Chapter 2 #2
By all the fire’s below, is this impromptu break going to give me anything worthwhile? Or am I doomed to watch a highlight reel of mortal incompetence?
I rub a hand over my jaw and keep on walking, the static of the Forbidden Zone pressing against my eardrums. I’m dying for a spark—one thing interesting enough to justify the paperwork I’m going to have to forge to explain my absence.
I’ve made it exactly three steps when sudden, sharp draft whips through the stagnant heat, slapping against my skin.
There.
A portal, pulsing, leaking in mortal atmosphere like a burst pipe.
My feet are moving before I can think on it, gravitating toward the tear.
I reach the fracture and lean closer, my shadow stretching across the shimmering boundary.
My eyes roll back, lashes fluttering shut at the sensation of the sweet, grief-laced air brushing against my nerves, teasing and stroking me in ways I haven’t felt in too long.
Now this is more like it. This is prime, front-row entertainment.
I suck in a deep, hungry breath.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuuuuuuck.
I can’t see her face, just the back of her head—dark hair tumbling in messy waves over a thick, oversized cardigan.
She’s a visual riot. Even from behind, she is a symphony of soft, mammalian curves that make my palms itch.
In Hell, everything is sharp edges, jagged bone, and cold basalt.
But her? She’s plush. She’s give-and-take.
Even through that pilled cardigan, I can see the soft slope of her shoulders and the way the light catches the fine, fuzz on the back of her neck.
And she’s bleeding. The bright, metallic scent of it hits me like a physical blow—a fresh cut across her forearm, weeping onto the parchment laid out in front of her.
Oh, you are fascinating.
Her whole body’s trembling as she forces out a string of crappy, rhyming poetry. It’s the kind of flowery, ‘earth-to-sky’ drivel written by hacks who think rhyming words written in calligraphy are the same thing as a ritual.
It’s so charmingly delusional I have to physically jam my fist against my lips to hold back the laugh threatening to bubble up. She’s trying to summon a human. A dead one at that.
You’re calling out for a ghost, but you’ve managed to snag something so much more interesting.
As I watch her, the amusement starts to curdle into something heavier.
Every mangled, broken syllable spilling from her lips blurs from noise, into a frequency.
It’s a low, thrumming vibration that matches the ache in my own chest. It acts like a match struck against my skin, dragging a slow, burning heat across every inch of me.
The air around me begins to thin, swirling toward the portal as if she’s creating a vacuum on the other side.
It’s pulling at me—tugging on my tie, my hair, the very essence of my bones.
I should step back. I should go back to the office.
But the scent leaking through the tear is very quickly taking hold.
It’s the smell of rain and air that hasn’t been recycled through a billion pairs of charred lungs and filtered through sulfur. It’s life. Raw and unfiltered.
My vision narrows until the entire universe is that shimmering crack and the black hair of the girl who made it. The hunger isn’t just in my head anymore; it’s a physical weight in my gut, demanding a mouthful of that clean, mortal oxygen.
I shove my face right up against the Veil, breaching it ever-so-slightly.
And behind me, in the deep, dark corridors of the Forbidden Zone—Hell loses its collective mind.
Guttural alarms rip through the air in a visceral, deafening wail. The walls flare in spots of crimson, emergency sigils igniting one by one in a chain reaction of molten light. A distorted, synthetic announcement booms across the chamber, mechanical words ricocheting off the stone.
“UNSANCTIONED CONTACT—CLASS EIGHT brEACH.”
But I barely register it. Because all that noise—all that chaos—is nothing compared to this.
I drag in another breath and almost choke on it.
Fuck—fuck—it’s intoxicating. It’s sunlight and everything I’ve been starved of for so fucking long.
The electric pleasure coils higher, licking over my arms, sending heat curling low in my abdomen.
“Malachi!” Grath’s rough voice cracks furiously from a distance. “Step away from the portal! Now!”
“If you don’t move now, the Veil is going to shred you into fifty different kinds of nothing!” Ulrik bellows, voice barely audible over the roar of the static and the sirens.
“Relax,” I call out, not taking my eyes off that little summoner. “I’m just... supervising. Quality control.”
“You don’t have authorization!” Grath is so close I can hear the rattle of his armor. “You don’t have a shell! You’ll be a raw demon in their world—it’s too dangerous! Get back here, Malachi, or we’re all going to be flayed for this!”
“Think about the paperwork, you idiot!” Ulrik adds, sounding genuinely panicked. “They’ll peel us just for letting you through the gate, let alone allowing you through a portal!”
I weigh it up for all of three seconds. On one side, two hundred and twelve years on a ‘pending’ list—an eternity ahead of me filing reports in the dark. On the other... a single, glorious moment of burning up in her atmosphere.
It isn’t even a choice.
I grin over my shoulder at them, my fangs glinting with a final, sharp defiance. “Yeah,” I draw out the word, savoring the look of pure horror on Grath’s face. “About that…”
Before thought can catch up to instinct, I do the stupidest, hungriest thing I’ve done in centuries.
I jump.
The Veil catches me mid-step, folding my reality from the inside out.
It feels like being drawn through the eye of a needle made of white-hot wire.
For a heartbeat, I’m nowhere. I’m everywhere.
Light and fire sear the inside of my skull, peeling every thought open and scattering my essence across a dozen worlds.
Then, the tension snaps. The world breaks.
A wet crack ripples through the floorboards, the portal snapping shut behind me the second my boots hit the carpet.
Hell’s noise dies mid-howl, alarms and screaming sucked out in one long inhale until there’s nothing left but thick, heavy silence ringing in my ears in the aftershock.
Mortal breath twists over my skin in silky drags, sliding into every inch of me so smoothly I don’t know whether to moan, snarl, or come like a sinner on the altar.
I blink hard, waiting for the world to stop spinning. The apartment steadies itself in a dim, fractured kaleidoscope of orange candlelight and grey smoke.
Well. I’m not dead. That’s a start.
Oh, and she’s right there. Just a few feet away, her back still turned to me, so close I could reach out and brush the hair from her neck.
I probably shouldn’t. I definitely want to.
I swallow the urge, forced to school my expression into something vaguely approachable instead of just outright ravenous.
I need to look like a guest, not a hunter.
I blow out a slow, appreciative whistle and take a second to adjust the cuffs of my shirt, smoothing out the wrinkles from my inter-dimensional commute.
“Hello, little summoner.”
If it weren’t for the faint tremble of her left hand against the wood of the table, I’d think she’d flatlined.
“Hey,” I say, snapping my fingers to break the trance. “Come on. Don’t be shy now. Turn around. I want to get a proper look at the girl who plays with blood and poetry for ghosts.”
She stands, her breath hitching. Then slowly, she turns, her movements fluid with fear.
Saints below.
She’s a mess. Her eyes are rimmed with red and her cheeks are tracked with mascara, but all I can see is the plush, trembling curve of her lower lip.
For a mortal, she’s a masterpiece of bone and grief—deliciously soft in all the places I’m sharp.
I wonder if her skin feels as silk-thin as it looks, or if it would bruise as easily as a ripening fruit under a bit of pressure.
I stand there, tracking the pulse in the hollow of her throat, savoring how delicious this realm tastes, because on top of the rain and mortal air, it’s peaches—peaches that have been left out in the sun too long, sugary and delectable.
Her face warps through a dozen emotions: pure horror, shattered disbelief, and then, that gorgeous, dawning realization that she is utterly, irrevocably fucked.
Fuck, I want to bottle that look and wear it like a damn trophy.
For a micro-second, nothing happens.
Then, with a speed that’s frankly impressive for someone in a cardigan, she lunges, her hand blurring as she snatches a chipped mug from the coffee table and launches it right at my sternum with every trembling ounce of mortal strength she can summon.
It smacks dead-center, splattering cold, dreg-heavy tea across my white shirt in a brown arc before clattering to the floor. I look down at the stain soaking into the cotton, then back at her, slowly raising one eyebrow.
She lets out a full-on squeak and retreats across the room like a cornered rabbit, the heavy heave of her chest sending a fresh spike of adrenaline through my marrow. She hits the far wall, trapped and panting, her eyes wide and wet.
I run my tongue along a fang, relishing the familiar sting, my gaze never leaving the way her cardigan slips just a fraction off one rounded shoulder.
“Really?” I drawl, the word dripping with disappointment. “I just tore myself through a structural dimensional barrier, risking a total essence-shredding, and your big opening move is… wet leaves in dishware?”