Page 68 of Surrendering Hope (The Hope Legacy)

“Creatures, you mean demons?” I state.

His head shakes as he whispers in my ear. “I don’t want to open the gates of hell, Natia. Annihilation is the goal. Demons are abominations. We will rule the old world.”

Frowning, I shove him back. “What do you mean?”

A distant metal clang sounds again, most likely Lawrence returning from escorting my heart and soul out of hell. What’s left is a bone chilling emptiness, I sink deeper into a pit of darkness. Ty sends tendrils of power to seduce my mind. They promise freedom from the burning pit of pain Duncan and Zee have left behind.

“I see the bitch is at last where she’s meant to be.” My head whips towards the voice. Jack leans against the wall opposite the cell, arms crossed like he’s at home. Given that he died at my hands because he sexually assaulted me, I guess he is. But the burden of guilt comes crushing on top of the loss of Duncan, Zee and Archan.

“Call her a bitch again and your pathetic afterlife will be painfully short,” Ty growls out. Awesome, the King of Monsters is defending my honor.

“You attacked me,” I point out, slipping my ‘devil couldn’t care’ mask on.

“A Prince of Hell influenced me, you should have seen through it,” Jack snarls.

“You already harbored violence. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that these people can’t create an emotion which doesn’t already exist, but they can draw on it, excite it to maturity. You were already capable of the things you did.”

He shrugs. “Maybe, but we still wound up in the same place. The high and mighty Natia, brought to heel.”

“You’re a sad, deluded fool if you think this is me brought to heel. Even when I am lying on the cold, hard, unforgiving ground, broken, bruised and battered, I will still stand taller than you ever did. My power will always be greater than yours and whilst my soul may be destined for hell, my heart belongs in the light.”

“Of course you’re destined for hell, you’re a murderer,” Jack snaps.

“Enough!” Ty says, snapping his fingers. Jack explodes into a fine mist of charcoal.

What happens when you meet your demise in hell? Do you come back? Like a zombie? I shudder. “Is he?” I ask.

Ty shakes his head. “I have obliterated his existence.”

“Oh.” Clever come back, Natia. Don’t depend on your wit and brains to get you out of this one.

“Natia?” A soft feminine voice from my dreams says from the cell next to ours. I fly towards it without thinking, my fractured heart breaking. They can’t use her against me, anything but her.

“Gran?” I whisper, searching the dark for the woman who patched up my knees, wiped away my tears and made me believe in fairytales.

My gran steps forward, the purple dress we buried her in hanging loose on her gaunt figure. I shake my head in horror. Her brown eyes are sunken deep and her once buoyant silver hair is limp and greasy around her pale face. “What happened?” I reach through the bars. She grasps my hand, her sharp bones sticking against my palm.

“I heard your prayers, Natia.”

A sob leaves my throat. “Why are you here?”

With a sigh, she glances around the cell. “I’m here to pay for your misdeeds, you’re a murderer, Natia, and until you take your punishment, it is me who will suffer.” I sink to my knees, tears track unbidden down my cheeks.

“The dead pay for the crimes of the living?”

She shakes her head. “No, not normally. But you aren’t human, are you, child? You are at a crossroads for mankind. Once you decide what to do, they will release my soul back to heaven.”

“I’m so sorry, Gran.”

“Are you? You didn’t sound sorry when confronted with your victim.”

My head droops. “I’m sorry I took a life, but I was defending myself.”

“He wouldn’t have killed you. You should have withstood the attack.”

My head snaps up. “Do you know what he planned to do?”

She shrugs and pulls her hand from my grasp. “Women have been seen as the weaker sex long before now. They have been under the heel of men for so long, it’s not like you would be the first or only.”

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