Chapter 24 Eden #2
I expect the walls to bleed or the floor to turn into liquid, but the room stays stubbornly, mockingly the same. Even as I teeter on the edge of a breakdown, Malachi’s hands stay steady. He’s already cleaning the fresh cut, wrapping a strip of gauze around my forearm.
“Good mortal,” he murmurs. “Keep going.”
A spark of that earlier rage flickers in my chest, but I keep my eyes glued to the scrawled ink.
“From the heights of the stars to the hollows of deep,” I continue, my voice gaining a little more confidence. “I rouse the secrets that the shadows keep. Open the gate, unmake the seal, let the hidden world be the only thing real.”
It’s a terrifying irony—I’m reading the words meant to pull a soul up, to bring back the ghost I missed so much I was willing to break the world for him. But we aren’t pulling anyone up this time. We’re using the open door to jump down.
I think of the ghost I originally wanted—the one I would have given anything to see again. Then, I look at the demon I got instead, and take one long, shuddering breath.
“By the key of my soul and the lock of my breath, I walk the path between life and death.”
The final word hangs in the air, heavy and vibrating like a struck bell.
“Did it work?” I look around, desperate and half-blind with adrenaline. “Malachi, nothing’s happening. What now?”
He looks to me, and a slow, terrifying, fanged grin spreads across his face.
“Oh, it worked,” he purrs, pressing a kiss to my forehead. “Well done, you clever, little mortal.”
“I don't see anything,” I whisper, my eyes darting frantically around the room, searching for a portal, a hole, a sign—anything. “Malachi, there’s nothing there.”
He reaches behind the couch, and—oh God.
The air ripples in a wet distortion that makes my inner ears scream. For a split second, the familiar, floral wallpaper vanishes; in its place is a glimpse of something dark and stony. Then it snaps back, the living room flickering back into focus.
“Shoes. Now.” he commands, already pulling his own on.
I stumble toward the door and shove my feet into my boots, not even bothering to lace them. I blindly snatch my handbag from the side table, slinging the strap over my shoulder in a panic as my eyes dart frantically around the wreckage of my living room, looking for a flash of black and cream fur.
“Vesper! Baby, come here!” I call, my voice cracking.
“Eden, we don’t have long,” Malachi growls, his grip on my arm tightening.
“I'm not leaving her!” I scan the room.
She’s not on the couch. She’s not under the table. Where the fuck is she?
“She will be fine! Your sister will find her when she wakes,” he bellows over the rising roar of static. He laces his fingers through mine, his grip bruisingly tight.
“Malachi, I can't—”
He stops in his tracks, sensing the exact moment my knees start to give way. He reaches out and curls a hand around the back of my neck, pulling me forward until our foreheads are pressed together.
“Everything will be fine,” he rumbles. “I’ve got you. Stay close, keep your eyes on me, and don't let go of my hand. Do you understand?”
I nod jerkily against his forehead, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. I have no choice. I have to trust him.
“Good,” he whispers. “Then let's go and fix this mess.”
He doesn't give me a chance to change my mind—he just turns, and steps directly into the ripple.
Blinding, white-hot agony sears through my body, like I’m being turned inside out, my atoms unspooled and rethreaded through the eye of a needle.
My guts swirl, churning and rearranging themselves behind my bones.
I try to scream, but the air is gone, replaced by a pressure so intense it feels like it’s trying to collapse my lungs.
Then, gravity returns with a vengeance, and my knees hit rock with a bone-jarring crack. I collapse forward, groaning as the air finally rushes back into my chest—dry, scorching, and tasting of copper.
When I finally manage to peel my eyes open and look up, I don’t see lakes of fire or pitchforks. I see… screens.
Hundreds of them in every direction. Shimmering tears in the magma-laced walls, hanging in the air like a gallery of the damned.
Each one is a window, a voyeuristic glimpse into a thousand different rooms. From men to women to children—every single one of them trying to do exactly what I did. Reaching for something they shouldn't.
From my periphery, the ripple to my living room gives one final shudder—a glimpse of my messy coffee table and the discarded ritual supplies—and then it snaps shut, leaving me in a whole new realm, with a demon who’s seemingly unbothered by the interdimensional whiplash.
He’s already rubbing at his silver temples next to me, his posture losing that defensive edge as he settles back into his usual state of bored arrogance.
He looks down at me, his eyes reflecting the flickering glow of all the desperate mortals in the walls.
“Welcome to the Forbidden Zone,” he says, his voice echoing around us. “Try not to vomit. The janitors here are notoriously sensitive.”
I don’t throw up, but it’s a near thing.
The Forbidden Zone.
I’m actually here. In Hell. The place people spend their entire lives praying to avoid, and I just walked through the back door in my pajamas and a pair of unlaced boots.
A soft meow echoes through the camber and my head whips toward the sound. A small, familiar shape is picking its way across the stone toward us.
“Vesper!?” I whisper-hiss, my heart jumping into my throat.
Malachi freezes, eyes widening as he spots the intruder. “You brought the House-Beast!?”
“No! I did not bring her! Why would I bring my cat to Hell!?”
I scramble on my hands and knees, scooping the warm, solid weight of her into my arms. She lets out a soft chirp and immediately starts kneading my pajama shirt, as if nothing is amiss.
“Oh, baby, why did you come?” I say into her fur, a fresh wave of panic crashing over me. “Why would you jump? Piper was going to find you and take you to her home and—”
“House-Beast!” Malachi snaps, fingers digging into his hair. “Why did you come?! Answer me now, you ridiculous, furred creature! This is not a sanctuary!”
Vesper just blinks at him, completely unimpressed by his demonic posturing. She lets out a long, loud yawn, showing off a set of tiny white teeth that look laughably inadequate against the backdrop of eternal darkness.
“She followed us,” he snarls, stopping mid-pace to glare at us.
“She’s spent so much time soaking in our shared filth that she probably thinks she’s part of this whole thing.
Great. Fantastic.” He tips his head to the seemingly infinite ceiling, squeezing his eyes shut as if the sheer stupidity of the situation might actually kill him.
“We are going to die, and it’ll be because of a creature that licks its own anus for fun. ”
Around us, the air continues to cough and pop as screens flicker into existence and snap shut.
“Give her to me,” he orders, his chin jerking vaguely toward a screen where a teenager’s sobbing in the middle a messy bedroom. “I will throw her into one of these. She’ll land on the laundry and be someone else’s problem.”
My grip on Vesper tightens. “Don't you fucking dare.”
“Eden, she’s a liability,” he counters. “She is loud, she sheds, and I do not have the correct food for her.”
“She stays with me,” I say. My voice is trembling, a thin wire stretched to the breaking point, but it’s final.
He looks like he wants to incinerate both of us, his nostrils flaring with a visible, frustrated heat that smells like a forest fire on the verge of erupting.
“Fine,” he snaps. “She cannot stay with us long-term, so I will take her somewhere... safe-ish. For now, put her in the bag.”
He plucks the cat right from my arms and shoves her into my black, crackled-leather tote, his large hands maneuvering her into the cramped space with a strange, delicate efficiency.
As she lets out a muffled, indignant mewl, he pushes her head down beneath the flap and leans down.
“You are a brave feline specimen. Congratulations.”
Then he reaches out and swipes a handful of thick, black soot from the damp crevices of the stone wall. Before I can even flinch, he smears it across my cheekbones, dragging it down to the line of my neck.
“Hey!” I snap, jerking back.
“Hush,” he drawls, his golden eyes scanning the wall for more filth. “You stand out like a flare in a coal mine, but with the soot, the stupid demons—which is most of them—won’t notice anything amiss.”
He works fast, dragging the grime over my hair, matting the strands, then down my arms and legs until every inch of exposed skin is a dull, wretched grey. I’m smudge in sheep-print pajamas, looking like I’ve been dragged through a chimney and left for dead.
“Besides,” he continues with a smirk. “This is just me returning the favor for slathering me in your beige mud. It’s a disguise, Eden—and it’s a reckoning. One for one.”
He steps back, surveying his handiwork with a grim sort of satisfaction.
“You aren't my little summoner right now,” he says simply. “You’re a miserable, tortured demon who’s just finished her shift. Try to look appropriately soul-crushed. Now give me your teeth.”
I blink, certain I’ve misheard him over the hum of the screens. “Pardon?”
“The guards on the gate. They’re morons, but they’re easily persuaded by calcium. Allow me to remove some of yours—two, maybe three. You don't need them to survive.”
“Fuck off!” I hiss, stumbling back a step. “You are not pulling my teeth!”
“Eden, be reasonable. My currency is at my home, and I gave my last few to the gatekeepers just to get in here the first time. It’s the only bribe they understand.” He leans in, his molten-gold eyes scanning my jaw as if calculating the easiest point of entry. “I just need your wisdoms. Open up.”