The Protect Her Box Set: Parts 7-9 (10 page)

I heard Paige’s cry as our hands unlocked and then the sense that I had of her was gone. I was looking at her from the other side of the gate, and Bruno Proctor stood in the space that I had just exited. His hand slammed down on top of Paige’s completing the connection I had just had with her. Before I could react, the shimmering surface of the gate was gone. I stood there staring at a stone wall.

I turned around, and found a horde of demons waiting there who had clearly been ready to enter the gate to move to the other side.

There was no doubt about it.

I was in my own personal Hell.

To be continued…

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By Ivy Sinclair

Copyright 2015 Smith Sinclair Books

ebook Edition

Cover Design by Mihaela Voicu

ebook Edition, License Notes

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CHAPTER ONE –
RILEY

Hell is one of those places that you hope you never end up in any lifetime. The irony of the fact that I was making my second visit there in my short twenty-eight years wasn’t lost on me. When you dance with the devil to pay the bills, eventually you’re going to go dark. My past was littered with bad decisions determined by what jobs would put the most bucks in my bank account, followed by horrible mistakes that I’d never be able to go back and fix. It had always been in the back of my mind that when my time came, I’d wind up here.

But it wasn’t supposed to be today. Not when Paige needed me to stay in one piece. Not when I felt like the world as I knew it hung by a thread that was about to be cut. The stakes were too high for me to be stuck in Hell.

Those were the thoughts running through my mind as I faced a sea of demon faces. My back was against the wall that, just moments before, had been a portal into the realm where I belonged. On the other side, I had watched Bruno Proctor take my place to magically bond with Paige over the relic and complete the closure of the portal. He switched sides of the portal with me and left me to rot here. If I didn’t feel the sear of the mixture of anger and anguish twisting my guts, I’d probably realize I was more than a little impressed by the move. No matter what we did, it always seemed as if the bastard was one step ahead of us. That meant that I needed to get smarter. That was if I lived through the next few minutes.

It was the hardest thing to do considering the situation, but I closed my eyes. I could practically feel the press of contorted bodies moving closer to me in an attempt to overwhelm me. Demons knew what I did to their kind. The reputation I spent ten years building was about to come back and bite me in the ass. The feeling of sudden helplessness was suffocating and panic inducing, but I didn’t open my eyes. Not yet. Because I knew a thing or two about Hell. Things that those who ruled it didn’t want the common folk to know.

Hell was what you made of it. It knew all of your deepest, darkest secrets. Every feeling of self-loathing, guilt, and shame was brought to the surface. Those things that haunted your nightmares were manifested into physical form, and there was no way to escape because you were trapped inside the horrors of your own mind. Hell was literally the ultimate mind fuck.

When I stood on the other side of the portal, I thought I saw shadowy forms moving on the other side. So when Proctor pulled me through, I expected to see an army of demons waiting for me. That was the shitty thing about Hell. It was more than happy to serve up whatever fresh images your mind could come up with to twist your perceptions and make them real.

There were real demons crawling around Hell; no doubt enough of them to fill cities across the world. But they didn’t have to be here with me. Not if I didn’t give into the fear. That’s what Hell was about: pain, fear, torture, loss, grief, sadness, and your bleakest despair. All of the emotions that tore up our souls and took us to the deepest recesses of the blackest parts of our minds. Demons like Bruno Proctor pushed those emotions along and kept them festering and fresh. That was part of their job. Lure new souls in by making them do terrible deeds on earth that marked their souls, and then they got to spend the rest of eternity torturing them.

It wasn’t possible to make Hell a garden spot; that was for damn sure. But it was possible to bend the rules of what it served up to you when you got there. You just had to see through your mind’s illusions. That’s the idea that I kept repeating over and over again in my mind. Alice had taught me how to concentrate even when the rest of the world around me was in a panic. It was critical to my line of work. It was what allowed me to control a host of dead, reanimated corpses in the midst of battle. I was able to separate what was happening around me with what I was doing in my mind.

I felt the movement of air again that indicated the demons were closing in on me. I could feel the hot, rancid air of their breath scorching my skin and searing my nostrils. My body felt exhausted trying to stay upright under their weight. I steeled my mind against those thoughts and forced it to think about different ones.

Inevitably, my thoughts turned to Paige. But I couldn’t think about her being in Proctor’s clutches once again. I could only imagine what kind of perverse image Hell would serve up for me then. Instead, I thought about her smile and the way that her head often cocked slightly to the side when she laughed. I thought about getting lost in the depths of her blue eyes. I thought about the smell of her hair and how it tickled my bare chest when we slept with our bodies intertwined. I thought of how lucky I was that she had told me that she loved me.

I had no idea how long I focused on those thoughts of Paige, but the silence was what eventually cracked through my consciousness. Throughout the fight across the cavern to the portal and in those first moments in Hell, it was as if a thousand voices pounded around inside my head along with mine. It was jarring and unnatural. Combined with the external noise of teeth gnashing, bones breaking, and roars of success and defeat, it was overwhelming.

But now there was nothing but silence. It was time. I took a deep breath and opened my eyes. The space around me was different now. I was in a simple room. It appeared to be a long rectangle because I couldn’t quite make out the other end of it. I whirled around and found that the wall at my back was wooden panels, not stone. Wherever I was, this was not where I had entered Hell. I slammed the palm of my hand against the wall in frustration. I hadn’t anticipated that my tactic to save my skin from the demons would result in putting me even further away from Paige.

“Riley, you have to calm down.”

My breath caught in my throat. The voice was achingly familiar. I knew that I should be happy to hear it, but it was highly likely that this was the new version of Hell I was about to contend with. Hell didn’t like those that inhabited it trying to change the rules. It always found a way to try to bring you back into its chokehold. I didn’t expect it to adjust so quickly, but I shouldn’t have been surprised. It was Hell, after all. My only consolation was that I wasn’t planning on staying there for long.

I turned slowly and found my mother standing several paces away. Her expression was one of anxiousness, and I saw that she was twisting the ring on her left hand. She still looked just like I remembered her. She wore the same V-neck rose colored blouse and jeans that she had on the day that Proctor supposedly killed her. My mother was always the most comfortable in jeans and casual clothes. The only thing that was elaborate about her attire was her wedding ring. For my mother, it was big and ostentatious, and yet she never took it off.

My father left her high and dry when I was just a baby, but she still wore the damn thing every day. Still, when she was upset or unsettled, she played with it like she was now. It was one of those unconscious ticks that made her human.

I wanted to rush to her and scoop her into my arms. Until just a few days ago, I thought that she was dead along with my sister, Gabrielle. Five years ago, Proctor supposedly killed them in front of me to punish me for trying to double cross him. In actuality, he hadn’t killed them at all, but just tucked them away for safe keeping until he could drag them back out in front of me again. He had used them to get what he wanted from me, which was agreeing to assist Paige in retrieving the relic.

Being imprisoned in Hell should have been the worst thing that happened to them, but Proctor had also tortured them with the worst violation of all. My mother and sister were demon possessed. I had no idea how long they had shared their bodies with the despicable souls of Proctor’s worst demons. It really didn’t matter. Once possessed, it was a long road to recovery for even the strongest of human wills.

What had it done to my family? Would they ever be able to be sane, normal people again?
Those were questions that I was afraid to find out the answers to.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Her voice carried a sharp edge to it now, and her mouth settled into a thin frown. “I didn’t think that I raised my children to be so impolite.”

I felt a swirl of emotions and memories and then I couldn’t contain it any longer. I moved toward her and pulled her into a bear hug. It was a brief moment later when I felt her arms wrap around my shoulders. I was almost twice her size, and I wished for a moment that it was back in the time of my life when my mother’s hug seemed to solve every problem. That ended for me when I was a teenager the first time I saw a dead person, but I could wish for it nonetheless.

“Mom, are you okay?” It was a stupid question. She was in Hell possessed by a demon. Of course, she wasn’t okay, but the question was automatic. There was one thing I did know. If there was anyone who could survive that kind of experience, it was my mother.

Over the years, I had gleaned information about small parts of my mother’s life before she got married and had me and my sister. She was one of those rare mortals who knew about both realms. She and my mentor, Alice, had been best friends in their youth. Something happened to them when they were teenagers that changed the course of their lives forever. Alice became a nun but dedicated her life’s work to finding out everything there was to know about magic and the creatures that existed in both realms. She had the power of her faith and her church to protect her from the less savory elements.

My mother had tried to forge a normal life away from everything that could be considered close to that other realm. She didn’t want any part of it. Who in their right mind would though? But fate played a cruel trick on her when it delivered to her a son that grew up to become a necromancer. That was more irony that wasn’t lost on me. Still, my mother was strong, clever, and stubborn. I had never known my father, but I always assumed I got those particular traits from her.

“This makes me feel better,” she replied. She squeezed me tighter for a moment and then released me.

I didn’t want to let her go, but I did so reluctantly. As she stepped back, my eyes searched the dark corners of the room around us. “Where’s Gabrielle?”

“She’s around somewhere,” my mother said. A dark shadow crossed her face. “We are allowed to roam quite freely when we agree to let the demon have control of our bodies.”

I felt the knot in the pit of my stomach tighten and twist. “This is all my fault. I’m sorry.”

She held up her hand. “You have to let that go, Riley.”

“You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for me. For what I tried to do. It is my fault, no matter what you say, so don’t try to make me feel better.” The words choked in my throat, but somehow I got them out. I would feel shame and guilt for the rest of my life. I cost my family their freedom and perhaps even their souls. “I’m going to make it right.”

Her eyes were sad. “You can’t undo the past. You know that.” She looked down at her shirt. It took a moment for me to register the dark smears of red on it. “You’re hurt.”

In the chaos, I had forgotten all about the wound that I suffered by Benjamin’s hand. He had gone for Paige, but I got to the tip of his knife first. I had suffered worse. “It’s nothing. Just a flesh wound.”

My mother brushed my hands away as I tried to keep her fingers away from my side. As I felt her fingers brush my skin, I bit back a yelp of pain. All of the adrenaline from the earlier fight was receding, and the acute awareness of my injury was beginning to surface.

“This isn’t a flesh wound.” My mother’s voice rose a notch. “I don’t know how you’re still standing up.”

I started to laugh, but then the sound was cut off as I felt the rise of liquid in my throat. The laugh turned into a twisted cough. I moved away from her just as it bubbled in my mouth. A metallic taste hit my tongue, and I spat a glob of thick blood onto the floor.

We both stared at it for a moment. Then another coughing fit overtook me, and I doubled over even though I felt the sharp protest of stinging pain from the wound in my side.

I felt my mother’s hands on my shoulders as she tried to brace me against the onslaught and keep me upright. More blood joined the first drop on the floor. Even as the last couple of coughs left my lungs, my mother pulled me across the room. A cot seemed to appear out of nowhere, and she propelled me onto it even as I protested.

“Paige is out there alone,” I said. I felt my thoughts starting to grow fuzzy around the edges. The pain was intensifying and blocking out everything else. I didn’t have time for this. “I need to find her.”

“You aren’t going to do anyone any good dead,” my mother admonished. I could tell that it was an effort for her to keep her tone even. I knew that expression. She was scared shitless. “I don’t know what happened to you or how you got here, but you need to rest. I need to get you cleaned up.”

“I can’t..stop.”
Was that my voice? It sounded tiny and weak.

“Your body won’t let you keep going, otherwise you’ll kill yourself. Stop fighting it.”

“Can’t.” I kept arguing because it meant that I still had the will to go on despite what my body said. But I knew that she was right. I had known from the moment that Benjamin pulled his knife out of my body that there was a real chance that I was going to die. The archangel had been taking people out for years. He knew how to deal a death blow with a single thrust. But I was determined to be the exception to his rule. My whole existence was an exception.

“I miss you,” I said. “I’m sorry.”