“Love.” The endearment was little more than a whisper. In that one word was an explanation, one I didn’t want to hear.
Nononononononono—no.
“Why, Andre?”
His head lulled against my breast. “Staked. The sword … was wood.”
“No.” There were only a few ways you could kill a vampire; a wooden stake through the heart was one of them.
I didn’t realize I was crying until my tears hit his cheek.
“Don’t cry, my life,” he breathed.
“Andre, don’t leave me. Please.”
He gave a slight shake of his head. “Never.” His hand groped for mine. I helped him, slipping my hand into his. His skin had never been this cold.
I couldn’t breathe. Heaven above, this was what loss felt like.
Only one way left to save him. I still clutched the quill. My grip tightened.
This ends now.
Desperation fueled me. My eyes frantically searched the room. A leather-bound book rested below the coffee table. I grabbed it and ripped out the first page.
I wrapped Andre’s hand around the quill. “We’re doing this together.”
“No—please, soulmate. It’s yours.”
I ignored his plea, bringing our joined hands to the paper. Belatedly I realized that I didn’t have any ink for it.
Fuck.
My eyes searched the room. I could fumble through all the odds and ends in Andre’s private library, but he could be dead by then.
You know this can’t possibly save him anyway. I pushed the thought away. I would save him. That was what soulmates did; they saved each other. And fate be damned, he was my soulmate.
Only, it was looking like there was no ink to transcribe this.
And then a horrible, macabre idea entered my mind when my gaze returned to Andre.
Blood. I could use his blood.
A sob slipped out. I pinched my eyes shut as I dipped the quill into a pool of Andre’s spilled blood.
What mischief is my little queen up to now?
The devil was suddenly, staggeringly present. I could feel him like a swift wind brushing past me. The question he asked was irrelevant. He knew what I was doing, what I had. I realized then that he’d been watching from the shadows, waiting for me to come this far only to snatch victory from my grasp.
I had seconds—if that—to finish this.
The devil began to coalesce in the room.
“Leave, soulmate,” Andre pleaded with me.
“Never,” I said, throwing his words back at him.
I began writing, dragging Andre’s hand along with mine, glancing up at the shadows as I did so.
S-A-V-E
The letters were a mess. Blood was poor ink, and my normal difficulties with quills were only exacerbated by the unwilling vampire who kept trying to pull his hand away.
U-S
Smoke wrapped around me, souls screaming.
A-L—
The quill was ripped from my hand before I’d been able to write the final “l” in my message. I hadn’t even managed to write a full three words.
The devil snatch the sheet from me.
“No—!”
I reached for the paper only to watch it go up in flame in the devil’s hand.
I counted my breaths, in and out, in and out. I waited for divine judgment to strike me and Andre. For us to be whisked away from the room.
Nothing happened.
I failed.
I failed.
The world as we knew it would end. Andre would die, and I would rot away in hell for an eternity. It was almost too much to comprehend.
The devil turned his wrathful gaze on me.
“Consort.”
Never had I heard so much anger packed into a single word. Betrayal gleamed in the back of his eyes. I hadn’t expected that. Not from the Deceiver.
I stared at him, a stubborn part of me still holding out for some sort of divine intervention. But the seconds ticked by and deliverance never came.
It really didn’t work.
It was a good thing I was already sitting, because if I wasn’t, my legs would have given out.
“Even in my native tongue, there are not words for what you’ve done,” the devil said, speaking to me in Demonic.
I swallowed back bile. If Andre and I weren’t going to be saved, then things were about to get very, very bad. I would not face them sitting down.
Andre groaned as I lifted him enough to slip out from under him.
The devil seethed, the shadows around him expanding
“This is not your native tongue, Asiri,” I responded, moving away from Andre so he’d avoid the devil’s attention.
“How dare you use that name with me now of all times!” The walls of the room shook under the force of his words, and my hair whipped around me.
Having the devil’s love was bad. Slighting the devil that loved you was far, far worse.
He disappeared only to reappear directly in front of me. He grabbed me by the neck and dragged me across the room, slamming my body up against the wall. The entire time he stared me in the eyes. I could see pain in those inhuman irises, pain that stemmed from love.
I choked as he lifted my body up, my feet leaving the ground. “I banish you to the deepest, darkest region of hell, consort. May you rot until you’ve paid your penance, then rot some more.”
The words were barely out of his mouth when I felt the devil draw on my power. I gasped as I felt my life force sucked from me. I could hear wood begin to splinter far below us. I knew what was coming.
“No.” This came from Andre, who was trying to stand.
The devil spared him a glance, his lips curling with his anger. He swept his free hand out, and a wave of energy hit Andre square in the chest.
The devil’s hold on my neck cut off my scream. Andre fell back, and this time he didn’t move. The world turned red as tears leaked from my eyes.
“You cry for him? Him?” The devil grew bigger and more powerful as his pain fueled him. So much hurt lay in those eyes. Right now, the all-powerful devil was a wounded thing. I couldn’t have created a more dangerous creature.
The room filled with static electricity.
Even with him feeding off his own pain, more and more of my energy drained from me. I heard stone crack and wood splinter as the floor lurched and shifted.
“Asiri,” I said.
He squeezed my throat until he crushed my windpipe completely. As black dots spread across my vision, the vines snaked around me, and then they dragged me down to hell.
Chapter 29
Gabrielle
The deepest, darkest region of hell was exactly how the devil described it. Deep and dark. I could feel the weight of the very earth itself press against me.
I blinked my eyes, but I saw only blackness. Oblivion. One could go crazy down here. I reached around me, but felt nothing. Perhaps this all just went on and on. Nothingness, forever.
Andre was down here somewhere—or he would be very soon—burning in the flames, damned to unbearable agony. My blood chilled at the possibility. Fear triggered the siren in me, and my skin began to glow.
Wherever this place was, it was no longer the darkest region of hell. On a whim, I reached for the locket around my neck and yanked it. I heard the dainty clasp snap, and I tossed it away from me.
No more doubt, no more uncertainty, no more straddling two men. I knew whom my heart belonged to. I’d spend every last second of my undying life trying to free Andre from this place, regardless of the punishment the devil doled out. It didn’t matter what the fates had decided; he was my destiny and I was his.
But first I needed to escape this place.
I began walking in ever increasing circles, reaching out in search of walls. When I’d done this for several minutes and came across none, I stopped. This place could be endless.
I reached above me. My arms met only cold air. The only surface I’d come in contact with was the eart
h beneath me. So I knelt against the floor, pressing my hands to it. My blood thrummed as I did so, and power raced down my arms and into the ground. It poured from me until instinct commanded that I reclaim the magic I’d only just released. So I called the power back to me, drawing it up from the ground.
I didn’t know exactly what I was doing until a wisp of golden light curled up from the earth, thickening and coalescing as I watched. My power was making it corporeal. My brows furrowed as the golden wisp became a silhouette and the silhouette became a man.
Not a man, a soul. A damned soul that had been trapped beneath the floor of the darkest, deepest region of hell.
Souls couldn’t die. Not even damned ones that had been spent of their energy. They just became a part of the matrix that made up this place.
Once I’d pulled the soul from the ground, the urge to repeat the process rode me.
I continued to pour my power out of me, only to pull it back from the earth. Each time I did so, more souls took shape around me.
I couldn’t say how fast time passed down here, or how long it took for those wisps to fill out into the semblance of people. But even after they’d filled out, they stayed by my side. Each gave off a slight glow, and the deepest, darkest region of hell brightened.
As I worked, I wondered about the devil. I hadn’t heard him in my head when I should’ve. It took effort to yank one of my hands from the earth and put it to my heart, the power that gripped me reluctant to let me go. I could still feel the devil inside me, but I sensed a cocoon of magic swathing our connection. Thousands of intricate threads of magic had woven themselves around it.
I had no finesse when it came to magic. Spells were a witch’s forte, not mine, and while I could now sense magic and understand it at a rudimentary level, I knew in my bones I couldn’t have made the enchantment that wrapped itself snug around our connection. I could, however, sense this spell’s function. It blocked the devil from sensing what I was up to without closing him out completely. It was the magical equivalent of feeding security cameras benign footage to cover up a heist. The devil could feel me, but he couldn’t sense what I was up to.
I knew enough about spells to know this one was powerful—strong enough to outwit the devil. The back of my neck prickled. Whatever instincts were conducting my movements had also led to the creation of that enchantment.
At that, the tingle in my hands became almost unbearable as power built up. The itchy feeling beneath my skin forced me to resume my efforts. The ground pulled my hands to it like a magnet, and I resumed my task.
What seemed like an eternity later, the earth released my hands with a pop, and my power ebbed back inside me. I leaned back on my haunches as the last spirit finished taking form. That was when I realized there were hundreds of them—maybe thousands. All hovering around me, casting that eerie light on this place. They waited, staring at me, and I stared back.
Alrighty.
This situation was … weird. Weirder than normal. And my normal wasn’t exactly all that normal.
The souls didn’t speak, but they began to crowd me. I really didn’t want to hug this out, but there was nowhere for me to go. I felt their bodies brush against mine. Instead of the usual agony that I’d come to expect when I brushed up against the souls of this place, I felt … peace.
They began to touch me. My skin still glowed, so I assumed that even in death the siren appealed to them. Until, of course, those hands latched onto me and my feet left the floor.
I let out a yelp.
I yanked against their grips, putting my supernatural strength into it, but any hands I shook off were replaced by others. Glancing down, I noticed with dismay that spirits were now beneath me as well as around me. I tilted my head up. Dozens crowded the space above me. They surrounded me completely, sheltering my body with all their forms.
We rose up, moving as a unit. Each of their faces was turned skyward. Their features blurred then sharpened. I’d given them back their form, but they no longer had physical bodies to hold those forms in rigid place.
As I watched, some of the spirits disappeared above me. First their heads, then their torsos, and finally, their legs. I realized that was because we’d finally come across a ceiling. Only I wasn’t a spirit. I’d smash up against that ceiling, and then I’d fall back down.
I renewed my struggles as more souls disappeared. Like before, I couldn’t break their holds. And then the ceiling was above me, and there wasn’t any more time to struggle.
I gritted my teeth and held my breath, preparing myself for impact. But instead of smashing against the stony ceiling, I moved through it much the same way I moved through the ground when I traveled between worlds. The spirits dragged me through it, and as they did so, my power flared. I could sense more spirits trapped in this section of hell. My power whipped out of me and then it retracted, pulling souls out from the earth as it did so.
Once I broke through the earth, the spirits released me, continuing to float upwards. I dusted myself off, noticing that I stood inside the palace, the black stone walls arching high above me.
Home sweet home.
I stood in the middle of the great entrance hall. Across from me, two large doors led out to the fields of fire.
The place was utterly abandoned. Not that this was unusual in and of itself. This time, however, I could feel it. All the heavy players had been released from hell.
A manic need took hold of me. It thrummed through my veins. I was a vessel. A vessel for this power that demanded I release more souls.
I lifted a hand and aimed it at the double doors. I blasted them open, and then I stalked outside, down the palace steps.
It was time to pull souls from the fire.
Andre
Andre blinked until his surroundings came into focus.
Devil stabbed me, banished Gabrielle to hell—
The scrape of steel on steel and the boom of thunder filtered in from somewhere far beyond the walls of his library.
And now the bastard is waging war outside.
He tried to sit up, but his limbs were weak. So, so weak.
I’m dying.
It was almost unbelievable. He’d been alive for so long, been the most powerful being around for so long, that he thought he might be impervious to death at this point.
But all it had taken was a wooden sword. A child’s play thing. He recognized it earlier as one of several usually stashed in Bishopcourt’s training room.
With much effort, Andre lifted a hand and probed the wound. He hissed as it screamed. The skin around his heart felt raw and ragged, and blood oozed out. Andre let his hand fall back to his side. Time to get on with the business of dying.
He laid there as his life slowly seeped out of him, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. His mind spun.
As soon as he died, Andre would drag the last of his coven to hell. A part of him wondered if they could sense his encroaching death. If their limbs moved slower, if their bodies weakened.
Then his mind moved to less pleasant places. He’d be bound in the fires of hell, burning for eternity, and he’d have to watch that monster with his soulmate. He couldn’t decide what was worse—witnessing the devil’s cruelty towards Gabrielle or his kindness. Likely Andre would have to see both. And he couldn’t do a single thing about it.
The nearby grandfather clock ticked down the final minutes of his long existence. They said that when you died, your life flashed before his eyes. But it wasn’t his life Andre was thinking about.
Gabrielle’s smile. Gabrielle’s laugh. Gabrielle’s bad jokes. Gabrielle’s clumsiness. The way Gabrielle looked at him when he moved inside her.
He couldn’t give that up. Not yet.
Andre gripped the edge of the coffee table next to him. A cry tore out of him as he pushed himself up.
This was nothing. He’d seen men with arrows wedged between shoulder blades and sunk deep into guts. He’d seen their bodies sliced open and bludgeoned in, and still they fought. And fought
for what? Their country? Their religion? If ever there were worthy causes to fight for, fighting for his soulmate and his world would be them.
While there is life left in you, live.
Gabrielle
I headed straight for the hellfire, led by some unseen hand. As I passed through the flames, my instincts tugged me forward, toward a soul that needed saving.
I halted in front of a sexless gray wisp. This one had almost been swallowed whole by this place. I fed it power and a form took shape. Thick, rounded limbs and soft skin. A woman, I realized, as she filled out. Then color came. Long auburn hair, brown eyes. Each feature became more distinct until her image had fully filled out.
When I arrived here, in this damned land, I knew instinctively how to place a soul into the fire. Releasing one was a little different, a little trickier, and yet I knew the movements intuitively. I wrapped my power around the woman and tugged, like pulling a weed from the ground. Once she was free from the flames, I released her. She floated up, up, up. A bright light in the darkness. The screams quieted as they watched.
I moved through the fire once more, my power driving me towards another soul. This one, after he regained his contours, was a burly man. He smiled at me before he drifted upwards, joining a collection of souls gathered far above me.
I repeated the process again and again. Why I passed by certain souls and stopped at others, I couldn’t say. Some other force guided my hand. I didn’t know who these souls were or why they called out to me, but I did know that I wasn’t liberating all of hell’s prisoners.
The devil said it wasn’t possible to release a soul from the fire. What he meant was that it was impossible for me to release a prisoner. But that was before he’d thrown our connection wide open, thrown it open so that he could tap into my power.
He’d dipped into my power, and now I was dipping into his.
Time lapsed as I freed souls, and the more I touched, the more dissociated I became. I lost my identity somewhere in those flames, and thank God for it. I would’ve gone mad otherwise. The sheer number of souls I freed, the faces of those I bypassed, the power I wielded—it was all too much for even an immortal like me to bear.