Chapter Thirty-One
Thirty-one
My nightmare is different this time.
Instead of one pair of golden eyes, the trees surrounding the road are full of them.
When the roots wrap around my ankles, I don’t fight it.
The car smokes, bent around the trunk, but my parents are beside me.
From the shadows, the eyes take form. I brace myself for the advance of demons and monsters, but to my surprise, souls step out.
Their phosphorus glow is the only light aside from the moon’s shine.
I don’t remember the moon being out that night.
It was so dark, and it always is when I relive it.
But this time, it’s lighter. Like dawn might be coming.
“Why are they here?” I ask. Some incline their heads, but most peer with their glowing gazes.
“You set them free,” my mom says simply. She reaches for my hand, giving it a squeeze. “Maybe you should do the same for yourself.”
I choke awake, not sure what I’m choking on until I realize my mouth is filled with blood. I instinctively spit it out and the glob lands on the table in front of me. It nearly blends in with the black-stained wood, settling on the surface but not seeping into the grain.
“Brie.”
My head snaps up. Bad move. Stars dot my vision and a groan falls from my mouth. I squeeze my eyes shut, willing the pain to pass.
“Careful. I think you’re concussed.”
“No shit,” I snarl back, before it fully clicks who I’m snarling at. Against my better judgment, my eyes fly open, taking in the person sitting across from me as my contacts focus.
No—not just sitting. Tied down. And so am I. We’re both fastened to chairs, ropes around our hands and ankles. Fuuuuuck.
“Are we in…?” I look around, my eyes adjusting to the dim light—and grateful for it. A concussion is an optimistic hope. I’ll be lucky if it’s not a brain bleed.
My epic balcony fall comes rushing back—and so does Luke’s deception. He watches me carefully, quietly, letting my addled brain sort through everything that led up to me swinging from the ceiling like I was recreating the “Wrecking Ball” music video.
As the last memories slot into place, the urge to launch myself across the table and strangle him nearly overpowers the throbbing behind my eyes. I guess being tied down is a blessing in disguise.
“What happened?” I ask, trying to guess how long I was out. “Where are we?”
“We’re on the top floor of headquarters.” Luke jerks his head back and my gaze follows. Behind him are a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows. We’re above the clouds, though lights from the city below permeate through. It’s beautiful and otherworldly.
“This is the conference room where the D-Suite meets,” he continues.
I finally let myself look at him for real.
His left eye is blackening like he got slugged and his bottom lip is split, blood crusted into the thick stubble lining his jaw.
Sometime between when I ran from him and now, he lost his jacket, and the top few buttons of his dress shirt have ripped off so it gapes open.
The bandage on his shoulder that I redressed—yesterday? Today?—peeks out.
“I watched you fall.” The calm in Luke’s voice cracks with emotion I don’t want to dissect.
“When you ran, I tried to follow, but the crowd swallowed you before I could. Then I saw Badulf and thought if I could lure him toward me, let him get me, you might get away. But he and Zekiel split up and next thing I knew, you were falling from the sky.”
“Did you enjoy the show?” I joke weakly.
He drags in a rattled breath. “That fall could have killed you. When the hounds brought us up here, I wasn’t sure you were alive. You’ve been unconscious for an hour, maybe more. I thought—”
He cuts himself off, swallowing thickly. His eyes reflect a whirlwind of frustration and fear as he finishes. “I thought you were dead.”
I feel a little dead, all things considered. “Yeah, well, I’m like a roach. Tough to snuff.”
His gaze darkens. “We should have never come here. You should have left with the others. You would have been back in the overworld by now. But there’s still a chance. If we can get out of here—”
A laugh breaks out of me, spiking pain through my side. That’s not good. A broken rib, maybe two. “Oh, sorry, do you think I’m going anywhere with you after you kept the itty-bitty truth from me that you were the fucking devil?”
He flinches as if my words are a slap. “Emphasis on were. Past tense.”
“Luke,” I growl.
His shoulders shift like he wants to raise his hands in innocence before remembering he’s tied to the chair.
“I know. I’m sorry. You’re right, I should have told you.
I wanted to—started to before the aerial act began—but you weren’t the only one running from your past. I couldn’t face it. Didn’t want to.”
“Still don’t?” I guess.
“I don’t think I have a choice. And…” He trails off, searching for words.
“At first, I didn’t tell you because I needed us to stay on track and get to Beliar’s before it was too late.
But then, there was a shift. I didn’t want to tell you because I valued what you thought about me.
I was ashamed, and it had been a very long time since I’d felt shame. I didn’t know what to do with it.”
I blame the concussion for me caving. “Explain. The whole truth, and nothing but the truth, or I’m out of here.”
Mentally, of course, given I’m tied to a chair less than six feet away from him. He’s smart enough not to point it out.
“I didn’t lie about my childhood,” Luke begins.
“The running, the hiding, the endless ridicule—it was real. We’d had close calls before, but the worst one happened when I was sixteen.
My brother and I snuck onto a farm to steal food and got caught.
My mother begged the farmer, a greater demon, to let us go, and offered a trade—us for her.
He agreed and she was taken in our place. ”
Anger lights up Luke’s face. “It was my fault. It was my idea to sneak onto the farm, my idea to steal, and she paid the price. I swore I’d free her. But to do it, I needed someone more powerful than a greater demon backing me. So I came here, to Hell Headquarters, and made a deal with the devil.”
I try to imagine Luke as a teenager, with all the false bravado that a sixteen-year-old might muster, standing at the foot of the throne and bartering with the man sitting on it.
“What was the deal?” I ask.
“I asked him to protect my mother and brother, and in return, I’d serve him.
He was terrifying, but he liked my guts and was impressed I’d lasted so long as a human.
He agreed and had my mother retrieved. She was put in one of our old safe houses, the cabin by the lake.
Even though my terms meant I had to live here to always be available to him, my brother could stay with her.
He was furious with me for sacrificing myself to protect them, but it was too late.
The deal was struck, the ink was dry. I’d signed my life away to be the devil’s intern. ”
I swallow down an absurd laugh. “Unpaid, I assume?”
“The worst positions always are.” His responding grin is dismal at best. “I did everything he asked. Endless paperwork. Event planning. Crisis management. Explained how to attach PDFs to emails too many times to count until eventually I took over correspondences entirely. I even killed for him. He suspected the Midwest vampire clan was up to no good, so I infiltrated it by dating Tatianna, its heiress. But I was still human, trying to hold on to it despite everything. It made me make human errors, like letting my heart get the best of me. When it did, he’d punish me. ”
I swallow past a growing lump in my throat, knowing better than to hope peak punishment here is a performance improvement plan. The faded scars I saw on his body suggest otherwise.
“I lived like that for a decade. But while I got older and wiser, he was becoming crueler and more reckless. Making stupid calls that threatened the economy and fragile peace between the hell branches. I wanted out and knew there was a loophole if I could find it.”
“The loophole was killing him.” I piece it together, horror cinching my chest. “But doing that meant—”
“Becoming the devil myself,” Luke finishes grimly.
“Hell had never had a human devil, so it was a long shot. Banishing him to the abyss until the next Reckoning wasn’t enough.
I had to get rid of him for as long as possible.
My research led me to the Night Market, where I met Hazaar.
I traded my mother’s pearl necklace, the only thing she had left from the overworld, for a vial of Fatality. ”
“That’s how Hazaar knew you.”
Luke nods. “There was a banquet planned, and I put the poison on my steak knife. I was always seated next to the boss. When he cut into his filet, I cut into him. And just like that, he was gone, and I had a roomful of hell beings to vouch that I was the rightful successor.”
I gape at him, forgetting I’m supposed to be pissed. It’s so outlandish a tale I can’t even question the authenticity of it—no one in their right or wrong mind would make this shit up.
At my silence, Luke continues, though his expression shifts to something difficult to pin. Regret? Shame? Disgust? Maybe all three.
“In the beginning, I had good intentions. To be kinder, more merciful. I thought I could bring real change. Good. But that’s where I was wrong. There is no good in hell. There is bad, and there is worse. Before I knew it, I was becoming worse.
“My mother raised us with rules to keep us human—the same ones I passed on to you. Eat three meals a day whether you’re hungry or not.
Sleep at least a few hours a night. Lean into your fear instead of shutting it out.
I tried to adhere to them, but they were reminders I was human, to myself and those around me.
It felt like displaying my biggest weakness over and over again.
So, the meals became further apart, I’d go days without sleep, and when I stopped feeling so afraid all the time, it felt good. I didn’t realize what it really meant.”
“The portrait.” I recall the painting downstairs. How it was obviously Luke, but not. “Your eyes were black.”
“Not just my eyes.” A humorless laugh chuffs out of him.
“When I assumed power, I couldn’t just fire everyone.
It was a delicate situation. The devil’s right hand was Beliar, who had always despised me—he thought the old boss was insane for keeping a human so close to the throne.
He’d been waiting for the perfect moment to off the previous devil to take power, so imagine his fury when I, the useless mortal who never deserved to be here to begin with, beat him to it. ”
“No wonder he hated you so much,” I comment.
Luke shrugs. “It didn’t help that I demoted him to manage the shipping facility and appointed my brother as DOO. One human at headquarters was bad enough, but two? Incomprehensible. It was only a matter of time before he went after one of us, but he acted quicker than expected.”
My gaze flicks to the scar on Luke’s neck, more recent than the others. “He tried to kill you.”
“At my own fucking party,” Luke huffs. “Came up behind me and slit my throat. Everyone thought it was a killing blow, myself included. It should have been. Would have been.”
“But you weren’t human,” I whisper, a little afraid, a little in awe.
Luke meets my eyes. “My blood poured out black. Beliar had turned his back to me, relishing the cheers of the crowd. He’d used a normal blade, a scythe, never suspecting it wouldn’t be enough.
But I still had my obsidian dagger. I drove it through his back, right where his heart would have been, if he’d had one.
Hell beings go feral for a plot twist, and the human king surviving an assassination attempt was the kind of absurd chaos they ate right up.
Beliar was banished to the abyss and my status as ruler was more secure than ever, especially given that I was apparently no longer human. ”
I let my eyes drop from Luke’s to the bandages peeking from behind his dress shirt. “Last night, you were convinced you weren’t going to die. You wouldn’t let me try to give you blood. It’s because you knew you’d heal, didn’t you? It’s the same reason you ripped out the arrow.”
Luke has the decency to offer a guilty nod.
“When I saw my blood was red again, I didn’t know what to think.
I still don’t. I am healing faster than a human, but slower than I did when I wasn’t one.
My whole life, I’d been warned that the longer you spend in hell, the more likely it is you’ll lose your humanity.
I didn’t know that the reverse could happen in the overworld. ”
“You were becoming human again.” There’s a beauty in that truth that’s impossible to ignore. A new realization hits me. “Wait— How old are you?”
He quirks a brow. “Thirty.”
“Going on three hundred?”
“Going on thirty-one. I wasn’t…unhuman long enough for it to slow my aging.
” Amusement flickers in Luke’s eyes, though it dims as he meets mine.
“I know I told you too many half-truths and lies, so I don’t blame you for not believing what I said downstairs.
But I meant it. You make me feel. Awe and gratitude and peace.
Anxiety, which I could definitely live without.
But most of all, you make me feel hopeful.
I forgot how beautiful and good that can be. The furthest thing from a weakness.”
I’m mad that tears wet my eyes and I can’t lift my hands to wipe them. “This doesn’t mean I forgive you,” I warn, the dampness in my voice muting the threat.
The corner of his mouth quirks up. “I suspect I’ll have to do much more begging before that.”
“You said you’ve never been a beggar.”
His gaze is loaded with sincerity. “I’ve rarely had something worth begging for. Now I do.”
Before I can respond, a door behind me slams open and shut, echoing in the room. The click of shoes across the tile sounds like the ticking of a bomb. Luke tenses, tugging against his restraints.
A chill sweeps across the back of my neck as a familiar voice declares, “Welcome home, brother.”