Page 20 of Hellfire to Come (Infernal Regions for the Unprepared #5)

Chapter Twenty

ALICE

It wasn’t sleep.

Sleep didn’t claw its way through your thoughts, or hum like a thousand wasps caught beneath your skin. It didn’t taste like blood and iron, or echo with voices that sounded like your own but spoke in tongues you didn’t know.

This was something else. A prison of magic.

I existed in the dark.

There were no walls, but I knew I couldn’t run.

There was no sky, but I felt like I was falling, perpetually, without end.

The curse Frederic had spun through me moved like smoke and barbed wire, curling tight around my mind, burrowing through my memories.

I could feel it feeding. It tore through who I had been, distorting the shape of myself in ways I didn’t understand.

Sometimes, I would catch glimpses, small flickers, of my own reflection in the black: my eyes too wide, my skin cracked like porcelain, my mouth stitched shut with golden thread. And somewhere far off, like wind brushing through the bones of a ruin, I heard laughter.

His laughter.

But lately… something had shifted.

The darkness still clung, but it didn’t fit right anymore. It scratched. It thinned. Like a snake shedding its skin, resisting, then unraveling. The threads of the spell writhed within me, pulling tighter the more I tried to resist.

And I was resisting.

I didn’t know how, not truly. But something inside me, a tiny shard, a sliver of defiance maybe, refused to bow. Maybe it had always been there. Maybe it was something I learned from Brooklyn.

Dear Universe, Brooklyn.

The moment I thought her name, pain sliced through me. Not physical but deeper. A truth.

An ache.

She was doing something.

I felt it like a pulse beneath the surface of this nightmare, like a call through water. Something was tearing at the curse from the outside. Gently, but with intent. I could feel her persistence and loyalty to me like a fire being held against glass. Warming. Cracking. Daring me to come back.

Damn, hope was a dangerous thing.

But I knew my friend too well. We were very different but very much alike.

If I could feel her as if she stood next to me, then she had to be close to me in a way she shouldn’t be.

She must have gone to someone. Done something.

Promised something. I should know because I would’ve done the same thing.

My anxiety screamed through the dark. What did you do?

The curse hissed at that. It didn’t like the intrusion. It didn’t like the crack in the wall. The space where light had begun to bleed through.

Suddenly, everything shifted.

It was like being ripped through the fabric of a dream. The sensation wasn’t kind or clean. It felt like falling through a mirror, glass shearing through every limb, until…

Heat.

Not flame. Something older. Something alive. It curled around my heart and lungs and bones. It recognized me. And more terrifyingly, it recognized Brooklyn.

Something had changed. I knew it. Felt it. The curse, once so embedded in me I couldn’t tell where it ended and I began, was retreating now. Not destroyed, but folding in on itself like a beast wounded in its den.

The pressure broke. I gasped.

Sound rushed in.

For a long moment, I wasn’t sure if I had actually opened my eyes, or if I’d only imagined doing so.

Everything was blurry, shifting shapes, half-formed shadows swimming in a haze of amber candlelight and something richer beneath it, like sunlight straining through molasses.

I blinked. Once. Twice. The room stilled and focused.

Wood-paneled ceiling. Worn rafters. The faint scent of pine and blood and burnt herbs.

I was alive.

“Shit…” Chester’s voice cracked mid-word, his hand knocking over a bowl of dried herbs. “Echo, she’s…she’s looking at me. She’s…Holy shit , she’s awake!”

The blur above me sharpened slightly.

Echo’s eyes locked on mine. Her breath caught in her throat.

Her hands froze, halfway between my chest and a bowl of glowing sigils etched in salt.

Or, sand. Things were very blurry without my glasses.

The wolf growled softly near my side, tail low, head tilted.

But there was no menace in him. Just stunned reverence.

“Alice?” Echo whispered, voice trembling, as if she was afraid saying my name might shatter the moment.

My mouth was dry. My lips cracked. But I forced the word past them anyway.

“Hey. This is not actually hell, right? I mean I’m awake in my own world? Right?”

Chester whooped so loud I flinched. “Oh, dear gods , she’s actually talking. She’s alive !”

He grabbed Echo in a wild embrace, spinning her around despite her protests.

“I’m fine,” I rasped, even though it was a bald-faced lie. Every nerve in my body was fried. My skin felt like it was made of bruises and regret. But I was awake.

Alive.

Lucid.

I blinked again, the weight of the room settling in around me.

I was back in the safe house. The cot beneath me was firm and familiar, and someone had clearly tried to make me comfortable, too many blankets, too many cushions, but all of it with care .

There were runes drawn on the walls. Burnt candles on every available surface.

The smell of incense, medicinal herbs, and desperation lingered thick in the air.

The wolf was still beside me, eyes locked onto mine like he didn’t trust the world not to take me again. His fur was still matted with blood. Mine? Someone else’s? I didn’t care. His presence made my chest ache with gratitude.

But one presence was missing.

“Where’s Brooklyn?” I asked, heart stammering.

Chester froze. Echo hesitated, eyeing me like one would eye a snake debating if it would slither away or bite you.

“She’s not hurt,” Echo said finally. “She’s not…hurt. She’s okay. She just… went to get help.”

“That’s vague,” I muttered. “even for a demon.”

“She went to the reservation,” she clarified after a beat. “To the shaman. Laughing Crow.”

My blood turned to ice. “She… what ?”

“You didn’t give us a choice, Alice,” Echo muttered, almost put out as if I was trying to be difficult just to make her day miserable.

“You were barely breathing. Rowan’s still barely alive.

Samir won’t speak to any of us—he is hiding in his room.

She said she’d do anything to get help. She left hours ago. Dominic went with her.”

My breath caught in my chest. I didn’t need to ask what Brooklyn meant by anything . I could feel it in the pit of my stomach, the way the spell inside me had changed. Rewritten itself. Not vanished, no. But no longer trying to consume me. Someone had paid its toll.

And that someone had been her.

“No, no, no,” I mumbled, trying to sit up. “We have to go. We have to stop her, get her to undo whatever stupid…”

“You’re not going anywhere,” Echo snapped, her touch gentler than her words.

She pushed me back down with a surprisingly steady hand.

“You’re barely here as it is. You just clawed your way back from whatever spell that bastard laid into your veins.

Sit. Breathe. Let your body remember how to be whole again.

The last thing I need is for Brooklyn to kill me because I let you get out of bed.

” She muttered that last part under her breath.

“But she…”

“She’s Brooklyn,” Echo said simply. “And that means she’s strong. And also, the most reckless, bull-headed creature I’ve ever met until she introduced me to you. If there’s a fight to be had for your life, she’s not losing it.”

Chester stepped forward, his grin softer now. “She told Dominic she’d wait. No violence. No threats. Just words.”

I swallowed hard. “That’s not her way.” I eyed him although he was very blurry, like he had grown a second head. “We are talking about Brooklyn, right? You’ve met the girl.”

“That should tell you how bad you were if she was willing to put blades and fangs aside just to get help,” he said.

I lay back against the pillows, trembling, my muscles aching with exhaustion. I could feel the remnants of the spell like soot in my lungs, but I could also feel her . Brooklyn. Not just a memory or a name but something warm threaded through the wreckage of me. Like a bond lit from within.

She’d bargained with the shaman; I knew it as well as I knew my name. I didn’t know what the price was that she had to pay, but I knew it would never be light.

I closed my eyes, letting tears fall freely now. Not because I was weak. But because I was alive . And because she had to sacrifice something to bring me back to the world of the living. I was tired of being a burden, a liability to her. Despite all my shortcomings, there she went again.

She’d saved me.

Again.

And when she returned, gods help whoever tried to stop me from saving her right back. I was going to pluck Laughing Crow’s hair one by one until she undid whatever she did to my friend.

After that I was going to sleep.

And eat something.

Not necessarily in that order.