Page 113 of Hellbound

She clutched the blade in both hands and raised it over her head. With a guttural cry, she drove it into Stellan’s chest.

The knife sliced through him like butter.

Stellan spasmed violently. Skin peeled back from flesh as blood gushed from the wound. The body underneath her quaked as it burned from within. Silver light pierced splintering bone. A strong hand grabbed Marian by the neck and pulled her backward as the Argent floated off the wall in open defiance of gravity.

A bead of perfect darkness manifested at its sternum as the ruined husk of a man bulged and contorted. A silent explosion sent a small shockwave through the garden, creating a swirling vortex. A rush of air pulled her forward into the rift, and she’d have gone flying had Vale not seized her. Her tie flapped violently in front of her, straining for the darkness. In her periphery, Tori stumbled, swaying toward the void until Paul took her to the ground and shielded her with his body.

Marian’s eyes widened in horror as Daniel clambered to his feet. Her jaw fell open, a warning on her lips as he made a break for the parking lot, right past the rift.

Daniel barely made it two full strides before Marian’s warning devolved into a stream of incoherent pleas.

With a final burst of light, Stellan’s body folded in on itself and was summarily sucked through the rift. The gale swept Daniel off his feet, and the void swallowed him whole with a blood-curdling shriek.

A sound like a thunderclap signaled the rift’s collapse. The void vanished, leaving miniscule threads of crackling energy and the smell of ozone in its wake. Daniel Eaves and Stellan Blacke had vanished.

Marian swayed on her feet. Everything began to spin; her head was too big for her body. The world shifted in and out of focus. Then she was sinking through the earth, back to—

Pill bottles scatter to the floor as she paws through the cupboards. Acetaminophen for the whiplash, sertraline to keep her functional, benzos to stop the panic attacks. They’re the last of the supply; her insurance is gone. These are the prescriptions for a new lease on life. Now they’re going to kill her.

She chased them with a glass of the Merlot she’d been saving for the day the article went live and destroyed Daniel Eaves. A day she’d never see, now. He knew. All along, he’d known.

And he’d waited to see what she’d collected, the sources she’d amassed, so he could bury them all in threats and litigation. She’d been so stupid to think she had any power over him. Marian Meyer, the colossal disaster. She’d resigned from the paper before someone was given the odious task of firing her.

“Look at all these lives you’ve ruined.”

Daniel stoked the fires of her own self-hatred so high, Marian sees no other way to escape them.

Lightning strikes inside her mind. Time shoves her forward. She’s on her kitchen floor. This is where she’ll die for the first time.

Paramedics fight to make her heart beat on its own. They’re breaking her, but it doesn’t hurt. Something holds her on the precipice of life and what lies beyond it. Her eyes aren’t open, yet she sees people working frantically to bring her back.

And she sees the amorphous black spiders roving over her, humming their strange dissonance as they scuttle between the gloved hands pushing and piercing her body.

More than ever, she wants to stay, and she doesn’t know why; it’s not for fear of the end. Whatever it is, she doesn’t know its name—only that it’s here with her and the trembling motes.

Darkness wraps around her. A roar like the quaking of worlds chases away the encroaching silence. It should be the end of her. And for a while, it is.

Until she opens her eyes to a red sky.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Marian awakened in the back seat of a moving car, her head in Tori’s lap, gold satin pressed against her cheek. Her jacket draped over her like a blanket.

Someone had removed her tie and unbuttoned the first few buttons of her shirt. She vaguely recalled Vale doing this, his touch achingly gentle despite the fury in his gaze. Marian had been miles away from her body at the time. Blearily, she looked to her left.

A tall figure sat in the driver’s seat. Marian would recognize that cropped head of charcoal hair anywhere, even without the errant shadows slithering down his shoulders.

A wound in her heart had reopened, one she couldn’t staunch. It’d taken her months to strip the barbs from that memory to make it less lethal. In an instant, she’d relived it in vivid detail. Watching Daniel slip through the void as Stellan ceased to exist somehow made it all so much worse.

They’d rid the world of two evils tonight. So why did she feel like she’d failed? Emptiness gnawed at her heart. Her body buzzed with adrenaline. She wasn’t ready to be perceived. So she lay there quietly on Tori, eyes closed, seizing the silence that she knew wouldn’t last.

And sure enough, it didn’t.

Vale left the Audi parked in the gravel in front of the house. Tori helped her stand, and Marian didn’t miss the haunted look in her eyes.

Paul pulled up seconds later in a separate car. The procession into the house was uncomfortable. Anger flowed from Vale in waves. Tori looked like she’d seen a ghost. Paul’s body language suggested irritation. Marian couldn’t stop fucking shaking.

“Go to bed,” Vale said curtly as he stalked through the front door—the first words spoken by anyone since they’d left Brentwood. “We’ll discuss this in the morning.”