Broken: Hidden Book Two (19 page)

“That is basically how it works. Some souls never make it to us. Some, Hades sees fit to send on to the Everafter with no action on our part. Many are, actually. Our services are required of those who have done so much damage, that even death cannot redeem them. Ordinary men and women simply pass through. The monsters among us, though, come to us.”

“Some have lifetimes of punishment ahead of them. Some require less. They are punished until they repent, in any case.”

“Lifetimes?” I asked, staring at her.

She smiled. “That is where things get confusing. It feels like lifetimes to them. Time passes differently here, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. It passes quickly for us, unbearably slowly for those here for punishment. It is necessary. We’d never be able to do our job thoroughly otherwise. What feels like hundreds of years worth of pain to those we punish feels like seconds, maybe minutes, to us. While it happens, you are connected, completely, to the soul you punish. This is how we are able to punish so efficiently.”

She said it all in such a calm, casual voice, as though she was discussing the weather or a newspaper article she’d read. Tisiphone caught me looking at her. “It is a sacred duty, daughter. And I’ve seen you work. You were made for this.”

I shook my head. “So, is it just nonstop punishing, or…?”

“If you spent all of your time in vengeance, you would lose yourself. Spend as much time as you can stomach, and then return to your loved ones. I don’t remember how it felt at first, but it may be overwhelming for you. I have no idea,” she finished. “The souls are not going anywhere.”

She led me to a side room, unlocked it. I peered in, expecting to see a bunch of ghosts or something. Instead, it was an empty room, with just a simple bench and a chair. I looked at her. “The demon guards will bring the souls to you. Here, they have almost a corporeal form. They look much as they did when they were alive. They hurt the same, as well.”

Tisiphone paused, watched me. “You will need to be careful. We are not supposed to destroy the souls, merely punish them and send them on.”

“Is that even possible? To destroy a soul?”

She nodded. “Based on what I felt when you were with the Nosoi, it would take almost no effort for you to do so. Control is essential, Mollis.”

I looked at my feet, remembered similar lectures from Nain, about how important control is, about how I could majorly mess things up by losing control. It was always the same story, with me. “I will be careful,” I finally said.

“Good. Hades takes this very seriously. These souls are promised the Everafter once they repent. If you break his word….”

“He’ll be pretty pissed. I get it,” I said, ignoring the shiver that went through my body.

“You do not want Hades to punish you. I’ve been through it twice. It is not something I ever want to live through again,” she said softly.

I nodded. No pressure. Right.

“I will leave you now. Stop when you need to,” she said. I nodded and she closed the door behind her, leaving me alone in the gray room. I sat on the chair, settled my hands in my lap, and closed my eyes. I didn’t know what I was supposed to be thinking about, so I just focused on punishment, vengeance. I felt strengthened as I thought the words, as if they were a verbal talisman against the trepidation I was feeling.

A few moments later, there was a knock at the door.

“Yes,” I said, and the door opened. A large demon guard, wearing the typical black uniform, bowed briefly to me and shoved the form of a tall, thin man into the room. “I will collect him when you have finished,” the demon said, and I nodded.

The demon left, and I was left alone with the man, who was sprawled on the floor where the guard had shoved him.

I felt a connection to him, immediately, as instinct took over, and I did what a Fury does. My soul melded with his, and I could feel and see everything I needed to know about him. There was nothing he could hide from me. Every secret he thought he’d kept so well was laid bare before me, and he whimpered when he felt me enter his soul. I knew everything.

I also knew why Tisiphone had been so sure to warn me against destruction.

The soul had been a male who had abducted and murdered seven women. I saw, in a flash of understanding, everything he’d done to the women, every thought he’d had, the emotions that had run through him as he’d tortured and killed them.

My blood boiled.

I felt fear from him, and it was good.

I also understood what my mother had meant by the soul-bond being the most efficient way to punish. I saw what he’d done, what he’d felt. And I saw what he feared. I had complete control of his mind, and I used it. I punished him with the things he feared most, even as I watched, over and over again, in slow motion, in Technicolor detail, how he’d ended so many lives.

He began to beg for mercy. I was beyond it.

His punishment continued, and I lost all track of time. I used my mind, my hands, my sword, which had appeared again of its own accord. I came just short of destroying him, drawing out his punishment, and his screams, his pain, his fear fed me.

It was glorious and sickening.

I know that my body broke out in a sheen of perspiration, that my breathing became ragged, that my entire being yearned to obliterate this remainder of human filth. Yet he still showed no remorse, so it went on.

He babbled. He begged. He screamed and cried. And still, all I felt from him was how sure he was that it was his right to do the things he’d done. I turned his mind, his memories, back on him, had him re-live every abduction, every torture, every murder he’d committed, but from the other side. I made him feel what his victims had felt, over and over again as he screamed.

And I felt it. The moment he truly repented. The moment he saw his vileness for what it was, and felt remorse. His screams went silent, and he accepted the pain, because he deserved it. And I forced myself to pull back, and I opened my eyes and saw his soul, kneeling at my feet, sobbing. Regret, sadness, flowed from him, disgust at what he’d done.

I still wanted to destroy him. I snarled at him, and he flinched away. I went to the door and banged on it, hard, twice with my fist, and the demon guard came immediately and led him away, still keening, still feeling the effects of what I’d made him feel. His time would end soon, and he would leave, repenting, and spend eternity knowing how worthless he’d been.

And I would have his memories, the images of the things he’d done, with me for the rest of my life.

“Next,” I called to the guard, steeling myself against the terrors I’d see from the next soul assigned to me.

I spent as much time as I could stomach punishing the souls assigned to me. After the first man, who had been sickening, it only got worse. But I was torn between being sickened by them and enjoying punishing them, and, for a while at least, vengeance won.

My soul felt filthy from being bound to theirs. My mind could not un-see the things they’d done, could not un-feel the things they’d felt. And while their fear, their pain at my hands had been sweet, it came at a price.

As I walked past the guards, barely thinking straight enough to acknowledge them as they did their usual fist-to-chest salute, I tried to shake the disgusting feelings inside me. I didn’t see anything. The amethyst sky, the demons who waved or bowed to me. I was barely there.

Instead I saw girls, women, the prey of the people I’d just punished.

Girls and women who had not been saved. I tried to push the memories away, the visions I saw through the eyes of evil. I was sick with it, my stomach turning. At the core of the sickness, sadness, and helplessness, there was rage.

I held on to that, a life preserver to keep me from drowning.

I left the Nether, walked through the gateway into the Packard plant. Dahael and Bash were there, waiting, just where I’d left them. They thumped their chests, and greeted me with a low, “Mistress.”

“How long was I gone that time?” I asked them, and it felt strange to use my voice.

“Two days,” Dahael said. “Shifter has been here many times, looking for Mistress. Told him you’d be back.”

I shook my head. “Time is so different there.”

They both nodded.

“I need to find some lost girls. Tell me you have some leads.” My rage coursed through my body, and I welcomed it because at least it deadened the helplessness, just for a little while.

“Of course,” Bash said, and he and Dahael led the way out of the factory, to my car. I followed the instructions they gave me in their raspy little voices.

I hunted. I rescued first one teenage girl, then two young women, then a pair of little girls who had just been taken by a friend of the family that same night.

I destroyed their captors. There was nothing left. I stopped, just short of destroying their souls, though it meant I’d have to see them again someday in the Nether.

“Next,” I said to the imps after we’d returned the two little girls to their family. After the hugs, after the declarations that I was a miracle, a servant of God himself. After I returned two little girls, when so many more had never made it back home.

“No more tonight, Mistress,” Dahael said, taking my hand gently. It was caked in blood. I had not been gentle or merciful. “Enough.”

“Never,” I said. “Next,” I repeated, more forcefully.

Bash looked up at me. “Mistress needs to go home. People who love her,” he said, nodding sagely.

“Did good work tonight. Go home,” Dahael repeated, pulling me toward where we’d parked my car. “We will find more for you next time. And demon Levitt helps some too.”

“Does he?” I asked numbly, thinking again that I needed to check in on the demon. By all accounts, he was a valuable asset. Soon.

“Asked us how best to serve Mistress. Guards the gate, finds lost girls,” Dahael said. I nodded and we climbed into the car, and I roared toward home.

It was just after three. I let myself into the dark loft, only the lights of the city illuminating the main part of the loft. I went into my room, stripped off my ruined clothing, and stood under a shower that was so hot I gritted my teeth against the pain. It still wasn’t hot enough to make me feel clean again. I stood there until the water ran cold, trying not to think, and failing.

I pulled on my pajama pants and a Wonder Woman t-shirt Brennan had bought for me the previous Christmas. I went out into the dark living room, and sat in the chair Brennan usually sat in. I could smell him on it, and I curled up into it.

I felt the tears threatening, and, before long, I couldn’t fight them back much longer. All those girls. So much pain. And no amount of me destroying things would save them all. Soon I sobbed harder, biting my hand to keep the sounds to myself, not wanting anyone to hear me. I could hear Shanti’s stereo on. The last thing she needed was to see me losing my shit, falling apart. Not when she counted on me to be the one who chased the nightmares away.

As hard as I tried, I couldn’t stop. The tears and sobs came, and I hated every second of it. So much weakness. And my anger just made me feel worse. I pulled my knees to my chest, and rested my forehead on my knees, and just tried to muffle the wracking sobs that I couldn’t stop.

I heard a door open upstairs, and I tried to take deep breaths, tried not to be heard. That was stupid, I knew. They would feel me. And I could sense Brennan, awake and coming closer. I wiped my eyes angrily, trying to make the tears stop.

And then he was there, standing in front of me. I wanted to stop crying. I wanted to tell him I loved him, that I’d missed him. But I couldn’t make the words come. I could barely breathe around the overwhelming emotions I was feeling.

Without a word, he scooped me up in his arms, sat down, and settled me on his lap. His arms were strong around my body, and my head rested on his shoulder. Eventually my sobs died down. He sat, calm and soothing through it all, his hand running up and down my back, his arms around me.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” he said softly, holding me tighter. “I’m glad you’re home, but I want to destroy whatever’s doing this to you.”

“Life as a Fury,” I said against his neck as I rested my face on his shoulder again. It was all the explanation I could give without falling apart again, and all he needed. He knew. I felt the sadness, anger in him, for me. He squeezed me tighter to him. We sat in silence for a long time.

“Why did you sit down here alone like that? You could have come to me,” he finally said.

“Didn’t want you to see me like this.”

“Like what?”

“Weak.”

He put his hands on my cheeks, pushed me back so he could look in my eyes. “Honey there is nothing weak in you. You care so much, and you take everything the universe dishes out to you, and I don’t know how you do it. Being in pain is not weakness. You don’t have to be such a badass all the time,” he finished, gently brushing my remaining tears away with his thumbs.

“Yes I do. I need to be a badass. I need to be
more
of one. I need to protect–”

“Who? You can’t protect everyone, Molly,” he said, his voice warm, soothing. ”Not even you. As amazing as you are, one woman, goddess, Fury, whatever you are, is not enough to save everyone.”

“They need to see me as a badass. Those I need to protect and those I’m protecting them from. I can’t be weak,” I said. “I saved a girl tonight whose mother told me that she’d prayed to me. To
ME
. Do you know how crazy that is?”

“You give them hope,” he said softly.

“And I’m not worthy. Like you said. I can’t save them all.” I was quiet for a moment. “I need to be a badass. I need to pretend I’m strong. It’s like armor or something. I can’t explain it better than that. If you, anyone, sees me weak, I feel weak.”

He held me close again. “Be a badass, then. Wear your armor. But you don’t need to wear it for me. I know the woman inside. And I have more faith in her than I do in the persona she tries to present. I know how strong you are, how good you are. I know how personally you take every life you can’t save. Let me be the one to give you a warm place to go when everything gets to be too much, okay?”