Three Trials

by Kristy Cunning

  She was the one they seemed to really enjoy, and she was flirty and fun, not at all timid or apprehensive of the debauchery they showered her with.

  And the most beautiful.

  Now she walks in here and makes Death himself smile as though it’s a simple task.

  She looks around, as though she’s searching for something. Everything she does is suspicious now, because I’m just looking for a reason to kill her.

  “Now I know why you made me promise to behave,” I state dryly.

  Jude’s lips twitch as she faces him again.

  “I was waiting for your brothers. I may not can sneak you all in, but I assumed there’d be a little trade for this very deadly risk I’m taking for the four of you,” she says, smirking before she winks.

  “I’m going to have to kill her,” I say on a sigh, then stiffen, realizing I said it aloud.

  Jude clears his throat, his humor gone.

  “Fine. I won’t kill her.” In front of you, I add silently, deciding I’m really good at negotiating. Seems like a fair deal to me. No need in getting his vote on the matter.

  “My brothers stayed home. The soul breaks are getting worse, and we’re stationed in the highest concentration of the breaks right now.”

  He tells her this easily, even though this is the first I’ve heard that tidbit of information. One more reason to kill her. She makes my place feel threatened, and I don’t particularly care for that feeling.

  “Would they have paid her the way she clearly wants to be paid if they’d been able to come here?” I ask, deciding that is very important information I need to know before I decide if I’m an idiot or not for thinking I was special.

  I really will leave and find a way to extract myself from them completely if he answers yes. Even if it’s just to be a snarky dick to me. I will so be gone, just as soon as I return him safely home.

  Those three were beginning to make me feel like I was as important to them as they are me, yet they didn’t mention any of this.

  Jude, of course, doesn’t answer me, since he can’t talk to a phantom his guest can’t see, without being terribly suspicious. Since she seems to be as paranoid as he is with trust, that would be bad.

  I decide to make him talk so she doesn’t trust him. I’ll find a way into hell to gather their information. They don’t need her.

  “Would they?” I ask him again.

  He signs the letters n and o behind his back. Hmm… I can read sign language? Oh, he’s telling me no! They wouldn’t have. I hope he’s not lying.

  As she comes to stand closer to him, her eyes raking over him, I move to his side.

  “You’re turned on without them,” she says, glancing at his lap.

  That has me scooting away, since that’s my effect.

  Jude clears his throat as he leans forward, hiding the noticeable erection he certainly shouldn’t be having with another woman in the room.

  “If I’m a conduit for your attraction to her, I’ll be forced to make her ugly very soon,” I tell him seriously.

  He gives a subtle shake of his head. I’m not sure what he’s telling me, but I think he’s asking me not to kill her or telling me it’s not her effect.

  “I mean it. I will not be the little magic gem that offers you an independent boner so you can screw another girl in my presence.”

  “I’d never betray my brothers by taking someone without them,” he tells her.

  I really hate the way he calls them his brothers. It’s confusing. Which in a sense, they are. But not in the blood-relation sense.

  “The Kincaid brothers only share,” she says on a sigh, as though she’s repeating something she’s heard too much. “I remember well.”

  “All quads share,” he says dismissively.

  We’ll have to circle back to the Kincaid brothers thing. That’s the first I’ve heard of that, and again, they’re not really brothers.

  Her eyes close, like she’s relishing a memory. My phantom fists clench.

  “You being turned on by her definitely makes you my least favorite,” I mutter under my breath.

  Pettiness is my new shade of personality lately.

  His eyes dart to me as his jaw tics, but he immediately looks away, unable to say whatever it is he wants to say, since she’s here.

  I like that I’m making him want to talk. I need this siren gone before she sings her song and I lose him completely.

  “You four don’t have the same last names if you were born to different families. I’ve not even been able to uncover your last names. So why does she refer to you as the Kincaid brothers?” I muse aloud.

  “Are we going to hell or not, Lake? Time is very precious right now, and I’ve been separated from my brothers too long. You know how quad bonds work,” he reminds her.

  I’m not sure why my stomach unsettles, but it’s not envy this time.

  I look back at her as her eyes open, and she gives him a small, sympathetic smile.

  “You’re hurting for their presence. Sorry. I really did expect them to be here with you, or I wouldn’t have made you wait for so long. The truth is that I was trying to get out of my latest assignment, which is the main reason I’m so late.”

  He cocks his head.

  “What do you mean?” he asks as he stands.

  She takes a step back, pinching the bridge of her nose.

  “This culling is terrifying everyone. Lucifer hasn’t stopped it yet. Forty more escorts were killed this morning. He wants nothing but devout loyalty, and you know where I stand on that fence if I’m willing to break the rules to take you under,” she says, smiling sadly up at him.

  “You think you’ll be in the culling?” he asks, sounding concerned.

  There’s that damned envy again.

  “All of the participants of the trials survived, sans the two you and your brothers killed,” she tells him.

  “Everyone survived those trials?” he asks incredulously.

  She nods, a huff of a breath escaping her. “Lucifer retrieved the others before their deaths. They never made it past even one obstacle. But he needed them to start a change. To replenish what he’s recycling, because there can be no vacant jobs, obviously. Everyone has a task to be fulfilled to preserve the balance.”

  “I don’t understand. No one gets out of the trials without completing them,” he goes on, confused.

  Her watery smile doesn’t sit right with me.

  “I’m afraid you have no idea what you stirred up by surviving that third trial. It was impossible to complete every task in the three days allotted. Even in a month, no one could have done that. I never believed them. They tried to tell me, but I refused to believe it could be true, because I really like the four of you.”

  I step closer, tilting my head. What does she think is wrong with them?

  “She thinks something really bad, but she doesn’t know I helped. Tell her so she’ll stop believing whatever it is,” I tell him, not liking the way I’m now worried about her damn opinion of him.

  After all, I want her gone.

  “What’s going on, Lake? Do you know what Lucifer was trying to achieve?” he asks, not telling her about me even though I’m giving him permission.

  She nods once, then meets his eyes. I step in front of him, trying to inspect her look closer.

  “I’m afraid I do. And I’m sorry I have to be the one to do this,” she says.

  I see it too late. She’s incomprehensibly fast.

  The glint of the blade is barely recognized before it’s halfway through my body. It’s so fast that I barely even register the fact she’s slicing through me.

  I don’t even hesitate to turn whole, pain lancing through me as the blade gets jammed in my upper stomach, slicing through my spine as I shove power out of me.

  She’s launched backwards, cracking the wall and hitting the ceiling, pinned there but not dying. Because it hurts too much to strain for the acid.

  Two arms catch me before I collapse, and I choke on the
blood I feel gurgling in my mouth, tasting like acid on its own as the black streams of it trickle down.

  It’s like a heavy drumming happens in my ears. I can’t hear what Jude is saying, but I feel his power flowing through me as ashes flit around the room.

  His eyes are feral and wide as he hovers over me, and I cry out when he jerks the dagger out of me. Pain. All consuming, burning, excruciating, agonizing pain has me almost blacking out.

  The trickles of a cold sweat break out across my skin as I start struggling to breathe, coughing. I still can’t hear much, but I do hear him shouting on the phone.

  In the next instant, I’m in our house. He siphoned us…

  I try to go phantom, hoping it can heal me, but a scream is ripped from my throat as it only makes the pain worse, leaving me unable to leave this dying form.

  All four of them are hovering over me, panicking, working tirelessly to save me. My head lulls to the side just as Ezekiel gets my dress ripped open, exposing the proof there’s no coming back from this.

  The black veins are climbing up me from the poison on the blade as black blood pumps out through the cracks of Gage’s fingers. He presses down harder, and I scream in pain as he tries to keep me from bleeding out.

  “Devil’s poison!” I hear someone shout loud enough to just barely cut through the continuous drumming in my ears that is increasing in tempo.

  This weak, pathetic form I coveted and craved so much is poisoned.

  But this form is what saved them when the phantom couldn’t.

  “Run,” I tell them on a gurgle. “She…wanted…to…know…where you…were,” I manage to choke out.

  Kai is suddenly cradling my head in his lap. I can’t hear what he’s trying to tell me, but I can see the grief already shading his eyes.

  I’m not going to survive this.

  Something is getting shoved into my mouth and slathered over me in the next instant, but I choke on it and spit it out when it makes it feel like my mouth is about to explode and pain shoots through my head.

  Four gazes swing to me as the veins only slither up farther, stealing my breaths and causing me to convulse.

  I never even got to tell them why I’d give everything to keep them safe.

  Maybe they know.

  Chapter 12

  Agony.

  No, not agony.

  Torture. That’s what the burning sensation feels like when I open my eyes.

  Next feeling?

  Panic that overrides the pain, because I’m inside a motherfucking box! A wooden one lined with silky fabrics as though that’s supposed to excuse the fact someone has locked me in a box.

  I don’t care how soft that gray silk looks, this is not okay. In fact, it’s weird and very unsettling. Even by my standards.

  Still whole, I bang on the lid, but no one comes to open it.

  “Let me out! This isn’t funny!”

  And just why the hell am I naked?

  A black shard of singed fabric is all I find while searching around for the handle that will let me out of this damned thing. There is no handle. At least not on this side of the box. Why does it still smell like something is burning?

  My vision is in gray, so obviously it is very dark in here if I’m using my fancy new night vision…that only worked so well in hell…

  Flicking the confusing yet useless piece of singed fabric away, I close my eyes and concentrate, reminding myself I’m a badass and I can fight through the pain. That is not as intense as the last time I was awake.

  Frustrated, I start looking around the box again.

  Why the hell is the back of this box charred?

  Am I actually in hell?

  It hurts when I strain for phantom, but at least this time I can do it.

  Immediately, I sit up, and see…dirt under me where there should be a box like everywhere else around me. But it’s just lots of dirt and charred pieces of wood around the edges.

  Am I in the ground?! Is the ground smoking?!

  I drop my head back down and observe my surroundings with a newly informed eye, as I’m forced to turn whole again and endure the endless pain. This box is not just a luxurious box. It’s a freaking casket. And I’ve been buried.

  Naked, for some reason.

  Possibly in hell.

  I’m really not happy with this current situation.

  I thought turning phantom would instantly heal me like it made me sober. Though the wound is not quite as grave as it seemed earlier—I must have been a little dramatic, now that I’m really looking at it—it still hurts.

  The veins are gone. The flesh is pulled back together. Only a very large bruise remains as proof I didn’t make the whole thing up in my head.

  Yet, the pain is still unbearable. It’s as though I’m still burning alive from the inside, and it’s weakening my ability to turn ghost girl.

  With all the concentration I can muster, I focus really hard on going phantom, but I can barely sense them when I feel myself fighting to stay in intangible form. It feels like I’m being pulled in four different directions at once.

  I zap myself seven feet into the air—calculating an extra foot for human error in depth since I can’t see—and fall the extra two feet back to the ground, landing in a crumple as a real girl who can feel that shit.

  They buried me a foot short. Dicks.

  I can’t even go phantom again when I try.

  Oh damn. If I can’t go phantom and zap myself all the way back to them, then how the hell am I going to find them? It’s not as though they’ve ever walked home.

  Looking around, I note that it is a very familiar cemetery.

  Then, of course, my eyes dart to the headstone to see how they’ve endeared their fearless, selfless, wonderful, doting guardian, though they never helped determine her virginal status.

  No name.

  The stone simply reads, “Comoara Trădătoare.”

  There’s also a bed of quickly wilting roses I’m sitting in. I don’t feel a single thorn.

  It reminds of the roses they showered onto those women as a gift to bring them into the folds. They always took care to remove the thorns. I found it so thoughtful. It was one of those things that just reeled me in that much more.

  Now that I’ve apparently died—again—one of those assholes finally got me my damn roses. Whichever one it was, they’re my new favorite. I don’t even care if it’s Jude; this one is a win.

  “Lovely,” I say to myself, grinning at the heaps of roses surrounding me, even though the ones under me smell like they’re burning.

  Lush, luxurious, red…and faded red/pink. And dried and dead beneath.

  For an entire moment, I’m distracted from my pain as I bask in my roses, then bewildered by their varying degrees of decay.

  Just how long have I been dead?

  It surely took a while to get such an ornate gravestone, though they certainly could have put a little more thought into the inscription I was supposed to be left with for all time.

  Where are my awesome quotes? Not even any dates to show my very short time as this version of me. Just that damn treacherous treasure crap that is certainly not a sweet term of endearment.

  I’ll get mad at them later.

  The pain will be distracted no longer.

  Staggering to my feet, I look around, confused. How do I find my way home in this mess?

  I manage to walk, despite the pain, focusing on the guys, thinking of everything about them. It seems to lessen the pain.

  Two people stumble over themselves, gaping at me like they’ve been traumatized.

  “It’s just a naked body,” I tell them with a bitter smile as I flip them off and keep hobbling along.

  Dying apparently makes me very cranky. Especially when I come back whole and struggle to cling the form I once despised.

  I tell ya, there’s just no way to make me happy right now.

  I can’t even conjure some clothes for myself. And somehow I’m still dirty even though I did go p
hantom.

  “Sheesh, someone get me a cheese plate to go with my whine.”

  Yeah, my recycled-yet-slightly-altered bad pun doesn’t even cheer me up.

  The back alley I turn down doesn’t look promising. The guys are in a much nicer area.

  The three guys who swing their gazes up in shock and very alarming delight has me looking over my shoulder as I pass them.

  They’re definitely about to piss me off.

  Predictably, they cut off my exit and surround me, all of them leering.

  “What do we have here?” Mr. Cliché asks from behind me.

  “You have a very naked girl who just dug out of her grave—figuratively speaking on the digging portion. If I’m a zombie, you idiots will be the first I infect,” I tell them flatly. My gaze deliberately dips to one’s crotch. “And depending on your intent, the bite wound could be vicious.”

  The one in front of me looks hesitant now, as though he’s not sure if he wants to do terrible things to a girl who might just be crazy enough to bite away his manhood.

  I’ll do far worse, but they’re human and don’t know that. Yet.

  “I’m in a lot of pain, and I’m a little lost right now. I’m almost suspicious it’s because I’ve been away from my four very ungrateful boyfriends for too long. Care to hurry up and exercise your free will so I can decide if I’m going to kill you or not?” I ask with an impatient smile.

  The one in front of me turns and runs when I smirk at him. When I flick my gaze to the right, the guy there sees something in my eyes I’m apparently missing.

  Or maybe it’s the fact the concrete under my feet seems to be sizzling and burning away without fire the longer I stand here. That’s rather curious.

  It makes me look back on everything that’s been going on since I woke and consider all the burning smells.

  He runs as well, while the one behind me jerks me back by my hair and calls them a string of very emasculating names.

  My lips tense when the fella jerks me back harder, trying to force me to the ground. But he cries out in pain before I even do anything to him.

  “I think that’s enough free will for the day,” I say before reaching back and grabbing his hand, yanking it away before throwing him against the wall with it.