20. Dante #2
"Virgil." The demon grins, even more maliciously than before.
Beside me, the tortured woman emits a low moan.
"I knew I recognized this one's particular flavor of pain.
Acquired a pet, have we?" He spins back to me with predatory speed and has his hands back around my throat before I can move. "Wandered off the path, did we?"
Virgil shrugs, his face utterly composed.
He seems nearly bored. His gaze drifts back the way we came, as though he's considering leaving.
His eyes pass over me, and only in that brief moment do I see a spark of feeling so deep it could cut through hell's foundations.
But I've misjudged this man. He's far better at concealing his emotions than I've ever been.
It strikes me hard that he's chosen to be readable to me. All this time.
Every flicker of emotion I thought I'd caught, every moment I believed I was seeing through his composure—he let me see. He welcomed me to see his truth.
"You know how tedious these souls can be," Virgil says in a dry, detached tone I've never heard from him before. "I’m enjoying my time with that one, though. He comes from a modern city. You remember how I find those fascinating."
Malrec scoffs. "You and your obsession with the mortal world."
Virgil only shrugs. "We all have our diversions."
"Yours aren't amusing at all." The hand tightens around my throat. I try to tell myself this isn't real. Hell isn't real. But my senses betray me. The clench around my windpipe feels as real as anything I've ever experienced.
"Well," Malrec purrs. "I can relieve you of him now."
"It would be wiser for you to go." Virgil glances back toward the shadows once more. His voice is slow, languid, and unconcerned with what happens here. "He approaches. And you've gone too far with this one." Virgil nods toward the crumpled woman. “I need not say how our master disdains excess."
Malrec licks his lips. "I haven't broken her yet."
"You've destabilized her. You know he abhors that. Breaks can create cracks. But take my counsel or not. I, for one, intend to be elsewhere when he arrives to survey this." Another dismissive glance at the ruined soul.
Malrec wrinkles his nose and looks me straight in the face. Then he takes his tongue and traces it up my jaw. I jerk away from the violation, the loss of control, the disgust—but then freeze as something else hits me.
Pain.
Pain so brutal I cry out without any ability to hold it back.
I am six years old and my father's belt cracks against my back, welts rising where thick leather falls again and again while I bite through my lip to keep from screaming.
I am nine, and my ribs show through my skin, and I'm so hungry I can't remember what it feels like not to be.
I am nineteen and in a dorm room with a boy I thought I wanted, finally allowing myself to want at all, but his hands are too rough, his mouth too greedy, and when I try to slow him down, he doesn't listen.
He pushes past my hesitation like it's nothing, like I'm nothing, and I let him because I need this to be more than it is.
Afterward, he falls asleep, and I sit on the edge of his bed, cataloging the bruises on my hips, the ache in my body.
I am twenty-eight and watching Matthew's face crumple as I tell him I don't love him. Watching myself destroy something precious and doing it anyway. Choosing to do it. That's the worst part—the choice.
I am every age at once, every wound reopened.
Hopeless. Tormented. Burning. I think I'm actually on fire, my body doused in oil and set alight.
I thrash. I scream. And it's no use. I continue to burn, to suffer, to feel every shame and loss and moment of aloneness I've ever buried.
Every harm I've suffered and every harm I've caused.
It all surfaces at once, a flood with no banks to contain it.
The pain stops as suddenly as it began.
Malrec smiles at me, then kisses me firmly on the mouth. I'm so frozen from the torment that I can't even turn my head away.
"Just needed a taste of you before I depart," he murmurs against my lips.
He drops me, and I have no ability to catch myself.
I land against rocks that bruise my ribs, let my face fall against the ground with a dull thud.
I see the woman shuddering beside me and try to focus on my breath.
On any physical sensation that’s grounding.
That reminds me I'm here. Not in the fire, not in the abuse, not in the cold room where I broke a man’s heart.
With a groan, I rise onto an elbow just as Malrec chuckles, nods to Virgil, and disappears around the bend.
Virgil is beside me at once, his careful mask gone, his eyes welling with tears. "How badly are you hurt?"
I groan but manage a smile. "Not at all. If you'll...” Another groan. “…remember, hell isn't real. This is all…” A whimper. “…in my head." I pause to breathe. "But on that note, damn my imagination."
Virgil starts sobbing. His hands hover over me, desperate to help me up, to comfort me, but knowing he cannot. And even though it takes more muscle control than I currently possess, I reach up and hover my hand just above his shoulder.
"I am okay."
"You are a fool," Virgil whispers. But he reaches out in kind, brushes his ghostly hand over my shoulder.
The woman shudders violently. I roll over, trying to get closer to her. Her trembling intensifies, and her form begins to separate, blinking in and out, pieces of her image spilling away like ink dropped in water.
"What—" I gasp. The pain is still settling in me, the lingering fire slowly cooling.
“She’s become destabilized." Virgil shakes his head. "Can you walk? We need to distance ourselves before she breaks."
"Breaks?"
“Her soul comes apart, Dante." Virgil says this with such sorrow that it seems to pool around us.
The woman explodes. Her image tears away like ripples from a stone dropped in still water—expanding, fragmenting, dissolving. Then she’s gone. The space where she'd been is empty.
"He will have felt that," Virgil says, his voice nearly hollow. "I know you're hurting, but you must rise now, Dante. We have to move."
I nod and, painstakingly, get to my feet. The world tilts, then steadies.
My body aches with phantom wounds. My mind still echoes with fire and belt-leather and hands I couldn't escape.
I can still feel Malrec's tongue on my jaw, his lips on my mouth, violations I'll carry whether I want to or not.
And beneath all of it, Matthew's face. The way it crumpled. The way I made it crumple.
I look at the empty ground where a soul had been only moments ago. Then I look at Virgil, at the tears still wet on his face, at the hands that reached for me even though they couldn't hold.
"Lead the way," I say.
He turns toward a corner of the darkness. I watch his back for a moment, the slight hunch of his shoulders, the way he moves like he's carrying something heavier than himself.
I'm not letting him carry it alone.
Not anymore.
I follow.