Page 64 of Love At the Gates of Hell (The Seven Sinners Trilogy #1)

forty-three

Gideon

Gideon wasn’t sure he’d ever been in love before.

Real love . The kind that made a heart ache with need and want and hope.

It had always felt too dangerous in their line of work.

He was a professional thief. There was no white picket fence.

No two-and-a-half kids and a dog. He knew firsthand after dealing with the tumultuous bullshit between his parents that hoping for anything like real love would just bite him in the ass.

His mother walking out and never coming back.

His father throwing himself into his work in order to avoid coming home to a house without a wife.

He had learned not to set himself up for disappointment.

Gideon prioritized the work. He prioritized Luke.

They had been through too much together.

Taken on the burden of adulthood when they were both too young.

When the bills were piling up. When homework had to get done and dinner needed to be made.

When someone had to argue with the electric company about late bills or fix a broken pipe in the kitchen.

Gideon and Luke against the world.

He’d do anything to protect his brother. He always would.

Which was exactly why he had been so quick to shrug off his jacket and roll up his sleeve. If anyone was going to help his brother heal, it was going to be Gideon. That was just what they did for each other.

He never expected Benny to offer herself up.

This was the same woman who once calmly threatened to set his brother on fire, and now here she was, stepping in so easily, willing to give him blood they all knew was like fucking catnip to vampires. Could she possibly know what that would mean to Gideon?

Could he let her go through with it?

And as that argument played out in his head, he realized what all of these emotions and feelings he had for Benny had been building into.

The thing he had been hesitant to name. In these last few weeks, in these countless hours spent together, in sharing the same walls, his feelings for Benny had seemed as natural as breathing, sleeping, eating.

Like they were just intrinsically a part of him.

He’d never known love could feel like this.

What the aching, twisting feeling in his chest had been hinting at.

“Are you sure?” Gideon asked.

He needed to hear her say it again.

“Yes,” she said, as if it was nothing. “Honestly, it makes the most sense—”

“No. No way, Benny,” Luke said quickly, shaking his head, a wince passing through his lips as he pressed his hand to the floor to better prop himself up. “You said that I could never—”

“Luke,” she cut in, her voice a little frazzled. “I know what I said. Consider this an exception to the rule.”

“I don’t think I can,” he replied, avoiding her gaze, and Gideon couldn’t remember the last time he saw his brother this torn. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Benny reached out, her fingers grazing against Luke’s jaw.

“You won’t,” she said gently.

“What if I can’t stop?” Luke asked, finally turning back to look at her.

Gideon huffed out a breath.

“You’ll stop,” he said with a pointed look. “Or I’ll shoot you, too.”

Benny fixed Gideon with a roll of her eyes, but there was something affectionate about the gesture.

“You’ve been battling with blood lust this whole time,” she told Luke. “Believe me, I can see it now. I trust you. Besides, I’m not sure we can do this without you.”

“No, you probably can’t,” he said, smug despite his injury.

Gideon narrowed his eyes, “Okay, Lucas, let’s get this over with.”

He tried to maneuver Luke more firmly out of sight, letting the rows and rows of prayer candles behind them work as cover.

Benny inched forward before resting back on her heels as she held out her left arm for Luke.

Gideon could see the hesitation in Luke’s features, the way his brow furrowed as he reached for her arm.

He was nervous. Gideon could tell that much. But he was hungry, too.

Gideon felt like a fucking idiot.

Blood lust.

He hadn’t considered what the reality of that would look like for either of them.

His brother’s face shifted, and he tried to pluck out the features that still felt like Luke, that reminded him that his brother was still in there.

There was a moment that hung between the three of them, the silence so loud it drowned out the rest of the chaos in the cathedral.

And then Luke sank his fangs into her skin.

A small gasp passed through her lips and she reached for Gideon, her hand brushing against his chest, fingers curling in the fabric of his shirt.

He couldn’t bring himself to watch what was happening so he focused on her face.

On the tremble in her touch. On the way her lips parted as Luke continued to drink.

There was a hum in her skin as his fingers curved around her wrist. Like a thrumming of electricity.

He held her hand to his chest, right over his heart, and she looked up. There was a softness behind her eyes, like a little glimmer of that hope he never thought could apply to him. And it scared the shit out of him.

“God, you know you two are ridiculous, right?” Luke muttered as he pulled back, wiping at his mouth. “Like goddamn teenagers.”

Gideon scowled as he shook his head. Benny pulled her arm back, little beads of blood pooling at the fang marks in her forearm.

Gideon could see the way her skin flushed pink against the stark white of the dress she was wearing and he hoped to all the gods he didn’t believe in that they’d make it out of this alive.

A heavy thud came from deeper within the cathedral, like a bleak reminder of what was still left for them beyond the pillars they were hidden behind.

“You good?” Gideon asked his brother.

“Brand-fucking-new.” Luke grinned. “Jesus Christ, Benny, this feels fucking great.”

The corner of Benny’s lips twitched.

“Don’t get used to it,” she warned as she moved to get up.

Gideon was quick to steady her, rising first before helping her stand. She looked up at him even as she reached her full height and he noticed she was a little wobbly on her feet. He frowned. “Are you good?”

“As ever,” she replied.

“I feel like I can lift a fucking tractor trailer,” Luke exclaimed as he sprang to his feet.

“Great, you might have to,” Gideon said as they discovered Frank or Halmanthoran or whatever the fuck he was grabbing a man by his shoulders like he was an action figure and tossing him over the side of a pew. “Because I think we’ve only just gotten to the hard shit.”

“Just now?” Benny asked wearily.

He shrugged. “Relatively.”

Luke clapped his hands together. “Well, let’s fuck some shit up, folks.”

Almost as if he summoned it, a stray bullet whizzed past Gideon’s ear, and he whipped to the left to see Harker in the throes of battle with a particularly grizzled-looking vampire.

The demon hunter landed a heavy elbow into the vampire’s stomach and knocked her back before driving a stake through her heart.

He looked up with a sheepish grin as the ash pooled at his feet.

“Sorry, love,” he called out with a wave. “I tried to stop her.”

“We’ve already dealt with one bullet wound, Harker,” Luke called back.

“You look fine to me, darling,” the demon hunter retorted as he swung his staff around his shoulders, knocking back two more vampires. “Plan to join back in the fray?”

“Like I’d let you get all the glory.”

“Benny,” Gideon said. “What do you need from us?”

“Time,” she said, hands wringing against her chest. “Right now his only focus is finding me. Whatever his use is, I don’t know but—”

“Your heart—” Gideon felt his whole body tense.

“If he can’t have me as his own personal witch,” she said with a shrug.

“We’ve really gotta kill that sonofabitch,” Luke growled.

“How much time?” Gideon asked.

“As close to sunrise as possible.”

In the absolute fucking mayhem that was Our Lady of Perpetual Help’s current state, Gideon found himself back-to-back-to-back with Harker and Luke as they all brawled against a handful of vampires.

Gideon wiped at his face with the back of his hand, brushing away the beads of sweat that pooled at his forehead.

There was a thick heat within the cathedral.

From the sticky warm September air or the fucking gate that led to Hell beneath their feet, he wasn’t sure. But the atrium was stifling.

“So, tell me about your angel,” Harker said in between punches.

“You told him?” Gideon grunted, tossing his brother a look.

“Oh, I told him.” Luke laughed. “Of course I told him.”

“Well, I’m glad one of you did,” Harker snapped as he drove his wooden staff into the center of a vampire’s chest. “That’s not exactly an everyday kind of event.”

“Because the rest of this is,” he retorted dryly.

“Knowing that the heavens have a stake in this changes everything.”

Harker was bleeding from the lip, his staff resting against his shoulder.

“Were they hot?” Luke asked.

“ What ?”

Gideon dodged a swing of a fist, spinning around him and ramming his heel into the back of a man’s knee.

The men at Frank’s disposal seemed endless.

For every one they killed, two more seemed to pop up in their place.

It was an exhausting onslaught. But it meant they had time, whatever time Benny needed.

“Were they hot?” Luke repeated slowly as the vampire he was fighting gave him a funny look. He narrowed his eyes as he staked him in the middle of his chest, the ash hovering in the air for a moment before sinking to the ground. “It’s an honest question!”

“No, they weren’t hot, Lucas,” Gideon said as he fired a wooden bullet into the chest of a vampire. “They had like four heads, and only one of them was human.”

Harker fixed him with a concerned glance.

“They came to you in their true form?”

“Was there another option?” Gideon asked, grateful for the breather.

The demon hunter chuckled, his head shaking.

“Oh, love,” he said. “How do you attract such trouble?”

Gideon wished he had an answer to that question.

“What did they say?” the demon hunter asked.

“What did who say?” Cleo asked as she ducked behind a nearby pillar to reload.

“Gideon was visited by an angel last night,” Luke said.

“Jesus Christ,” Gideon muttered with a roll of his eyes. “Just tell everyone.”

“Holy shit,” Cleo said, blowing out a breath. “Like a whole-ass angel?”

“Four heads and everything,” Luke offered.

Cleo seemed to consider that visual, her head nodding just slightly.

“Well, I can see how opening up the gates of Hell would probably piss them off,” she said as she rested her head back against the pillar.

“They said something about atoning,” Gideon said, though it felt difficult to recall the exact wording. Like their interaction was purposefully fading from his memory. “Like maybe we were the sinners and not that sack of shit out there.”

“Typical,” Harker muttered. “What else?”

Gideon scrubbed a hand across his face, his fingers coming away with blood.

“That was it,” he said, his eyes falling to Luke.

His brother said nothing.

Only Luke knew what the angel said about Benny.

Tefi came sweeping into the atrium, her mace dragging on the floor beside her as she licked at her fingertips. She had a splattering of blood across her face and chest, and she looked feral, her eyes still glowing red as she approached.

“We’re running out of time,” she announced.

“You’re certain?” Harker asked.

Tefi nodded, wisps of her long, dark hair slipping from her ponytail. A part of him couldn’t believe she was here. Messy hair, a tear in her sleeve from what Gideon assumed was an earlier fight, and actually helping.

Another part of him wondered what they’d pay in return.

“It’s only a matter of time before what’s down there comes up to join us here,” she said as she gestured toward the floor. “And we do not want that.”

Gideon remembered what she said about the hierarchy of Hell. He had never seen fear in her before. He wasn’t sure she was capable of it. But the picture she painted, of dozens of demons like Halmanthoran roaming the earth, the gates of Hell wide open—he understood that fear.

Completely.

“Just think of Cinderella’s castle,” Harker said.

“What do you mean?” Cleo asked as she rubbed her shoulder, her fair skin a little red and flushed, a trickle of blood at her cheek bone.

“If one door is open…” Harker started hesitantly.

“Then they’re all open,” Tefi concluded.

“And you waited until just now to tell us?” Luke scoffed, rubbing absently at the healed wound in his gut. He had lost his suit jacket somewhere in the fray, and the red splash of blood on his shirt was starting to darken as it dried.

“I had hoped it wouldn’t get to this,” Harker sighed. “And why make things worse?”

“This must be our only priority,” Tefi said impatiently. “We must close them.”

“Gonna be a little hard with Godzilla and his men over there,” Gideon said.

“Not for much longer.”

Benny’s voice was clear as she reached the group.

She had been doing her best to keep out of Frank’s sight.

Fighting just out of Frank’s reach. A game of cat and mouse that had Gideon rattled with nerves.

But so far, it was working. At the expense of nearly everyone’s energy and a few unfortunate casualties in the Caruso family as they took the brunt of distracting the demon.

They threw every bit of firepower they had at the demon.

Trying to keep him contained to just one part of the cathedral.

The size of the church was their only real advantage until Benny felt like it was time.

But they were getting closer and closer to sunrise.

“How?” Cleo asked, exasperated. “There’s not a single weapon here that’s been able to put a dent in him. We’ve tried.”

“Not every weapon,” Benny replied darkly.

Gideon’s whole body tensed. He could feel the heat coming off her skin.

The nuclear option.

“Benny,” Gideon said, his voice gruff. “Are you sure? Do you even know how this will work?”

But her face was resolute.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I won’t let him win. I won’t let him walk out those doors.”

He reached for her, his hand grazing hers, ash staining his skin.

“I promise we’ll be okay,” she said.

He nodded. It was all he could do.

“Tefi, what do you need to close the gate?” Harker asked.

“A life,” the other vampire replied. “I was thinking one of Frank’s men would do rather nicely.”

Gideon glanced back down at his watch as a plan began to whir in his mind.

“I think I know how we can swing this.”