by Lana Kole
Turning her back to the room, Daria stared into the empty glass, watching the ice cubes melt. God, she still got so angry over it. Not just over Peter, but at the thought that the discrimination against women was still prevalent in most workplaces.
“I quit. Said fuck that and walked out. They could take their misogynistic views and shove it up their ass. I left that day.”
Daria shook her head, banishing the negativity. “Oh, it gets better. I went home to pack, and found Peter’s fucking secretary there, playing nurse while he was in bed. Turns out they’d been fucking on the side for a few months.”
Embarrassed, she rested her forehead in her hands and made a groan of frustration. “I was so stupid! No wonder no one took me seriously! My fiancé was fucking his assistant right under my nose!”
With a shake of her head, she stood upright and stared into the ice in her glass. “And the rest is history. I packed my shit, sold the ring to cover my first few months of rent, and did a few odd jobs here and there, but nothing stuck. Then bills were piling up, the rent was due, and then... I met you.”
She forced herself to look up, and into eyes of gleaming obsidian and glittering cerulean. She’d prepared herself to see pity, or worse, disinterest in their eyes. Instead, the emotion there rocked Daria to her core.
“Fuck, Daria… ” Truth started, but in the end he shook his head.
She understood. There was nothing to be said in the face of such a bullshit situation.
Misery just stared at her, then at the spot Peter had been a moment ago, his fists clenching and releasing, the veins under his pale skin sticking out with barely contained fury. “He is a fucking dumbass. You’re better off without him.”
“Oh, believe me. I know. I could be homeless, and I’d still be better off than with that asshole.”
But she had to admit the thought of the fall out was enough to make her grit her teeth. The whole situation had been impossible to win. It had been just so shitty, how that era of her life had ended. Between the career and the broken engagement, Daria had felt even more that she needed to win at this new part of her life, but in every direction all she’d done was fail.
Failed at getting a new job. Paying rent. Having a relationship with her mom. And then the fucking curse. She couldn’t even uphold something she’d literally been born to do.
Hopeless. She felt fucking hopele—
Jerking her gaze to Truth, she saw the concern in his eyes fade at her alarmed expression. “He’s here,” she said.
“Which one?” Truth and Misery spoke at the same time, eyes darting around the club in search of a face familiar to them.
“Hope. It’s gotta be him.”
“Um, yeah, I’d say fucking so,” Misery grumbled, nudging her arm and pointing to the couple next to them.
The guy had taken her by the hips and pushed her up against the wall, sliding his hands up her thighs as they mumbled to each other. “I was hoping you’d say that, baby. Tell me you’re the one.”
And then all fucking chaos broke loose.
All the desperation in the club suddenly turned to unbridled lust—all clouded with the air of hope, that this person they’d met or come with would solve all their problems. Left and right couples, or groups, from the look of it, fell into each other, all mouths and teeth and groans, baring far more skin than Daria ever wanted to see from strangers.
“This is new,” Truth observed.
“Yeah, because he’s giving them hope, not taking it away,” Misery mused, his head cocked as he watched the couples around them in interest. He turned to her with dry humor lining his face. “You feelin’ hopeful, Dare?”
“Again, I ask, who are you?” She threw her hands up in the air, exasperated.
“We have to find him, do we split up?” she inquired, getting down to business.
“We’ll cover more ground that way, just be careful where you step,” Truth teased, motioning to the careless displays of lust all around them.
Daria stalked to the wall of booths situated under the awning of the balcony, scanning the tables for someone matching Hope’s description. Instead, all she found were writhing couples, hoping with all their hearts and… bodies, that somehow their actions tonight would solve their problems.
Who knew that Hope could result in so much lust?
A couple bumped into her, tossing her back against the curtained wall by the last booth, and the curtain gave way. She got her feet under her again, but curiosity clawed at her and Daria fumbled around the fabric until she found a break between two sheets. Parting it in what she found was a tear, she stepped through to a cavernous back room. Obviously meant for utilities, the room was sparse with controls and electric boxes attached to the walls. A stairway caught her eye, and when she glanced up to see where it went, an idea formed.
Following the stairs up, and up, she passed even the balcony level and ended up in the rafters above the entire club. Grimacing at the display of utter loss of control, she steadied herself on the metal grates and tried to find familiar faces.
Probably a bad time to admit heights weren’t her favorite thing. Gripping onto the side rails, she held on for dear life. The pounding music vibrated the metal under her, making every step feel shaky.
She shook her head against the nausea that threatened to twist her stomach, and focused on looking for Truth, Misery, and Hope. Misery was just heading down the back hallway, maybe hoping for an encounter like the one she’d had with Betrayal.
Truth was… there, standing on a table to the right side, searching the crowd for a familiar face, just like her. She must have made a movement too quickly, because his gaze somehow drifted to her and he gave a thumbs up. Then his expression faltered, and the strobe lights hid the movement of his lips, but she saw his hand point to her left.
Alarmed, she jerked, afraid a bouncer had found her to kick her out. Instead, she found just the person they’d been looking for. He was distracted, his gaze trained on the chaos below, and she slowly approached, holding tight to the railing, lest she fall.
As she drew closer, she saw the simple description from Truth and Misery hadn’t done him justice.
Well, he certainly gives me hope, she thought to herself.
Her steps on the metal grates were louder than she thought, and his face turned to hers when she came close enough.
“Hope,” she called out, a relieved smile on her face.
She crossed the last few feet between them, until she stood just before him, the walkway extending in each direction behind them and to their sides. They were in the middle of the lopsided X that spanned the back room she’d discovered.
“You look okay,” she breathed, relieved to see at least the cult hadn’t done any damage… at least not physically. “Are you okay?” she asked anyway, to make sure.
Just like the other three demons she’d met, he was handsome. Sexy even. The strobes bounced over them, lighting his face up like a warm golden dawn, and highlighted the muscles under his simple gray shirt. Tattoos she couldn’t quite make out decorated the bronzed taupe of his flesh, inked sparsely across his skin. His rare green eyes stared at her from a face carefully blanked of all emotion, though a guilt seeped through that she didn’t quite understand.
“Are you okay?” she questioned again, a little louder as she reached forward to touch his arm. He flinched away and she pulled back, suddenly feeling silly for the comfort she felt around him. They’d all been in her head, so she felt she knew them all inside out.
In reality, she was only just coming to understand that they were each more than their namesake.
“You should come with me, with us,” she said instead, motioning to where Truth was making his way to them by jumping from table to table to avoid the writhing bodies in the seats and on the floor. And they weren’t dancing. “I have to say, I didn’t think hope could be so… sexual,” she commented, trying to lighten the mood with a wink.
“There’s nothing sexier than hope.” His deep, wa
rm voice rushed over her like a sunrise and she shivered, the cooler air so high up a contrast.
Tilting her head, she simply asked, “What do you mean?”
“Everyone hopes for a better life. But what happens when they think that better life lies in the touch of the one in front of them?”
The cadence of his low, velvet voice pulled her in, his words seducing her as much as the meaning behind them.
“Sorry about this, Daria,” he said softly, bringing his hands up to her shoulders, his flesh grazing hers where the straps of the dress allowed it, warming her from the outside in.
Her head tilted in the other direction as she stared up at him, into his beautiful green eyes. “Sorry about wha—”
She didn’t even get a chance to finish her question, because with a flex of his muscular arms, he shoved her back, knocking her against the railing, off the skywalk, and onto the concrete below.
Where she died.
Again.
DARIA
Daria didn’t know what it was like when other people died, but when she did, it wasn’t that terrible. A morbid nap, maybe. The type where you wake up after wondering what year it is.
This time, Daria wasn’t sure what was different, only that something was.
It wasn’t like she was… conscious. She didn’t have a body wherever she was currently, but she didn’t just feel asleep either. It was more just… a state of existing?
Hardly wrapping her head around it, she counted down the minutes until she could leave. The time between death and life seemed to have dropped exponentially between the first time she’d died and the second. She hoped this one was even faster, because nerves were threatening to get the best of her.
A sense of awareness passed behind her, like when someone walks into a room without you noticing, and she jerked around in her not-a-body, finding a stranger’s face, but knowing who it was all the same.
“Death?” the single word released on a breath of air pregnant with relief, even though it sounded like a question.
He nodded without speaking, and her nerves shattered. “Oh shit. It was a nine-lives thing. But I only got three! Oh my God, am I really dead?” Panic welled like a high tide under a full moon, and she gasped for air. Air? Was she breathing? Did the dead breathe?
Oh God, what did I do? What happened?
“Daria. Daria! Breathe!”
“I can’t breathe, I’m dead!” she shouted.
Shouted. You have to breathe to shout. “I’m breathing,” she observed, a manic thread in her voice as she gripped Death’s forearms where his hands braced on her shoulders.
“Yes, good observation. You can breathe. And you’re not dead. Well, I mean, you are. But not permanently.”
Her shoulders slumped in relief, and now Daria did need a nap. Being dead was stressful.
“What are you doing here? You’ve never come for me when I died before,” she accused him, only just then taking note of his appearance now that her panic had washed away.
Which brought the question, why could she see so damned well in here? It was black, everything was, but she could see everything about Death—from his concave cheekbones that were sharp enough to cut stone, to the light coral color of his lips that looked mesmerizing next to his pale, tawny skin tone, framed in a dark shadow of a beard. All partly covered by the waterfall of dark, long hair that dipped a few inches past his shoulders.
“Funny you should phrase it that way,” he muttered.
What was I talking about? “Why?”
“Because I can’t… come for you, as it is.”
Did Death just...
“You’re gonna have to explain.”
Death was a lot less confusing when he was in my head, she thought.
“When someone dies, I know about it, and wave them on to the next life. Simple as that. I do have the extra perks, like knowing when and how, and having the ability to… expedite the cause and effect.” He stared at her for a long moment, and Daria resisted the urge to fidget where she stood. “However, when you die, I don’t know about it. It doesn’t come natural to me, and nothing calls to me. You’re not on my radar. You’re an… anomaly.”
“Oh gee, thanks,” she scoffed, but his words made her nervous. Did the curse do all that? Or was something wrong with her?
“So why are you here now?” she asked bravely.
“I’m here now because I need to talk to you. I’m sorry about Hope.” He grinned lopsidedly. “That was my idea.” Then shrugged, as if it was no big deal she’d been killed. Again.
“Truth is gonna be ma-ad,” she sang to him. “Do you know what he calls me?”
“There’s no telling,” he teased.
“Boo. He calls me Boo, like a damned ghost! Because I keep dying! Because of you!” She pointed a finger at him accusingly, and he just leaned forward and nipped at her flesh. Yelping, she pulled her hand back and glared at him, but the smile on his face was contagious, and in the next second, she was smiling too.
“In all fairness, the first time was so not my fault.” He held up three fingers next to his head in a scout’s salute.
“Yeah, yeah. Whatever. I’m holding this one against you.”
“Oh, please do,” his voice dropped an octave, the smile still in place, but dropped his gaze to roam over her curves.
Daria wasn’t usually the type to flirt with death.
With a curse, she realized she was still wearing her clubbing outfit. “So, what did you want to talk to me about? Can you tell me where you are?” she inquired to change the subject, cheeks reddening at his obvious perusal.
“Good guess. That’s exactly what I’m here for. I had to really concentrate on you in order to know when you’d died. The cult is not going to be happy with me when I wake up.”
Daria frowned at his words, stepping forward as if to protect him, although it was useless wherever they were currently. It was just the two of them. “Are you all okay there?”
He winked. “You’ll see when you find us.”
Then he told her everything she needed to know. When he was done, she could have face-palmed, it was so obvious!
“I can’t believe it was right there all along! Right in front of us!”
“They’re clever, I’ll give them that much credit.” His smile disappeared like clouds over the moon, and Daria recognized the sudden seriousness. “Daria, just be careful, okay? Warn Misery and Truth and take care of them before we meet again.” His head tilted and his gaze grew distant before snapping back. “Speaking of, our time is up, little ghost.”
“No, not you too!” she groaned, but was secretly pleased at the new endearment.
“Until next time.” Death tipped an imaginary hat, and in the next second he disappeared.
The floor fell away, and Daria jolted at the sudden weightlessness. She fell, and fell, through time and space and darkness and light until with a jolt, she landed back in her body.
Blinking rapidly to clear the blurriness from her vision, she groaned at the headache setting in instantly.
“Daria? Daria are you okay?” Truth and Misery both bombarded her with questions, concern evident in the lines of their faces and tones of their voices until she held up a hand.
“Oh God, stop talking. It hurts.”
They quieted immediately, shushing noises and smacking sounds echoing while she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, fighting the smile on her lips and ultimately failing.
“Me dying again was Death’s idea,” she stated bluntly. “Can I have coffee?”
Instead, she got bottled water, and glared while she twisted the cap off, but the cold water was too refreshing to turn away once she got a sip. Before she knew it, she’d chugged the whole bottle, and only then did she get a steaming cup of coffee.
“Dying’s a hard job. Makes a working girl thirsty—wait,” she deadpanned, rethinking her words at the humor in Truth’s eyes. Feeling almost like herself again, she leaned back against the couch and groaned, noting h
er feet were bare. A fluffy blanket had also pooled in her lap when she sat up, and she blinked back rapid tears at the sight.
Besides her foster parents, she hadn’t ever had anyone to take care of her. Not even Peter, who she thought she’d been ready to marry, had ever done something as simple as cover her up with a blanket. Not really having anything to compare him to, she’d just thought all guys were like that.
A little voice in her head pointed out that these were demons, not the average guy.
The thought jarred her, and she cleared her throat before sipping the hot coffee, perfectly attended to. “Thanks, Misery,” she said while meeting his gaze. His dark eyes softened.
“So, what do you mean it was Death’s idea? And how do you know—oh!” Truth answered his own question as she basically saw the light bulb light up from within. He vibrated with energy.
“Yeah, I came face to face with Death, and lived to talk about it.” Daria giggled at her own joke.
Jeez, were hormones a side effect of dying? She’d gone from grumpy to sad to delirious in the span of minutes.
“And? What else did he say?” Misery prompted, sitting down at the edge of the couch and taking her feet into his lap.
Surely he’s not—oh, he is!
Daria didn’t attempt to muffle the moan that escaped when his thumbs dug into the arches of her left foot. He stopped suddenly, and she blushed profusely at the look on his face.
“Sorry,” she squeaked. “Please don’t stop.”
With a smirk that was so very unlike Misery, he continued as Truth motioned for her to do the same.
“Okay, fine, fine.”
Daria told them everything, trying to remember exactly what Death had revealed to her. By the end, Truth was frustrated that it was so obvious—and not even he had seen it. The irony was not lost on her.
Then they made a plan, until her coffee cup was empty, and Misery had moved onto her calves, massaging and relaxing her until she was on the verge of sleep. She swore she only blinked, but when she opened her eyes again, early sunlight was streaming in through the blinds, washing the bedroom in coral, and she had a demon on each side of her.
