by Sarah Piper
Behind us, Darius twitched on the floor, groaning at the pain of the poison coursing through his blood. Despite the fact that he’d damn near killed me, I hated seeing him in that state. I hated seeing Gray unconscious on the floor, the grandmother she didn’t remember weeping over her body.
A fresh lump lodged itself in the back of my throat.
For so many years, I’d believed the worst thing I’d ever have to face was Gray’s death—the event that would trigger the official start of her contracted servitude, requiring me to deliver her straight to Sebastian.
But now here she was, very much alive, her soul trapped in his hell. Was that worse than becoming a demonic servant? An eternal slave?
Was there any chance at getting her out of either disaster? Of any of the obstacles and terrible situations she’d likely face, even if we could free her from this latest round of torments? She was a powerful Shadowborn witch. To think she’d survive this life unscathed was a ridiculous pipe dream.
I turned away, unable to look at her another minute. I didn’t have the strength for this. It turned me inside out, like someone had carved me open and set all my nerves on fire. It hurt to breathe. To blink. To think.
Gray’s death? It would’ve gutted me.
But this… This was definitely worse. She wasn’t dead, just trapped, condemned to an eternity of suffering, mere seconds after we’d liberated her from the last otherworldly prison.
Deirdre sighed, and I turned back to face her, our eyes locking once again. Hers were cloudy with sadness and regret, and for a brief instant, that shared pain connected us by an invisible thread.
In another life, we might’ve been family.
I wondered if she was thinking the same thing. Then she got to her feet and said, “Don’t just stand there moping, demon. Sebastian is certainly expecting you by now.”
“Fuck Sebastian.” I closed my eyes, breaking the momentary connection. “There’s nothing he can do for me now. And if you think for one hot second I’m taking her anywhere near him, you’re—”
“She’s lost in his domain now, Ronan Vacarro. He’s the only one who can help us get her back.”
“Us?” I opened my eyes and looked at her again, eyeing her skeptically. “You think there’s an us in all of this?”
She folded her arms across her chest and jutted out her chin, a look that was so very Gray, it shot a bolt of pain through my heart.
I stepped closer, staring her down. “Let me tell you what it means to be part of an us. Gray and I were an us. We had each other’s backs. We cared for each other. We shared things, went through shit together, came out on the other side swinging. We didn’t condemn each other to—”
“Enough!” Her eyes blazed, and she didn’t back down, glaring at me as if she were the one towering over me rather than vice versa. “We’ve all done unspeakable things to keep her safe. Don’t pretend you’re above all of this. I know the truth.”
“You know nothing about me, witch.”
“Oh no?” Her steely gaze softened, and she reached up to touch my face, her palm soft against my cheek. “I know what you gave up for her. I know what she means to you. And,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper, “I know what haunts your dreams.”
At first her touch felt kindly, like I’d always imagined a real grandmother’s would. But then it turned icy cold, spreading across my jaw and into my head, boring into my skull. The feeling was like a brain freeze, like eating ice cream too fast, and everything else in me went still as she rifled through my mind—not my thoughts, I realized, but my dreams. My nightmares. I saw each one flicker and glow as she paged through them like stories in an old, dusty book.
When she finally pulled back and the warmth rushed back into my head, she was looking at me with a mixture of righteousness and pity. Compassion.
“Do that again,” I warned, “and you’ll… I’ll…”
I pinched the bridge of my nose and shook my head, letting the words die off. I didn’t have it in me to threaten her. She’d been right. We’d all done things to protect Gray. Would do them again in a heartbeat. I had no right to judge her.
In a fluid, effortless motion at complete odds with her small physical stature, she hauled Darius to his feet and yanked his arm over her shoulder, taking the bulk of his weight against her body. Darius groaned in half-hearted protest, but he leaned into her, trying to find his footing.
“I’ll deal with him,” she said, then nodded toward Gray. “You get Rayanne to Sebastian. I’ll meet you there as soon as I can.”
I looked at Darius, the blood congealing on his lips and chin. His hands trembled, his head lolling sideways as if he didn’t even have the strength to hold it up. His eyes held none of their earlier viciousness.
Fucking hell, Beaumont.
Deirdre must’ve seen the concern in my face. Adjusting him against her body, she said, “He would have killed you both had I not intervened.”
“He would’ve tried, maybe.”
“Ronan, we don’t have time. I’ve got him. You need to help Rayanne.”
“He’s not himself,” I went on. “But he’s… he’s important to her. To both of us.” I stepped closer, putting a hand on his shoulder as if he was mine to claim. “I can’t let you end him, Deirdre. No matter what he’s done.”
She sighed loudly, her patience clearly thinning. “I’m not planning to decapitate him, demon. He needs sedation and treatment. Unless you want me to release him into the wilds of Las Vegas, I need to relocate him somewhere safe, preferably before sunrise.”
Safe? I almost laughed at that. Where the hell in this city was a safe place for a powerful vampire with no memory, out of his mind with bloodlust, currently neutered by hawthorn, completely at the mercy of a pint-sized, dream-stealing, elderly witch?
“I’ll find you at Sebastian’s casino once the vampire is secured,” she said, the sternness in her voice leaving no room for argument.
Darius groaned again, but if he had an opinion on the matter, I had no idea what the hell it was. I had to go by instinct, trusting that I knew the real Darius well enough at this point to know what he’d want.
Like me, he’d want to protect Gray at all costs. He’d want me to focus on her. To find some way to get her out of this fucking bind.
I scooped Gray into my arms, holding her tight against my chest.
For a moment, Deirdre and I stood facing each other, looking over the charges each of us held close.
These are the most important people in my life.
“I’ll take care of him, Ronan,” she said, a little bit of that grandmotherly tone creeping back in. “You have my word.”
Her gaze dropped back to Gray, her lips pressed into a tight line. The creases between her eyes deepened with worry, and she glanced back up at me, as though she wanted me to give her the same reassurances.
But I didn’t owe her a damn thing. She knew who I was. Knew that I was perpetually obligated to keep Gray safe, even if I wasn’t in love with her so deeply my heart would never hit a steady beat without her touch again.
So with my best friend—hell, my entire life—cradled in my arms, I emerged into the lonely desert night, leaving Darius in the care of the one witch I’d hoped I’d never, ever meet in person.
The witch who—twenty-some years ago in her own dark moment of desperation at the crossroads—had signed her name in blood on a contract with the Prince of Hell, bargaining away her granddaughter’s eternal soul.
Three
Liam
For all the power I possessed, for all the fear my presence invoked in humans and supernaturals alike, for all the incomprehensible vastness of my very being, I could not save her.
The pain wracking my human vessel was agonizing, guilt’s red-hot lava boiling in my stomach, shame blazing a new fire in my chest, regret eating a gaping hole in my heart that could only be repaired by Gray’s safe return. Shifting into my shadow form would’ve spared me, but the pain was no less than I deserved.
I couldn’t risk depleting my rapidly waning energy with another shift. Not until I made my journey into the heart of hell.
For once, I wasn’t speaking in metaphor.
“Ah, my old friend, the Lord of Shadows. Welcome to Sin City.” Sebastian entered the conference room with a flourish, then sat at the head of the long, sleek table, his image perfectly framed by two large paintings depicting nude women pleasuring scores of demons.
How the natural order saw fit to keep this despicable being in power was beyond even my understanding.
“My assistant tells me you requested a meeting,” he continued with a smirk. “Does this mean your rendezvous in the Shadowrealm didn’t go as planned?”
“Let us not pretend you don’t know exactly how things unfolded in the Shadowrealm.” My temper flared, but quickly faded under the watchful eyes of the women in the paintings. They seemed to be disappointed in me, as though I’d managed to fail them as horribly as I’d failed Gray. I could hardly blame them.
Hanging my head, I said, “I’m afraid I’ve… miscalculated.”
“An understatement, I presume.” Sebastian chuckled, removing a small silver box from his inside jacket pocket. “Cigar? Something tells me you’ve got a doozy of a story to tell.”
The greasy demon prince held out the box, his thrill at my misfortune—Gray’s misfortune—plainly evident. When I waved him off, he removed and lit a thin cigar for himself, his cheeks billowing as he puffed the thing to life.
Smoke curled around his pockmarked face. I wished I had the power to bring disease to his lungs. To cause him a very long, very painful demise.
But Sebastian was immune to the powers of Death.
“So tell me. Did the witch refuse your proposition?” he asked. “Tell you to stick it where the sun don’t shine?”
“The proposition, as you call it, is no joking matter. It’s a matter of her true destiny. As such, it was not something to be entered into lightly. There are many facets, many details which must be explored and debated ad nauseam. We did not have the time to fully discuss her options.”
“You never even told her there were options.” Sebastian sucked on his cigar, the end of it crackling. His eyes shone even more menacingly in the orange glow. “There’s a difference.”
A thousand retorts swirled in my mind, but every one of them turned to dust on my lips. Sebastian was right. I’d kept everything from her—everything that mattered. Her true choices, and what each one would’ve meant. Her legacy. Consequences. Information that would’ve altered the course of her destiny and saved a lot of lives in the process.
I’d staked everything on my ability to train her in time, to persuade her onto the right path. I was so certain, so blindly convinced she’d accept, none of the myriad other pathways spiraling out before her seemed plausible.
After all, who could refuse the call of Death? According to the scrolls in the hallowed Hall of Records, no one in a hundred thousand lifetimes had ever dared.
Then again, I was fairly certain Death had never fallen in love with his protégé, either. That was a complication I could not have foreseen.
I knew I should regret it, but I couldn’t. No matter the outcome.
Even now, the remnants of our kisses on the beach in the Shadowrealm warmed me inside. I closed my eyes, allowing the moment to replay itself. I smelled the salt of the ocean, felt the grit of sand and shells beneath my back as Gray fell into my arms, her mouth warm and soft, her hair tickling my cheeks, her laughter like music I’d only just begun to remember.
If I lingered there, if I allowed myself to partake in the comforting opiate of human memory, the pain burning through my body might finally ease, ever so slightly…
“In any case,” Sebastian said, wrenching me from that blissful haze, “she’s in my possession now, and though I can’t use her as I’d originally intended, what with her soul being trapped in hell and her body being—well, wherever that thing ended up, I’m not keen on relinquishing her. As you have failed to uphold your end of our bargain, it seems our partnership has come to its unavoidable end.” He rose from the table in a cloud of smoke, the fat cigar lodged into the corner of his mouth. “Now, if that’s all, I’m a very busy man, and—”
“You must allow me to reclaim her soul,” I said, suddenly frantic. “To reunite it with her body before she dies. There’s still time, Sebastian. She deserves better than lingering in hell, and you know it.”
He glared at me a long moment, then said with another smirk, “The way I see it, Lord of Shadows, you should be thanking me.”
“What ever for?”
He resumed his position at the head of the table, taking another puff on the cigar. “I’ve spared you the ugly task of killing her yourself. This way she’ll never even know abut our arrangement.”
“I never agreed to killing her. That was your term for it.”
“What would you call ending her life as she knows it, then? Tearing her from the ones she loves, forcing her into a service from which she’d most certainly recoil? What would you call eliminated one’s every last choice?”
“I did not sign her original contract.”
“No, of course not. You merely agreed to alter the start date.”
“I never should’ve accepted your terms.” The lava inside me sputtered to life once again, burning a hot path to my throat, though I was admittedly more upset with myself than with the demon presently taunting me. “The natural order is not something to be twisted and bent to one’s will, Sebastian. We must respect it at all costs, or what are we left with? What do we become but a rabble of unconscious ghouls, roaming the earth like the primordial beasts of old, tearing one another limb from limb for the pure sport of it.”
“Save your philosophy, demon. You and I had a perfectly legitimate deal. You failed to deliver, ergo—”
“I am no demon, Prince.”
“Ahh, but aren’t you?” He stabbed the cigar into his ashtray, grounding it until his fingers were coated in ash. The room was hazy with smoke, and now it began to descend on us like a fog. “You’ve bargained with her life almost as many times as I have. And here you are at the final hour, once again begging me to make another deal.”
“I’ve done no such thing.”
“Then why are you here? To enjoy the many pleasures of my establishment?” He gestured toward a blackened window on the opposite wall. At his attention, the glass lost its smokey tint, clearing to provide a view into the adjacent room. A soft red glow emanated from the ground, just enough illumination to reveal the garish scene unfolding inside. It seemed to be a near-exact replica of the artwork on his walls, and though the almost-nude woman chained to the wall did not move as three male tormentors carried on, her haunted eyes told the story of her endless torture.
She couldn’t have been more than eighteen years old. Twenty at best.
“Perhaps your human vessel is craving a bargain of the, shall we say, carnal nature?” Sebastian’s eyes glinted as he drank in the sight of the woman’s brutalized body, licking his lips as one of her captors tore off the last remaining scrap of fabric covering her breasts. “Violet is a client favorite. I’m told she’s never refused a request, no matter how degrading or bizarre. Then again, she doesn’t have much of a choice. Such is the way with the Devil’s bargains.”
“You are a monster,” I whispered, unable to look away from Violet’s pained eyes. There was nothing I could do to help her. She was a demonic servant, the details of her own bargain unknown to me. Even death couldn’t save her now.
“No, I am the Prince of Hell,” Sebastian bellowed suddenly. “You would be wise to remember that before wasting my time with your pathetic pleas. I am not the hero in this story, Shadow Lord. Nor have I ever pretended otherwise. So if you’d kindly stop wasting my time, I do have other business to attend to.”
His eyes glowed the same eerie shade of red as the torture room next door, cutting through the remaining blanket of smoke and reminding me exa
ctly who I was dealing with.
“So be it,” I finally said, resigned. He was right—I had come here looking for one last bargain, and now I would have it. “There’s no deal I wouldn’t make to save Gray’s soul from Hell’s grip.”
“I’m very glad to hear it.” At this, he snapped his fingers, and a manilla envelope appeared, thick with what could only be another contract. “The terms are rather simple, actually.”
“State them plainly, Prince. I’ve neither the time nor the interest to parse through your fine print.”
“Very well.” He set the envelope on the table before him, then stroked his goatee, gazing through the window as if he were deep in thought. As if he were actually considering the options rather than simply pausing for dramatic effect and enjoying the sick view next door.
Sebastian was no fool. He’d known full well why I’d come today, and full well the terms he’d offer. Still, I let him play his games, hoping that the day would come where his confidence would so fully blind him that someone more powerful than I would slip behind his defenses and plant the trap that would usher in his final undoing.
“I will allow you to retrieve your beloved witch’s soul and work your shadow magic to bring her back to life.”
“At what cost?”
“No more or less than our previously arranged price. The cost of your failure. An excellent bargain for you, I do declare.”
It was precisely what I expected, yet everything I most feared.
I’m so sorry, Gray.
I knew there was no room for negotiating here. Sebastian might let me bring Gray back to life, but he would not allow her to walk away from him unscathed. Not when he already had her soul in possession. He held all of the cards here, and I was out of ideas.
I had to accept. Leaving her soul to float untethered through hell was simply not an option.
“On one condition,” I said. Sebastian raised an eyebrow, and I pushed on, gesturing toward the window. “Release Violet into my possession. I… I must have her.”
