is a fine cut of meat.”
Wincing, I bring my hand up and drop the leather pouch on the wood, the surface a dark shade that has me uncertain as to whether it was finished with varnish or blood. Flickering candlelight from three black glass candelabras set at intervals on the table sets quite a romantic, if gothic, tone, but as far as I can tell he’s been dining alone.
“Well, go ahead,” he says, gesturing with his wickedly sharp knife, “open it.”
I do, tipping the bag so that the ring drops onto the table with a metallic clink.
“Hmm,” he says, savoring another bite.
“Something wrong?” I ask.
“I just…” he circles the blade in the air as if trying to conjure a word, “I thought it would be more. It seems so insignificant, doesn’t it? And yet…”
“And yet what?” He already thinks I’m dumb, might as well use that to my advantage.
“And yet it’s not,” he finishes.
So much for my information gathering.
The knife scrapes against the china of his plate as he cuts another bite, and the high-pitched sound is my own personal Pandemonium. I want to rip my ears off and throw them at him. “I don’t suppose bringing you the Dead Hex completes my part of our bargain?”
“If I had a sense of humor I would laugh at that until I choked,” Lucifer says drily, looking at me for the first time since he dragged me here. The firelight dances in his eyes and his lips are red from the bloody steak.
“Well, if that’s all for tonight then I guess I’ll be going to… I don’t know, do I have a room here? Or this place seems like it would have some sort of chambers?” I’ve never actually been inside Lucifer’s home long enough to figure out where I stay. If I stay.
“Indeed. You are on a number of Counterfeit hit lists and this is the only place they and their assassins cannot reach you,” he says. “Do you remember the last hallway we walked down when I sent you off to say goodbye to David?”
The sound of my love’s name on Lucifer’s lips makes my skin crawl. I swallow back my anger and nod.
“Those rooms are the quarters I keep for my Hellions. The symbol on your wrist will correspond to the symbol on the door to your room. I’m sure you’ll find it quite homey.”
I shudder to think what homey means for the servants of the Devil.
A woman strides into the room like she owns the place, and the utterly bizarre thought that I have actually interrupted some sort of dinner date with the Devil rattles around in my brain. Lucifer sits back, setting down his fork and knife and giving the woman his full attention. I would, too. She is stunningly pretty, tall, and lean, clad in black from head to toe, and her olive skin sets off her… silver eyes.
Silver like Runner’s. Could she be his wife?
“Sloane. Is there a problem?”
The woman, Sloane, answers Lucifer’s question with one of her own. “Did you think Trivia would take her incarceration well?”
“She’s stripped of her magic,” Lucifer scoffs. “How bad could it be?”
“Tartarus is in Pandemonium?” My question is apparently silly, because Sloane looks at me with something like disdain.
“Of course it is,” Lucifer says. “Where else would it be? Excellent job, by the way, Gray. Trivia is quite the get for us.”
“Did you kn
ow she was the one I would have to go after?”
He shrugs at me. Because of course he does. “It was a possibility.”
Sloane pins him with an ice-cold stare, and I decide in that moment that I probably like her. “Just because she’s lost some of her bells and whistles doesn’t mean the Queen of Ghosts can’t be a handful if she wants to.” She’s animated when she talks, gesturing to paint a picture in the air along with her words, and I catch a glimpse of a tattoo on her wrist. A symbol that’s different from mine, but branded on her all the same. She must be a Hellion like me.
I need to know more about her. About this place. About everything.
Pushing my chair back, making quite certain that it causes maximum commotion as it scrapes along the floor, I stand and clear my throat. “I’ll just get going. I’m sure that hallway is around here somewhere…”
“Absolutely not,” Lucifer mutters. “Sloane, will you show Gray to the Hellion’s quarters?”
She turns that glacier gaze on me, and I swear I can feel Hell freezing over. “I don’t have time for this.”
“That was less a question than an order,” Lucifer says in a low voice.
Teeth clenched hard enough to make a muscle tick in her jaw, Sloane nods. “Follow me.”
“Am I stuck here?” I ask Lucifer as I move to join Sloane. “Or am I free to come and go?”
“Why? Are you eager to go traipsing around Counterfeit City surrounded by a multitude of creatures that wish you dead?”
“I’m eager to get back to Mina’s. If you’re going to keep sending me on missions to find objects that are a complete mystery to me it’s going to be a huge pain in my ass, not to mention cost you time. I need to learn about this place if I’m going to be any good to you.”
I think my answer surprises Sloane because she blinks at me in surprise before turning to Lucifer to see what hell he’ll rain down upon me for my sass.
“Fair point,” he says, shocking us both. “No, you are not stuck here. You can come and go as you please. That brand on your arm lets me keep track of you anyway. The door at the end of the hallway, the one I tossed you out of, it will take you anywhere in the Counterfeit realm that you wish to go.”
“I’m supposed to step out into thin air and hope it drops me where I want to go?”
He nods, a massive grin on his face, and yanks another hunk of steak off of his fork. “Just put the destination in your mind and have a little faith.”
The Devil is telling me to have faith.
The Devil.
“I don’t have all night,” Sloane mutters. “This way.”
***
We wind our way through Lucifer’s castle, and I’m certain that if I didn’t have Sloane as my guide I’d turn down one of these hallways and disappear forever, lost to the maze of stone and glass.
Silence is normally fine with me, and she certainly has no interest in chatting, but that’s not going to get me what I need.
“You work at Tartarus, then?” I ask.
She glances over at me, her eyes suspicious slits. “I run Tartarus.”
“You must’ve been here for quite some time, then.”
“Long enough.”
Excellent. She’s of the Lucifer school of information distribution: give crumbs to those who would converse with you, and leave them frustrated and cranky.
“Are you a Phantom?”
She rounds on me, walking backward so she can talk to me without prolonging our journey. “How long have you been here? You’re his newest, right? So you know nothing?”
“Like I said upstairs, I have a lot to learn.”
“Well, I’m not the one to teach it to you. It’s not worth my time.”
We come to the hallway Lucifer led me down while he was stealing my hopes of seeing David again from me. Anger churns in my stomach as we pass door after door cut into the rough stone walls, and I have a moment of Deja vú as we pass a door with three interlocking circles burned into it. The last time I was here, someone was inside. They’d slapped the window as we’d passed. They had been awaiting their punishment.
We finally come to the door that has my matching symbol burned into it. Sloane reaches to unlatch the lock, and I see that her wrist is branded with three interlocking circles.
So she’s a troublemaker, like me.
“You stay here,” she says, pushing open the door.
“No locks?”
“No need. Nobody disobeys Lucifer.”
“You did,” I counter.
Sloane tenses and steps toward me. I think she expects me to back up from her, be intimidated by her, to let her crowd me into feeling small and weak and inadequate. Instead, I jut my chin out and meet her gaze. “How did you know that?” she says.
“Bad timing. You were awaiting your punishment at the same time Lucifer dragged me down here after I completed my first mission for him.”
I’ve intrigued her, and I can tell that it pisses her off. “What did you do for him?”
“Brought back two things he lost: the Dagger of the Fallen, and Lilah.”
Her silver eyes go wide at the mention of my former boss. “You got Lilah back here?”
“Do you know her?”
“She is one of my prisoners,” Sloane responds, but her eyes dart away from me as she speaks and I’m certain that’s not the whole story. “And I have to get back to work.”
She backs away from me and turns to leave.
“What happened to the last Hellion in this room?” I ask.
“He disobeyed Lucifer,” she calls over her shoulder. “Speaking from experience, I don’t recommend it.”
And then I am alone.
I peer into my room, and it’s about as comfy as I expected: twin bed, stone walls, as sparse as Lucifer’s chambers are luxurious.
No matter. I’m not planning on spending much time there anyway, starting now.
Shutting the door to my room, I move to the end of the hallway where the door to Counterfeit City sits waiting. I pull the handle to find it locked. ‘Gods dammit,” I mutter, “can nothing be easy here?”
I crouch down to get a better look at what I’m dealing with, and the strangest tingling sensation spreads out from my wrist as I fiddle with the lock. On a hunch, I press my wrist to the keyhole and a thunk sounds from inside the door. Trying again, I find that the door swings open easily.
“Lucifer wants me to figure things out myself? Done,” I say.
That horrible black void lies beyond, and the last thing I want to do is step out into the nothingness. Everything Lucifer has told me has been a lie, so who’s to say this is any different?
It’s just one tiny step into thin air.
All I have to do is trust the Devil.
I close my eyes, think about where I want to go, and let myself fall.
21
A GOOD OLD FASHIONED SEANCE
I expect to fall forever.
Instead, I shock the hell out of myself and everyone else in the room when I land right where I want: the living room in the house of the Daughters of the Dead.
Runner jumps up from the couch in a fit of panic. “Where in the good gods damn did you come from?”
“Literally Hell,” I say from the floor, my face on the cool hardwood. “Pandemonium.”
“But you’ve only been gone for thirty seconds,” he says, reaching down to help me up. He gives me a pat on the back and a smile that tells me he’s happy to see me. I’m dying to tell him about Sloane, but only once I’m sure it’s his wife. I can’t get his hopes up like that without being certain.
“Time must work differently down there because I feel like I’ve been gone for a year,” I say, brushing myself off as I stand on wobbly legs.
He’s right, though. Kara hasn’t even finished her whiskey. Mad enters from a hallway on the far side of the room and her jaw drops when she sees me. “You’re back!” She rushes over and wraps me in a fierce hug. “That didn’t take long, did it? Good. We have so much to talk about�
��”
“We do. And I want to,” I say, “but… I have to ask you a favor.”
“Here we go,” Kara says. “I knew it. This wasn’t a one-time thing, was it? You being here? You’re going to become a regular, you and the Phantom.”
“Gods damned right she is,” Mad says, moving to the couch and gesturing for me to sit between her and Bex.
Bex nods. “Anything you need, Gray. If we can help you, we will. You helped bring our Anya back. We are deeply indebted to you.”
“It’s about David,” I say, pacing because this is one of the rare instances where I can’t seem to control my emotions. It’s too important. He’s too important. “I’ve watched you resurrect people. I wondered…”
“If we could do the same for him?” Bex asks gently.
I nod because the words are stuck in my throat.
“Oh, Gray,” Mad says, and her eyes are sad and I think I have my answer. “What we do is only temporary. The only reason Anya is still with us is because of the liquid you gave her.”
The liquid wouldn’t have worked on David, with him being human. It would have only created a monster. It’s silly, but at the moment I’m cursing him for not being a Counterfeit because if he had been, I’d have saved half of that vial for him.
“That doesn’t mean we can’t try and talk to him,” Kara says over the rim of her glass, and we all turn to her in unison.
If she’s fucking with me, I swear… “What do you mean?”
Kara sets down her glass on the mantle and cracks her knuckles. “I mean, we haven’t done a good old fashioned séance in years, and I for one could use some practice.”
Not willing to take Kara at her word, I turn to Mad. “You can raise his spirit?”
She nods, and her face is alight with hope. “It’s normally just one of us channeling a message, but if we’re really lucky, you might even be able to see him.”
HELLION: THE DEAD HEX: (Hellion, Book 2) Page 12