Page 40 of Hellbound

Tori jerked her chin toward the gate. “Let’s get your spooky business over with so we can get my spooky business over with, too.”

Marian shook her head. Thoughts like daggers clashed in her mind. Was this a trick? Why would Tori trick her? Tori needed her. Unless there’s something else you haven’t considered.

“How do you know this isn’t real?”

Tori tapped a finger to her temple. “My little bell is ringing.”

Marian looked down at the abyss, then back up at Tori. “But I didn’t lie.”

“Hell lies.” Tori pointed at the pit. “That right there is a lie. My little power works on people and places, I guess.”

Wasn’t that exactly what an illusion was? A lie. And she’d seen Hell produce plenty of them. She’d fallen for one the last time she’d died.

She took a step forward and hoped she hadn’t placed her trust in the wrong person again. Cold fear washed over her and vanished the instant she felt the squishy surface underfoot instead of a long fall.

“I couldn’t see past them at first,” Tori explained as Marian crossed the rest of the gap. “I don’t have tactile senses in Hell, but I hear things. See things. There’s so much noise here, I have to listen really close for the ringing.”

Marian eyed Tori, her interest piqued more than she cared to admit.

She wondered what else she’d seen that had been a lie, too. Lies she’d not detected. With the false obstacle cleared, Marian raised her eyes to the gate. Dread settled once again in the pit of her stomach

The gate looked like it’d been brought into existence by an act of violence. As Marian approached, its aura grew more insistent—an unsettling signal pelting her repeatedly like Morse code. Marian didn’t know Morse code.

Neither of them spoke as Marian traced the bizarre construction with her gaze, following the wild lines to where they converged in the center at eye level. There they turned sharp and jagged, a vortex in suspended animation. The metal reflected no light, and at the center of it lay a mass that rivaled the deepest darkness— Vantablack.

“Guess we need to open this. And by ‘we,’ I mean ‘you.’ ” Tori reached for the gate. Her fingers disappeared through a picket with a hissing sound, and she quickly withdrew her hand, which sparked and fizzled where her digits went missing just below the first knuckle. Golden threads sprouted from the nubs and quickly went to work replacing the fingers she’d lost.

Tori hissed and shook out her hand. “I definitely felt that. Big, big ow.”

Marian frowned. “Maybe don’t go all Shadowcat on that again.”

“I can’t remember the last time something here hurt me like that,” Tori murmured as she glanced down at her newly grown fingers. Her brows arched as she grew pensive. Then she frowned and blinked at Marian. “Was that an X-Men reference?”

Marian ignored her and took a decisive step toward the gate, gritting her teeth against the torrent of sensation radiating from it. Unease crawled over her skin and through her, whispering to her in a deep, mournful timbre. One note rose above the noise, steady and stronger than ever.

The key.

There, at the center of that angry-looking metal mass, where the iron-like knots melted into shadow, pulsed an unmistakable aura. She couldn’t see it, but she believed with all her being it was there.

The key—hidden somewhere in all that darkness.

And yet as she reached for the center of that black mass, every cell in her body hesitated. Her legs turned leaden, rooting her to the spot. Muscles tightened. The rest of her body rebelled against her mind. Her hindbrain ordered her to run. Frustration flared in her chest.

Take it.

Marian plunged her unmarked arm into the darkness and watched it swallow her.

Cold. So cold. But there was nothing there. No pull, no painful surprises. Only icy emptiness.

For a few seconds, at least, until solid weight manifested between her fingers. It moved. Or grew? She couldn’t tell, couldn’t see it. The weight became smooth and slender, and her fingers curled instinctively around what felt like metal.

Her instinct flared at the contact. A victorious smile stole over her.

“What the heck is that?” Came Tori’s breathless question from over her shoulder.

Fuck.

Marian hadn’t intended for the traveler to see this. She ought to have made Tori wait somewhere else, but after the illusory crevasse and the gate’s pull, she’d gotten ahead of herself.