Page 11 of Hellfire to Come (Infernal Regions for the Unprepared #5)

Chapter Eleven

brOOKLYN

We had to move.

The moment Rowan collapsed and Alice slumped against my chest, everything crystallized with a cold clarity.

The silence surrounding us wasn’t safety, it was the breath drawn before the scream.

Frederic wasn’t dead, much as I longed for it to be true.

He hadn’t even been injured badly enough to grant me a fleeting illusion of justice.

No, he was regrouping. Somewhere in the bowels of this cursed stronghold, he was gathering his wretched forces again, sharpening the blade he meant to drive through us.

And he would return. To gloat, to punish, to claim what he believed was his.

I shifted my grip on Alice, securing her limp form against me as her head lolled gently onto my shoulder. Her pulse, though faint, beat steadily against my fingertips, a fragile rhythm that was enough. She lived. That was all I needed.

But she couldn’t walk. And Rowan…

“Is he breathing?” I asked, my voice sharp with urgency.

“Yes,” Echo answered grimly. “But just barely. He won’t wake anytime soon.”

Dominic didn’t speak although I could feel his eyes on me, checking if I was injured without getting me upset by fretting over me.

He merely lifted Rowan’s inert body over his shoulder like a burden he had carried a thousand times before.

The witch hung lifelessly, limbs dangling, his face pale and hollow, as though the spell that had bound him had scraped out his soul and left the husk behind.

“Go,” I commanded, my voice low but absolute. “Move fast. We need to vanish before Frederic finds his footing.”

The wolf flanked my side, hackles raised, his entire body quivering with tension.

He padded in silence, his eyes ever scanning the shadows.

We began our retreat, our footsteps echoing down ruined corridors that groaned around us like a wounded beast. The very walls seemed to close in, sagging beneath the weight of the secrets they held.

There was magic here, rotting and old, clinging to the air like mildew on stone.

Dried blood painted sigils across the cracked flagstones. They whispered as we passed, voices from beyond the veil, echoing remnants of pain and madness and centuries of imprisonment. The kind of echoes you didn’t answer if you wanted to keep your soul intact.

But I couldn’t afford to listen. Not now.

Alice’s weight leaned heavier into me with every step, her heat bleeding into my side. The way her body hung, half-conscious and unmoving, was a blade twisting in my gut but I pushed it down. There would be time to grieve, to rage, to fall apart.

Later.

Now, there was only forward.

Chester led us onward, a flickering orb of demonic flame floating in his palm to guide our way. The light cast shadows that jittered against the walls, making the hallways ripple with movement that wasn’t really there.

“The back stairwell’s still intact,” the demon muttered over his shoulder. “If we cut through the old wine cellar, Echo and I found a tunnel we can use. Leads beyond the perimeter.”

“Good,” I said. Even though nothing about this was good. Everything about this place screamed trap. Screamed unfinished business.

And part of me feared we hadn’t escaped at all.

We were simply being let go, for now.

We turned a corner, and the air hit us like a wall.

Thick, rancid, suffocating. A fetid mélange of blood, mildew, scorched flesh, and the acidic tang of old magic clung to the stone like rot.

It wasn’t just a scent, it was a presence, a living memory of carnage embedded in the foundation of this place.

The corridor pulsed with a malignant resonance, as if the very walls remembered every scream, every curse, every drop of blood spilled in service of the twisted rituals wrought here.

Alice stirred faintly in my arms. A weak, incoherent groan vibrated against my collarbone. Her head lolled, her breath coming in shallow gasps. I bent down close, brushing her temple with my lips.

“You’re alright,” I murmured. “I’ve got you.”

She didn’t speak, but her hand twitched against my ribs somewhere between a grasp and a flinch. That was enough. Enough to tell me she was still fighting whatever terror they had done to her, even if just barely.

Behind us, the darkness shifted.

It was imperceptible at first, just the tiniest change in pressure, like the air being drawn inward. Then it grew; Cold and aware. The sort of presence that didn’t need to announce itself. It simply existed, as certain and terrifying as gravity.

Dominic stopped without a word. He stiffened, his head turning fractionally, his shoulders coiling with the silent tension of a predator who knew another had stepped into his domain.

“Keep going,” I said softly, but even as I uttered it, I knew it for the lie it was. The pressure crawling up my spine, the frigid bite of instinct licking beneath my skin, whispered a different truth. Something, or someone, was there. Not attacking. Not chasing.

Watching.

“Him?” Echo asked, barely more than breath. Her fingers hovered near her dagger, magic gathering at her fingertips like condensation.

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. Not with certainty. But I knew the scent of arrogance. I knew the quiet malice of something that enjoyed playing with its food.

Frederic wasn’t dead. As much as I had longed to see him broken and ruined, he hadn’t given us that satisfaction. No, he was alive. Perhaps wounded, perhaps biding his time but alive. And he had released us not out of mercy, but out of cruelty. He wanted us to run.

To think we’d escaped.

To hope.

Only so he could tear it all down again when the stakes were higher.

And that scared me more than a hundred Guardians at our backs.

“He’s letting us go,” I whispered. “Or thinks he is.”

“For what purpose?” Chester muttered, flame still crackling in his palm as he glanced over his shoulder.

“If we get out of this place?” I exhaled, bitter. “Does it matter?”

The ancient stone staircase loomed before us, crumbling and slick with moisture.

Echo ascended first, sure-footed despite the unstable setting.

Chester followed close behind, his magical flame casting ghastly shadows along the walls, elongated, monstrous things that twisted as if trying to crawl back into the mansion’s heart.

We moved in grim silence, the weight of what we’d endured pressing down as heavily as the unconscious bodies we bore. Dominic adjusted Rowan’s limp form across his shoulders without complaint, though the witch hung like a broken marionette, his limbs swaying with each jarring step.

Alice’s weight in my arms felt heavier now, not just physically, but emotionally. Her heat was growing, her skin nearly scalding. Whatever vile enchantment Frederic had left festering in her system hadn’t abated. If anything, it was thriving.

She was burning from the inside out.

“We need to get her out,” I said, my voice roughened by more than exhaustion. “Somewhere clean. Somewhere untouched by this cursed stone. We need to purge whatever he did to her before it consumes her completely.”

“We will,” Dominic said with quiet certainty. “But we can’t help her from inside a crypt.”

The moment we breached the upper tunnel—a dirt-walled corridor that reeked of damp moss and old blood—I felt a sliver of relief. Not safety. Not yet. But something close to breath.

The servant tunnels were narrow, the ceiling so low that Dominic was forced to stoop, and the walls were lined with brittle wooden beams and clawed-up stones. Roots had broken through the earth, curling along the walls, twisting deeper into the tunnel, splitting stone and wood as they went.

It felt like crawling through a corpse.

I pressed Alice closer, shielding her as best I could from the dripping ceiling and the grasping tendrils of the forest. Her fevered skin seared against mine, and I gritted my teeth to keep walking.

Every instinct I had was screaming to stop.

To set her down. To fix it. But we couldn’t stop. Not here. Not yet.

Behind us, the mansion groaned. The sound rolled like thunder down the passage: a low, lingering wail of ancient wood and crumbling stone.

The sound moved through the corridor in waves, low and thunderous, as if the very bones of the estate were cracking under the weight of its sins.

It wasn’t just decay we heard, it was despair.

Centuries of blood-soaked rituals and suffering compressed into one final, echoing lament.

A house in mourning.

A predator denied its kill.

And still, I did not look back.

That place had already carved too much from our souls, each wall steeped in echoes, each step haunted by ghosts we hadn’t yet named. Whatever power lingered there was ancient, bitter, and patient. If I turned, I feared it would remember my name.

We pressed forward, the air thick with dust and old wine.

At last, we emerged into what remained of the mansion’s lowest cellar, the remnants of the wine vault Chester had spoken of in a breathless hush back in the tunnels.

Time had not been kind to it. Most of the vault had caved in, the collapse opening a gaping maw of broken stone and exposed dirt.

And there, beyond the wreckage, was salvation.

An earthen tunnel stretched outward like a lifeline, carved from desperation or divine mercy, I didn’t care which. At its far end, thin daylight filtered in, a single silver ribbon smeared across the packed earth. It was a ghost of a promise. A breath of freedom.

Faint. Remote.

But real.

And it was enough.

“Almost there,” Chester said, his voice hoarse as he extinguished the flame in his hand.

“Don’t slow down now,” I urged, shifting Alice again. She groaned softly, her lashes fluttering.

“Brooklyn…” she whispered, barely audible.

“I’m here,” I said as my throat tightened. “You’re safe. I’ve got you.”

But even as the words left my mouth, I wasn’t sure they were true. Because safety was an illusion. And war was only beginning.

Frederic hadn’t let us go because we’d beaten him.

He’d let us go because now he knew exactly how far we would go for each other.

And he would use that.

He would exploit it.

And I would kill him for it.

With no hesitation. No mercy.

No looking back.