Chapter Four
“Get up.”
Wha... what’s... going on?
“Get up, boy!”
Pain exploded in my side, ripping me screaming into consciousness.
Everything hurt.
Biting hard on my lip, screams bled through my teeth—pushing through harder than the tears trying to fall. My whole body was one open, bleeding sore, and it wasn’t an exaggeration. One bleary, swimming eye showed me I was covered in blood.
It also fell on the muddy, hoof-shaped bruise forming on my side. Traveling down, I saw the academy patch clutched in my grip.
I didn’t know what happened and never would, but I could only assume the deal kicked in and Lucifer found a way to shove another badge on me while the crows were taking chunks out of my flesh.
Flipping over, I came eye to eye with the offending hoof.
“I said up!” Erlik grabbed my arm and hauled me roughly to my feet. “If you’ve got time to lie around in your underwear, you’ve got time to explain to me how you did it.”
My eyes crossed to suddenly find his face in mine.
“How’d you tame that hellhound, boy?” he hissed.
“In nine hundred years, I’ve never seen anything like that.
Hellhounds are born starving. They never never turn down a meal when one is broken and mewling right in front of them, but that one did...
to save you.” His green eyes narrowed to slits. “Why?”
“I— I—” I tried to get my jaw to respond, but I was pretty sure it was broken.
“Refusing to tell me, are ya?” Erlik leaned back, anger bleeding into his brows. “Laughing at me, are ya?”
What?
“Calling me a stupid, ignorant chump who can’t tame a hellhound like a slow, worthless worm like you can?!” he bellowed, rage rising.
No!
“How dare you!” he roared. Erlik shook me like a rag doll. “You wanted to make an enemy out of me, boy? Well, you succeeded! To the dorms with you, insolent worm!” He tossed me bodily over his shoulder. “Now!”
Sabrina slithered over to me as his clomp-clomp-clomps faded in the distance. She took in my broken, bleeding body and the tear tracks cutting through my grimy face. “Well?” she snapped. “You heard him. Pick me up and take me to my room.”
IT WAS AN HOUR BEFORE I was able to fulfill that order, which was miraculous in and of itself.
I wasn’t premed like my sister planned to be, but I knew enough about the human body to know no one walks away from an attack like that after only an hour.
The blood loss alone should’ve kept me out of the game for days.
“My lord’s doing,” Sabrina mentioned. “He’d have boosted your natural healing ability. You should thank him by surrendering your soul to him now. He has already overpaid for it.”
“That’s an insane statement, and you know it,” I mumbled as I stumbled toward the entrance. “I’m not surrendering anything until Dora is safe at home.”
She hissed. “Stubbornnesssss is the plague of the elderly.”
“Who needs venom when your words are poison.”
Sabrina laughed that strange, hissing laugh. “That was humorous, human. Good,” she said. “It doesn’t do to be ugly and unfunny.”
I blew a hard breath out my nose. “And to think I was glad for a minute there that the crows didn’t carry you away.”
“What?”
“Ugh,” I cried, rolling my eyes. “Who am I kidding? I’m still glad. I was really scared for you, Sabrina.” I reached the short staircase to the main doors. “Are you okay?”
“What?” she snapped louder.
“Are you hurt?” I repeated. The crows ripped my shirt and pants off, so I had no trouble talking to her face to reptilian face. “You look okay, but do you need anything? I can—”
“Stop that,” she hissed. “Stop talking nonsense, human, and take me to my room!”
I blinked. I had no idea what I said to piss her off, but it was very effective. Dropping it, I pushed inside the academy—
—and froze.
I don’t know what I was expecting of an academy in hell. So far, everything I’d been subjected to in this world was as horrifying and traumatizing as you would expect of a place centuries of humans feared—and I’d only been here for a few hours. But this...
Skeleton chandeliers clung to the high, arched ceiling beams. The bones were its canopies and columns, the ribs were its arms, and candles rested on skulls—wax dripping from their eyes like ivory tears.
Not a single window claimed the entryway, allowing the oppressive darkness to win its battle with the thin, flickering candles.
Portraits looked down from where windows would be—painted with artistry so impeccable, I felt every stare and shuddered from each crafted snarl.
Scarlet and ebony damask wallpaper covered the walls—beautiful if not for the slash marks and spray-painted profanity as far as the eye could see.
Cobwebs covered everything in thick silky ropes, and little feet scurried through the darkness.
It was horrible... and beautiful.
I don’t know why both words came to my mind—side by side and equal in how they gripped me—but being here I knew, I was standing within something old and beautiful.
Too old and beautiful to be ruined by webs and graffiti.
Abaddon Academy would enchant all who stepped through their doors.
Enchant them to awe. Enchant them to envy.
Enchant them to ruin. But it would have a piece of you—whether you liked it or not.
I tossed my head, blinking. “Uh... rooms. How do I find mine?”
“In front of you.”
Squinting at the spot where she pointed, I made out a small crate of keys resting against the wall.
“Wait. This is how we’re assigned our rooms? We just pick a key from an abandoned box in the hallway?”
“Correct.”
“But what about a school map, a tour, orientation?” I cried, thinking of the sheer scope of this place, and my task to find Dora somewhere within it. “Is this really how they welcome new students?”
“Were you expecting a parade?”
Sighing, I crossed the hall to the—
“Agh!” I choked, clapping my hand over my nose. “What is that smell!”
“Urine,” Sabrina dropped like it was no big deal.
“Urine?! Someone peed on the keys? Why!”
If a snake could shrug, she’d be doing it. “Why not?”
My jaw worked, head shaking. I looked around for anything I could use to cover my hand, but there was nothing except my underwear.
“Oh no,” I breathed. “Oh no, oh no, not that.”
“What are you babbling about?”
I groaned, grimacing hard. “Sabrina, are you sure no one can see anything but a man when they look at me?”
“Of course I’m sure. Lord Lucifer is a master of lies, cunning, and deception,” she spouted off so proudly, you’d have thought she was speaking of a child who won the science fair.
“He himself crafted your disguise. All the lords and masters of hell could try to break through your glamour, but none will succeed unless you allow them to.”
“Well, then...” I popped off my bra. “Here goes...”
I WANTED TO FIND A dark corner and just fade away by the time I found the entrance to the dorm hall.
Naturally, not a single hallway or entrance had signs to let inhabitants know where they were or where they were going.
The best Sabrina could do for me was to sniff out where she smelled the highest collection of demons.
If they were all gathered in that place, we assumed it had to be the dorms. Unfortunately for me, that took us clear across to the other side of the castle, and all the way, I had to run past hooting, leering, howling demons who’d never know just how naked I was, but could see I was naked enough.
“I’ve never been so humiliated in my life,” I cried, skidding to a stop before the entrance to the staircase. Above my head, music pounded, people shouted, and fights broke out. “What is with this place!”
“It’s hell, human,” she hissed. “You better enjoy how horrible and small you feel right now, because it’s about to get a lot worse.”
If there was a retort to that, I didn’t know what it was.
I took the stairs two at a time, clinging to the walls. I was not interested in drawing any more attention to myself than I already had.
I hit the top of the landing and was partially relieved that no one was in the hallway.
All the noise was coming from the other side of the doors, but in a few minutes, I’d be on the other side of one of those doors, and with all the shouting, banging, and thudding roaring through the wood... all I could do was hope for a single.
Lifting up my bra, I squinted at the room number etched into the key. “Okay, 201... 201... 201...” I walked the length of the hall, my gaze pinging from door to door. “I’m going to find some bedsheets, then a shower. After I clean up, I’ll start searching for Dora,” I whispered.
I reached the end of the hall and found that it split, leading opposite directions to opposite staircases. “Sabrina, if you can smell demons, then you smell humans?”
“Yes.”
“That’s perfect,” I cried, perking up. “That means all you have to do is—”
“Understand thisss, human,” she sliced off.
“You are undertaking an impossible task, and there is nothing I or Lord Lucifer can do to make it less so. The creatures who took her will have taken pains to hide your nestmate and her scent from all who do not know her—which is everyone in this realm. As I said, glamours and cunnings only work on the ignorant, so if you could scent her, you’d find her.
“But you can’t,” she dropped. “Do not expect me to do what you cannot do, human. If you wanted miracles, you should’ve gone up, not down.”
I fell quiet.
We had nothing more to say to each other as I turned left, found myself in the three hundreds, turned back the way I came, and then ascended the right staircase. Room 201 loomed in front of me, beckoning me inside. Carefully, I inserted the key and walked in.
My gasp echoed through the manor.
Running back out, I looked up and down the dark, graffitied hallway of ripped wallpaper, and strewn trash—making sure I was still in the right place.
Darting back into the dorm, my jaw dropped all over again. It was magnificent— No, magnificent wasn’t the word. I’d finally left the mansion, and found the palace.