Page 3 of Infernal

His lashes lowered and covered the full blue of his eyes as his body slowly began to fade away.

“Trace! Wait!” I lunged forward to trap him inside my arms, to barricade him against my body, but there was nothing but air left in his place. I was too late. I’d lost him again.

I crumbled to my knees as tears brimmed in my eyes.

“Jemma, can you hear me?”

My head snapped back up at the sound of a warm, familiar voice.

“Open your eyes.”

Gabriel?!

I looked around, frantically searching for him as the scene from the Cape began to tremble and then bleed away like water running down an oil painting. I dug my hands into the earth, bracing myself as it all disappeared into nothingness.

2. INTO THE VOID

My lids sprang open, and I blinked the sleep and confusion from my eyes. Gabriel was standing by my side, his eyebrows knitted as he looked down at me, staring as though I were some newly discovered alien life form. Apparently, I wasn’t in the Cape anymore, or at the cemetery, or in the car. I was indoors now. That is, unless this was a dream too…

Freaked out and thoroughly confused, I immediately tried to lift myself up, but the room twirled around me like some out of control carnival ride that no longer had a working off switch. Or maybe I was the broken one who just couldn’t stop spinning myself into Hell.

That definitely seemed more likely.

“I was starting to worry about you,” he said with a tight smile as he wrapped his hand around my elbow and helped me sit myself up.

I could see the fire burning at the far end of the room, and I knew we were back at Huntington Manor, though I had no recollection of how we’d gotten here. My body shook as I tried to fit the hazy pieces back together, but nothing seemed to fit. Everything was disjointed and out of sorts, like puzzle pieces thrown into the air with nobody there to catch them.

“You hit your head pretty hard,” he said, his voice calming and soft. “But you’re okay.”

I wasn’t, though. Not by a long shot.

“How long have I been asleep for?” I asked him as I rubbed the hazy clouds from my eyes. Every part of my body ached something terrible, and despite the fact that I had obviously just been asleep, I felt utterly drained.

“You’ve been out for a few hours.”

A few hours? My eyes snapped back to his. “Where’s Trace?”

“Trace?” His brows furrowed as though he didn’t understand my question. Or maybe he just didn’t want to answer it. Either way, I knew I was headed for Shit’s Creek.

“Yes, Gabriel. Trace. Where is he?” My eyes scanned the room and immediately stumbled onto my mother’s incapacitated body sitting lifelessly on a chair in the corner of the room.

“You remember what happened at Angel’s Peak, don’t you?”

The look on his face coupled with the daunting presence of my mother’s body let me know that it hadn’t all just been a horrible dream.

This was real.

Hell on earth had come, and Trace was really gone.

I squeezed my eyes shut as my teeth clattered together painfully.

“I’m sorry, Jemma,” he said as everything came back to me all at once.

The pain of it slashed through my body in nauseating waves before settling heavily in the pit of my belly. I tried to hold it together, to hold it down, but I couldn’t. Overcome, I bent over my knees just as my stomach emptied itself all over the wooden floor. Gabriel quickly moved out of the way to avoid the backsplash and then grabbed a throw blanket from behind me, wrapping it around my shoulders.

My body continued to shake uncontrollably as I tried to stop myself from heaving.

“Drink this,” he said as he handed me a water bottle from the coffee table. “You need to get something in your stomach. It’ll help you feel better.”

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