Upside-down. Inside-out.
Zane’s inside-out shirt. He must’ve noticed he was glowing, and the only way he could hide it was by flipping his shirt around. The black box with upside-down crosses had never seeped any light through its cracks, but now that the key was hidden in Zane’s soul, his torn shirt lit the hallway with what was contained underneath.
I stared at Zane, caught between the battle raging around me and the key. Agatha stood in front of him, shouting something at me and glancing behind her at him.
The demons would keep coming from home, possessing people and making trouble, unless I did something I’d never been able to do. But why did it have to be Zane? With tears stinging my eyes, I winged that question up to my grandpa while I bowled toward Zane and Agatha. I didn’t expect an answer. Not really, although it sure would’ve been nice.
Was this what had happened to Zane that night when the old Kasey hadn’t shown up at the bus stop the night he’d gone to meet his dad? The same thing that had landed him in the nurse’s office? Mauve had said the key had been stolen from her after she took it… Saint Maria had said my grandpa had made an appearance in Jonesborough himself… Had He stolen the key back from Mauve? If Zane had been nearby, he’d be the obvious, safe choice because of the goodness that radiated out of him with just a hint of his smile.
“They keep coming!” Agatha shouted, then did a double take when she spotted me. “HP?”
Zane expertly wheeled the tip of his crutch toward me while attempting to pull his shirt together at the neck to stop the glow.
I crossed toward him and took his torn shirt in my fist, careful to avoid his soul hanging like a burning sun next to his heart, and grabbed Agatha’s elbow. “In here.”
We cut across the hallway into an empty classroom. I slammed the door on the chaos outside. I trusted Blade and Metatron to handle things while I sorted out the crazy. Still, we stacked desks and chairs in front of the door, just in case.
“Um, Kiera?” Agatha panted, using my real name for the first time. “What the hell happened to you?”
“I got my power back. Devil makeover, I guess you could say. I’m still me, though, I promise.”
She nodded. “HP is feeling perky.”
“Why are you squinting?” Zane asked. “Do your devil—do your red eyes hurt?”
“No.” I blinked down at the matted carpet. “I’m squinting because I can see it. I know where the key to the Gates of Hell is.”
“Well, what the heck are you waiting for?” Agatha spun wild circles with her hands. “Use it.”
I backed away from them, shaking my head. “It’s…it’s inside Zane’s soul.”
Agatha whirled on him. “What?”
“That’s what happened that night.” I forced myself to look at Zane since I felt I owed him that much. He hadn’t asked for any of this, and now…now I didn’t know how to make it right for him without risking the whole world. “Something happened to you and made you…glow. Didn’t it?”
He rubbed his chest and gripped his torn T-shirt, shaking his head in short, continuous bursts. Bloodstone welts spotted his skin, targeting him, too, but they didn’t seem to hurt him like they did me. The stones must’ve been enchanted to mark both me and the key.
“I didn’t know…” he said. “There was just this bright, warm light, and…then it came from inside me. I didn’t know what it was, but it reminded me of something…bigger. Something I would never completely understand. It scared me and calmed me at the same time.” His mouth opened and closed as if still trying to put words behind it. “I went to the nurse to see if I was crazy, but she didn’t see the glow. And then there was the cat, always next to me in the dorm and hissing at anyone who wasn’t me.”
“What happens if you leave the key where it is?” Agatha asked softly.
“The demons keep coming,” I said, my voice flat. “Earth becomes Hell.”
“The end of the world.” He took a long, ragged breath, then closed the space between us. “Then what are you waiting for? Take the key.”
His words drove an iron fist into my chest. My eyes welled with tears as I gazed at his purple-blue eyes behind his adorable Clark Kent glasses.
“I’ve never been able to take a soul before,” I choked out.
A boom rattled the doorframe and toppled a few desks and chairs off the pile in front of the door.
Zane glanced at it, then planted his hands on either side of my face, the muscles in his jaw clenching. “Come on, Kasey. What choice do you have? The princess of Hell can’t just let demons run around.”
I reached up, wound my fingers through his, the familiar zing of his skin warming my whole body, and heaved out a sob. “I’ll be taking you to Hell, Zane.”
Another blow jolted the door. Agatha’s rainbow wig flipped around her face as she looked from it to us and back again.
“How bad can it be? You lived there your whole life, and you seem to like it. You turned out okay.” He touched his forehead to mine.
“We’re talking about Hell, Zane. People suffer there. There’s lots of screaming. Torture.” I stopped, unable to finish, and trembles shook through me.
He swallowed. “Maybe I was chosen for a reason. Maybe I deserve it.”
“No.” I shook my head. “You don’t. Not this.”
“Will it hurt?” Agatha asked in a hushed voice.
“I honestly don’t know.” I heaved out a laugh, a rather inappropriate thing to do at a time like this, but it ended up sounding like a sob. “I don’t really know anything. I always avoided the rooms in Hell where the souls are kept. I’ve always been too afraid to go see it for myself.”
Zane smiled, actually smiled.
“I feel like you’re not reacting to anything the way you should be,” I said, my voice wobbly.
“I just think it’s amusing the HP isn’t really into the whole soul-stealing part of things. It doesn’t really surprise me. You’re no devil.”
His warm breath sighed against my lips, making them tingle and ache at the same time. I was suddenly all too aware of the closeness of the rest of his body. I wanted to freeze this, to stay in this moment forever.
A sound like a cannon of rocks exploding against the door made us all jump.
“I’m not doing it,” I said against his mouth. “I’m not taking your soul. We’ll fight.”
“We’ll fight all the demons in hell?” he asked.
“If we have to!” I jerked away from him. “Why don’t you care more? This is your soul!”
He stared at me with a soft expression that made me feel weightless and burdened all at once. “Why do you care so much?”
“You know why, Zane. I know your soul.” My chin trembled, and I wiped my hand down it as if to still it. “It’s worth fighting for.”
“You can’t let the entire world suffer for one person.” He shrugged. “You would never do that.”
I wanted to argue for the sake of arguing, to stall the inevitable, but the truth was there in his eyes. It filled me with a warmth I’d never known before. Every inch of my skin tingled in response to that look. He knew me, knew all of my faults and didn’t let those things bar the truth—that I could still do what needed to be done and remain…good, or at least remain who I was meant to be. He didn’t seem to care at all how that possibility affected him, which spasmed my heart with a painful, electrical charge.
If I had been anyone else, I might’ve let the entire world burn for him. Tears flowed in uncontrollable waves, and I had to look away. Because I wasn’t anyone else.
He stepped so close as to not leave any unnecessary space between us. “So, who are you?” He tucked his thumb under my chin so I’d look at him. “Kasey Morrison, Kiera Morningstar, or HP?”
I gave a sharp nod, the movement jarring the rest of my tears loose. “HP if I’m feeling perky.”
Agatha moved to block us from the door, another soap container at the ready. “And are you feeling perky?”
“Kiera!”
Blade shouted from the hallway, his voice carrying over the battle. “Where are you?”
No. I wasn’t feeling perky. Not at all. But this had to end.
“Thanks for being my friend, Aggie.” My friend. I sure wouldn’t win any BFF awards since here I was, about to drag one of them to Hell.
Agatha smiled over her shoulder and folded me into a side hug. “Never thought I’d be friends with an HP.”
I turned back to Zane and settled my hand at his waist to touch him, feel him one last time. His body heat melted through my fingers, which I curled into him and twisted the fabric of his shirt to haul him even closer. The warmth of his breath tickled my cheeks.
His blue-violet gaze dropped to my mouth and lingered there before searching the rest of my face. “I can try and make you hate me, if that will make it easier. Kick you in the shin, maybe?”
I shook my head.
A brilliant grin stretched across his face, brighter than any key forged in Heaven or Hell. “Kasey makes my Hell happier.”
“That’s a promise.” I sank into him, pressing my lips to his as a fiery spark linked us together every place we touched. He raked his hands through my hair and tilted my head to taste, to touch. This was what his eternity should’ve been. Not a sentence to Hell.
A scatter of bangs on the door wrenched us apart, both of us breathless.
“I’ll protect you,” I said.
“Okay.”
I couldn’t do this. I mean, I knew how—it was natural, it was in my blood, but still. I couldn’t do this and everything that would come afterwards. Because now that the throne was empty, taking a soul would put me in it.
Fighting the tremble that shook through my arm so I wouldn’t mess up, I placed my hand on his chest. Energy pulsed through him, sturdy and good. Like a powerful magnet, my magic pulled. A bright light filled every corner of the room.
Intoxicating power ripped into me, like a high that kept climbing. This was what it was to take a soul. This was what I was destined for. And I hated it.
“Zane!” Agatha cried, but I was too blinded to see why.
With a gasp, I pulled back, his soul swirling and glowing in an orb in the palm of my hand. Inside rested a golden key.
I looked up to find Zane, but the light burned the back of my eyelids. I couldn’t see anything other than the key. Silence hung heavy in the room. A weighted burden sagged my shoulders with the knowledge of everything I had to do next. But I had the key to the Gates of Hell. That was as good a start as any.
With a heartbroken wail, I called on my magic and ripped myself from the Nest back to purgatory, through the Gates of Hell, and plunked onto the throne in the empty throne room. The weight of millions of escaped demons, the eternally damned, pressed down on me, whispering confessions and dooming me to a lifetime of capturing and guarding them. Like my mother, the Devil.
See how well that turned out for her?
I gripped the golden key tight in my fist, but Zane’s glowing soul must’ve flashed to the Hall of Souls automatically. What could he be feeling right now? Was he scared?
My gaze dropped to the broken black box at my side, and I picked up the pieces. I’d never considered smashing the box open, but it wasn’t just an ordinary box that could so easily be broken. Maybe Mauve had had help. Or maybe not.
I still wore my combat boots with the duct tape over the laces. I tore the strips off and taped the pieces of the box back together again the best I could, though now it looked more like a flattened basketball. For now, it would do. I tucked the key inside. With the key back in Hell where it belonged, the gates were now locked.
I heaved myself up with the boxed key clutched to my chest and marched through the empty throne room, each footstep echoing through my head. This place had never been so quiet and empty, a good thing since I couldn’t seem to stop crying. I knuckled away my tears in case someone lagged behind and saw their new queen as a drippy mess.
Their new queen—I so wasn’t ready for this.
Inside the Hall of Souls, I stopped and skipped my gaze down the rows of closed doors on either side. A crackle of Hellfire licked along the obsidian floor and the rectangular stone doorways.
The room 802 emerged inside my head, the same number as Agatha’s hospital room had been. The doors whipped past me—or I whipped past them, I wasn’t sure—until black singe marks with the numbers 802 appeared to my right. As soon as the movement jerked to a stop, I spilled to the ground like the graceful, experienced queen I wasn’t. I shoved myself to my feet, brushing my hands together, and stared at the door.
“Zane?” My voice came out cracked and smoky, so I tried again. “Zane, can you hear me?”
It wasn’t as if he could throw open the door and sweep me into his arms. Was it? I hauled myself to my feet for at least the hundredth time that night and pressed my damp cheek to the warm stone door. It was just as silent inside as it was out here. Steeling myself, I took a breath and cranked the doorknob.
The door swung open on silent hinges. A thin line of jagged Hellfire lit a small, dusty room.
I took a hesitant step forward. “Zane?”
But the room was empty. I wasn’t all that experienced with the Hall of Souls, but I was pretty sure they should have souls. So where was Zane’s?
I backed out of the room and closed the door. I’d brought the key back to Hell, along with Zane’s soul. No question. Five minutes as Hell’s queen, and I’d already messed up big time by misplacing a soul. This would end just super.
One problem at a time. After a quick stop in my bedroom to hide the key inside a secret safe only I knew the combination to, I headed back through the Gates of Hell and to the Nest to find Blade and Metatron. They needed to know we now once again had a permanent Devil’s trap since Hell was back in business, if Agatha hadn’t already told them I’d found the key.
A harsh wind curved fiery smoke through the sky atop Miss Molly’s School for Troubled Teens. I scanned the grounds as I came closer, searching for the orange cat whose necklace I wore around my wrist. But the only creatures I found stalked toward me, one with a rainbow wig, the other a bare-chested demon, and the third an angel whose wings stretched toward Heaven with Agatha’s plastic bag slung over his shoulder.
As soon as Agatha saw me, she came running at top speed. I met her about a third of the way and crushed her into my arms, able to fight back tears since I didn’t think I had any left.
“The school’s clear. The demons are gone, here at least.” Her shoulders heaved with a sob, and she let loose with a loud hiccup. “You did it, HP.”
“Yeah.” I’d done it, all right.
Behind her, both Blade and Metatron sank to one knee and bowed their heads. Blade cleared his throat, and Agatha pulled away to look at him, then flopped herself down at my feet.
“Umm, okay.” I rocked back on my heels as if to dart away from this uncomfortableness. “How long is this nonsense supposed to last?”
Metatron chuckled.
“Until you tell us to rise, prin—” Blade sank his eyes closed. “My queen.”
I blinked at his use of “my” since it had always been Your Majesty with Mom. The “my” made it sound more personal somehow.
“Oh, okay. Rise, then.”
Blade shook his head, a smirk stuck to his face, as the three of them stood. “Did you ever pay attention when your mom held court?”
I snorted. “Of course not. But…I could use a crash course, and a new box for the key, if you’re willing.”
He dipped his chin, his red eyes bright and searching. “Anything.”
“Well, we could start with what might happen if…maybe…I might’ve lost a soul.” I shrugged, trying to give it a hypothetical vibe.
Judging from the tension that rolled off the demon and the angel, it hadn’t worked.
Blade crossed his arms. “The boy with the key.”
Agatha’s jaw dropped. “Zane? You lost Zane?”
“Only a little bit. He wasn’t where
he should’ve been. And I know I had the right room.” I forced a chuckle. “This is going really well so far, I think, don’t you?”
“Your definition of really well must be different than mine,” Blade said through clenched teeth.
“Don’t you dare mock me.”
“I’m not…” He sighed. “I’m not mocking you. I’m trying to figure you out.”
“Can you hurry that up a little?” I demanded.
Metatron stepped between us, palms raised. “Okay, whoa. Let’s focus on more important things. We have more escaped demons around town to capture and a soul to find.”
“And my mom and Mauve and Elia.”
“Of course,” Metatron said.
“And a cat.” I gazed around the smoky night. “Have you guys seen it? It gave me my power back and protected Zane.”
Metatron frowned. “An orange one?”
“Yeah.”
He nodded. “Your grandpa sometimes appears as an orange cat.”
“He…does?” Well, no wonder Mom claimed to despise them. So had he been protecting Zane and the key all along by covering him with cat hair? Oh God, of course he was! Cats on my clothes and actual cat fur on Zane to conceal us. Had this whole cat thing for protection been orchestrated by Grandpa?
Not to mention the help he’d given me by leading me toward Agatha in the gym when she needed a friend the most and holding my power in the rhinestone necklace. I didn’t know what beef Mom had with her dad, but maybe he wasn’t half bad. Him or the furry version.
“Hey.” Agatha reached for my hand. “Miss Molly’s here, the real Miss Molly. I spotted her again after you left with…” She swallowed, winced, and crept her free hand up under her wig. “Well, after. She knows where a large chunk of demons are hiding out.”
I sighed, suddenly exhausted. “Not at the strip club?”
“Not at the strip club.” She led me toward the school, and Blade and Metatron fell into step beside us.
“And…and what about…” I started. Zane’s body, I wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t squeeze though the clogged emotion in my throat.
“I’ll take care of everything, Your Highness.” Metatron rested his hand on my shoulder and gave it a comforting squeeze. “You’ve done enough.”
Daring the Devil (Reigning Hell Book 1) Page 19
