Page 17 of Hellfire to Come (Infernal Regions for the Unprepared #5)

Chapter Seventeen

brOOKLYN

To say I was unprepared for stepping into the shaman’s home would be the understatement of the damn century.

The moment my foot crossed the threshold, something ancient stirred, like a knife pressed gently to the underside of my ribs.

Not a threat, exactly. Not yet. But a warning.

Some primal instinct, buried so deep in my bones it predated language, snapped to attention, hissing like an animal too long caged.

With herculean effort, I smothered it. Wrestled it down where it writhed beneath my skin.

But she saw.

Of course, she did.

Laughing Crow’s eyes, too black, too wide, like obsidian moons carved into the hollows of her face tracked my every twitch. She didn’t speak. Didn’t move. Just watched as my feet faltered on the threshold and my fingers curled instinctively before I forced them still.

“Which way?” I asked, hoping she’d walk ahead so I could study her back instead of feeling her eyes scour mine like truths being etched from bone.

She didn’t answer. Just tilted her chin toward the narrow hallway pulsing with warm light.

Subtle, clear. I didn’t miss the message. You know where to go. Go.

And fine. She wasn’t wrong. The direction was obvious. I just didn’t like her witnessing my every misstep like she was tallying my worth in real time.

I swallowed my pride and stepped forward. The house groaned softly under my boots, the floorboards old, well-loved, and not altogether welcoming. The scent of sage and juniper hung thick in the air, masking something older. Smoke. Iron. Memory.

Dominic followed a step behind, steady as ever, his presence the only thing keeping me from unraveling into a thousand threads. But if I expected the shaman to acknowledge him, I was mistaken. She gave him only a flick of her gaze and nothing more.

No, her attention remained solely on me. A scalpel gaze. Watching not just what I was, but what I carried.

“I didn’t come here to start trouble,” I said quickly, ducking beneath a hanging bundle of dried thyme strung from the ceiling like a ward.

The kitchen we entered was sparse and weathered, more function than form.

The walls bore the kind of dust that carried generations, not neglect.

Mismatched furniture lined the space; A rocking chair in the corner cloaked in a faded quilt, gently swaying in an unseen breeze like some ghost was still lounging there.

“I wouldn’t have stepped foot on your land if I wasn’t desperate,” I continued. “This wasn’t a decision made lightly.”

“Yes, yes,” she muttered, waving one hand like she was shooing off gnats. “You’re all desperate when you come to me. Always on the verge of ruin. Alice was no different.”

Her voice sank into my spine like a thorn, and I halted mid-step.

“What?” I asked, turning my head slowly, narrowing my eyes.

She snorted, unfazed. “The two of you are carved from the same troublewood. Always running toward fire and then crying when you get burned. Maybe if you both made less spectacularly bad choices, you’d require less... assistance.”

I bit back my retort.

The shaman drifted across the room with a grace that defied age. She didn’t walk so much as glide, her bare feet silent against the old pine floor. Every movement carried authority, measured, exact. Like nature didn’t dare defy her.

A feline shape curled on the rocking chair stirred, a soot-colored cat who, upon laying eyes on me, instantly bristled. Her spine arched into a perfect crescent, green eyes slitting into knives. She hissed, lashing her tail like a whip behind her.

Until she spotted Dominic.

Then all hell broke loose.

Her pupils dilated, and she loosed a low growl like she was ready to summon the wrath of Bast herself. And Dominic, my ever-so-dignified mate, hissed back. Full lips peeled back over fangs in a snarl so primal I flinched.

The cat bolted.

Straight between us like a shot, claws skittering on wood, gone before I could even swear properly.

“Really?” I asked flatly, turning toward him. My voice was dry enough to start fires.

He just shrugged, utterly unrepentant. “She started it.”

“She’s a cat.”

“A disrespectful one.”

“Felines of any kind,” Laughing Crow said mildly, amusement dripping like honey from her lips, “are strange creatures—moody, territorial, dramatic. Little assholes. Especially with their own kin.”

She gestured toward two wooden chairs pulled up near the center of the room, her black eyes dancing with mirth. “Sit. Or hiss some more at each other, but preferably somewhere I don’t have to bless again.”

Her gaze lingered pointedly on Dominic, who arched a brow in that lazy, warning way he had. He didn’t like being dismissed, let alone mocked, but he was smart enough to pick his battles.

I jumped in before the situation could combust. “He’s aware of his assholish behavior,” I rushed to say, dragging a chair backward and collapsing into it before the situation got any weirder.

Dominic’s mouth twitched. Whether in amusement or protest, I couldn’t tell. But he remained standing behind me, arms crossed, eyes fixed on Laughing Crow like he didn’t entirely trust her not to turn him into a worm.

Wise, honestly.

She poured herself a measure from the soot-blackened kettle, steam rising in faint curls that drifted toward the ceiling. Then, without a word, she poured a second cup and offered it to me.

The clay mug was warm, no, hot , and the scent struck like a warning: pungent sage, scorched yarrow, and something darker beneath it. Bitter and old. Like regret, distilled.

She did not ask if I wanted it.

“You came for my help,” she said at last, her voice low and unhurried, yet sharper than my blades. “For your Alice. The girl who nearly knocked over three generations of my grandmother’s pottery while bleeding on sacred stone.”

I flinched despite myself. “Yes.” The word slipped out smaller than I intended. Too humble. Too raw.

The truth was, I had nothing polished left in me. No argument prepared, no clever plea. Just desperation curled tight behind my ribs.

Laughing Crow took a slow sip from her cup and studied me with those wide, dark eyes that seemed to look through skin and bone to whatever soul might still remain. She did not blink. She did not sit. She merely stood there, childlike and quiet, like the storm that hadn’t broken yet.

“Then tell me,” she said eventually, tilting her head just so in a birdlike manner. “As much as I’ve been dying to meet you…Why should I offer aid to someone like you ?”

Her words were not cruel. Not even scornful. Just... factual. Precise. And devastating.

I tightened my grip on the cup, grounding myself in the warmth.

“Because I am willing to pay any price for her life,” I said, voice steady even though I felt anything but.

“Because I’ve watched her fight for others long after she had nothing left for herself.

Because I would bleed out in this kitchen, on your ancestral floor, if it would buy her one more chance to live.

If anyone deserves to be saved, that’s Alice. ”

“And what,” Laughing Crow asked, tone sharpened by something colder now, “makes her life more sacred than the thousands of others your kind have taken?”

I swallowed hard. “Nothing,” I said. “Not a damn thing, yet here I am begging for your help.”

That seemed to catch her attention.

“I’m not asking for forgiveness for my kind,” I continued.

“Not from you. Not from the land. I know what I’ve done.

What I am. You feel it in your bones…I don’t belong here.

I’m poison to your soil and your air and your wards.

But Alice… Alice does belong. She chooses kindness always.

She chose hope. Even when it nearly killed her.

I didn’t drag her into this. She walked with me willingly because that is who she is.

And I would damn myself ten times over to save her from the consequences of that choice. ”

A long pause followed.

Her stare didn’t soften, but something behind it shifted. The air grew heavier, like the room itself was listening.

“So,” she murmured. “You offer your blood. Your life. To pay a debt if needed.”

I nodded once. “Willingly.”

“And what if the cost is not yours to bear?” she asked, her voice turning quiet as snowfall.

“What if the price falls on her ? Or worse, what is the payment is asked at a later date, unexpectedly, costing you something or someone you are not willing to part with?” her gaze flicked for a split second to Dominic and back.

If I was not watching her like a hawk I would’ve missed it.

That struck like a knife between my ribs.

I searched her gaze for any inkling that she was messing with me but something ancient stared back.

“Then at least I will know she was given a choice at life. She can decide if she wants to pay or not. I will decide how to deal with whatever is asked of me, as well. For now? She will get help. Not death disguised as mercy.”

Laughing Crow exhaled slowly, setting her mug down without a sound.

“You speak with pain,” she said. “But not just for her. You speak with shame. With the guilt of one who has tasted ruin and dared to ask for something better.”

I didn’t answer. There was nothing left to say. I had no defenses to offer, no lies, no shields, no claws. Only the jagged, bloody truth laid bare before her. I was a monster. She knew it. I knew it.

The land knew it, too.

Another long silence stretched between us.

Then, with the same unhurried grace as before, she turned and gestured toward the hallway.

“Come,” she said. “You’ll help me prepare the circle.”

I blinked. “You’re agreeing to help?”

“I’m agreeing to listen,” she corrected. “And that’s more than most like you have ever received.”

Then, just as she stepped out of view, she added over her shoulder, “And if your friend lives… it will not be because you begged well. It will be because something in the bones of the earth answered for you.”

Dominic reached for my hand from behind me. I didn’t realize how hard I was trembling until our fingers met.

It took a long moment before I felt comfortable to stand up without worrying that my knees would give out and I’d collapse. But with each step I took to follow the shaman, I was certain that all our lives were about to change forever.