Chapter Seven #2
Levi’s messy brown hair obscured his eyes. He tried to fit the grunge aesthetic, and to the untrained eye, his stringy, greasy hair did scream “I don’t care what you think of me,” but Skye could tell the holes in his jeans were purchased that way.
It made her cringe, but she wasn’t here to judge the authenticity of the guys she made deals with.
Levi was the lead guitarist of Key of Atlas. He bargained with Skye to get his band on a sold-out stadium tour. Easy. Done.
Their sudden rise to stardom would be chalked up to good luck and meeting the right people at the right time, and Levi’s soul would get Skye at least two more weeks of Earth-walking privileges.
Skye extended her hand to seal the soul bargain with him, but instead of shaking his hand, she grabbed Levi’s wrist and tugged him off balance so his palm encircled her wrist. With his skin touching her Devil’s mark, she called upon her connection to the Devil’s magic to complete the bargain.
The birthmark burned as the magic entered her bloodstream, funneling through her and into Levi.
Levi’s eyes rolled back into his head, and he collapsed as magic yanked his soul free.
A white orb floated into the palms of her hands, and Skye captured the soul in a jar. A sharp, tingling sensation prickled over her arms, and Skye winced as the magic of the soul bargain snapped into place immediately, instead of taking two weeks like it had with Remi.
She stepped over Levi’s unconscious body and sifted to Hell.
Her cheeks heated, and sweat prickled at her low back as she walked down the hall toward the throne room. Her demon magic adjusted her body temperature until Hell’s climate no longer made her uncomfortable, and the invisible cloak she kept around her wings, tail, and horns vanished.
Her body casted no shadow. Firelight came from every direction at once. Even outside the palace, the sky was red with flames during the day and darkened into a deep blue at night.
The lack of shadows in Hell always disturbed Skye, even as a child. Her favorite time on Earth was dusk. She liked watching the darkness crawl out of its hiding place.
She took a breath outside the towering bronze door.
Let’s get this over with.
A pinprick sizzled along her Devil’s mark as his magic sensed her, and the door swung open. Skye breezed in and kneeled. “I am but a humble servant to your great flames.”
“Rise.” His voice boomed through the throne room, and the jars of souls hanging on the wall shivered.
Skye stood. The Devil liked deference from his demons, but that wasn’t the only reason Skye kept her gaze lowered.
The Devil was an immortal entity who had no physical form, unless he chose to take one. Usually, he materialized in Hell as a giant fireball, though sometimes he’d shift the smoke into the form of a face, depending on his mood.
“You have another soul?”
She held up the jar and offered him the glowing orb. It floated through the air and joined the thousands of others that lined the walls.
Like stars, Skye had always thought. Hell didn’t have stars either. Was it any wonder Skye preferred Earth?
“Your last soul is defective,” the Devil said.
Skye looked up, breaking the unspoken rule of decorum. She shielded her eyes and squinted as she looked into the blazing sun of the fireball. “Defective?”
The Devil grunted, and smoke morphed into a giant hand and grabbed a jar off the wall. She thought it was Remi’s jar, but the soul inside was no longer blue.
The glass was full of swirling black mist. Upon closer inspection, a little bit of the blue soul was left inside, but it was shrinking right before her eyes.
“What happened?” she asked.
The Devil shifted the smoke into a bodily shape, sitting on a throne of fire. His stern face glared down at her from under thick-ridged eyebrows. Displeasure seeped from his voice as he said, “The bargain is deteriorating. The soul is fading from my grip, returning to its place.”
“How is that possible?”
The Devil’s giant smoke hand tapped his fingers on the armrest of the throne.
“A soul bargain is a bridge, and the people making the deal are the pillars standing on either side. The bridge that is created is a two-way road; a soul travels down one lane and my magic travels up the other through you as the conduit. But this soul is too powerful. The bridge is crumbling, and my magic is not holding. You need to stay near him until the cement dries, so to speak.”
“How will I know when the cement dries?”
The jar with what was left of Remi’s soul shot through the air and into Skye’s hands. She caught it and held the cool glass against her stomach.
“The soul will no longer be made of shadows .”
“Shadows? That’s what this is?” Skye asked, gesturing to the black mist in the jar.
The Devil crossed his arms over his chest. “Yes, shadows.” He curled his lip and eyed the jar with both disdain and intrigue, as if he was solving some complex problem that had the audacity to perplex an immortal deity.
“You must get me the soul,” he said. “I need it. I’ll increase your Earth-walking privileges from five to ten years.”
Her jaw dropped. “Ten years?”
“I am infinitely generous, as you know, and I want to make sure you understand the importance of this task.”
She shook her head. There was no way Remi would let her hang around. Not after the way she left things. “I can’t—I won’t be able to—”
He slammed his fists down on the armrests. “This isn’t a request.” His voice thundered through the room. The glass jars shook, crying out in fear. Clink. Clink. Clink. “You will remain by his side until the bargain resolidifies, and if you don’t, I’ll clip your wings.”
The root of her wings, at the base of her shoulder blades, ached just thinking about it.
Skye didn’t feel fear—no demons really did.
Not the visceral nervous system reaction that she’d observed in humans, but while her fear response was muted, it wasn’t absent entirely, especially when threatened with the most horrific torture a demon could endure.
Skye had seen two wing clippings in her life.
Every demon in Hell was required to witness them as a warning of what would happen if they disobeyed the Devil.
Skye could still remember the demons screaming in agony as the Devil sawed through the most precious part of their bodies.
Once a demon’s wings were gone, all their connection to their magic was severed.
The first demon died. Without magical healing powers, the stubs became infected.
The second demon managed to heal, but she became an outcast. No demon spoke to her, and she had no magic to sift to Earth. Humiliated and ostracized, she killed herself by jumping into the pits of Hell.
She was Skye’s mother.
“Don’t come back until you have the soul,” the Devil said as his parting words. Her inner wrist burned, and then a heavy blanket of fire magic spread, smothering Skye. It seeped into her bones and her muscles, forcing her to move against her will.
With no control of her body, Skye turned and walked out of the throne room.
The door slammed shut behind her, and her body loosened as the Devil’s compulsion over her faded, though the threat of it lingered as a burning ache in the center of her wrist, the birthmark a permanent reminder of his control over her—over all demons born in Hell.
She held the jar up to her eyes. The swirls condensed into a potent darkness, dancing this way and that.
The power inside didn’t feel like a soul.
She’d never felt magic like this before, but something about it felt familiar. It tugged at her, whispered at her to remember something she’d never known, something she wasn’t conscious of.
Skye unscrewed the lid, releasing the darkness. It hovered like a cloud around her.
Shadows.
The swirling mist gave her a shadow in Hell.
She smiled as the darkness skated over her skin. Tapping the diamond on her choker necklace, she asked, “Stay in here?”
The shadows complied. They filled the gem and turned it into a black diamond, cool against her throat. She had absolutely no clue what was going on.
Guess I really am going to the Whisky a Go Go tonight.
She had a rock star to see.