by Ivy Asher
“Whoa.”
I want to ask if that happens a lot, but then I’m distracted by Iceman. He’s still blue with large horns jutting out of his head, but there’s something so much more captivating about him in the light of Hell. It’s like someone turned on a black light and everything about him came to life in a stunning and completely mesmerizing kind of way.
Looking over at Jerif, I see that he also has the extra Hell hotness about him too. The way his hair and eyes flicker down here is stunning. They looked like fire before, but now I can feel the intense heat coming off of him. He is the epitome of dangerous, kill you in a millisecond, scorching hot lava.
I take in the sight of all three of them, and then I frown at Crux. Tanned skin, muscles, long blond hair and bright green eyes. He still looks like the ultimate hot surfer dude. “You...didn’t change,” I remark. “In fact, you look about as demon as I do.”
The other guys chuckle, and Crux narrows his eyes at them. “Oh, fuck off!”
“Crux is sensitive about how Diluted he looks,” Iceman says with a smirk.
Crux shoots him a look and a hand gesture that I’ve never seen, but seems definitively rude. Ignoring the heckling that ensues, I take a moment to look around, but it’s hard to see much of anything. It looks like we’re still in the same mausoleum as before, except it’s about a hundred times bigger. “Where are we?”
“We’re in Hell’s Embrace. You passed through,” Iceman declares excitedly, like I just accomplished something incredible. “Told you that you were a demon,” he adds eagerly, but my insides don’t match the elation I see in his blue eyes.
Holy fuck, I really am a demon.
Don’t puke, Delta.
11
I take a step back and try to swallow the acid I can suddenly taste crawling up the back of my throat. I know I agreed to this, but right now, as horror drops down on me like a weighted blanket, I realize that a large part of me expected them to be wrong.
I thought Hell would be like, Nice try, human peasant. Away with you, and that would be that. But as I look around at the gray stone and columns surrounding us, I can’t deny what just happened. This is definitely not a prank, because I can tell that I’m somewhere else. There’s something in the air here, some otherworldliness that I can’t quite explain.
I’m really not a human. I’m a fucking demon.
“See? You can be our fifth!” Crux exclaims, a massive smile on his face.
I cringe.
Iceman reads the panic clear on my face and offers me a reassuring grin. “This is good news. It means we can finally stabilize the Gate and maybe even close it,” he explains, like any of that matters to me.
Jerif nods. “Yeah, don’t worry. You belong down here, otherwise you would have disintegrated already,” he announces casually, and I can’t tell if he’s trying to push me over the edge or if he’s that bad at being nice.
I round on him. “What did you say?” I demand, closing the distance between us with furious strides.
If he weren’t so fucking gargantuan, I’d be giving him a very intimidating chest bump right now. But the fucker is massive, so it looks more like I’m trying to motorboat his pecs. That’s probably why I hear someone snort behind me.
Jerif looks pissed and confused at the same time. “I said don’t worry.”
“No, after that.”
His fire-kissed brow furrows. “You belong here?”
I do a finger circle in the air. “Keep going.”
“Um...the disintegration part?”
“Ding, ding, ding! What do we have for our winner, folks?” I announce in my best Price is Right announcer voice. The mausoleum supports my outrage by making my voice echo all around us.
“You’re saying I could’ve disintegrated when you brought me here, and no one thought that fine print should’ve been pointed out to me ahead of time?” My voice grows a little shriller with each syllable, and I have to keep from wincing at the sound. Maybe one of my parents banged a harpy or a banshee—are those demons?
Anguish hammers through me as I struggle not to drown in the overwhelming emotions. How can I actually be a demon? Did my mom cheat on my dad? That thought makes me feel sick. I know kids think their parents hang the moon, but I just can’t picture Tanya Gates looking at anyone the way she looked at my dad.
An ache starts in my chest.
“We, uh, didn’t want to worry you,” Crux declares, as if the statement should solve any issues I might have.
“The air is acidic down here. If you weren’t Hell-touched, you couldn’t breathe it without…” Jerif trails off as I cock a brow.
“Disintegrating,” I finish for him.
“Yes.”
My eye twitches slightly. Great. That word is probably going to be a lifelong trigger for me now.
I want to rage, and cry, and hit something, but I ball my fists and take deep breaths in an effort to get a hold of myself. These assholes don’t seem to be taking my life very seriously. There’s a very blasé attitude about things like disintegrating and suddenly being responsible for closing a Hellgate.
It’s all I can do not to claw at my throat. I’m breathing fucking acidic air? I force myself to look down at my perfectly normal looking arms and legs and rub them to reassure myself that they’re solid, but it doesn’t help.
My breaths quickly turn into gasps as I lose my fight with the dread coursing through me. I can’t tell if it’s me fracturing or everything else around me.
How the fuck is this happening? How could my parents not have had some sort of contingency in place to cover this in the event that they weren’t around to tell me? There should’ve been a we just thought you should know, you’re a demon plan firmly in place! I mean, when were they going to fucking tell me? I was nineteen when they died, they had plenty of time to drop this bomb.
I’m so pissed and hurt that I wish I could scream at them and demand they explain it all. But they’re not here, and that fact makes all of this even worse. Both of their images flicker back and forth in my mind as I try to figure out which of them is to blame for this. I quickly realize though that it doesn’t matter, they both fucked me over, and that hurts worst of all, because my parents are my fucking heroes. Or they were.
I bend over, my hands on my knees, and try to pull enough oxygen into my lungs to chase away the black spots speckling my vision. Someone is rubbing my back, and I can hear other voices speaking to me, but I can’t focus on any of them right now.
I’m a demon having a panic attack in Hell.
I look up to find Crux looking at me, his green eyes filled with pity-laced concern.
“Get me out of here,” I huff between labored breaths.
“It’s okay, Delta, you’re safe here,” Iceman reassures me, but the dismissal of what I want pisses me off even more.
“Get me the fuck out of here!” I scream, my panic jumpstarting a rush of rage.
I have no idea how I even have enough air in my body to force that level of fury and terror out of me, but my voice slams against the stone walls around us and reverberates back to me.
I can hear myself breaking in my own voice over and over again, but there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Warm tears drip down my cheeks, and I feel like if they don’t get me out of Hell’s Embrace right this second, I’m going to die.
“What the fuck do we do?” someone growls.
“Take her out!”
“But—”
“Take her the fuck OUT!”
Suddenly, I feel a hook-like sensation in the middle of my stomach, and in the next hyperventilated breath, I’m yanked back. The world as I know it contracts and then explodes, and in a blink, I land hard on the cold stone floor of the mausoleum we started in—the non-Hell side.
As soon as I have my feet steady beneath me, I scramble out of there and promptly empty the contents of my stomach in the bright green grass growing along the side of the building.
Yep. Breakfast tastes just as bad coming up as it did going dow
n. Fuck you, Grumpy Lurch.
Someone tries to hold back my hair, but I bat them away as the dry heaves kick in. “Don’t. Touch. Me.”
“Delta, let us help you. We know this can’t be easy.”
“I told you she couldn’t handle it,” Jerif says with cruel arrogance, and that’s it.
That’s the final straw.
I round on him, not even caring that I just puked my guts up. “You know what? Fuck you!” I scream, pointing in his face. “I don’t need this shit. I don’t need to fucking help you with the Gate.”
Iceman’s blue brows pull together in a frown as he steps forward. “Delta—”
“No,” I say, cutting him off. “Ever since I first came here, my life has turned upside down. I’m pretty fucking easygoing. I’m used to shitty things happening to me, but this? I don’t have to do this,” I snap, looking at each one of them in turn. “I quit. I want nothing to do with you guys or Hell or the fucking Gate. It is not my problem.”
“Pathetic,” Jerif snaps. “You take one look inside the very outer edge of Hell, and you’re bailing?”
I swipe the back of my arm across my mouth, grimacing at the taste of bile still on my tongue. “Yeah, I’m bailing. Who the fuck wouldn’t? I have no stake in this. You four are the Gate Guardians. If you can’t stabilize the Gate, that’s your problem, not mine.”
He gives off a humorless, harsh laugh and looks at the others while holding a hand out at me. “See? Unreliable. Weak. Scared.” He says each word harsher than the last, making me flinch at the disdain in them. “I don’t give a shit what Ring she’s from, a Diluted would be better than her.”
His words are sharp pricks in my pride, just adding to the hurt and fear I already feel. “Fine!” I say, chest heaving. “Then go fucking find a Diluted.”
“We can’t,” Crux says, intervening. “We’ve been trying to fill this position for a long time, Delta. Every time we get an Outer Ring or Diluted in here, they don’t last and we have to start all over. Our Gate isn’t stable. We’re barely holding it together as it is.”
“Then find someone from the Inner Rings to help,” I reply.
Echo laughs bitterly. “The last thing any Inner Ring would do is give up their life to become a Gate Guardian,” he tells me. “The only reason the four of us do it is because it’s our familial legacy—a vow that’s been passed down to us through the generations.”
I dig my heels in, crossing my arms in front of me just to feel like I can close myself off from them. “If you’ve been doing it this long, then you shouldn’t need me.”
“Unfortunately,” Iceman begins. “We do. Without a true Gatekeeper, this Gate has needed more and more power, and therefore Guardians, to come forward to try to stabilize it, but like Crux said, nobody lasts.”
“Because they all die,” I point out. “I’m not fucking interested in dying, Iceman.”
His blue eyes soften at my use of my nickname for him. “You won’t die. We believe you’re more powerful than that.”
“But you don’t know for sure,” I argue.
“Which is why we want to take you to Hell and see which Rings you have access to. Once you do that, we’ll know for sure,” he answers.
I’m already shaking my head before he can even finish his sentence. Just the thought of being sucked back down there, where the air felt like it was crackling with electric otherness...the thought of being away from the Mortal Realm that I know...it’s enough to make me want to heave again.
“No. I can’t,” I gasp.
Echo curses under his breath, but Iceman nods, though I don’t miss the disappointment that flashes over his face. “Okay.”
“Okay?” Crux turns to Iceman, bewildered. He runs a frustrated hand through his long blond hair. “You can’t actually be fine with just letting her walk away. She has a scythe! What if she’s an actual Gatekeeper?” he demands.
“We’re not kidnappers,” Iceman replies coolly, repeating his earlier words. “It has to be Delta’s decision.”
The vise-like grip that was banded around my stomach lessens slightly, and I nod at him in gratitude. “Thank you.”
“What about the attacks?” Crux says, refusing to give up. “Since she’s not fucking blocked or whatever she used to be, the Outer Rings and Diluted will be able to sense her. More of them might attack her. She’s safer with us.”
All of the tension returns, and my shoulders lock up. Iceman must sense that I’m about to dive into another panic attack, because he replies quickly. “We’ll figure it out, Delta. We won’t just leave you high and dry to be attacked. One of us will stand watch until I can find a way to reapply the block that was somehow on you before.”
Jerif gapes. “Are you fucking serious?”
Even Echo frowns. “Rafferty, we can barely hold the Gate as it is, and you want to stretch us even thinner by taking one of us out to watch her?”
“Do you have a better idea?” Iceman snaps. “We can’t leave her unprotected.”
“I’ll watch her,” Crux offers, though I know he’s disappointed, because his smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes. Still, I know he’s trying to make a horribly awkward situation better, and despite my righteous anger, I do find myself feeling guilty.
“We’ll take turns,” Iceman says. “In the meantime, we’ll ask around, see if anyone knows anything about the type of block Delta had and how we can put it back on her.”
“Thank you,” I say to him again, and even though he nods, his eyes won’t meet mine.
I feel a pang of regret. I know that bailing on them is shitty, but the alternative? That’s fucking worse, and I’m incapable of dealing with that. I’m just a twenty-eight-year-old girl from Sandpiper, with two dead parents and an unemployment file. I’m not cut out to be a demon Gate Guardian, no matter how much these demons want me to be.
Crux opens his mouth to say something, but Jerif cuts him off. “Give it a rest, Crux. She’s not fucking cut out for it. Let her go home and hide. We’ll watch out for her even though she wouldn’t do the same for us. We’ll fucking handle the Gate.”
“How?” Crux demands, tossing his hands up in exasperation.
Jerif’s expression grows thunderous. “The same way we always fucking handle it!” he snarls before turning and stomping away into the mausoleum, his footsteps fading after a brief flare of light beyond the doorway that makes me squint.
My throat works down a shaky swallow as I stare at the place Jerif just disappeared from. “I’d like to go home now,” I say, my voice rough and my eyes burning. I won’t cry in front of them, but I need to have a serious break down in the privacy of my bathtub with a bottle of wine.
“I’ll take her,” Echo says with clear disappointment in his black eyes before turning on his heel and walking through the graveyard without waiting for me. I sigh and move to follow him, but Iceman stops me. “Wait,” he says, grabbing my arm. “Take this.”
He hands me a card with a number on the back. “Call us if you change your mind.”
I nod and take the card, shoving it into the pocket of the sweatpants. I glance at Crux and Iceman. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry I couldn’t be what you needed,” I tell them. “Hopefully your next Help Wanted ad gets you someone better than me.”
“Don’t think there is someone better than you, Delta, but thanks anyway,” Iceman tells me with a sad smile.
Not knowing what to say to that, I turn and start walking away, following the shadowed silhouette of Echo far ahead.
The guilt and aftershocks of the panic and fear that I felt weigh down my steps like a ball and chain around my ankle. But I meant what I said. I’m not cut out to be a demon. Maybe that’s why my parents lied to me for all of those years. They knew I wasn’t strong enough for this shit. I guess I should thank them instead of being pissed, but I can’t find the strength to turn away from my hurt feelings either. My life feels like a giant lie, and I’m not sure which of the new truths I learned are the worst.
Gu
ess I’m not as strong as I always thought I was.
12
The screen on my phone lights up, and I squint at the brightness and read the time. I set the phone back down on my side table and roll onto my back with a huff.
Three a.m. and I still can’t fall asleep.
This would make it day nine since Echo dropped me off at my front door and promptly disappeared into a shadow without a word. I spent the whole drive to my house trying to come up with something that would help him understand my choice, something that would keep him from looking at me like he was completely disappointed, but I came up with nothing.
Now, try as I might, I can’t stop replaying everything in my mind over and over again. I don’t know if I’m punishing myself, trying to cement what happened into reality, or prove that I made the right choice. I feel like I’m losing my mind. I thought walking away would solve all my problems, but it didn’t. Because I don’t know if I’ll ever be the same. I definitely don’t feel the same anymore.
I give up on trying to fall asleep, and get out of bed with a sigh. If tonight is like every other night, I’ll finally crash from exhaustion around eight in the morning. This new schedule is seriously going to fuck with my potential job prospects, but it’s not like there’s much sliding into my emails at the moment. Besides, there’s that little caveat of me still being afraid to leave the house. I don’t think Iceman has been able to find out much about blocking me so I can’t see demons anymore, because I haven’t heard anything. Not that any of them are really talking to me much.
I pull back a curtain panel and look out the window into the streetlight lit night. I can’t help but wonder which one of the demons is out there tonight. I’ve only caught a hint of them once in a while. Everyone except for Crux stays outside though, and they tend to disappear as soon as I lay eyes on them.
It’s a weird feeling, knowing that someone is out there watching me, but not being able to see them. I find it unnerving, even though I know the guys won’t hurt me or allow me to be hurt. If I’ve paid attention to their shifts correctly, then it should be Crux’s turn to watch me tonight. He’s the only one that will still openly talk to me. Even so, it’s just a generic how are you or what’s new, but that’s something at least.