Page 32 of Hellfire to Come
From me.
The vehicle shuddered as Chester coaxed it into motion, tires crunching over gravel and moss-slick roots, the engine growling low like it too resented returning to the world of the living. Inside, the silence was unbearable, not the peaceful kind that soothed, but the taut, breathless hush that followed calamity and preceded grief.
The air was thick with exhaustion, with blood and sweat and the stench of something ancient we had disturbed.
I couldn’t take my eyes off Rowan.
He lay as though carved from marble, pale and unmoving, lips tinged a worrying shade of gray. The faint rise and fall ofhis chest was the only thing keeping me from believing we were already too late. He had been my brother in arms, my confidant when I trusted no one else. We had bled on the same soil, fought through the same nightmares. And now… he was fading in my arms like breath in winter. I hadn’t lied to Brooklyn when I told her he didn’t betray us. He would never do that, there was no doubt in my mind.
I wanted to scream. To demand something of the world, of the gods, of whoever or whatever might be listening.
But I did nothing.
I held his wrist between my fingers as if the thread of life pulsing there might not slip away if I gripped it tightly enough.
Beside me, Brooklyn leaned against the door, Alice curled in her lap, looking fragile and half-formed. Her fingers ran absent-mindedly through Alice’s hair, the way someone might touch a ghost to make sure it’s real. Her face was calm but it was the calm of someone bracing for impact.
“She’s burning up,” she whispered again.
I shifted to see Alice more clearly. Her skin gleamed with sweat, her cheeks flushed with a sickly pink that did not look healthy. Her lips parted with shallow, rapid breaths. Whatever magic Frederic had seeded into her, it hadn’t been purged. It still writhed beneath her surface, coiled and venomous. We’d escaped the mansion, but the battle wasn’t over. I only hoped Samir would know what to do.
Brooklyn didn’t cry. She never had. But I saw the tremble in her lower lip before she locked her jaw and hid it behind clenched teeth. I knew her pain like I knew my own. And it broke me in places I hadn’t realized were still soft.
“She’s strong,” I said quietly, more for myself than for her. “She will fight it and win.”
“She shouldn’t have had to be strong, Dominic,” Brooklyn said, and in those six words was a lifetime of fury and sorrow. “She should’ve never been in this position to begin with.”
The trees blurred past the window, shadows and sun slicing in ribbons through the branches. But my mind wasn’t in the car. It wasn’t even in the forest. It was back in that crumbling house of horrors. And I had no idea what to tell my mate. Why did my thoughts linger back in that crypt of terror?
Back with the thing that watched us leave.
Its presence lingered in my marrow. Not like a memory. Not like fear.
Like blood.
It felt carved into me. Known. Intimate in the way a name is intimate when whispered against skin. It wasn’t Frederic. It was something other. Something buried deep under all the magic and curse of that place.
A voice I couldn’t hear, but could almost feel, whispering from the dark.
Find me.
See me…
I pressed my palm against the side of my skull, trying to scrub the sensation out of my brain.
Brooklyn glanced at me then. “You feel it too.”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. She didn’t press. She never did when I looked like this, like something was crawling just beneath the surface of my skin and trying to rip its way free.
The car bounced, tires slamming into a rut. Alice whimpered in her sleep. Rowan remained still.
“I don’t think it was just watching us,” I said finally. “I think it knew me. And not in the way enemies do.”
Brooklyn tilted her head, the hard line of her jaw tight with thought.
“I didn’t feel fear, not even for you,” I admitted. “I should have. But I didn’t. It felt… familiar. Like something that used to be mine.”
She stared at me then, really stared, and for a second, I thought I saw something flicker across her face. Recognition. Dread. Possibility.
