Page 75 of Hellbound

Marian’s face screwed up in confusion.

“What—?”

A loud knock on the door froze them both in place.

Another, more insistent knock rattled the hinges. Marian and Tori’s eyes met, and Tori mouthed a word Marian didn’t catch. The traveler waved her out of the bathroom and crouched low. Marian followed suit and crept beside her to the edge of the curtained window. She inched toward the glass and slowly pushed the curtain back enough to see who’d come knocking.

Though Marian knew who she’d find on the other side, her mouth still went dry at the sight of Abe standing in front of the motel room door, one hand in his pocket while the other pressed a phone to his ear. Marian’s phone buzzed half a second later. She palmed it into silence.

“It’s Abe,” Marian whispered.

Tori crouched beside her and rose up off her knees to glimpse their visitor.

“Marian,” Tori whispered back. “Abe is Roman.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Abe—Roman—stood outside Tori’s motel room. The plain, preppy kid Marian had encountered at the coffee shop had been replaced by a goth doppelganger. Black barbells skewered his bushy brows, silver chains looped through his earlobes. He’d shed his tidy, conservative disguise and donned layers of black; a Tool shirt peeked through his unzipped hoodie. His choppy raven hair hung loose and wild.

“That’s real bad,” Tori whispered. She pushed off the wall and slipped out of Marian’s periphery.

“Hey Marian, just making sure I’m in the right place,” Roman’s voice drifted through the door as he left a voicemail. He sounded so at ease, so nonthreatening. “Call me when you get this.”

She craned her head around in search of Tori’s guidance, but Tori had moved behind the bed and pressed a finger to her lips, gesturing for quiet. Right, that made sense. Pretend the place was empty. Then he’d go away. Hopefully.

Fuck.

Marian grappled with the self-loathing rising within her. How had she screwed this up so badly? Resisting otherworldly manipulation was her forte, and yet this kid had played her like a fiddle.

The traveler waved frantically at Marian and mouthed something she strained to interpret, but the sound of Roman jimmying the lock had them both ducking out of sight before Marian could even begin to figure out what Tori had been so desperately trying to tell her.

Dread seized her like a hand around her thundering heart as the doorknob turned and the door swung open. There was nothing nearby to hide behind. She could dive across the room to hide with Tori behind the bed. A cement truck would be stealthier.

Marian’s Hell-tuned instincts wailed at the sharp, sudden pain driving into the back of her skull. The enduring pain only Hell could deliver.

Roman strode inside. The surrounding air quivered like a mirage as his arrival filled the room with a presence so twisted and wrong. It twitched and seized, as if unstable. So unlike the unbreachable certainty of Vale’s power as it pushed against the bounds of reality. Whatever Roman brought with him was new—volatile, and a violation of Marian’s most base instincts. Completely unlike the normal, non-threatening aura he’d possessed at the coffee shop.

Whatever he is should not exist.

When Roman turned his head and his eyes locked on Marian, her breath caught in her chest like a rabbit in snare. Time slowed to a crawl, and somewhere in it, she found the strength to stand up from her crouched position by the window. She stared back, desperate to run, and yet arrested by his horrifying presence.

Roman’s expression slowly shifted into one of surprise. Fear curdled her guts as she forced her face to remain carefully blank.

“Hey,” Roman said in that earnest, unassuming voice. “Sorry, I wasn’t sure I was in the right place. Where’s Tori?”

Marian hastily built up the mental walls she hoped would be strong enough to keep his influence out of her mind. But if it was touch that gave him his power, she was already fucked.

Marian replied evenly. “You just missed her.”

Roman’s brows rose.

“Where did she go?”

“Out for ramen.” Don’t look at the bed.

Roman cast a sidelong look out the door. “Where is there ramen around here? I only saw a gas station on my way over.”

Marian held his gaze, unblinking. She dragged her tongue along the roof of her mouth as a spark of spite cut through her fear.