Chapter Thirty-Three
Thirty-three
“What about you?” Dante echoes, seeming to really contemplate my question. “The overworlder road-tripping across the underworld. How has hell been? Hospitable, I would hope?”
I know he’s mocking me, but Shonda’s words from the Night Market ring in my ear. You have a sly tongue. The devil will appreciate your mouth.
I don’t have much; my mouth is all I’ve got.
“A bit of a letdown, actually. Not nearly enough fire and brimstone. Also, the potholes along Route 666 are killer. Ever heard of road maintenance?” I say conversationally, as if I’m not holding a sharp object to his throat.
It takes every ounce of my focus to will the room not to spin, to ignore the pulsing in my head and the ache in my side.
My hand shakes, bringing the tip of the dagger close enough to graze Dante’s skin.
Despite it, he grins. “Sorry to disappoint. I’ll pass your complaints along.”
“To who? I thought you’re the boss?”
His grin grows, revealing he shares a dimple with Luke. “I am, aren’t I?”
My quivering body, held together by spite and my ripped dress, is no match for the maneuver Dante pulls.
He swipes a leg back, taking mine right out from under me, and pushes himself off the table and away from my blade.
My skirt twists around my ankles as he shoulder-checks me hard enough to throw me off him.
I fall backward and hit the tiled ground.
He rises to his full height, staring me down in all his hellish glory.
When I slammed him against the table, it knocked his crown off, but he doesn’t need it. He looks every bit the formidable ruler he is.
“What to do with you,” he muses, eyes cast entirely in shadows, thanks to the windows at his back. The tip of his shoe presses on the unraveling hem of my dress, thwarting movement on my end. “Your execution is warranted on several offenses, starting with the assault of my hound.”
“So you saw what I did to Badulf’s nose? He should be thanking me for that. Major upgrade and a free nose job.”
Dante continues like I haven’t spoken. “You’ve resisted arrest. Several times.”
“Maybe your mutts are just exceptionally bad at arresting people.”
“You used a near-permanent poison on one of my upper-management leaders.”
I finally rip my dress free and scoot back a handful of inches. “Beliar? You said you wanted him gone. You’re welcome.”
He advances, closing the gap between us so I have no choice but to keep dragging myself backward like the wounded prey I am.
The glint in his eyes betrays how much he’s enjoying this.
“And you freed his souls. Several hundred, might I add, which will no doubt impact the economy and cause shipping delays. Let me put it in terms you’ll understand: Burning money is illegal. ”
My back hits a wall. I have nowhere else to go.
I use it to haul myself to my feet so I can look Dante defiantly in the eye. “No one deserves to be reduced to a currency.”
“Everything’s a currency, darling. Even you.”
My dagger materializes in his hand—I must have dropped it when he outmaneuvered me—and he brings it up to trace my cheek. He sighs, close enough for his exhale to blow my frazzled strands out of my eyes. His breath is as sharp as the rest of him—spearmint.
“What to do with you,” he murmurs, using the dagger to tuck a stubborn curl behind my ear like Luke did not too long ago on the dance floor.
I shiver as the cool edge touches my curved shell.
It’s nothing compared to the way my whole body quakes when he brings the tip to rest right above my heart.
“What. To. Do.” He taps it against my bare skin with each syllable.
“You’re not doing anything to her,” Luke snarls from behind him.
My mouthing off distracted Dante long enough for Luke to escape the confines of the chair. His arms wrap around Dante in a bear hug and he picks his brother up, twisting to throw Dante into the windows.
I wish they’d break and send Dante barreling into the clouds, but they don’t even crack. Dante rebounds quickly as Luke wedges himself between us. Fury crackles across Dante’s face, perfectly timed with the rumble of thunder and corresponding shot of lightning that illuminates the sky.
Dante launches himself at Luke and the two go to town.
They fight like mirrors, clearly having spent their entire lives practicing on each other.
Every punch Luke throws, Dante anticipates.
Every kick Dante attempts, Luke blocks. They circle the perimeter of the long conference table in a blur of jabs and glints of their sparring twin blades, though neither lands a fateful strike.
It’s fascinating watching them brawl. Partly because they are clearly a perfect match, but partly due to something else that takes me a few disoriented moments of ogling to pin: neither is going in for the kill.
The worst hits are with fists while shouting things like “You sent me to the fucking overworld without even a toothbrush” (Luke) and “You never wrote down a single fucking password, fuck you” (Dante).
I know I should do something like help Luke or make a run for it, but it’s such a bizarrely mesmerizing fight that I’m just grateful for the beat to regroup.
The beat ends when Dante finally lands a kick that sends Luke reeling back onto the table. His dagger clatters across the length of it, falling off the opposite edge to the ground.
I dive for it.
Luke rolls off the table, falling onto the assortment of chairs that scoot out from under him, thanks to their wheels. From the ground, he sweeps Dante’s feet out from under him.
“Luke! Catch!”
I toss the dagger to Luke as he leaps to his feet.
It spins through the air in an arc, the most impressive show of sportsmanship I’ve ever produced, before landing in Luke’s palm like a loaf perfectly placed in the bread basket.
His elbow connects with Dante’s mouth, sending a spray of blood onto the table.
Giving his brother no time to rebound, Luke copies my move by taking a fistful of Dante’s hair and jerking his head back to bare his neck, pressing the edge of his blade against the skin.
The fight comes to a sudden halt.
“Drop it,” Luke orders. The sound of Dante’s dagger hitting the ground rings with finality.
“Kill me,” Dante dares. “There were only ever two endings for us. For all humans in hell. You either get killed by the monsters you’re running from, or you become them. Do it.”
Luke’s jaw works as his teeth grind. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t.”
“I can’t.” Dante laughs, as if he knows his fate is sealed.
Lightning makes the room glow, illuminating the red splattered across the table matching the blood smeared across his teeth. I jump as thunder cracks the air. Luke stares at Dante’s blood.
“The clock’s ticking,” Dante taunts. “Maybe Beliar’s sacrifice would have been moot. If the veil is weak enough, all it will need is The Reckoning with the super blue-blood moon to make it rip wide open. Shall we test that theory? Wait and see?”
“I should kill you,” Luke agrees. Dante’s pupils shrink a fraction, revealing more of his green irises as Luke presses the dagger harder into his skin. He’s afraid. I brace myself for Luke to drag the blade across his brother’s throat.
Instead, he slams Dante’s face into the table, knocking him out so he crumbles to the ground.
“Let’s go,” Luke tells me, retrieving the second dagger from where it fell and placing it in my palm. “There’s still time to fix the veil.”
I glance back at Dante’s still form, tempted to tell Luke that whenever the bad guy is left alive in the movies, it’s almost always a fateful error on the hero’s part.
But as a member of the only-child club, I don’t feel qualified to advise him to off his only brother, even if Dante is kind of a dick.
Outside the conference room, we stall in what’s clearly a reception area with an elevator at the other end.
A semicircular desk is pressed to the wall with a gold placard atop it.
A girl sits behind the desk in a lacy green dress.
Her fingers fly across her keyboard as if wrapping up a few last-minute emails before joining the party downstairs.
“Hey!” she yelps, jumping to her feet and reaching for the corded phone on her desk as if to call for backup. “What are you—”
Luke’s dagger is embedded in her chest before she can finish the sentence. Her mouth parts on a gasp and for an awful moment, I think she might be human. But then she’s swallowed by shadows, disappearing into a cloud of smoke.
Luke punches the down button for the elevator. It dings and we step inside. Luke presses the button for the very bottom floor.
The entire elevator is tinted glass. We begin our descent and awkward elevator music fills the air, as if this night wasn’t already horrendous enough.
“I’ve always wanted to press the emergency stop button,” I say to break the silence. “But never so much as right now.”
A laugh scrapes out of him. “Don’t tempt me with a good time.”
My cheeks warm at the implication that we could recreate our morning in the bathroom if only the fate of the worlds didn’t hang in the balance. Talk about a cock block.
“I forgive you,” I blurt out. Luke’s head jerks to me, but I can’t meet his eyes. “For keeping the fact that you were the devil, past tense, a secret. I’m not sure I would have told me, either.”
The view opens up as we soar down through the lobby. Below us, the party raves on. Nobody cleaned up the mess I made when I fell and now people gyrate on the table like it’s a makeshift stage, spinning under the glow of the serpent chandelier.
“You don’t have to,” Luke finally says, though his voice rings with hope. “I don’t deserve it.”
I force myself to look in his eyes. “This isn’t for you. It’s for me. I’m sick of living with regrets. Whatever’s about to happen, however this ends, I don’t want it to be with us at odds. We’re a team, right? Teams forgive each other.”
One second I’m beside him and the next I’m crushed in his arms. His hand gently cradles the back of my head and I release a shuddering breath against the soft skin of his collarbone, relishing the feel of being pressed against him.
My own arms wind around his waist, the hug so comforting I can almost con myself into thinking we’re anywhere but here.
We tremble together, clinging tightly as we’re plunged underground.
We’re still holding each other as the elevator dings and the doors slide open. Slowly—regretfully—we part.
His hand lingers on my cheek, the look in his eyes so tender I’m tempted to close the doors and rocket us back up. “Thank you.”
We face the room before us. A sole fluorescent light flickers, illuminating rows and rows of cubicles. Go figure.
“The veil is here?” I ask Luke.
“There.” Luke points down the aisle. At the opposite end there’s a simple wooden door.
“Oookay,” I say, dragging out the O. “Let’s go fix it.”
I step out of the elevator, but Luke’s arm across my chest stops me.
“Wait,” he cautions.
“For what?” I ask.
From the cubicles, hell beings rise. Hounds and monsters and demons. Rows and rows and rows of them, all standing between us and the veil.