Amaymon’s brows pulled together. His words were a garbled mess, slow and nearly inaudible. In his defense, it was difficult to speak the language of Hell with a mouth full of lava.
“I know she’s here,” I said. “I’ve come for her.”
Amaymon opened his mouth, and just when I thought he’d spew liquid fire all over me, he leaned back and shook with laughter.
“Her death was a sacrifice,” I said.
Amaymon stopped laughing and looked down on me quickly with a serious expression. He knew a sacrifice couldn’t be held in Hell, especially not Eden, The One, the Keeper of The Balance.
He thought about my words, then smiled again. “You may win the war, brother, but not the battle,” he gurgled.
I shifted, trying to come up with a reason for us not to fight, but Amaymon was positioning for one. I crouched instead. “Shit,” I hissed under my breath.
Chapter Five
Eden
For a time, the darkness held me. Disoriented, confused, unable to see or to hear anything—even my own breath. After a few seconds I realized it was because I wasn’t breathing. The last moments of my life came back in waves and then all at once. My mother’s tears, my father’s anger. Bex’s and Levi’s devastation.
Levi.
I could feel him. My senses were either confused or heightened. He was so close, his adrenaline heightened as if he were about to fight, but I knew he was still there, in my home, without me. I had no idea how to get back there, or where I was, but I had to get back to him; to ease the agony in his eyes moments before I left.
The blackness was sticky, possessive, and held on to parts of me that made it almost impossible to let go. My senses were jumbled, shut off, going haywire, as if tar-like fingers slipped beneath my skin and left me as cold as my surroundings. The cold was somehow refreshing, like sweet ice tea on a blistering hot summer day, and also somehow comforting and soft, making me think twice about breaking free.
Was it better that I stay? Would it be more peaceful without me? What if my return would only hurt those who loved me more? My mother didn’t have to worry about me another moment. Levi didn’t have to fight anymore. No one did. Their war was over if I would only stay away…
Those thoughts spoke in my voice, but they weren’t my own. They came from the darkness; whispering, hissing.
No.
NO.
The darkness had held me, but not tight enough.
As I pushed away from the cold depths, swimming upward through a lake in winter, every bone felt broken, every nerve screamed for me to rise faster, to push myself harder. Each cell in my body seeming to move together in unison at a wildly chaotic pace.
I concentrated, and my leg twitched. The movement caused a sudden burning pain to radiate up to my hip, into my abdomen, and then my chest. After the pain subsided, I willed myself to test the darkness again, and once more it punished me. An electric fence blanketed me, and each movement I made set it off.
As violent as was my end, my new beginning would be excruciating.
After a few moments building up courage and preparing for the pain, I willed myself up, breaching several levels, each time passing through what felt like hundreds of broken mirrors lined in acid and salt. My hair was on fire, my eyes melted, my fingers twisted, and my teeth gnashed in agony. And just when the pain became too much, in the hellish misery of knowing I would either be free or die again, it was over.
The same bench where my parents had first spoken was beneath me, my palms flat against the wood. My home was just a short walk away, my family inside, but I needed to rest and gather my thoughts for a moment under the warm light of the streetlamp nearby.
Was I alive?
Had I died and risen again like freaking Jesus?
Could I come back from the dead anytime I wanted?
What the hell did that make me?
Steam rose from my wet hair and the moisture on my skin. It was thicker than water, the odor similar to the bottom of a trash can, bad breath, and burnt skin. I wrinkled my nose, held my wrist to my mouth, and then let it fall away, unable to get away from the smell.
Crickets chirped loudly in my ear, as did the sound of worms writhing through loose soil, fluttering of a bat above me, and wind grazing the branches above. Those sounds I’d experienced before, not as concise, not as sharp, but they didn’t disturb me like the sounds of sap pulsing through the tree roots in the ground, a deer grunting and breathing ten miles away, the tingling inside a chrysalis as it shuddered in the wind, the blood moving through my mother’s heart. I could also feel her pain. I covered my ears and bent over until it stopped, but it only got louder.
“Stop!” I yelled.
Silence.
I sat up and looked around, unsettled. As much as I wanted to run home, I wasn’t sure how to announce my arrival. My family had just seen me die. How would I explain that their zombie daughter was home in time for dinner?
I stood, taking stock of my extremities. Something was different. Very different. Not off, more like extremely in-tune with all life, from inside me to miles away. When the sounds creeped in, I shut them off without effort, but hearing an ant pulling a donut crumb across the sidewalk before I could willfully ignore it made every step disconcerting.
“Mom?” I called, pushing open the front door.
The lights were out, the entire house dark. Claire’s new Bugatti wasn’t in the drive, so some time had definitely passed. I worried how much.
“Dad?” I called. Panic began to seep in as the idea that my parents would appear gray and elderly crept in, that Levi would be an adult with a wife and family of his own while I’d been held by death for what seemed like a few moments.
“Come into the light,” a familiar voice said. I could see him in the dark, even though he thought he was hidden.
I choked out my relief. “Bex?” He looked exactly the same as the last time I’d seen him. Same clothes, his eyes bloodshot and puffy from saying goodbye.
He stepped forward, the moonlight from the window glistening on the edge of his Glock’s barrel.
He swallowed as his eyes glossed over. “Who are you?”
I nodded. “This is weird, I’m sure. But … it’s me.”
His eyes narrowed. “This is a cruel trick, even by Hell’s standards.”
I shook my head. “It’s not a trick. Where’s Mom and Dad? Claire? Levi?” I gasped. “Where’s Morgan?”
Bex’s gun didn’t waver. “I’ll kill you where you stand, demon.”
“Bex, take a breath. Do I feel like a demon to you?”
He paused, then shook his head. “Eden?”
I nodded.
A tear fell down his cheek, but he still targeted me, unsure. “How?”
I shrugged. “I just remember being stuck in the dark, but then I found my way back.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Is it?” I asked.
“Are you here to kill me?”
I frowned. “No? You’re my uncle. Why would I kill you, dumbass?”