“No deal, then.” He started to object, and I spoke over him. “Why should I give myself to you to save my father if you’re just going to go after my friends and family later? That’s not me saving my father—that’s me delaying his torture and inevitably painful death. I’m not going to sell my own soul for anything less than the absolute freedom—from you—of everyone I love.” My heart thundered within my chest. My pulse was the fevered race of fear through my veins as I turned to Ira to say the words that would either pull Avari into our trap or trigger the collapse of everything I’d lied, stolen, and negotiated for. “Let’s go.”
He nodded triumphantly, virtually glutted on Avari’s rage, and we started to turn.
“Wait!” Avari roared at my back, and the sound rolled over me like an arctic gust, raising chill bumps the length of my body even as it threw me forward. I stumbled to keep from falling, grinning the whole time. I could practically feel his greed, at just the thought that some other hellion might make off with the prize he’d been chasing for months—which obviously didn’t feel like a “blink of the eye” at the moment. “Fine. I agree,” he said, and the words sounded like icicles shattering on concrete. “Once I take possession of your soul, I will have no further contact with your friends or family members, directly or indirectly. From now, until the end of my own existence, should that day ever arrive.”
I glanced up at Ira. “Does that about cover it?”
“I believe it does.” His black orb eyes shined. “And that means this is goodbye, little fury.”
My pulse raced out of control, flushing my system with fear and dread. Panic tripped in my chest, and my heart skipped one beat, then another. My hands tingled, and I could no longer feel my feet. “Don’t forget what you promised....”
“Like it or not, I am a hellion of my word. We all are.” He shot an amused look at Avari, who seemed to hate the hellion of wrath with an all-new passion. “One more kiss for the road?”
I nodded, and Ira leaned down to kiss me one more time, in front of three other hellions and assorted creepy-crawlies that had gathered to watch, no doubt waiting for the chance to grab a scrap of flesh or a chip of bone should one be tossed their way.
But that kiss wasn’t just a goodbye between me and Ira, who was only playing the part of my friend because I was paying him. That kiss was a vital part of my deal with the hellion of wrath.
This time when his lips met mine, he inhaled and warmth seemed to flow from my body, pulled through my throat, then from my mouth into his. A bitter cold remained in its absence, and suddenly I couldn’t remember...something.
There was something I’d known a moment earlier, but couldn’t...quite...recall. Whatever it was, it was important. So important it had to be removed before Avari could find it in my head, when he took me apart.
And now it was completely gone.
Ira stepped back and licked his lips, and more ice spread across the ground toward us from beneath Avari’s feet. “Your father is waiting,” he said, and little crystals of ice seemed to fall from his words.
Greed is a cold emotion; wrath is white-hot. Stuck between them, I felt like an icicle on fire.
“Fine.” My head spun, and my stomach cramped. Avari had told me months ago that in the Netherworld, my existence could stretch into eternity, but I’d never imagined that my eternal existence would belong to him, much less that I would give it to him of my own free will.
But I had no other option. Nothing else would protect my friends and family, and if I’d learned anything about Avari over the past year, it was that he would not stop hunting us until he got what he wanted.
Until he got me.
“It has to be your choice,” he reminded me, and I nodded. I had to agree to stay. I had to give him my soul.
I took in a deep breath, more out of habit than any real need for air. Then I said the words that had been rolling around in my head for the past couple of hours.
“You’ll let my dad go if I give you my soul?”
“Yes.”
“And beginning from the moment you take possession, you’ll never again try to contact anyone I care about, forever and ever, amen?”
“This redundancy is exasperating, Ms. Cavanaugh.”
“Just say it.”
He growled in frustration, and Ira chuckled. “Yes. Beginning the moment I take possession of your soul, I will never again attempt to contact your friends and family for any reason whatsoever.”
I sucked in a deep breath and swallowed the massive lump in my throat to keep from vomiting. “Fine. My soul is yours.” My world changed in that moment. It...darkened. Narrowed. Spiraled toward infinite despair. “Come get it before I change my mind.”
Avari’s hand closed around my arm. Belphegore and Invidia released my father. The instant they let him go, his eyelids began to flutter. Ira disappeared from my side and appeared at my father’s, holding him up.
“Kaylee?” At first, my dad looked as confused as he sounded. Then he blinked, and horror came into focus in his expression as the Netherworld came into focus around him. He looked at me, then at Avari. Then at the demon’s hand around my arm. “No! Kaylee, no!”
Tears filled my eyes for the millionth time in the past four days. “This is the only way, Dad.” My hands shook. My teeth chattered. My entire body seemed to be convulsing with fear and dread. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t find some other way.”
I wanted to tell him not to worry about me. That I’d be fine. But that wasn’t true. I wouldn’t be fine. Avari would make sure of that.
“No!” My dad tried to stand, but he was still too weak. Confused. He didn’t seem to realize Ira was holding him up.
“You’re safe now. Avari can’t touch you—any of you.” And they were under Ira’s protection. That much I remembered, but the rest of my deal with the hellion of wrath was... It was gone.
Terror furled through me at that fresh realization. What if I’d gotten something wrong? What if I hadn’t covered all the bases? It was too late now. I couldn’t even remember the details. I’d have to trust myself. I’d have to trust Ira, as much as any hellion could be trusted, but that was really just trusting myself to have made sure he gave his word.
“Kaylee!” Now my father was crying, and Avari let me watch. Avari made me watch, because my pain was already feeding him.
“Make him forget!” I shouted at Ira, and only once I’d said the words did I remember that he had to. I’d negotiated for that.
Ira put one hand over my father’s eyes and whispered something into his ear. Something I couldn’t hear and could no longer recall the specifics of, even though I’d made him promise to say it. To...do whatever he was doing.
Then they were gone. Just like that, my father was gone. He was safe.
I was alone in hell.
Avari spun me to face him. The world twisted around me, and pain spread through my flesh at his touch, like his fingers were icicles stabbing into me, spreading through my veins, freezing the blood in them. I would have fallen to my knees if he wasn’t holding me up.
“I always knew this day would come, little bean sidhe. I knew that someday you would scream just for me. So open your pretty little mouth, and let’s have a taste of forever.”
His hand clenched around my arm, and pain like a thousand needles shot through every muscle in my body, driving away all thought and all sight. My mouth dropped open, and a scream of agony ripped free from my throat, shredding the soft tissues as it poured out of me.
Avari laughed, and I realized I heard him in my head, because my ears were full of my own screaming. As he dragged me down the cracked sidewalk, my toes scraping concrete, snagging on vines and thorns, his next words seemed to take root in my brain, bypassing my ears entirely.
“Welcome to hell, Ms. Cavanaugh. Please make yourself at home.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The pain begins, and within seconds it consumes me. If I’ve ever felt anything else, I can’t remember it. Maybe
I loved, once. Maybe I was loved. Maybe I touched something soft. Maybe I tasted something sweet. Maybe I heard something beautiful.
There is none of that here.
Here is every face that ever taunted me. Here is every heartbreak I’ve ever felt. Here is every doubt, every lack, and every failure.
In hell, I am the sum of my flaws.
This lasts for eternity, though I have no idea how long eternity really is. There is no time here. A minute, a day, a century, they are all measured by how much agony can be stuffed into a single heartbeat.
I scream as my flesh burns and my organs shrivel. My skin blackens and peels, and flakes of it fall to the floor, like a rain of ashes. This must be hell’s version of snow. I’m horrified by my own disintegration, but I never lose consciousness. He won’t let me miss a moment of my own torture, and he leaves my throat intact, because my screams are the soundtrack of his triumph, and somehow in hell I never lose my voice.
What he wants most from me is screaming, and I have no choice but to deliver.
Then, when there’s so little left of me that I can’t recognize the charred, twisted remains of my own body, he puts me back together so he can start from scratch, and there is no end to his imagination or to the pain it inspires. I cannot think. I cannot breathe. I cannot sleep. I can do nothing but suffer and scream, and here it becomes clear that I deserve nothing more. He shows me that I’ve ruined every life I ever touched, and I will spend eternity paying for every mistake I’ve ever made. I will pay, and I will pay again, then I will pay some more, and forever will come and go while I am still paying for sins I’ve long since forgotten I committed.
He wants to know every part of me. Every thought in my head and every cell in my body, and he seems to think that taking me apart one piece at a time—one leg, one finger, one memory, one thought—will show him how I feel things he can’t possibly understand. Things like love and pity and compassion, few of which I can even remember, with my own screams carving canyons through my mind.
But dissecting me won’t help. He will never understand any human emotion that doesn’t feed his appetite for greed or for suffering. Hellions don’t have that capacity. And when he figures that out, his anger swells like the ocean tide until I’m afraid we’ll both drown in it, and I know his fury should make me happy, for some reason I can’t quite remember, but it doesn’t, because in this place, his anger only means my pain. In fact, his pleasure means my pain, and his confusion means my pain, and his very presence means my pain.
And then, when my pain finally begins to bore him, hell changes, and I learn all new ways to suffer.
I remember me now. I remember who I was, when I was something other than this. Other than agony given battered shape and shrill voice.
I was a daughter. I was a cousin, a niece, a classmate, a friend, a girlfriend.
I am none of that here, and the pain is infinitely worse now that I know what I’ve lost.
He shows me what I’ve missed as I tumble through eternity, banged and bruised and abraded by my own memories. He shows me my friends. My family. He shows me that my attempt to save them has brought them all to ruin.
Hazel eyes, twisting in pain.
Long, thin hair, streaked with blood.
Black eyes flashing in fury, in futility.
Tears trailing down pale cheeks.
Grief and anger lead to violence, and neglect, and relapse, and pain that has no end.
I haven’t freed them—I’ve sentenced them to an existence of guilt and tribulations I’ve caused but cannot fix from beyond the grave. And I am so far beyond the grave now that the thought of being buried in a dark, quiet hole in the ground feels like mercy.
He shows me that Emma is lost. She is drowning in the suffering around her, and it takes over her mind until she can’t think. Can’t form coherent sentences. This time when they lock her up, I am not there to set her free. She sits in the corner of an empty room and screams my name over and over. I am the only thought she can still express, and the pain in her voice rips through my very center, shattering me into bits too small for the king’s horses and his men to ever find, much less put back together. And for no reason he will explain to me, Tod is not there. He does not help her.
Where is Tod?
My captor shows me that Nash has escaped Emma’s fate. He’s escaped everything, except for a saccharine euphoria and the memories he lives in, convinced they are reality as his body wastes away because he’s forgotten about food and rest and life. He pays for his high with bits of himself, and remembered bits of me, and when those are all gone, he pays with bits of Sabine, even as he pushes her away.
Months flow like water beneath the bridge of their lives, and when she cannot wakehimshakehimsavehim, Nash finally lets it all go, and I cannot see the reaper who comes for his soul, but I know Nash does not resist. He lets the last of his life fade away while he rides on a vaguely pleasant fog, unaware that it is dissolving beneath him until he crashes to the ground, to the floor of his own bedroom, never to rise again. And for no reason I can understand, Tod is not there. He does not help his brother.
Where is Tod?
Sabine does not go to Nash’s funeral. She cannot look at him in his coffin, skin molded to the shape of his bones, cheeks hollow, eyes sunken in dark wells carved out of his skull. But I cannot look away.
I have done this, and I am not allowed to forget that. I have led my first love to his ruin, and with him, so many others fall.
Without Nash, Sabine has no reason for...anything. No reason to care, to be careful, to exercise control. She feeds to numb the pain, and in her wake the bodies pile up, but the police don’t catch her until she lets them. Until she decides she has no place in society and no right to freedom.
Then there is broken glass, stolen cash, and handcuffs she doesn’t fight. Sabine stares through the bars every day, alone in her private hell while the other prisoners shy away from her. She doesn’t feed from them. She doesn’t feed from anyone, and I realize she’s starving herself, just like Nash did. Soon she will be gone, and there will be no one at her funeral because she is fear itself, and everyone who had the capacity to love in spite of that fear is long gone.
My heart hurts when I realize that they are gone—all three of them. Prisoner, patient, corpse, I have driven them all to their destruction, to ends surely as painful as my own miserable existence.
But even worse than the tragic ends is the conspicuous absence. Where is Tod? Why can’t I see him?
When I realize I know what his absence means, I pray for oblivion, but cognizance plays a pivotal role in today’s torture. My mind is not allowed to wander....
And when my pain begins to bore him again, hell changes again. And it never ends.
There are infinite variations, and I think they will eventually numb me, because how can anyone hurt for as long as I’ve been hurting, yet numbness never comes. Each revolution of torture brings its own special brand of hell, and each is more agonizing than the one before, and this goes on forever.
Years have passed, surely. Centuries, maybe. I bruise, I bleed, I fall apart, I die, then I am born again, only to suffer and fall anew, but the pain never becomes routine. It is always fresh and new, welcoming me to an existence I cannot end.
I am hell’s phoenix, forever bursting into flames only to be resurrected again in the next heartbeat so we can dance this excruciating dance all over again.
I’ve forgotten my name. I cannot remember who I am or where I’m from. I think I was born into this. There has never been anything else. I am hell’s daughter, and my mind is as fractured as the Nether-realm itself, twisted and torn. There are pieces of me everywhere, and I cannot gather them fast enough. Parts are missing, surely. Memories. Thoughts. Names. Places. They litter the ground and I cannot hold them all together. I cannot hold myself together.
There is little left worth saving anyway.
Light is pain.
Dark is fear.
The scent of
burning flesh is seared into my brain—what little remains of it—and I think that flesh is mine. Dinner is served, and I am the main course, and still I scream.
Scars. Screams. Blood. Fire. Ice. These are the pieces of me, crumbling between my fingers, and I can no longer remember how they should fit.
I cower in the corner, in drifts of filth, but I cannot hide. There is nothing left of me. What once intrigued him is gone. Dead. Scorched beyond recognition, and I don’t know who or where or why I am, but I know that my time is almost up. I have nothing left to give him but my screams, and my throat is so, so tired.
His shadow falls over me.
Over the whole room. In the next instant, I scream, and this time I am lost in the sound of my own madness.
* * *
“Kaylee.”
The voice came from inside my head, because my ears were too full of my own screams to hear anything else.
My eyes opened, and I saw only shadows. A warm, hard hand covered my mouth, and my screaming stopped. The sudden silence was profound. Stunning. Startling.
Disorienting.
Echoes of past screams haunted me, spinning me on edge, hurling me around inside my own head. Reality would not come into focus.
“Wake up, little fury. You’re going to miss all the fun.” The hand pulled me by my arm, and reality tilted around me as I sat up. The world assaulted me with light and color, sharp edges and cruel angles. Outside of my dirty corner, the room flickered with hundreds of points of light—human fat, crudely rendered, burning in bowls of curved bone.
The stench had made me sick at first—how long ago had that been?—but now I couldn’t remember any other scent.
“Kaylee.” He stared at me through red-veined, black orb eyes, only inches away.
My hands shook as I pushed myself across the floor, away from him, cowering from those eyes, fleeing from memories I couldn’t bring into focus.
He reached for me, and I flinched, then lashed out, swiping with hands that had no claws. Words that had no power. “Don’t touch me!”
My voice was raw. My words were slushy. I hadn’t played with consonants in...eternity?