Table of Contents
Title Page
Contents
Copyright
Get Updates
Dedication
Author’s Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Epilogue
Read Next: Cain University
Read Next: Fae Like Me
Also by Lucy Auburn
About the Author
PHOENIX ACADEMY: FREED
LUCY AUBURN
Contents
Get Updates
Author’s Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Epilogue
Read Next: Cain University
Read Next: Fae Like Me
Also by Lucy Auburn
About the Author
Copyright 2020 Lucy Auburn.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written
permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other
noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
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Author’s Note
This book contains some violent scenes, and allusions to child abuse, drug use, and
other adult situations.
Phoenix Academy contains a reverse harem romance. I hope you enjoy!
Chapter 1
FUCK it if I'll let everything end this way, after the way it started: with a severed dick,
four demons who called to me, and my body reborn in flames. I'm not going to just roll
over and let the soulless beast take everything away from me. And I won't abandon
Petra, even if she's already dead.
I have to fight. I have to get up. To work through the pain, track down the man who did
this, and protect the academy I love from the enemy they don't even know is coming for
them.
It's hard, though. I feel so alone. And so guilty. None of this would have happened if
not for me. I was foolish—I wanted easy answers, more power, a way to free my guys.
And I let myself be led around by the nose because of it.
I freed the necromancer's son, the one who was revived and lost his soul, giving him
immortality and immense power. Now he's out there with a bracelet that has the power
of six immortal deaths flowing through it—and there's no telling how many people he'll
kill with that power.
I drag myself out of the fog of pain and confusion caused by the poltergeist. Get a hand
under me. Try to use that hand to push myself up off the ground. Focus my eyes on
Petra. Grit my teeth and move my feet, trying to make them take my weight.
They shake beneath me.
The pain is so overwhelming that it tips me forward. Something is off—something vital
has been taken from me. Fear fills my chest, and I instinctively reach for the bond I have
with my guys, needing them here, but that part of me is empty.
It's like the Husk's soul moved through me and stole what was most important to me all
at once, in one foul and terrible move. My strength. My fire. My quartet.
And without my guys around to laugh with, lean on, and love, I don't know how to
navigate through this cruel and terrible world. I would do anything to free them,
anything to have them by my side—and I'm reaping the consequences of those desires
now that they've led me astray.
"You need to get up." The voice in my ear is male, but isn't any one of my quartet. It's
the familiar voice of a long-dead Grim, Gaugin my half-brother, his spirit hovering over
me like a worried mother. "There's strength in you yet, I know it. You can't let him get
away from you. But he's still nearby—you can catch him if you try."
Through gritted teeth I mutter, "I can't. There's too much pain." Swallowing, I add, "I
wish I were dead."
The spirit chuckles bitterly. "No you don't. Though for you, at least, death would bring
relief from the pain—and rebirth. There's no time to wait for you to regenerate, though.
You need to summon your phoenix spirit and get your feet beneath you. Only fire and
magic can cleanse the soulless Husk from this earth."
"I don't have much spirit in me right now." I grunt, pushing up from the ground only to
face-plant again, despair in my heart. "I fucked up. Completely, totally screwed up
everything."
"Maybe you did, maybe you didn't." There's a soft tone in Gaugin's voice, but it turns
firm as he adds, "But you need to get up, and go help your friend over there. She's
bleeding pretty bad. If no one does anything for her soon..."
His words light a fire beneath my feet, one that's not phoenix fire related but purely
made out of force of will. Thinking about Petra—her snappy comebacks, the way she
tosses her blonde hair over a shoulder, how she's vowed to give her life to protect me—I
push past the pain remaining in my body from coming so close to death and having an
evil poltergeist dive beneath my skin. Even though it feels like every nerve in my
fingers, toes, and in between is burning with agony, I make myself get up off the
ground and stumble towards Petra.
It hurts to move, but I do it anyway. Petra put her wolf shifter ass between me and
danger—the least I can do is shake off a little mortal agony to return the favor.
Stumbling towards the mouth of the cave, I go down on my knees near her prone body,
reaching my blood-coated palms towards her wounds.
She breathes shallowly, but with difficulty, beneath my touch. Her pale cheeks are even
more drained of color than usual. I can feel her fight to stay alive. Even a shifter, with
their regenerative abilities and supernatural strength, can't fight through every injury. If
no one does something soon, she'll breathe her last breath.
"Hey asshole," I tell her, sucking back the tears that fill my eyes, desperate for her to
look up at me and say some insult in response. "You said you weren't gonna die on me.
So rally and wake up already, you weak ass bitch. Otherwise I'm going to kick you off
my superhero team."
For a moment, no response. Then a weak groan leaves her lips, and those eyelashes peel
open to glare at me, blonde brows drawn together in annoyance. "I'm in so much—
fucking... pain, but I swear to fuck I'm gonna bite your ass."
Relief fills me, and two tears tumble down my cheek to nestle in my collar. "I'm going to
figure out some way to save you. Otherwise you'll haunt my ass, right?"
"For eternity."
Looking to my right, I find Gaugin's spirit hovering near me, a grim expression on his
face. "What do I do? She's in pain, and I don't have the right kind of magic to fix it. I'm a
demon-summoning phoenix, not some kind of healer." The helplessness that fills my
chest is undeniable. "This isn't something that can be fixed with brute force."
"Even flames can be cleansing," Gaugin says, as Petra's eyes close weakly, her breathing
growing shallow as her consciousness drifts away. I press down on the gouges in her
chest, heart twisting at the blood I feel pulse out of her body beneath my touch. "The
effects of a poltergeist's touch only last so long. Summon your strength, Dani."
He's not talking about my emotional or mental strength. What he means are my
demons. I'm afraid to search for the bond and find it missing again, which always feels
like taking a step forward only to find the earth yawning wide beneath my feet. For
Petra, though, I'll do anything. So I reach for my guys again, and this time I can feel
them there, the bond as weak as it was the day it was formed but still undeniable.
Because I'm still weak, I only have room for one small summoning. I choose Sebastian,
who has dominion over pain and its shadow, pleasure. He arrives first in spirit form,
two poison-slick knives in her hand, eyes wide and wary. Tugging on the bond with my
jaw clenched, pain surging as I use the last bit of my strength, I make him corporeal so
he has hands that can touch and soothe.
"Take her pain away," I tell him. "I'm going to... what can I even do? My phoenix fire is
useless."
"It isn't," Gaugin gently coaxes me. "You'll have to hurt her to save her, but we both
know that you can. Cauterize her wound."
As Sebastian's blue eyes flit to mine, and he kneels by Petra, wordlessly sheathing her
knives, I voice our shared concern. "I'm more likely to burn her alive than heal her. I
don't think I have that kind of control yet."
In a firm voice, Sebastian points out, "There's no time for training or studying anymore.
It's do or die, my darling. Time to figure out what you're made of." He presses a curved,
gentle palm to Petra's forehead and murmurs, "No pain, no pain, no pain."
His words echo the same mantra I woke to that fateful day in my foster mother's house,
a hole in my chest caused by a White Phoenix's grasping hand, my heart nearly stolen
right out of my rib cage. Sebastian's powers were the only thing that kept me from
going insane from the pain alone while my body regenerated himself. As he passes the
same gift onto Petra, her face clears, a little color returning to her cheeks.
It's not enough to heal her. But taking the pain away lets her body focus on one thing
only: healing itself. All I have to do is help it along by stopping the bleeding, and her
shifter physiology will take care of the rest.
My mind flashes back to the night I met Petra, when she was the tiny badass blonde
between me and a Grim who wanted me dead. I had no idea what I'd been reborn as,
and I was used to living on the streets alone, street rat that I was. Now I'm different,
and it's all because of her and the other students at the academy.
I've got to save her. Taking a deep breath, I steady my hands, hovering them just above
her chest. My eyes meet Sebastian's blue gaze; his expression is steady and calm.
"You can do this, Dani," he says, sounding so sure of me, while I'm full of nothing but
doubt. "It's just a matter of closing the wound with enough heat. I'm taking her pain
away, so she won't even feel anything."
"I can do this," I echo, almost believing it. Determination fills me. "And once I've saved
her, I'll take out that asshole so he can't hurt anyone else."
Anger gives me confidence, and that confidence stokes the fire of the phoenix inside
me. I almost died—almost lost another of my few and precious lives—but I managed to
rise from the ashes, just like I have every time before. Remembering Yohan's lessons
and everything I've faced already, I focus my power in my palms until I'm holding a
pure white blade of heat.
As Sebastian pulls the pain from Petra's body, I press the tip of the phoenix fire knife
I'm holding against her wounds. Sweat beads on her forehead, and the smell of burning
flesh wafts in the air. Sebastian guides my hands with a low voice, telling me when to
move the knife, and when to press it against her. Soon her veins are no longer spurting
red blood, and there are three angry roped slashes of burn scars where the wounds
were.
Petra is going to be so pissed at me for fucking up her bikini body. But at least she'll be
alive to be pissed. Letting go of the phoenix fire, I let it subsume into my body, feeling
the furnace inside me grow as I gather back my strength.
Looking to Gaugin, I ask him, "Why do I feel so weak? It's like he took everything from
me with that blasted soul of his."
"The Husk has turned his free-roaming spirit into an impossibly powerful poltergeist
over the decades. It has the power to take spirit energy from supernatural beings, which
is surely what he did to you." Gaugin's mouth thins into a line. "He shouldn't be alive,
shouldn't even exist—his creation was the fault of a grief-filled necromancer and a
powerful witch with too much ego. As long as he and his spirit are roaming this earth,
untethered from each other, he'll be immortal and impossibly powerful."
"Great. I love it," I snark at him, staring down at Petra, who has warmth in her cheeks
even as Sebastian drains the pain from her body. "We've got to be able to defeat him
somehow. But as long as he can just snap his fingers and make that poltergeist of his
steal all my powers, I won't be able to do anything to face him. No one will. He'll
slaughter everyone in his path without stopping."
The threat the soulless Husk presents is bigger than my half-sister Lainey ever was,
even bigger than my bastard of a bio father Meyer. He was created by Grims messing
with the line between the living and the dead, just like Lainey, but unlike her he doesn't
have a fleshy heart that can be taken from his chest and crumbled. From what I've seen,
and read about him, he's just like Ari's father—an unstoppable soulless killer without
remorse.
To think, there are two of them roaming the earth now. If the Husk is what the Heretic
will turn into one day, I have to figure out how to face them both—and teach Ari what
we do to shitty dads.
"I know he was created by a necromancer," I tell Gaugin, "but what can you tell me
about that thing? There's got to be a way to stop him. A way to face him, and make him
mortal again. Otherwise we're all doomed."
"There may be a way," the spirit says, sounding reluctant. "But it won't be easy. And it
may take more of you than you're prepared to give. When a soul is severed from a body
for so long, the result is far from normal."
"But you know something you're not saying," Sebastian says, narrowing his eyes at
Gaugin. "Spit it out."
The spirit sighs, then reluctantly nods. "I know his story. And I can tell you more of it,
to help you face him, and give you some magic as well. But you have to know, Daniella,
that killing him won't mean slaying the monster. It'll mean murdering the man."
"Tell me. I'm ready."
I shoved my hand into my half-sister's chest, pulled the stolen phoenix heart from her
body, and watched the light leave her eyes. I've gone into the spirit realm and faced
twisting mazes that led to immortals on the other side. Dying has become like dreaming
to me—and I'm willing to do whatever it takes to free my guys and protect the academy
that saved me from certain death.
This is something I can do. Something I have to do.
No matter what it takes from me.
Reaching inside, I find my bond with the guys, and summon the other three: Ezra,
Lynx, and Mateo. They start as spirits standing around me, then coalesce into their
corporeal forms, all ready to fight.
But our enemy has already escaped us. In order to track him down, we need
information first. "I'm okay," I tell them, as Ezra hugs me tight and Lynx presses a kiss
to my forehead. "Petra is alive, too. But we have something important to do, and
Gaugin is going to tell us how. Right?"
The mage looks around at the five of us, then at Petra on the ground, her wounds
healing slowly with the help of my powers and Sebastian taking away her pain.
"Of course," he says. "You might want to take notes."
"I'll get it all up here." Lynx taps the side of his head, staring at the spirit. "Whatever we
have to do to get this asshole and take him down, tell me. I'll strangle him with my own
bare hands for what he just pulled."
That's my Lynx. There's a relief to having my guys back with me. For a moment there, I
thought I would never see them again.
I never want to lose them like that ever. And I don't want to see Petra prone on the
ground bleeding out into the earth. This soulless immortal will pay for what he did,
that's for sure.
"It all started with a father's grief..."
Chapter 2
SOME OF WHAT Gaugin tells me, I already know, because Ari showed me the passage in
that book she found that she thought might be about her father, the Heretic. It was
called A History of Dark Magic's Follies, and it told stories that ended predictably poorly,
because bringing the dead back to life isn't exactly the smartest thing. Who knew.
Basically, it goes like this: a long time ago, but that not long ago, a Grim lost his son. In
his grief, he found a witch who practiced dark magic. Together they joined their two
powers to reanimate the boy's flesh and bring his spirit back from the spirit realm.
As Gaugin tells it, though, something went wrong. "The witch didn't know what she
was doing," he says, shaking his head, his mouth thinned disapprovingly. "I researched
the event when I was apprenticing under my master, Mage Graves, and it was clear that
she had only a rudimentary understanding of the runes she was using. There's a reason
why us mages keep runic knowledge to ourselves—their power can be used to do great
magics, good and bad.
"While she summoned the boy's soul, she wasn't able to put it back in his body. And
she'd yanked him out of the spirit realm so thoroughly that he wasn't able to return and
seek his afterlife in the Great Beyond. So he turned into a spirit doomed to walk the
earth, and eventually, a poltergeist. In the meantime, the boy grew without a soul—his
name was Frederick, but after he joined the army, people began to call him the
Manslayer, because of how well he killed, and the legendary blood-soaked smile he
would sport in battle. Eventually, he grew into the same powers of his father, and
became a Grim with necromantic abilities. That was where things got worse."
Sebastian snorts. "Any fool could've predicted that."
"It does seem pretty obvious," I tell him. "If they'd watched Sabrina the Teenage Witch
they would've known magic has consequences."
"I have no idea what that is." Gaugin looks at us quite seriously. "Should I?"
Mateo chuckles, low and dark. "Just tell us the rest of the story, dead guy. This
Manslayer has your magic bracelet full of immortal power, after all. He's at least half
your responsibility to take down."
That reminder makes Gaugin look a little ill. He continues with his story. "The Husk
came into his powers, as I said. And he derived... pleasure from using them. He enjoyed
killing people and controlling their bodies when he brought them back from the dead
wrong. He studied what makes life and death tick, and he learned more about himself.
By the time I was a master mage in my own right, searching for a way to resurrect my
lady love, he was a scourge twice as deadly as the Black Plague. So I imprisoned him,
along with the other immortals. I didn't think he'd ever escape except in death."
"You should've warned me about him," I tell Gaugin accusingly. "You said nothing
about there being a soulless immortal Grim in there. If you had, maybe I would've used
a little more precaution."
Sorrow crosses his face. "In truth, I'd forgotten about him until he escaped, and seeing
his face jogged my memory. As I believe I said before, living in this half-dead state for
so long has taken much of my memories from me. I can barely remember the spells I
used to imprison the immortals... though I do remember the rune that was meant to
bind the Manslayer's soul to his body. The witch used the wrong symbol, but
afterwards, Mage Graves helped me figure out what rune would have worked. We'd
planned on using it to kill the Husk, before plans changed and I chose to imprison him
instead."
"The world would've been better off if he were dead." Gaugin nods sharply, clearly
feeling guilty for letting the thing out in the first place. "If you want this compass back,"
I hold the thing up, "and to get the chance to see your dead lover in the spirit realm, you
have to help me face him. I need a way to kill him—whatever rune you and your mage
teacher were going to use, show me."
"I don't know." He hesitates. "It's one thing for a witch to use runes, but a phoenix..."
"I have Grim powers," I point out. "I'm no ordinary phoenix. I'm a Black Phoenix."
"And we'll be there to help her," Ezra says, sounding fierce, his sword held tightly at his
side. "If we can somehow put that asshole's soul back in his body and make him mortal
again, I'll cut him in half with my blade."
"Very well. I'll show you the rune. But you must promise to keep it a secret." Gaugin
looks reluctant to reveal important mage power to us. "These things aren't meant for
just anyone to know. And keep in mind, in order for the rune to work, it must be forged
in fire... not that I think you'll have an issue with that."
"No," I raise my palm and let phoenix fire pool into it, relieved at the feeling of its dark
flickering warmth against my skin, "I don't think I will."
"This is the rune that you'll need to burn into his body to force the soul to go back
beneath his skin." He draws it in the air in front of me, unable to interact with the
mortal world. "Draw it in the ground so I know you've got it right."
I try the rune a few times, and he corrects me, showing me with impatient fingers what
it's supposed to look like. I'll give Gaugin this: he's no Auerbach. He doesn't have the
patience to teach students anything. Centuries spent as a half-dead spirit haven't
tempered him at all.
Eventually, I've gotten the rune's swooping lines just right, and he nods in satisfaction.
"Very well. I suppose that's all I can do for you. You'll just have to face the poltergeist
on your own now, since I can't leave this clearing. Unless..." His eyes dart from me, to
Petra's prone body, to the mouth of the cave. An expression crosses his face, one of
reluctance, but eventually he says, "There is a way that I can bind your spirit energy to
you more thoroughly, so your demon quartet and your phoenix fire can't be removed
by the poltergeist. But the way to do it involves something rather... irreversible."
"I'm fine with that," I tell him. "I want to be with my guys forever. If they're bound to
me for life, that's exactly what I want."
"That isn't the irreversible part." He jerks his chin towards the cave mouth. "My body is
in there. In order to do the spell to bind you so you can fight the poltergeist and kill the
Manslayer, I'll need to be back in it, just for long enough to do a single spell. I should be
able to manage it now that someone else is bound to the bracelet, though I won't
survive long. My body is in too poor of a state to support my soul for longer than a few
minutes. I'll just have to give up hope that once I die, I'll be able to find her."
It takes me a moment to realize what he means, and I look down at the compass in my
hands. "You mean that you won't be able to find the woman you love, because you
won't have this."
"Yes. You'll need it to fight the Husk. There's no other way to find his spirit and put it
back in his body."
I meet his eyes, seeing a strange sorrow in them, and a lump forms in my throat despite
myself. "I'm sure you'll be able to find her. Maybe once you die, your memories will
come back, and you two will be drawn together by the same love that drew you
together in life."
"Perhaps." The shadow of a smile passes over his mouth, though his eyes are still
darkened by grief. "Nothing is guaranteed. But it's for the best that I move on. Now
may be my final chance for a long time. And if it gives you the strength to face the
problem I've created with my own hubris, then so be it. I won't be able to look her in the
eyes if I don't do whatever I can to make up for my mistakes."
I know how he feels. I've made my own mistakes, and the sight of other people
suffering for them is far worse than my own pain. It hurts to see Petra injured, to feel
my guys be torn away from me, and to think of what might be happening even now on
campus. This is a mess that has to be cleaned up, and Gaugin will make the ultimate
sacrifice of love to do it.
Maybe he's less like our father than I feared.
"Show me where your body is," I tell him, resolute. "I'll help you reunite with your
flesh. It'll be good practice for this spell I'm supposed to do anyway. I can prove that I
know how the rune works."
"It's this way." He motions towards the cave, where only hours ago Petra ventured
around the corner to fish around in his pocket and find the compass. "I have to warn
you, my body isn't in great shape. But that shouldn't matter much for one spell."
Ezra says, "I'm coming with you," sheathing his sword at his side. "Don't get too close to
the entry to the spirit realm. The last thing we want is to go back in there prematurely."
"I'll stay here," Sebastian says, hands still on Petra, his face losing color as he uses his
powers to keep her pain away. "She's going to live. We have to take her to be treated
soon, though. Otherwise she could get an infection."
Mateo and Lynx join Ezra, me, and Gaugin's spirit in the cave. The path to his body is a
narrow one—no doubt he wanted to make sure his earthly flesh wasn't stolen or eaten
by carrion. I can feel the prick of magic in the air as we approach the secondary cave
where he's laid to rest. There's a certain weight to magic, a smell to it too, one that clings
to my nostrils.
The place on my elbow where the bracelet was feels empty. I miss the reassurance of its
magical power there, lending me strength. I don't know what I would do with it if I had
it back, but I do know that I can't let the Manslayer, or the Husk, or whatever you want
to call him, have that much power at his fingertips. It would be too dangerous to allow.
Getting through the last few feet of the narrow entrance to the little cave requires
turning to the side, shimmying, and ducking a little. No doubt tiny Petra was able to get
in and out easier than me and the guys, but we make it through, only a little scraped up.
Gaugin's body is laid out on a slab in the middle of the chamber, which is lit by a low
and mysterious glow, one that whispers magical secrets to me. A circle of runes is
carved into the stone around the slab, protecting his body from decay.
Mostly, that is. There's a distinctive scent in here, one that's cloying and sweet but
unbearable to inhale, that must be his flesh slowly rotting away. I wrinkle my nose and
plug my nostrils, walking as close to the body as I dare, the guys right behind me.
"That passageway almost took my dick off," Mateo complains, adjusting the hustler of
his gun at his hip. "This spell bullshit better work."
Lynx murmurs, "If it keeps us from ever being separated from Dani again, it'll be worth
your dick getting cut off."
"We can't let the poltergeist take her away from us." Ezra grasps the sheath to his
sword, his brows furrowed, green eyes intense. "She'll need us to face this bastard.
What nearly happened when he fought her just now... it can't happen again."
"I'm okay," I soothe him, grimacing as the taste of Gaugin's flesh coats my tongue. I
amend, "I'll be okay as soon as we're out of here and far away from this fucking body.
This spell better work, Gaugin."
The spirit of my mostly-dead half brother is hovering near the slab, leaning over his
body and staring at it with a forlorn expression. I wonder how much of the time he's
spent stuck here alone has been in this cave, staring at his own body, wishing he could
flit back into it and live out his life with the woman he loved like he planned.
We're all fools for love, in the end. I wound up freeing the Manslayer because I wanted
nothing more than to free my guys from their demonic contracts with Hell. Gaugin put
him away instead of killing him because he was convinced the power of his immortal
life would bring the dead back. Neither one of us is going to get what we want, it
seems, but that never stops the lovesick from trying. The greatest tragedies began with
the deepest loves.
"I wonder if I'll remember her once I'm back in my body," Gaugin muses, looking from
me to his own physical self on the slab. "Maybe I'll get one glimpse of her face before I
die. That could be enough to lead me through the spirit realm to find her."
"If I get the chance, I'll give you back your compass."
"Thank you, but I doubt you'll be able to." He straightens up and faces me from the
other side of the slab, looking determined. "Once this is all over, after all, you'll have no
reason to walk between the worlds of the living and the dead. No, I'll be on my own in
the afterlife. It's the least I deserve for trying to cheat death—my own, and another's."
I can't really argue with that. No one cheats death—or demonic contracts, apparently—
without a few catches. I've felt the sting of reaching what I can't quite grasp.
If there's a way to free my guys... but no, it's impossible. The demon Malavic is the only
one who's managed it before, and he said that the way to do it was for a demon to die
and come back to life with their memories intact, in the same body.
From what I know that's impossible—Ezra told me not long after we met that demons
come back in different bodies, without their memories, after dying. I won't risk
something that terrible to get them freedom that's out of their grasp.
Even though it's the one thing I want most in this world.
And I'd die a dozen times over to give them the gift of being freed.
"Let's do this," I tell Gaugin, shaking off my melancholy thoughts. "So do I just... burn
the rune into your flesh?"
"Yes."
"That'll stink," I mutter, and beside me, Mateo pulls his shirt up over his nose and
mouth. I roll my eyes, taking a resolute step towards the slab despite the stench of
mostly dead flesh. "The rune is all it takes? No magic words or spells or incantations?
No catch?"
"The inside part of the rune is an ancient word that translates to the word anchor
literally, and magically defines the anchor between body and soul. With the outside
border of the rune to hold the meaning in place, and your fire to forge it in my flesh, the
spell will be complete. There's no spell—this is pure mage work, not a drop of witch
magic in sight."
He sounds proud at the last part. From what I've gathered since I met Ari and
Auerbach, this whole witch/mage thing is a big rivalry. They both perform magic in
different ways, but apparently each looks down at the other.
Seems like a lot of trouble if you ask me, but then again I'm a Black Phoenix on the
phoenix side of the war between our kind and Grims, with my own Grim powers to
boot. I understand a little bit of what it's like to have a rivalry.
Taking a deep breath—and immediately regretting the smell that coats my nose
completely—I put my palm above Gaugin's bare arm and imagine the shape of the rune
in my head. Then I let my strength and power flow into my hand, phoenix fire waking
up at my call, making my fingers glow.
"That's it," he coaxes me. "With a single glowing fingertip, draw the shape of the rune,
just like you cauterized your friend's wounds. It's the same principle. Just ignore the
stench. Once I'm back in my body, I'll try to do the spell right away—before the
inevitable happens."
The inevitable being his body dying completely because the spells meant to keep him
suspended between life and death went all wonky. Licking my lips, I glance back at my
guys for support, and find them watching me closely. Ezra gives me a confident nod,
and Lynx smiles at me softly, while Mateo just pulls his shirt tighter over his face. They
believe in me and support me—even though I've failed so far to figure out how to free
them like I promised.
They're everything to me. If Gaugin can keep us from ever being torn apart, then I'll
finally feel whole. Complete. And capable of kicking some soulless immortal ass.
After all, no one takes down the Big Bad without a little help. Even Buffy had her
Scooby Squad. And mine is hotter than that.
I concentrate on the shape of the rune, push my powers down into my fingertip until it
glows, and begin to trace the rune on Gaugin's flesh, starting with the word he said
means "anchor" in the middle, then moving outward. There's a terrible smell in the air,
like rotting bacon burning, mixed with a bit of old feet and fish stew. I persevere despite
it, and soon I'm making the last little swoop to finish off the rune and connect the fire
lines.
"Oh." Gaugin makes a strange, half-gurgle type of noise. His eyes look up and meet
mine, and he grimaces. "So that's what that feels like."
Moments later his spirit disappears.
And the body on the slab moves, sitting up so fast he nearly knocks me out. I stumble
away from the slab, alarmed despite the fact that this was the goal from the start.
There's something alarming about a magically preserved corpse with age spots and bits
of loose flesh suddenly bending at the waist and staring at you.
"Dani." Gaugin's physical voice is definitely off-putting. He sounds like he's got two
wrinkly testicles in his throat rubbing together where there should be vocal cords. "Take
off your blazer. There isn't much time."
Mateo steps forward. "Like Hell she will—"
"The spell must be anchored to her wings," he says, clearing his throat a little, looking
annoyed. "Trust me, demon, I have no interest in bedding my half-sister. I just need her
shoulders to be bare."
I pull the blazer off and throw it on the ground, then push up my sleeves and yank my
shirt up towards my neck. Gaugin motions for me to turn around, coughing weakly,
sounding closer to death already.
"Just a little bit of marking... Burn this piece of cedar please." He pulls a wood chip out
of his pocket and hands it to me. Cupping my palms together, I make short work of it
with my phoenix fire, then pour the ashes into his cupped hand. "There we are. I put
those in there for the smell, but they work well for fire and ash-based spells as well.
Now, this will sting a bit..."
I wince as his fingernails dig into my back, followed by the burn of what must be the
cedar ash, and the low sound of his voice chanting in an unfamiliar language follows.
Meeting my guys' eyes, I gain strength from them, along with the hope that this spell
will bind us together tighter than ever before, our bond forged by death, rebirth, and
now something new on top of it.
I never want to lose them. Not in this life, or the next.
"Almost done." Gaugin presses his thumb deep into my spine, and I take in a deep
breath through my mouth, trying to ignore the stench in the cavern. "There we go.
Allohm-habranah."
Flames burst from my back, and despite myself, I scream.
Chapter 3
IT'S a scream of surprise more than anything. I wasn't expecting fire to ignite wherever
Gaugin pressed the ash into my back, his fingers lightly scoring my skin with magic.
The flames burn out as fast as they ignited, leaving the smell of singed wood and skin in
the air, this time fresh rather than rotten.
"What did you do to her?" Ezra paces forward and draws his sword, green eyes
narrowed menacingly at Gaugin. "Explain yourself, or get cut in half."
The mage sighs. "I only forged your bond more thoroughly. The magic that binds you
was born in her phoenix spirit, and now it lives in her flesh as well. Now, no matter
what harms her in the metaphysical world, your bond will remain—until death. Yours,
hers, or both." He coughs, and this time it sounds like he hacks up something more than
phlegm. "You're welcome, by the way."
"He didn't hurt me," I tell Ezra, pulling the shirt back down over my back, surprised at
how true the words are. "It just surprised me, that's all. You don't have to worry."
He points out, "I'll always worry about you. Especially when you scream." But he
sheathes his sword, and both Mateo and Lynx relax a bit, their stances no longer quite
so menacing.
Lynx asks, "How will we know the spell works?"
"Yeah," Mateo agrees, "for all we know this is bullshit you used to get your soul back in
your body."
He has a point, but Gaugin just rolls his eyes dramatically, then coughs again. Between
wet-sounding hacks he points out, "I am now dying, whereas before I could've remained
forever in my spirit form. Why would I sacrifice myself for a trick? A foolish one at that.
As far as testing the spell goes—Dani can do that. Simply try dismissing your demons
back to the Purgatory from whence they came."
I blink at him. "You mean they can't go back there anymore?"
"Not now that the bond is set in flesh."
"You didn't tell me that was a side effect." I frown at him. "I only have a twin bed at the
dorm. Where will they sleep?"
Ezra wryly points out, "I think we have bigger problems."
"Just try what he says." Mateo looks from me to Gaugin, then back again, seemingly
eager. "I'd fucking love it if we never have to go back to that nowhere place again. You
used to send me there every time I annoyed you."
"Or when you farted," Lynx adds, wrinkling his nose. "Oh god, we're going to have to
smell his farts every time now, aren't we? Dani, undo the spell."
I ignore them. Gaugin is fading before our eyes, and if something went wrong with the
spell, I want to know now, before he's dead, rather than later.
Fluttering my eyes closed, I take a deep breath, and try to dismiss the guys. I imagine
them gone. Back in that nowhere place. Incorporeal.
When I open my eyes a sliver, they're still here, sexy as ever, their abs quite firm and
corporeal. Not ghostlike as they once were, and not stuck in the nowhere place where
they went whenever they weren't haunting me.
Biting my lip, I point out, "It'll suck if they can't be incorporeal anymore. That was one
of the ways we would gather intel." Also, it always gives me shivers when they walk
through me or brush up against me in incorporeal form. "Demons aren't supposed to be
corporeal all the time, after all."
Mateo says, "Speak for yourself. I like having real bullets."
"They can still access their spirit forms." Gaugin lists backwards on the slab, looking like
he might turn into a pile of bones and rotted flesh at any moment. "It's simply that
they're in control of that part of themselves now, not you. The bond is physical flesh
now. You'll always be able to call out to them, and to summon them to where you are.
You'll each know where the other is when one is in trouble or needs aid. This is the gift
I've given you—the gift of permeance. Use it wisely. Don't let yourself forget what love
truly is."
Despite the greenish cast to Gaugin's face and the raspy sound of his voice—not to
mention the tooth he spits out at the end of his speech, mouth going mushy—I'm touch
by his words. It'll be a whole new thing for me and the guys, them always being around
all the time, but if it means I'll never be without them, I'm glad for it.
Even with Mateo's farts.
They're real room-clearing stink bombs.
"I don't have much time left." Gaugin holds out a shaking hand, and I push down my
gag reflex to take it. "I remembered her name, though. Can you... can you bury me near
her plot? When you get the chance. Even if it's just my bones."
"I'll try," I vow. "Assuming we all lives through the battle to come, I'll carry your bag of
bones there myself."
"Good." He looks relieved. "She should be somewhere nearby, on the continent. Her
name was Cassandra. Cassandra Brown Mueller. Mother Emily. Father Patrick. When I
knew her, she lived in... Calais. She should be buried there. In a protestant plot. Near
the church with the... green... stained glass... windows."
As he finishes telling me this, Gaugin leans back on the slab completely and relaxed
from head to toe. I feel the strength leave his hand, which drops from mine, and his
eyes flutter closed as he breathes slowly out.
He doesn't breath back in.
The smell of magic in the air around us drains away all at once.
And his body, finally given leave to do what bodies are meant to do, collapses into
ashes and dust around his bones. A few bits of him clatter to the ground, and I swoop
to pick them up, wrapping my hand in my blazer and forming a little pile of them in the
center of the slab. The guys help me, and by the end we have something like a little
funeral memorial, with his skull at the top of a pyramid of bones and dust.
"I'll come back for you," I vow to him, "my strange, dead, super old brother."
Then I feel it: a twinge inside me. A bit of panic, and a string being pulled. My instincts
tell me instantly what it is, and I know that the bond is working.
Sebastian needs our help.
"I'm not able to keep the pain at pay anymore," he says, pressing his hands against
Petra's body as she bucks beneath him, moaning low in her throat. "My powers can only
go so far for so long. Dani, can you help?"
"What can I do?"
"I need you to lend me your strength. Here, take my hand." As Lynx kneels down to
help restrain Petra, Sebastian pulls his hands away from her and reaches out to me. I
take his palm in mine, a little thrill going through my at his touch, even after
everything. "Our powers are often stronger when you've just summoned us. This
should help."
He puts his other hand against her forehead and murmurs, "No pain, no pain, no pain."
Petra calms down, relaxing against the ground again, silent for the moment. "We need
to get her to a clinic or a hospital right away. Anything that can treat her."
"Let's bring her to the helicopter landing pad," I tell him, doing calculations of the
distances in my head. "Once we've safely dropped her off there, then the hunt begins."
"There's so much to tell you," Mateo says to Sebastian, his hip cocked, gun holstered
near his ever-hovering hand. "Dani has a cool ass burn tattoo now. And we know how
to give this asshole as good as he got. Plus, we're anchored to her forever now—
physically and spiritually."
Sebastian's eyes briefly flicker up to me at this news, something slightly shadowed in
his expression, but he nods sharply in acceptance. "Sounds like a good idea, if we're
going to be fighting poltergeists who can steal our connection away. Now, Lynx, help
me with Petra—I need to be in contact with her physically at all times to keep her pain
at bay."
As we move towards the helicopter pad, Petra draped in Lynx's arms, Sebastian's hand
resting on her ankle, I sneak little glances at his face. There's something there, a secret
he's not telling me, and I have the feeling it has something to do with the mysterious
past all the guys share together but have never really talked about much to me.
Whatever it is, I hope I'll find out when we get the time.
I want all of them. Every single bit. Darkness included.
The helicopter blades are still over my head. I hold Petra's hand, her eyes frowning up
at me, a scowl forming where her blonde brows meet. "You're not doing this without
me."
"Pretty sure you're not in fighting form," I tell her, wishing she'd stayed knocked out.
The stubborn wolf shifter might just jump out of this helicopter mid-trip if it meant
fulfilling her duty as my Shield. "If you try to come with me, we'll spend more time
hauling your ass around and protecting you from getting hurt than actually fighting the
Manslayer."
"Are you saying I'm dead weight?"
She's completely prone in the back seat of the helicopter, strapped in and peaked from
all she's been through, but I swear the glare she shoots in my direction could scald. I
have to fight not to wince and back away. "Petra..."
"Fine." She looks away from me, bits of mist in the corners of her eyes. "I'll go back
home. But I swear, the instant these wounds are on their way to being awesome scars,
I'm coming back. I don't care if you've killed him already. Someone's gotta make sure
he's dead."
I laugh a little at her fierceness. "Fine, fine."
Stepping back and away from the helicopter, I slam the door shut and give a nod to the
pilot, who's been waiting here to take all of us back. Of course, there aren't seats for the
demons, who are inconveniently corporeal now and still figuring this whole physical
bond thing out. The pilot nods back; he was reluctant to leave without me, part of his
assignment, but I convinced him.
As the helicopter takes off, flattening the grass beneath it, I step back and watch it go. In
thirty minutes it'll be at the local private airplane hanger. An hour and a half after that,
Petra will be at a hospital getting treated, and by tomorrow she should be back on the
Phoenix Academy campus—unless she manages to fight her way out of it, which
wouldn't shock me either.
Once the helicopter has turned into a blip in the distance, Ezra steps up to my elbow.
"Ready to slay the beast?"
"Ready," I assure him. "First, though, we have to find him."
Chapter 4
IF THERE'S one thing I learned from my classes with Meyer and that book A Guide to
Demonic Summoning for Beginning Grims it's that certain lower class demons have the
best noses. Better than bloodhounds by a few thousand times. Capable of picking up
not just physical scent, but the actual scent of a soul. And unlike an upper class demon
like Malavic, they don't require great amounts of energy and control to summon.
They do, however, stink to high heavens. As I etch the summoning circle into the
ground, Mateo whines, "Do we have to use a daeschund? There are trash barges that
smell less than those things. I don't even know how they pick up scents through all the
stank on 'em."
"Do you want to find this Manslayer or not?" I shoot back. "He tricked us all. Nearly
killed Petra. Made me think I was speaking to my mother—" I take in a sharp breath of
grief, "and stole our bond so thoroughly I thought I was going to die and never see you
four again. So I think holding your nose is worth tracking him down."
Mateo sighs, then nods sharply. "Fine. But I'm going to work on that whole 'being
incorporeal on demand' thing. My spirit form doesn't have as much of a nose."
Ezra cuts his eyes at Mateo, then says to me, "Just summon it, Dani. We're wasting time
on Dumb, Dumber, and Dumbest over here. I'm itching to sink my blade into that
bastard."
"Same," Sebastian agrees. "And unlike this wimp, I can hold my nose."
There's grumbling back and forth. I slice through it with a sharp hand through the air,
and my quartet falls back, weapons at the ready in case this summoning goes wrong.
It shouldn't. Truthfully, a child raised in a Grim clan could summon a daeschund.
There's a reason why their name is so close to the German dachshund—they're basically
a breed of dog, but with demonic features. That doesn't make me less nervous that I'll
somehow fuck up the summoning circle and wind up getting a voltari instead, straight
from the bowels of Hell like the ones Lainey used to try to kill me. I still feel so out-oftouch with my Grim side, even though I've used that side to summon powerful demons
and control other Grims' summoned demons.
Staring down at the summoning circle after I'm done, I frown. "Should that look more
like a loop?" I compare it to the drawing I have in my journal, which frankly isn't the
best. "I think I drew it as a curlicue on purpose, but I can't really be sure since it's been a
while since I took that class—"
"You're doing it right," Lynx says, his calm voice cutting through my anxiety. "This is
something you can handle, Dani."
"That's what I thought about the seven immortals and Gaugin's bracelet, and look how
that turned out." Taking a deep breath, I shake the thought off. "But you're right. There's
no time for self-doubt. Now is the time for action."
If I've learned anything by now, it's that when you don't know what you're doing, fake
it, and things will probably turn out okay—eventually. Licking my lips, I say the simple
summoning words to bring the daeschund into this world, and step back as the
summoning circle glows with brimstone heat.
The stench is immediate, and almost unbearable. I try breathing in through my mouth
and gag at it. The daeshund arrives with a pop in the air and the glow of a small, worklike dog things, which curls up in the middle of the circle and raises its many-fanged
mouth towards it with a tentative sniff.
Then it hisses, and the smell of its breath is enough to make me regret being alive. Even
my appetite is gone from the scent of it, and I'm pretty much always hungry. Lynx turns
around and plugs his nose, Ezra backs away with a grimace, and Mateo shoves his
fingers up his nostrils. It's only Sebastian who looks stoically, perpetually
unperturbed—probably he's smelled worse, or has somehow tapped into the air of zen
and not giving a fuck.
"Hush," I tell the daeschund, even though it hurts a little to breathe in and speak. "We're
looking for a scent. One in particular. A soulless man. Find it, and I'll reward you with a
treat."
I have dried beef jerky in my pack. It was meant to last for whatever trek we needed to
make out here through Danish villages and empty countryside, but I'll give it to the
demon if it finds the enemy I'm searching for.
Like a dog with a bone in its future, the daeschund pops its twelve little legs out of its
body, whips around, and scurries into the undergrowth. It takes effort to make myself
follow it, but the good thing about the demon's stink is, even an asthmatic with no sense
of smell would be able to follow the trail it leaves behind. The demon smells the
Manslayer, we smell the demon—like a circle of scent or a snake eating its own tail.
Lynx falls in beside me as we play follow-the-garbage-heap. "What are we going to do
once you catch up with the Manslayer? He's a formidable immortal soulless Grim, after
all. A plan is necessary, especially given what's at stake."
"I know." My stomach clenches, and it's not because of the scent wafting through the air
and sliding down my throat. "I have to basically carve this rune into his body. Which
means getting close. So I'm going to need the four of you to help me with everything
you've got."
Staring at me, Lynx nods sharply, his hands flexing at his side. "Sebastian can weaken
him with poison. I can tie him up. Mateo, of course, can shoot him. And Ezra can run
him through with a sword. As long as our bond to you can't be messed with by this
asshole's poltergeist, we'll be okay. But Dani... none of what we do to him will mean a
thing until he's made mortal again."
"I'll get close enough to carve that mark into his skin permanently," I vow, a little
surprised by how much I want to see the bastard twist, bleed, burn, and die. "You can
count on it."
"Then let's find this piece of shit. The sooner he's in the ground, the better."
I just hope we'll be able to get close enough to take him out.
With the power of six immortals in that bracelet on his wrist, he might be too powerful
now for even four upper class demons and a Black Phoenix to fight.
The first dead body is sitting by the side of the road, cut entirely in half, the torso on
one side of the road, legs on the other, a twisting trail of intestines and blood in
between. There's no sign of the head, for whatever reason.
I close my eyes to steady myself, think about what I'm going to do to the monster who
did this, and open them with a grimace. "He must be close."
"Stay alert." Ezra draws his sword, eyes wary. "If it comes down to it, and fighting him
isn't working, we have to be willing to run. Also—keep in mind how much power he
has. It'll be better if we do a little surveillance on him before engaging."
"Agreed." I focus on the putrid stench in the air and follow it towards the little Danish
village in the distance, trying to prepare myself for what comes next. I've stashed a little
knife in every accessible pocket or sheath I can think of, and have my phoenix fire at the
ready, but I know better than to believe we're prepared for this. "Whatever happens, we
fight together, run together, or even go down together if it comes to that. Though I hope
it doesn't."
"All of us do."
I keep my eyes on the road ahead of us as we break into town, all of us with weapons at
our fingertips and a wariness to our steps. It's not just Manslayer I'm worried about, but
his poltergeist; even if he can't fuck with our bond anymore, he's still terrifying, capable
of causing incredible pain. A madman's soul detached from his body and turned into a
woman—I can't imagine anything more sinister or harder to fight.
Souls don't have dicks you can rip off.
But there are things that can be done to fight them. Ari is the only witch I know, and
Auerbach the only mage, but when I was being haunted by what I thought was my
mother's spirit, they gave me a few tricks. Salt is a bit of a help, though all I have with
me are some restaurant packets I stole from the helicopter as we dropped Petra off.
Holy water will be hard to come by, given the unholiness of my current companions.
But the real trick to spirits is to acknowledge them, believe in their existence, and
dismiss them, just like I learned how to dismiss my quartet when they were essentially
haunting me.
Even four demons like mine aren't as scary as this poltergeist is to me. Or as
infuriating—the fact that he imitated my mother, even used my birth name to trick me,
makes me want to wring his incorporeal neck. It'll be hard to dismiss the thing and
move on, but I try to center myself and keep my emotions in check even as we near the
village, prepared to have to fight the toughest battle of my life.
The worst part is all the bodies.
A man leans out of his window, throat cut, eyes dead. Two women protectively cradle
something between them that I can't look at without wanting to be sick. The houses are
locked down and barred, cheery windows empty of light, cars missing. I send up a little
prayer to whoever-the-fuck that some, or most, of the people here got away.
Sleepy Danish villages aren't exactly prepared for attack by immortals hellbent on
violence, after all.
"We came through this village not that long ago last night. I..." Trailing off, I jerk my
eyes away from the sight of a small child-sized lump in the distance. "This is all my
fault."
Ezra's voice is soft. "That's a dog, Dani." I swallow down my nausea long enough to
focus on the body and look away, still feeling a stab of guilt in my middle. "And it's not
your fault. No one predicted this—no one could have predicted this. We didn't have all
the information, but that isn't something you can blame yourself for. The only way to go
is forward. Looking back won't help a thing."
"Maybe it'll teach me something," I shoot back. "Like the value of... I don't know. Not
acting without thinking? Which we're about to do."
Stopping abruptly in the road, I pull the guys with me down a narrow alleyway, certain
that we'll be able to catch up to the daeschund and its distinctive scent no matter how
much of a detour we take. Insistently, I tell the four of them, "We've got to make sure
we have a plan. A good one. Just because Gaugin gave me this rune doesn't mean we'll
be able to fight him."
"I have my gun." Mateo hefts it in one hand, then helpfully adds, "And about a dozen
grenades in my belt, plus an incendiary device with a remote trigger in my pack. Don't
look at me like that, Ezra. You knew I was going to take it, no matter what you said."
"If you blow yourself up, that's on you," Ezra shoots back.
Sebastian snarks, "I'm just saying, he's a Florida Man and we all know it."
I smile briefly—a tiny flicker of a thing in the midst of all this darkness and sorrow. It
leaves in an instant, and we all sober up. "What's the plan?"
Step by step, we figure it out. And we prepare ourselves to take him on.
Just in time. As soon as we've sketched out the details of our plan—and a backup
plan—I hear a scream. And go racing to respond, desperate to stop the monster I've
unleashed before he kills another person.
Chapter 5
IT DOESN'T TAKE LONG to find our victim and killer—or the daeschund nearby, hissing
and spitting because it wants its reward. I toss it a length of beef jerky and dismiss it
with a thought, focusing in on the Manslayer himself.
He has a little girl in his hands. She struggles, but he's stronger. And we're still so far
away, stalking up on him from an angle.
I want to jump in, but Lynx holds me back. "Wait. He's not killing her. Not yet."
My book smart demon is right, as usual. The Manslayer likes to toy with his food. He's
looking at the girl with his head tilted to the side, a sly smile on his face, the
handsomeness of his jawline and cheekbones ruined by the cruelty that lights up his
eyes.
I've never seen someone look so eager to kill, or so ready to do it, but he's slowly
torturing the girl. Playing with her almost. His poltergeist flits around in the shadows,
making her scream as it touches her with its cruel fingers. It makes my heart twist for
Ari, who's related to a bastard just like this one, a biological father who took her family
members from her.
Even Meyer isn't as much of a piece of shit as this guy, and that's saying something.
The Manslayer—Childslayer too, it turns out—is near the shadow of a house, the front
door and windows broken, a man and a woman's body strewn by his feet. He's saved
the girl for last, maybe to make her watch her family suffer. Anger stokes the furnace
inside me that fuels my phoenix fire, and I feel it crackle along my palms.
It's time to fight.
Sebastian draws back from us and takes another way around, heading towards a row of
houses to our left. The plan is that he'll be at the monster's flank to weaken him with his
strongest poison. Whether or not it'll work remains to be seen—but at least we'll be
trying something, anything, to stop this madness and mayhem.
I feel a lump in my throat at the thought that we might fail. All of us will come back if
we die, but my guys won't remember me. And if the Manslayer pulls my heart out of
my chest, if he decides to truly kill me and not just toy with me—I'll never see them
again. They'll live out the rest of their demonic contracts with Hell utterly oblivious to
the fact that I even exist. It'll be like that night on the cliffs never happened.
We have everything at stake here.
Even so, as we head towards battle, Mateo pulls a grenade out of his belt and shoots me
a charming smirk. "See you on the other side."
All at once, the monster becomes aware of our presence, his cruel smile turning towards
us. His hands tighten on the girl, who struggles and hopelessly sobs. The anger in me
turns into a hot knife. Without hesitation—knowing that he'll kill her if I don't—I form a
blade of pure phoenix fire energy in my palm and throw it at him. My fire slices across
his cruel arms. The wound that opens is temporary, but it's enough that the girl
struggles out of his grip and runs away like a frightened rabbit.
The monster considers her for a moment. His soulless eyes narrow. He could pursue
her. Hunt her down. I'm prepared to stop him. Instead he turns towards me, and I feel
the suffocating presence of his soul-turned-poltergeist fill the air around us.
It's now or never. Gaugin's final, dying spell is going to be put to the test. Stepping
forward with far more bravery and conviction than I actually feel, I stare down the
Husk, the Manslayer, the soulless Grim, and let the full strength of my phoenix wings
unfurl at my back.
They're fed by the forge of my anger.
My resilience.
A life spent surviving in foster homes, then on the street, then dying and actually
coming back to fight again. Every bit of me—my anger, my heartache, and my love and
belief in the four not-quite-men at my backs—pours into the black and orange of my
wings. I feel their heat and light beat against my shoulders as they expand, their fire
crackling like a thousand bright-burning feathers. They're like two burning suns that
slice through the shadows and make the air swelter with heat.
I can't fly, but I almost feel as if I could, in this moment.
Maybe surviving the fall is a type of flight all its own.
Fuck knows I've survived plenty.
"You came back for more." The chuckle that leaves the Manslayer's mouth is inhuman.
It feels like fingers crawling up my spine or scraping down a chalkboard. "How sweet. I
see you've managed to summon your menagerie of fools again. Let's fix that, shall we?"
The poltergeist looms, its dark energy swarming around us. Chitters and screeches echo
in the air, and despite the heat of my wings, I feel a chill. For a moment I swear I even
see sharpened, spike-like teeth hovering neat my head, snapping at my throat.
I force myself to remain calm. The tattooed runes on my shoulder blades will anchor my
quartet to me. I might not be able to fight the poltergeist, but I can fend it off—and send
it into the Manslayer's body to make him mortal again.
As it tries to sink its nefarious, incorporeal claws into my body and rake the very bond I
have with my demons from my soul, I grit my teeth and blast my wings at it. Their
heat—from the fire, and from my spirit—makes the poltergeist shrink back, its shriek
echoing as it tries, and fails, to weaken me.
"How interesting." The Manslayer takes a step towards me, eyes narrowed, and at my
side the guys tense. I make a hand motion towards Mateo, urging him not to use his
gun or grenade just yet, knowing that no injury will be permanent as long as the
monster has no soul. "You've changed somehow. Some kind of... magic has been
performed on your body. Anchored into your skin where those wings of yours burst
out. But I wonder, what will happen if you lose their fire?"
I force myself to stare straight at him, even as a figure moves stealthily in the shadows
at his back. "I'll never lose my fire. It's connected to my spirit, my soul—my very being.
Not that you'd understand anything like that."
"No. I severed the connection to my soul long ago. It's been useful for me." The shadow
of a smile curls his lips, and he stalks towards me, making Ezra tighten his grip on his
sword and Lynx wrap cords of rope around his fists. "I can't help but notice that you're
down a buffoon—and I don't mean that pitiful wolf shifter I disemboweled. There's one
missing among your number, which must mean..."
As Sebastian is moving in close to deliver his poisonous blow, the monster flicks his
wrist, and energy surges out from the bracelet against his skin. He throws a pulse of
white-hot lightning at my beloved Poisoner, who flicks a wrist out to slash a poisoned
knife against the monster's calf—only to be thrown back before his blade connects. My
heart jumps into my throat as Sebastian goes flying at least thirty feet back, skidding
against the ground.
There's a low curse behind me, and Lynx takes a step forward, eyes narrowed in hate,
mouth twisted with anger. I hold a hand out to urge him back; even now, the
poltergeist is regrouping to go at us again, and the Manslayer has the power of six
immortals at his fingertips. We have to be smart about this.
Let him toy with us like he toyed with the girl. We don't need to overwhelm him with
power. We just need to select our moment.
I spare a brief glance to Sebastian, who groans as he gets up but is at least alive. Then I
round towards the Manslayer, my wings at my back, and curl them forwards until their
heat glows against his neck.
"You shouldn't have done that," I tell him, heart in my throat as I take a step forward,
then another. "We don't want to fight you, but we will if we have to."
"Bullshit." Those dark eyes narrow at me. "You're aching to fight me. Come at it, then,
Daniella. Show your precious mother what you think of her—if you dare."
My wings burn as the heat of my anger rushes through me. Eyes on the bracelet, I take
another step towards my target—and the poltergeist rushes into my body all at once at
the Manslayer's command.
The previous attacks from his aching cold talons are nothing like this one. Even with the
heat of my wings behind me to burn at his shadows, the spirit is aged and relentless,
driven mad by time spent unanchored from a body, desperate to leave the mortal plane
and rest in the Great Beyond.
It takes everything in me not to shrink into a little ball on the ground as pain bright and
sharp enough to drive the breath from my lungs tears my body in two. It's as if there's
an ice pick in the middle of my skull, rattling around in my teeth, making a low groan
of pain leave my mouth. My bones ache, pierced through by thousands of tiny, invisible
needles. Every muscle that holds me up goes tense and useless with agony, and my
tendons feel like they're on fire.
I can't hold it back. Curling towards myself, my wings flagging as the furnace that feeds
them grows cold, I open my mouth and scream in pain. That's all it takes to make my
guys forget every plan we made, every word I used to caution them, and choose brute
force over cleverness and deceit. Tears of pain stream down my face as, one by one,
they attack the Manslayer—without me able to move, much less stop them.
The poltergeist is in my head. My body. My very soul cringes back at its putrid, twisted
touch. It's hard to focus, to remember what Gaugin taught me about dismissing it. This
is nothing like when I learned to dismiss and summon the demons. They weren't ever
crawling around in my head, pushing into dark places like the poltergeist is now.
I fight against it, reaching through the darkness it's suffused in me to find the burning
furnace of my phoenix spirit deep inside, but it's so strong. And so all-consuming.
It shows me things. Dark, terrible things that its soulless body has done. Pain, suffering.
Lives ended—all because I was too curious, too reckless, too power hungry not to see
the trap I walked into. It laughs as it shows me the image of my mother that it fed me as
a lie to get my compliance.
Whatever this soul once was, before the young boy died and was resurrected, there's
none of that left now. All that's left is pain and cruelty. Anger and a desire for revenge.
And with it in my body, even though my bond doesn't break and I hold on to some
semblance of my power, I'm helpless to do anything but watch as my guys face the
Manslayer and are brutally cut down one by one.
Lynx tries to tie him down, and the monster sends dragon fire at him, making the rope
in his hands burst into flames until blisters boil up on the surface of his skin.
My sweet, dear Ezra comes at him with a blade, and the Manslayer only laughs, raising
a hand to catch the blade, blood running from his palm. He twists it into two pieces, the
Hellfire forged metal bending easily in his grasp, then throws a burst of energy at Ezra
that sends him stumbling back.
Mateo, of course, shoots him. Expertly. Over and over in the chest. One bullet in each of
his knees, to bring him down, even if only for a minute. He pulls the pin on his grenade
and throws it right at the monster—who catches it and holds it in an iron grip, cruel
mirth on his mouth as the thing detonates uselessly in his hands and crumbles to dust.
As he does it, the bracelet on his wrist glows with power.
And the poltergeist sinks its claws deeper into my mind, trying to take over, to bend
me, to break my will and my spirit until there's nothing powerful left of me.
My guys aren't done yet, though. Lynx surges forward and punches the monster in the
face despite his burned hands. Sebastian comes at him from behind, a whirling storm of
knives slicked with poison nicking at the monster's skin, turning his veins grey and
black beneath the surface. Ezra pulls a second sword from his back, its blade brightly
gleaming, and rushes the Manslayer with fury in his eyes.
They'll fight him to the death if they have to.
But I won't let them do it alone.
Reaching deep into my center, where the last bit of my stubborn will resides, I find the
furnace that fuels my power. I let my mind flash back to that moment on the cliffs,
when I fell onto the rocks and died, in complete agony, only to come back to life in even
more pain.
The ocean waves lapped the cliff above me.
I tasted salt water on my tongue.
Overhead, the moon stared down, silver and far away, unconcerned with my human—
and supernatural—worries.
I was reborn that day, and though that rebirth bound to me four men, and forged me in
fire, it also freed me completely. I was no longer Dani Carpenter, the girl with blue
streaks in her hair who ate food out of the trash and mistrusted everyone she met. I was
Dani Carpenter, daughter of a Grim and a woman with phoenix blood, fighter with a
dozen lives.
No way in fuck am I wasting all of that by succumbing to Casper the goddamned ghost.
Coaxing my fire to life, I grit my teeth and push outward at the spirit. Like a feral cat
being forced into a cage, it claws for purchase, desperate to stay where it is, but I don't
let go. As its terrible presence leaves my body, I feel a sense of relief—and then I
prepare to fight more.
"Get gone," I tell the thing, which coalesces in front of me as a dark specter, a cloud of
black sinister energy merely shaped like a man. "I'm not going to tell you twice."
My wings unfurl behind me. The guys keep fighting the Manslayer, only to be pushed
back again and again. I have to get this done, now. Taking a deep breath, I imagine the
poltergeist going back to Purgatory, like a genie being forced back into its bottle.
I clench my fists and make it so.
At first it seems like it'll be able to resist being dismissed. But then it starts to howl as its
shape is diminished, siphoned off as my Grim powers let me force its dark energy into
another realm. It's something I've never done before to anything except a demon, but at
this point, the poltergeist's spirit isn't that far away. It claws and fights, but I put it back
in its cage, then shut the door and lock it for good measure.
Just in time. Grabbing Ezra's wrist, the Manslayer breaks bones with his power, then
bends his blade back and forces it through his body. Lynx attacks him with his fists—
and gets his feet yanked down into the earth for his trouble, freezing him in place.
Mateo and Sebastian are exhausted, both bloody and looking worse for the wear, but
the former reloads his gun and the latter slicks his knives in poison, prepared for
another round.
The anger that fills me at the sight of them so injured, yet still fighting, makes my wings
unfurl like beasts at my back, their light glowing all around me.
"Let him go," I tell Manslayer, "or you'll regret it."
"This thing?" He contemptuously pushes Ezra back, releasing his broken wrist, my
beloved sword piercing his body. "Have it if you want it. I don't know who they're
picking to turn these days in Hell, but I've fought lower level demons that were more
powerful."
I force myself to simply confirm that Ezra is alive before I turn back to the issue, and the
enemy, at hand. "It's me you want," I point out, "so let's fight."
"Gladly."
He raises the hand with the bracelet on it, and a wall of power surges towards me. I
push my wings forward, their Grim magic and phoenix fire curving and reaching, and
the two forces collide between us.
My feet slide beneath me and I lean forward, feeling like I'm facing off against a
powerful, impossibly windy storm.
The Manslayer's mouth thins into a line, and I inwardly cheer at the realization that he's
actually having to put some effort into this.
Maybe we really can win.
But before I can get too excited, he flicks his wrist, releasing the wall of energy. I
stumble forward, against nothing—and cry out as the bastard forms a knife of pure
energy and throws it directly into my chest.
It sinks through my ribs and towards my beating phoenix heart.
The cry of anger and pain from my right is immediate. Mateo surges to his feet. Lynx
and Ezra are at his heels. Snarling, a wounded Sebastian draws a knife and prepares a
throw.
As the Manslayer stalks towards me, my wounded, battered, nearly defeated men
converge around him, ready for a final stand.
Chapter 6
I CAN'T LET this be the end. They've fought so hard for me, risked so much, sacrificed
continuously. Our love is all that matters. I won't let them lose their lives, their
memories, and our connection because of a mistake I made.
As they fight, I push my hands over the wound in my chest and force myself to focus.
Ezra narrows his green eyes and shouts a battle cry, knifing the Manslayer in the side.
Lynx draws another length of corded rope from his belt and wraps it around the
immortals throat, yanking down. My beloved Sebastian throws knife after knife into his
back, until his sheaths are empty. And Mateo lays a bomb at his feet, yelling at the
others, "Fall back!"
It isn't enough, though. We all know it. Even as Lynx yanks him down, ties him up, and
double-checks the knots, I meet the Manslayer's dark eyes, and see in their emptiness
that he knows he's won. Just like Ari's soulless father, he'll be able to survive anything.
A shotgun round. A bomb. Even a semi ramming into him probably wouldn't leave a
dent for long.
The only way to kill him is to give him back his soul.
So, as the guys fall back, as Ezra reaches towards me, I duck his hand and run forward.
Towards the bomb. Towards the soulless beast.
I made this mess.
I'll die fixing it if I have to.
"Dani—your heart!"
I ignore Ezra's shouted warning, even though I know what he's worried about. The
energy knife the monster threw at me has exposed my chest. My beating heart is right
there for the taking. If the explosion knocks it out of my chest completely, I'll die in a
very mortal way. Even if it doesn't, I'm going to die, this close to a bomb my Mateo
built.
I have three lives left. That's plenty. Especially if it only takes one of them to end this
motherfucker right here, right now, for good.
Here's to hoping I'm just as much of a hot piece of ass when my phoenix body heals and
I come back to life again. Explosions aren't exactly a regular part of my skincare routine.
I dive towards the bomb anyway. My motions take the Manslayer's eyes off it for just a
moment, and he misses the slender opportunity he gets to disarm it with his magic
fucking bracelet. Because Mateo is an absolute nut with a taste for things that go boom,
the bomb doesn't have any kind of a clock, and it barely has a fuse. As soon as I get
close, wings curled forward, it goes off.
The heat of the explosion is like the fire of the sun falling down on me.
I feel it tear through me. My ears ring. My feet go out from under me. Dust and light fill
my eyes. I go down, and so does the Manslayer.
But I refuse to stay down, to not get up and fight again. I've died enough times by now
to work through the pain of a body that's bleeding from a dozen wounds.
Immortal asshole that he is, the Manslayer isn't used to fighting. He took most of his
victims without much effort at all, picking the weak. And he's been in that coffin
Gaugin made for him so long—pain is foreign to him. Despite his supernatural abilities,
he's been weakened, and I hear him cough and groan as he draws his limbs around his
vulnerable center.
That's all it takes. My wings sputter and die at my back as my body loses blood and
other things I don't want to think about, but I manage to crawl to him. There are distant
voices in my ears, and I know my guys will be there when I die, and when I come back.
Before that, though. While I still have the chance to right this wrong I've made. I grab
the monster's hand, look up into his dark eyes, and use the last bit of my still-fighting
phoenix furnace to make a knife of pure energy, just like his.
Then I slice his hand off at the wrist, just below the bracelet.
The last thing I see as I die is his blood. The last thing I hear are his screams of pain.
And his hand is still warm and gushing in mine as my quartet grab my body and drag
it away from him.
Death closes over me, and I smile.
For a while there's peace. Warmth. I don't see my mother's spirit—maybe I did once,
that time I died seven times in a row, or maybe that was just a fever dream. I don't
know if my deaths made a crack in my psyche that the Manslayer exploited, or if I saw
into the spirit realm once, and he took advantage. Maybe Ari or Auerbach can tell me
when I get back to campus, or maybe I'll never actually know.
When I come back this time, there's agony, like always. But it's a distant burn of
pinpricks all over my skin instead of an all-consuming pain. I've died enough times,
and been wounded to death besides that, to know that the feeling is temporary. So I
fight through it, force my eyes open, and look over at my left hand.
And I laugh. "I didn't imagine it."
"No, you didn't." Sebastian raises a wry eyebrow. "Gonna keep the hand?"
"I might," I respond, smirking a little at the way the monster's fingers are almost
lovingly curled around mine, like we're two middle schoolers on a first date holding
hands. "I think for sure I'm keeping this."
Despite how incredibly fucking gross it is, I grab the bracelet Gaugin made and yank it
off the disembodied hand. The thing fights me—how dare it, given that it was made for
my blood, or at least for Gaugin's—but it does come off. As soon as it does, I slide it up
my forearm and sigh as it nestles against the inside of my elbow.
I'm never going to take that power for granted again. Now that I have it, maybe I have a
fighting chance against the goddamned monster I released—especially if he's still in
agony over as minor a flesh wound as a severed hand.
It's not like it was his dick.
That'll be next, if I get the chance.
Looking up at Sebastian, I ask him, "The others?"
"Keeping him at bay. He's howling mad, but far less powerful than before. And
apparently regrowing a hand takes a while, even for an immortal soulless Grim. But,
Dani—I don't think he's done with tricks up his sleeve." A troubled expression crosses
Sebastian's face. "I was thinking, there has to be a reason why he killed all these people.
Other than the obvious, of course."
"That he's a psychopath?"
"I think there's a spell he wanted to perform... but I guess it doesn't matter if we kill him
before he pulls it off. Especially now that you have the bracelet. It's just been nagging at
me." He shakes his head, like he's shaking the train of thought off. "Ready to go?"
"Let's kill this fucker. Help me up." As he grabs my hands and pulls me to my feet, I
half-jokingly ask, "Do I still look pretty? After getting a face full of Mateo's shrapnel."
"As beautiful as ever." He slaps my ass and kisses my cheek, then hands me a knife
that's slicked with blood. "I got this out of him. Nice job with the phoenix fire knife, by
the way—I wish I could do that."
Taking the knife, I crack my neck and tell him, "Let's go sever some dicks."
The other three demons are keeping the monster from regaining his footing too much,
but I can tell they won't be able to run him ragged for long. And I can already feel—and
taste—the heavy, harsh scent of the poltergeist in the air. My dismissal of the twisted
soul won't last forever, and when it comes back it'll be far stronger and onto me. We
have to strike now, while we've got the upper hand.
Stalking towards the monster, I smile as Lynx ties him down with an abundance of
rope, Mateo shoots his kneecaps out a second time, and Ezra holds him from behind,
arms looped through the Manslayer's armpits to grasp him tight. His missing hand is
trying to grow back, the stump red and gnarly-looking, all of the energy of his life force
flowing towards it with a soft white glow.
They'll only be able to hold him for so long. That much is clear. The monster thrashes in
their grip, so Sebastian slashes him across his injured stump of a hand with one of his
poisoned knives, black ooze gushing from the wound. His immortal body wants to
keep going, but it's taking a lot of energy to heal him.
This may be my only chance to put the bastard's twisted soul back inside his even more
twisted body. Summoning my power, I make a tiny knife of energy and hold it between
my thumb and index finger. Then I crouch in front of the bastard, my eyes briefly
meeting the pools of black that make up his gaze.
"I'll kill you for this," he says, twisting against his restraints, baring his teeth. "I don't
know how you've managed to banish my poltergeist to another realm, but it'll be back
soon. I feel it. When it is, I'll have it snuff the spirit out of your permanently—so you
can never see these four filthy lovers of you again."
"Excuse you," Mateo says indignantly, "but I am a very gentle lover."
Snorting at his joke, I grab the Manslayer's injured arm, pull his collar to the side, and
press the sharp hot tip of the energy blade against his skin near his shoulder. He doesn't
flinch or wince as I start to carve the rune into his flesh, his dark eyes watching me, a
snarl twisting his lips. I can feel him fight Lynx's ropes, but without the power of his
poltergeist and the element of surprise on his side, he's not able to free himself. We have
him.
But as I carefully carve the lines of the rune into his skin, I feel a dark and foreboding
chill. The poltergeist. I dismissed it, but not for long. The monster senses his other half
is returning and smirks at me. I ignore his expression and force myself not to rush this.
Runes are very sensitive to how they're drawn; Auerbach made that clear time and time
again. One like this, that puts a wayward soul back in its body, can't be hurried
through. Even a little mistake in the intricate lines would be enough to ruin everything.
Ruin. Rune. I'd laugh if I weren't so full of panic. The chill of the poltergeist's touch
caresses my spine. The Manslayer's hand is almost fully formed; he's flexing his stubby
fingers, stretching them out. Once the resurrection magic in his soulless body has fixed
that, he'll be strong again, and capable of escaping. I only have a few moments left.
We all sense the tension.
Then. Pulling a long knife out of a sheath nestled against the middle of his back, Ezra
grabs the Manslayer's uninjured hand, which is helpfully held down by Lynx's ropes,
and swings his blade. The monster makes a muffled groan as his hand is severed from
his body, and my green-eyed demon tosses it over his shoulder, ignoring the spray of
blood.
"There. That should slow him down while you finish the rune." He wipes the blade on
the short winter grass at our feet. "Let me know if you want to cut any other parts off."
My eyes flick to the monster's crotch, and I smirk, but there's no room for them to take
his manhood, since I'm crouched over his body. Too bad—if it wouldn't cost us time, I'd
have my demons play with him a little, severing parts and taking them just to see how
much pain the Manslayer can live through. He deserves all that and more for what he's
done.
"Almost there," I tell the guys, as the monster shoots me a resentful look, now edged
with panic. "Just a little more..."
There's a tenseness between my shoulder blades from the poltergeist's presence. It
pushes its cold spirit into my body, seeking dark places, creeping back into the mortal
realm bit by bit. I dismiss it with difficulty; the thing is growing stronger. So much time
without a body has made it resistant to others' wills.
"Dani." Lynx's voice has an edge to it; he reties one of his ropes as the knot breaks. "The
poltergeist. It's trying to free him. And I'm not sure how much rope I have left."
Mateo frowns. "You didn't bring enough?"
"Well, some of it was burned—"
"I'm almost done," I tell the guys. My eyes flit to the bracelet on my wrist; I have no idea
how exactly to use the power, but maybe... "This should help."
Pausing in my rune-carving, I put my left hand against the Manslayer's forehead and
focus inward. He struggles back from my touch, but the ropes hold him still enough, for
now. Tapping into the bracelet's power with hesitancy, I think about the creatures I just
released: the three-headed Cerberus who guarded the gates of Hell, an ancient dragon
who watched the world from clouds up above, even an actual honest-to-fuck unicorn,
complete with the shining white fur and piercing horn. The world forgot them in their
time as immortal captives, until death was the only release left to them, but their power
is anchored here. To this bracelet, which responds to the blood flowing through my
veins—Grim blood.
The Manslayer is powered by the resurrection spell that brought him back incomplete,
without his soul. His body repairs itself over and over again; that's why he won't die.
But the magic that powers him is familiar to me. I use it every time I summon demons,
my quartet or otherwise, and play with the barriers between the living and the dead.
Necromancy. It's not something I've done myself. Apparently it has a history of going
poorly. My now-dead half-sister Lainey, Gaugin himself, Ari's father the Heretic, and
the Manslayer struggling in my demon's grip are all proof of that. The dead should stay
dead.
When I took Lainey's stolen phoenix heart from her chest and unbound the spell that
animated her, I felt the gasp of necromantic power release, its taste as cloying as grave
dirt. Whatever spell was used to bring the Manslayer back, I have no idea; the Grim
father and rogue witch who cast it are both long dead. But I bet I can drain enough of
his necromantic energy to weaken him so the guys and I have time to put his soul back
and kill him for good.
Tapping into the bond with my quartet, which anchors me and my power here, I lick
my lips and blindly reach for words that might work. Certain types of magic are
improvisational in a way, its power set more in intention than anything, so I hope this
does something.
"Drain the necromantic hold on this man's body," I murmur, uncertain of myself.
"Release him from his undead bond to his body, and weaken him."
The Manslayer chuckles, low and cruel. "Do you really think that—"
A moment later he's gasping in pain, as the bracelet around my elbow warms up
against my skin. I sigh at the feeling of power flowing through me, releasing a little of
the bonds that hold the Manslayer's undead body together. Recently healed wounds
open up on his body, making him moan low in his throat. The poltergeist, meanwhile,
shrinks back as I mentally dismiss it again, stuffing it back into its cell in Purgatory for a
while longer.
"Whoa," Mateo says, his tone impressed. "I think you really gave him one there, Dani."
"Let's hope so. I need him to be still so I can finish this rune."
"I'll help."
"Me too."
Sebastian and Lynx kneel and grab the shoulder I've been carving into. They push his
arm and neck down, keeping him from struggling as he finally feels the pain he
should've been reacting to all along. I'm not sure how much longer my improvised spell
will hold, but thankfully I'm halfway done with the rune, and it looks like I'll be able to
finish it.
As I dig the point of my red-hot knife into his skin, forming the last line, I ask the
monster, "Any final words?"
"Happy dreaming."
I don't understand what he means. Skin sizzles, and the lines of the rune are finished at
my touch. The mark I've made glows as it reaches completion, and there's the sudden
acrid scent of magic in the air. Gaugin's bracelet heats up against my elbow, so hot it's
nearly uncomfortable, forming a ring of white light.
The monster's eyes roll back in his head.
All around me the world plunges into darkness.
Chapter 7
I FEEL it in the darkness. The poltergeist. A terrible thing, formed of anger and misery,
made from a connection to a body severed through dark means. Souls shouldn't feel
like this. Spirits shouldn't be this way.
The presence of the thing is suffocating. Air, light, they all disappear. So does my hope.
I taste iron and salt on my tongue, pressing down on me. It's like having my mouth
covered in a heavy cloth dampened with blood. Maybe it is blood.
Maybe I've been imagining everything that happened since I left the cave with the
seven immortals. Gaugin coming to me. Petra surviving. My guys returning, and the
bond being anchored to my body permanently. It could've all been a fever dream.
This is the truth, then. Blood in my mouth. Darkness all around me. A terrible,
suffocating sense of foreboding. And nothing, nothing but despair at my side. No
quartet bond within me. No phoenix fire furnace. My soul quivers and shrinks like a
dying moth.
I should give up. I have nothing, am nothing. Death—a real death, a clean death—
would be better than this.
I should've died that night on the cliffs.
And many other times after.
I'm so very, very tired. Tired of fighting. Of falling and having to get back up again.
Maybe this is what it feels like when you've reached above your abilities. Maybe I'm
treading water, when I should just give up and drown. I can feel how it's drained me.
I'm hollow inside, empty and worthless, absolutely no one and nothing.
Nothing, nothing, nothing...
But the sense that I'm not alone in the darkness.
There's something out there.
Something that's waiting for me.
I force myself to my feet, even though they feel wobbly, like a newborn foal's uncertain
legs. Looking around myself, I search for the something in the pitch blackness. Some
sign that I'm not imagining someone is with me.
Someone... or something.
I hear it before I see it. There's a strange and heavy breathing in the distance. The sound
of an object hitting the ground, softly. A light chuffing noise. Deep breaths in a barrel
chest.
Squinting my eyes, I walk through the darkness, towards whatever it is that I hear. The
blood taste filters out of my mouth. A light warmth suffuses me. Slowly, I pull the
cobwebs of darkness from my eyes. Blinking through the last of the suffocating despair,
I realize that all this time it's been the poltergeist convincing me that I was worthless
and should give up.
It was never true.
I've always been a fighter. Always will be one, in fact. Whatever the poltergeist put in
my head, the doubts and the fear and the trauma, I'm not nothing. I'm Dani fucking
Carpenter, badass Black Phoenix, one of a kind, with four guys who will always be there
for me, and friends who risk their lives on a semi-regular basis to save my ass.
My very cute, very pert ass, thank you very much.
No one and nothing will hold me down for long.
I just have to figure out how the fuck the goddamned poltergeist pulled off this lastminute Hail Mary and fight it off so I can cut the Manslayer's head from his body and
be done with this once and for all. As soon as the beast is dead, my quartet and I will
head straight back to campus, where we'll find out if the whole thing is still standing
and hand over the keys to this immortal-life-filled bracelet once and for all.
First, though, I need to figure out what the Hell is in the darkness with me. I don't think
it's Ezra, Lynx, Sebastian, or Mateo, that's for sure. I'm pretty certain that breathing isn't
coming from anything human at all.
Seeing a gentle white light ahead of me, where the breathing sounds have been coming
from this whole time, I head in that direction. As I get closer, I nearly groan, because I
can't possibly be seeing what I think I'm seeing.
"Unicorn." I frown at the thing, which blinks its wide, docile eyes at me—eyes that no
doubt hide its supposed bloodthirsty interior. "What are you doing here? Or your spirit,
I should say? Because you're dead."
Instead of answering, it bobs its head at me, turns around, and starts walking off into
the distance. I scoff in its direction, but it turns back and gives me a very clear,
meaningful look.
"Follow the ghost of the unicorn through the suffocating darkness. Why in the world
would I do that?"
I swear, the thing makes an expression that seems to suggest I don't really have any
other options. It's communicating to me through eye blinks and lip twitches, I guess. Or
maybe something more—the feeling in my chest seems to suggest comfort and warmth,
with a little bit of impatience, like a border collie is nipping at my heels to try to get me
to go where I'm supposed to go.
The unicorn is supposedly capable of controlling people with emotions. Like some kind
of a mastermind, but with happiness and joy and lust. It caused wars in its time on
Earth, and lured maidens to dangerous places to use them as human sacrifice.
So, hopefully that's not what this is. Especially since I'm no maiden—just ask the four
demons I lost my virginity to. Given my options, I guess I don't really have much else of
a choice. And at least the unicorn's emotional whatever-it-is made the poltergeist's
nightmare of despair go away.
I follow the damned thing, glowing white butt, twitching tail, and all. It has silver
horseshoes and smells like daffodils. A goddamned unicorn, I swear to fuck. It's so
ridiculously cheesy and mythical. I wonder if it shits and farts like horses do. Maybe
rainbows and butterflies come out of its butt.
The unicorn stops, looks back at me, and makes a very displeased face. It stomps a rear
hoof and twitches its tail. I swear, it's almost like the thing has been listening in on my
thoughts—and maybe it has been. It is an all-powerful glowing-white virgin girl's
fantasy, after all.
On its internal prompting, I walk up next to the unicorn's front legs and rest my hand
across its... hump? Withers? Shoulder blades? That thing in the horse behind their neck.
Whatever. It walks forward now that I'm up here next to it, apparently self-conscious
about all my staring at its butt and thinking about its poop.
I hope my guys are okay.
They don't have immortal unicorn spirits to guide them through the poltergeist's
nightmare, after all. If they're unlucky, they've got the dragon or the mermaid guiding
them. Those two were the worst.
Soon enough, we reach a path in the darkness. Then, in the distance, a gate—and
beyond it, a door. There's something stirring about the door, like it holds secrets or
promises. As I get closer, the unicorn falling back behind me, it lights up with this
glowing white warmth.
"Through here?" I look back, and the unicorn nods its head, stomping a hoof. "Okay. I
hope you're not like, tricking me or something. Unicorns don't eat human flesh, do
they? I mean, I'm pretty sure we're in the spirit realm, so I'm not flesh, but—"
The thing makes a low, threatening sound. Then it lowers its head, the shiny
incandescence of its horn pointed towards me, and bunches up its muscles.
"Okay, I'm going! Don't shish-ka-bob me. I swear, you're very ill-tempered for a
mythical creature featured on Lisa Frank notebooks."
Grabbing the door handle, I swing it wide and take a step forward before the unicorn
can decide that I'd be better off with a big ol' hole in my middle. I don't know how
much of the stuff that happens in the spirit realm is permanent, but I'm not going to test
it out.
A thought wiggles in the back of my mind, though, and I stop before I step through
completely. Turning back to the unicorn, I ask it, "Why aren't you in the Great Beyond?
You know, the whole reason why you volunteered to die in the first place."
The thing swings its head, looking deep into the darkness.
I stare in the direction that it's looking.
And get the sense that something is deeply, terribly wrong. It may be dead, and its
spirit may have gone deep inside the spirit realm, to the very verge of the afterlife, but
the unicorn hasn't been able to cross over. Not yet. Because there's a disturbance that's
been keeping it here.
"I'll figure it out," I tell the thing. "If I can, that is. I mean, I'm new to this shit. But I'll try.
You should get to frolic in fields of daisies with other unicorns, after all. Or whatever it
is that you do."
The unicorn stares at me with impossibly deep eyes. I wonder if it's thinking about
what a dumbass I am. It probably regrets ever letting me into its coffin to release its
spirit. Or maybe I'm just projecting all my fears and anxieties onto a shimmery horse
with a weird glowing horn.
As I walk through the door, I cross my fingers that I'm not about to find myself face-toface with the sphinx or the mermaid. I definitely am not in the mood to face down the
dragon, either. Thankfully, though, the only thing waiting for me on the other side of
the door is a white light, followed by the vertigo-like sensation of suddenly being back
in my own body, in the mortal realm, in the midst of the fight.
It's like waking up from a very bad dream upside down in your bed with nausea and a
sweaty back, only ten times worse. My eyes take a moment to adjust to the light, and
my fingers have pinpricks of sensation in them. Time has passed here, even though my
body barely moved.
I'm still holding the knife that I used to carve Gaugin's rune into the Manslayer's skin
and force his soul back into his body.
But the knife, instead of being pressed up against his shoulder, is slicing through ropes.
The Manslayer somehow wriggled underneath my stock still hand to get himself out of
his sticky situation. He's not looking at me, so I don't move my head at all, instead
flicking my eyes around me as subtly as possible to take inventory of the current
situation.
My quartet is completely frozen. Each of their faces is slack and expressionless, their
eyes focused far away. Around us, like some kind of a dark fog or a strange dome, the
poltergeist's presence hangs heavy in the air. He's suffocating and terrible, just like I
remembered, and most definitely not inside the Manslayer's body.
Which is when I realize that there's one more mark I need to make on the rune to
complete the spell: the mark that locks it all into place. I've called the soul here, urged it
towards its original body, but until I've slashed through the curling inner part of the
rune with my phoenix fire knife, it'll be like we didn't do anything at all. The battle will
be lost, and the Manslayer, if he continues to untie himself like this, will escape (mostly)
intact, despite the necromantic energy I drained from his body.
I can't let that happen. Especially if his next move, after freeing himself, is killing my
guys and taking Gaugin's bracelet back from me. The power is too much for an evil son
of a bitch like him to be allowed to have.
So I need to act fast, and think faster. The slash—it's all I need to finish up with my
knife, but I doubt he'll hold still. And he's managed to wriggle out of the guys' grips,
since they're all being held hostage by the poltergeist's dark energy, which no doubt
dragged their spirits down into its dark corner of the spirit realm just like it did to me
just now.
The poltergeist's presence is heavy in the air. It's hard to move my hands, hard to think.
But the monster's shoulder is close, and he's wriggling around to try to slice the ropes
off his upper arms. If I can just... move a little... that way... no, over here...
He's so focused on the tip of the knife and the ropes that he doesn't notice me moving at
first. But then his eyes flick up to my face, and I momentarily panic, trying to force my
facial expression into the slack-jawed one on my quartet's faces.
"Keep her further under, will you?" He says off-handedly to his evil, untethered soul. "I
swear I saw her blink just a second ago. The last thing we need is for one of these
troublemakers to get loose before I'm free."
There's a stirring in the air. I get the sense that the poltergeist is saying something back,
but if so, it's not in any language that I can understand.
The Manslayer frowns. His eyes flit back up to my face. At this point, I'm starting to feel
more than a little tense. And the urge to sneeze is overwhelming. I don't think it's a real
urge, but there it is anyway, pushing up against my nose. It must be some
psychosomatic totally imagined bullshit.
"I'll give you one of them later," the Manslayer says to the poltergeist, sounding more
than a little annoyed. "You can't eat their insides now. It'll take them from their stupor
and give them a chance to finish their little spell. We can't have that. Now, as for the
girl..."
His focus on the poltergeist distracts him for a moment, and he shifts. I see my one and
only opportunity and take it without even thinking. Lunging forward, I slash across the
rune with my knife, aiming for the curling spot in the middle.
Three things happen all at once.
Flesh sizzles beneath my knife's tip.
The poltergeist howls and trashes, knocking branches from trees and kicking up a foulsmelling wind.
And the Manslayer puts his one free hand around my throat, squeezing tight, his grip
strong despite his recent regeneration.
His grasp makes me light-headed as he restricts the blood flow to my head. While the
guys are starting to stir, just barely, and the rune is closed, I can feel the tension in the
air. The howling rises to a terrible, ear-piercing scream, then silences all at once as the
poltergeist dives inside its master's body against its will.
Soul and flesh, one again.
It should have made him back into a man.
But this man's soul has been divorced from his body for far too long, trained to do cruel
and terrible things, made mad because it is never allowed rest or peace in the Great
Beyond. His eyes, those dark and soulless eyes, only seem even darker now that his
soul is back in his body. And the necromantic energy that kept him alive for so long still
flows through his veins, weakened but not destroyed by my earlier spell.
The moment is now. Someone has to slay him. Diving to pick up Ezra's partially melted
sword, I hold it in two hands, remembering everything I've learned in Weapons
Combat and at my demons' side. Stance sure, I put all my weight and strength into the
single blow of the blade as I swing it towards the monster's tied-up body.
He shouts out, "You don't have to do thi—"
I cut his head off, severing it completely at the base of his neck. It shocks me how
quickly the Hell-forged blade slices through tendon, muscle, and bone. Killing someone
should feel harder than this, but in the case of the soulless monster, I find I don't really
regret a single thing as his eyes slide closed and his body slumps over to the side.
Gaugin's bracelet warms at my elbow. I wonder which circle of Hell the man formerly
known as Frederich will be spending his eternity in. Or if—and the thought makes me
shudder—he'll be given a deal: Purgatory, and time spent serving Hell as one of its
demons, in exchange for a contract that may or may not cleanse his sins.
A man as terrible as this one couldn't possibly wash the blood away. I think. Then
again, I have no idea what my guys did that got them in Purgatory, and neither do they.
For all I know they were just as bad as the Manslayer.
Somehow, though, I doubt it.
Overhead, the sky clears. The sun gently shines down on us—and the carnage of the nolonger-sleepy Danish village. I drop the sword, watching the blood puddle around the
beast's body, feeling tired and angry, at myself and at the world.
Blinking, standing, stretching, the guys arrange themselves beside me, and we stare at
the body together.
"That was... a little nuts." Ezra rubs the back of his neck. "Did everyone else get frozen
and start seeing things? Crazy things. Like..."
His voice trails off, and his green eyes are somewhat haunted. Reaching out, I squeeze
his arm and tell him, "It's over now. But I saw stuff too. Mostly darkness. I think it was
just the poltergeist fucking with us. When I came out of it, you four were all frozen and
seemed like you weren't here at all. As if you'd been hypnotized."
Lynx murmurs, "Something like that. I saw things too."
"I saw this old lady get chopped to pieces," Mateo says, bouncing a grenade in his hand
as casually as if it were a rock and not an incendiary device. "She kept talking to me in
Spanish and saying... well. She was calling me Alejandro and saying all this stuff about
how much she loved me and not to blame myself. But this machete kept cutting her into
pieces. And I swear for a moment..." He shakes himself, like he's shaking off the
hallucination, the old woman, all of it. "It seemed familiar. That was probably just the
freaky ghost though, fucking with my mind."
"It wouldn't be hard to fuck with your mind," Sebastian says drolly. "There's not much
in there."
The teasing is normal, exactly as expected, but something about Sebastian's tone of
voice seems... off. His blue eyes are distant—even more so than normal. And it's not
because of the dead body with its head chopped off on the ground in front of us. It's not
even the fact that we came so close to really losing this time, or the innocent lives that
were lost because of what we did in the first place.
No, Sebastian is haunted by something. Just like Mateo, I'm betting it's something he
saw when the poltergeist had a hold of him. There's an expression on his face that he
only gets when he's keeping something from me. I wish I didn't know what it looks like,
but I've come to know my guys in our time together, and I can read him better now
than ever before.
"Was there a unicorn in any of your visions?" I ask the guys lightly, hoping to get them
to open up. "Or maybe you saw a strange older woman get brutally murdered, like
Mateo."
"It wasn't just that she was murdered," Mateo says, sounding uncharacteristically
emotional, even as he tosses the grenade up and down like a nervous tic. "It was that I
knew it was my fault. There was no doubt in my mind that machete was tearing her into
pieces because of me."
"Accountability? That's new, coming from you."
Scowling, Mateo whirls on Sebastian and clutches the grenade tightly, like he's thinking
about lobbing it in the other demon's general direction. "What about you, what did you
see? Because I doubt it was all rainbows and butterflies. I told you mine, you tell me
yours."
"That's not how it works."
They glare at each other, practically growling like a couple of hormonal werewolves.
Just when I feel like I'm about to have to break up an absurd and unnecessary fight,
Lynx steps in.
"I saw a building go up in flames." His voice is calm, clear, but there's some unspoken
emotion underneath it. "Like you, Mateo, somehow I knew it was my fault. Not just
because there was a match in my hand, still lit. And..." There's a moment of silence.
"There were people in the building. People who died because of me. Maybe because I
wanted to kill them."
Because his expression is so heavy, his voice so full of emotion, I tell Lynx, "It wasn't
real."
"Are you sure of that?" He asks it simply, his hands loose at his sides, looking at me
askance. "Because I'm pretty sure it wasn't a hallucination. It was a memory."
Chapter 8
OUR CONVERSATION in the village stays with me the whole helicopter ride back to the
closest city, and again the whole flight overseas. My mind keeps running over and over
everything. Thankfully our private jet, charted just for us by Headmaster Towers and
the mages, is quiet enough to allow for thinking. Among the top of my thoughts is: how
in the world did anyone let this happen? Especially the mages, who should've known
better. Especially me, after every lesson I thought I'd learned about evil and betrayal.
There was a cleanup in the little village. The bodies... I didn't want to, but I had to count
them before I left. Eight dead. More than should've died today, but fewer than I feared.
Apparently someone shouted out a warning after the first death, and almost everyone
got out in time to avoid the Manslayer's wrath. He wasn't very well-versed in modern
planes, trains, or automobiles, so I guess we have that to be thankful for, if nothing else.
Most of the village got out safely.
Not all of them.
And I know, without self-pity but just with a simple kind of certainty, that it was all my
fault. I'm the one who let the monster loose from his cage. I had a choice, and I picked
power and the unknown over safety and the knowable. Those innocent deaths are on
my hands.
If there were any justice in the world, I'd stand trial in front of some sort of judge and
jury. But because there isn't, my recklessness—justified or not—got all those people
killed, and no one will ever know. The mage council will make sure of it. The cleaners
who showed up to handle it seemed unfazed by the entire thing.
I'll have nightmares about the blood, the guilt, my part in all of it, but a member of the
mage council showed up herself to thank me for making the bracelet whole again, her
eyes on my elbow as she invited me to visit their esteemed post-graduate academy for
further training and study after Headmaster Towers is done with me.
I have the feeling that if Towers weren't a mage herself, who has dealt with the council
previously, the mage might've tried to pluck the bracelet from my elbow right then and
there. It would've been a mistake—between my power and my quartet, I'm sure I
could've made it troublesome for her. Besides, the stupid thing is bonded to my
bloodline, wretched as that blood is.
It won't come off even when I dig my fingernails beneath it and tug.
And despite its immense power, I want it off. All it makes me feel is guilt and shame.
Like my demons with their hallucinations, or memories, or whatever they are. I feel
responsible for every single death that happened in that village.
Eyeing the guys as our plane nears the gate we'll take to get back on campus, I wonder
what the poltergeist showed each of them. Lynx saw a fire he thinks he started. Mateo
saw a woman be brutally murdered. If they really are memories, maybe they have
something to do with the contract that has them bound to Hell.
I freed the immortals from their prisons, and killed the Manslayer, because I wanted to
be able to free my guys as well. I thought the bracelet would let me do that. Until I
found out from the only known untethered demon, Malavic, that the supposed way to
free a demon is for them to die and come back with their bodies and memories intact.
It's a riddle, or a trick—that sort of thing isn't possible. If he really did pull it off like he
claimed, there's no way we'll be able to pull it off too.
Unless.
There's something I don't know.
Something the bracelet might help me accomplish—along with some research and my
ever-present friends.
That's assuming, of course, that the Phoenix Academy campus is still standing when we
arrive.
We arrive on the east cost, somewhere between here and there, at a secret second gate
into Phoenix Academy near a small veterinarian's office and an ice cream shop. It's
faster for us to go through here than to fly all the way back to San Diego and head to the
Indian grocery store, but the gate strictly opens on the inside, which means settling into
chairs on the outside patio of the ice cream shop and waiting for someone to show up.
As we wait, the conversation finally turns back to the only topic I've been thinking
about. Mateo is the one who speaks up, his voice surprisingly contemplative. "If our
hallucinations were memories, then do you think..."
"No," Sebastian cuts in, voice harsh. "We can't even consider it."
Lynx murmurs, "It does seem like, if the poltergeist could tap into our memories with
trauma, maybe we could figure out a way to die and come back with them intact."
My heart leaps, and I lean towards him, biting my lower lip. "You really think it might
be possible?"
"I have no idea," he admits. "This isn't something I can really research. Malavic is the
only one who's ever done it, and he's a slippery bastard. But he shouldn't have been
able to lie to someone who summoned him, so it seems that he was telling the truth. If
he did it..."
Sebastian's expression could cut through stone. "After everything, you really think this
is something worth considering? The risk isn't worthwhile."
"How would you know?" Lynx shoots back. "Maybe it isn't as risky as it seems. I don't
remember the world ending when Malavic freed himself."
Ezra mutters, "You're being foolish." He cuts his eyes at Lynx, a rare menace in his
green gaze. "It would be immensely selfish of us to free ourselves and take even the
tiniest risk that there are consequences. A demon dying and coming back without
losing their bodies or memories... it's too close to necromancy. To what created the
soulless man we just fought. Do you really want to risk turning into that? No, it isn't
worth it. We can't free ourselves."
There's a heavy silence on the plane. Into it, I clear my throat. "And what if I freed you?"
Four sets of eyes look to me. Green, blue, honey brown, and dark as freshly poured
coffee. To say that they're all dismayed is an understatement.
"You can't risk anything more for us," Ezra insists. "We're going home, dealing with that
bracelet, and things are going back to normal."
Lynx says, "If you're considering summoning Malavic again, don't. The last thing you
need to do is risk yourself with that troublemaker again."
"I have the seven immortals' power in Gaugin's bracelet," I point out to them. "It can
protect me. I feel it. And what if we have this one opportunity to figure things out and
free you from your contracts, but we don't take it?"
Sebastian's blue eyes are sorrowful but insistent. "It absolutely isn't worth the risk to
you. We made our beds. The lives we had before we died were awful enough that we
didn't deserve the rest of the Great Beyond. Whoever we were before, those people
agreed to a contract with Hell. There's no going back now."
Mateo says, "It's stupid, anyway. How would keeping our memories intact change
anything? Malavic must've gotten something wrong. Or it was all some kind of trick or
riddle or something."
Biting my lip, I point out, "It could be the memories you had from when you were alive
that you need. And you saw those. If getting them back can free you—"
"No. You won't even think of it." Ezra's voice is firm, and I bristle at his tone. Just
because he's often the leader of the quartet doesn't mean he gets to boss me around.
Narrowing his eyes at me, he adds, "I know you don't like it when I tell you what to do.
But right now I don't care. This is for your own safety. Messing with Hell isn't like
anything you've done before. No matter who you've fought or how many times you've
died, that'll always be true."
Sighing, I turn to look down the street, mouth sealed firmly shut, forcing my thoughts
down inside.
I have to free them. It's what I set out to do, and despite everything, I'm more
determined to do it now than I was before. All of this—the fighting, the betrayal, lives
lost—can't be for nothing. There has to be a light at the end of the tunnel, some answers
beyond the golden brick road.
I'll do what it takes to find out how to free them. Just as soon as this messy business
with the bracelet is taken care of.
Soon enough, our liaison here at the secondary gate arrives, and we receive the call that
the inside is going to be unlocked. It's time to go through, and head back to campus—
which is hopefully still intact, a fully healed Petra somewhere on the other side of the
wrought iron gates.
I don't know what I'll do if it turns out that the bloodshed I caused with my foolishness
spread all the way to here. It was one thing to see those innocent lives taken because the
Manslayer managed to take me on a ride. If my friends or teachers suffered for it, I'll
never stop blaming myself.
"How are things back at the academy?" I ask our guide as he ushers us through a
hidden door and into a magic tunnel that'll lead us to the school. "Everything okay? No
cataclysmic events we should know about?"
"Actually." He clears his throat, looking nervously at me and my guys as he pulls the
door shut behind us and locks it thoroughly. "About that..."
As we step through the tunnel and onto the other side, at a doorway near a back part of
the campus that hasn't been kept up, I let a little phoenix fire pool in the palm of my
hand and cautiously survey our surroundings.
"You don't have to do that," our guide says, frowning at me. "There's no threat inside
the campus gates. Professor Auerbach says his wards have contained the problem."
Our guide back to campus is a third year student that the headmaster apparently
decided she could do without, despite the current demonic threat to the entire campus.
Looking at his string bean body, I find myself agreeing with her assessment—especially
if he's this foolish about walking back to a campus with demons attacking on all sides.
Yep, demons.
Apparently they started attacking early yesterday morning, hours before I'd gotten
Gaugin's bracelet. Michael, our guide, says that Professor Auerbach has pinpointed
their presence to a disruption in the spirit realm that he believes has been caused by a
leak in demonic energy into the mortal realm. A leak, he says, that is somehow
connected to the presence of Ari, our Blue Phoenix, on campus.
Something to do with a trickster demon needing a witch-turned-phoenix to help him
escape into the mortal realm untethered.
As in, not summoned by a Grim, or a misplaced mortal plea for revenge, or even by a
dark spell and a sacrifice, like the one those assholes used on that cliff the night I died.
No, this demon wouldn't be tethered by contracts or deals or even blood magic. He
would be fully, completely free—even freer than Malavic. Capable of causing
destruction.
And he plans on bringing an army with him.
The threat, our guide seems certain, is contained. But I know demons. They're not
exactly put off by a bit of a challenge. Freedom is their biggest desire—and one mage
standing between them and what they want isn't nearly enough.
"Bring me to the headmaster," I tell him. "And Auerbach. And, well, everyone else."
Ezra arches a brow at me. "What are you going to do?"
I hold my arm up. "Figure out what the fuck this thing does."
I've got the power of seven immortals now. Surely that's six immortals more than is
required to beat a demon horde back from the campus gates.
"How did you let this happen?" I stare Auerbach down, ignoring a twinge of guilt at the
tired expression on his face. "I've barely been gone a few days. I mean, maybe five at the
most."
"It's been a week," he says, which surprises me. "I know cell reception was bad on that
island you were on, but surely you saw the sun rise and set."
Rubbing the back of my neck, I admit, "I was on a plane for a lot of it. And inside the
spirit realm. Didn't Petra tell you?"
Raising her upper body off the cot she's been forced onto, and ignoring the protests of
the medic trying to tend to her cauterized skin, Petra glares me down. "I can still shift
into a bigass fucking wolf and tear your throat out with my teeth."
Mateo quips, "You shouldn't. She'd probably give you rabies."
They both guffaw at this, and I just roll my eyes, turning back to Auerbach. He's sitting
at a chair by Ari's side, tending to her in the magical coma she's entered in between
bouts of refreshing the wards around the campus. It looks like he hasn't slept.
I study his face. "What happened? The guide who brought us through the tunnel
seemed to know just enough to confuse the fuck out of me. Did she really bring the
demons to our doorstep?"
"I don't know," he admits. "She was... taking care of an issue with a poltergeist. I'm
afraid that I pushed her too hard. Or expected too much of her. I don't know which. But
she went into the spirit realm, along with her three shifter familiars." He winces. "They
didn't come back. She did. But before she could tell us what was going on, she
collapsed. That was the day before yesterday."
Pacing over to Ari's side, Lynx looks down at her and comments, "Her eyes are moving
rapidly beneath her eyelids. Almost like she's dreaming."
"I believe she is in a state of REM sleep, yes. Whether it's physical, mental, or magical...
well, I have the feeling it's the latter." He sighs, pushing a hand through his hair. "I
never should've encouraged her to deal with a poltergeist's energy. What I thought was
a simple spirit turned out to be something more. And she went into the spirit realm to
deal with it. When she came back, something slipped through the door with her. Some
things. Demons. I managed to push them back, to wrap them in wards and keep them
from getting onto the campus. But I can't banish them from the mortal plane."
All eyes look to me. Petra says, "You can do that, Dani. Especially now that you've got a
fancy ass bracelet. Demons are nothing compared to that fucking thing you abandoned
me to fight."
I frown at her. "I did not abandon you, I saved your life. And the Manslayer is dead
now."
"You sure about that? He was kind of being held together by a shit ton of gnarly magic."
"I mean, I severed his head from his body and had the villagers burn it in two separate
pyres, so yeah, I'm pretty sure he's dead." To my surprise, the Danish villagers took on
what I told them to do with aplomb. Maybe tiny Danish villages see more bad mythical
magical shit than I realized. "I can deal with demons. I think. I mean, I've never
dismissed one I didn't summon."
Leaning up against the wall near Ari's bed, Sebastian points out, "You dealt with that
poltergeist pretty well, and you didn't summon it."
"True." Turning to Auerbach, I ask him the one question that's on my mind. "First,
though, how do we save Ari?"
He looks up at me with a drawn and sober expression. "You can't. She's already lost."
Chapter 9
I GLARE HIM DOWN. "She's not dead. Her body is right here. You can't honestly tell me
that her soul can't be saved."
"Dani, she's—"
"I just learned this rune from Gaugin that puts a spirit back in its body," I tell him,
thinking quickly. "I can use it on her. And before you object again, just know that there's
no fucking way I'm letting the only other rare phoenix around here die like it's no big
deal. Especially after all the terrible shit she's been through. Ari deserves someone to
fight on her behalf."
Holding a hand up, Auerbach patiently tells me, "I wasn't saying that you should let her
die. What I'm telling you is that only Ari can save herself from the predicament she's
currently in. Trickster demons are a sticky thing. Luckily, she has her familiars with
her—body and soul. And she was born a witch, with all the learning that entails. The
spirit realm will be a labyrinth for her, yes, but I'm certain she can get out of the
demon's hold."
I blink at him. "I thought you said the demons followed her through the door."
"Some of the trickster's army did, yes. But before she slipped away, Ari managed to tell
me that she made some kind of deal with the trickster. They're battling it out now in the
spirit realm. She did what she could to protect us from the demonic threat—now I just
need you to help me save the campus before my wards fail. And Dani," he adds, a grave
expression on his face, "my wards will fail."
"How do I do it?" I ask him, looking around at my guys, who are preparing themselves
for another fight. "Do I just dismiss them all? Is that it?"
Headmaster Towers walks into the infirmary, where we're all gathered, her bright red
hair in a messy greasy bun, her clothes disheveled, looking nothing like the puttogether headmaster I know.
She tells me, "The only way to save the academy is to close the door to Hell."
Well, fuck.
Welcome back to Phoenix Academy, Dani Carpenter.
Here's another supernatural mess for you to clean up.
Lynx has a book in mind. Of course he does. The Melisandra Library upstairs doesn't
have it, because it's rare and dangerous—of course it is. But Auerbach, well-connected
with the Council of Mages, is able to call in a favor, perform a spell that looks like it
ages him a month in a single moment, and summon the book from across continents.
First, though, I eat dinner. With two desserts, just in case. Everyone in the dining hall
looks drawn and wary—I guess they're tired of going to a school where your life is
threatened more often than you take final exams. If things don't settle down soon,
Towers won't have enough rich shifter families' tuition money to keep this place up and
running.
Thankfully I'm back, and I've got power at my fingertips, my guys thoroughly at my
sides, and a dweeb like Auerbach around to make important books pop onto the surface
of his desk. The sudden change of pressure in the air makes me grimace and rub my
fingers in my ears, but it's certainly easier than dealing with the Head Librarian.
That woman is likely to kill me in my sleep one of these days.
Staring at the book, Lynx exclaims, "That's so exciting! Where did it come from?"
"A library in Morocco," Auerbach says, sounding like a kid in a candy shop as he
strokes the cover of the book. "Normally they don't lend out, but considering the
circumstances... I've never seen a book this rare in person." Leaning down, he sniffs the
air above the book's cover, and Lynx actually does the same a moment later. "It even
smells old."
"And like spices and pigment," Lynx adds. "I wonder what it's bound with."
"I believe the glue was..."
I tune out the rest of their nerd talk, incredibly grateful that my book-obsessed demon
has amazing abs. He wouldn't get away with being such a doofus and a dork otherwise.
That ass helps too. My eyes drift to it as Lynx and Auerbach get into the nitty gritty of
the book's translator and the pulp of its paper, then even the embossed gold of the
cover.
Eventually, though, it's time for brass tacks. "What will this help us figure out about the
door to Hell?"
Lynx jerks his head up, blinking out of his book nerd stupor. "It's all about veils.
Barriers between this realm and others—the spirit realm, Purgatory, and of course
Hell."
"A book about doors, in essence," Auerbach explains. Raising a hand, he rubs his chin
thoughtfully. "We've seen the door manifest itself beyond the north wall around the
campus, just past my wards. And when I'm close, I can sense it: brimstone, heat,
damnation. I'm sure you four would be able to sense it even more thoroughly."
In a dour voice, Sebastian says, "We've spent more time at the outskirts of Hell than a
mortal mage like you could possibly imagine."
"It smells like unwashed balls," Mateo says, which makes me wrinkle my nose
unpleasantly. He shrugs in my direction. "It's just true."
"You would know," Lynx gripes. "The only time you wash your balls is when forced."
"Technically, when we're incorporeal in that in-between place—which I guess won't
happen much anymore—we don't sweat. And demons don't age. So. I smell like a
newborn baby's butt cheeks, thank you very much."
I wave my hands in the air, holding back incredulous laughter. "Okay, okay! Enough
talking about Mateo's balls. No offense babe, but we've got more important things to
discuss."
Auerbach has an expression on his face that says he very much wishes he was never
here for this conversation. "I agree. We need to discuss how this gate to Hell will be
closed. After all, the runes on it..."
The mage hesitates, and I frown in his direction. "Runes? What runes?"
"If there's something you know, spit it out," Sebastian growls, while Auerbach's gaze
wanders the room, distinctly uncomfortable. "We can't let the entire campus be flooded
with dozens of demons just because you kept secrets."
Auerbach sighs. "Of course. I'm hoping that we'll find more answers in our research,
but this being so time sensitive... I have no idea how long my wards will hold, after all. I
just..." He trails off, then straightens his spine, resolutely facing off—towards me, his
gaze holding mine. "There were mage runes on the door. Almost as if it was forged by
mage hands, centuries or... well, likely millennia ago."
I frown at him. "You think a mage made a door to Hell?"
"No, after some thought, I don't think a mage did it. Rather, I believe that the form of
magic I practice—that every trained mage practices—must descend from something,
well, otherworldly in nature. Something ancient, formed by immortals perhaps, or at
least by a culture other than humanity. Which makes me wonder if perhaps the runes I
use and the summoning circles you use are similar."
"Okay." I blink at him, frowning. "No offense, but how does that help us close the door?
It all sounds very fascinating for you, I'm sure, just not useful."
"The runes on the door had an inscription." He's playing with the edge of his sleeve
now, while next to him, Lynx is leaned over the book, worshipping its pages. There's
something Auerbach won't just spit out, so I frown at him, hoping he'll out with it. "It
said something about a... a sacrifice being required. Blood opens the door, and blood
closes it."
"We've got plenty of that," I point out. "There are enough phoenix and shifters with
regenerative powers here to fill a Floridian swimming pool."
"Not that kind of blood." Auerbach's eyes can't quite meet mine. "Demonic blood.
Lifeblood, to be exact."
The room goes deadly silent. Panic crawls up my throat. A familiar fear fills me, one I
felt when I was facing off against Lainey, whose chest only opened when enough lives
were sacrificed, and my guys wanted to be the ones who died for me.
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 Hellfireforged 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.
I can't give up this easily though. Inevitable or not, I'm a stubborn bitch. I'll fight anyone
and anything for my guys—including fate itself.
"Cheer up," Mateo says. "We get to slaughter a bunch of demons now."
Chapter 11
GOO. Ick. Gooey ick. That dry lint stuff that forms in your belly button and mixed with
bits of skin. Toe jam. Pus.
What comes out of the demons as we cut them down is the most disgusting shit I've
ever seen, felt, smelled, or—I shudder as a sploogey bit of it latches on near my
mouth—tasted.
So of course, as he lobs grenades at them and shoots them in their various appendages,
Mateo has a shit-eating grin on his face like he's winning rounds of Blackjack at a
casino.
"The sound they make when they die is fucking mental!" He laughs, aims, shoots,
laughs again. "I can't even tell what shape that thing was, but I think I shot it in the
head."
"Talk less." Ezra swings his sword with an expression of grim determination—and
disgust. "We're losing ground bit by bit. And Auerbach won't be able to keep up the
wards for much longer."
He's right. We've only been fighting for a little over half an hour, letting down the
wards in select places and facing whatever manages to slip through, but already our
line of fighters is further back from the gates than where we started. At this rate—and
the rate at which the demons are pouring into the gap where dead ones fall—they'll get
past us and overwhelm the campus in under an hour.
All around me, shifters pounce. Lions, tigers, and bears—oh my, but it does nothing to
change the overwhelming odds. Yohan throws balls of orange fire that tear holes in
black-scaled demonic things. Headmaster Towers raises walls of red flame that
incinerate everything they touch, scorching through the grass and trees of the campus
as well as the demons.
Ezra and Sebastian cut them down with blades. Lynx takes bombs and grenades from
Mateo, makes traps with rope in the trees, and blows holes in them ten feet wide. Mateo
empties clip after clip. And I drive them back, throwing black-and-orange fire at them
with one hand, reaching out with my Grim energy with the other and forcing them
back, back, through the veil and to Hell.
Every once and a while I draw on the power of the bracelet on my elbow, trying to
channel its strength, but my control is wobbly—nearly non-existent, to be honest. I
mostly just manage to throw dragon fire towards the sky, with none of the finesse of my
phoenix fire abilities.
But the gap in the open gate remains. They keep coming through. And while most of
them are the lower level, horrible-looking things that resemble worms and spiders and
other animals made into upside-down versions of themselves, some of the demons I
spot in the crowd are nearly human. They walk on two legs and have two eyes. None
are quite the upper level of my guys, but any minute now a demon with powers and
intelligence will walk through, command the horde into something resembling an
army, and turn the tide against us.
We can't keep this up.
I know that.
Just like I know what has to happen next.
That doesn't mean that I have to like it. I'm a stubborn bitch; I get used to having things
a certain way. My foster mother Sara used to complain that if she served me special
pancakes for breakfast one morning, I'd whine and complaining if I didn't get them the
next. Every time something in my life is fantastic, I want everything to be that way—
and when I get comfortable, like an old hunting dog laying down by the fire, I snap if
you try to move me.
This, though, is the only thing I can think of to do next. The only thing that might work.
And if I don't accept that now, it'll be too late when it does happen.
"Ezra!" I call out to him, then motion towards Lynx to finish setting his trap in the
woods. "Mateo, throw that grenade and get over here. Sebastian—you too. I want to
talk to you guys."
We fall back. Other fighters fill in the gaps they leave behind. I tell myself that my heart
is beating fast because of adrenaline from the battle, and nothing more at all.
When they're surrounding me, silent and splattered with goo, I take a good look into
each of their eyes. I think about everything we've shared—and how hard we've fought
to stay together. We've been torn apart and brought back again. I lost them, and fought
to return to them. So much has happened since that day on the cliffs. We're not done
with our story just yet, though.
"What is it, Dani?" Mateo reloads his guns as he speaks to me. "Make it fast. I want to
see how my nine millimeter does against that thing with a dozen arms—aw, Fisk got to
it first." He cranes his neck towards the battlefield. "Well, there'll be another. I'm pretty
sure its head is at the bottom end of its body."
I shudder, hating that this is my life now. Somewhere out there, in an alternate
dimension, another Dani got a rich foster father and is spending her days on private
planes getting manicures and making friends with models—though if her life is
anything worth living, she has a Swordwielder, a Poisoner, a Choker and a Bomber at
her side, just like me.
I'd like a life without demon goo, thanks very much.
"There's something we have to do if we're going to win this battle."
"There is," Ezra agrees gravely. "We have to close that door."
"Eventually," I shoot back, putting all the force of my words into it. "But not yet. You
can't do it."
Sebastian raises his brows. "Will you order us not to, if it comes down to that?"
It better not come down to that. Not if I have anything to say with it. "I'm still not
convinced that we can't just wait for an evolved enough demon to wriggle its way
through that gate and slash the thing's wrists to get it to close. But no, there's something
else we have to do. Someone we need to talk to who I think may be of help to us if it... if
it comes to the worst. Which I want to prepare for." I swallow, forcing myself to blink
back the tears, to choke down the grief. "Just in case."
Lynx figures it out first. "Malavic. You want to summon him, and figure out how he got
his memories back after dying. So that if we have to die too, we can do the same thing."
"Exactly." My stomach twists, because I know they aren't going to like this, so I quickly
say, "Look, I know it's not a great plan, summoning the trickiest, least controllable
demon out there, with no way to make him give us what we want. But if it's the only
way—"
"Do it," Sebastian says, his voice surprisingly firm. "Just make sure you've got that
bracelet on your wrist. If you figure out how to use all its power at once, even Malavic
would have to fall in line."
I snort at that thought. The demon I met didn't seem like the type to bend knee so
easily. Then again, no one in the world has the power of all seven immortals, and I'm
supposed to at least use it against this demonic threat until we figure out what else it's
good for. If Malavic can help us close the gate some other way, or tell me how to keep
my quartet from losing everything, technically that counts.
"I'm glad you guys aren't going to stop me. I need to find out more information from
him." I meet all their gazes one by one. "I hope you'll wait to do anything rash until after
I'm done. But while I'm summoning him..."
"We need to beat back the demonic horde," Ezra says, understanding quickly. "We'll do
whatever it takes. But Dani... don't give him anything valuable."
Lynx adds, "Including knowledge. You never know what a demon will do with that."
He winks at me. "Just saying."
Leaning forward, my book nerd of a demon kisses me quickly on the lips. Mateo
presses his mouth to my forehead, and Ezra squeezes my arm while giving me a soft
kiss on the mouth. Sebastian just stares at me, blue eyes raw and wanting, then nods
sharply and turns back to battle, his blood and goo-slicked blades at the ready.
I'm doing this for them, I remind myself, despite the shiver that goes down my back at
the thought of summoning Malavic again. I can do it. I can figure out some way to—
well, if not control him, cajole him.
I just hope that I have something he wants.
Preferably something I can afford to part with.
Somehow I doubt he'll settle for another one of my lives. Not that I can part with one—
I'm running very low now, for a phoenix who started with twelve to begin with. I
should probably save at least a handful for whatever is bound to come next. And
skydiving—I've always wanted to try that.
Thinking about all the various, horrifying, terrible things Malavic might want, I draw
his summoning circle onto the ground in white chalk. I'm careful to close the circle
entirely—any gap in the line is something he could take advantage of if he wanted to,
and based on the ancient hunger I saw in his eyes when I summoned him last, taking
advantage of weaknesses is in his nature.
Without him, I wouldn't have found Gaugin's bracelet. I have its power now, though,
which means he can't railroad me completely. And just because I don't know entirely
how to use that power doesn't mean he has to know that. I'm in charge this time.
Maybe. Mostly. I hope.
Taking a deep breath, I stand several inches away from the edge of the summoning
circle, mindful of my feet this time, and say the incantation that will summon him.
Then I wait. I know Malavic has the option to refuse my summoning. He's a free
demon, after all. No bonds, no contracts, no obligation to answer a Grim's call. If he
wants to he can pop into his summoning circle, take a long piss on it, then pop back out
again.
I wouldn't put it past him. But I have the feeling he's going to come. His life—or
afterlife, as the case may be—is pretty boring, after all. Answering my summons is the
most adventure he'll get all year. And he has to be wondering why I'm calling to him
again so soon after last time, when he gave me the object that I sought but not the
answers I desired.
At least, not in the way that I wanted.
With demons there's always a catch.
Even my guys, as much as I love them, have their catches. Their secrets. Mysterious
pasts and sins they're serving time for. Whatever they've done, whoever they were, I
may never know. And it grieves me to admit it.
After what feels like a whole minute, I smell a whiff of sulphur in the air. Feel the
pressure around me change. Then, with a blast of smoke and a glow of otherworldly
power, the demon himself pops into view, standing on the white symbol that represents
his true name.
I raise my brows at the sight of him. "Decided to get a makeover, did you?"
"Apparently I was out of fashion." He grimaces, running a hand through his dark,
short-cropped hair with a peeved expression. "The modern era is exhausting. A new
look every decade? Spare me. And now I have no use for all that hairspray. But at least I
don't look like a fool anymore."
He does seem more intimidating now that he's not wearing his throwback '80s classicrock-meets-hip-hop clothing. His jeans are a normal, medium wash that actually fits, his
shirt a black silk button up for flare, and he's no longer wearing eyeliner or teasing his
hair above his head. Without all the retro passé bullshit getting in the way, Malavic's
power shines through that much brighter, his eyes glowing golden, his presence heavy
in the air with ancient magic.
The hair on the back of my neck stands up when he looks at me, and I can't help but
remember: he took one of my lives. He burned my body. While he claimed it was to
unite my two magical selves, Grim and phoenix, I have no doubt that there was an
advantage for him as well. Maybe he just liked the taste of my life. Or maybe, as an
ancient, powerful, free demon, he's capable of taking my life and using it for nefarious
purposes.
"You seem... different." He cocks his head, narrowing his glowing golden eyes at me. In
an almost accusatory voice he says, "You let someone perform magic on you.
Permanent magic. The kind that changes the bond between a Black Phoenix and her
demons."
"It was necessary. I had to kill an immortal being who controlled a dangerous
poltergeist... long story. Actually, not that long: the bracelet came with a few side
projects. But now it's fully powered up." I raise my arm so he can see it in all its glory.
"Now so wimpy anymore."
"I can see that. The thing glows... but not as much as you. Pulling your spirit bond with
your demons into the mortal realm has changed the energy of your very soul." Looking
me up and down with a slow, lascivious gaze that would get him killed if my quartet
were standing next to me, he smacks his lips. "It's positively delicious."
"Thanks? But gross. I'm not here for you to leer at me like an old man at a singles bar.
We have business to attend to. I need answers."
"Somehow I thought you'd come back for more." Prowling to the edge of his
summoning circle, he smirks at me, and I deliberately plant my feet, refusing to lean
back or give ground. "Let me guess, you didn't like what I told you about the secret to
my freedom."
"It wasn't as satisfying of an answer as I'd hoped, but you already know that."
I stare him down, swallowing my fear, ignoring the churning of my stomach at being so
close to such an ancient and powerful demon. The last time I summoned him, he held
me against his chest and slashed my throat with a knife. I was reborn in the ashes of my
own body, burned in hellfire.
It's hard not to be intimidated.
But I've killed a soulless immortal since then, and have his power running through a
thin circlet around my elbow, tied to the blood I share with Gaugin through our shitheel
of a father. I won't let myself be intimidated. The dragon wouldn't, after all, and his
spirit lives on with me, in its own way.
"Fascinating." Malavic narrows his eyes in my direction, studying my face intently.
"You've traveled through the spirit realm since I last saw you, and taken some of its
power back with you. I can see it in those dark eyes of yours."
"My eyes are hazel," I tell him, stiffening at the memory of the black inkiness of my gaze
after I awoke in ashes at his feet. "Let's get this over with: tell me what you want for the
information you have about freeing yourself from your contract. Not that useless
bullshit about coming back to life with your memories intact—I want to know what you
did, in agonizing detail, told in the most literal way possible. You wouldn't be here if
there wasn't something you want from me. So spill, demon, or stop wasting my time."
"Feisty." His smirk is somehow lustful and condescending at the same time. "It's such a
shame you're already taken. I love a little spirit in my women."
I hold my tongue and barely managed to keep myself from incinerating him. I need the
knowledge he possesses. "Just tell me what you want already."
"Very well." He leans as close to me as he can, the barrier of the summoning circle
keeping him from touching me. "I've tasted your life, little phoenix, and how delicious it
was. What I want now is a promise from you: that you'll do me a favor."
I snort. "Really? You think I'm stupid? I'm not agreeing to something so vague."
"If you want me to be specific, I suppose that I can... how unfortunate that we have to
do it standing in the woods like this, without the ability to seal it with a handshake or
something more. I always preferred to conduct my business negotiations over tea by a
warm fire."
"You'll deal," I tell him, swallowing all the insults and anger that I want to shoot in his
direction. "This favor—tell me what you want, in very exact terms, and maybe I'll
consider it."
"How stubbornly short-sighted of you. I find, personally, that I prefer when things are
vague." He smirks. "It leaves so much room for the imagination. Since you insist,
however... the favor I want from you is simple: I'd like you to bring me to Hell."
I raise my brows at him. "Can't you just go on your own? Also—what makes you think I
can get you to Hell?"
"First question: I can't go to Hell, because it's another realm, and I can only move
through realms when summoned. Does that surprise you? Purgatory is terribly boring,
I have to admit. I thought when I erased my contract that I'd be as free as I wanted to
be, but my soul has no true home, so I'm stuck in the place where the unsettled go.
While my corner of Purgatory is as nice as I can make it... I'd like to go other places."
"I don't know how bringing you to Hell would help with that. And again: I don't know
how I'd get you there."
"Oh, you'll get me there," he says vaguely. "Very soon, in fact. As far as what I want to
do in Hell... let that be between me and my maker."
"Sounds like a trick."
"How could it be?" Malavic raises his brows at me. "Hell is where demons like me
belong, after all. It's where we're forged. Putting me back there doesn't put anyone at
risk." I frown at him, and he sighs. "Very well, I can tell you want some more info. So I'll
simply explain: I have some unfinished business in the depths of Hell. Satisfy you?"
It doesn't, but I need his information, and his request is simple, as far as things go. The
only thing is, "I can try, but I have no idea how to get you down there."
"Leave that part to me. When I tell you what you want to know, well, let's just say it'll
all become very clear. So bring an ear close, darling phoenix, and all the secrets of the
afterlife will be yours."
I grumble, "It seems like you could just tell me from there."
But because he clearly wants to be dramatic, and I can't control him or change his mind,
I give in to Malavic's request. Glancing down carefully at the white chalk line, I step
forward until my toes are the merest whisper away from the edges of the circle that
holds him in. Then I lean forward, tucking my hair behind my ear, and wait for him to
reveal all to me.
"The secret, my dearest, is simple: in order to be reborn free, a demon must die... by
facing himself in Hell, instead of running away. All his misdeeds. All his old memories.
Every sin, every person hurt, all the lives lost—everything that got his contract forged."
Malavic chuckles, low and dark. "The path is twisted, and I have no doubt you'll want
to go down it with your men. But trust that what I tell you is true: if you go to Hell with
your demons, you're unlikely to ever get out. And what you find there may sear its way
onto your soul forever, dragging you down, denying you the very afterlife you seek.
"Lost souls who make their way to Hell rarely find peace in the Great Beyond. So
choose wisely. If you want your men to be free, you must risk everything—and you
may not ever leave the fiery depths of the pit of unending torture. Just think: the hordes
of slathering demons you face are the very least of Hell's horrors. Tread lightly, little
phoenix."
Chapter 12
"WE'RE GOING TO HELL." I announce this standing in a tiny clearing covered in goo,
ickor, and various pieces of hacked-up demon. There's blood on my clothes, some of it
mine, some of it belonging to a bison shifter, a bit of it mysterious. "That pit where those
things crawled out of? It's where we have to go to free you guys, and to close the door,
all at the same time. We'll all have to die to do it. And it won't be easy, for all the
obvious reasons. So let's hope you're ready."
We're the only fighters left on the field; everyone else has fallen back to rest, regroup,
and have their injuries tended to. As soon as I was done with Malavic, our deal sealed
in mutual blood, I rejoined the battle, my hands full with demons to kill. It took until
now for us to get a break in the wave of the fighting, along with my only chance to tell
them the plan for what comes next.
They don't look too excited about the thought of returning to the place of their rebirth.
Ezra and Lynx exchange a look of shared worry; Sebastian silently broods, while Mateo
seems to be counting his remaining bullets and grenades, unconcerned.
"We drove the demonic horde away from campus," Ezra points out. "They've been
thoroughly beaten. Only minor injuries were sustained. This might be the last of them."
Behind us, Auerbach strides onto the battlefield, looking wizens and tired. "It won't be."
He pulls a thin silver circlet out of his collection, and approaches the gates as he speaks
to us. "I've managed to strengthen the wards, now that demons aren't thrusting their
variously hairy and scaled appendages through, but they'll come back through that
gate. Make no mistake: they fell back to regroup and fight again, just like us. That
means there's likely a leader among them, which means they'll come back with a
strategy next time. Fighting a faceless horde of teaming demons with no particular plan
is one thing. This next battle may very well overwhelm our forces permanently."
Worrying at my lower lip with my teeth, I ask him, "How is Ari? Were you able to wake
her?"
"No." His voice is grim as he drops the bracelet, releases its magic, and draws runes in
the air to strengthen the wards near the campus gates, which face the cracked-open gate
to Hell. "She's deep in a magical slumber. I believe she has to wake herself. We won't
find out what opened this gate, or why, until she's finished with her own battle."
"How long until the wards fall again?" Ezra asks.
"About two hours, a little more if we're lucky. After that... I'm not sure I'll be able to
build them again." Holding up his hands, he tells us wearily, "I'm almost out of magical
stores. And while the Council of Mages may send someone out here to help me, by the
time they arrive..."
Turning towards the guys, I tell them grimly, "It sounds like ending this is up to us. We
have some time to talk about it, and to regroup, but I think... I think the four of you are
going to have to close the door."
Mateo asks, "And then what? We just... die?"
"We go to Hell," I tell him. "The five of us. Together. And we end this thing for good—
freeing you guys and protecting the campus from invasion all at once. Forever."
Because we have a brief respite, and a lot of things to think about, my quartet and I
wind up back in my dorm room. The only thing is, now that all four of them are
corporeal all the time, it feels much... smaller.
"Think one or two of you could go all ghost-like?" I ask, as Mateo nearly upends my
bookshelf with a wayward brush of his shoulder. "I mean, no offense, but you don't fit."
"I seem to remember fitting pretty well on your bed," Mateo says, a glimmer in his eyes.
"And in other places."
"Yes, me as well." His blue gaze full of desire, Sebastian pushes me up against the
window and cages me between his arms, smirking down at me. "One last fuck before
we die sounds like a good idea."
From over his shoulder, Lynx calls out, "Showers first! We're covered in ick."
"I kinda like it." Mateo lifts an arm and sniffs his armpit. "All manly and tough."
Rolling my eyes, I shoo him towards the bedroom, plant a brief kiss on Sebastian's lips,
then duck under my blue-eyed demon's arms.
"I call first shower." Striding towards the bathroom, I toss over my shoulder, "Come
with me, Seb. Unless you want to be dirty?"
Ezra growls, "I think we all want to be very, very dirty."
The flash of his green eyes makes it clear what he's thinking of, and before I can make it
past him into the bathroom, he puts an arm around my waist and draws me against his
chest. Heat emanates from every inch of him, along with the clear lust of his hardened
cock brushing up against me from beneath his pants.
Crushing my lips against his in a tight, needy kiss, Ezra delves into my mouth and
stokes a different kind of fire in me. This isn't the fire I used to fight demons on the
battlefield or the one that burns within as I come back to life. It's the fire of lust, of need,
of an all-consuming love that makes it impossible to imagine a life without them,
including the afterlife.
I open my mouth to him. As I do so, I feel another touch brush against my back, and
after a moment Sebastian's lips are sucking lightly at the delicate skin of my neck. In the
bathroom, the taps turn on, and Mateo calls out, "Hey—no fair! You guys said shower
first. If you're staying out there..."
Pulling back from Ezra and Sebastian, I shoot them an apologetic look. "If you two don't
shower, he'll try to take a whore's bath and call it a done deal. C'mon—the water won't
be warm for long."
We wash up in the shower together, agreeing to go two by two, so the water stays
warm. Mateo and I go first, him stripping his explosives belts and grime-covered
clothes and dropping them on the ground. He kisses me with his mouth curved up in
happy amusement, because despite everything, Mateo will always see the best in
things.
"It's not a bad day to die," he says as we stumble back into the shower, the hot steam
stinging my shoulder blades. He draws me against him and presses his fingers into the
new tattoos on my back. "We killed lots of shit. I got to use my favorite guns and my
favorite explosives. And if we pull this off, we'll be fucking legendary."
Batting my eyes up at him, I ask, "Aren't we already legendary?"
"We should be," he boasts, grabbing the soap and drawing his hands across my wet
body, making suds wherever he touches me. I shiver as he twists my nipples in deft
fingers, his voice drawing down to a low octave. "When I look at you, I don't know
what I want to do more: fuck you until you scream, or kill anyone who even thinks
about hurting you. Today I get to do both. What could possibly be better than that?"
"Not dying would be better," I tell him, but he's already running his hands down to my
abdomen and getting down on his knees.
I gasp as he pushes me back against the door of the shower, my eyes going to the three
figures standing in the bathroom just beyond its fogged glass. Lynx, Ezra, and Sebastian
have undressed and are waiting, watching, their desire clear, willing to wait their turn
even as they harden at the sight of me naked. I'll never get used to what it feels like to
be worshipped, loved, and desired by all four of them.
As Mateo parts my thighs and pushes his tongue between them, I tip my head up
towards the shower head and let the water sluice down my skin. His mouth is deft,
warming me up with clever little flicks and presses of his tongue, starting on my inner
thighs and working his way in.
I moan, my legs resting against his arms as he takes my weight, my lower lips pulsing
with desire and my body warming against him. I push myself onto his face and enjoy
the burn of stubble, the coaxing of his tongue, warm water all around me as he brings
me to a soft and gasping climax with nothing but his mouth and the knowledge of each
other's bodies that we have from so much time together.
When he stands up, there's a grin on his lips, and his cock is so hard it bobs against my
abdomen. Grabbing the soap, I slick him up, reaching down towards his shaft and
wordlessly meeting his eyes as I stroke it. He lets his gaze travel up and down my body,
the lust clear in his eyes.
Sebastian calls out, "Don't use all the hot water!"
"Fuck you!" Mateo shoots back.
"Dani will soon," Sebastian promises, and my pussy twitches at the thought of the
pleasure he'll wring out of my body. "Very soon."
Because the water really will get cold, we move on to washing ourselves properly,
grabbing the shampoo and soaping up. I spend extra time with the conditioner, running
my fingers through my shortened, bleached hair. Mateo kisses me as he rinses the suds
from his dark locks, his mouth making promises.
"If we die today," he says, low voice for my ears only, "and I mean really, actually, not
coming back die, I'll find you again. I swear it."
"You can't know that." My voice comes out choked with emotion. "You won't have your
memories. You won't even know you made this promise."
"I will." He stares at me, his dark brown eyes sure. "If nothing else, my love for you will
lead me back to you, no matter what body I'm in or what memories are in my head.
That, and I want to taste that pussy again." Grinning impishly, he kisses me like he's
stealing the kiss. "You won't get rid of me, Dani Carpenter. Not in a thousand years."
Then he slips out of the shower, leaving me to condition my hair and tilt my face up
towards the running water in the hope that it might hide the tears rolling down my
face.
I'm not ready. I never will be. Two hours, two years, two decades, even two centuries—
it could never be enough time. Not with them. Heart of my heart, soul of my soul, I will
never rest easy until the day they're free. Until the day I know I'll be with them always,
here and wherever my soul goes next, into the Great Beyond.
If nothing else, though, I have to enjoy them while they're still here. So as Lynx reaches
out to grab the shower door and lets himself in, I force myself to swallow my grief and
my fear, and enjoy another moment with my wonderful, kind, smart, and sexy book
nerd of a demon.
"Nice abs," I tell him, splaying my hand against his rippled abdomen. His skin warms
beneath my touch as the steam rises up between us. "Do you read many books with
those muscles?"
"Oh, then and now. I'm just a casual reader, though."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah," he jokes, "I prefer Dan Brown novels."
As the water and soap wash the grime of the day off his wonderful body, his brown
skin flexing with the movement of his well-toned arms and shoulders, we kiss like
middle schoolers beneath the water's warmth, giddy and breathless. I don't even care
that the conditioner is getting washed out of my hair too soon. I barely notice that the
soap on his body gets on mine, or that I have to step onto his toes to stretch up and kiss
him. All I feel is warmth and happiness in this moment with him.
Eventually the shower goes from hot to merely very warm, and Lynx murmurs in my
ear, "We better get out now. Leave the cold water to those two chumps. They can fight
to see which of them goes first."
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah." His hand moves down my side, around my thigh, and between my legs, fingers
teasing me. "I have plans for that sweet little body of yours, now that I'm thoroughly
clean."
Kissing me again, he grabs my hand and leads me out of the shower. As Sebastian and
Ezra move past us to get the last of the warm water, Ezra smacks me on the ass and
Sebastian trails his fingers down my side, his touch leaving a trail of shiver behind on
my wet skin.
"You're cold. Here." Lynx goes over and grabs a clean towel off the towel rack. "Let me
help you with that."
In the other room, Mateo settles in on the bed, watching us with his damp towel pooled
on the ground. He watches us with half-lidded eyes, his hand gripped around the base
of his erection, water dripping off the dark curl of his hair and rolling down his brown
skin to pool on the bed around him. I want to tell him off for being a mess, but all I can
think about is how sexy and filthy he is.
Then Lynx spins the towel around and smacks me on the ass with it playfully. I jump,
out of surprise more than anything, and he gives me a look that would melt the polar
ice caps. Drawing me too him, he pulls the towel around my shoulders and leans down
to bring our mouths together in an incredible kiss.
My body presses against him, the warmth of his skin driving the chill away, his long,
girthy cock rock hard against my belly. Drawing the towel around, he dries my back
slowly, then wraps his hand in the soft terry cloth and brings it around to my front. I
shudder from something other than the cold as he cups my breasts with his broad,
towel-covered hand. The texture of the towel only heightens my pleasure, my nipples
growing hard from something distinctly warm, not cold.
Then Lynx brings the towel between my thighs. His eyes meet mine, an expression of
pure lust on his face, those golden irises darkened with lust. I moan as I rub against the
towel, my hair dripping down my back, our bodies separated by nothing but a bit of
damp cloth.
In the other room, Mateo strokes his cock.
"Over here." Lynx twines our hands together, drops the towel, and tugs me towards the
bathroom counter. "Enough teasing. I want to fuck you already."
"God, just do it." I jump up on the counter and wriggle my hips, splaying my legs and
drawing him to me. "I can see how hard your cock is. Thinking about what it'll feel like
to fuck my pussy?"
He makes a deep sound in his chest that's somewhere between a moan and a growl, his
arms flexing as he slots his hips between my knees. "It's been too long. Damn that cold,
cursed Danish island. If I die today, I'll do it with your scent still on me."
I shudder a little at the primal sound of that, then press my mouth against his in a
scorching kiss. He nips my lips as his fingers draw pleasure from my nipples. Then,
reaching down, he teases my entrance with the flared head of his cock for a brief
moment before tugging me towards him and plunging inside.
Lynx's cock is as familiar to me as my own bedsheets, but I still moan with surprised
pleasure at the way it tears inside me and fills me to the brim. He's thick and long, his
eyes intense as he balances my weight at the edge of the counter and wrenches his hips
to stroke himself balls deep in me. There's a desperation to his movements, one I meet
by squeezing my legs around him and drawing him deep, wanting nothing between us
at all. Not air, not distance, not death.
We fuck at the edge of the counter, moaning and gasping, while Ezra and Sebastian
each clean themselves up, then leave the shower to watch, water sluicing off their
bodies. I can see them over Lynx's shoulder as he strokes inside me with abandon, his
cock plunging deep inside my wet entrance, his body drawing me towards orgasm. He
puts his fingers against my clit and rubs harshly, bringing me right to the edge.
Then Sebastian walks over, bends his mouth to my neck, and whispers pleasure against
my skin. I cry out in pleasure and agony alike as my climax descends on me like a bolt
of lighting. My body pulls Lynx's cock deep within, pulsing around it tightly, and he
groans as he comes.
His deep voice murmurs against my skin, "I love you, I love you. So fucking much."
"I love you too."
We kiss sloppily as we come. Then he pulls me off the counter, his cock still pulsing
cum inside me, and walks me into the other room. Tossing me down on the bed, his
length slipping out of me, he stares down at me with dark eyes.
"We'll get through this," he swears, as Mateo crowds him out and Ezra stalks into the
room. "I won't leave you. Ever."
"Promise?"
"Always."
I must be a fool, because I believe him. We both know that it's not possible; Lynx can't
promise that he'll never leave me anymore than Mateo can promise that he'll find me
with or without his memories. But his words soothe my soul, just like his body brought
mine pleasure.
Ezra looks at me with desire in his green eyes, his naked body a sight to behold, his
brown hair damp and his cock curving towards his muscular abdomen. "You used all
the hot water," he says, his brow curving in admonishment. "How are you going to
repay me for that?"
A spark lights up inside me, and I squirm on the bed, my thighs damp. Licking my lips,
I suggest, "On my hands and knees?"
"Sounds good." He leans down to kiss me, his mouth open and giving in this, while in
other ways he keeps secrets closer than anything. But he pulls back from the deep kiss
before it can fully satisfy me, leaving me leaning forward wantonly for more. "I think
you need something other than a good fucking from behind, though. That mouth of
yours has gotten us into so much trouble... Mateo, think of anything Dani could do with
her mouth that might be more productive?"
"Oh, I can think of something," he says, his cock throbbing as he holds it in his hand, a
pleasured smirk on his face. "Don't worry Ezra. When she comes so hard she screams,
I'll make sure I'm there to keep her quiet."
"Dani is good with her mouth," Ezra teases me, clearly enjoying this line of things—as
am I, because my pussy is already throbbing for more. As I squirm, he notices, and
raises his brows at me, lowering his voice. "Get into position, now. Hands and knees.
Face the wall, and open your mouth. No complaining."
I smirk up at him, just so he knows how much I'm enjoying this. "Oooohhh, Bossy Ezra.
My least favorite Ezra."
"Now!"
He growls, green eyes flaring, and lust rises within me. Turning to do what he says, I
enjoy the way Sebastian is watching lustfully from the corner, how eager Mateo looks,
and the way Ezra's cock hardens almost painfully as I sway my hips and wriggle my ass
in his direction. Watching me crawl across the bed, he climbs up behind me and grabs
my hips in a sure and tight grip, his cock head leaking precum against my ass cheeks.
"Right here. Like this." He adjusts my position, then motions towards Mateo. As the
other demon walks in front of me, his crotch at my eye level, Ezra leans down and
murmurs, "This is what you get for stealing the hot water from me."
"I'll find a way to repay you," I promise him, already salivating at the thought of Mateo
heavy and heady on my tongue. "Just you wait."
Ezra grabs my ass cheek and playfully smacks it, then parts my lower lips and strokes
his cock inside me. I gasp, and as my mouth opens, Mateo puts his fingers against my
lips and pushes his cock head past them. Flicking my eyes up to meet his dark gaze, I
enjoy the way he grunts as I suck on the first couple inches of his length, precum
spilling onto my tongue.
Then Ezra plunges his hips forward and thrusts himself balls deep into me, pushing me
off the bed and onto Mateo's cock. I moan around his shaft, and he reaches under to
tweak at my breasts, which sway towards him.
"There," Ezra says, grabbing my hips and fucking in and out of me until his shaft is slick
with my wetness. "That should shut you up."
They fuck me from either end, making my toes curl and heat gather in my center. Mateo
fills my mouth up and tugs against my hair, his grunts, pants, moans, and curses
making me feel powerful. Ezra thrusts himself inside me, the hardened act inevitably
falling as he curves over my back and murmurs sweet nothings.
"Fuck, you're so hot."
"Suck like that, Dani," Mateo encourages, his hands curling around my head. "Yeah, just
like that."
Ezra groans as I sway my hips back towards him. "Oh, Dani. I wish this could never
end."
"Such a wet mouth—ah, fuck." I bat my eyelashes up at Mateo as I open my throat and
swallow him. He makes a low, pained sound. "I'm gonna come, fuck!"
I swallow around him again, sucking for all I'm worth, as Ezra cries out and plunges
inside me, nearly to the edge but not quite there. Mateo spills himself in the back of my
throat, his eyes wide, clearly not meaning to come so soon. Heat pulses in me at the
sight of him coming undone, whimpers leaving his mouth.
As he pulls out, he says, "I love you so fucking much, Dani."
Wiping my mouth off, I smirk up at him and swallow. "Love you too, asshole."
Then I do to Ezra exactly what I'd planned: pushing my ass back towards him, I lean all
the way down against the bed, grab my ankles, and enjoy the gasp that leaves his
mouth as his cock plunges deeper inside me then it ever has before. A moan of pleasure
leaves my mouth, tremors wracking my body, and Ezra curses wildly as he curves
against my back and releases himself, panting and moaning.
Tightening myself around him, I let a slow, deep orgasm wash over me, enjoying the
way it pulls more and more of Ezra's orgasm from his body. When he's finally able to
sound coherent, he murmurs, "I love you, Dani."
"Ezra. I love you too." Sitting up, I twist around and kiss him, his slick length falling
from my body. "You jerk."
Sebastian has been jerking himself this whole time, keeping his cock hard just for me as
he watches Ezra and Mateo fuck me at the same time. Prowling over to the bed, he
pushes me back against the pillows, barely waiting for Ezra to make room, slots his hips
between me, and presses his mouth to the corner of my lips.
"All the pleasure," he murmurs, and stars explode inside me as his cock plunges into
my wet, willing, still trembling body. "I want you to have all the pleasure in the world,
Dani."
My orgasm starts the instant he's deep inside me, and as he pulls my legs around him
and strokes further in, it keeps going. I moan, barely able to think straight as he fucks
me deeply and uses his powers on me the whole time.
I come for what feels like hours. Stars dance, my legs turn to jello, and the only thing
I'm aware of is the sound of Sebastian's voice. The feeling of his lips ghosting against
my skin. And the way his face comes undone as he orgasms inside me, moaning against
my neck, the sound of his declarations of love barely audible.
Over and over again, I ride the waves of pleasure. Slowly, I come down. To his ear, in a
low murmur, I tell him, "I love you more than the moon and the sky."
Afterwards, we all briefly shower again—all the sweat and everything else has to go
somewhere, after all. Then we dry ourselves off and get dressed, meeting each other's
eyes but not saying much. Weapons are cleaned, oiled, and sheathed. Supplies are
stocked. Minor flesh wounds are bandaged.
Now it's time we face what's coming next: death.
Chapter 13
"ALRIGHT, SO WHAT'S NEXT?" I stare at Auerbach, gathered with him, my quartet, the
other teachers, and the warrior students we have left still standing in the big, open
space of the shifter gym. "Do I just like... go to the gate? And then my guys..."
"I'm not really sure how it works," he confesses, "but I know how you can get answers:
go into the spirit realm."
"I've done that already," I point out. "It wasn't a picnic."
"I'm sure. But this time, you won't be going in body and soul. Just your spirit will
enter... in a half-dying state. I have a spell—"
"No way." The voice that interrupts shocks me; Laura McKinley, my fierce, often scary
Hand-to-Hand Combat instructor steps forward and shakes her head at Auerbach,
mouth a thin line. "No student of mine is sacrificing themselves in a battlefield. Death
while fighting is one thing, but this? Magic is no way to die."
Taking a step forward, I tell her, "I've faced worse than this."
"Yes, and you shouldn't have had to," she says, facing me with her chin up. "I may not
be able to stop this, but I at least want my objection noted."
"Mine as well." Kade shrugs as I look at him, eyes wide. "If you can't fight it with
weapons, Dani, you shouldn't have to fight it at all."
"And we never go into battle alone," Fisk adds, his voice a low rumble, his mouth
turned down at the corners. "Auerbach, you're new here. If you want to send one of our
students into the fray, you'll have to have a good reason for it. It's one thing for the
students to get injured defending themselves, after plenty of training and preparation—
it's another for one of them to risk dying for a gamble."
"I can do it," Yohan volunteers, his eyes a steely, dark brown. "I only have the one life
left, but I'll gladly give it for one of my favorite students."
I feel my eyes prick with tears at the corners. I didn't think Yohan did much more than
tolerate me most of the time, though after I helped ease his sister's transition into death,
he had a certain level of affection for me. He's always been gruff, as have my other
teachers, but as they stand facing the mage with injured and weary students all around
them, I realize the reason why they've been so harsh: they were trying to protect us.
None of the teachers here can stop the powerful Grims from wanting to kill us and take
our hearts. They can't put wards around the campus, like Auerbach, or face off against
demons with anything other than their hands, weapons, and shifter forms. Protecting
us is their duty, but lately they've been unable to do much other than watch us be put in
danger, again and again. Now they're stepping up—for me.
"I appreciate the worry." Headmaster Towers steps forward and turns to face her staff.
"But please, let Instructor Auerbach explain further. I'm sure he doesn't plan on hurting
Dani—and if her designation as a Black Phoenix lets her find answers and close the gate
to Hell, that'll be worth the risk."
"No offense, Lana," McKinley says in a disapproving tone, "but after all this is over,
maybe we should consider voting on a replacement Headmaster. Students have a
startling tendency to die on your watch."
Towers' face briefly crumples before she manages to put a veneer of distance back on
her expression. Around us, the students murmur in alarm and curiosity, and I find
myself looking at the teachers with new eyes. So often I've felt alone in my time here,
special enough to be thrown into the fray but not enough to be fully protected—maybe I
was overlooking how much the teachers wanted to protect us but were helpless.
"We can talk about it later," Towers says, clearly eager to move on to any other subject.
"For now, we should at least listen to Mage Auerbach's plan before dismissing it out of
hand. Especially given the fact that we're all certain to die, students and teachers alike, if
we don't find a way to shut the gate to Hell and keep its denizens on the other side,
where they belong."
McKinley purses her mouth at this, but stands down. The other teachers do too, though
I can tell they're not thrilled. I wonder how much of their trepidation has to do with the
fact that Auerbach represents a faction of the supernatural world that keeps secrets and
refuses to mingle with the rest of us. The mages set the wards here, because they're paid
to, but they don't share their runes freely even though their magic could protect the
phoenix whose lives are in danger of Grim slaughter.
While Auerbach may have broken rank enough to start teaching here, he still keeps
most of his secrets close to the chest. I'm sure the other teachers are worried that he's
keeping them even now, in a dire moment of terrible danger. I've come to trust the
man—even though I have a bad track record with the new teachers around here—but
they have their reasons for disliking him.
"I understand your objections," he says, stepping forward again, face somber. "This isn't
something I suggest lightly. The spirit realm is a dangerous place—Dani would know
more than most, since she's been there recently." Shock ripples across many faces; my
mission overseas was kept on a strict need-to-know basis. "But the greatest danger isn't
to Dani. It's to her quartet of demons, who will be key to closing the door to Hell.
"In order to protect us all, they must sacrifice their lifeblood. That's what we know. To
find out more, Dani will need to go directly through the gate for answers—and the only
way to do that is in spirit form, while her body and soul are separated. I have a spell
that will keep her suspended in that state. And while she's on the other side of the door,
time will stand still, giving her the opportunity to do what must be done. But I won't
pretend there's no danger to her."
Fisk grumbles, then points out, "You keep saying the other side of that door. But the
gate leads to Hell—nowhere else. And you're talking about sending a student there."
Malavic's words come to me again. He knew I'd be going to Hell in order to close that
gate. While I'm there, I'll get to help the guys break their contracts, and return with their
memories intact—if we manage to pull it off. I can't help feeling a little shiver of
premonition go down my spine at how much the demon knew, and how little he's told
me about his mission in the darkest realm there is.
"I'm willing to go there," I tell Fisk, trying to sound sure and brave, even though it's
fucking Hell, of all places. "It's not like I'll be going alone. My quartet will be joining me,
once we've figured out how to close the gate. Our research—Auerbach and Lynx's
research—revealed that me crossing over is crucial. And I can't exactly just waltz
through the way I am now."
Clearing his throat, Lynx speaks, and I notice the unease in the crowd at a demon
speaking to them, even after all this time spent fighting alongside my quartet. "Right,
my research. One of the things we discovered is that the instructions to close the door
are on both sides—part of the spell is on this side, the other part on the side that faces
towards Hell. So the only way to close it is if someone goes through to read the
inscription on that side. Once Dani has done that, she'll send the other half of the spell
through, and we'll complete it."
"Send it through?" McKinley sounds doubtful. "I don't think there will be cell service in
Hell."
Auerbach speaks up, "There won't be. Which is why I've fashioned a spellglass." He
pulls a small glass vial with a golden stopper out of his voluminous pockets, which
contain multitudes of spell ingredients and objects. "All Dani has to do is write the other
half of the spell down on the piece of paper inside, stick it in the vial, and send it
through. The glass is spelled to find me no matter where I am—see?"
To demonstrate, he drops the vial. Just before it reaches the floor, the thing stops,
hovers, and shoots back up into his hand. Auerbach looks pleased at this, but the
teachers just seem wary—it's one thing to trust ancient wards around the campus to
keep us safe, but another entirely to think that a parlor trick will survive Hell.
I don't have to believe, though. I know in my heart that this is the only way through.
For me, for my guys—it's time to face the truth beating at the center of everything.
It's time to go back to where they came from, and find out who they were before they
died. Time for a reckoning.
Whether I'm ready or not, whether everyone approves or not, I'm going straight to Hell.
And I won't come back until I've gotten what I'm looking for.
"Are we sure we're ready for this?" Lynx anxiously runs his eyes across us. "We're really
gonna do it?"
"Go to Hell," Mateo quips, but without his usual grin. "Apparently we're doing it."
Auerbach turns to face me. We've gathered at the campus gates, on this side of the
wards. The instructors and a select few students are at our backs, ready to fight in case
we don't manage to close the gate in time, or any straggling demons make their way
through. I said my teary goodbyes to Liam, Sam, and Olivia—Petra held me so tight I
swear she was trying to break my body in two in order to prevent me from leaving.
"You don't have to do this if you don't want to," Auerbach says gently, no doubt seeing
the fear in my eyes. "I can send my spirit to the other side of the gate to get the spell."
"If you die, it's pretty permanent," I point out.
"Dying in Hell is permanent no matter what kind of phoenix you are. That's why we're
sending your soul through and keeping your body here—safe and intact. But you're not
the only one who can do this."
"I am, though." Straightening up, I tell him, "I've got the power of seven immortals, and
my magic will go through with my spirit, with the help of your spell. I can come back
from the dead, like other phoenix, but I can also control demons because I was born a
Grim. Who else could possibly do all that? Unless you have another Black Phoenix up
those ridiculous sleeves of yours, it's me or no one."
He studies me. I make sure my face shows all the resolution I don't quite feel inside.
Auerbach nods, as if satisfied by what he sees. "Hold out your wrist—not the arm with
the bracelet, the other one. The last thing we need is spells ricocheting off each other.
Now, I'm just going to tie this here..."
Pulling out what appears to be a simple length of cotton twine, but is no doubt
something infused with magic, Auerbach ties it loosely around my wrist and weaves
the ends together in a complicated series of knots until there's a six inch pattern of loops
resting against my skin. Once he's done, he steps back, and looks over at my guys.
This is it. We might not make it back from this. Even if we do, there's a good chance we
won't be the same. They may not be able to get their memories back. We could lose
everything. I have to remind myself that we've already said goodbye a dozen times.
Meeting their eyes, we share a wordless goodbye, because we all know that if we try to
hug or kiss it out one of us will wind up holding on tight and never letting go.
"Alright." I lift my chin, and nod at Auerbach. "Kill me already."
He smiles a little, even though it's mostly just dark, not funny. Then he places his hands
over the series of knots on my forearm, and says a spell in words so strange and archaic
that I barely understand a single syllable.
At first nothing happens, and I start to wonder if he's going to have to stab me with a
ceremonial dagger or something. Then I feel the flare of power in Gaugin's bracelet as it
responds to a spell being performed nearby.
Darkness gathers at the edges of my vision.
The breath leaves my body all at once, and I can't seem to inhale anymore.
Spots dance in my eyes.
Numbness and tingling starts at my fingertips and toes, then spreads up my limbs,
finally settling in my center.
It occurs to me that maybe I should've been sitting down for this.
But if my body falls onto the ground in a useless heap, I don't feel it. I don't feel
anything at all. All I feel is the sudden sense that I'm not in Kansas anymore, and the
world around me has changed.
This is unlike any death I've experienced before. This time, instead of a cessation of pain
followed by complete agony, I feel as if I've been yanked out of my body and put
somewhere else.
I'm in the spirit world. But not the version of it I saw in that cave full of caged
immortals. Instead, as my vision comes into focus and I become more aware of the
world around me, I realize that I'm standing in an almost mirror world version of the
Phoenix Academy campus.
Everything is a little bit fuzzy, all the color is drab, and none of the people I was just
standing next to are here anymore. The grass is dead. The wards are gone. But just past
the gates that lead off-campus, sitting in a spot all on its lonesome, is the propped-open
door to Hell, runes and all.
This is it. Time to go through, send the spell back, and wait for my guys to show up so
we can dive into Hell and do what needs to be done.
I don't hesitate. Striding through, I walk straight up to the door, turn sideways, and slip
into Hell itself.
Chapter 14
AS SOON AS I'm on the other side of the door, I turn around and take note of the spell
symbols drawn around its edges. A few of the runes are complicated, but thankfully
there are only about ten total. Pulling on the string inside my pocket, I raise my brows
as the little vial comes through—Auerbach really did spell it to follow my spirit into the
spirit realm. I jot down the runes on the piece of paper inside, then pause and add a
short sentence to the bottom of my note.
I know they have to die to close the door. Make it happen as quickly and painlessly as you can.
And tell them that I'll see them soon.
Then I untie the string and let the vial zip through the door, straight to the mage
himself. Studying the rest of the door, I grimace at the carvings on it, which depict
various upper level demons being gutted wide to unlock the door's spells. Even without
understanding the runes or knowing what's on the other side, it's pretty clear what's
supposed to happen to open the door. And clearly some tricky upper level demon got
the rest of the spell from the mortal side in order to open it and slip through.
There are bowls of dark red blood at the edge of the door, and two bloody knives, but
no sign of anyone around me. The demons who attacked the campus must be
elsewhere, regrouping for another attack, just as Auerbach anticipated. I'll have to find
somewhere safe to hide from them while I wait for my guys to show up so we can go
deep into the center of Hell and free them.
Beyond the door is nothing but an impossibly tall wall of hedges. It surrounds me on
three sides, curving outward on the fourth. Frowning, I walk forward, and snort aloud
as I realize that I'm in the middle of a hedge maze.
Apparently I should've paid more attention to my Greek classics in high school. We
studied them in history and literature, but other than the fact that Zeus is a horny
monster who turns into animals to rape random women, I barely remember a thing. I
do remember, however, something about a minotaur and a maze.
Let's hope there's no horned beast at the end of this maze. Knowing my luck, though, I
doubt the place is safe. Best to just find a corner somewhere and wait for my guys to
show up so they can escort me the rest of the way through. Even without their
memories of our lives together, they'll know how to navigate Hell.
The first stretch of the maze is long and empty. On either side of me, the hedges stretch
up high above my head. Experimentally, I wriggle a hand between the close-knit
branches, and wince as I encounter thorns. My phoenix regenerating powers close over
the shallow cuts within seconds, but even I'm not enough of a headstrong fool to force
my way through a hedge of thorns.
So I'll follow the path. That should be easy enough—though, knowing that this is Hell,
there's probably a catch. Maybe there's endless torture at the other end; people getting
their eyeballs plucked out, men being forced to eat their own dicks, that sort of thing.
The only way to find out is to venture forward.
As I walk down the long stretch of corridor, my feet ring out on a hard tile floor.
Frowning, I glance down, wondering where the packed earth the hedges were growing
out of went. The sight of the tile makes my blood freeze; its a familiar pattern, a Roman
throwback that was imported from overseas for some rich lady's decorating sense.
I've seen these tiles before. They're custom, so I know it's not a coincidence. Somehow,
despite being all the way in Hell, surrounded by hedges on either side of me, I'm
standing in the hallway of Fern Valley Private High School. A school where rich kids
tortured me for my non-tailored skirts, mousey brown hair, and checkered past. A
school I never dared tell my foster mother Sara I didn't want to go to, because I knew it
meant so much to her that I'd made it in—and then she got cancer, I was sent to the
group home, and I never returned to this place, or saw her again.
The Fern Valley kids are technically the reason why I ever met the demons in the first
place. They were in the middle of trying to kill me—pretty sloppily, I might add—to
perform a demon summoning ritual when my powers woke up and protected me by
creating a bond with my quartet.
Sure, I might've found them some other way, but as I've learned at the academy,
phoenix are created through struggle and death. No supernatural creatures comes back
from the dead like us. I wouldn't be where I was if not for those rich assholes.
Which doesn't mean I ever want to see them again for the rest of my life. It's just the
tiles for now, but as I look up towards the end of the hallway, I get the terrible
foreboding that every step I take will bring me closer to being that weak teenage girl
again. The one who cursed beneath her breath, grit her teeth, and failed to fight the
loneliness inside. The one without friends. Or anyone to rely on but herself.
Well, I'm not that girl anymore. I still sneak a look over my shoulder to see if I can go
back, but nope—the corridor I just came down has crumbled behind me, and there's a
huge rift in the ground I'd have to jump over to get back. Hopefully my guys will be
able to find me once they've finished the spell, died, and gotten over here.
Resolute, I turn back to face that old world. As I take a step forward, I feel the old
school uniform settle around me, bulky and restricting, itchy from head to toe. I'll give
Phoenix Academy this much: every sheet and skirt in that school is branded with a
golden phoenix, but at least they use a high thread count cotton and natural wool.
Each step down the corridor raises more of that old world for me. Bleach blonde girls
with fake smiles appear beside the hedges, closing locker doors that show up out of
nowhere, nestled in the thorns. An old teacher of mine, Mr. Grover, appears to frown in
my direction and remind me that I'm late on my assignment—whatever assignment
that is. And in the distance, I see the bullies who gave me the worst trouble, the ones I
met again that night on the cliffs.
Richard, Amanda, Leila, Taylor, and Jake. All rich. All complete assholes, for various
reasons, with souls so dark that Lynx took one look at them and sealed their dark fate. It
wouldn't shock me if I'm looking at the real versions of them—no doubt that night they
died, all five went straight to, well, here.
"Wow." Amanda gives me a good, scornful look up and down, then shoots a fake smile
in my direction. "Put on the wrong uniform again, homeless girl?"
"It fits her terribly." Richard laughs. "What, did you get it from some guy you blew for a
chicken sandwich?"
I stare at him, then realize this is all so stupid. Derisively, I tell him, "You got your dick
severed." Then I look at the others. "You were disemboweled. I saw you get cut to death
with poisoned knives. You were choked out. Each and every one of you is dead—you
can't hurt me. I'm the one who rose from the ashes. You're just mince meat."
One by one, the crumble into ash. So does the school around me, fading away. The tile
turns to packed earth. The lockers in the hedges disappear. All the rich, scornful
students are gone, along with the teachers who never bothered to get to know me.
Great, just great. I would wind up in a psychological torture chamber of some sort that's
plucking my worst memories out of my head to fuck with me. The guys were right: Hell
is worse than I could've imagined.
But I can't go back. The sudden sound of howling further down the maze behind me
makes that clear, along with the scent of demonic hordes in the air, and a prickling at
the back of my neck. The army is re-forming to charge Auerbach's wards again, and
while time will stand still for me once my guys are dead and the door is closed, it's
running forward pretty quickly now.
There are two paths in front of me: the left, and the right. Both look identical. Both have
extremely tall hedges. And I'm sure there are torturous memories either direction. So I
pick left, because it doesn't matter, turning and running down the short corridor.
It leads to a right turn, then a left, then two rights. Running down the maze, I dart my
eyes back and forth, anticipating the next memory that's going to torture me. It doesn't
take long; I've got plenty of shit for Hell to pluck out of my mind and force in front of
my eyes.
This time, it's one of my least favorite foster moms: LeAnn. And she's already
screaming.
"You didn't separate the whites from the colors!" She throws laundry at my feet, and I
wince as she gets in my face, her rage incandescent. "Go do it again!"
"It's past your bedtime! Go lie down."
"You've eaten more than your fair share! Go stand in the corner and think about what
you've done."
Each time she punished me, it was for something she'd never taught me was a rule in
the first place. She seemed to just expect me to know what she wanted—how to do the
laundry, when her ever-changing curfew was, how many servings I was allowed to eat
at dinner. Sometimes I think she made the rules up as she went along, because it was
fun for her to scream. Her temper was extraordinary, and we cowered from her, never
quite sure was unexpected burst of anger would come next.
It was a relief to get out of there. One day she decided she'd had too much of my
mouthiness and "punished" me by asking CPS to find me another home. That next
home with Sara.
Staring this Hell version of LeAnn down, I tell her, "You're a big bully who preys on the
weak. There's nothing about you that frightens me at all. Find someone else to pick on."
She vanishes.
I head further down the maze's corridors. This time I go slower, even though I can hear
the distant howl of the demonic hordes. Any minute now Auerbach and my quartet will
perform the spell. They'll show up here, and we'll figure out a way to escape this place.
For now, though, better to space the terrible memories out a bit. They're not exactly
enjoyable. I prefer that the past stay just exactly that: the past.
Of course, the maze has other ideas. A few turns pass me by, and I see a door in the
hedge up ahead of me. But I know better than to think that it's my way out.
It's a very familiar door.
With a clear glass knob.
And peeling yellow paint, revealing an off-white paint beneath.
The urge to turn around and go back is overwhelming. But I know better than to think
that'll work. Even without the demons, this is Hell—it won't let me out of its grip so
easily.
So I walk slowly, carefully, towards the door. Despite the way it shakes and rattles.
Even though the locked doorknob keeps wiggling as someone on the other side tries to
turn it. I can hear his voice, low and threatening, through the door.
This was one of my early foster homes. One I'll never forget, because it was two long
weeks of temporary placement. The girl whose room I shared warned me not to let him
in. She escaped out the window that first night and was placed in a group home when
they found her.
I followed her advice. Every evening, I locked the door. By the time I was gone, he was
threatening to take the lock off. I don't remember why or how I was placed somewhere
else—I was too long for the specifics to settle in. I just know I was glad to make it to the
next home intact.
Staring down the door, I look right and left, but there are nothing but hedges on either
side. No way down the corridor. No turn at all. The only way through must be... this.
I know there isn't safety on the other side of the door. It's probably just more hedges
and bad memories. Maybe there's even a monster on the other side of the door.
I unlock it anyway, and turn the knob despite the churning of my gut. The door swings
open into a black abyss. Stepping into it, I smell the cigarette-and-beer stench of that old
foster father's breath.
"You'll never get to me," I tell him, trying to sound like the grown woman I am and now
the little girl my fear remembers me being. "I'm safe from you now. And if there's any
justice in this world, some revenge demon cut you down, and every little girl is safe
from you too."
The darkness dissipates. I'm alone in the hedge maze again. But this time, I hear a
familiar, distant voice, and the hairs on my arms stand on end.
Ari is here.
It takes me a good, sweat-inducing amount of hiking through endless rows of hedges to
find the source of Ari's voice. Finally I see her as I round a corner, visible through a
wrought iron gate in the hedges, standing in the middle of a clearing full of rosebushes
and fountain.
A fucking garden.
There shouldn't be a fucking garden in Hell. This place should have blood-filled
fountains and mass graves. The whole thing is probably a trick—this version of Ari is
going to turn to me and open her mouth to reveal rows of teeth or something.
But it feels real. My phoenix blood sings at the sight of her. When I look for a latch in
the gate, though, I don't find one—and she's so far away. There's mist surrounding her,
and other figures in the mist with her; it must be her three familiars, those shifters she's
bonded herself too.
"Ari! Over here!" I wave my hands, jump up and down, and pace back and forth
looking for a way through. I even shove my hand into the hedge only to find more
thorn. "Ouch—fuck. That was stupid."
Frustrated that all the yelling is getting nowhere, I let my temper do the talking, and
form a ball of phoenix fire in my hand. Shooting it in Ari's direction gets her attention—
her blue hair flips around her as she turns to face me. But when she tries to walk closer
to talk to me, a rift opens at her feet, dividing us permanently.
"Dani!" I can barely hear her voice. "What are you doing here?"
"Not important. What's going on? What are you doing?"
She mouths something back at me—maybe "huh" or "hey" or "huck," who the fuck
knows. The ground between us is widening and stretching. Frustrated, I grab the bars
and yank back and forth, then try melting them with my fire, but nothing happens.
Ari waves her hands around and says something. I catch snatches here and there—
"magic" and "stuck" and "power." But nothing that I can make sense of. As I try to
wrench at the iron gates, a sharp hot pain flares at my elbow, and I step back, hissing.
Gaugin's bracelet is glowing brighter than a forge. Whatever is going on, the thing has
been activated again, and is apparently punishing me for thinking I could possibly
waltz into Hell and back out again without a few bumps on the way.
"Ari, stay there!" I call out. "I'm going to try burning these fucking hedges down."
Knowing my luck, and the fact that this is Hell, they'll probably turn into poisonous
ash. Or be invulnerable to fire. But I have to try something.
Stepping back, I form a fireball between my hands, narrowing my eyes at the damned
hedges. I raise my hand and prepare to fire.
And the ground at my feet gives way as I drop down, down, further into Hell—through
a hole that brings me straight into darkness. My ass hits the bottom of a pit with a
thump, and the groan that leaves my mouth is far from ladylike. Blinking, I look around
and find myself in nearly pitch black darkness, barely able to see anything around me.
Above my head, a thin circle of light marks the spot I just came from.
Apparently Hell doesn't want its wayward Black Phoenix and its trapped Blue Phoenix
getting together to burn things down. Well, Hell has another thing coming. Dusting
myself off, I get to my feet and decide it's time to figure out how to use this damned
bracelet. Seven immortals' power should be able to make me fly or teleport myself or do
something besides vaguely heat up from time to time.
Before I can use it, a sudden sense knocks into me so hard that I nearly fall on my ass
again.
My guys. Our bond. I feel it suddenly. I didn't even know how thoroughly it was gone
until now. It settles into my bones and makes my teeth ache. The sense of them is
sudden and overwhelming: bright, determined Ezra, bitter, dark Sebastian, gentle,
intelligent Lynx, and brave, foolish Mateo.
They've done it.
They've died.
Now for the rest of the foolish plan.
Heart beating double time with excitement, I summon them to me.
They arrive all at once, take one good look at me, and draw their weapons.
Chapter 15
EZRA APPROACHES ME, his green eyes narrowed, blade naked and ready for battle. "A
Grim summoned us here. I can feel her control. Sebastian, get into position."
"Ready."
"Wait just a—"
Mateo doesn't give a warning. He just shoots me in the kneecap. I cry out, stumbling
forward, the pain immense. The bullet went through skin and bone alike. There are
pieces of me spattering the ground.
They don't remember me.
They don't love me.
And if I don't do something fast, they're going to kill me.
Especially Mateo, who's got his finger on the trigger and is pacing close, prepared to
shoot again. I don't think he'll kneecap me the second time around. The dark look in his
eyes is brutal.
Ezra says, "I guess death by bullets works too."
Snarling, I instinctively reach out and tug on our bond, yelling at Mateo, "Drop the
gun!" Then I turn my eyes to Sebastian, who's been sneaking up behind me this whole
time, and tell him, "Dump your poisonous knives. All at him." To Ezra I command,
"Shut up and sheath that sword," and to Lynx, "Whatever you're thinking of doing,
don't. Keep your hands and rope to yourself."
I take a deep breath. It's hard to ignore the glares I'm getting. They're so... cold. And it's
not just because we're locked deep in a dark pit of Hell. Without their memories,
without our shared experiences, their eyes are empty and their hearts closed off to me.
At least they're still in their same bodies. That part won't change unless the deaths take
for good, and they return to the mortal realm, at which point, I've been told, they'll
never remember me again. And they won't be free of their contracts at all. I've got to get
through to them down here, in Hell.
Of all the places in the world for our story to end, this is not it, and this is not how. As
my knee knits itself back together, bone regrowing, skin stretching over the wound, I
force myself up to my feet and stare them down.
"I didn't summon you four here to kill me," I tell them. "We have too much to do, and
we have to work together to do it."
Sebastian snarls. "There is no we, Grim. As if we'd ever work with one of your kind.
Whatever you have planned, expect a fight from us."
"She must be powerful," Lynx says, warning in his voice. "Take care. No weakling Grim
would be able to summon the four of us and control us like this."
"Shut up," Ezra advises him, green eyes pinned on me. "She doesn't need to know our
plans."
A bead of sweat rolls down my back. This is going to be even harder than I thought,
and for all the wrong reasons. When I imagined this, I knew they'd be confused, maybe
even reluctant, but not this.
I forgot that I was born a Grim.
We're mortal enemies, just like phoenix and Grims.
Well, I'm not my father's daughter, damn the lying bastard. Gritting my teeth, I
summon fire in my palms, and study the edges of the pit we're in. There are sconces set
into the wall, the torches in them dry and dead. Pacing around the room with a bit of a
limp, I light them one by one.
"Wow." Mateo whistles, long and low. "I've never seen a Grim do that."
Ezra is staring at me, his expression changed. In a resigned voice, he says, "She's not
merely a Grim. She's a Black Phoenix."
"Took you long enough," I tell him, lighting the last torch and frowning as I face off
against him. "Why didn't you use your powers the instant you saw me?"
He narrows his eyes in my direction. "Why would I need to, Grim? I felt the tug of your
summoning of us. The rest was obvious. And just because you also have phoenix
powers don't mean you're not still a Grim."
"If I summoned you, how did I do it?" I ask him, motioning around the room. "There are
no summoning circles anywhere on the wall or floor."
Lynx studies the ground, but Mateo cocks his head, frowning at me. "Invisible ink!"
I stare at him. "Really? You think I brought invisible ink with me to Hell?"
"It would be unusual for a Grim to summon us in Hell." Sebastian sounds reluctant to
admit this. "Their spirits don't cross over with their powers. And no mortal has escaped
the inner circle in millennia."
"Stranger things have happened," Ezra points out. "Mortals have escaped. It's mostly
legend, but still."
"What about your memories?" I eye them one by one. "You're all here. You know each
other's names, and the basics of demonology, and how Hell works. But do you
remember yesterday? The day before? What about your last mission? The last year?"
Dawning lights in their eyes slowly... well, except for Mateo. Lynx is the one who tells
him, "We must have died. We've been reborn... partially, at least. Our bodies are the
same. But once we take our next mission, or are summoned by a Grim in the mortal
realm, we'll disintegrate and be reborn in new bodies."
"Well, fuck." Mateo whines a little. "I hated waking up in this body in the first place.
That coffin was disintegrated. And it took ages to get this skin suit looking right."
I wrinkle my nose. They never told me that they're reborn in coffins—Sebastian left that
part out when he explained how demon death and rebirth works. And the words skin
suit don't exactly make me feel great about the fact that I've slept with them.
"Can we get back on track, please?" I ask, trying to dismiss the thought. "There isn't
much time. We have to get out of this pit, and into the deepest depths of Hell—at least
the third inner ring, though how we get there, I have no idea. You four are supposed to
face—"
"Enough," Ezra says, voice harsh. "Whatever it is that you want, whatever reason drew
you to bring us here, forget about it. We're not serving you or your interests, Grim."
His words sting. Those green eyes that have met mine with so much love are cold and
harsh now. I feel like the girl I was on the cliffs, the one who was frightened and alone,
who screamed at the sight of a dick being severed and a bunch of privileged assholes
dying messily. I've changed, but now so has he, and I'm the only one who can fix what's
gone wrong—too bad he doesn't trust me.
Impulsively, I reach for him, and he cringes away, leaving my hand hovering in the air.
There's scorn on his face, along with disgust and confusion. It's not like it was before—
when we were bonded, he and the guys were incorporeal, tugged along for the ride.
They got to spend time watching me and getting to know me. They knew who and
what I was from a distance. Now it's different, and I have to accept that if I want us to
get to the other side intact.
I take a deep breath in, then out. Facing off with Ezra, who I know I'll have to convince
more than the others, I tell him, "I'm not just any Black Phoenix. I'm your Black
Phoenix."
Silence falls at this revelation.
I decide I might as well keep going with the rest of it, and hope that I'll be believed.
"The reason why you're here—why all five of us are here—is because I want—we all
want—to free you from your contracts. To do that, we have to go to the innermost parts
of Hell, where spirits are forced to face themselves and either cringe away or cleanse
their sins. Once you've faced who you were, and who you are, you'll be freed from your
contract."
His face looks skeptical. "No demon can free themselves from their contract."
"Malavic did," I point out, but his frown just deepens. "He told me his secret. All it cost
me was one of my many lives, and... a favor." One I'll have to repay soon, by drawing
his summoning circle and bringing him here. In time. "This is what he did to free
himself from his contract. Now he can't be controlled. He's only summoned when he
wants to be. And he'll die just like anyone... well, he would, if he chose to live a mortal
life, among mortals. Which is what..."
"What we want."
Lynx's voice is soft but sure; I turn to face him, my heart squeezing at the little bit of
awe in his brown eyes. He's no longer looking at me like he wants to squeeze the life
out of me. I think he believes me.
In a tone full of wonder, he paces towards me and says, "Her soul. It calls out to me.
When I look at her, I see so much more than I've ever seen before."
Stubbornly, Sebastian says, "That's just because she's supernatural. All those phoenix
lives affect the size of their spirits—they have to. It's excess energy."
"No," Lynx says firmly, "It's because we're tied to her. I don't think I'd be able to see her
soul unless she was dead, or nearly dead, here in this part of the spirit realm. But I do
see it. It glows, you guys. And it's so beautiful. I think... I think I actually believe her."
Relief makes me close my eyes, taking in a gasp of air. I was starting to think that I'd
have to do this alone. Or worse, if they never believe me, they could decide to just let
themselves be reborn, and lose any chance of recovering what we had.
"It's the truth," I say aloud, looking around at them in the hopes that it might be sinking
in. "I can tell you all about it. I don't exactly have proof, but... I know things. All your
scars. Your powers. Your histories. We know each other very, very well. I'm the reason
why you're here. And together, we can get out of this, and free all four of you from your
contracts with Hell."
Sebastian's blue eyes study me. "Let's say I believe you—and that's a big if. Why should
I even trust you? Not only are you a Grim—or at least mostly a Grim—but I don't even
know your name."
"I know yours, Sebastian," I tell him softly. "Mine is Dani. Dani Carpenter. I was born a
Grim, but I wasn't raise one. Until the night I met the four of you, I had no idea the
blood that flowed through my veins. Everything started for me that night when I died...
and nothing has been the same since."
Mateo whistles. "How did it start?"
This part makes me smile at him impishly. "With a severed dick."
Chapter 16
WHEN I'M DONE TELLING them who I am—who they are—I find myself facing a mixture
of curiosity, disbelief, and rapt attention. Lynx looks utterly convinced; Mateo does too,
though he asked the most questions. But Ezra is still wary and distant, while Sebastian
looks like he's trying to break away from my early order, pick his poisoned knives up,
and slash me with a few.
He's not going to come around easy. That much is obvious from the way he's acting. At
least I have half of them on my side now. Maybe that'll be enough to actually pull this
off.
"So, all we need, like I said, is to journey further into Hell, find your true selves, and if
you face them, you'll be free from your contracts forever."
"Or," Sebastian says, "we could slit your throat and be free of you forever."
Lynx mutters, "Really, dude?"
"I'm not buying this story of hers." He narrows his eyes at me. "Maybe we were bound to
her, or... still are, but there's no way we went along with it or—" here he sneers a little,
"fell in love with her."
"I dunno man," Mateo says, "the severed dick thing sounds pretty true to form for you."
"Also, she knows us pretty well," Lynx adds. "Not just our names, but everything. Our
powers. How we related to each other. Our personalities."
"One of the other Grims who's summoned us could've written information down all of
that. They write down info about us all the time. It makes us easier to enslave to their
will."
"I told you, I don't even know any Grims," I object. "I didn't know what I was until I
died. I had foster families, and my dad—well, he was a dick who left my mom. The
only ones who told me about you are you."
"It is somewhat plausible," Ezra admits, "but there's no way I'm going to do anything a
Grim I don't remember tells me to do. Not if it could risk my life."
Frustrated, I tell them, "Once we're deeper into Hell, I can summon Malavic. And he
can't lie while he's standing in his summoning circle above the rune of his true name.
Would you at least believe him if he told you this is how you'll free yourselves?"
Sebastian admits, "The demon is an asshole, but he's free for a reason. I've always been
curious why."
"I'm up for it," Lynx says, "though of course you already knew that. The research
though—it's fascinating. I've never known how who we are works, or why we were
made into demons. Knowing my past... it's a draw bigger than I care to admit."
I hesitate for only a moment before I tell him, "You might not like what you find. Before
you died and lost your memories, you saw something that you were sure was a
memory of your old life as a human. It's hard to explain—a poltergeist was involved—
but... you were pretty upset about it."
"We all did terrible things that got us here." Sebastian crosses his arms over his chest
and glares at me defiantly. "Maybe it would be better if we never find out what they
were."
"Maybe," I admit, though my heart twists at the thought. "But which would you rather
choose: a chance at freedom from all Grims forever, or living in blissful ignorance? I
know which one I'd rather pick. Then again, I'm not a coward."
He snarls at me, then reluctantly admits, "I've never liked backing down from a
challenge. This one does seem to be bigger than any other. And it would be good to see
Malavic face-to-face. That asshole... whatever he did to get out, I want to know."
"I told you the truth," I protest. "Exactly as he said."
"Still. Better from the horse's mouth." He seems to make a decision. "I'll go, Ezra, if you
are. Deeper into Hell will be a cakewalk—we know the way. And Malavic is worth
listening to."
"I never liked that asshole. But fine—let's do this, if you're up for it. Follow the Grim
brick road." He narrows his green eyes in my direction. "If there are any tricks up your
sleeve, Grim, know this: I'll cut you down before you can use a single one of them. You
won't be enslaving any of us, or forcing us to do anything we don't want. Bond or no
bond, I'm certain that if we try hard enough, we can fight against you."
I don't know that they could. I'm not willing to test it, though. These memories, the ones
of us as we are now, will remain with them after they've restored everything else and
broken their contracts for good. I'd hate to see the look in their eyes if I misused my
power to bend them to my will.
"Just don't use your weapons on me," I remind him, putting the force of my Grim magic
into my words. "All of you—you can bring your weapons, but keep them sheathed
unless there's another threat. One that isn't me. Understand?"
Mateo complains, "It's not like we have any choice."
They don't.
But soon they will.
Soon they'll have every choice at freedom in the universe.
"So, how does this work? Do we just go down more hedge mazes or something? Is there
a riddle with three doors? Also, how the Hell do we get out of this pit and into, well,
Hell?"
"You ask a lot of questions," Sebastian grimaces as he sheaths the last of his knives, no
doubt wishing he could use one on me. "The pit is an illusion. If we find the right brick,
we'll be able to get out. After that—no, there aren't hedge mazes. What you likely
walked through on your way here was child's play. A simple series of meaningless tests
to discourage Grims like you from getting into Hell and releasing demons who are kept
here for a reason. What we'll find once we leave this pit is a great deal worse."
At the end of this grim speech, Mateo adds, "So I have you have an 8mm. No? A
shotgun? Grenade? Anything?"
"I have these," I tell him, stepping back and summoning my wings. They flourish
behind me, black-and-orange fire flickering into view. Dismissing them, I tap the
bracelet on my elbow and add, "And this. Not that I'm really sure what I'm supposed to
be doing with it, but once I know—well, it's Headmaster Tower's to deal with when I'm
out of here. It's pretty powerful too, though."
"What does it do?" Lynx asks.
Excellent question. I have barely the faintest idea, so I airily tell him, "Oh, it has
immense power. Seven immortal lives. And it throws dragon fire and... other things."
Sebastian snorts. "She has no idea. Ezra, found the way out yet?"
I bristle at his dismissive attitude, finding myself wishing that he would face his inner
asshole before the others. I long for my sweet yet bitter Sebastian, the one who takes my
pain away and gazes at me with love in those blue eyes. The sooner we're done with
this and I have the old versions of my guys back, the better.
"Almost there..." Ezra has been moving around the room, tapping various bricks with
the handle of his sword, seemingly getting information out of what sounds like nothing
in particular to me. "This one is close... maybe one more... two to the left..."
"It's here." Mateo strides over and taps one of the bricks in the wall, and the entire wall
collapses into a doorway around him. When Ezra shoots him a peeved look, he just
shrugs. "I saw a divot in the middle of it."
I can't stop myself from snorting aloud in amusement as Ezra's frown deepens. "Florida
Man beat you at the riddle."
"Wait..." Ezra is looking at me in genuine confusion. "How do you know that we call
him that?"
"Because I know you."
He frowns. "I guess so."
There's a moment of silence, full of unspoken emotions, where I can feel it: hope. That
everything will come out okay. That I'll get them back in the end.
"We should go through the door," Sebastian says, cutting through the moment like
knives through skin. "It'll close, and somehow I doubt Florida Man over here can solve
the riddle a second time."
As we head towards the door, Mateo wonders aloud, "Huh. I guess I could find out
soon if I really am from Florida."
"Knowing you, you're probably the son of a stripper and that bath salts guy who ate
someone's face off."
Hell has—shocker of all shockers—a lot of demons guarding its gates. Slathering,
many-legged, furry and strange demons with odd smells and teeth in places no living
thing should ever have teeth.
"Ready? We've got to fight through there," Ezra points to a gate at the far side of the
room we're peering into, "then get to the other side, where there will be at least half a
dozen guards, and around the corner. I know the way, but I'll need you guys to back me
up."
"Ready," I say, more out of habit than anything, and Ezra gives me an odd look.
Swallowing, I realize aloud with a blush, "You... didn't mean me."
He frowns and looks back down towards the obstacles in front of us, his throat bobbing
as he swallows heavily. In a low voice he says, "Let's get this over with."
And we do—with surprisingly little difficulty. My phoenix fire cuts through demon and
their spawn. Ezra's sword slices things in the middle, and the head, and other places.
Facing off against dark and twisted demons with a demented, delighted smile on his
face, Sebastian makes short work of them with knives and daggers. Lynx is all fists and
brute force, while Mateo takes up the rear and shoots things long range.
At one point, a scaly thing nearly slices me open from hip to shoulder, but Mateo shoots
it five times until it's twitching on the ground. I turn to grin at him, but he's already
looking away, moving on to his next target.
Swallowing my disappointment, I remind myself: this is only temporary. It'll all go back
to normal soon.
Unless it doesn't.
"Here is as good a place as any." Ezra wipes his sword off on the ground and sheaths it,
pacing towards the center of the domed room we're in. "You can summon Malavic now,
Gr—Dani. It's time we talk to him about this little plan you cooked up."
I don't remind him that we all came up with the plan together. I'm exhausted—not just
from fighting my way through swathes of demons, but of reminding the guys over and
over again that this isn't the beginning for us. It's wrenching me out, turning my heart
into a dull, heavy thing. We really are in Hell—even though it doesn't look like it,
bizarrely. Not in this room, at least.
We're in some strange underground atrium with a dome that looks up towards endless
Hellfire, packed earth at our feet with green grass growing out of it, half a dozen guards
dead around us strewn between rosebushes and fountains. The demons have gotten
more humanoid as we moved closer to the center of Hell, though these still had tusks
coming out of the corners of their mouths and floppy ears. Apparently this room is
some kind of staging place—Ezra explained, in an impatient tone, that it's where human
souls are brought on their way into or out of Purgatory to be weighed and judged.
There's a book set on a marble pedestal in the middle of the room, along with a marble
bench that curves behind it. The judge is absent—apparently the room is rarely used,
Purgatory being an underpopulated place. Most people either damn themselves
straight to Hell or float peacefully to the Great Beyond—those that don't stick around
and turn poltergeist, that is.
It's strange and awful to think that this is where my guys' fates were sealed. If they
hadn't come here, they never would've signed their one-way, doomed contracts with
Hell that enslaved them for as long as it's decided they deserve it. But if they'd never
been turned into the demons that they are now, they wouldn't have met me, or I them,
and none of us would be here today. I don't know if I should curse this place or thank
Hell for it.
"What's this book for?" Walking over, I run my fingers along the pages. "It's full of
signatures."
In a dull voice, Sebastian says, "This is where we sign our contracts, remember? The
signatures bind humans to an afterlife of servitude."
My heart aches, and I pull my hand away, shaking my fingers like something might've
rubbed off on them. It's hard to imagine what people might be told to convince them to
sign such an irrevocable thing. Maybe they feel like they have no choice—Hell is
burning through the dense glass just above our heads, after all. I doubt any of them
realize just how long they'll pay for their sins, or how much humanity it'll cost them.
Turning away from the book, I find an empty spot in the grass, slightly creeped out by
the garden. It takes me a moment to realize why: there are no bees here, no butterflies
or birds, not a single puff of wind or drop of water. The plants that grow all around me
must stay frozen like this, created not with life, but with power. They don't need
sunlight to survive. Only the fires of Hell shine down on them.
It's the last place anyone should decide their eternal fate. That's kind of the point,
though. As I draw Malavic's summoning circle for a third time, I send up a little ironic
prayer that he'll convince the guys to do what I need them to do. He's wily, though—
and this is no place for prayer.
This is a place where prayers, hopes, and dreams alike go to wither away on the vine.
The summoning circle takes less time to draw than I remember. At this point, I guess it's
become almost like muscle memory to me. Stepping back, I look over at the guys.
They've arranged themselves across the bench, save for Ezra, who's standing stiffbacked next to the podium.
I meet his hard and wary green gaze. "It's not a trick, you know," I tell him, because
some part of me desperately wants him to believe what I'm saying, all on his own. "I
really am telling you the truth. I'd die for you. I'm in Hell for you. This is really about
your freedom and nothing else."
He considers me for a moment. "You know, I think I believe you."
"So you trust me?"
"That's the thing," he says slowly, his expression drifting far away, "I may believe you,
but it's not reassuring. The only thing more dangerous than a Grim is a young woman
in love."
I blink at him in disbelief. Behind him, Mateo snorts and boos. "You sound almost as
maudlin as Sebastian, and it stinks. Summon the demon, little phoenix. Maybe he'll
decide to cut Ezra's heart out and eat it while he watches."
I laugh a little. "That reminds me, though—stay out of the summoning circle. Malavic
has to tell the truth, and he wants to be here, but well... he's known for his craftiness for
a reason."
"We're not fools," Sebastian mutters. "Well, except for Mateo."
Rolling my eyes, I move back a few feet from the edge of the circle, then say the
incantation. Moments later he appears, in the flesh and looking very pleased: the
ancient demon Malavic.
Smirking at me, he murmurs, "Miss me?"
"Not on your life."
Chapter 17
"WELL, well, what have we here? The Room of Recognition... been such a long time
since I've seen this place." Malavic surveys the garden all around us, a smirk on his face,
then turns back to me. "Open up my summoning circle, little phoenix. I want to let the
Hellfire loose and burn this place down for good."
"Wait just a minute," I tell him, already nervous at the thought of releasing him from the
circle. "There's something we need to ask you."
"Oh?" Raising a brow, he looks over my shoulder and snorts. "Ezra, old pal. You're
looking at me like you're imagining what it would feel like to cut my head off with that
sword of yours."
Ezra pushes off from the pedestal and approaches the summoning circle, a troubled
frown on his face. "I would like to see what's inside you that makes you such an
asshole," he says, "but that's not what I wanted to talk to you about." I feel his eyes flick
to me, briefly. "Were we really... willingly bonded with this Grim?"
He says the words the way you'd say eating human feces or tap dancing naked on the roof of
the Hilton Hotel. I stiffen, trying not to take offense, reminding myself that the Ezra
standing next to me isn't the one who fell in love with me—or the one I fell in love with.
He'll change back to normal soon enough. If we get through this next part that, is.
"Well, well." Chuckling darkly, Malavic looks back and forth between me and my guys,
and I try to ignore the fact that he's probably seeing all my pain and heartbreak. "You
really did it. You really died in order to get down here and free yourselves. And now
you don't remember anything. How interesting."
"Just answer the question."
An eye roll from the ancient demon. "Yes, I've seen you with this woman before. You
never seemed to be terribly upset about it." He leers at me. "Then again, I wouldn't be
either if I got to fuck her tight little body from time to time."
The urge to kill him rises, and I nearly take a step into the summoning circle before
reminding myself that he has all the power in there. Instead I just grit my teeth and
glare him down, trying to ignore the flare of heat in my cheeks—or the fact that I can
feel Ezra looking at me. I don't want to glance over and see what expression is on his
face right now.
I'm afraid that it might break my heart into so many pieces that I'll never rise up as a
phoenix from the ashes again.
Lynx gets up and approaches the circle, a curious expression on his face. "We actually
wanted to ask you something else—is facing yourself in Hell really the way that you
broke your contract? Will it really work for us?"
"Yes," Malavic says simply, wiping the leering expression off his face. "I died, but when
I got down here, there was something... calling to me. Or someone, I should say. A ghost
from the past. I journeyed into the deep corners of Hell to find the source of the voice,
and instead I found myself. My true self. The one who committed the sins that got me
stuck in that contract in the first place. Instead of running from who I was, I faced what
I'd done. And it worked."
"It does make a certain sort of sense," Lynx muses. "Our contracts are in place because of
the sins we committed as mortals. We're meant to serve until those sins are wiped clean.
If we faced them down and repented for them, maybe it's essentially the same thing."
The ancient demon's eyes glow gold, and he warns Lynx, "Don't underestimate what
it'll take from you. Facing my self was one of the hardest things I've ever done—and I
orchestrated the Black Plague." He grins roguishly. "I don't know who you were as a
mortal, but I know this: we don't become demons because we jaywalked or rolled
through a stop sign. Whatever you did, whoever you were, you won't like that person."
Lynx shakes his head. "I'm sure I can face what I've done. How bad can it be?"
Malavic chuckles. "Don't say I didn't warn you."
"Consider us warned," Ezra says, then paces back to the pedestal and the bench to join
the other guys.
"We should probably talk this out," Lynx says, and my heart squeezes painfully at the
realization that I'm not part of his 'we' anymore. "If we have anymore questions, we'll
let you know."
"Mmmmm." Malavic's eyes go to me, and he grins. "So, little phoenix. It seems we meet
again."
"This was our deal," I remind him. "Why you wanted to return to Hell like this, I have
no idea, but you're here now."
"Yes. Thank you for keeping your end of the bargain." Glancing over at my guys, who
are deep in discussion with each other, Malavic leans towards me and murmurs, "I
could go with you, you know. As your ally. Now that you find your own quartet to be
so very... cold."
"I'll be fine," I tell him, irritated. "I don't need you."
"Are you sure about that?" He raises a brow. "They don't seem particularly enamored
with you."
"We have an alliance now. They want to be free, and they're bound to me still,
whether—whether they want to be or not."
"Denial. Such a sweet sound."
"Shut up," I spit back at him. "You don't know anything."
Malavic chuckles. "I know that if you expect those four to watch your back in their
current state, you're far more than an optimist. You're a fool. And fools don't last long in
this place called Hell."
I'm tired of listening to him speak my worst fears aloud, so I turn away and walk in the
opposite direction of the guys, further into the still garden all around us. It seems
strange to have such a place in Hell, but it makes sense. Convincing humans to sign a
contract that enslaves them for an unknown period of time must be easier if they're
surrounded by calming sights—with a little reminder of the worst parts of Hell that
await them, in the form of the Hellfire glowing above our heads.
Staring at the roses, I find myself wondering if Malavic is right. Maybe I'm a fool to
think that this will work. I was a fool in the first place to search so blindly for a way to
free my guys. Love may have bound us once, but without it, we're just a Grim-born
phoenix and four wary men with blood on their hands. I can order them not to wound
me, but I can't make them trust me, or want me around.
A voice clears its throat behind me. Turning, I stare up in surprise at Sebastian's blue
eyes.
"We're going to do this," he says, his voice even and clear. "The five of us. Together.
Maybe when we get our memories back, we'll understand better how in the world we
wound up bound to a Black Phoenix in the first place."
"Thank you. I guess."
Studying me intensely, he adds, "It might help if you asked Malavic to tell you how to
get through the next part of Hell. We've navigated about as far as we know. The inner
circles aren't exactly welcoming to upper level things. If you thought what we faced out
there was bad, the things that live further in are horrifying—and there are human souls
there too, being tortured for eternity."
I grimace. "Great."
"If we know another path, we might be able to go around," he says. "But if we go
straight through..."
"I'll ask Malavic." As I start to head towards the summoning circle, though, Sebastian's
fingers grip my arm, and I stop to look back curiously at him. "What is it?"
"This place..." He stares at me. "Do you know how you're going to get out of here?"
Licking my lips, I tell him, "When the moment is right, I'm meant to send a signal back
to the mortal realm. At which point, the mage standing watch over my body will release
me from the spell keeping me in this half-dead state, and I'll wake up... hopefully."
"That's a lot to risk." Sebastian runs his fingers through his hair, looking a little
confused. "If you wind up stuck down here, you won't be able to escape. Even if you
deserve to rest in the Great Beyond, there's no way out once we pass this room and go
further in. You could wind up trapped in Hell for eternity."
"I know."
"But you risked it anyway." His dark brows knit together. "Why?"
Staring up at him, I wonder how it is that he hasn't figured this part out already.
"Because I love you enough to face eternal damnation."
Meeting his gaze, I try to make him believe it. Based on the way his blue eyes widen just
a little, I think he actually might. Licking his lips, he opens his mouth—but before he
can say anything, another voice interrupts him.
"Time to get out of here," Ezra says. "We're about to have company."
My eyes dart to the door we fought our way through. The handles are jiggling—
someone is on the other side, pounding relentlessly on the wood. Mateo stuck one of
the guard's swords through the door handles, but it won't hold forever. Especially not
with demons on the other side.
"Alright." I take a deep breath. "Let's do this."
Sebastian watches me with some deep, unidentifiable emotion in his eyes. "Yes, let's."
Stalking over to Malavic, I tell him, "We need to know the best way out of here. And
before you try to protest—"
"Yes, yes, you'll leave me in this circle and the guards will run me through." He sighs
dramatically. "This is what I get for asking you to summon me to Hell, but not
specifying that you free me afterwards."
"Stop whining. Tell me the way."
"Very well: left, left, left, right, right, straight." He smirks. "Oh, and when you see the
door made of human flesh, don't go through. There's lots of icky torture on the other
side."
I frown at him in disbelief. "That's it? A few measly directions?"
"If you want me to be more specific, I can't be. When I came through here, I had a
magical talisman with me. How I got it is complicated, but—it lit the way. Satisfied?"
"Fine." Stepping forward, I smudge the lines of the summoning circle I drew, trying not
to let my nervousness about what I'm doing show. "Don't follow us."
"Wasn't planning on it."
The doors creak. They're about to break. Ezra is standing on the other side of the
pedestal, near the door out of here—the one that leads deeper into Hell.
I spare one glance back at Malavic, who's facing the pounding at the doors with a shiteating grin on his face, clearly ready for a fight. Then I rip my eyes away and head
towards the door that'll lead us straight into damnation, Sebastian at my heels, the other
guys ahead of me.
Ezra asks, "Did he tell you the way?"
"He did. Not that it was useful. But I think he dropped a piece of information that'll
help more than any map."
Taking a deep breath, I step through the door... and into pitch blackness, full of
unnerving screams. Instead of letting myself freak out, I take a few more steps in, then
reach over and brush my fingers against Gaugin's bracelet.
In the most commanding voice I can muster, I tell it, "Illuminate the safest path
through."
At first I feel silly—what inanimate object takes orders? It seems too simple, and too
good to be true. Then a tiny line of bright blue light bursts at my feet and whizzes away
into the darkness—towards our left.
As Sebastian pulls the door shut behind us, I turn towards the guys and tell them, "This
way."
We walk into the dark together, ready to face the worst thing of all: the truth.
Chapter 18
THE BLUE LIGHT leads us past horrifying things that I glimpse in the darkness and try not
to look at too long.
People hung on meat hooks, their skin being flayed from their bodies. Others writhing
on the ground, guts spilled, screaming for mercy. There are eyeballs alright—and
terrible monsters who hunger for human misery.
It's Hell, after all. I don't know what I was expecting. It still seems so unimaginably
cruel—there's no redemption here, no way out.
Not unless, like my quartet, you sign a contract full of catches, and serve Hell's whims
for untold years. What a way out. But we're going to find the real way out soon, the one
that leads to their freedom.
The blue light brings us to a door that stands alone, no wall on either side of it, curved
at the top and made of thick oak. I frown, stopping in front of the door, and pace
around it to make sure the blue light doesn't continue on the other side. But it seems to
have stopped here for a reason.
"I guess we go through," I murmur, staring at the door. Tiny vines of ivy crawl up its
surface and curl around the doorknob. "I'll go fir—"
When I grab the door, though, a static shock goes up my arm. Snatching my palm back,
I hiss and shake it, glaring at the knob.
"I don't think the door is for you, Dani." Turning, I meet Lynx's gaze; his voice is hollow,
his eyes just a little wide with trepidation. "It's... calling to me. I think I'm supposed to
face whatever is on the other side. Alone."
"No." Shaking my head, I reach for his hand and twine my fingers around his. It's a
relief when he lets me, returning my grip. "If you go through this door, you're not going
alone. We're going together—you and me."
"We'll watch your backs," Ezra says, turning to face the darkness with a determined
expression on his face. "If anything tries to stop you from freeing yourself, it'll have to
face the three of us."
"Thank you," Lynx tells them. Then he looks down at me. "I don't know what's on the
other side of that door. You could be signing up to see terrible things. For all I know, I
was a monster, and that's why I wound up here."
"No way." Grinning up at him, I remind him, "You're way too much of a sweet nerd for
that. Besides, the monsters are out there, getting their balls stretched and their noses cut
off. Whatever is on the other side of that door, we can face it. Nothing will change
expect that you'll finally be free."
"You sound so sure."
"I am." I make my voice firm. "I'm sure of this more than anything."
He smiles a little, then turns towards the door, grips the doorknob, and opens it.
Stepping through, he brings me with him—and we face his past together.
On the other side of the door is a modest one-story house nestled in the suburbs. With a
red brick exterior and a gabled roof, it looks a little old, a little worn, but well-loved.
There are daisies in the front garden and a welcome mat by the front door.
Staring at the house, Lynx says, "In here. I think that's where I'm supposed to go."
The moment he's said it, we're inside the house, right at the threshold. I jump a little—
then remind myself that this is a memory, after all, not reality. It makes sense that we
would be guided through it.
On the other side of the door is a modest living room with a worn-in couch and a small
TV. There are things lying everywhere: comic books on the coffee table, an old doll
lying on the floor, dog toys, a jacket crumpled on a chair, and more than a few empty
snack packs. A woman is singing under her breath in the other room, something in
French, her hands in the sink washing dishes, her hair covered in a silk knot. Her
complexion is dark and rich, like Lynx, and it's not hard to figure out where we are.
This must be his childhood home.
As if drawn by something, he turns away from the kitchen, towards a hallway off the
living room. It was daytime when we entered, but it's dark now; crickets sing outside,
and the TV turns itself towards an old late night talk show, the host interviewing an
actor who hasn't been young or famous for decades.
This all happened a long time ago, far into the past, but it's been dragging Lynx down
and binding him to Hell for decades.
I follow him into the hallway, which is dark. There's a door open to a room with a small
nightlight on. Lynx stares inside; a boy sits on the bed, his face remarkably similar to
Lynx's face, a comic book open in his lap. He doesn't read the words; instead he's
chewing on his lower lip, eyes darting out towards the hallway, face full of anxiety.
Further down the hallway, a door is cracked open, and light spills out from inside.
Taking a deep breath, Lynx turns towards that door.
He says to me, "This is it. That room—that's where something terrible happened."
Flattening a hand over his chest, he adds, "I can feel it."
"I can go first, if you want."
"No." His voice is firm, sure. "This is mine to face."
We walk down the hallway together. A man's voice filters through the door. I try not to
hear the words, but they come to me anyway.
"That feels good, doesn't it? You like it. And you love me, don't you?"
"Yes, Papa."
Lynx shudders. The man murmurs, "Now, because you love me—"
I don't have to hear anymore. Pushing past him, I kick the door open, and stare at the
scene frozen on the other side.
A little girl. A grown man who should have protected her, but did something else
instead. Something terrible.
The scene warps, twists. We're standing in the other room now, the little boy's room. He
puts his hands over his ears. He's humming something, eyes squeezed shut.
In a raw voice, Lynx says, "I knew. But I didn't protect her."
"You were just a little kid," I remind him. "This wasn't your fault."
"I was her older brother," he says. "I could've at least told our mom. But I was afraid
that she wouldn't believe me, or she'd think it was my fault somehow."
I squeeze his elbow. "This can't be it. This wasn't why you were sent to Purgatory. And
if it was, then Hell is the most unfair place in the universe."
"This wasn't all of it," he says, a hollow expression on his face. "There was more. I can
feel it."
The house shifts beneath our feet. There's a rumble. And we're standing somewhere else
now: in a tidy one bedroom apartment with beige carpet, the kitchen spotless, little
plants in the windows, an orange tabby grooming himself on the counter.
A young woman who looks like Lynx walks through the little living room, running her
hands back and forth on a worn, closed envelope. She stares out the window. She takes
out her phone.
In a breathless voice, Lynx says, "That's her. My sister. I think... I think I know what
she's going to do." He closes his eyes, and two tears run down his cheeks. "Oh, God."
The woman sets the envelope on the kitchen counter. Leaning over, I read the name she
scrawled across it: Antoine. Then she opens a cabinet in the kitchen, pulls out a bag of
cat food, and pours it into a large mixing bowl. The tabby walks over to the kitchen and
rubs against her legs.
"Just in case," she says, rubbing his cheeks as he purrs. "He's always on time, though.
Wednesday dinners. Our little tradition. But just in case he doesn't swing by... you'll be
okay."
A deep sense of foreboding runs through my chest. I grab Lynx's hand and squeeze
tight. He squeezes back, his face dark and full of grief.
The woman goes to the bathroom. Pulls a full bottle of pills out of the medicine cabinet.
Pours a large glass of water. Walking back to the living room, she opens the bottle, sits
on the couch, and calmly takes every pill.
Her eyes close.
She relaxes into the couch all at once.
The cat eats his kibble in the other room, unaware.
Then the ground shifts beneath us again. It's nighttime now. The cat is grooming
himself on the sofa; he doesn't seem to be aware that the dead body of his owner is right
next to him. Or maybe he is, and the only way he knows to get through it is to lick his
paw over and over again.
There's a knock at the door. We both turn, and somehow I know who's on the other
side.
Another knock at the door. "Denise! You didn't show. Everything okay?"
A pause as he waits for a response. A phone rings—the woman's, sitting on the kitchen
counter. Of course she doesn't answer.
He knocks more rapidly. Then, frantically, he says, "Denise, I'm coming in! I swear to
God, if you're fucking with me—"
A key in the lock. She must have a spare under the mat, or he must keep one. I watch as
the door swings open, and a young man maybe a few years older than the woman
bursts through, his face frantic.
Somehow he looks like Lynx but also doesn't. They have the same medium brown skin,
the same black hair, but his is a little bit longer than Lynx's, long enough to show its
curls. He's wearing relaxed clothes that are a bit big for him, his jacket and shirt not
quite matching, his tennis shoes muddy at the edges. Though he's not a skinny string
bean, he's not as built as Lynx either.
But I know it's him. I can feel it as he rushes back me towards the sofa. I can hear it in
the wail of grief in his voice. Lynx's hand tightens around mine, and I grab his arm,
squeezing tight.
"It's all in the past," I tell him. "It already happened, so there's nothing we can do about
it."
"I know." Watching the other version of himself pull his sister's body to the ground and
perform CPR on her, 911 on speaker phone beside him, he bites his lower lips and lets
two more tears roll down his cheeks unchecked. "You know, when we get our bodies,
we're able to change them for a while. We all choose how we look, to a certain extent,
using the magic that lingers when we're reborn. I think I got pretty close, but looking at
them... I look more like her than like him. Almost as if..."
"Some part of you remembered her, even though you didn't know it."
He nods, squeezing his eyes shut. "If I'd done something, maybe she wouldn't have
done this. If I'd protected her—"
"Stop. You couldn't have. It wasn't your job." I loathe their father for what he's done to
both of them: the man who was Lynx, and his sister, who died too soon. "We're all
supposed to be protected by our parents, but when they fail us, that's not our fault.
Trust me. I would know."
After a moment, he says, "This isn't what almost sent me to Hell. I can feel it. There's
something more."
As he says the words, the world shifts around us again.
We're back at the house again, in the evening. The young man who was Lynx is with us,
standing just in front of the house. There's a hard, angry look on his face, and he's
wearing dark clothes that blend into the night. He has a red gas container in one hand,
while the other is stuffed into the pocket of his hoody, which is rounded with the
weight of something I can't see.
We follow him, pulled along in his wake, as he strides up the driveway towards the
garage. He pokes his head through the door, his voice echoing in the emptiness.
"Good. Mom's car isn't here. She's out of town, just like her calendar said." Walking to
the other side of the garage, he grabs a few dirty rags from the shelf. "These should
help."
As he walks past us, out of the garage and towards the house, Lynx closes his eyes in
grief. "Fuck, I was so stupid."
"What's going on? Is he—are you—really going to do what I think you are?"
"Yes." Lynx grimaces, and we find ourselves standing in the living room with the angry
young man, watching him unscrew the cap on the gas container. "This was my biggest
mistake. What got me put in Purgatory. What I've been paying for all these years. But
Dani—I'll never be able to make up for what I did."
Striding around the room, he covers everything—the couch, the carpet, the recliner,
even the drapes—with gas. Then he heads down the hallway and covers that too,
liberally dousing both of the kids' rooms, and stuffing the dirty rags under the door at
the end of the hall, which must lead to the master bedroom.
In a low voice, he mutters, "You should burn in Hell for what you did to her. But I can't
make that happen. So you'll burn here instead."
We follow him as he makes a trail of gas towards the front door, tipping the last few
drops out onto the lawn. Then he pulls a box of matches out of his hoody pocket, lights
one, and stares at the tiny dancing flame.
There's so much anger on his face.
So much hatred and grief.
I've seen that look on his face once or twice, mostly when he was strangling someone to
death who really, really deserved it. Lynx may not be the young man standing in front
of us with a lit match and an empty container of gas, but they're not that different after
all. Taking these memories from him didn't change who he is—it just left him in the
dark.
He's always hated evil people, and wanted to protect the innocent. When it comes
down to it, I can't blame him. But as he drops the match on the line of gas and watches
the fire race towards his childhood home, I know that this isn't going to turn out the
way he wants.
Bit by bit, the flames rise. We can see them in the living room. Then through the
windows into the bedrooms. The old version of Lynx backs up, pulls his hoody over his
head, and starts to turn away, needing space from what he's done.
Then the screaming starts.
Not a man's voice.
A woman's.
And his eyes widening. "Momma!" Turning back towards the house, he races inside,
frantic. "Fuck fuck fuck—"
We follow him through the flames as they lick up the walls and across the floors, as
they consume everything in their wake, fueled by hatred and anger but no longer under
control. He covers his face with his hoody and tries to get to the bedroom, but the
flames in the hallway are the worst of all, and he coughs from the smoke.
The woman who sang in French, who ties her hair up with silk, who says his name with
love in her voice, opens up the door at the end of the hallway, coughing. The fire licks at
her skin. She sees her son.
"Antoine—" Reaching for him with a trembling hand, she falls to her knees, frantic at
the sight of her boy. "It's going to be okay."
But it isn't. He reaches for her, tries to get to her, takes his hoody off and throws it over
the flames in an attempt to put them out. Nothing works. The fire consumes. They both
pass out from smoke inhalation, and the flames keep burning, undeterred by the human
flesh in their way.
Lynx says, "I did this. I killed her—and myself in the process. All because I didn't know
how to forgive."
"Your father didn't deserve forgiveness."
"Not him." He looks at me with mournful, golden brown eyes. "Myself. That's who I
needed to forgive. All those years, I was so afraid of what happened to her. When she
died, I made it more about me than about her—I was so sure I could've saved her. But I
don't even know if that's what she needed. Maybe she just needed me to be there for
her. I was too busy walking away from the past to find out. So when she killed herself, I
blamed me, and I took it out on the one target I could find."
"You didn't mean to kill your mother," I point out. "You only meant to get revenge."
"And in the process I lost everything." He closes his eyes, and sighs slowly. The scene
around us fades away. We're standing in the dark again. "I remember it all now, Dani.
Every moment of being alive. All the pain and the love. And I remember you—us.
Everything."
Hope surges inside me. "Everything?"
"Yes."
He confirms it with a kiss that sparks the life back inside me. I felt so lost with him,
without them, but now it's starting to come back together. We're going to get what we
want–I know it. We have to.
When our lips part, we're standing in front of the oak door again, with the others. In
front of our eyes, the door crumbles into ash, and the blue light races ahead, into the
darkness.
"Well?" Sebastian is staring at Lynx with a hungry expression. "Did it work?"
"It did," he responds simply. "And I remember it all—including her. She didn't lie to us.
Not one bit."
Ezra looks flummoxed. "Now what?"
I'm the one to tell him, "Now we free the rest of you."
Chapter 19
MATEO'S DOOR is made out of thick galvanized steel that's riddle with bullet holes that
don't go all the way through.
Of course it is. I wouldn't expect anything less. We probably really are going to walk
through the other side and discover that he died in some weirdly tragic funny accident
involving drugs and a swimming pool.
"So I just... go through?" He touches the door handle and grins. "Seems easy enough.
Especially if I get to find out who I was. I bet I had hot chicks hanging off my arms left
and right."
Sebastian snorts. "More like hot chicks running away from you left and right."
"Take her." Lynx pushes me forward insistently. "That's a key part of the process, I
think."
It isn't, technically, but I shoot him a smile of gratitude anyway. Now that he has his
memories back, he knows how much we shared—and how much it hurts me that the
others don't remember me yet. He wants me to go with Mateo so I can be there when he
remembers our love again.
Thankfully, my Bomber takes my hand with a shrug, and grabs the handle of his door.
"Let's do this fucking thing already. I'm excited to find out how rich and famous I was. I
bet I had really cool dogs."
I raise my brows at him. "Really? Cool dogs?"
"Yeah, you know—a purebred doberman or something. Or maybe a tiger. Let's find
out."
He yanks the door open, squealing on its hinges, and leads me through with him.
Just like before, we're drawn into a scene, one that starts at a house. Unlike Lynx's
house, this one isn't just modest, but run-down and very, very small. One of the side
windows is broken and covered in duct tape; the driveway has potholes, and the
gutters look like they're falling down. There are bedsheets in the front windows instead
of drapes, and broken pottery on the front porch, not to mention a lawn mower rusting
on the driveway.
"Just wait," Mateo says insistently, "maybe I grew up here, but I became rich and
famous later."
I laugh at him, then see the nervousness on his face. He may cover his true emotions
with jokes and bullshit, but I can see through them. Especially after all this time.
"It's okay, you know," I tell him. "Whatever you did, I'm sure there was a good reason
for it."
"Yeah, maybe." He sounds doubtful. "Let's just hope it doesn't take long. The last thing I
want is to watch a three hour movie of my probably shitty life."
He takes a step forward, and within moments we're in the house. It's full: three men are
sitting on the sunken sofa, two women cooking in the kitchen, kids playing underfoot.
There's an old woman in the dining room who catches my eyes, and a teenage boy
talking with her, the two of them setting cracked and mismatched china plates on the
table together.
"Tia Maria," the teenage boy complains, his black hair flopping over his forehead, "you
know that I can't go to that school. It costs too much. Mami and Papi barely have money
for my school supplies now."
"You just have to believe in yourself, Alejandro." She reaches out to squeeze his arm,
and I see all her love for him. "There are scholarships. And you're so bright—when you
want to be. Not to mention good at soccer. You can make a life for yourself." Looking
into the living room, she lowers her voice, "A better life than this."
Watching the teenage boy, Mateo says, "I was pretty good-looking, for a pipsqueak.
Wonder if I had a girlfriend."
I shake my head at him and roll my eyes. "Your priorities never change."
"I'm just saying." He grins at me. "I bet I cleaned up well."
We get to see more of Alejandro, scene by scene, and I have to admit that Mateo was
right. He cleans up well as he gets older. But he also changes in other ways.
Together, we watch him pick up a gun and rob a convenience store, a mask over his
face. He flees with his friends, including a boy named Santiago who makes alarm bells
ring in my stomach. Together, they buy liquor with fake licenses. They steal packages
off the back of parked UPS trucks. They scare women coming out of the opera and yank
jewelry off their wrists.
"This, I don't love," Mateo admits, after the fifth scene of mortal him stealing. "There
was probably a good reason for it, though."
Within a moment, we're standing back in the living room again. Mateo—Alejandro—is
sitting with his aunt on the sofa. He's pushing money into her hands, insisting, "Take it.
For the doctor."
"No, Alejandro. You need this for—" She coughs, and he folds her fingers over the
money. Finally, she relents. "Fine. A little won't hurt. But I want you to be enrolled at
that school by the summer. You've graduated high school now, and it's time for
college." Patting his cheek, she adds, "I'm so proud of you. Nineteen and working for a
hotshot lawyer. My boy."
"I love you, Tia."
"I love you too."
My heart squeezes. Mateo observes, "Guess we know why I went to Hell."
"Purgatory," I correct him. "And... I doubt this was all of it. Petty thieves are nothing.
You didn't even hurt anyone."
"I scared plenty with that gun," he points out. "But I'm sure you're right. There probably
is more."
He looks nervous, and I don't blame him. I can remember my whole, shitty life, and
even I don't like to look back at the petty thefts I committed.
"We all do what we have to survive," I tell him. "You just did more than most."
As if on cue, the scene changes, and we're standing in a luxurious living room with lush
carpet and wide leather couches. Young Mateo is walking through, swiping things off
the end tables and putting them in his backpack, checking drawers for cash. He has a
gun stuffed in the waistband of his jeans. We follow him around the corner into an
empty bedroom with a dresser covered in jewelry.
But it only seems like the room is empty. As he pushes more trinkets into his bag, a
woman comes walking around the corner, her blonde hair damp from the shower,
wearing a thin white robe. She freezes when she sees him.
He freezes back.
"Hello?"
"Don't move!" Pulling the gun on her, he grabs a roll of duct tape out of his bag. "Don't
scream, either. Get on the bed—like that. Hold your hands out, wrists together."
As he stalks over towards her, his hands shake, but she trembles too. In a panicked
voice she begs, "Please, don't hurt me."
His eyes flick up to hers. There's guilt in his gaze. But in a rough voice, he says, "Don't
move."
I watch him duct tape her wrists together, then her ankles. He shoves a pillowcase in
her mouth and tapes that up too. Then he goes back to the dresser and grabs some
things—but he's clearly shaken. He keeps looking back at her, a horrified expression on
her face.
Mateo mutters, "Fuck, how embarrassing. Stealing from some rich white lady while she
watches. I bet she thought I wasn't raised right. Maybe I wasn't."
"Don't say that. It was an accident. And you didn't hurt her."
"Just wait," he says, mouth downturned. "I doubt this ends here."
It doesn't. Because, just like the house wasn't empty, Mateo—Alejandro—wasn't alone.
The other boy, the one who gives me a bad feeling, burst into the room and stares at the
woman on the bed.
"What the fuck is this? Alejandro, the fuck you doing?" He shoves teenage Mateo, then
pulls his gun. "You didn't tell me someone was home."
"Because I didn't know! I thought the house was empty." Looking over at the woman,
he stares at Santiago. "Hey, put that away. I tied her up. She's not going anywhere."
"And what do you think she's gonna do when we're gone, huh? Tell the police. Run her
mouth. We have to take care of this."
"It's not like that. Hey—hey!" Mateo grabs Santiago's shoulder, staring at the gun as he
raises it. "Don't do that, man. She won't say nothing."
"Fuck you, man. I'm not going to jail because of you."
It all happens so fast. Santiago shoves Mateo away. Mateo pulls his gun. Santiago
shoots the woman—I flinch—right in the head. At the same time, Mateo shoots
Santiago, hitting him in the shoulder too late to stop him from killing the woman. The
guns fall to the floor; Santiago's because his arm is torn through, Mateo's out of shock
that he actually shot it.
They stare at each other. Santiago looks shocked. Stumbling back, he spits out, "Fuck
you, man. You'll pay for this."
I think he means it. The boys run out of the house, each grabbing their guns, Santiago
going slow as blood drips down his arm. Around us, the scene shifts.
Mateo is frantically going through his room, grabbing things. His Tia watches from the
doorway as he pulls money out from under his bed and thrusts it in her hands.
"Take it," he says, sobs leaving his mouth as tears run down his cheeks. "Take all of it. I
don't deserve it. The things I did—take it, Tia."
"No." She shakes her head, pushing the money back towards him, eyes hard. "My
Alejandro. You can't run away from this. Please, whatever happened, stay. We'll talk to
your Uncle Jose—"
"He'll just turn me in."
"For what?"
Young Mateo stiffens. He packs a bag and slings it over his shoulder, then looks back at
her. "Stay safe, Tia. I love you."
"Alejandro—"
But he pulls out of her grip. Heads out the door. Jumps in a beaten up old sedan, and
starts it, peeling down the road.
We stay in the house, with his aunt, watching him. Remembering Mateo's nightmare, I
feel my heart beating, and know that something bad is about to happen. Not just his
Tia's tears or the terrible expression on her face as she watches her beloved nephew run
away for good. But something far, far worse.
Mateo mutters, "Fuck, I was an idiot. Still am."
"Don't say that. You got a bad start in life. That doesn't mean you couldn't have been
better. Fuck, I've stolen plenty of shit. Neither one of us had other options."
"Didn't I, though?" He motions towards the house, and his aunt. "I could've worked
hard. Started modestly. Saved up. Maybe fixed this house up. It's not like I was
starving. I just thought I should have more, and I took it."
He's not wrong. I don't know what to say to that. So I grab his hand and squeeze tight
as the rest of the scene plays out.
There's a crash as someone breaks into the back door. It's Santiago with one of his
friends, waving a machete. They grab Tia Maria and push her into the sofa as she
screams.
"Call Alejandro. I want him to be here for this."
Moments later, the sedan peels back down the street. Young Mateo jumps out, gun in
hand, and bursts through the front door, looking at his friend with frantic eyes.
"Please," he begs, "don't do this—"
The machete falls. She screams at the top of her lungs. I close my eyes, then force myself
to open them again. Mateo jumps in, between his beloved aunt and the blade, gun in
hand—but his hands shake, and he gets stabbed for his effort. The gun falls. He tries to
protect her body, but Santiago's vicious friend pulls him away.
Eyes wide, he watches his Tia be murdered. Her gaze is on him as she dies. She lifts a
trembling hand towards him.
"Alejandro—"
But she dies before she can finish what she wanted to say. Mateo dies next, slashed
across the throat, crumbling onto the old carpet and bleeding out. I stare at his body as
the scene freezes.
"This is it," the demon Mateo says, standing next to me. "I was a piece of shit, and
people died because of me. People I loved. All because I was stupid and selfish."
Biting my lip, I point out, "Seems like Santiago was the true piece of shit in this case."
His mouth curves up into a smile. "True. Hopefully he's dead by now and getting his
fingers chopped off in some terrible corner of Hell. To think, he didn't just kill me—he
ruined my perfectly beautiful face by spraying blood all over it with that shitty death
blow."
"That's one way to look at it." Staring at his aunt's dead body, I point out, "She's
probably in the Great Beyond."
"Yeah. She deserves the rest." He licks his lips, then says, "And maybe I should get to
join her one day. You know, when I die again. Instead of getting stuck with all this
death and bullshit, I want to be better. Do better. And get what everyone else gets:
peace."
"I hope you get that," I tell him, turning and staring up into his face. "I really, really do."
He smirks. "I also want to get that fine ass of yours. In this life and the next."
Rolling my eyes, I kiss him. He tastes like black coffee and freedom, smells like warmth
and coming home. As his arms go around my waist, the scene fades around us, and my
heart lifts.
When we part, we're standing in front of his steel door with the guys again. In front of
our eyes, the metal melts, dissolving into liquid at our feet. Mateo whistles.
"Impressive. Let's keep going."
Gaugin's bracelet warms up against my elbow, and the blue light leads us further into
the darkness at our feet.
Chapter 20
"OF COURSE YOUR DOOR IS BORING," Mateo says, looking over at Ezra with a smirk on his
face. "It even has a nameplate on it."
It does. Ezra's door is a flat black, business-like door in a frame, with a silver plaque
that reads: EZRA, DEMON. Just that. No last name, no official title. It's in a very
professional-looking font.
Mateo adds, "I'm surprised your name plaque doesn't say 'ruler of the known universe'
or 'bossy asshole.' You certainly are one."
Elbowing him in the side, Ezra smirks at the oof that leaves Mateo's mouth. Then he
looks over at me, eyes reluctant. "I guess we're going in together."
Swallowing, I tell him, "You could leave me behind—"
"No," Lynx cuts in. Then, absurdly, he grabs our hands and smashes them together, like
a little kid making two dolls kiss. "You go in together. It's worked this far. No way are
we changing things and fucking it all up."
Ezra's hand is stiff in mine. He takes my grip, barely. His green eyes keep looking at me
like he doesn't know what I'm going to do next, and I guess he doesn't. We're strangers
now, after all.
But he leads me in his wake as he goes through his door, which is more than I could
possibly expect. It's a relief at least not to be left behind. I might've volunteered that, but
no way was I going to be okay with it if he'd really gone on alone.
On the other side, I expect to find another house. This time, though, we're outside a
hospital. It sprawls above us, covering blocks of space, foreboding.
Ezra drops my hand. "I think I basically grew up here."
"Were you sick?"
"Let's find out."
We step forward together, and into a hospital room. What I see takes my breath away.
There's a woman in the bed, her red hair fanned out behind her, sallow and weaklooking, an IV running to her arm. At her side, a boy reads a book aloud to her: The
Secret Garden. His voice cracks every few words, puberty trying to take over.
I knew Ezra was a teenage boy when he died, but I didn't realize he was this scrawny.
His arms are basically spaghetti noodles. He looks like he's never gotten a tan in his life.
And his rich brown hair is too long, curling at his neck and around his ears, clearly in
need of a haircut.
But his eyes, when he looks up from the book and at the woman in the bed, are the
same brilliant green they've always been. And they're full of love and concern, just like
I've seen them before. The sad thing is, though, his shoulders are rounded with the
weight of the world. He barely looks strong enough to carry much of anything, but he's
already shouldering responsibility beyond his years.
"You look tired," he says to the woman, reaching out to press his hand to her forehead, a
frown on his young face. "Maybe you should have some rest. Do you need more
morphine? Is the pain bad? I can get the nurses. The call button doesn't work half the
time, but Nurse Valerie—"
"I've got it, kiddo." A doctor walks in, his voice deep and rich, his face handsome and
jawline striking. He strides over and messes with little Ezra's hair. "It's not your job to
take care of your mom, Kyle. That's my job."
Despite myself, I snort. To Ezra I comment, "Mateo will make fun of you forever when
he finds out your real name is Kyle."
"Which is why he'll never find out." Ezra cuts his eyes at me. "Never, ever."
"Sure, if you insist," I say lightly. "I guess I'll take the secret to my grave. No promises
beyond that, though."
Little Ezra-slash-Kyle looks up at the doctor and frowns. "Dad, she seems worse than
yesterday. Don't you think we should—"
"I think you should go home with your Aunt Vanessa and work on your homework.
Mom will be fine. I've got it." Reaching for the end of the bed, he pulls her charts and
adds, "Don't worry, Heather. You'll be home in no time."
"I know I will," she says, smiling at her husband weakly. "I've got the best doctor in the
world. I just hope we get a diagnosis soon. The second best doctor in the world is on
that one." Winking at little Ezra, she jokes, "He'll be going to med school before you
know it."
Proudly, Ezra puffs up his chest and tells his dad, "I was reading some of your old
medical books, and I think I figured out what's wrong with mom. Based on her
symptoms—"
"We can talk about it in the car, kiddo," Ezra's dad says sharply, weirdly angry over
nothing. "Time to go."
The scene changes. We're inside a house now; looking around at the fireplace in the
corner and the pictures hung on the wall, I get the sense that this place cost money. Not
so much to make them rich, but enough that I buy it took a doctor's salary to pay for all
of it. The living room is expansive, but a good portion of it is taken up by a bed with
metal railing, and the frail woman sleeping in the sheets.
Ezra's mother looks gaunt. Her red hair barely has any color, and has been cut close to
her neck, no doubt because it was too long for her to take care of anymore. There's no
color to her skin, no vitality to her. I have to step close to even see her chest rise and fall.
Just like at the hospital, Ezra is sitting at her side, a book open in front of him. This time,
though, he's not reading aloud. He's staring at the words with a worried frown on his
face.
It's not a medical textbook. At least, not in the traditional sense. The front cover reads:
He Doesn't Love You: Dealing with a Partner Who Has Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
It doesn't look like the kind of thing a teenage boy would buy to read. In fact, based on
the way he glances over the top of the book to stare at his mom, I get the sense that little
Ezra found this book among her belongings.
"I remember this now," Ezra says, and I tear my eyes to him. "It took me so long to
figure out. I was so dumb. If I'd just realized..."
"Just realized what?"
He doesn't answer, mouth tight. But little Kyle does. Throwing the book to the ground,
he stands up and heads towards the kitchen—then stops, reconsiders, and walks
around to the other side. Following him into the dining room, we watch as he leaves the
lights off, creeps up to the door, and opens it just enough to peek through.
On the other side, his dad is putting food on a tray: rolls, chicken soup in a bowl, a glass
of orange juice. He puts two pills beside the soup. All normal.
Then he looks around to make sure he's still alone, bends down to open the cupboard
beneath the sink, and pulls a box out. The cardboard is unlabeled, but the vial he pulls
out doesn't have to say POISON on the side to make its intention clear. As he pulls
liquid into the dropper and adds it to the soup, I feel my stomach churn.
So this is what changed Ezra. What made him the way he is now. He must feel guilt for
not realizing sooner that his father was slowly poisoning his mother to death, all while
pretending to "treat" her for her ailments.
Looking over at the demon, I see it in his face: the weight of the world that he carries on
his shoulders. Though I know it's useless, I tell him, "It's not your fault."
"No, it isn't," he says, surprising me with his agreement. "It was his fault. That's why... I
have the feeling I know what comes next. I don't remember it, but at the same time, I
do."
We're in the kitchen suddenly, with Kyle, who's wearing a different outfit. It must be a
new day. He has a determined look on his face as he stands over the stove, flipping two
burger patties, his shoulders curved with that grave responsibility.
His father walks in, and he startles. "Hey, kiddo. How those burgers coming?"
"Fine." Teenage Ezra looks at the beer in his father's hand and presses down on the
patties with a wide spatula. "I'll have them out to you in a minute."
"No rush." His father smiles, soft and warm, but a shiver goes down my back at the
knowledge of what's hiding beneath that expression. "I'm just glad we get to watch the
game together, Kyle."
"Me too," the boy says to the grill, not looking up. Once his father leaves the room, he
stares in the direction he went, eyes hard.
Another shiver of trepidation goes down my back.
Ezra and I watch together as the mortal teenage version of him flips the patties, puts
cheese on them, adds onion, tomato, and lettuce, then squeeze ketchup onto the top bun
of both. Then, after making sure the coast is clear, he goes to the same cupboard his
father opened, pulls out the cardboard box, and lifts the glass vial out with trembling
fingers.
He stares at it for a while. Then pulls the bun off one of the burgers and squirts several
drops out at once, mingling it with the ketchup and melted cheese. Putting the bun back
on, he grabs the tray and hides the vial, then stops.
Looking between the two burgers, his mouth hardens. And he seems to come to some
sort of decision. I watch as he takes the second bun off and adds another dose of poison
to the other burger, so both are covered.
Then I follow him into the living room, Ezra at my heels, and watch as he passes a
burger to his father and takes the other one for himself. His gaze briefly goes down the
hallway as he sits on the couch next to his dad. Glance that direction, I see an open
door, a bed inside, and a heart rate monitor by the bed.
"She went into a coma," Ezra says, voice roughened by grief and anger. "She was never
going to come out of it. I knew that. I had no one because of him."
He's watching himself take a bite of the burger and chew it tentatively, then another.
Beside him, his father eats gustily, not one bit the wiser—apparently he picked a
tasteless poison for his wife.
"Why did he do it?" I ask demon Ezra, watching his father lick the last of the burger
from his lips. "Did you ever find out?"
"I have no idea. If I have to guess, there was another woman. Or maybe he just wanted
to play the hero. I thought at first that he was going to 'cure' her magically at the last
minute, give her a diagnosis and reverse the poison. Now I wonder if he was just bored
of her, and if he'd done other things like it before, without anyone knowing. Other
patients..." He shakes his head, mouth hard. "Does it matter why he did it? He
murdered my mother. The one person I should've been able to count on no matter
what."
Watching teenage Ezra eat half the burger then set it down, his face pale, my heart
hurts. "Why kill yourself, though?"
"I knew I couldn't live with what I'd done," he says, voice bitter. "Unlike him, I wouldn't
be able to walk away from it. Maybe because I was weak or a coward. But I knew that a
world with two dead parents wasn't for me."
Slowly, his father's eyes go shut. He tries to fight it, face confused, but eventually
realization dawns on him. By the time it does, it's too late—his limbs are weak, his
breathing shallow. He looks over at his son, who looks peaked, and his face breaks out
into a sneer.
"You stupid boy," he says. They're his final words before he dies.
Kyle dies slower, coughing a little. Getting off the chair, he falls to the ground, and
crawls on his hands and knees to his mother's room. She looks so weak and pale, but
somehow he finds comfort as he drags himself up onto the bed next to her and closes
his eyes for good.
Ezra and I watch him die, and the scene freezes in front of us, heartbreaking and
somehow inevitable.
"You shouldn't have been punished for this," I tell him, looking into his green eyes.
"You were just a boy."
"I was old enough to know what I was doing, Dani." He shakes his head, face grim.
"This wasn't something spur of the moment. I planned out every detail. I invited him to
eat burgers with me. Even told him I'd been practicing the recipe. And I ate mine slowly
because I wanted to watch him die."
I feel like my phoenix heart might just burn up into ash in my chest. "You never would
have done it if he hadn't been such a monster."
"Maybe," he agrees. "But maybe I was also a little bit of a monster, like him. I was too
much of a coward and a narcissist to live in a world where I was a murderer who
everyone reviled for killing his own father. So I chose suicide, and look where it got
me."
"You deserved better," I tell him, taking his hand firmly in mine. "There could've been
other options. You weren't done growing up. Hell is a terrible place for a teenage boy."
"It is," he agreed, "but it's made me strong. Capable. Hardened."
I want to cry at the burden he's placed on his own shoulders. "You're not alone, you
know. The rest of us can be strong for you."
"I know that now." Leaning towards me, his presses his forehead against mine, his
green eyes fluttering closed. "Can you ever forgive me?"
"For what?"
"Forgetting you."
"It's already forgotten."
We take each other's hands and stand like that for a while, each of us leaning forward,
each of us taking a little bit of the other's weight. I feel peace wash over me, and wonder
if this is what it's like to grow in love, until you feel bathed in it.
The world changes around us. The darkness returns. Stepping back, we watch together
as Ezra's door cracks in the middle, then splinters outward, the wood crumbling into
pieces, then blowing away as nothing but sawdust.
Ahead of us, the blue light sparks to life and zips forward.
One more to go.
Chapter 21
SEBASTIAN'S DOOR is made of the darkest, blackest glass: obsidian. Its surface is rippled
and jagged, so sharp at the edges it would cut fingers open if you touched it for too
long. There is no knob or handle—just more jaggedness.
Mateo stares at it. "Fuck, men. If the door represents you, you're real fucked up inside."
"I want you to know that I hope you die choking on your own dick," Sebastian says,
cutting his eyes in the other demon's direction. "Not that it's big enough to do the job."
"Oh, please." Mateo rolls his eyes. "My dick is plenty big enough. Dani can vouch for
me. Right Dani?"
"I plead the fifth," I tell him, my cheeks heating as Sebastian looks over at me with his
eyes narrowed. He's the only one who doesn't remember our connection yet—it's
awkward standing next to him. My skin feels like it's itchy all over. "How are we going
to get through this door, anyway?"
"We'll push it." Sebastian stares at my hand, his mouth twisted. "I guess we should go
together."
"It's worked so far," I point out.
Looking reluctant, he takes my hand. Then he faces the door, puts his palm out, and
pushes it open. We walk through into the darkness—and the instant we're on the other
side, he drops my hand.
I try not to take it personally.
Getting forgotten is starting to get old, though. Hopefully soon this exquisite torture is
over with for good, and we can finally get the Hell out of Hell.
The darkness on the other side of the door coalesces into a dim, warmly lit interior full
of people. We're in a bar. I look over at Sebastian, surprised, but then it occurs to me:
maybe his story doesn't start in his childhood.
Sometimes, we fall later in life.
All around us, people are drunk and tipsy, shooting pool and making out in dark
corners, smoking cigarettes and stumbling into the bathroom. One person in the room
calls my attention above all others: the man standing behind the bar, wiping down
glasses, getting ready to pour another round.
A sharp jaw. A pouty mouth that turns down on the corners. Dark hair that curls at his
ears. As his eyes flick up towards the customer in front of him, I feel my breath leave
me at how blue they are.
Sebastian.
We watch him lean forward and smirk at the woman who's come up to the bar. "What
can I get for ya, darling?"
"Gin and tonic."
She sways her hips back and forth, leaning forward at just the right angle to make her
breasts slip out of her neckline. Sebastian—the mortal one—takes a good, appreciative
look, and I find myself staring at the woman like I might be able to reach into the past
and stab her to death.
As he brings her the drink, she asks, "What's your name, alcohol-slinger?"
"Vincent. But you can call me Vinny." I wince, looking over at Sebastian, whose mouth
is just slightly parted in horror. "What about you?"
"Ruby. See you, Vinny."
We see a fast forwarded version of the night: the woman goes into the crowd, mingles,
then comes back for another drink. Then another. She buys a round of shots and entices
Sebastian to take one with her. They flirt, going around and around, his eyes lingering
on her ass as she walks away and her breasts as she orders her drinks.
Eventually, the bar is empty.
But she's still there.
And so is he.
"Closing time," he says, wiping down a glass and staring at her with clear lust in his
blue eyes. "You go somewhere to be?"
"I dunno." Stalking over to the bar, she folds up the walk-through partition and grabs
him by the collars. "Do I?"
It's hard to watch what happens next. He kisses her like he's devouring her, like he's
never wanted anything more. Even from here I can see the erection in his pants.
Beside me, demon Sebastian dryly comments, "Clearly I went to Hell because of my bad
taste."
I open my mouth to say something, then shut it in horror as the scene changes. We're in
an apartment—it must be Sebastian-slash-Vinny's place—and neither one of them is
wearing a stitch of clothing. Sebastian is fucking the woman with abandon, hips
pummeling into her on top of the sheets of his bed. I stare at a water stain on the ceiling,
trying to remind myself that the past is the past.
Still. It's a relief when they finish. Staring at her, I take note of every flaw, and tell
myself that I've got a way hotter body. Also, I find myself observing guiltily, Sebastian
is far better in bed than his mortal precursor Vinny. Those jackhammer hips weren't
sexy.
After they're done, they both light up. And it's not cigarettes they're smoking. It's...
"Is that heroin?"
"It appears to be." Sebastian watches with a frown, arms crossed. "Who could've
guessed that I was a white trash idiot. Mateo would love this."
The two lovers collapses in a fog of high on the bed. I don't know what to say.
Around us, the scene changes. This time they're smoking joints. Drinking. Then taking
pills. Shooting. In between, she's giving him a blowjob. He's screwing her from behind.
I feel like I'm the one being punished. Anything would be better than this.
"It's great that you get to see this, too," Sebastian says wryly, sounding miserable. "Love
to have someone along to witness my absolute buffoonery."
"You're not the first drug addict I've ever known." I shoot him a look of sympathy.
"Also, this is a different version of you."
He looks like he's about to say something, but the scene in front of us stabilizes. This
time, Vinny and Ruby are arguing. And it doesn't look pretty.
"I know you stole my stash! You're nothing but a junkie."
"What, and you're any better?" She sneers at him. "You lost your job again, didn't you?"
He kicks a box. "At least I had a job!"
"I told you, I'm working at the salon."
"Yeah? And where's the money from that?"
"Somewhere safe from your friends. I know Wally stole from me. I wanna save up—"
"Please. Like you could. You spent all that money on drugs and liquor, and now you're
back here begging for more." He points a finger in her face, scowling. "Well, don't
expect any. I'm cutting you off, Ruby. I don't want you coming around no more."
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah."
"Well, tough luck on that one. I'll be getting your money one way or another, whether
you like it or not." She stares him down, her eyes reddening as she starts to cry. "I'm
pregnant, Vinny. And before you ask, you asshole, the baby is yours. So you better get a
job already, because I'm going to need you around."
"You're pregnant?" His eyes widen. "And you're not pulling my leg?"
"Do you think I would?"
To my horror and amazement, they kiss. It turns sloppy. He pulls her clothes off. She
jerks at his pants and grabs his erection. Then they're stumbling to bed, his pants barely
around his knees before she's crawling on him and fucking him like a drunk teenager.
I look up at the ceiling at that water stain for a while. Beside me, Sebastian chuckles.
"Look at him. What a three pump chump. Tell me I never did that."
"I can't look. Don't make me."
"It's fine. They're falling asleep. I'm falling asleep, I guess I should say."
I look back, and they are—beneath the covers this time. Her arm falls out of the sheets,
and I find myself look at the track marks, heart in my throat. It hurts to imagine what
will happen next. I saw this sort of thing on the street many times.
Beside her, Sebastian's eyes slide open. He stares at the ceiling for a while. Then he slips
out of bed, refastens his pants, and grabs a backpack off the ground. Slowly and quietly,
he moves around the room, packing the bag.
Then he slips out the door.
"Wow." Demon Sebastian stares at his counterpart's back. "Deadbeat dad. Guess I did
deserve Hell."
"This isn't all of it," I tell him. "Though hopefully all the screwing like bunnies is over
with. I could've done without that part."
"Oh yeah?" His eyes slide over to me. "Jealous?"
Before I can answer, the scene shifts. We're in an abandoned building. There are bare
mattresses and sleeping bags on the floor. Empty beer bottles roll around between
them, and the distinct scent of things burning wafts through the air. Though sun is
shining bright through the windows, people are sleeping all over, in heaps and
blankets, on the mattresses and in the middle of the floor.
My stomach sinks. I've been in places like this, when I had nowhere else to sleep. People
don't wind up in drug dens unless they've hit the black pit beneath rock bottom.
Sure enough, in the middle of a heap, arm around a girl who looks like she could stand
to gain a good fifty pounds, is a familiar blue-eyed face. This time, it's gaunt and tiredlooking. A few years have passed, but Sebastian-slash-Vinny still has that same pouty
mouth, the same dark hair. It's just that the mouth is peeling and dry, the hair greasy.
"Fuck, what a loser." I look over at demon Sebastian, who's sneering in hatred and
disgust at himself. "I wish we could just skip this part. Hey, use your Grim magic to
change it."
"I can't. You know that," I remind him. "You have to face yourself. All of it."
He looks away briefly, then back again. "Yeah. I guess I do."
We follow the gaunt Sebastian out of the abandoned building. He has his hands in his
pockets, and he's trembling—not from the cold, but because he needs his next fix.
Looking over his shoulder, he walks a few blocks down and over, no doubt to where he
knows his dealer tends to hang.
Then he ducks inside a diner and heads towards the back, where a phone hangs in the
hallway, an old school rotary phone. I find myself wondering what year it is, but realize
it doesn't matter either way. Something is about to happen. Something big.
"Yo, Vinny." One of the cooks slides out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a towel that
hangs over his shoulder. "You got a call. I wrote down the note."
"Was it Patricia? Because I'm done with her."
"No. Something new. Just call 'em back."
The cook disappears. Vinny sighs, looks at the note, and picks up the phone. My heart
starts to race.
Beside me, Sebastian says, "This is it. We're about to find out how much of a scumbag I
really am. I know it somehow."
"Just remember: it's all in the past. You can't change any of it."
"That's the worst part."
As Vinny takes the call, we hear the voice on the other line. A woman's voice. "Is this
Vincent Salazar?"
"It is."
"There's something I need to speak to you about. It concerns a little girl, Rebecca
Johnson. You see, she was adopted, but your name was on the birth certificate."
Vinny looks annoyed. Frustrated, he tells her, "I signed over my right."
"You did," the woman says, sounding more than a little disapproving. "This isn't about
that. You see, Rebecca is four years old now, and she's recently been diagnosed with a
rare form of leukemia. Her best chance of survival is a bone marrow transplant, but it's
been difficult finding a match. Of course, her parents aren't biologically related to her.
But if we could get someone who is, preferably an immediate relative like a parent, that
would give her a much better chance of surviving."
Vinny leans against the wall, rubbing his brow with his thumbs, looking something
between impatient and panicked. "Call her mother."
"We tried. I'm sorry to tell you this, if you didn't already know, but Ruby Green is dead.
That makes you Rebecca's closest blood relative. I know it's a lot to ask, Vincent, but as
her doctor, I'm asking for a reason. Can you come in to find out if you're Rebecca's
match?"
Vincent-slash-Sebastian looks down at his arm. He's staring at the track marks there.
His mouth purses, dry lips red at the edges. In a hollow voice he says, "Sure. What's the
address?"
The scene in front of us changes again. We're in a hospital. A gaunt, pale Sebastian is
sitting on an exam table, his hospital gown rolled down to his middle, ribs showing,
bruises on his sides. He coughs. The doctor examining him looks at the nurse, face hard.
"Mr. Salazar, we need to talk."
"Yeah, what about?"
"Nurse, if you could give us the room."
She leaves, her expression full of disapproval. Beside me, Sebastian closes his eyes. We
both know what's coming next. It's not hard to figure out.
"You have to be in good shape to donate bone marrow. To be blunt, Mr. Salazar, you
need to be clean. Preferably for at least a year. In this state, you simply don't have
enough red blood cells to give bone marrow."
Vinny stares the doctor down, shadows beneath his eyes. "I can get clean. Just tell me if
I'm a match."
"Genetically, yes, you're likely a match given you share the same rare blood type. But
physically—"
"I can do it. I can get clean." His hands tremble, and he pushes them down onto the
exam table. "I swear that I can."
The doctor seems to pity him a little. In a softer voice he says, "Mr. Salazar, even if you
could get clean, I'm afraid Rebecca doesn't have a good chance of survival. By the time
you've been clean long enough, it'll be too late."
Just seeing the blow this news causes is enough to make me look over at Sebastian. His
arms are crossed tight, his face closed down, a bitter twist to his lips. But I know what
he's feeling: guilt, anger, self-loathing, and frustration.
He can't change any of this.
None of us can.
It's not a terrible surprise when the next scene we're brought to is a graveyard, or when
the tombstone is small, because the grave it's set in front of is the size of a child's coffin.
A thin, pale Vinny with short-cropped hair stares at the grave. Wordless tears slide
down his face. Kneeling in front of it, he presses his hand to the tombstone.
"I'm sorry I couldn't make it to your funeral." His voice slurs the words drunkenly, and
I wince at the sound of it. "They wouldn't let me. The bastards. Said they were your real
parents—whatever. Me and Ruby could've figured it out. No one ever gave us the
chance."
Beside me, Sebastian snorts. "The pathetic loser is lying to himself."
"He's grieving," I tell Sebastian. "Try to cut him—try to cut yourself—some slack."
"I don't think he deserves any."
As we watch, Vinny pulls his belt off, and takes a needle out of his jacket. He doesn't
seem to care much what's in it as he shoots himself up. Eyes fluttering closed, he slumps
over on the grave, staring up into the sky, jaw slack from the drugs.
In a singsong voice he says, "Oh, Rebecca. I would've saved you if they'd let me. The
bastards wouldn't let me, though. It wasn't my fault." He sniffles. "You deserved better."
Then he starts to sing a drinking song, until the drugs make him so laconic that his eyes
slide closed. A while later, like nothing at all, he stops breathing.
"What a waste of a life." Sebastian walks over to his own corpse and tries to kick it, but
the whole thing is an illusion, and his foot just goes through. "I killed my own daughter
because I was too selfish and stupid to get sober and get a job. And I don't even have a
good excuse for it. My childhood wasn't shitty. I didn't go from foster home to foster
home like you. I just... sucked."
"You have to let it go," I tell him, sliding up and putting my hand on his arm. "You may
not be able to save your daughter, but you can be a better man for her."
"What's the point, when I'm not a better man at all?" He looks down at me with those
bitter blue eyes. "I'm a demon, Dani. I met out terrible punishments, killing and
maiming people, all because that's who I am. I cause pain."
"And pleasure," I remind him.
"It doesn't change who I was, or what I did."
"Nothing can. But you can stop dwelling on it." Reaching up, I press my fingers to the
corners of his bitter mouth, like I can change how he feels by changing his expression.
"You aren't that man anymore. You never will be again. Now that you know who he
was, though, surely you can figure out a way to face it."
"He failed her."
"But he wanted to do what was right," I reminded him. "He would have if he'd been
able to, but he couldn't. He knew that. In the end, it was too late for him. That doesn't
change his heart, though. It doesn't change the fact that he—you—loved your
daughter."
Sebastian looks down and away, swallowing heavily, then at me again. "Do you think
you could ever look at me the same way, knowing what I've done?"
"Oh, my beloved." I press my palms to his cheeks and draw him to me. "I love you like
the sun loves the moon."
We kiss, slow and tortured, bitter and sweet. The world melts around us bit by bit. I feel
him let two tears loose, their salt mingling with the exploration of our mouths.
When we step back, he's holding my hands tight, and some of the bitterness has faded
from his eyes. Together, we turn towards the door, and watch the black drain from the
obsidian glass, then the entire slab of it shatter into a million tiny pieces.
Sebastian takes a deep breath in, then lets it out again. "Let's get the fuck outta here."
Chapter 22
THERE'S JUST ONE PROBLEM: in order to use Gaugin's second spell, the one that lets him
know it's time to wake me up, we have to be close to the gate. Right now, we're very,
very far away from it.
"Use that bracelet of yours," Lynx says. "Maybe it can show us a path."
"Good idea."
Licking my lips, I press my fingers to the bracelet, which is still warm from using its
magic to guide us through the dark. In my most commanding voice, I tell it, "Bring us to
the gate as quickly as possible."
It flares with heat and power. I feel a whisper of seven immortal voices in my head,
from cruel to kind, tricky to simple, each of them with centuries and even millennia
behind them. The bracelet seems to squeeze around my elbow as it summons all of its
magic to make a path for us. Golden magic flares, and my heart lifts.
It's only as the gold forms a short road in front of us that I realize I forgot to request that
the path be safe.
Ask and you shall certainly receive. In this case, we've received a very short, quick path
straight through the center of Hell and out again, past all its most dangerous demons.
Every one of which is turning to stare straight at us, made aware of our presence by the
glowing magic of the golden path I've created, like a beacon in the night screaming
KILL THESE FUCKERS.
"No problem," I tell the guys, letting my wings unfurl behind me. "We can do this."
And we can. Forming a group, with me at the front, Sebastian and Lynx at the rear, Ezra
to my left, and Mateo to my right, we charge into the fray. I throw fireballs at demons,
and wrench control of them with my Grim powers. Mateo shoots things and throws
explosives into the crowd. Ezra cuts off limbs, Sebastian throws poison knives, and
when all else fails, Lynx punches evil in the face.
At one point, Mateo shoots one demon through another demon's head. Sebastian cuts
the innards out of something that doesn't look like it should have any. My beloved,
gloriously geeky Lynx tears a demon apart with his bare hands and brushes the gore off
himself. And Ezra cuts through three smaller demons at once, his sword turning them
into pieces of demons, a shit-eating grin on his face.
The only thing that tops it is the moment when Sebastian severs two demons dicks from
a double-dicked demon. Now that's a sight to behold.
After everything we've been through, the biggest, baddest, grossest demons in Hell are
nothing. I'd cut off all dozen heads of a dozen-headed monster if it meant my guys and
I could be together forever.
Soon, we're at the end of the path. I can feel that the door is near. Taking a step forward,
I find myself in the hedge maze again. My quartet soon follows, tumbling through
covered in demon blood.
Mateo exclaims, "Fuck, that was fun!"
"It's not over yet," I warn him. "We've still gotta let Auerbach know it's time to wake me
up. Once we do, I'll summon you guys back to the mortal realm, and we'll shove the
door the rest of the way shut." Eyeing them anxiously, I add, "Your contracts are really
severed, right? And you have all your memories back. So when you come to the mortal
realm—"
"We won't forget you," Ezra says, grabbing me and kissing me despite the terrible
among of demon blood, guts, and gore we're covered with. "No matter what, Dani,
we're with you to the end."
Mateo jokes, "All the way to graduation, assuming the academy survives that long."
"Tell me about it. At this rate I wouldn't be shocked if it's turned into a pit of evil by the
time my graduation date comes around." Reaching into my blazer, I pull out the
magical ring Auerbach gave me to follow my spirit here and alert him when I'm ready
to be pulled out. "See you in a minute or two."
"Bye for now," Lynx says.
I shove the ring on my finger.
A moment later, I gasp as I wake up back in my body, lying in the grass, no longer
covered in demon guts or blood. The world is quiet. Auerbach is standing next to me,
watching me anxiously.
"It only took a minute," he says. "Did you really get all of the spell? And manage to get
your demons through and back again?"
"Let's find out."
I push up to my feet, my body stiff from the whole being-partially-dead thing. One of
these days I've really got to stop dying. Maybe when the academy is no longer in
constant danger.
Once I'm standing, I close my eyes. The campus is tense around me; I can feel the
demons at the edge of the gate, about to push through and bring the wards down. We
have to finish the rest of the spell to close it all the way.
Breathing in, I think about my guys.
I think about how Lynx was so broken by his sister's death that he did unimaginable
things, but still turned into a kind, sweet man who has a thirst for knowledge and an
endless curiosity, with warm golden-brown eyes and strong hands.
I think about Mateo, careening through life with zest and zeal, always wanting more,
never satisfied, who even in the afterlife finds the spark of humor in everything, and
can turn a paperclip and a bottle of rubbing alcohol into a weapon.
I think about Ezra, whose life was ruined by the person he should've been able to trust
most, and who took the burden of that onto his own shoulders. He deserved better, and
should've gotten to grow up with a mother who was around and a father who cared
enough to be kind. Somehow he turned into a fearless leader and a courageous fighter
even without their guidance.
And I think about Sebastian, whose life was a series of mistakes, but who wanted to do
better in the end, even though it was too late. His bitterness follows him wherever he
goes, but he doesn't let his own pain cloud his eyes. When he can have mercy, he does.
Wherever he can take away other's pain, he lays his hands down to guide them, because
he's always trying to make up for the one whose pain he couldn't take away.
I tug on the bond that unites us, the one we've fought for and died for, that's written
into my skin permanently and settled onto my bones. When I open my eyes, they're
here, looking at me with love, and I realize that I never expected anything less.
I knew we'd make it through this, even though I doubted sometimes, in my darkest
moments.
We're made for each other.
Nothing can change that, or break our bond.
"Let's do this," I tell them.
Walking towards the gate with Auerbach, we let him remind us of the rest of the spell.
"Push on the gate together," he says. "The blood you spilled is on the ground in front of
it, which unlocks the first part of the spell. As you close it, say the words igorus leheim.
Just like that."
Mateo says, "Ignoramus Luigi. Got it."
Auerbach shoots me an anxious look, and I just laugh. "He's fucking with you. Don't
worry. We'll close the gate. Let us through the wards."
Raising his hands, Auerbach drops just enough of the wards to let us through. We walk
to the gate, over bits of dead demon bodies, and... to the edge. Where there's enough
blood for four demons to have given their lives, but no signs of my guys' bodies.
"They turned to dust," Sebastian says at my quizzical look. "If we'd been reborn, we
would've woken up in new bodies in coffins, and had to change them to look how we
wanted. Thankfully that didn't happen, because we're free now. We can go where we
want, do what we want, and even die the right way, when the time comes."
"Let's make sure it comes later rather than sooner," Ezra says, motioning towards the
door. "All together now."
We set five hands on the door, from top to bottom, Mateo crouching to push, Lynx
reaching up above his head. Together, we step forward and lean our combined strength
into it.
"Igorus leheim!"
Magic is a trip, because the nonsense words make the gate swing shut all at once. I stare
at it as the magic of it being closed makes it fade away. All around us, the bits of the
destroyed demonic horde fade away into nothing, until we're just standing on the
opposite side of the campus gates, somewhere between here and there, nowhere and
somewhere.
"What now?" Mateo asks.
Groaning, I tell him, "Finals."
Epilogue
HER BREATHING IS SO DEEP. You'd think it would be shallow, but as Auerbach keeps
reminding me, she's not dead. Just in a magical coma, whatever the fuck that means.
Staring at her, I know that I shouldn't do what I'm about to do. But I'm Dani fucking
Carpenter. I do what I damn well want. And while Headmaster Towers may have plans
for Gaugin's bracelet, I don't really see why I should do what she tells me to do, when
I'm the one who fought so hard to get the damned thing.
"I wish I had blue hair," I tell Ari, pushing her hair back from her forehead. "It must be
cool to be a witch. I mean, not that I'd trade or anything. No offense, but those three
familiars of yours are kinda whiny. I like my demons better. Plus, I can't tell the twins
apart."
Reaching down, I pull her free arm up off the sheets. The other one has an IV running
into it—not that it really matters, since she's in a magical coma. For all I know though,
Auerbach is going to inject her with pixie dust.
The shit that happens around here.
I swear, no one would believe me if I wrote a tell-all book.
Especially given that it all started with a—well, you know.
"This probably won't work," I tell Ari, but I pull a sharp knife out of my blazer anyway.
"I'm kinda dumb, though. I do shit that doesn't work all the time."
Slicing open my hand at the base of my thumb, I drip the blood onto her elbow. The
wound closes quickly, but it's enough to get things started. Smearing it onto her skin, I
draw a rune I stole from one of Auerbach's books—what can I say, a sneaky bitch stays
sneaky. I wanted to know what he was hiding, and all I found was a bunch of textbooks
full of nerdy shit.
At least this one will help me on my little secret mission. The rune is meant to bind
blood, at least temporarily. In this case, I'm hoping it'll bind my blood to Ari's, so I can
do what I plan on doing next.
Reaching over, I yank the bracelet off my elbow. It takes some effort to do it, but I've
been working on taming the thing. No way am I wearing it forever, after all.
Headmaster Towers wanted me to give it to her as soon as I figured out how to take it
off, which is why I'm doing this in the middle of the night.
What's she going to do, expel me? As if.
Putting the bracelet against Ari's skin, I wait for it to protest. But it gloms onto her just
like it did me, tightening around her elbow in the blood I spilled, convinced she's a little
bit related to Meyer.
I still haven't figured out how the Manslayer put the bracelet on, without Meyer's blood
in him. I could ask the Dear Old Asshole in question, but I've decided to just leave well
enough alone.
Some things are better off remaining mysterious.
Sometimes it's better to be in the dark.
I've learned a lot in my time here, but the one thing that's stuck with me the most is that
I need to be patient. Jumping in without looking has gotten me nowhere. It's better to
think before you leap.
There are still some things I'll do rashly, though. Like give an incredibly powerful
bracelet to a friend and fellow phoenix to help her escape from Hell. I might be older
and wiser, but that doesn't mean I won't stick my hand into the fire for someone I care
about.
As the bracelet settles against Ari's skin, her eyes flutter, and I watch her breathing
hitch. Something is happening for sure. Deep in that part of Hell she and her guys are
stuck in, things are changing.
I'd tell you what's going to happen next, but that's not my story to spill.
It's hers.
Mine is over with—for now, at least.
Until the next dick needs severing.
Ari’s story will end in Phoenix Academy: Mayhem! Dani will make appearances.
Looking for another adult-age paranormal academy series? Check out Cain
University!
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Read Next: Cain University
Want humor, steam, action, mystery, and an adult level paranormal university? I’ve got
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I'm Ellen Arizona, and I'm a murderer.
I know you've heard my name. They're all talking about what I've done. But no one
really understands why I did it. And no one understands me.
Except for the other killers at Cain University.
The Cain graduate program for killers is the only safe place left for me. But it comes
with a catch: leave, and the consequences are deadly.
I need to stay. I have powers to train, and someone to kill next: the man who murdered
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Easier said than done. Especially when I find out the four men I loathe, who hunted me
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First Kill is a brand new university-age first in a series, similar to The Magicians and Villain
Academy. It has blood, gore, mature scenes, laugh out loud comedy, and a reverse harem
enemies-to-lovers romance that will scorch off the pages. For readers 18+ only; please read the
trigger warning inside.
Read First Kill (Cain University 1) Now!
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If you like new adult romance, especially urban fantasy and paranormal romance with
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I just learned I’m a part fae succubus. And I need to find the men to sate my sexual
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Here I thought I was a normal college girl with a high libido. Turns out that’s wrong—
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Also by Lucy Auburn
Phoenix Academy
The First Years
Phoenix Academy: Awaken
Phoenix Academy: Unbound
Phoenix Academy: Forged
Phoenix Academy: Reborn
Phoenix Academy: Freed
Blue Phoenix
Phoenix Academy: Madness
Phoenix Academy: Mayhem
Cain University
First Kill
Kill or Be Killed
Final Kill
Coleridge Academy Elites
The Snake in the Grass
The Pawn
The Knight
The King
Selena Pierce
Fae Like Me
Hell Sucks
Godspring
Seven Trials
The Black God
Wild Heart Chronicles
Primal
Feral
Savage
or… get all of the above as the
Wild Heart Bundle (free!)
Standalones
Three for a Witch
Queen Sector
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About the Author
Lucy Auburn is an urban fantasy/paranormal romance writer who lives in the Southwest. She loves writing
interesting stories about strong women. Some of the writers who inspire her include Patricia Briggs and Sarah J.
Maas.
She values her privacy and does her best to keep her online life and her real life separate.
Catch up with her…
www.LucyAuburn.com
LucyAuburnBooks@gmail.com
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