Page 57 of Live Like Legends

Reese walked over, offering me his outstretched hand. Once I was off the ground, he steered me back to the bed, nearly forcingme to sit down. Xander clapped his hands together, pointing his thumb towards the door. “Should I go get Natalia?”

Elise swung her head towards him. “No. You and the witch have done enough, thanks.” She gave him a forced smile and half assed wave.

Xander raised an eyebrow, but simply chuckled. “Feisty one, aren’t you.” It wasn’t a question, just an observation. He winked over at Reese while he walked backwards towards the door. “Watch your leg in Purgatory. I didn’t spend all that time healing you for nothing.”

When he was gone, I dug my hand in my pocket, pulling out Reese’s lucky arrowhead. His hazel eyes narrowed when I presented it to him. “I almost forgot to give you this.”

He plucked the charm from my fingers, flipping it over in his palm. My best friend let out a heavy sigh. “Doesn’t seem too important anymore.” He let out a short joyless laugh as if everything that that arrowhead stood for was some kind of joke now. “Really don’t know how lucky this thing is.”

“Listen, you asked me to go get it for you and I did. No one could have assumed that Dimitri would blow everything to shit.”

Reese slipped the charm into his pocket and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I know, I know. I just know that if you didn’t then everything would probably be different right now. Or maybe everything would be fucking worse, I don’t know. I guess the only thing I really want to say right now is I’m sorry.”

I tilted my head to the side, nudging his bicep with my fist. “The only person who needs to be sorry right now is Dimitri.” I pointed at his pocket that held the arrowhead. “That thing still might have some luck in it, don’t doubt it now. We’ll need it for finding her in Purgatory.”

Elise clucked her tongue. “Right…about that.”

We both glanced over at her as she slid her eyes over to Beetee who was nervously biting her lower lip. After a moment of silence, I spoke. “About what?”

“Purgatory. We aren’t going there.”

“Of course we are,” Reese argued, waving his hand at her dismissively.

Elise pointed her finger at him. “Good luck with that because you won’t fucking find her.”

My eyes narrowed and her words stung. “Well that’s super fucking shitty of you to say.”

“What she means is that she’s not there,” Beetee explained, her eyes not really looking at me. She almost looked as if she was too nervous to say anything else.

“That doesn’t make any sense.” I shook my head in disbelief.

Elise rubbed her forehead, letting out a frustrated sigh. “Oh yes it does. I would love to tell you that Dimitri has taken her back to Lilith and she’s held up in some prison in her castle. I would be stupidly overjoyed to proudly tell you that very notion, but I can’t because it would be a fucking lie. And it would be a waste of my fucking time to have you believe everything is that simple.”

I licked my lips, reaching up and rubbing my finger along one of my eyebrows. “Then where is she?” My voice was steady but concerned.

Elise pressed her tongue into her cheek, her gray eyes piercing into my brown ones. She looked as if she knew exactly what she was going to say but my reaction was the thing holding her back. It was almost like she cared just a bit about my wellbeing. “She’s in Hell.”

“I’m sure being with Dimitriishell, yes.” Reese said, sarcastically, rolling his eyes. The air left my lungs when I considered what she said, what it meant. I swallowed the lumpdown into my throat and I could feel the nausea starting to build up. I felt myself wanting to nearly dry heave.

“I meanliteralHell, Blondie.” She shook her head at him, but focused back on me.

My mouth felt dry, but I was able to form words as difficult as it was. “How do you know that?”

Elise crossed her arms over her chest and shrugged. “I’ve known Dimitri for longer than I’d like to admit and he’s fucking pissed. You made him look like a fucking idiot in his own club, Dani took his hand and you faked him out with her death. He thought he was getting something promised to him by Lilith and he’s now an embarrassed entitled piece of shit. His father runs the prison down there and what better way to keep your ex-girlfriend in line then to bring her home and make her wish she had respected you all along.”

“So what? He’s keeping her stowed away, nice and pretty, for what?” Reese asked, leaning against the bed.

Elise looked over at Beetee again who met her gaze and furiously started biting her fingernails. They both had this look of hesitation. “I told Dani a few days ago that that little blast of hers might have caused an issue. Something with that much power is hard to miss no matter what realm you’re in. Clearly I was right.” She looked up at the ceiling, groaning. “Dimitri isn’t like Lilith though, that bitch wanted Dani to do all the work, but Dimitri….he sees her as an equal, a partner in destruction. He knows she can produce that kind of power now, so unfortunately I can’t tell you what that means to him. If I know Dani at all, she’ll fight against that asshole.”

I rubbed the back of my neck. “Dimitri in his own sick way cares about her I guess, so maybe he’s just hiding her away and that’s it.” The look in Elise’s eyes sent a shudder down my back. It was almost like she cringed at my optimism.

“Hell is the kind of place that doesn’t want fuck ups and mishaps unless Lucifer himself calls for it, hence why Dimitri hasn’t caused a scene and the reason why nothing has happened since she’s been gone. Nothing has happenedhere, Nick, that doesn’t mean nothing is happening over there.”

“The fuck does that mean?” I said, jumping off the bed and turning my body to face her.

I heard Beetee clear her throat, running a shaky hand over the shaved side of her head. “There is a lot of chatter about Dimitri not being the…nicest. Especially when it comes to that place. Creatures get menacingly tortured there…”

“And since his father is letting him have a little more control in everything, Dimitri is usually the one calling all the shots. He puts on a really nice fucking façade I’ll tell you that. Demons at that club worship him. While I love the idea of blood and torturing for the hell of it, Dimitri is just fucking cruel.” Elise scoffed, looking off to the side as if a small memory ran through her mind, but then she blinked back over to me.

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