When my fingers touched the doorknob, a sudden burst of air swiped the whole door from existence. There stood Not Miss Molly, dead black eyes aimed at me.
Agatha choked out a scream.
Zane sputtered and flung himself backward into a metal shelf that pitched back and forth.
Not Miss Molly, a dangerous smile cracking her face, flashed out both arms toward Agatha and Zane. Agatha swung from one hand by her bunched-up collar as if she were an old hankie. On Not Miss Molly’s other side, Zane struggled in her grasp while reaching for his fallen crutch.
I pushed my hair out of my eyes. “Let them go.”
Her smile stretched so wide the skin around her mouth began to rip and peel back. “Give me the key first.”
“Just remember,” I said, fishing the holy wine from my pocket, “I asked nicely.”
Uncorking it, I hurled a splash at her. It dripped into the side of her blonde hair.
An unholy wail pierced the small closet. She dropped Agatha and Zane and slapped her hands to the sides of her face, which sloughed off her head like brittle autumn leaves. She backed away from the doorway, still screaming, then vanished into a puff of smoke, which blended with the rest of the school.
I blinked after her. Not Miss Molly would likely feel the effects of that if she went back to normal. When she went back to normal. We needed to rip that demon out of her and heal her—fast.
A boom shook the walls. We followed the sound with me lagging behind, up the hallway toward the chained doors. Whispers snaked toward us from outside, growing louder with each step, but not really saying anything understandable.
Agatha leaned over at the waist to catch her breath, still gripping her plastic bag and flasks, her face paling as she stared at the door. “Does someone give out scholarships for surviving Hell High? Because that should totally be a thing.”
I gazed at the chains as I leaned against the cinderblock wall, rubbing my sweaty palms over the pockets of my cargoes. Would water, wine, and salt be enough? I somehow doubted it. But these chains… Even without magic, I could make them work for me as another weapon like I used to.
The doors rattled. One of the links on the chains snapped, and the doors bowed in, escalating the whispers to a loud hiss.
Zane backed away from them and turned, his purple eyes bulging behind his glasses. “I think we’re about to have company.”
23
A loud boom echoed off the double doors again. The three of us jumped.
The whispers grew into screams. The chains rattled harder. Through the narrow gap in between the double doors, fingers wormed through like snake tongues.
Zane threw himself at the doors and pressed his weight against them. Agatha and I rushed to help.
“Get ready!” I shouted and gripped my flask of holy wine.
Zane did the same, and Agatha tied the ends of her plastic sack of Devil’s trap soap containers around a belt loop.
A sound like thunder inside a drum boomed off the walls. The doors burst open. The three of us were thrown back. A black blur of movement surged forward. Screams erupted, turning the sanctuary for displaced teens into a little piece of Hell on Earth.
Home at last, sort of.
I shot to the side of the incoming smoke and demon-possessed human army and snatched at a handful of broken chains.
Behind me, Zane backed up into Agatha, balancing on one leg while he swung his crutch at the horde. He connected with the side of a possessed woman. Her skin flew out like paint on a splash board and flew back together a second later. Agatha zipped in behind her, wrenched her mouth open, and poured holy wine down her gourd. Black smoke fluttered out like a thousand crows above our heads. Agatha leaped into the air and swung her muscled arms up, as if flying after a softball, and slapped a Devil’s trap soap container around it.
More possessed humans crushed inside, fighting with each other in an attempt to get in, their empty black gazes aimed at me.
One locked its arms around me from behind. “The key,” it hissed in my ear.
“I don’t have your stupid key!” I stomped down on its toe, which loosened its grip and propelled it backward. I uncorked my holy wine and doused the chains hanging from my fist. If this didn’t work, I’d just wasted all my wine in a useless puddle on the floor.
Gritting my teeth, I spun around. The possessed man charged. I lashed my chains through the air, and they twisted around him. He screamed an agonized, demonic wail. Black smoke swatted at my face as the demon left the human, who crumpled into a pile on the floor. Agatha dodged to my side and trapped the smoke in another soap container.
Straight ahead, a man leapt through the crowd, dug its fingers into Zane’s chest, and knocked him on his back.
“Zane!” I cut through to him, but there were so many demons, most of them warring with each other and blocking my way. By the time I got to him, the demon stood with one foot planted on Zane’s throat. “No!”
Agatha looped a rope around the demon’s throat and jerked its head back. From his position on the floor, Zane kicked the demon in the goods with his working leg. The thing went down like a rock.
Agatha grinned and gave Zane a thumbs-up. “When in doubt, kick them in the balls.”
I reached down, pulled Zane to his feet, and herded the three of us into a back-to-back circle so we would know instantly if one of us went down.
“Looks like some of these ass pints have been diving into the locals,” Agatha said. “That was my junior high PE teacher.”
“Try not to hurt them too much,” I said. “They’re just possessed humans.”
Zane barked out a high-pitched laugh. “Just possessed humans?”
I gripped my chains in my fists, ignoring the flashes of pain in my fingertips, and leveled all of the demons with what I hoped was a Hellish glare.
Zane swung his crutch like a baseball bat. Agatha drew a circle of salt around us and splashed holy water on those who drew too close. I whipped my chains left and right. The three of us were like a well-oiled machine.
One of my chains wrapped around a possessed human’s neck, tethered it to the ground, and drove the demon out. Zane mowed through three at once as if they were no more a threat than an overgrown lawn. Smoke left their bodies, and Agatha expertly caught it before the bodies thudded to the ground.
Three left.
Two.
Zane took the last one out with a swift jab of his crutch straight into the gut. The possessed human vomited out black smoke and crashed to the floor. Agatha clapped a soap container around the demon and stuffed it down the front of her tank top where at least four more containers poked. All of her pants pockets were jam-packed too.
Panting, I looked around. At least thirty bodies, limp, dirty, but none of them broken, littered the hallway. Puffing my hair out of my face, I wiped my lip on my shoulder and faced my friends.
Zane stood with a gaped mouth, and Agatha’s wig was wildly crooked. But they were both alive, even after having my back. My two friends. I was the luckiest girl I knew.
A relieved laugh bounced from my stomach. “Well, how about that? No sweat, right?”
“It’s over,” Agatha said with a stunned smile.
Zane lifted his crutch toward the ceiling in a victory pose. “I could do that again, no problem.”
Through the open doors at his back, a cat slinked in, the same orange one I’d seen around with a rhinestone necklace. Its ears lay flat against its head, its back arched with bristling fur. A low growl sounded from deep inside its throat, but its yellow gaze aimed behind me.
My body tensed. I turned around.
A wave of black smoke filled the hallway, and out of it walked Elia.
“It’s far from over,” she said, her mouth tilted in what passed as a smile for her. “Wouldn’t you agree, Mom?”
I blinked. Mom? As in the cat?
The cat hissed. I whirled around to face it. It slunk low toward the ground and crept backward toward me, all of its rage pointed at
the pitch black night through the open doors.
Then slowly, a figure emerged from the darkness outside as if after a long hesitation. Mauve. My Mauve.
24
Sweat dripped into my eyes. I blinked it out, but Mauve still stood there in the doorway. The fire mixed with the fluorescent lighting hardened her bird-like features into cold stone. Her silver hair was pulled back into her signature bun, but it seemed more severe, as if the skin along her high forehead might rip away to show bare bone.
“Mauve…” I shook my head, desperate to understand. “What’s going on?”
She walked past me to join Elia—her daughter?
Elia peered down her nose at me, her knit cap sliding over one gray eye. She had thrown the false, timid Elia away from when I first met her, and now her true colors blinded me.
“It’s an honor to have been in your presence these last few days, Princess Kiera,” Elia said. “Luckily I have friends in low places to sniff royal blood out of false memories. Like the pink demon you saw in the common room.”
“Talk to me, Mauve,” I begged, ignoring Elia.
Mauve held up her hand for silence. But this wasn’t a freakin’ library, and I was so done playing around. I was no longer Kiera Morningstar, the sensitive girl Mauve had helped take care of for most of her life. I was the Princess of Hell, HP if I was feeling perky. Mauve’s future ruler. Yet somehow I guessed that had all been conveniently forgotten. A sharp, bitter sting formed at the back of my throat.
I draped my chains around my shoulder like a beauty pageant ribbon of destruction. “Are you this little girl’s mom or just her peon?”
Danger flashed in Mauve’s red eyes, and for a brief moment, she was the demon I sometimes feared growing up. “There’s no need for hostility.”
“I disagree,” I said, my voice hard. “And you.” I glared at Elia. “You’re just a human. Unless…you’re not a human?”
Elia’s smile crawled a chill up my back. “You tell me.” She took off her giant knit cap. Coiled on top of her head was a mass of thick, black snakes, writhing and hissing.
I frowned. “I’m going to go out on a limb and say no.”
“No way,” Zane breathed.
“And I thought I had problems with my hair,” Agatha said.
Elia lifted her gaze upward toward her head snakes. “You met these guys in the library when you lost consciousness. I’m half human.” She pointed to Mauve. “Half demon.”
“Did my mom know?” I asked.
“Of course not,” Mauve snapped. “She was too preoccupied with sheltering her precious daughter from being who she truly is.”
“That’s not your right to judge.” A bright red fury sizzled through my veins followed by a horrible realization. “It was you, wasn’t it? You stole the key to the Gates of Hell.”
Her silent, red stare confirmed it.
“Why?” I hissed. When she didn’t say anything, I took a step toward her to rip the answers from her throat.
A ball of orange fur darted in my path. The cat wound around my legs, tripping me up and loosening the rhinestone necklace around its neck. It plinked onto the ground.
Something flickered in Mauve’s eyes as she studied the cat.
I stopped. “I’m losing patience, Mauve.”
Her gaze lifted. “So was I, child. Your mom was a weak ruler, always moping around about how she was the one being punished even though she was the queen of Hell!”
Was. Was the queen of Hell until she gave up the throne for her safety and mine. What or who had made the Devil herself so fearful? Mauve?
“Why did you take the key to the Gates of Hell, Mauve?” I asked, my voice low.
“Because both Heaven and Hell needed to see that she was unfit to rule.”
“And me by association. What a slap in the face.” I nodded, gnashing my teeth together to keep from crying. “Thanks for that.”
“I’m doing you and your mom a favor. Neither of you want the throne, so when the opportunity came to dethrone her, I took it.”
“Did you try to kill her?” I demanded.
“Your mother has a lot of enemies.” A slight shake of her head. “Not just me.”
Had she always considered herself an enemy? Even when she was taking care of me?
A crack against gravel, almost like a footstep, sounded behind me. More demons? But I needed answers, not another battle. I froze and darted my gaze to Zane and Agatha who were huddled by the wall to the right. A breath of hot air at my neck leaped the nerves in my stomach. I almost screamed until a soft touch brushed over the small of my back and a familiar voice whispered at my ear.
“Keep her talking, but listen to me.”
Blade. Behind me. Hiding behind the wall next to the open door.
“Say something to her,” he whispered.
I forced a swallow, smoke and fear and shock thick on my tongue. “Why, Mauve? You were like a second mother to me.”
“I was sent to Hell because I wasn’t a good person,” Mauve began.
“Metatron is fighting off the demons in the boys’ dorm,” Blade whispered. “He’s on his way here.” His hand tightened in the fabric of my shirt at the small of my back, shooting a random flurry through my gut. “When I say duck, duck.”
“Your mother showed me pity by sentencing me to servitude and aging when she should’ve dealt my punishment with her head, not her heart.” She waved a dismissive hand. “You’re the exact same way.”
“And not worthy to rule, right?” I snapped. “What about her dad, my grandpa, the biggest Daddy-O of all? He sent her to rule over Hell. If that didn’t make her qualified for the job, then what does?”
“On the count of three, duck,” Blade whispered.
“He wanted to get rid of her for being a whining brat,” Mauve said, her gaze pointed as if I needed a little extra help to get what she was saying.
Elia smiled as she patted the hissing snakes on top of her head. “Give us the key.”
“One,” Blade said.
“What?” I flicked my glare between the two of them. “I don’t have it. Mauve does. Weren’t you listening just now?”
“Someone stole it from me,” she shouted.
“Well, it sounds like a case of karma,” I said. “So sad.”
“It was you who stole it from Mother, you filthy liar,” Elia said. “The bloodstones said it was here inside the school, almost always near you.”
The orange cat slinked between my combat boots and batted at the rhinestone necklace. Leave it to a cat to play at a time like this.
“Two,” Blade breathed.
“Demons are flooding out from Hell to walk the earth unchecked,” Mauve said. “It’s literally Hell on Earth. I would figure you would be a little more concerned about that with your love of humans and all.” She grinned wickedly at Agatha and Zane.
“Believe what you want,” I said, my muscles coiled in case anyone made a move on my friends.
Mauve’s mouth peeled back in a snarl. “I believe I’ll put an end to your bloodline unless you tell me where the key is.”
“Three.”
I ducked low and lunged out of the way to the right of the door. Blade and Metatron rushed inside, feathered wings and machete raised high. Somebody’s feet kicked the cat’s discarded necklace so it skidded into the wall. I darted my gaze to check that both my friends and the cat were out of danger, then swept up the necklace.
As soon as my fingertips made contact, white flame erupted in the air around me. A burst of wind fanned my hair out of its messy bun. It hung past my shoulders in red, lustrous waves encrusted with garnet. A red gown flowed down to my legs, and the bloodstone welts vanished. The chains wrapped around my shoulder glowed red.
Magic, my magic, had been contained inside the cat’s rhinestone necklace. It stormed through me, its power stealing my breath, choking out the demonic smoke in the hallway with a bright light. I stood on shaky legs to let it course through me.
If the necklace ha
d held my power, then who—or what—was the cat really? I rolled the necklace onto my wrist for safekeeping.
Through the thick smoke, the striking snakes on top of Elia’s head, Metatron’s enormous feathered wings, and Blade’s defensive machete blows, I didn’t see the cat anywhere. Or Zane or Agatha.
Elia delivered a swift upper cut to Blade’s chin. Metatron dodged a crushing blow from Mauve’s fist. More wispy black smoke flooded in through the open door behind me, along with a crush of possessed townspeople.
My magic flared. Wait. That wasn’t just my magic glowing. Something else lit up from across the hallway, on the other side of the chaotic battle crowding around me.
I whipped off my chains and swatted through the smoke. The metal connected with the glittery pink demon who lunged to Elia’s side. Her howl split the hallway when the holy wine-dipped chain links bit into her body.
Energy surged up my arm and flooded me with a warmth that left my skin buzzing. It was as good as Zane accidently brushing my skin. Almost.
The fiery red fizzled out of her eyes and went cloudy white. Her mouth formed a panicked O, the perfect example of an oh-shit face. She dropped, and I unfurled my chains from around her to attack another demon. And the next, on my way across the crowded hallway. I wanted to snap my chains around Mauve’s or Elia’s neck, but the smoke had swallowed them.
No one else seemed affected by the bright light. Just me. Getting closer.
And then I saw the source. Torn fabric revealed a column of smooth skin stretched over bone and muscle, marred with red bloodstone welts. The corner of a miracle necklace peeked through. A glowing orb shaped like a key was housed inside the sweetest, most loving soul I had ever known.
The key to the Gates of Hell had been hidden inside Zane’s soul.
25
Mrs. Crenshaw’s cross had reminded me of something. The crosses on the black box that hid the key to the Gates of Hell. Upside-down crosses.
Daring the Devil (Reigning Hell Book 1) Page 18
