Chapter 29 #2
I touch my forehead to hers and breathe her in again, drawing strength from her belief in me. The strength to keep going, to tell her the part of the story that might finally dim the light in her eyes.
Because in the end, I didn’t survive the monsters.
I merely became one myself.
“I flourished at University, as you can imagine. The hallowed halls of academia, the tradition, the pursuit of excellence, knowledge as a passion, as a gateway to more knowledge… these became my touchstones. My haven in a world that up until then had felt so lonely and terrible. And, socially inept as I was, I managed to make two very good mates.”
She smiles. “Warren and Oliver.”
“We shared a flat, took many of the same classes. Pursued graduate degrees together. They were always more outgoing, though, bouncing from party to party, while I preferred the library. The familiar comforts of books. The smell of paper and ink, of leather-bound tomes. The mysteries contained within.”
“Ahh. The doctorate origin story.”
“Two doctorates, actually. Library—”
“Library Sciences and early English Literature, yes, I recall,” she teases, nudging me with her shoulder. “Were you always so insufferable about the size of your brain?”
I laugh. “Yes, well, I was rather dedicated to my studies. Right up until the end.” My laughter drifts away, and I close my eyes again, that dark door of my heart creaking open a bit further.
“There was a party,” I say, my voice fading again, as if it might conjure the old ghosts. “Oliver and Warren insisted I join them. It’d been a while since we’d hung out; I’d been locking myself away in the stacks, following rabbit holes.”
The moment that changed the course of our fates was a simple one; they’d worn me down. A final shrug, a sigh. A ‘why not, these books will still be here tomorrow.’ One drink, a few laughs. I can manage that. For my mates, I can manage that.
“The party was held at the house of a vacationing professor. I was overwhelmed within minutes, as I knew I would be. The press and stink of bodies, the cigarette smoke, the music. All of it muddled my mind, made me itch with discomfort. I slipped away upstairs, found an unoccupied room. A study filled with books and art and fine leather furniture.”
“You’re safe space,” she says gently, and I nod.
“I was lost in thought, as I so often was, admiring the fine collection of books. Thinking perhaps it wasn’t such a terrible party after all—it was just the company that needed changing.
And I’d found it—my people. Dead, their words memorialized between leather covers, shelved for posterity.
I was so enamored of this clever metaphor that I didn’t notice when the girl entered. ”
I hear Elizabeth’s sharp intake of breath, feel the jolt of realization zip through her veins. She knows, instinctively, this is where the story turns dark.
I spare her the longer version.
“She was someone I knew, a student in the entry-level English Literature class I was teaching at the time. Bright, eager. Also, blindingly drunk. I attempted to make small talk. To see if I might encourage her to return to her friends, to leave me in peace.” My heartbeat quickens, the familiar guilt soaking in around the edges, burning and sharp.
“She was not interested in her friends. Nor was she interested in further small talk. She pressed herself upon me, reaching for my belt. The eagerness, the passion in her—it startled me. I tried to push her away—gently, always gently, but something happened. A heel caught in the carpeting, a miscalculation of a single step. She lost her footing, and down she went. I reached for her, tried to grab hold, but it all happened so quickly, and… she fell backward, hit her head on a table. The sound it made… it haunts me still.”
Tears glitter on Elizabeth’s face. I brush them away with my thumb, clinging to her silken skin. Forcing myself to hold her gaze.
“I knew she’d died. The blood was… there was no mistaking it.
I checked her pulse, confirmed. I was frantic, desperate to save her.
I made my bargains with every god I’d ever studied, and when that didn’t work, I somehow opened a direct line to Hell.
And when I bargained, when I begged, it was the demons who finally answered. ”
Elizabeth closes her eyes. She knows how this story ends. I force myself to say it anyway.
“I didn’t read the fine print,” I whisper.
“Didn’t even consider it. I was ready to sacrifice myself and save this girl’s life if it was the last free choice I had.
But what I actually bargained wasn’t just my own life.
‘Everything you hold dear,’ the demon had said.
And I was a fool. A desperate fool not to know what that could’ve encompassed.
I was so used to keeping love at a distance, to refusing intimacy, to rebuffing even my closest friends on the best of days.
It simply didn’t occur to me that I was signing away anything but my own future.
My own soul. But what I ultimately signed away… ”
“Warren and Oliver,” she whispers, and I nod, the admission tearing a fresh hole through my chest.
“It is a sin I have carried for the entirety of my demonic existence. A sin for which there is no atoning.”
“But they must’ve known it was an accident. That you were trying to save someone. They must’ve known it wasn’t your fault. They’re still your best—”
“They know nothing of it.” I exhale a dark sigh.
“I never told them, Elizabeth. And that is my worst crime. There was nothing to be gained from their knowing, nothing that would change their fate. Suddenly I was locked in the attic again, nothing but rats and rotted food to keep me company… No, I couldn’t bear to lose them—my dearest friends.
I have kept them selfishly in the dark, and while we’ve carved out our niches in Hell, winning privileged existences by proving ourselves most useful to Matthias, I’ve spent every possible moment searching for a way out, a way to reverse the events of that night, to break the demonic contract, to give my dear friends the freedom to live and die as men.
That, more than my aptitude toward scholarship, is why I spend my life in Hell buried in the stacks of ancient archives, poring over each manuscript, searching for one damned loophole.
Decades upon decades. Thousands of texts and scrolls, some in languages that don’t even exist anymore.
Fairytales and biblical stories, demonic records of old, heresy and rumor and human etchings on cave walls.
Still, I’ve never found a way.” My shoulders sink beneath the weight of it.
I manage one last smile, thin and defeated, the very last of my strength finally leaking out of me. “Until you handed me these pages.”
Elizabeth bolts to her feet, the precious pages scattering. “What? Merrick, what?”
I can already hear the hope flooding her voice, buoying her spirit.
I crouch to gather the pages, rising to meet her eyes. “Your mother crafted a spell to reunite a demon with his human soul. Essentially, to return him to life as a mortal man.”
“But…” Her eyes search my face for an explanation I simply don’t have. “Why would my mother do that? Do you think she was coerced?”
“The spell wouldn’t be effective if she was, and in any event, Evelyn was far too clever a witch for that.
She would’ve found a way to corrupt it. This spell is…
it’s absolutely perfect.” I glance through the pages again, marveling anew.
“No, Elizabeth. This is a work of deep love. She took great pains to craft it, and even greater pains to hide it. All I can say for certain is that if your mother crafted this spell with intent to cast it herself, it was immensely important to her. Perhaps the most important thing she would’ve ever done. ”
“What makes you say that?”
The weight of irony crashes down upon me. Cruel world. Cruel, terrible, fucking world.
“The spell to reunite a demon with his soul—to return his humanity—requires the caster to sacrifice her magic.”
Her face pales. “How much of it?”
“All of it, Elizabeth. Permanently.”
I see it in her eyes, the moment she connects the dots. The moment her hope shifts to dread.
She can not save me and the others. No one can.
“Merrick, we might be—”
“No.”
“We have to try!”
“I won’t allow it. Not this.”
Tears glaze her eyes. She grabs my wrists, nearly pleading. “Listen to me. I want—”
There’s a horrid crash, footsteps thundering up the tower stairs. A blast of light, and the eldest Bonnivarde tumbles into the room.
“It’s Kate!” Rachel exclaims. “All the dead plants she took from here… they’re alive. And the whole downstairs is covered in muddy footprints and the back door is open and…” She covers her mouth, tears spilling from her eyes.
“Rachel, you need to breathe.” Elizabeth grabs her sister’s wrists, gently drawing her hands away. “Slow down. Tell me exactly what happened.”
Rachel closes her eyes and shakes her head. “Kate’s gone, Lizzy. She’s just… gone.”