Page 18 of Hellbound
“I’ll drive you home,” Mr. Vale said as he loomed over her.
“You said you’d call me a cab.”
“I said I’d call you a car.”
Marian frowned. “What’s the difference?”
He smirked. “Several hundred dollars.”
“Then I’ll take that expensive car now.” She slowly untangled herself from the blanket and gave the luxurious fabric a goodbye pat before standing up. To her relief, her legs worked.
“Keep it,” Mr. Vale murmured, tipping his chin toward the pile of chenille.
Marian’s brows rose, but she didn’t hesitate to shove the blanket in the white bag along with her raggedy jacket. Mr. Vale strode behind his desk and tapped a few keys on his keyboard.
“A company car will be here in ten minutes. You’ll tell the driver where you live, and he will lose that address once he’s delivered you home. He will not ask you questions, and he will only speak if spoken to. He will have no memory of you after tonight.”
Marian tore her eyes from the mug to stare at Mr. Vale. “You can erase memories?”
He stared at her inscrutably for far too long.
“In a manner of speaking. For the right price, you can make anyone forget anything.”
“Oh.” Marian pursed her lips. She searched for something in that arrangement to complain about and came away with nothing. Exhaustion tugged on her limbs, her thoughts sluggish and sticky.
It was past time to go. She grabbed the white bag, which seemed far too heavy given its meager contents. Death always left her so fucking weak.
She cleared her throat. “Cool. Good talk.”
The demon’s face split into a smile that was miles away from reaching his eyes.
“Yes, this has all been very interesting, Meyer.”
Marian grunted as she tugged her hat further down her brow, cringing as water trickled down the back of her neck. There were dozens of questions she ought to ask him. Any sensible diver would want to know how he came to decide that killing her would affect her search in Hell. But the icy shift in Mr. Vale’s aura told her that this conversation was over.
She always thought there was something of a rapport between them. Tonight reminded her that he was and always would be a demon. A monster. It was human nature to run from monsters.
She’d have to find her answers elsewhere.
What had she seen in Hell tonight? Where were the damned? Had the Remnant consumed them all? What even was the Remnant? Its moniker had come from the divers who’d lived to tell of it, but what it wanted and where it came from was still a mystery. And why did the aching scar in her arm light up like a glowstick when it touched her?
The Hell she knew now was so unlike the Hell her mother and stepfather had taught her to fear.
She threw a furtive glance out the window at the red and white rivers of cars creeping through the city streets and willed the night to end.
“Likewise,” she mumbled. “Let’s never do this death thing together again.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Marian launched out of bed the next morning with a strangled shout. Streaks of pale light streamed through the gaps between the two blankets she’d fashioned into curtains in her stuffy bedroom.
Her raw throat was her first clue that she’d spent the night screaming. Marian missed having downstairs neighbors. They’d throw shit at the ceiling to wake her up when her cries grew too loud; it had kept her night terrors brief.
Between each deafening throb of her heart, fragments of a nightmare half-remembered appeared superimposed against the wall. Senseless shapes paraded before her eyes, leaving a trail of orphaned dread in their wake. What had she seen this time? Her frantic pulse and dysphoric paralysis were reason enough to believe that whatever it was, it’d come from Hell.
Amorphous phantoms in the dark. Pain like being dissected alive. Screams. Constant screams. All of it misshapen in the waking world as though encrypted in her return through the veil.
Her body ached with fatigue as though she’d slept for minutes instead of hours. She lay on her sweat-soaked sheets and stared at the creeping mold on the popcorn ceiling for another hour, wishing dreamless sleep would claim her. It never did.
