He reached a bony, white-knuckled hand toward me, his fingers stretching with an unholy creak. “You. You’re here. Everything I need in one package. Come to me.”
I felt his ethereal grip tighten around my throat, and with no warning, I was snapped forward. I was dragged so quickly toward him, I could barely get a word out.
All too soon his fingers tightened around my throat. I could see, based on the glee spreading through his eyes alone, that the only thing he wanted to do was snap my neck and keep snapping it for more energy. He looked like a glutton who’d found a buffet.
Just before he could strangle me, he stared down at the empty vault box. “Bring me those records. They are the last key.”
When I didn’t react, I felt him taking hold of my body.
This was it. I knew I kept saying that, but this really was it this time. There was no way out of here. There was no one on my side. There was no damn hope. All I had... all I had was a snow globe I couldn’t use, an engagement ring that now meant nothing, and this box.
The box....
Somehow it was coded to me. When I’d cried and that single tear had opened it, it hadn’t been the universe smiling down upon me. Though I didn’t understand how this specific version of a magical lockbox worked, you could encode similar items to work with certain people. Just like a human biometric scanner, if the box encountered the correct biological data, it would open. Someone or something had coded this box to me, and my tear had opened it.
But I doubted they’d coded it to Hilliker.
All at once, a desperate plan formed in my mind.
It was too late to enact it, however.
Hilliker’s compulsion magic spread all the way in. Just before I could thrust the box toward him in a crazy plan to lock him inside it, he gained complete control of my body. I couldn’t even move my lips.
There was the sound of footfall from behind Hilliker. It was more priests. I was surprised to see the broken face of that one who’d attacked me outside the elevator.
As soon as he saw me in Hilliker’s grip, he smiled this dark, devious grin. “Before you kill her, my liege, ask her how she escaped Purgatory. I tried to question her, but she failed to answer.”
“I will, but in future, do not presume to have the power to advise me,” Hilliker snapped.
The priest, suitably chastised, bowed, clamped his hands together, and took a step back.
Hilliker turned his blazing gaze on me. “Sacrifice, how did you escape Purgatory?”
Once more I felt compulsion magic wrapping around my tongue. This time it was complete. “I prayed on my cross.”
Hilliker wasn’t as easy to fool as the rest of his priests. His gaze darted down to my top. With his free hand, he twisted his fingers to the side. My top yanked down and my cross became visible. It was caught by several motes of magic, and it lifted up on its chain. It hovered in front of me, catching the light that was barely there.
You wouldn’t think that a face like Hilliker’s – as damaged and torn and broken – would be able to show fear, but I saw it all right. It shuddered through him, shaking his otherwise impenetrable grip around my throat. He even jolted back, his mouth opening with a wet slap. “How,” he hissed. “How was that not burned up by Purgatory?”
I wanted to lie, but of course, I couldn’t. “It stayed with me the whole time, never leaving my side.”
Hilliker looked completely freaked out. I had never seen anything like it. Judging by his sheer fear alone, it was as if that cross was a gun against his head. I tried to tell myself stupidly that it was just the symbol – a symbol of the church that he’d turned away from wholeheartedly – but it had to be more than that. The exact way his cheeks slackened and his face looked as if it had been shoved through a meat grinder told me that this cross was a weapon like no other.
I would’ve given anything to clutch it now, but I couldn’t move a muscle.
It took Hilliker too long to calm down. Eventually he hissed, took a deep, shuddering breath, and jolted his head down, his expression somehow even darker. I said somehow, but it was pretty easy to have a dark expression when your eyes had been replaced by black holes. “There is no point. It is too late for you to clutch at hope.”
He began to squeeze.
He tried to snap my neck in one smooth move, but for whatever reason he couldn’t. His fingers tightened, but they couldn’t follow through with the move.
Strain lines started to appear down his knuckles, up his wrists, and across his throat. His lips spread wide over his teeth. He kept trying and trying to squeeze, but it wouldn’t work.
I could see the worried priests lining up behind him. They were obviously waiting – eager for him to kill me once more – eager for him to release yet more energy.
But it could not and would not happen.
“How?” he snapped. His gaze suddenly narrowed. “How did you escape Purgatory?” he growled.
“I prayed on the cross,” I answered.
“Tell me,” he roared.
He had complete control of my tongue now – so much that I couldn’t even breathe. “I prayed on my cross,” I spluttered again, “the one around my neck.”
He roared. “How can you fight me? My control of you is complete.” He proved that by tightening his grip once more.
My eyes bulged. Tears ran down my cheeks. My body would’ve shaken if I’d been able to control it.
Though Hilliker clearly tried to kill me, he still couldn’t. He roared in total anger.
“My liege,” one of the priests said, shuffling forward even though it was clear he was scared to get too close to his enraged boss, “maybe she does not understand herself. Pry into her memories.”
This time Hilliker didn’t snap that he didn’t need advice. He did exactly as was suggested. He reached a hand forward and spread it on my sweat-slicked brow. My eyes instantly rolled into the back of my head. I was tipping backward – tipping right back into my memories. They rushed around me until I was in Purgatory once more. I was right there on the edge of that hole, those ghosts eagerly trying to push me down.
But this time Hilliker was right beside me, standing there, a white-knuckled grip on my wrist.
I tried to stop him from seeing the memory, but he saw everything.
As it broke around me and I was brought back into the real world, I watched the hollows he had for eyes bulge in recognition. “You finally figured out how to access it?” he hissed, a toxic mix of fear, greed, and yet satisfaction swirling through his tone. “I thought you would need to be liberated more to do that. But it is clear you are finally starting to ascend. Or should I say descend?” he snarled as he brought his face right up close to mine.
His control of my tongue suddenly broke. My lips wobbled. “Descend?”
“You are still yet to fully understand what you are, child of sacrifice. You are a unique creation from the Deep – a gift like no other. You are here to bring about the Banished and nothing more.”
“... The Deep?” I’d heard that before, I’d said it and thought it, but this time it was different. As those syllables trembled off my lips, I felt something building within me. It was a presence – one that had been there all my life – far longer than Sonos’s grip on my shoulder.
It’d been there the day I’d been born – maybe even earlier.
It had been there, shining through my destiny like a bleeding star.
“You cannot access the power of the Deep to protect yourself forever – nor can you use it to stop me from killing you,” Hilliker said as he kept his mouth pressed up against my ear. “For the more you use the power of the Deep, the more you bring the Banished toward you. You two are connected forever, locked in step with one another. Two hands reaching out across the void. I will use you to bring him back. And then I will feed you to him, Eve. Watch now as your destiny unfurls around your throat.” As he said the word unfurls, he wrapped his fingers all the way in.
He broke through whatever I was using t
o stop him from killing me, and he snapped my neck.
The end of Better Off Dead Book Two. The third book in this series – Better Off Dead Book Three – is currently available.
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Better off Dead Book Two Page 15
