Page 49

Chapter 48

Not My Nightmare

Jemma

“W hat are you going to do with Joe?”

Hellen ignored me, using the same strange air magic she’d used in the apartment to propel me along the dark, smelly, hotter-than-the-surface-of-the-sun tunnel. There were doors at regular intervals along the hallway, and occasionally a thin wail or a screamed, “Please, no!” would reach my ears.

Both Joe and I were royally screwed.

She’d portalled us into a chamber so similar to the one I’d spent the night with SJ in that it could only be Hellen’s private quarters. She’d pinned me to the wall with her wind before chaining Joe to what looked like a Medieval torture rack in the corner.

“Don’t you hurt her!” he’d warned, fire in his eyes and not a hint of fear for himself. Darting his gaze to me, he’d begged, “Don’t let her hurt you!”

And then Hellen had swept me out of the room on her foul breeze before I could do so much as say a goodbye to my brother.

My stomach swooped, picturing just what she might do to Joe. Images of him whipped, sliced … bleeding and broken … flooded my brain.

“What you really should be concerning yourself with, Mini Bliss, is what I’m going to do with you .” Hellen waggled her sharp eyebrows at me. “I’m going to make a deal with you. If I’m not mistaken, you have one last task left on your little FiendPay contract, yes?”

Hellen paused as an enormous, maroon demon approached, his fat wobbling as he leered at me. His eyes roved my body, my mini skirt and cropped Sailor Moon T-shirt. His horns lengthened, surrounded by midnight blue hair, and he gripped himself between the legs, an appreciative growl ripping from his throat.

I spat at him.

Hellen slapped me. My head snapped back, my cheek smarting, my eyes watering. She turned to the demon, who was … eww … licking my loogie off his cheek.

“This one’s mine !” she snarled. The demon put his hands up placatingly, threw me one last lascivious look, and ambled off.

I shuddered. Monster romance be damned—that guy was super creepy!

“Isn’t there supposed to be a famine down here?” I asked archly. “Couldn’t tell, that creep was very well fed by the looks of it!”

“SJ really has been telling all our secrets, hasn’t he?” Hellen hissed, her wind forcing me on once more. “Famine from soul misery isn’t as simple as your pathetic human needs. It’s a withering of the soul.”

“Demons don’t have souls!” I argued. She retaliated by slapping me again.

“Everything has a soul,” she muttered. “Not all souls are created equal, though. The human soul is particularly … nourishing. Your little lives are so short, so your souls burn extra brightly. And yours … well, yours is delectably powerful.”

She sniffed, and another surge of wind had me staggering forwards, the rock biting into my palms as I just stopped myself from face-planting on the ground.

“Speaking of souls, finally, you will actually be faced with a task that is worthy of winning your soul back. None of this namby-pamby ‘dinner out at a fancy restaurant’ business. You survive what I have in store for you—with your sanity intact, that is—and I’ll return this little bit of your soul to you.”

She produced the Token, holding it in front of me. I squinted. It was so bright. Well, of course it was. I would run out of fingers if I tried to count all the different types of terror I was feeling.

“Pfft! A walk in the park!” I scoffed, but my voice squeaked and shook. Hellen grinned evilly.

“You say that now … but you really have no idea what you’re about to encounter.” She stopped at a door. I strained my ears, but only silence met me.

“In you go!” Hellen cackled, wrenching the door open and shoving me inside. The last thing I saw as the door shut, and I was plunged into pitch black, was Hellen’s sneering face.

* * *

Don’t faint. Do not pass out, Jemma!

My breath sawed painfully in and out of my lungs. Eyes closed tight, head against my knees, hands over my ears. Rocking back and forth. Back and forth.

If I stayed like that, I could pretend that the reason for the utter dark was just my position. Not the completely unknowable space I was locked in. It could be vast, with no walls. No ending.

It could be tiny, and if I reached my hands out, I might find the edges were too close … much too close.

Or … I might not be alone.

I swallowed down a scream, sweat slicking my forehead and making my head slip against my knees.

Just get through this. Get through this, and get that Soul Token back, and get the Hell out of … Hell!

But Hellen hadn’t specified how long this ordeal would last. What if she left me here for days … weeks? I was human, not one of their eternal souls to torture! I would starve, die of thirst in this dark cesspit that was rapidly filling with all the horrors my mind could conjure up.

Don’t faint. Do not faint!

Footsteps, as if on stairs.

Was I imagining that sound? Or was this place taking my worst memories and replaying them?

Oh no, oh no, oh no.

I couldn’t relive that night again.

But then …

The swing of an object through air. A grunt of pain. A scuffle. Muffled shouts.

“Get out of my?—”

That voice.

Oh God, that voice.

A thump and a pained grunt … my dad’s pained grunt. “Your boss … committed a crime!” he gasped. “People died because of his choices … and it will catch up with you all eventually.”

Silence, then another grunt of pain, more ragged this time.

“You leave my wife out of it!”

The words sent chills through me. Who was he talking to? Why was I hearing this? Were these the last moments of his life? Replayed in the dark to torment me?

Another thump. Something cracked, and I flinched, pressing my head tighter into my knees.

Was this what had happened to Dad that night? Is this what she’d planned to torture me with?

But why could I only hear him? Why couldn’t I hear who he was talking to?

“No … please ! Don’t hurt her, don’t?—”

A piercing scream turned my skin to ice.

“Mum?” The word tore from my throat, cut short by a wet, gurgling sound from somewhere in the darkness.

“No! No, Elsie!” Dad’s ragged wail drowned out what had to be the sound of my mother choking on her own blood. Joe had never told me what it was like seeing their bodies. No one had told me how they died. But I was a morbidly curious child; I’d hunted down the court documents at fourteen.

Mum’s throat had been slit, ear to ear.

Dad had been beaten, bones broken. And then they’d taken him, still alive, to the place their bodies had been dumped, and that had been where they’d finally crushed his skull with a rock.

Was I about to hear that beating, too? I’d already heard the start of it, I thought.

My cheeks burned with hot tears, and I uncurled my body, crawling desperately. I wasn’t sure whether I was trying to escape the sound or find the source of it in this never-ending blackness. I just had to move, had to do something to end this nightmare.

“Oh God, no , please … Elsie …” Dad’s words trailed into pitiful, gasping sobs.

That decided me. I turned, seeking that sound. Approaching it on hands and knees, my eyes squeezed shut, fending off the dark.

It wasn’t Dad. Not really. I was sure that this was all inside my head.

That didn’t mean I didn’t want to try and stop it, stop them from doing what happened next.

Red flooded my eyelids.

“Peek-a-boo!” Hellen’s voice called merrily. “Open your eyes, Jemma Bliss!”

As if compelled, my eyelids peeled back. I blinked away tears from the brilliant crimson light flooding the room, and it slowly came into focus.

I choked on a gasp, my hand fluttering to my mouth.

There, in the corner of a space much smaller, and also somehow much bigger than I’d imagined, was a man. He was curled up, emaciated, and clad in the raggiest of rags. His skin was filthy and grey and almost transparent over his bones. Bald patches shone on either side of his head.

“Dad?” My voice was a scratchy whisper. No. This could not be real. It was just my imagination. Just the nightmare they’d planted …

The pitiful man looked up at my voice, his eyes bloodshot and vacant. But when he saw me, something sparked to life in them. I scrambled towards him, eyes streaming, blurring the awful reality in front of me.

This wasn’t my nightmare. It was his.

“No!” he snarled, his fingers clawing at the bald spots as he gaped in horror at me. “Not my daughter! Don’t touch my daughter!”

“Dad, it’s okay, it’s?—”

I froze just short of touching him when he cracked his skull into the rock behind him. And again. Again. Until blood was everywhere. On the rock, on his face, dripping down his body, thick and maroon.

“Unlike my brother, I did my research,” Hellen remarked lightly. I turned, peering frantically around, but there was no one there. No one except the broken shell of my father. Or of his soul, anyway. “Imagine my delight when I discovered that I had the means to torture you already in my possession!”

The stone door ground open, and I spun to find Hellen strutting in, her tail twitching, her teeth bared in a smug leer. “Did you know that for the last eighteen years, this has been your father’s existence?”

She giggled delightedly. I retched.

“No! That’s not possible,” I gasped. “My father wouldn’t have ended up … here!”

The emaciated man started blubbering behind me.

“Oh, but it is, and he did! You see, that’s the beauty of soul-reaping. Your father sold his soul to my father for one single, elusive piece of evidence that would put a crook behind bars for life. In a moment of delicious irony, his own life was also ended because of that one piece of evidence … and” —she snapped her fingers— “voila, he popped into existence in Hell, with so much fodder for torture fresh in his brain.”

I did more than retch this time. I vomited up the minuscule amount of sushi I’d grabbed from the hospital canteen on my way home from art therapy. That meal felt like a lifetime ago, but there it was, barely digested.

“Has he …?” I mumbled, wiping my mouth. “Since he arrived?”

Hellen nodded, eyes glinting, guessing the meaning behind my stilted words. “Oh yes, he has been watching your mother die in front of him, on repeat, for eighteen years. I’m surprised his soul is still intact, to be honest. So many of them wither too quickly or become desensitised to their torture.”

She sauntered closer. I scrambled back.

I had never hated a being as much as I hated her. Although, her father … he was the one who had done this to Dad.

Hellen seemed oblivious to my hatred. She leaned down, gripping my chin. “I can’t wait to own your soul properly, Jemma Bliss. If you’re anything like your father … and I think you might be, judging by the power in your little Token … you’ll feed our demons for months. Years even, just like Daddy dearest.”

A piercing wail echoed from behind us, and I ripped my chin from her grasp. Dad reared his head back, cracking it into the wall with so much force his body crumpled into a bony pile on the floor. A pile too insignificant to be the man who used to sing me silly songs as he tucked me into bed. The man who had a belly laugh so loud and infectious that it filled the entire house, and set me to giggling uncontrollably.

“Oh, bugger it!” Hellen grunted, shoving me down and getting to her feet. “Now we’ll have to wait for his soul to revive him before he can begin another round.”

She headed for the door, sniffing crossly. “May as well leave her in her beloved darkness,” she muttered. Whoever she was talking to killed the lights, and terror clawed its way up my throat again.

“Call me when he wakes!” she commanded. “I’ve got more important things to do. I’ll return when it’s fun down here again.”

I swallowed back a scream, determined not to let the darkness overwhelm me as I dragged myself over that rough, too-hot floor, until I found the thin, crumpled form that was my dad’s soul.

I curled up around it … him. In this Hellish place, he was so cold.

I sobbed.