Page 26 of Hellfire to Come (Infernal Regions for the Unprepared #5)

ALICE

I barely registered the sound of a door opening before I was already moving.

My legs didn’t ask for permission; they just flew.

Through the corridor, past the creaky floorboard near the pantry, around the corner of the house, my socked feet slipping and sliding over the wooden floors until I saw them.

Brooklyn and Dominic stood in the hallway like shadows turned solid, road-worn and still streaked with dust and tension. But they were real. They were back.

Alive.

I crashed into them like a bowling ball.

“Oomph…Alice…!” Brooklyn staggered under my weight as I hurled myself at her. Dominic, ever the shield, tried to catch us both, but we ended up collapsing backward onto the wall in a mess of limbs and laughter and the kind of relief that’s so sharp it borders on pain.

“You’re back! You’re back!” I cried, voice breaking halfway between sobs and hysteria.

“Do you know how mad everyone’s been? I mean, I’m so glad you’re alive, but what the hell, Brooklyn?

! Did you actually try to die again? Because I swear if you keep doing this, I’m putting you in a cage.

A magical, talking cage. With glitter wallpaper and no privacy! A pink one!”

She blinked, wide-eyed, horrified at the picture I painted and still stunned, her mouth half-open.

“I love you, too,” she murmured, and that was all it took for another wave of emotion to knock loose in my chest. I was bawling in her arms. Ugly crying with snot and everything.

Dominic groaned beneath us, shifting to sit upright. “Gods, Alice, I think you cracked my rib.”

“I think I cracked three,” Brooklyn muttered, rubbing her side, but she was smiling, and that was everything.

Echo and Chester came tumbling into the room a moment later, the noise impossible to ignore.

“There you are!” Echo cried, her gaze darting between us. “What happened? We know the shaman helped you. Obviously…” she flicked a wrist at me and I glared at her. “What did you have to do? Did she make you give blood? Sacrifice something? Did she speak in riddles?”

“Slow down,” Dominic said, holding up a hand.

Brooklyn winced and sat straighter, pulling herself out from the dogpile. “It’s... complicated.”

“Oh, come on,” Chester grumbled. “We’ve had nothing but ‘complicated’ since this whole thing started. At least give us the CliffsNotes.”

Brooklyn rubbed her temple and looked at me. “You’re okay?”

I nodded, sobering slightly. “I think so. I mean... I feel weird, but not like... cursed-weird. Just tired. Hollow. Like something burned out and left room behind it.”

Echo gave a relieved sigh. “At least you don’t need to worry about demonic possession.” When we all gaped at her she shrugged. I can sense those.”

Then her expression darkened slightly. “Rowan hasn’t woken up yet. Still unconscious. He’s stable, but... unmoving.”

A shadow passed over Brooklyn’s face. “We’ll figure it out,” she said softly. “We have to. The shaman didn’t offer any clue about him.”

And then, like a switch had been flipped, she harrumphed to herself under her breath.

“Here,” she whispered, reaching into her back pocket. “I almost forgot. You’ll need these.”

She pulled something small and familiar from behind her and held it out to me.

My glasses.

I stared.

“The shaman gave these to you?” Unease started clawing at my insides.

“No,” Brooklyn looked at me strangely. “You left them on the front steps. You should be careful, one of us can step on them.”

Everything else, voices, light, warmth, it all blurred to nothing. I took them into shaking hands. Scratched, slightly bent. Just as I remembered.

Except I hadn’t remembered. Not really. I had convinced myself it was a dream. A hallucination. Some leftover fragment of nightmare tangled in the threads of Frederic’s spell.

But it wasn’t.

They were real.

She was real.

And so was what happened.

“I thought...” I started, then stopped, trying to get my mouth to work. “I thought I made it up.”

The air shifted. All eyes turned to me.

“I wasn’t just held imprisoned. I mean, I was, but... there was something else. Someone else.” My voice was shaking now, brittle as glass. “Two men dragged me. I remember it. My head was spinning and everything was dark, but I heard them. Arguing.”

I looked at Dominic, then Brooklyn. “They said ‘she’ wanted to see me before the Council got back.”

Echo’s brow furrowed. “She?”

“I don’t know who. But she wasn’t part of the Council. I know that. She wasn’t one of them. She was something else.” I swallowed. “Someone they think they control but they don’t.”

Chester shifted uncomfortably. “You sure it wasn’t just a dream? What?” he snapped when Echo elbowed him. “We have enough shit to deal with without additional boogeyman being added to the mix.”

“No,” I answered when I could finally speak again. “Because I smelled her. And you can’t imagine smells, not like that. She smelled like…” I gagged slightly. “Like lilacs. Like something that should make me feel safe. Protected. Weirdly enough, it did make me feel better when I was around her.”

“Safe?” Brooklyn was looking at me with worry scrunching her features and I hated that I had to be the bearer of bad news.

“She smelled very similar to how Dominic smells.” I swallowed the lump clogging my throat.

“Another shifter maybe?” Dominic ever the logical one started connecting the dots immediately. But not even he could guess what I actually knew for certain now that I saw.

“A shifter, yes.” My hand reached for Brooklyn’s, and I grasped her fingers so hard I could hear her bones groan. “A female panther, with eyes like yours.”

Echo and Chester inhaled a sharp breath at the same time, their heads snapping toward Dominic who watched me with confusion.

“Eyes like mine?” he parroted. “That’s impossible, Alice. Only my family had this color eyes from the panther community. And they are all dead.”

My mouth opened to say something, anything really.

No words came out.

The door to the common room cracked open and all of us turned to look at it.

Rowan half stepped out half hung on the door handle, pale as a ghost, dull lifeless sigils flickering erratically all over his skin. Dark circles formed half-moons beneath his eyes that had lost all their color and looked see-through right now.

His gaze locked on Dominic immediately as if he listened to our conversation all along.

“Dominic…” Rowan rasped, his voice thready and raw. “Your…” Coughs raked his body and Dominic jumped up and rushed to catch him when he tilted—just about to fall over.

“My what, Rowan?” Dominic leaned over the witch, pressing his ear to the barely moving lips.

A sharp intake of air was followed by Dominic stumbling back and almost dropping the witch.

“What is it?” Brooklyn was instantly by his side, holding them both steady. “Dominic? What’s wrong?”

“My”—his frantic, shocked gaze met hers— “my sister is alive.”

Goosebumps covered me from head to toe even though I knew what Rowan would say.

“Frederic has my sister.” Dominic whispered.

Rowan shuddered and lost consciousness again.

And me?

I never wanted to see the look in Brooklyn’s eyes ever again.

For the first time in my life I was shitless scared of my best friend, my soul sister.

“I’m going to get her back,” she said calmly, evenly.

She had never sounded more menacing since I’d known her.

Shit was about to hit the fan.

And that asshat that cursed me?

Frederic was going to regret the day he was born.

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