Page 62 of The Hellkeeper

"Amelia!"

My voice rips through the air, raw, desperate, unhinged.

No answer.

I’m going fucking insane.

I spot Margaret on a stretcher. They’re wheeling her toward the ambulance, her apron soaked in blood, her wrinkled hands shaking. But it’s not the wound that has her face twisted in terror. It’s something worse.

The second she sees me, she lunges, her bloody fingers grabbing my arm in an iron grip.

"Damien," she gasps. "Damien, they took her."

Everything inside me stills.

"You need to save her," she sobs, clenching onto me as the paramedics try to pull her away. She won’t let go. She’s fighting them with the little power she has left.

"She was screaming for you," Margaret cries. "Screaming for you, Damien." Her voice breaks. "They took her to Hell."

The paramedics yank her from me. The doors slam shut.

Hell.

I know where that is.

I’m already heading to my car.

They think they took her.

They don’t know—

I’m bringing hell to them.

Chapter Twenty-One

Amelia

Hell follows me everywhere I go.

It burns the people I love just like it burns me. Maybe I was never meant to escape it.

I press my hands harder against Margaret’s wound, my fingers slipping in her blood. The restaurant is chaos. Shouting. Wailing in the distance. People screaming. But all I hear is the faint, wet rasp of her breathing. It's way too shallow and slow. Margaret is old and fragile. I hope, with everything inside me, that she can survive this.

“Margaret,” I choke out. “You have to hold on, okay? Just a little longer.”

She blinks up at me, unfocused and delirious.

“I love you,” I whisper, my voice breaking. “I don’t think I ever told you that. But I do. I love you so much. You don’t get to leave me, okay? You don’t get to die before I show you how much you mean to me.”

She smiles, and it shreds me.

Her thumb strokes my cheek. “Oh, my sweet girl,” she murmurs.

Her hand is bloody, and her thumb smears the red liquid on my cheek. “I took you in because I understood you,” she says softly. “Because I saw myself in you.”

“Margaret—”

“I’m just like you,” she cuts off whatever I meant to say. With a shaky breath, she confesses, “I ran too.”

---