Chapter Thirty-Four
Thirty-four
“Stay close,” Luke instructs, raising his dagger. “We don’t need to kill them all—just get through the door. Can you run?”
I wiggle my bare toes and use the hand not gripping my dagger to hike up my dress. “I can try.”
I don’t know who moves first, but suddenly we’re sprinting and the hell beings spring into action.
We make it a quarter way down the aisle before the first one gets in our way—a grizzly-looking being with silver eyes and matted dark fur bursting from the confines of a tuxedo vest. Luke swipes at him with zero hesitation, then uses the ensuing cloud of smoke to our advantage.
We plow forward, stabbing hell beings as we go.
There are two things working in our favor: the bursts of smoke provide coverage for us to dodge and weave so the hell beings miss us and hit each other, and we’re the ones with the weapons.
At least, actual weapons and not frightening appendages, which still count in my book but clearly aren’t a concern for Luke. While my blade parries attacks away from gutting me, every jab of his is aimed to kill. Our little self-defense/offense tango works, moving us down the aisle blow by blow.
Our luck runs out with only a few desks left. The wall of hell beings is so thick, they plug up the rest of the aisle.
“We need them to thin out,” I tell Luke between pants. My dagger catches a black-eyed being in a gouge deep enough to send it to the great beyond. I may not be anywhere near Luke’s body (kill) count right now, but I’m holding my own.
“Working on it,” Luke grunts, hacking away with his dagger like he’s wielding a machete in the .
“We need to split up.”
I’m as surprised by the suggestion as Luke. Before he can refute it, I continue. “We spread out toward the sides to lead the monsters away, then gun it for the middle and meet at the door.”
That’s all I give him before I jerk sharply to the right. Feet pound behind me but I turn again, using the tightly packed stations as my very own labyrinth. Opposite me, Luke does the same. We’re not making the time we were when we were charging down the center aisle, but my plan is working.
Until I accidentally veer into a cubicle.
Dead end. I turn around but the entrance is already guarded by a hell hound in a mask with gold ears. Zekiel? Badulf? Don’t care, fuck ’em both. I just need to get out.
I step onto the rolly chair and use the momentum to spin toward the desk. A clawed hand swipes at me but I leap onto the surface, narrowly avoiding the attack. My bare feet crunch down on a boxy keyboard, which is akin to stepping on Legos. A yelp escapes as the keys prod my bruised feet.
I attribute the Lego keyboard as the only reason I don’t dodge the second attack.
White-hot pain lances up my left side as claws shred my dress.
I stumble right over the edge of the cubicle wall and topple to the ground.
It’s nothing compared to my balcony fall and I leap to my feet in time to plunge my dagger into Badulf/Zekiel’s unreasonably hairy chest.
“Brie!”
Luke’s nearly to the door. I hike up my dress and sprint as another hell being catches up to me.
While I weave through the remaining cubicles standing between me and freedom, Luke reaches the door and takes a keycard from his pocket.
He must have swiped it from Dante during their fight.
He presses it to the pad beside the door and the light changes from red to green.
He swings it open just in time for me to soar through it. I catapult into the room, only stopping when I hit a tall metal rack in the back. Burning gasps tear through me as I suck down air.
Luke closes the door as the wall of monsters descends on us, slamming it in their faces. He grabs a mop and positions it against the handle to jam it.
Hold it—a mop?
“Are we…” I turn about the small space that barely fits us and apparently enough cleaning equipment, old printers, and reams of paper to make any type-A receptionist lose their mind. A single bulb shines overhead. “In a supply closet?”
“Yes.” Luke steps up to the rack I still pant against and starts unceremoniously shoving shit to the floor.
“What are you looking for?”
“The veil,” Luke grunts, tossing a stack of manilla envelopes over his shoulder. “I’m gone for eight months and the place becomes a pig sty. Who could find anything in this mess?”
There’s a question I should have asked before now. “Luke.” Every breath I take burns. “You said the veil is like the ozone layer. How are we supposed to fix that?”
A breath of relief shoots out of him as he pulls my worst nemesis from the depths of the debris. “We’re not. We’re supposed to fix the thing that powers our branch’s portion of the veil. This.”
I hear him, I do, but he can’t be serious, because—
“That’s a fucking fax machine.”
He shoots me a sharp look. “It’s also one of the most powerful tools the underworld has—a physical representation of the veil and our only way to communicate with the overworld. We fix this and the fabric of the veil is restored. But it can be a little…finicky.”
A new realization stabs me between the eyes. “Oh my God. You let me come with you because this is my thing. I’m the faulty fucking fax machine fixer! You brought me here so I could be maintenance. You’re no better than Ted!”
“That was low and you know it,” he says, making me feel chagrined. “Did it cross my mind? Yes. But for the record, I was the faulty fucking fax machine fixer before I knew you existed. Besides, I meant what I said. I wanted you to leave with the others. To be home and safe and—”
A thunk against the door steals our attention.
“They’re trying to bust it down,” I realize with horror.
Luke focuses back on the yolk-hued machine that looks straight out of the ’80s. It’s similar to the one from the Curated Care office, except probably missing the specks of Cheeto dust that transferred from my fingers, thanks to my afternoon snack. There’s only one light on it, blinking red.
“Do you know what’s wrong with it? A jam?” I prod as Luke presses a series of buttons.
“It’s more metaphysical than that,” he explains, continuing to try combination after combination of number punches.
“Since Dante and I screwed with the natural order of hell and the veil tore, think of it like the Wi-Fi’s down because a tree fell on a power line.
The real veil is the Wi-Fi, I was the tree, and this is the power line.
We fix the power line, we fix the Wi-Fi. ”
Another crash comes from the other side of the door, making me jump. The jerky movement makes the pain in my side excruciating. I lean against the rack, my knees threatening to buckle.
“What can I do?” I ask, trying to focus on anything but my injuries. A sliver of light from the office pierces through the thick wood of the door. We have minutes until it splinters completely.
Luke releases a frustrated breath, dragging a bloody-knuckled hand through his hair. “I don’t know. Everything I used to do isn’t working. This is the worst it’s ever been. I don’t know.”
My eyes squeeze shut, the press of tears behind them impossible to push down. “We can’t have come all this way for nothing. There has to be a fix.”
“How do you fix the one in the office?”
My eyes spring open at Luke’s question. I push off the rack to stand to my full height, meeting him right under the bulb to look him dead in the eye. “I unplug it and plug it back in.”
Luke blinks slowly. “You…unplug it and plug it back in? That’s the magic fix no one else ever thought of? I’ve watched you mess with that thing for over an hour before.”
I shrug, but even that hurts. “On slow days I need ways to make myself look busy. Unplugging it is always my last resort.”
A ludicrous laugh bursts from Luke. “Great. Okay. Well. We can’t unplug it because that would make the entire veil drop, which would be a disaster, and—”
“Why not?” I counter, an idea taking form. “The Reckoning is coming, and if Dante’s right, it could be enough to rip the veil completely. What’s there to lose? If we power it down for a second, it might reset everything and make it whole again when we plug it back in. It could work.”
Luke nods in understanding. “Like a factory reset.”
I jam a thumb over my shoulder at our quickly crumbling defense.
“We have to try. We’re out of time, and—” My throat catches around our impending reality.
We have no exit. A wall of hell beings stands between us and even the hope of escaping.
And who knows if we’d make it out of Hell Headquarters beyond them.
My head pounds and my side is on fire. “We both know how this is going to end. Might as well go out with a bang.”
Emotion flows across Luke’s battered face as the true direness of our situation hits him. Disappointment, grief, fear. He closes his eyes, and when they reopen, there’s a sheen across them. “I’m sorry,” he chokes out. “It was never supposed to end like this. Not for you.”
His hands cup my cheeks and I cling to them, but only for a moment before turning back to the faulty fucking fax machine. “Where’s the plug?”
Luke gets on his hands and knees to crawl beneath the last shelf of the metal rack. I can only see the bottom half of his body when he says, “Got it. Ready?”
“Pull it,” I order.
The light on the machine goes off and the whole world seems to get quiet. The pounding on the other side of the door has stopped, and even the faint music from the party above disappears. My raging heartbeat is the only sound thundering in my ears.
I count thirty agonizing seconds out loud. With each passing one, the reality sets in that this might not work. That monsters could be crossing into the overworld right now. That despite everything we’ve endured, this night could still end in failure.
“Plug it back in,” I say when half a minute has finally passed.
Luke does, shimmying out from under the rack. At first, nothing happens. My finger hovers over the power button on the fax machine before I finally press it.
It whirs. The light blinks once, twice, three times. Red.
And then it turns green and stays that way.
“That was…” I search for words, though nothing sums up the overwhelming relief I feel at seeing the green light. “Kind of anticlimactic, actually.”
Luke doesn’t quite agree.
“We did it.” His voice is full of awe. He stands, rolling out his shoulders and looking around. “I can feel it—it’s back. You did it.”
I don’t feel anything but the intense desire to lie down and never get up again, but I grin at him nonetheless. “Good thing you brought me after all, huh?”
“Good thing.” He laughs, scooping me into a hug that lifts my feet off the ground. It would be sickeningly romantic if it didn’t feel like he was plunging a knife in my side.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, setting me down as soon as the wounded cry involuntarily leaves my lips. “Are you hurt?”
“My side.” I finally allow my fingers to gently probe where it hurts most and suck down a breath.
The hound didn’t just shred the dress—he shredded my flesh. Four gouges span my left ribcage, so deep that blood weeps from them. Only now do I realize the entire left half of my gown is soaked from it, the rust red blending in with the dark purple fabric.
“Brie.”
I was almost a doctor. I know it’s bad. But hearing my name burst from Luke’s mouth in a cocktail of horror and heartache is what seals the deal.
That, and my quickly darkening vision.
I don’t make the decision to collapse—one second I’m standing, and the next I’m on the rough, carpeted floor, half in Luke’s arms because he caught me before I hit the ground.
“It’s okay,” I say, feeling the odd urge to comfort him even though I’m the one bleeding out in a supply closet right now, arguably one of the worst places to kick it. “I’ll be okay. It’s okay.”
“I’ll get you home.” He clutches me, frantically looking around the room as if an ambulance might appear. When one doesn’t, he looks down at me. “Just hold on. You have to get home. For Krystal, remember?”
“And Debra,” I try to joke, though it comes out as a wheeze. “Who else is gonna badger her for next week’s report?”
“Exactly. You’re one of a kind.” As if realizing the words, he holds me tighter. It hurts, but also might be keeping me together. “You’re one of a kind, Brie Benson.”
There’s an explosion so loud my ears ring. Luke curls over me, protecting my broken body with his. Smoke swims up my nose, clouding my already hazy thoughts.
“You did it.”
The voice is familiar, but not Luke’s. Consciousness is a slippery thing that worms out of my grasp every time I think I have it. I don’t know how long I was out for, or if I was out at all. I don’t know how long it will be until I go under again.
I don’t know if I will ever wake up if I do.
“No, no, no.”
“You got what you wanted. It’s fixed.”
“I don’t care. Look at her! She’s dying.”
Footsteps come closer. I want to open my eyes, don’t even remember closing them, but my lids are too heavy. All of me is too heavy.
“Yeah, well, you offed my assistant, so let’s call it even. I actually liked that one, and now that you staved off the impending Reckoning by fixing the veil, who knows when the next one will occur.”
“It’s not the same,” Luke bites, cradling my body to his chest. “She’s mortal. There is no Reckoning for her, no revival. She dies and she’s dead.”
Maybe I already am. But surely death can’t hurt this much.
“That sounds like a personal problem.”
“Save her.”
Luke doesn’t sound like any of the Lukes I know. His voice is a commanding stab meant to draw blood. Some far-off part of me wonders if this is what he sounded like as the devil. Cruel and demanding.
“We both know I’m not in the business of saving.”
“But you can,” Luke counters. “I could, and so can you. Please, Dante. Send us back. Let me get her to a hospital. She’s running out of time.”
“Send you back,” Dante muses. “And then what? Everyone saw you here tonight. What would I tell the hounds? The other devils? That I was merciful? Mercy is what fucked me over from the start. I should have killed you instead of sending you to the overworld.”
“Then strike a deal with me,” Luke proposes.
“They’d never question a deal. I once told a very pretty lie that I was sent to the overworld to hunt the monsters that escaped into it.
Let me make it true. Pardon us both to the overworld, and I will make sure every subject of yours that escaped is sent back. I will be your hunter.”
“There are supposedly hundreds. Are you willing to devote yourself to finding them? Devote yourself to me?”
“Yes.” Luke doesn’t hesitate. My grip on consciousness slips. “Do we have a deal?”