Page 10 of Hellfire to Come (Infernal Regions for the Unprepared #5)

Chapter Ten

ALICE

I should’ve known it was too easy for me to get to a point where I could see my friends.

Stupidly, I didn’t think anything of it until it was too late.

Shuffling forward with strength I didn’t have, I started to doubt that I was out of that damn prison.

Maybe my nearly broken mind conjured a story where I was free and almost away from the hellhole they kept me in.

The corridor still echoed with the chaos of battle, shouts, metal ringing, the sharp coppery sting of blood in the air.

My knuckles were raw, the rusted pipe shaking in my grip, and yet…

when I saw Brooklyn charging toward me, I felt safe.

I shouldn’t have. Not here. Not ever around the bloody vampires.

But my friend was a blazing star in the dark, unstoppable, blood-slicked and radiant with fury. She was coming for me. Tearing everything and everyone apart that stood in her way.

My knees almost buckled from the relief.

That was when the shadows behind me twisted.

I barely had time to turn before a cold arm wrapped around my throat and dragged me back against a hard, immovable chest. A blade pressed under my chin, the prickly metal biting at the tender spot there. I froze, sucking in a sharp breath as fingers like ice clamped down over my shoulder.

“I was wondering how long it would take you to find her,” purred Frederic, his voice curdling the blood in my veins.

Brooklyn’s eyes snapped wide as her feet skidded to a stop a few yards away.

“What a lovely reunion.” he cooed beside my ear, silken and sharp as a razor. “How very touching.” Long strands of his silky blonde hair fell over my shoulder when he grazed the tip of his nose on the side of my face, sniffing me.

That sleazy asshole.

Of course, it was him.

I’d never seen Brooklyn look so murderous.

“Let her go, Frederic and I might kill you quickly,” she growled, each word soaked in venom.

“Mm-mm.” He tutted, dragging me back a step into the deeper gloom behind us. “Not unless you’d like to see what color your dear friend is on the inside.”

The blade nicked my neck. I held still, swallowing hard. My hands gripped the pipe tighter, but one wrong twitch and I was dead. I knew that. So did he.

None of us moved.

Not Echo. Not Chester. Not Dominic, who’d shifted back to his human form and stood like a coiled spring, nostrils flaring.

His eyes still glowed faintly with his animal close to the surface, darting between Brooklyn and me like he was debating which way to pounce if the opportunity presented itself.

Even the wolf was frozen in place although it was obvious how badly he wanted to come to me.

His body was trembling from the effort to stay put.

I hoped he’d listen because I’d hate to watch him being killed.

“If any of you so much as breathe the wrong way,” Frederic continued conversationally like we were all out for a stroll, “I’ll slit her throat from ear to ear. And wouldn’t that be tragic, Brooklyn? You fought so hard to save her… only to watch her die at your feet.”

“I dare you, do it,” she whispered, all emotion disappearing from her face. It was as if someone else who looked exactly like Brooklyn stood there, but it wasn’t her. Her power flared so hot the very walls groaned with it. “See what happens to you, Frederic, when I have nothing holding me back.”

Frederic only smiled wider.

“I believe I’ve said this before,” he drawled, and I almost gagged when he shifted, bumping into me, and I felt his erection poke my lower back.

The creep was getting hard from the prospect of killing me, or from taunting Brooklyn.

Either way, it was disgusting. “But you’re magnificent when you lock your humanity away.

I cannot wait to have you back where you belong.

Your friends started joining us already and they are waiting for you to come home. ”

So, it was from taunting Brooklyn. He was repulsive.

Then I felt the power creeping toward me and every other thought drifted away. A ripple of vile magic sliding through the air like oil. My stomach turned.

From the shadows behind Frederic, another figure emerged into the flickering torchlight.

“Rowan!” Brooklyn’s voice hissed with so much venom that even I flinched.

My breath hitched like it had been knocked from my lungs.

It was Rowan.

Same bold head. Same long worn cloak. Same eyes, only… they weren’t his bottle green peepers. They were dull. Vacant. Like a puppet waiting for a string to be pulled.

He didn’t blink.

Didn’t speak.

Didn’t even see us.

“Oh no,” I breathed. “Rowan? No, no, no.”

“Look who joined us,” Frederic said brightly while bile rose in my throat. “I left him alive. I simply found a better use for him.” Sounding disappointed, he started shaking his head and the blade dug deeper into my skin. “He was a horrible witch anyway.”

Brooklyn took a half step forward, eyes wide, shaking her head. “Rowan? Rowan answer me.” My friend used that tone in her voice which forced anyone to obey her but not a muscle moved on Rowan’s face.

“He can’t hear you,” Frederic interrupted. “He’s quite… borrowed, shall we say? A rather exquisite blend of witchbinding and possession. Nasty business, really. Messes with the soul, I’ve heard. But, on the bright side, he’s terribly obedient.”

The old vampire removed his hand from my shoulder, and his fingers twitched once in a graceful motion at the dazed witch next to us.

Rowan moved.

Fast.

Straight toward Brooklyn.

A scream lodged itself behind my teeth, but I didn’t dare move.

Thankfully, she dodged just in time, sliding back as Rowan’s hands lifted in front of him and lit up with intense visible energy, blue-white sigils sparking like lightning around his fingers.

He threw a wave of that energy at her, and it cracked the stone floor where she’d been standing a second ago.

“No!” I screamed, struggling in Frederic’s grip.

Damn him and that knife he held on my throat.

“Let me go, you piece of shit!” I slammed my elbow back into his ribs, felt the impact, but he didn’t even flinch.

I was about to slam the pipe I still clutched in my other hand but I immediately froze.

Magic shivered down his arm and tightened like a vice around my neck and shoulders. I was paralyzed from neck to waist.

Brooklyn didn’t strike back, I realized in horror.

She couldn’t.

Her expression was carved from agony and restraint, but all she did was dodge every attack from Rowan.

“Fight back!” Chester roared, trying to rush forward, but Echo slammed a hand across his chest, preventing him from coming between Brooklyn and Frederic. Her eyes blazed.

“She can’t fight, you idiot!” Echo hissed. “Not until Alice is clear!”

Brooklyn ducked another blast, then rolled, narrowly dodging a rune sigil meant to turn her insides into wall decorations.

Rowan advanced like a whirlwind built for destruction. Precision in every movement, methodical, calculated. He launched another spell, this one a narrow beam of scorching light that sliced clean through a support column beside Brooklyn’s head.

She dropped into a crouch, rolling through a plume of shattered stone and heat, her body a blur. Sweat gleamed on her brow as she rose behind the debris, breath ragged, gaze finding mine for the briefest, electric second.

The anguish there nearly undid me.

She wanted to end this. She wanted to kill Frederic. She wanted to protect me, as she always had, more.

But she couldn’t. Not without sentencing me to death.

And Frederic knew that all too well.

“Oh, the poetry of it all,” he murmured, his voice a velvet blade curling against my ear. “Your lethal little guardian, reduced to inaction by sentiment. How tragic.”

“You’ll regret this,” I said, jaw clenched so tightly my teeth ached, vision blurring under the weight of whatever power he used to squeeze my ribcage.

“Possibly,” he replied with a languid shrug. “But regret is a game for mortals, darling. And I’m rather immortal, I’m afraid.”

Rowan struck again, this time summoning a corkscrewing vortex of fire and electrical charge that shrieked through the air. Brooklyn dodged by inches, landing hard against a jagged outcrop of wall. Blood trickled from a gash along her temple, yet she pushed up again without hesitation, without fear.

She never paused.

Behind her, Chester strained against Echo’s restraining hand, his expression a storm of wrath and desperation. The wolf prowled in tense arcs, jaws frothing, a low growl reverberating through the stone like a bad omen.

“Brooklyn,” Dominic was as still as a statue as he growled, his voice roughened with urgency. “We need to go. We can return another day for Alice.”

“No,” she bit out, ducking as another arc of sigil-fire seared past her cheek, singeing the ends of her hair.

“Anytime you want to start fighting works for me, female!” Chester bellowed, eyes darting between Rowan and the blade still pressed to my throat. Something had freaked out the demon but I had no clue what.

Frederic’s hand twitched, and agony bloomed through my ribcage as the invisible bindings forced me to my knees. The pipe clattered to the floor beside me like a useless relic from my paralyzed hand.

Brooklyn took a step forward, arms lifted; Not to attack, but in supplication.

“Rowan,” she said, her voice taut with urgency and sorrow.

“Rowan, it’s me. You don’t have to do this.

Please. I know you didn’t betray us. Dominic assured me.

Fight him.” Her voice took that tone again. “Fight him, Rowan.”

But Rowan didn’t blink. His hands continued to dance, sigils flaring brighter, more intricate, twisting into incantations designed to dismantle souls, not just bodies.

“Brooklyn!” I choked, panic rising in my throat. “You have to stop him…he’s going to kill you!”

Her eyes flicked to me, burning with quiet resolve. “I won’t risk either of your lives.”

“You’ll risk your own?!” I cried, heart clawing against its cage.

Her answer was simple. Unflinching.

“Always.”

And then the air shifted.

Not just temperature, but something deeper, like the architecture of reality had flinched. The sigils in Rowan’s hands began to sputter. His arms shook.

Frederic’s pleasant mask twisted in displeasure. “Oh, don’t tell me the puppet has found a string of his own.”

In a blur of motion, Brooklyn sprang, not toward Rowan, but toward me. Her blade arced like a falling star, a desperate gamble, a calculated risk.

Frederic snarled, yanking me backward, tightening the bonds he had around my upper body. Magic snapped around my limbs, pain coiling through my spine like barbed wire.

Brooklyn couldn’t reach me in time if he decided to jerk the blade across my neck but it forced Frederic to shift his focus. Just long enough.

The spell holding me paralyzed weakened.

I moved.

I slammed my head backward, catching him between his legs right over his erection. There was a scream, a satisfying, shrill shriek, and his grip loosened.

I dropped to the floor and seized the pipe, still slick with my own blood and sweat.

And I swung with everything in me.

The blow struck his kneecap with a sickening crunch. He howled, magic flaring wild around him and then, without fanfare, he vanished. Dissolved. Like mist into the night.

He was gone.

The crushing weight on my chest evaporated. The bonds fell away.

I hit the floor, coughing, lungs burning, every nerve frayed to the quick.

“Rowan…” Brooklyn whispered inching slowly to place herself between me and the witch.

He stood as if suspended, mid-cast, arms trembling.

“I know you’re in there,” she said, softer now, each word a balm and a plea. “Don’t let him do this to you. Don’t let him erase you.”

His lips parted. A faint breath escaped.

“I… can’t…”

But he hesitated.

Brooklyn moved with excruciating care, inching forward, her palms still raised.

On the other side, Echo leaned toward Chester, voice barely a whisper. “If he lashes out again, I’ll stop him. Possessed or not.”

“No,” Brooklyn said, keeping her eyes locked on Rowan’s. “He’s one of us. And we don’t kill our own.”

Rowan’s fingers spasmed.

And then… his knees buckled.

He crumpled to the floor, unconscious, blood trickling from his nose and down his chin.

The sigils around him flickered out like extinguished candles. The tension dissolved, leaving only silence. Thick, aching silence.

I stood trembling, everything inside me clenched tight. The iron pipe was still clenched in my hand, streaked with sweat and blood. It felt like a joke now, absurd in its inadequacy after everything we’d just endured. But I held onto it anyway, white-knuckled and shaking.

My gaze met Brooklyn’s.

Then the adrenaline gave out.

The room tilted sharply. My knees turned to water. I wobbled a step forward, but the floor was a wave and I was drowning on it. The stone walls swam in and out of focus, growing dimmer with every blink.

“Brook…” I started, but the word didn’t finish. My voice failed me.

Everything became a blur.

I saw her move before the floor started spinning and I lost my footing. Before the darkness swallowed me, I felt my friend’s arms catch me so I didn’t hit the ground.

“I got you,” she said, and I was lost to the dark.