Bella is shaken from seeing Stephanie and Daven together, which angers me more than I had originally thought. I want to crawl under his skin, take his soul right from his body, and watch as his eyes melt out of his head, but I know I’d lose Bella if I did that. Instead, I give him a punch to the gut from the inside out. I can hear him puking as Bella and I walk away.
Now, with no interest in her classes when my family is at stake, like the good girl she is, we’re sitting on a park bench near her school. Her spirits are much higher than they were the night before, when she came home with the pills.
We didn’t have anything like that in my day. Sometimes you’d eat the powder from crushed up herbs, and those would help you with some basic things, such as breaking a fever or throwing up poison. But the only remedies we had for the brain were the ones that opened a layer to the other dimension, where you could look at it through a magnifying glass. And even then, those were better consumed whole than in powder form. Those were my favorites.
“I want to help you,” she says to me.
I can see fear in her eyes. As a demon, this is something I crave. But not with Bella. I don’t want her to feel a negative emotion in her entire life, especially if it’s one I have caused.
Bella is like a mirror. The chosen ones often are. It can lead them through a life of great sadness and anger. Like the entire world is out to get them, and it only gets worse the more resentful and hopeless they feel. Many of the chosen ones don’t survive.
But sometimes the Chosen One is met with manifestations of happiness and luck. These ones don’t last long, either. Because their riches always lead to something that will eventually break them. Maybe drugs, maybe worse. And once the descent happens, it happens quickly.
From what I can tell, Bella’s family has done well for themselves because they request little and expect less. I have suspicions about the mother, however, about the pots of herbs she simmers as she cooks, and the salt she pours at her door.
But as far as I can tell, Bella has never heard a word from her mother about their involvement in the Underworld. About their chosen status. That makes her the perfect victim—but I am weak. I pray that her and I can work together. That I don’t have to turn her in order to get what I want.
So, I begin with a sob story. Maybe it’s manipulation. But I’m a demon. There’s much worse I can do.
“Your family reminds me of mine. You’d do anything to save them if they were in trouble, wouldn’t you?”
She doesn’t need to think about it. She nods. “Of course, I would.”
“Because they’d do anything to save you, right? Even if you’d done something wrong?”
I can see a flashback swim across her eyes.
Yes, I know about Brick. I can feel her shame. I can see the scene written across her skin because it constantly eats at her. I’ll use this to my advantage, without ever letting her know that I know.
She looks down at her hands, which are wrapped in mine as we sit at a picnic table near her school. “They would.”
I nod. “Well. I did something wrong. When I was young. I was your age, probably. Maybe younger.”
I was the exact same age, actually, that she was when she killed Brick.
“What’d you do?” she asks, eyes wide and innocent.
“I opened a door. It doesn’t sound bad, but we had many warnings in our village. Humans in your generation call them folktales, but they were as real to us as the weather. We knew of demons who would rise to the surface, like weevils in rice, every thousand years. And it was time. So, we had new laws to follow,” I tell her. “All doors remain open. All bodies of water are to be ignored. Don’t look inside trees with holes.”
“Those sound silly.” She smiles. I love the way she lightens things with her smile.
“Yes, I thought so, too. They were hard rules to follow because they didn’t make much logical sense. So, I ignored the most important one, don’t go swimming in the river at night. The demons just needed a little of my life source to rise. And then… I let them take my father. The demons. I thought that would be enough for them. But then they came back for the rest of us and half the village.”
“Because you went swimming? Draven, that’s an innocent mistake. Not even a mistake! I don’t know what I’d call it!”
I shrug. “It’s a mistake that cost my family and I several millennia, and many of those were spent in horrendous pain and unbearable torture.”
“Why did you give them your father?”
I try to think of a good answer.
“I thought they would stop with just him.”
“Why did you think that?”
“They said they would.”
“And they didn’t?”
I sigh. “Demons lie. It’s our favorite thing to do. We lie to anyone we can lie to. We lie when we’re telling stories; we lie when we’re telling secrets. We just lie.”
Bella raises an eyebrow. “Do you lie to me?”
“You would know, Chosen One.”
This answer satisfies her.
“Are they still being tortured?”
That’s a loaded question. How might one define torture?
I nod. “They are.”
She nods, too, as if she’s made a decision. “Why me?”
I shrug. “I don’t know why you were chosen. But you were.”
“And what exactly am I supposed to do? Go to Lucifer’s throne and beg for your family’s release?”
I shake my head. “It’s a little more complicated than that.”
l hope to keep the secrets of its complication.
“Well, I need more information.” Finally, she seems a little irritated. I know she’s not stupid, and she knows I’m hiding, avoiding the real conversation. I feel her irritation itchy under my skin, the frustration thrusting itself under my skull.
“Okay. Well, first, we will try to find a portal. The Chosen One is supposed to be able to open it.”
“Like you? Are you a chosen one?”
I shake my head. “That was different. That was when the layers between the portal were already thin. They aren’t so thin right now.”
“Well, I’ve never seen a portal. I don’t know what it’s supposed to look like.”
“It’s not like that. It’ll be an element, a fire or water or earth or spirit or—”
“A spirit?”
“Like a place of worship. A place of prayer that you feel connected to.”
She frowns, scratching in between her brows with one of her long-painted fingernails. “Yeah, religion and I haven’t mixed well. I don’t go to church.”
“Unsurprising. Churches tell only lies. You probably know it’s all bullshit.”
She chuckles, still not looking up at me. “Maybe. I don’t think my family has ever stepped foot inside a church.”
“Maybe your mother knows.” She snaps her head up, anger in her eyes, pushing past her mild irritation and growing full force.
“Don’t say that.”
I pretend to act surprised, as if I’m not actively trying to push her buttons. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you.”
She softens.
“I just hope that if my mom knew, she would’ve told me. It feels like a pretty big thing to not tell your own daughter.”
“Yes. Especially because it can mean so much danger, so much pain. You’d want to warn your child what might be coming for them, so that they could be safe. So, they wouldn’t have to protect themselves.”
I can see the guilt dancing across her skin again. If I can drive a wedge between her and her mother, her and her purest human connection, I might be able to convince her that what we have to do is warranted.
“You love your mom?” she asks.
“Of course, I do. And it’s my fault that she’s stuck down there.”
“What kind of torture is she facing?”
Another truth I cannot tell. My mother is actually doing a lot of the torturing. After being asked for thousands of years if she was ready to succumb to the darkness, she finally agreed.
“Things I don’t want to tell you, Bella. I don’t want you to be scared to go down there.”
“But then you are no better than my mom,” she says sharply. “You don’t want me to be protected or safe. I need all the information that I can get in order to be safe and protected.”
I stifle a smile. My plan is working as expected. “I thought your mother doesn’t know.”
She looks back down at her nails. “She didn’t. She doesn’t. I just meant—”
“I will tell you all you need to know to be safe. We will find a portal. That part will be hard, not because it’ll be hard to find, but because getting through the door isn’t pleasant.”
“How do you do it?”
“With a key. But the key is you. It’s the worst thing you’ve ever done. The most horrendous thing that’s ever happened to you. It’ll play it back for you in the mirror, and if you can face yourself, if you can still push through, then you’re in.”
“That’s what I’m worried about. What if I don’t?”
I sigh. “You will get through it. We all do.”
She rests her head on my shoulder, looking out at the rest of the park. The peaceful scenery in front of us. Swans swimming in the pond, trees blowing in the wind. This will all be madness soon enough.
“When do we start?” she asks.
“Now.” I take her hand and guide her up, and we walk toward the thick trees of the forest. I can feel it all rushing through me now, a wild energy. This is working. It’s finally going to work!
When my mother and sister join us up here, will they have a thirst for torture and pain? It has truly become an acquired taste of ours all those years down there.
And what if the door remains open?
Many will die. Bella’s family may be amongst them, her friends.
Is lying to her worth my family coming back to me?
Save us, Draven! Help!
They feel my wavering heart. Okay, it’s worth it.