Page 1 of Infernal

1.RUN TO THE HILLS

Dark, looming evergreens lined both sides of the road, as if to usher me head-first into my final chapter. The rain was still falling hard, battering down against the windshield and making it hard for us to see two feet in front of the black SUV. I could hear Dominic and Gabriel screaming at each other in the front seats, their voices loud and disjointed, but none of their words were registering. Nothing was registering except the memory of Trace’s vacant eyes.

The haunting scene from Angel’s Peak replayed in my mind like a death wish I never wanted, an omen I couldn’t stop from happening. Dizzying flashbacks of the black smoke entering Trace’s body bombarded my mind. Each time, I scoured the memory looking for something that wasn’t there before…a clue…a kill switch…some way to undo it all. Each time praying that the memory wouldn’t unfold like the last time, that my horrifying new reality would instead disintegrate into nothingness and yield the happily-ever-after I had always dreamed of.

But my happily-ever-after never came.

I shook my head and pressed my palms down over my ears, blocking out the noise around me.

The Roderick Sisters had opened the Gates of Hell and unleashed Lucifer onto our world—onto my world and into the boy I loved, and I wasn’t sure there was anything I could do to get him back. Frankly, I wasn’t sure about anything anymore. The only thing I knew for certain was that I was in Hell.

Only I hadn’t gone to it…ithad come to me.

“That’s the stupidest thing you’ve said yet,” snapped Dominic.

“It’s the only way,” retorted Gabriel, his tone markedly calmer. “The Order will know what to do.”

“Is that so? And when have they ever helped us before?”

“Had we been transparent with them from the start—”

“Hadwebeen transparent?” scoffed Dominic. “All they’ve ever done is falsify facts and hide the truth from Jemma. The only help they provide is the kind that serves themselves.” Dominic turned in his seat to face me, beads of water dripping off his alabaster skin like falling gemstones. “Are you hearing this?”

His muffled words faintly broke through my covered ears. I pressed my palms down harder.

“Angel? Are you listening to me?”

“Shut up. Just shut up.” I wasn’t sure the words actually sounded from my mouth or if I’d just thought them inside the slowly crumbling barricades of my mind.

I didn’t want to listen to them argue about the Council or hear all the what ifs and could’ve beens. I just wanted them to shut the hell up so I could think. I needed to get my thoughts together and figure out a way to put all these broken pieces back together again—to put Trace back together again—and I couldn’t do that with them planting grenades inside my brain every two minutes.

“She’s in shock,” said Gabriel, eyeing me from the rearview mirror. His dark brows pulled down over his olive eyes, as if to offer me sympathy. But it felt like pity. “Let her be.”

“We need to get out of town, brother. Tonight. The Council can clean up their own mess.”

“And the others?”

I glanced over at my mother’s lifeless body slumped in the seat beside me. Gabriel had gone back to get her as soon as Trace and the Roderick sisters left the area. My stake was still protruding from her heart—a painful reminder of what I’d done, of the grave mistake I made believing a single word out of the sisters’ filthy mouths.

But I wouldn’t make that mistake again.

The death of my childhood naivety had come to pass. I trusted no one and I feared nothing, not even death itself, for everything I loved in this world had already been taken away from me. Ripped from my heart like a bandage. There was nothing left inside but darkness…darkness breeding darkness, and I was at one with it now.

“What of her Keeper?” continued Gabriel. “We can’t just—”

“He’s as good as dead, if he isn’t already.”

More bombs exploded in my head as his words sounded back to me.

He’s as good as dead…

Tracewas as good as dead.

A guttural scream ripped out of my lungs, the force of it so sharp and anguished that it blew out every window in the car, sending shattered glass raining through the air like shrapnel. Dominic and Gabriel threw their hands over their heads as the car hit the medium and then swerved off the road towards the embankment.

My eyes locked onto the tree ahead of us as we barreled straight for it.

It was the last thing I saw.

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