Damnation's Door: A Cursed Book (17 page)

It took effort not to stab him. I screamed and kicked, desperate to get back in the fight and get more blood on my knives. The only reason I wasn’t attacking Warrick was because deep down, something told me that he mattered to me.

But God, was I ever tempted to ignore those feelings.

“Seph!” Warrick shouted. “Get back here!”

The red-haired angel obeyed, turning toward us. Half of the crowd collapsed behind him, and the rest were fighting each other without restraint. Warrick’s grip loosened just enough for me to slip out of his arms. I tried to run, but he spun around and caught me again.

“Constance! Stop!”

“Fuck you!” I screamed back. “Let me go!”

“
Con!
”

Her voice cut through the violent haze that had taken over my mind. I looked over my shoulder and saw the only person I ever really listened to.

Dro stood a couple feet back with Max, who was holding the
movens caeli
in his hands. He stared at the crowd with wide, horrified eyes, but my sister was entirely focused on me. There was something different about her. Physically, there was nothing out of place. She was still wearing the same oversize green sweater, dirty jeans, and ratty boots. Her skin and hair were still paper white, and she still held her regal beauty.

But her eyes were maelstroms, wide with horror and shock, glistening with disbelief and sadness.

The urge to kill was still threatening to overwhelm me, but now something else was breaking through. Slowly, I was beginning to realize what was happening, and that was when the pain hit again.

I dropped the knife and the shank and doubled over to clutch my upper abdomen, a crippling burn slicing through it and leaving me breathless. I dug my fingers into Warrick’s arm so hard that my nails broke his skin.

“Constance?” his hand smoothed over my back. Either he didn’t notice that I was hurting him, or he didn’t care. “What’s wrong?”

Before I could tell him that my body was burning from the inside out, Sephiel shouted in pain.

It caught all our attention. He almost always avoided injury in battle. With a few exceptions when the pain was too horrific for even us to comprehend, Sephiel almost never
made any sound to suggest that he was in pain.

But that had been when he was an angel. Now he’s human.

I couldn’t see what was wrong until he turned around. That was when I noticed the blood spreading from the wound on his side. He’d been stabbed.

Warrick shouted something to Max. I was too stunned and in too much pain to hear what it was. Soon I was being moved into Max’s arms while Warrick ran for the fight to rescue Sephiel. I looked around frantically, seeing that the crowd had begun to grow. People had been hearing the fight from other areas of the city, and were being drawn to the commotion. The excitement of a fight was beginning to grow in their eyes. As they moved closer, they weren’t just staring at Warrick, who had managed to grab Sephiel and was dragging him back.

They were looking at me.

Warrick and Sephiel stopped beside us. Both men were breathing heavily, and Sephiel was grimacing in pain.

“Get us out of here Max,” Warrick commanded, reaching into his leather jacket to take out a handgun.

“I’m trying,” insisted the prophet. “It’s not working; we must have used the last of its power when we came back here.” He tightened his grip on me. “We’re trapped.”

He was right. Everywhere I looked, there were hungry eyes locked on us. Eventually all of the stares turned in my direction, and their brisk walk turned into a jog. There had to be at least forty people in this sudden flash-mob, and they were literally tripping over themselves to get to us.

There was no way we could escape. Not unless they had what they wanted.

The fragment lodged inside of me.

Just thinking about it sent another wave of pain through me. I choked on a scream and dropped to my knees, gasping for breath. Max fell with me, putting his hand on the back of my neck. He must have sensed something with his gift, because he suddenly recoiled.

“Oh my God,” he breathed.

I hunched over and grabbed my stomach, wishing I could drown out the roar of the crowd. Warrick’s arms curled around my back and pulled me into an embrace. I rested my head against his chest and breathed in his pine scent.

The pain worsened, and I nearly screamed again.

The footsteps were getting closer. I couldn’t fight. I couldn’t even fucking stand. I was going to be torn apart by this crowd, and my friends were going to die trying to save me. Even against the agony scorching through my veins, I could still feel my heart breaking at the thought.

That was when someone stepped forward, brushing past me and standing in front of the crowd.

“Please,” Dro begged them. “Don’t do this.”

For a single, perfect second, I thought the crowd was going to listen to her. They had all gone silent, all of them looking at Dro. I thought she had gotten through to them, that they’d heard the tender pleading of her voice, or seen the desperation on her eyes. I thought they had forgotten about me, and the horrible power I was carrying inside my body.

Then the fire surged through me in one violent burst. The pain covered my body in one savage rush, so hot I could feel it splintering my bones and melting over my heart. I clutched my chest and screamed.

The crowd broke into a run.

I didn’t see it all. I was fading in and out of consciousness, unable to take the torture the fragment was putting me through. But I heard Max shout in alarm. I felt heat outside of my body. I saw the blast of light coming from my sister. I smelled the scorched hair and burned flesh.

In seconds, it was over. The light faded and the heat dulled. The next sounds were screams and moans of pain. The group surrounding me was silent.

I was burning, Warrick holding me as tightly as he could, as if it would shield me from pain, but I managed to turn my head just enough to see what had happened.

Blackened bodies lay on the ground in front of Dro, smoke still rising from their torched flesh. Some of them writhed and shivered. Others didn’t move at all. Dro stood above them all, dropping her hands to her side. I blinked, certain that I was imagining it. My little sister would never do this, not even pushed. Hurting people was involuntary for her. She never meant it, and would never initiate it.

Yet every time I opened my eyes, there she was, standing over her destruction with a straight back and a seemingly calm demeanor. 

What has she done?

It seemed like forever before Dro turned around. When she did, it was a fast motion that startled Warrick. He jumped once, sending another jolt of pain through me. Dro didn’t seem to notice. She dropped to her knees in front of me and reached out to touch me.

Warrick’s arms tensed around me, as if he didn’t trust her hands now that she’d used them so violently. But her hands lit up with their familiar gold glow, and she touched my arm.

I’d always hated the pins and needles feeling that came with her healing. This was a thousand times worse.

The sensation amplified a hundred fold, every tingle becoming a drill. My nerves practically started exploding, piercing each cell and splitting my skull.

I had a twisted talent for being able to take a lot of pain. But all of this– the bruises, the broken bones, the stabs, the heartache, the flaming fragment– was too much.

“
Stop stop stop!
” I screamed.

It was a hoarse, choking sound that barely escaped my throat, but made Dro recoil as if she’d been bitten by a snake.

“Can’t...” was the only other word I could get out.

The group sat around me, breathing in the sour smell of burned flesh. I just lay there in Warrick’s arms, wishing I would die.

“Lift up her shirt,” Max whispered. His voice trembled.

“What the fuck did you just say?” Warrick snapped.

“I felt it... I felt... Just trust me. Dro can’t help her, because of...”

Max knows.

Sephiel, still clutching his wounded side, knelt down in front of me. He lifted the bottom of my shirt, drawing it up to the edge of my bra.

“What...” Warrick choked out. He held me tighter.

“It cannot be...” Sephiel breathed.

Dro started crying.

I shouldn’t have looked down, but I did. I regretted it immediately.

The blackness surrounding the cut along my middle had spread like a cancer, stretching from the wound to my belly button and the underside of my breasts. It was like a layer of my skin had been replaced with poisonous smoke.

The wound itself had somehow cauterized, the scar glowing like a burning ember.

“Sephiel,” Dro sobbed. “What do we do?”

The ex-angel shook his head. “I do not know,” he said grimly. “I have never seen anything like this.”

“There has to be something,” Warrick said. His voice sounded weak, nothing like him.

“Only Andromeda has the ability to heal her, and I am not sure either of their bodies will be able to handle the pressure that healing this wound requires.”

Warrick held me closer. Dro cried beside him.

Max hissed sharply. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him clutching his head. He took a couple deep breaths, then relaxed. He stared at me again with wide, hopeful eyes.

“Wait,” he said. “I got a flash. I think someone else can help us.”

“Who?” Dro demanded, getting to her feet. “Who?!”

“There’s a woman with an herb shop nearby who saw the…” he cast a nervous glance at Dro, “the riot. She knows about this stuff. I saw her helping Constance.”

“Then let’s go,” Warrick said. He was already picking me up. I was too weak to stand on my own.

“Max, I do not doubt your sixth sense, but is it wise to bring something as dangerous as the fragment to a woman who could know of it?”

“Fuck wisdom, Sephiel!” Warrick shouted. “She’s dying!” The demon slayer snapped his head at Max. “Which way?”

Max closed his eyes and concentrated for a moment. He opened his eyes and looked at Dro.

“Do you know where
Heirbas de María
is?”

I couldn’t see Dro, but I assumed she nodded because Warrick began moving. The sudden sharp motions were too much for my tortured body to handle, and I could feel darkness creeping over my mind. I closed my eyes and tried to breathe in Warrick’s smell, but all I could think about was the burning flesh we were leaving behind.

What did she do?

Chapter 14

The angry, snapping sound of a fist on a screen door jolted me awake. I hated myself for moving, because it meant a fresh wave of agony rushing through my body. I’d passed out on the way to this herb shop, so I had forgotten how brutal the fire corroding my insides was.

Now the pain was back, and it was making me pay for forgetting about it.

The second I opened my eyes, the fragment lodged under my ribcage burst with merciless heat, as if someone had lit a flare under my ribs. I choked on a scream and squeezed my eyes shut again. Sweat was plastered to my face, and something warm leaked from my eyes. I hoped it was tears.

“Open up! Please, we need help!” Dro was screaming. She was the one pounding on the door.

“She’s burning up,” Warrick muttered. “Are you sure this is the place?”

“Positive,” Max replied.

“We must enter the premises before attention is drawn to us,” Sephiel said. His voice was obscured, as if he was talking with his back to me. “Our location lacks anything resembling cover. I suspect it shall not be long before demons or corrupted are alerted to our presence.”

Dro must have heard what Sephiel said, because she began slamming on the door harder than ever.

“Please open up!
Please
!”

Finally, the door creaked open. I rolled my head just enough to see who was standing behind the screen door.

The woman was old, in her sixties. She wore a loose grey sweater and a flowing black skirt. Her hair was mousy and mostly grey, though I could still see some streaks of black in it. Wrinkles creased around her eyes and the corners of her thin mouth. She looked like a frail, thin woman, but her eyes were sharp and intelligent. Those eyes scanned our entire group with alarm and mistrust. She stared at me, her eyes narrowing.

“I’m not a doctor,” the old woman said, her voice rasped from age and perhaps too many cigarettes, “which is what she needs.”

The old woman began closing the door, but Dro slammed her hand on it again.

“She has a fragment inside her!”

I hated that Dro was so forward about it, but damned if it didn’t make the woman pause. She stared at Dro, then looked at me again. This time her eyes were filled with curiosity, and unease.

“Then you know what that means, and you can’t bring her here. I’m not risking my life for someone with the ultimate corruption stuck in her.”

The woman’s voice was tough, but I heard the fear underneath it. Anyone who knew about the fragment would understand how deadly it was to have around, and would want to be as far from it as humanly possible.

She started closing the door again, but Dro suddenly grabbed the handle on the screen door and yanked it open sharply. The woman stepped back.

“You’re the only chance she has,” Dro pleaded. “We don’t have anywhere else to go, and I… I can’t help her.” Dro’s voice trembled. “Please! Please, I’ll do anything!”

“It doesn’t matter what you will or won’t do,” the woman said reasonably. “If you had any idea what a fragment does to a person, you’d know that I don’t want to touch it at all. I don’t know how you found me or why you came here, but I can’t help you. I’m sorry.”

She started to close the door in Dro’s face. Dro’s hand shot out and forced it open again. The woman stared at her with surprised eyes. No one would look at Dro and expect such aggression from her.

I certainly hadn’t.

“I’m asking nicely,” Dro told her, “but I killed over forty people to bring her here. One more won’t make a difference to me.”

I had to be hearing things. There was no way my little sister would say anything like that, even if I were dying. She was a saint, all about kindness and compassion, she was…

She’s part demon. She’s Lucifer’s daughter.

No. That didn’t matter. She was still Dro. She was just desperate. When she was desperate, she lost control. That was all this was, desperation turning itself into anger. At least she had the decency to try reason. I would have skipped the pleasantries and gone straight for the demands.

But those people in the square, she killed them without making more pleas. She just stood there and stared at them, then moved on like it didn’t matter. Like dozens of people aren’t dead on the street because of her.

What’s happened to her?

Fire lanced through my blood, shocking my nerves and igniting every pain receptor I had. I shivered and curled into Warrick. His arms must have been aching from carrying me for so long, but he refused to put me down. All he did was shift his weight, and hold me closer.

I blinked past the blur of agony swimming through my head, and looked at the old woman standing in the doorway. She was staring at my sister with nervous eyes. That could only mean that Dro’s face was gravely serious. She wouldn’t let this stranger question her power, and we must have been close enough for her to see the remnants of Dro’s fire in the square. If the wind got strong enough, she’d be able to smell the death just down the street.

Everyone knew Dro was different when they looked at her. When you lived in a city full of demons and murderers, different wasn’t something to be trusted.

It was something to be feared.

The old woman took a deep breath and sighed it out.

“Fine,” she said. She stepped back and pulled away the door. “But hurry up. The sooner I get this over with, the better. It’s not going to be pretty.”

Warrick was the first person through the door with me. Dro, Max and Sephiel followed quickly so the woman could close and lock the door. Max was the only one who thanked her.

“Take her to the back room and put her on the couch.”

Warrick obeyed, and I felt my legs pushing aside a thin, fabric curtain. Even that single, tiny brush sent a painful tingle through my legs to my stomach and chest. Warrick gently laid me down onto a fabric couch that felt hard and smelled musty. My body naturally stretched out, and I felt like I was being pulled apart on a medieval rack.

Warrick moved around to the top of my head. Dro knelt by my right shoulder. I couldn’t see Sephiel or Max, but I thought they were standing by the door.

The woman scurried around the room. Bottles and jars clinked together. Something that sounded like cutlery scraped across wood. I wasn’t able to see what she was doing, and it was driving me insane.
I stared at the ceiling, trying to get a better idea of where I was.

The area reminded me of a storage room. Stained and pockmarked tiles covered the ceiling with yellow spotlights stuck in every other one. The walls were peeling egg white plaster that met a cold concrete floor smothered by a burgundy shag rug.

When the woman came back, her arms were draped with gauze. She had a shallow bowl in one hand, a scalpel and two sets of forceps in the other.

“What are those for?” Warrick asked. His voice was tight with mistrust.

“The skin over the fragment has healed over,” the woman said, kneeling beside Dro. “It needs to be cut out of her. She’s resisting, so it hasn’t been completely fused into her blood, but it’s breaking down and trying to force its way into her bloodstream. If we don’t get it out now and she keeps fighting its influence, it’s going to rip her insides to literal shreds.”

“How do you know this?” Max asked.

The woman paused. “I knew someone who had a fragment in them. I saw what it did to their body afterward.”

From the way she sounded, it had been someone she loved. She wasn’t going to give us any more information than that, and I couldn’t say I blamed her.

“Do you have some kind of anesthetic?” Dro asked. Her hand was close to my body, but she wasn’t touching me. She was probably afraid to.

“It’s too risky. The fragment is a parasite, and any kind of sedative risks provoking it.” The woman looked directly into my eyes. “It truly is amazing she’s resisted this long.”

As she was staring at me, a blast of pain shot through me. I winced and twisted on the couch. I could feel the fragment beginning to splinter inside me, cutting into my organs and slicing open my veins.

“Just get it out!” I screamed.

“Hold her down,” the woman said.

Warrick put his hands on my shoulders. Someone else pinned my legs to the couch. They were strong, so I assumed it was Sephiel. Max wouldn’t have the stomach for this.

I felt the cool air on my skin as my shirt was lifted to my chest. There was a dull swish of water, and then the woman was pressing her hand onto my stomach. I hissed and bit back another scream.

“Keep her as still as possible.”

That was the last thing the woman said before the scalpel cut open my newest scar.

The blade was freezing against my burning body, and I bucked reflexively. Warrick and Sephiel were still strong enough to hold me onto the couch until the wound was open. I didn’t scream again until she placed the icy forceps in the wound and pushed it apart. The smell of copper and sulfur slipped into the air.

“It hasn’t gotten very far,” the woman said. “But I can’t reach it with her shaking like this. Someone else has to do it.”

“I will,” Dro volunteered without hesitation.

Dro’s long hair tickled my stomach as she leaned over me. “I’m sorry about this, big sister.”

The fingers of her free hand hesitantly touched mine. I grabbed her hand desperately, and that was when she dug the medical tweezers inside my wound. The pain coursing through me was too much, and I blacked out. The welcoming darkness didn’t last, because I woke up what must have been a couple seconds later.

Dro was still leaning over me, pulling the bloody forceps out of my abdomen. She held the fragment in between them. The blood made the black, red-veined shard slippery, and the piece of Hell slipped out of the metal grip.

She acted reflexively, before I could tell her not to. Dro’s hand shot out and cupped the fragment as it fell.

It stayed in her hands for only a couple seconds. She stared at it with wide eyes, turning even paler than usual. I squeezed her hand so sharply I swore her bones creaked. Dro jumped and dropped the fragment onto the ground. As it fell, I was certain it began to disintegrate into ash.

“I’m going to clean the wound,” the woman said, lifting the shallow bowl. “This is going to make her pass out, and then we can work from there.”

I wasn’t sure what she meant until she took the bowl and poured it over my stomach.

The fire was replaced with a cold so intense I was certain it was freezing my blood. The water had to have been holy water, because the raw chill clashed into the fragment’s damage and extinguished it. I felt like a candle being snuffed out between someone’s fingertips.

The woman was right. I couldn’t handle any more pain. The last sparks of pain snapped across my body, and dragged me into inescapable blackness.

***

The world was a hazy dream when I woke up. I didn’t know where I was or how I’d gotten here. My entire body felt like a bruise. I wondered if my outside looked as bad as my inside.

“I’m sorry, Constance.”

My little sister was close to me, her hand still tightly clasping mine. I wanted to speak, to move, to open my eyes, but my body refused to do any of those things. All I could do was listen.

“For everything,” she went on. “Max didn’t see what was happening to you until it was too late, and by the time we got there…” She took a deep breath. I could almost see the tears on her face.