“Well, that was fun!” he exclaims. In a flash, he has me pinned up against the wall behind me by my neck. I struggle against his grip, but as he said earlier, he is stronger than me. His blood still being in my system doesn’t help either.
“Oh look, it’s the boyfriend…Why don’t we have a little fun?” he suggests as he looks at Reid, moving his other hand to my shirt, trying to open it.
I struggle even more against him, trying to get his hands and him off me. Reid has begun to shoot Grant again, but other than a slight jolt of Grant’s body, it has no effect. Grant’s head falls to my neck, starting to kiss it as he continues to work on my shirt.
“Get the fuck off me,” I seethe out. I feel a sharp pain in my neck before the pain is replaced by heavenly pleasure. The sparks originating at the bite place travel throughout my body. I stop struggling as the pleasure takes over, making me move my hands to Grant’s head holding him there. I can get why humans like this so much if this is what a bite can feel like.
“Scar…Scar!” Reid’s voice shouts, cutting through the fog. With the fog broken, it dissipates completely, and I can see clearly now. Grant still has his fangs in me, but I don’t feel anything.
All my strength surges back through my body. I pull his hands off me, throwing him through the air. He lands a couple of feet away. I look to Reid who looks stunned as I bring my hand up to the bite on my neck. It feels open, and as if it isn’t healing. Telling myself I’ll worry about it later, I run up to Grant before he can get back up. Not knowing how to kill him, I give him an offer.
“I think we can make a deal. You be my inside man, and I will give you whatever you want. You want someone changing? I’ll help you. I’ll do whatever you want. Eternity is a long time. We both promise also not to kill each other, okay?” I extend my hand to him and wait.
If Adrian is the real creator, I want to know what is happening while he is not there. I may have an advantage that way. He looks at my hand, his eyes hardening. He reaches for my hand and shakes it firmly. As he goes to pull back, I grip it tighter and pull him closer to me.
“If you go back on the offer or tell the person in charge about our deal, I swear I will rip every fucking thing out of your body until I have killed you.” I drop his hand. “Meet me back here in a week’s time, and you can tell me what you have learned, along with what you want from me.”
He nods, climbing to his feet. He gives me one last look before running out of the parking lot. I check to make sure that we are alone before rotating to look at Reid. He stares after Grant.
“Well, if it’s just us, I’m going to leave too,” he says, going in the direction of his car.
“Reid…wait,” I call. He stops where he is, looking over his shoulder. “You can’t just ‘save my ass’ and still believe that you don’t love me…We need to talk about this. You can’t just leave,” I tell him.
“I can, and I am,” he says, returning his eyes to his car and his destination.
I don’t care anymore about how I felt about him and the fight. I want to show him how much I care about him and how thankful I am to him for saving me. I run up Reid, spinning him around. I don’t let him have the chance to pull away as I let my lips cover his. Part of my mind is screaming at me to let him go, as he hurt me, but I ignore that part as I pour all my passion into my movements. Reid, however, stays unmoving. Once I am satisfied that I made my point, I move back and away from him. I stare into his blue eyes.
“You can lie to yourself for now, but once you have figured out that you are being a stupid asshole, you know where to find me. Thanks for saving me,” I say before letting him go.
As soon as I have done so, I turn and walk to my car, letting him think about it. I bite my lip as I wait for that moment when he calls me back, which I have seen in a couple of movies when I have been on Earth, but that doesn’t come. I get to my car without him saying anything.
I stare over the steering wheel, seeing that Reid still hasn’t come back to his senses. I start the car with a sigh, turning the steering wheel to get out of here. I stop my actions, though, at my phone ringing. I put the car back into park and reach for it. I look down at the screen and see a number that I don’t recognize. I answer it, bringing it up to my ear.
“The underworld. You do the crime, we torture you. You are speaking to Scar. How may I help you?” I speak in a formal tone.
“What? Was that meant to rhyme?” a voice I don’t recognize answers. It’s not even recognizable by gender or age. It’s almost like a robot’s, meaning the person is distorting the voice. I can tell, however, that I have caught them off guard.
“No, I was just stating a fact. If I wanted it to rhyme, I would have said something like: you perish, we eat you like relish,” I tell them, earning a distorted, mechanical chuckle followed by a throat clearing. The phone goes silent. I wait for them to speak again, but a minute has passed and still nothing.
“Hello?” I ask, bringing the phone down from my ear to check that we were still connected. We are, so I return it to my ear.
“I’d watch your boyfriend if I were you…” the voice speaks again, but this time, in a more menacing tone.
“That was a change,” I tell them, shocked at how different the tones are.
“I wasn’t meant to say anything other than that. You caught me unawares.”
I let out a giggle, only to realize the meaning of the message. I look quickly up and toward Reid to find him walking to his car on the road outside the parking lot. I narrow my eyes and search the parking lot for anything or anyone out of place.
“What? Are you trying to make me feel sad that he’s walk—” I stop short. A fireball is flying through the air and aiming straight for Reid’s car. I pull the handle on the car door, quickly trying to get out.
I spill out of the car but stay on my feet as I go running toward Reid, but I am too late. The fireball has made impact. Like earlier when I was trying to get Grant with my fire, the car explodes in a ball of fire. Reid flies backward at the force of the explosion.
“Oh shit! Why did you do that?” I shout, looking at the sky, wondering where it could have come from. Nothing is out of the ordinary.
“You and everyone you love aren’t safe. We will take over hell, and you can’t stop us,” the menacing voice says again before hanging up.
“Fuck!” I scream, throwing my now silent phone to the floor. I run my hands through my hair and run to Reid’s, hopefully, unconscious body. I drop down beside him, ignoring the pain in my knees.
His eyes are slammed shut. He is covered in scratches from the glass, and the smell of blood is strong which couldn’t just be from the scratches. Blood is slowly pooling on the ground under his head. It must have hit the ground forcefully. I frantically listen for a heartbeat and hear the reassuring rhythmic thumping. I breathe out in relief, falling back onto my feet. I crawl to where I threw the phone. I pick it up, pushing the button to see if the cracked screen will light up. It does, and I immediately go to my contacts and to the only person on Earth that I trust to leave Reid with in this state. The phone only rings a couple of times before it is answered.
“Yes?” Kyle asks.
“I need you to look after Reid. I’m going home and getting some answers from Adrian. If he’s the one behind all of this, he will pay with his life,” I tell him through gritted teeth.
“Calm down. Where are you?” he asks.
***
I have been pacing around the parking lot ever since I told Kyle where I am. Reid is still on the floor and unconscious. His heartbeat is still going, but it’s not as strong as it should be. I don’t really want to give him any of my blood, especially after how he reacted to finding out about the real me; he could take it badly if I have to tell him. I’ll just hope that his body will heal itself.
Kyle arrives five minutes after I called him, having run here. He looks around at the two alight cars and Reid, and then back to me and down to my neck which still hasn’t healed. He must
have something on his fangs.
“What happened? Are you okay?” he asks, his eyes trailing down to the blood on my clothes, which is partly mine and partly Grant’s from me decapitating him.
“Adrian has made an army of special demons. They attacked me, caused an explosion, resulting in this,” I explain, waving my hand around the parking lot, my anger evident.
“What?” he asks, looking confused and concerned.
“I’ll tell you more about it later, but first, I need to go down and get answers from Adrian,” I tell him heatedly.
“Okay, don’t worry about Reid. I’ll make sure he’s okay,” he assures me.
“Thanks, Kyle. I know you will. You’ve always been there for me and my dad,” I tell him.
“You’ve both done so much for me. I can’t imagine what my life would be like without you two,” he says, giving me a reassuring smile. I give him a small smile back and then look down to Reid; it quickly falls again.
“You really care about him, don’t you?” he asks.
“Yeah, but I think I blew it. He’ll never come back to me.”
Kyle’s big, warm hand falls to my shoulder, rubbing it soothingly. “I’m sure everything will turn out okay,” he consoles me. I shrug my shoulders as Kyle steps back from me, allowing me to teleport.
“Thanks again.” I close my eyes and picture my room at home in Hell. Adrian, I’m coming for you. You better have done everything you wanted to in your lifetime.
Chapter 32
Demons’ Torment
As soon as my feet hit the ground in Hell, I open my eyes and march out of my room, slamming the door behind me as I go. I feel the vibrations from the force as I open my mouth, putting all the anger, menace, and force into my shouts.
“Tell that fucking bastard that I’m coming for him!” For the second time in two minutes, the house shakes as a result of my anger.
As I make my way down the hallway, I hear a thumping making its way up the stairs. I meet the source of the noise, a very excited Tybalt, at the top of the stairs. My anger dissipates for a moment as I greet him. I didn’t know how much I missed him until now. His whole body moves as I hold his head in my hands and place a kiss on the top of his head.
“Are you going to help me?” I ask him as I straighten back up, and Tybalt’s excitement to see me lessens. Sensing that the reason for my visit is serious, he sits down almost as if standing to attention and looks at me expectantly. A small smile graces my lips as I move around him, but it quickly goes away when I focus back on why I came here. Stomping down the stairs, I ignore the congregation of guards at the bottom all looking up at me concerned and move past them to the hallway which leads down to my dad’s study and my destination—the dungeons.
As we are already in Hell, and there’s nothing worse than that, the dungeons are more of a place where we keep our prisoners. As expected, souls and humans are easier to torture, but with demons, it’s a lot harder, as we can heal easily and have a higher pain threshold.
I pull the rotting wooden door open and look down the stone steps. Like the boats that take the souls from the Styx Lake, the wooden door is just made to look like that; it would take a lot to get it open when it’s locked.
My dad’s deep voice floats up through the darkness, and a smirk comes to my lips when I hear a grunt of pain after it. As we make our way down the steps and into the darkness, Tybalt starts to growl lowly, his hackles rising under my hand. I move in front of him and down the ancient steps.
When I look back up at him to see whether he is following, two red orbs stare back at me from the top of the stairs. He pads down the stairs when I motion him forward; he always gets nervous whenever we come down here. He knows that this is where we keep the stuff that can hurt our kind and senses that whenever he gets near the door, meaning he will avoid coming this way. Tybalt also understands that the reason for my anger is probably down here and feels the need to protect me, which I think is sweet.
As I walk past all the small cells, my eyes easily adjusting to the darkness, I realize that almost every one of them is full. Before I left for Earth, we were hardly using them. I peek in through the small window of one of the many doors either side of the corridor and see that a demon is sitting on the floor looking beaten and thirsty. I step back and ignore the drastic change in temperature down here and the shouts from the cells as I stride forward and toward the door which is ajar at the end.
We don’t need to worry about the prisoners of this one getting out, as they are usually tied up and accompanied at all times. The door being open at all times is actually useful for us, as our philosophy is that listening to what is going on and possibly coming for you makes it all the worse. Welcome to the torture room.
Like the door leading down the dungeons, this one looks like it’s going to fall off the hinges at any moment. I pause, listening to make sure that I have the prisoner I want—Adrian. I try and see if I can catch a scent, but the smell of damp dust and the other prisoners mix together and form a sort of barrier to me determining the individual scents. Instead, I rely on my ears.
“Tell me, damn it!”
Silence follows his demand, causing my dad to exclaim out in frustration. “We will get you to answer, Adrian,” my dad murmurs.
This is all I need, and I bring my leg up to kick the door open. I only get a quick glimpse of the small room and the glowing plants in the corner because as soon as the door bangs against the wall, I am being lifted into the air by my neck.
Earlier when Grant said that there were no herbs or plants that were in his bloodstream, which he knows of, he was most likely telling the truth. However, a plant does exist out there that has the effects of Grant’s blood. It’s called daemoniorum tormentorum, which is Latin for “demons’ torment.” It was never officially “discovered” and named on Earth and hasn’t existed there for millenniums, as my family all made sure that every plant was either destroyed or kept to produce for our own uses (mainly torture), meaning my dad was the one to name it.
I hear Tybalt let out a loud growl, ready to pounce on the person holding me.
I meet the eyes of one of my dad’s guards who reacted to the intruder, raising an eyebrow.
“Good reaction time,” I comment. “Although I could be killing you right now, if I wanted to,” I say.
He sighs and rolls his eyes, dropping me to the floor. “Sir, your daughter is here.”
I look to my dad as the guard speaks to him. He is paused mid-punch, holding Adrian by the neck. When he sees me, he flashes me a smile.
“Hi, sweetie,” he says, his smile falling as his eyes go over my torn clothes, the wound which is slowly healing on my neck, and the glass in my hair. “What happened?” he asks, forgetting about his punching bag as he drops his hand.
“It’s complicated. There has been a revelation,” I explain as I look away from him and to Adrian who is tied to a chair with what smells like chains soaked in the Demons’ Torment. His blonde hair is plastered to the side of his head by the blood. I see Tybalt’s eyes are on the bright blue flowers in the corner, the blue petals glowing in the dim light. The flowers would be pretty if they weren’t so dangerous.
Did Adrian order the attack from in here? Do we have a security breach? He looks concerned as he looks me over and maybe even angry. I inwardly scoff; he doesn’t care about me; it’s all an act. He’s most likely angry at my survival and at Grant for not getting the job done.
“What are you doing here?” my dad asks.
“To buy a unicorn. What do you think?” I respond sarcastically. “I’m here to get answers.” I see the guards exchange looks with my dad, but I ignore them as I clap my hands together.
“So, what do you think we should start with first? I’m thinking…” I start as I walk further into the room, getting cut off by my dad.
“You’re not helping,” he states seriously.
“Why not?”
“You both were once friends, and I don’t think you would—�
�
“He’s not my friend anymore, and you know me, dad. Once I’m crossed, I don’t take it lightly,” I say, looking at Adrian to drum my point home with him.
He needs to know our friendship is over. Eighteen years of great memories and friendship down the drain in one afternoon. The only way I can be here now, without breaking down in tears, is that I’ve learned to switch off my feelings to some extent.
My dad lets out a breath, putting his hands on his hips.
“I don’t doubt that. I just…”
I interrupt him by pleading with him. “Please let me have some time with him. I don’t want to have come down here for nothing. I need answers and justice for what they did to me.”
“What did they do?”
“They tried to kill both Reid and me,” I explain, looking at Adrian in disgust. His eyes widen as they look from me to my dad, fear creeping into them.
You better be scared. You may not even have eyes to show your fear when I’m done with you.
“What?” he manages, his voice weaker from his pain and the chains surrounding him, but underlying the pain is worry and shock.
“Shut up!” I snap at him as I turn to look at my dad again.
He closes his eyes and takes a couple of breaths before opening them again, his eyes holding concern but also understanding. “Fine, I have better things to be doing anyway, but you report every little thing he says. Promise?”
“I was going to lie to you, but I guess I have to tell you now,” I tell him, a hand going to my hip and my head falling to the side. He shakes his head in exasperation as he turns to one of the guards standing in the corner, pointing at him.
“You,” he says. “Stay here. The rest of you come with me.”
I cross my arms as I watch the other guards leave the room after my dad, the door staying open a couple of inches behind them. I move around the chair in the middle of the room, slapping my hands down onto Adrian’s bare shoulders. I move down so my mouth is by his ear.
“Let’s get started, shall we?” I ask rhetorically, gripping his shoulders in my tightest grip. I let him go as I continue past the chair and to one of the walls, which, if I were to follow along, would lead to the dangerous plants in the corner. I press one of the stone protruding from the wall and am rewarded with the stones spinning back to reveal a wall of different torture implements. I grab a pair of the thick rubber gloves from where they are hanging, slapping the material against my wrists for effect as I put them on.
Hades’ Daughter (The War of Fate) Page 25
