Chapter 24 Eden
Eden
Ibury my hand in Vesper’s fur to ground myself, letting her claws needle my thighs as a tether to reality.
Across the room, Malachi is a restless, leaking shadow, back to himself, silver and sharp edges.
Between the cat's needling and his low muttering, I’m just barely keeping a full-blown panic attack at bay while the room fills with the cloying stench of a thousand rotten eggs.
He stops dead in his tracks, does a one-eighty turn, and makes a beeline for the—
No.
“What are you doing?” I ask hesitantly as he scoops up the box containing my summoning supplies—the thing that started this whole nightmare—and drops it onto the coffee table with an unceremonious thud.
“I’m not doing anything,” he says simply. “You, however, are redoing the ritual. We’re going to Hell.”
The fuck we are. We’re still in the throes of my first stupid ritual, and he wants me to do it all over again? To take us to Hell?!
“Absolutely not,” I snap, shaking my head frantically. “That is not happening. Never. Not in a million years. Not in the next ten minutes.”
I shove the box back across the table so hard the candles rattle inside like chattering teeth. I want that box out of my sight. I want it at the bottom of the ocean.
“Eden,” he starts, his patience visibly fraying at the edges. “Let me explain—”
“Explain what? How much fun the eternal lakes of fire are this time of year?” I stand up on legs made of jelly, depositing a disgruntled Vesper onto the cushions.
He drops to his knees on the opposite side of the coffee table, reaching for the manacles the Enforcer left there.
“You do not get to refuse,” he rumbles, the cold iron clinking between his long, sludge-stained fingers. “Pay attention and use that one working brain cell of yours for five minutes. That Warden threatened to end you specifically because of the blood-bind. And more will come.”
A cold, bitter wave of nausea roils through my gut. “So what? Your grand plan is to take me to Hell so they can kill me on your home turf instead? Is that the strategy? Just skip the middleman and deliver me to the door?”
“No,” he says, his eyes locking onto mine with a terrifying intensity as he pulls the candles out of the box, lining them up across the scarred wood.
“I am suggesting we go to the one place they won't look. In Veraxia’s mind, why would I return to the place I’ve been so adamant about avoiding?
It’s the perfect blind spot. No predator ever looks for the prey in its own bed.
” He taps a candle against the table for emphasis.
“In the mortal realm, we are a target. In Hell? We’re just noise. ”
He pulls the yellowed, blood-crusted parchment from the bottom of the box, skims over the words, and begins setting the ritual up.
“I have the means to go back any way I want,” he mutters, not looking up.
“I could tear a hole through the Veil with my bare hands if I had to. But if I go back the 'right' way, we’ll land directly at the Gates. I’d be processed, shackled, and delivered to Veraxia to do with as she pleases. And we would never get the bind off.”
My skin ices over, a fine, uncontrollable tremor starting in my feet and working its way up to my knees.
I can’t go there. Not willingly. Not ever.
“I first saw you in the Forbidden Zone,” he says. “It’s the only place where the Veil is thin enough for Hell to catch glimpses of you mortals playing with occult dealings. It’s a monitoring station, Eden. A blind spot in the bureaucracy.”
He strikes a match with a pop, and touches the flame to the first wick.
“If we go back through that same crack, we slip in under the radar. I have colleagues and acquaintances who are as weary of the status quo as I am. They’re bogged down by the same endless admin, the same stifling queues, the same rotting hierarchies, and I’d bet they’d be willing to help us cut the bind safely just to spite the higher-ups like Veraxia. ”
He looks up at me once the last candle is lit, a wicked glint in his eyes. “Spite is a very powerful tool when handed to a bunch of bored, middle-management demons.”
“And then what?” I ask, my voice cracking. “I just spend eternity down there? Wandering around some observation deck until I turn into ash?”
“No,” he says, sounding almost insulted, as if the idea of keeping me in his workspace is the most offensive thing he's heard all night.
“I would throw you back through the Forbidden Zone. I would hurl you across the Veil with enough force to make your ancestors dizzy. You come back to this mortal realm, to your little apartment and your little life, and we both continue our miserable existences without the other.”
“You'd just... send me back?” I whisper.
“Yes.” He snatches the parchment from the table and thrusts it at me. I try to shove it back, my hands shaking too hard to even grip the edges, but he catches my wrists, forcing the paper into my palms. “Do it. Now.”
Ice crystallises in my veins. Images of Hell—of fire, hooks, knives, blades… they flit through my mind at a million miles an hour. My wrists burn with phantom shackles, my skin sears with invisible blisters, my nerves scream from volts of electricity being poured directly into my body.
The rotten air isn't enough. I can’t get it down. I pull in a breath, but it gets stuck halfway in, breaking into a wheeze. Dark, static-filled spots caress the edges of my vision, teeth chattering against the weight of it all, pulse thudding so damn hard my ribs might fracture.
I’m going to have a heart attack.
“Eden, stop,” he commands.
I can’t. I’m falling into the tunnel. The floor is going to open, the hooks are going to find me, the silence is going to be replaced by a thousand screaming voices—
“Eden.” He snaps his fingers in front of my face. When my eyes don't focus, he leans in, his silver face inches from mine, his voice dropping into a scandalous, casual drawl. “Shall I put my fingers inside you again? That seemed to perk you up last time.”
The oxygen-starved haze vanishes, replaced by a hot, indignant flare of rage that hits me like a slap to the face. I shove his hand away from me—hard—my face heating up until it feels like it’s going to melt off my skull.
“You are fucking disgusting!” I yell, my voice finally finding its volume.
He lets out a genuine bark of laughter. “Anger is much better than hyperventilating. Your color is returning, and you've stopped sounding like a broken bellows. Now, do the ritual.”
The anger sustains me for a second, a thin shield against the dark. But then I look down at the parchment in my hands, the way sweat’s already slicking my palms, turning the stained paper soft and damp at the edges.
“I can't,” I whisper, my momentary resolve crumbling. “If they find us... if they catch me...”
“I will not let them touch you while you are bound to me,” he growls, reaching out to grip my face in both of his hands, framing my jaw. “Because you are mine little summoner. And I do not share what belongs to me—in any way, shape, or form.”
I suck in a shaky, shallow breath. “I am not yours.”
“You are,” he snarls, his grip tightening just enough to let me feel the terrifying strength behind his fingers. “And if anyone so much as tries to steal a piece of that beautiful hair from your pretty little head, I will rip their arms off and make them eat their own dicks. Do you understand me?”
The sheer, absurd violence of the threat should make me laugh, but instead, a cold, silk-like clarity washes over me.
If I stay here, I’m a sitting duck. I’m a logistical complication waiting to be deleted by the next bureaucrat with a skin-suit and a quota. That pointless kit won’t do a damn thing, and I’ll be dead before the tracking number even updates regardless.
There’s no version of this story where I sit on my couch, eat popcorn, and wait for the problem to go away.
The problem is in my blood. The problem is standing in my apartment, silver-skinned and swearing to protect me with a level of possessiveness that is both terrifying and the only thing keeping me upright.
My options are a slow death in my living room or a fast gamble in the place of eternal nightmares.
This is the only play left on the board.
Go to Hell, find the disgruntled middle-management demons, get the bind cut, and get the fuck back out.
I’ll come back to Earth, find the nearest church, join every religion I can find, and spend the rest of my life praying for enough forgiveness to ensure I never feel the need to summon anything—not even a plumber—ever again.
I am a mortal, and way out of my depth. But I’m the one holding the paper.
Fuck. Okay. This is it.
“If you let them take me,” I whisper, my eyes locking onto his, “I will find a way to haunt you for eternity. I'll be the worst thing that ever happened to you.”
He grins, fangs glinting in the light. “I'm counting on it, little summoner.”
I take the knife from the kit and press the cold, metal edge against my forearm, right next to the now-healing evidence from the first ritual, but I don't hesitate this time.
The blade drags across my flesh, layers of skin parting beneath the sharp edge with a quiet, wet hiss. Hot, dark blood spatters down onto the sigil, soaking into the dry, crusted flakes from last time.
Swallowing against the lump in my throat, I try to find a voice that isn't made of glass as I train my eyes on the words scrawled across the parchment.
Come on, Eden. Don’t choke now. Read.
“By name and blood, I call you home. By ash and breath, by skin and bone. By the silence that screams and the love that remains, I break the locks and cut the chains. Through the shadowed path where the light goes blind, I reach for the soul you left behind. By the flames that burn and the heart that stays, I call you back from the end of days.”