by A. K. Koonce
Torben stays quiet though. Latham releases me as we all turn to look back at the man who hasn’t answered.
“Yeah,” is all he utters.
“Care to enlighten us?” Aric shoves his arms across his solid chest.
The silence that slips in where Torben’s explanation should be leaves an unsettling restlessness inside me. This is bad. If a warrior of Hell doesn’t want to talk about how dark this part of Hell is, it has to be tortuous. Unimaginable horrors slice apart my thoughts with blood and gore.
The moment I turn back around to assess the wide-open span of the room, a busy chatter of noise falls across the music that I’ve only ever heard in elevators in the human world. The open space springs to life with desks of workers all typing furiously. And fax machines. I’ve never seen so many fax machines in all my life.
I didn’t think people used them any more since the age of email. It’d be quicker to send a message by raven, to be honest.
A digital dial up of an error rings louder and louder through the room, assaulting my ears and thought processes as I try to take it all in. It’s all noise layered on top of other noise.
“Take a number, please,” a woman calls out like an angry crow.
I glance at Torben. The line between his brows is so deep it looks like his head might split wide open as he rubs the spot tenderly.
“What is this place?” I ask in a hushed tone, conspiracy edging into my voice. Aliens and Bigfoot and the proper spelling of the Berenstain Bears all have to be tied together with this shit, right?
Torben shakes his head slowly like it pains him to remember.
“It’s the DGE: The Department of Good and Evil.” His words are a rumble of grunted syllables, but his gaze narrows on the desk straight ahead of us.
“I said take a number!” the woman squawks at us.
“Fucking hellhole,” Torben grumbles before jerking a little tag of paper off of a machine and plopping down in one of the many chairs that line the wall to our right. He practically dwarfs the small seat.
I quietly lower myself into the chair next to him. The plastic bites into my thighs, and an older woman at my side holds a little slip of paper in her fingers as well.
“How long have you been waiting?” I whisper to her as I shift in the hard chair.
I push my hair back to fully look at her. Her mouth hangs wide open. An empty stare straight ahead consumes her gaze. A buzzing sound flits in just as a small black fly lands on her lower lip.
And she still doesn’t move.
“She’s dead, Love,” Aric tells me casually before pushing harshly at the ash brown hair atop his head and spinning in an astounded circle to fully take in the dozens of workers typing furiously.
But ultimately… doing nothing. And helping no one.
“Excuse me!” he barks out so loudly the small blonde woman at the desk closest to us nearly jumps out of her seat.
“Yes?” she answers politely.
“Could you assist us? Get us the hell out of this fuckin’ section of Hell, by chance?” His manic gaze pins her in place, and she shakes her head, her long hair quaking as she does.
“I’m not actually qualified. Karen is the lead processor of souls. Not me.” She shrugs her delicate shoulders, and I note the fearful glance she tosses toward the woman at the desk straight ahead.
“Oh, come on,” Aric whispers rather sweetly, and the tilt of his half smile is enough to make her breath fall hard from her lips.
I fucking know it. When that deadly man smiles, my ovaries take on a heartbeat of their own. They take on a brain of their own too. And I’m left stupid and pussy pulsing while he gets anything his little black heart desires.
And he knows he has that effect on women.
“Please?” he asks with big demonic puppy dog eyes.
“For god’s sake,” Torben mutters with a hard shake of his head.
“I-I guess I could do it for you,” the woman answers in a dazed, far-off voice.
“Thank you.” He looks quickly down at her golden name plate. “Thank you, Asta.”
The four of us gather around her little black desk while she shuffles through a filing cabinet. When her old brown chair spins back around, she’s holding a clipboard, her pen already hovering over the page.
“Let’s see. We’ll start with a basic questionnaire. In the last three years,” she says, and my stomach suddenly twists.
What if I don’t know the answers? What if we don’t pass? Shit, why am I always so unprepared for exams like this?
“In the last three years, have you filed taxes?” She lifts her innocent face up to the four of us, and I blink at the randomness of her words.
Oh. That’s not so bad. My lips part to answer, but someone else speaks up first.
“What the fuck are taxes?” Latham answers.
And she nods.
“Mmm. I see.” Her pen scratches over the paper while Latham, Torben, and Aric whisper together about king’s gold and village dues.
“Let’s try something new,” she carries on, and I close my mouth, unsure now if my answer is needed.
Aric nods, staring at her like he’s ready to speed answer her questions and be announced the winner of Who Wants to get the Fuck Outta Hell?
“Say you’re at a traffic light. The signal turns green, but the vehicle ahead of you does not move.” She looks up at us. “What do you do?”
My lips part hesitantly but Aric is just too ready. “I fuckin’ skin him, eat his flesh, and devour his bones for wasting my fuckin’ time.”
What. The. Fuck?
My mouth falls open as I stare at him.
Torben’s brows lift and he scratches lightly at his beard, but ultimately he nods, pleased with that answer.
“Mm-hmm.” The woman makes a little mark with another quick scribble of her pen.
“Say someone leaps into a river, but they can’t swim. Would you risk your life to save theirs?” She looks at us one by one.
“Why did they get in a river if they can’t swim?” Latham whispers quietly.
“Why would I risk my life when this asshole might just dive back in?” Torben adds.
“Seems like a setup.” Aric looks to the others and they both nod. “Someone wants us dead.” More agreeing nods.
Asta jots all of those answers down, but I feel like we’re failing an exam on basic human decency. What the fuck kind of lunatic pack did I team up with here?
“I—” The woman stops writing the moment I make a single noise. “I-I’m a stronger swimmer. I could help the person in the river.”
Her empty expression lingers on me for several beats while Torben shakes his head with disappointment in my response. “People like that will get you killed, princess,” he murmurs under his breath.
“I see,” she says as she flips the page and writes something I can’t see.
“What’s your name?” she asks without looking up from her notes.
“Rhys. Rhys Love.”
With another quick note she looks directly up at me.
“Miss Love, if the world were to end in a… fairly horrific way, but you could stop it, you could save humanity” —her big brown eyes gleam as she gazes intently at me— “would you sacrifice yourself to save everyone else?”
“No.” Aric drops that answer like it’s final and nothing more will be said about it.
I arch an annoyed eyebrow at the hellacious man, but consider the question for myself.
“I—”
“No,” he growls once more.
“She asked me,” I snap under my breath.
“And I’m saying no. In no hypothetical or real way would I allow you to fuckin’ dive into a river after some swimless fuck, let alone give your life to save a society of people who have never showed you an ounce of fucking kindness!” His big palm slams flat on the woman’s desk and she flinches on impact.
But I don’t look away from him for a second.
“Bea did,” I whisper.
&
nbsp; The image of her hurt expression during the Dark Moon is fresh in my mind, and it’s honestly the main focus as I consider giving my life for the world.
I’d save her. Even Mary. Maybe even fucking Calvin. I’d save them all if I could. Because my small, insignificant life isn’t comparable to the human race as a whole.
There are good people out there, even if I never experienced much kindness or love myself. I felt it in the way the shyest boy in our class loved Bea. The way he looked at her when she didn’t notice. The way he kissed her when he knew he couldn’t keep her. I felt it with every washing wave of my magic that I gave out, time and time again.
I felt love. It was just never mine.
And that’s enough to know my answer.
“I’d give my life for theirs,” I say firmly, giving Asta my final answer.
Torben shakes his head like I’m the most foolish woman he’s ever kidnapped.
Aric looks furious. The hard set of his jaw tells me he wants to shift so damn bad it must hurt.
While Latham… Latham just peers at me with big shining eyes. He says nothing. He offers no judgment. But something in the way he looks at me makes me feel his hurt.
I don’t understand it at all.
Maybe I’ll never understand these three psychotic men.
“Well then…” Asta fills in another line on the clipboard before flipping to the front page once more and checking a few tiny boxes at the bottom.
I lean into the hard edge of the desk to steal a peek.
Visitor One: Hell Bound
Visitor Two: Hell Bound
Visitor Three: Hell Bound
Visitor Four, Rhys Love: Other
“You three can join me right this way.” She motions to the men as she strides with paperwork in hand toward a little gray door at the back of the room. A square sign is positioned just above it and in glowing red letters it reads: HELL.
“Um…” I tilt my head to the side to try to understand what in the literal hell is happening right now.
“I’ll be right with you, Miss Love,” Asta says with an office-like smile plastered on her pretty face. Elevator music accompanies her every step while it just drills through the confusion in my pounding skull. Still, she heads toward the apparent entrance to Hell.
The men next to me don’t make a single move to follow her.
Her palm presses to the gray door and it swings open effortlessly with dry cold air whisking in. Through the door, a rocky cavern of space is seen. Shadows cling to the depths here and there, but no fiery flames of Hell are seen, so I guess that’s a good sign.
What isn’t, is that I’m not going there.
I’ve come all this way, I’ve fought and killed to be here. To finally see her.
Just to be rejected at the door.
“Asta, either submit your visitors or close the door. You know I hate a cold draft!” the woman, Karen, snarls while tightening her red cardigan around herself.
“What the fuck are we supposed to do?” Aric steps closer to me while searching Torben’s face for an answer.
“I don’t know. We could… go in. Inform Hela what happened and come back for Rhys.” Torben doesn’t look at me while he plans what to do with me like I’m an old lamp that’s taking up too much space.
Just put me in storage. That’s basically his plan for the dusty old lamp.
“We’re not leaving her,” Aric growls.
“You got a better idea?” Torben tosses back at the shifter.
Their bickering turns into a more incessant sound than the grating fax error that’s ringing louder by the second. Anxiety prickles in my chest like a stabbing I can’t ignore.
Latham watches me in silence.
No one offers a real solution.
There’s nothing.
Nothing we can do.
And then… I see her.
A woman with pale blonde hair tied back steps in front of the door. Her face is so much thinner than the memory that’s suddenly flooding into my mind. But her soft blue eyes… they’re just like mine.
“You are love,” she coos, tucking in warm blankets all around me.
“You are love,” she whispers into my hair as she braids back the soft blonde locks.
“You are love,” she says with tears streaming down her face while she hugs me so tightly the fear in my chest presses harder.
And then darkness consumes my memories.
There are no more.
“Mom,” I whisper among the chaos of angry words and shuffling papers and terrible ringing errors.
Then I’m running. I sprint like a wolf about to shift. It all passes by in a blur of settings. Papers flit to the ground all around my feet. My knee bends, my boot rattles Karen’s desk, and I kick off of her keyboard with a clatter of keys in my wake.
Yells can be heard just behind me. It’s all alive with thunderous noise that I can barely hear.
Because in the next instant, I leap past Asta, through the door to Hell, and into my mother’s arms.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Welcome Home
Rhys
Her hands tremble but hold me firmly against her thin frame. Long hair curtains over my face as I clench my eyes and inhale her scent so hard that a flood of memories wash into my mind. The ashen smell of honey caresses each and every one of them.
“Mom,” I whisper on a cutting breath.
She shakes her head against me and holds on to me like she’s afraid I might disappear.
“You shouldn’t have come here.” Her voice wavers and the tears that soak her cheeks seep into her breathy confession. Her arms tighten around me, belying her words as she refuses to let me go.
An emotion I don’t understand—and don’t know if I ever will—comes over me: I missed her. I missed her and I didn’t even know I missed her until I had her.
My fingers dig into my mother’s thin brown shirt, and the sensation that I’m being watched tingles through me. My gaze lifts, and the kindest eyes I’ve ever known peer into mine. Latham’s happiness shines in the depths of those frost-kissed pools. But he wears no smile. That aloof amusement isn’t in his handsome features now. In the shadows of the cavernous room, he looks haunted. More tragically beautiful than ever before.
Sad. Fuck, he looks sad.
I pull away from my mother just slightly, and the moment I do, a man with pale features and even paler, white blond hair saunters up to Latham, Aric, and Torben. The man’s smile reveals sharp white teeth. Latham’s jaw twitches as he glares up at the strange man.
“Enjoy your freedom?” he asks in a slithering tone with that large, creepy smile stretching further across his face.
His hands lift and come down fast and hard. Metal clanks loudly, and Latham falls to his knees. Sparks fly from his wrists as shining black chains link one hand to the other.
My round, wide eyes stare at the horrible scene, my protests clawing their way up my throat. My heart thunders, my wolf snarls, and I’m in that asshole’s face in an instant.
“What the fuck are you doing to him?” I stand firmly within the small space between the eerie man and Latham. The beast inside of me presses to get out with gnashing teeth and snarling lips, but a pressure fights back against it. It feels heavy. Contained. Some form of magic is restraining the animal inside of me, and it only sends more molten hot anger lashing through my chest.
The man’s smile turns into a wicked snarl as he lowers his head and runs his nose from my collarbone to my ear.
My skin crawls with the feeling of skittering cockroaches everywhere he dares to touch me.
“Well, aren’t you pretty?” he hisses against my flesh, and the rise of vomit scalds my throat.
A warm palm slides around my arm, and Aric slips me behind him as he steps forward with his head held high.
“Don’t ever fucking touch her again if you want to keep your fucking tongue, Serpan,” he grits out from tightly clenched teeth. His wild, fiery eyes burn into the other man’s silver orb
s, promising wicked torture before death.
That smile eats up the sharpness of the stranger’s features.
“Know your place,” the slender man hisses.
Latham’s head is bowed, and all I can see is the sharp angle of his jaw as it pulses with rage. I turn to Torben, and there’s shame in green eyes. He can’t even look at me.
“Fucking fix this!” I shove at his broad chest, but he only exhales a heavy breath, and everything feels like it’s fucking falling apart all around me.
“Let’s go, pets.” A flash of fiery embers burn around Serpan’s long fingers. He flings that magic at Aric, and an iron collar falls heavily against the dragon shifter’s throat.
My fingers tangle with Aric’s, and he squeezes hard before trailing after the asshole like all of this is fucking normal. His hand falls away as he looks back at me just once.
And then my composure fucking shatters.
I’m not that quiet girl anymore. I don’t need my wolf to nudge me into sticking up for myself or my friends.
Her rage and mine are now one and the same.
And it all comes lashing out.
My boots echo over the rocky ground furiously. I shoulder past Aric and Latham. My knees bend and I leap into the shadows. My chest collides with a bony spine, and the man crumples beneath me.
“Get—get off of me!” Serpan grunts, but my arm is already fully around his scrawny neck.
“How fucking dare you?” I growl into his ear as I tighten my hold.
Hands claw at my arms, voices call out to me with urgency and warning. A choking noise gargles from Serpan’s thin lips, but I refuse to stop.
I’m sick and tired of people tormenting me, hating me, hurting me, and I won’t stand for a single second to see it happen to the people I care about. They have to learn that you can’t kick someone down without karma rising up with a vengeance.
And I’m going to make sure this fucker learns.
Sharp nails sink into my throat. The grip tightens, and then I’m hauled backward. A woman with long, inky black hair appears, and her hand tenses hard around my throat as she studies me with a tilt of her head. Big sapphire blue eyes shine into mine as a ghost of a smile kisses her black painted lips.