Hell High

by Cindi Madsen

  I got chills and had to swipe at my shoulders and arms just to make sure no spiders were on me.

  Grim eased the boat onto the gray-sand shore, and I jumped out, wanting to get as far away from the water as possible.

  I swiped my forearm across my forehead. “Man, it’s hot as Hell down here!” I made the joke every time. It didn’t seem to amuse anyone but me, but when you spend a couple weeks in Hell every summer, you find ways to get through it.

  My heart sank, and suddenly it didn’t seem funny even to me. Because this wasn’t a couple of weeks. I was still hoping that turning eighteen, as in becoming a legal adult, would grant me freedom. I was too scared to ask. Not so much because Dad would get mad, but because I was too afraid of the answer.

  “I trust you didn’t hit any snags after leaving Phegor,” Dad said, motioning to Red Face. “He told me you were quite difficult.”

  “Yeah, well Phegor rubs me the wrong way. He threatened my friends and my family, and that’s not something that makes me feel all warm and cuddly toward the guy. Doesn’t make me feel too warm and cuddly toward you either, since I’m sure you were the one who sent him.”

  Dad glared at Phegor. “When I sent him, I didn’t know he’d let a sixteen-year-old girl tell him what to do, even though I made it clear my daughter was never to leave his sight.”

  “If it’s any consolation, I’ll be seventeen tomorrow.” It didn’t seem to console anyone, not that I’d actually wanted it to. Red Face could burn in—well, here—as far as I was concerned.

  “You’ve got your orders,” Dad snarled at Phegor. “Now get out of my sight.”

  Red Face bowed, and I could feel the seething vibes he was sending my way. The sarcastic side of me wanted to do a smug ta-ta wave, but I figured I shouldn’t push the luck that I didn’t have. I did feel the need to clear up one thing, though.

  “I’m here, so Mom and my friends are safe from any retaliation Red Face thinks he needs to take out on me, right?” I glanced at Dad. “I know you’re the Father of Lies and all that jazz, but please tell me that’s a promise you’ll keep.”

  Dad fiddled with the silver cuff links on his sleeves, and they flashed red as they caught the light. His voice dropped deadly low and gave a threat I felt from head to toe, even though it wasn’t aimed at me. “Phegor knows the punishment for doing something like that behind my back.”

  Phegor, the guy who’d acted so hard-core facing little ol’ me this morning, cringed and backed away.

  Grim set my bags next to me and gave me a quick hug. “I’ll see you later.”

  “Apparently I’ll be around.” I watched Grim climb back into the boat, wanting to delay my heart-to-stone-cold-heart with Dad.

  When I turned around, Baal was no longer by Dad’s side, leaving just the two of us to stare at each other in awkward silence. Dad snapped his fingers, and my bags disappeared. Like into thin air. They’d be in my room when I got there, and as crazy as it seemed, I almost wished for them back. Carrying them would give me something to focus on besides how mad I was at Dad for dragging me here. I wouldn’t even call him Dad, but I couldn’t bring myself to call him Lucifer or Mr. Master-of-Darkness. And he didn’t take kindly to bastard or jackass—I’d crossed the line enough times to know not to do it again. As displayed moments ago with Red Face, Dad could be pretty freakin’ scary if he wanted to be.

  “Come along, Lilith—er, Lily. Let’s go home.”

  It was the first time he’d ever called me Lily. I wasn’t sure what his ploy was, but I was too angry to buy it. The fact that he’d just referred to his place as home didn’t help either. “Where’s your ride?”

  “I thought a walk would do us some good.” He held out his bent arm to me, like he wanted to escort me, circa eighteen-hundreds style. Or whenever they did that froofy stuff. Ignoring his arm, I lifted my chin and charged toward the giant, beyond-Gothic castle looming in the distance.

  By the time we made it to the castle walkway, where curved spires stuck up out of the ground and stone gargoyles on steroids guarded the way, my hair was plastered to my forehead and neck. I swiped my forearm across my forehead in a completely non-ironic way, feeling shiny and sticky and pretty much disgusting. I wasn’t kidding about it being hot. It wasn’t totally unbearable until you went deeper toward the center, but it wasn’t exactly comfy, either. More like Arizona on a hot day. With no pool. Or air-conditioning.

  Dad seemed immune, not a bead of sweat on him. He snapped his fingers, and the medieval iron door swung open. “You’ll get used to it,” he said.

  Doubtful, because I never had before. I stepped inside and headed left, toward my room.

  “I set up a more permanent bedroom for you. Up the stairs.” Dad tipped his head, indicating the golden staircase, and we started up. That whole story about King Midas touching everything and turning it to gold? That was what the inside of Dad’s castle looked like, except there were also gemstones, red velvet, and silk curtains in the mix. Every inch was covered in the finest fabrics and patterns.

  While Hell was uncomfortable for many, the king lived well.

  A handful of minutes later, Dad stopped in front of a door that, like the other doors on this floor, had to be at least fifteen feet tall. I held back a sarcastic comment about how often the giants came to visit him. I doubted he’d get it anyway.

  He swung open the door, and we stepped inside. The room was at least three times the size of my bedroom at Mom’s. Black-and-white swirled marble floors, a huge window overlooking the river. It might’ve been a nice view if I didn’t, you know, hate water and all.

  A ginormous four-poster bed sat in the middle, gauzy black curtains hanging down. “Black velvet bedding. How very cliché. Nice and cheery, too.”

  Dad snapped his fingers, and the room transformed to burn-your-retinas-out yellow. “Sunny enough?”

  I shielded my eyes with my hand. “How about blue instead? Like a sky blue?”

  “I see. More like your room back home.”

  I was surprised he knew what my bedroom back home even looked like. He snapped again, and the room transformed. The comforter changed to sky blue with a swirled black pattern, and the dressers and bed frame turned white. He’d even added a cushy rug that covered a decent amount of the floor. Much better.

  “Wow. That’s…” Compliments were hard to spit out in Dad’s presence, but I supposed positive reinforcement wasn’t a bad way to go. “It’s nice.”

  “You know, you can learn to do it. The transforming and getting what you want at the snap of your fingers. You’ve got the power inside you; all you have to do is channel it.” His hand came down on my shoulder. “I could give you so much more than you ever dreamed of.”

  An icy shiver tiptoed down my spine, the cold slightly intoxicating even as my insides screamed no. “What I really want is to go back home. To my real home with Mom and my friends. Can you give me that?”

  His jaw set, and his face darkened. “Your home is here now.” His voice echoed through the room and reverberated through me. He made a disgusted noise in the back of his throat and strode to the door. “Tomorrow, you will wake up and start your Temptress Training. I’ve given you quite a bit of leeway because I know leaving your world has been hard for you. But that stunt you pulled trying to run away and the disrespect you showed me in front of my men… It stops now.”

  “Or what? You going to take me out to the screaming field? Throw me in the river so I can mingle with the rest of the tortured souls? Or maybe send me to the fiery depths and watch me burn? Go ahead, do your worst.”

  The next instant he was in my face, so fast I didn’t even see him move. “Believe me, my dear, you do not want to see my worst.” Even though his hands remained by his sides, I swore I felt fingers on my neck, wrapping, squeezing, robbing me of oxygen. “Like I said, tomorrow you will start Temptress Training, and I won’t take any more lip about it.”

  Black spots danced across my vision, and I clawed at invisible fingers that tightene
d even more.

  Then Dad released me from whatever spell he was doing. “Now that we understand each other, I’ve got work to do.”

  I staggered back to the bed, gasping for air. The oxygen burned on the way down even as my lungs rejoiced. Add another reason to the many reasons I hated my own father. You’d think “he’s the embodiment of evil” would’ve covered it, but Dad kept finding new, appalling items to add.

  Angry, and more than a little freaked out, I pulled my cell out of my pocket, desperate to talk to Mom. The screen lit up, but what do you know, the reception here sucked. More like it was nonexistent. I’d always left it with Mom for my short visits, and I’d sorta doubted it wouldn’t work considering Dad didn’t take it from me, but it was worth a shot. The screen blipped in and out, fuzzy and impossible to read, so not even the games or all the books and music I’d saved to it were accessible.

  “Come on,” I said, my voice raspy from the choking incident. “At least my music. Just give me something. Anything.”

  As if to spite me, the screen went black and curls of smoke rose from my phone, which grew hotter and hotter against my palm.

  I yanked back my arm and threw my cell across the room as hard as I could. It hit the wall, and the broken pieces rained down on the floor, shattered.

  Just like my last shred of hope.

  Five

  I awoke to an alarm I didn’t set. Stared at a ceiling that wasn’t mine. Remembered where I was. Thought about the fact that I was now seventeen. Missed Mom so much it hurt. Climbed out of bed so Dad wouldn’t strangle me.

  A quick, skin-scalding shower later, I dressed in jean shorts and a lacy hot pink tank top. I pulled my hair up in a bun to help with the hot-and-sweaty thing and went downstairs.

  I wanted to sneak out of the castle, but I didn’t know where I was supposed to go to complete the mandatory Temptress Training.

  Dad sat at the dining room table, which was covered with platters of every breakfast food imaginable.

  “And here I thought gluttony was a sin,” I said, grabbing a plate and heading for the bacon.

  Dad took a sip from a steaming mug. “We sort of encourage sinning here.”

  Was that a joke? I almost smiled at him. Then I remembered last night and how much I hated him. I finished loading my plate with food, sat as far away as possible from him, and dug into my breakfast.

  Dad cleared his throat. “About last night… I needed you to know how serious I was, but it shouldn’t have gone that far.”

  My hand automatically went to my neck. I didn’t know if that was supposed to be an apology, but I wasn’t accepting it anyway. “I’ll go to the training because you’ve made it clear I don’t have an option, but you don’t really expect me to be some kind of temptress, do you?”

  “You already are one. You’ll just learn to be better at it.”

  I scowled at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He smirked and snapped his fingers, and a bagged lunch appeared in front of me—at least I hoped it was a bagged lunch. “Have a good day, dear. Baal will take you to school.”

  In other words, you’re dismissed.

  Happy freakin’ birthday to me.

  Powdery gray dirt puffed up with every step I took, coating my pale pink Vans as I walked next to Baal. Most people thought Hell was all fire and brimstone—whatever brimstone was; I always pictured it as volcanic rock. There are definitely some volcano-y parts. Fire, too. But that’s deeper in.

  The fringe parts of Hell weren’t quite as bad. Not that it was a real cheery place. All the trees lining the path looked burned, their empty black branches reaching toward the red-hued sky. The two suns were up, already heating the day, one coming from the east, one from the west. Or maybe it was north and south. I’d never been great with directions, and the two-suns thing only made it worse.

  My lungs strained against the thick, smoky air. I was trying not to suck it in, but it was impossible not to breathe heavily while hiking in one-hundred-degree heat.

  I was just about to open my mouth and ask, How much farther? when we rounded the corner and a hulking gray and black building with jagged spires poking into the skyline came into view. Like the castle, there were skinny pointed windows, although these were thick with soot, and this building had an arched stone entry. Like a Victorian-era cathedral, except there were pentagrams in place of crosses. The building looked ancient, which it most likely was, and like it could fall apart if the wind blew, which it probably could.

  “So this is Hell High,” I said. “Is there a class on how to train your dragon, because I watched a few movies on that already, and I think that would be pretty unfair to the other students. Not to mention how unchallenged I’d be in class.”

  Baal looked at me, face blank, his large, hooked nose making his shadow appear more birdlike than human. “Most of the dragons stay in the inner circle, making sure the prisoners keep working. They’ve already been highly trained.”

  Okay, now my joke didn’t seem so funny to me either. There were dragons here? And from the sounds of it, they weren’t the cute and cuddly kind you could ride and bond with. Too bad. A pet dragon might’ve been kind of cool.

  The arched entrance to the school had words engraved into the stone: Making the Best of the Best the Worst of the Worst.

  Underneath in smaller print were the words: Proudly Condemning Souls Since Man First Walked the Earth.

  “And I thought Harvard had an impressive mission statement,” I said. Baal, as usual, ignored me.

  We entered the building and hung a right. I stared up at the vaulted ceiling, taking in the intricate designs on it and the walls. It seemed like it should be drafty, what with all the space and oldness, but I could still feel the sweltering heat seeping in from the outside.

  Baal ducked into a side room, and a woman with green scaly skin looked up from her bulky wooden desk. A forked tongue shot out of her mouth. “You must be Princess Lilith.”

  “I go by Lily. I don’t want the princess title either.”

  She cocked her head, and I could see my reflection in her huge bug eyes as she studied me. She dipped a feathered pen in ink, wrote on a brown-tinged paper, and then pushed it across her desk to me. “There’s your schedule.”

  First up was Persuasion, followed by Granting Wishes in Exchange for Souls, then Seven Deadly Sins (and How To Get People To Commit Them), Which Demon To Send, and last, Cost Analysis.

  Cost Analysis? Why would they be teaching a class like that? “Wow, this is…” I didn’t even have the words to describe what it was.

  “This way,” Baal said, leaving the room without waiting to see if I would follow. I did thanks to the no-choice thing. His footsteps echoed down the hall, sounding loud in the quiet. “Your first class is the third door on the left. Anything else you need?”

  “I think it would be quicker to ask what I don’t need, because this training would be at the top on my list.” I held up my schedule and reread it. “My dad can’t be serious about this. It’s wrong on so many levels.”

  “He is quite serious, and I assume you want me to tell him how compliant you were when I dropped you off.” He raised his eyebrows, and I felt the ghost of Dad’s fingers on my neck, choking me with his mind, Darth Vader style. Lily, I am your asshole father.

  Trying to maintain what was left of my dignity, I lifted my chin. “I’ll be fine. Run off and tell him I was delivered to the halls of Hell High and that I can’t wait to learn all about how to screw up other people’s lives the way he’s done to Mom’s and mine.”

  Baal nodded and then morphed into a dog-sized tarantula, keeping his human head, which looked even worse than if he’d morphed all the way. He scuttled out the door, his furry eight legs moving unnaturally fast.

  “Can you not?” I shuddered and swiped at my arms and neck. “Ugh! That’s so, so disgusting.”

  I spun around, still jerking and gagging.

  And froze in place.

  A guy with wavy, sandy
-brown hair that looked to be about my age stood in the hallway, his hand on the knob of the door I assume he just came out of. His gaze was on me, and one corner of his mouth was turned up.

  “Spider. Big, demon-y one.” I was pretty sure Baal had morphed just to freak me out, and it had definitely worked. I brought my shoulders up as more goose bumps broke out along my arms. “I really hate spiders.”

  The guy dropped his hand and turned to fully face me. He had a football-player build, along with a strong jaw and a broad nose that left him on the more-rugged side of the pretty-boy scale.

  I licked my suddenly dry lips. Please, please don’t be a demon.

  He certainly didn’t look like a demon, but demons were tricky like that, what with the morphing and all. He walked toward me, not saying a word. I tensed, cursing myself for not taking one of those self-defense classes. Not like it mattered if the guy was here because he was a demon. Or a murderer. Obviously he was in Hell for a reason.

  He leaned in close, and my heart skipped a couple of beats. “Quick tip, try not to make so much noise or do anything that’ll draw attention to you.” A Southern accent tinged his words. “Trust me, it’s never a good idea to get singled out here. Not that your dance wasn’t amusing.”

  Relieved by the warmth in his voice, I peered into his face. He had muddy green eyes that held me transfixed for a moment. “You’re just saying I need to freak out quieter,” I said.

  A smile spread across his face, and I practically melted on the spot. Dang, he was cute. Not that I was here to scope out boys, but the right type—i.e. cute and funny—did usually make life better. Plus I could really use a friend at school.

  I hooked my finger through the chain of my winged-heart necklace. “In case you couldn’t tell, I’m new.”

  He glanced around the halls before his gaze returned to me. “New to Hell, or new to the training program?”