Before I Wake (31 page)

Was beauty so impossible to define? So pointless that it
couldn’t be accurately remembered? What must it feel like to be the most
beautiful creature in all of existence, but be forgotten the moment you leave
the room?

Was that how Aunt Val had felt?

Luca was the first to ask the obvious question, pulling me from
my own thoughts. “What do the demons want them for?”

The moment he spoke, all three hellions turned to look at us,
like they’d been expecting us all along. And, of course, they had been. Avari
disappeared, then reappeared close enough to whisper in Luca’s ear. “Why don’t
you join us and find out?”

Before we could answer—or think, or plan, or run—he grabbed
Luca and disappeared again, then reappeared beneath the pavilion, where he
shoved Luca onto the bench next to Emma.

“Okay,
plan?
” I whispered, glancing
from one Hudson brother to the other.

Nash huffed. “We probably should have come up with one before
we crossed over.”

“It’s not like we had notice or anything,” Tod said.

“Only two of us can cross,” I said, eyeing our friends on the
bench. “Even if we could get to them, I don’t know how many I can take at once.”
And the hellions could probably hear every word we were saying.

“Maybe you should go get help?” Tod whispered.

“Your mom?”

“No!” both Hudson brothers said.

“Levi, or Madeline,” Tod suggested.

“The more, the merrier,” Avari said, and somehow, his voice
came from right next to me, though he hadn’t left the pavilion. “Bring Madeline.
I haven’t yet made her acquaintance.”

“No!” Emma shouted, with what may have been the last of her
strength. “Don’t bring Madeline. Avari needs her.”

Tod and Nash both glanced at me, and I knew what they were
thinking. What could unite three hellions who hated one another, and why the
hell would they want Madeline?

Thane slapped Emma, and she gasped, then kicked him in the
shin, still holding her side with one hand. He pulled his hand back to hit her
again, but Luca stood and shoved Thane back, glaring silently, and the reaper
actually stayed back. Tod wasn’t the only member of the undead unnerved by the
necromancer.

Sophie was sniffling quietly. Lydia looked paralyzed with fear
and pain, and I realized she was syphoning some of Emma’s pain. Neither of them
would last long like that.

“Come on.” I wasn’t sure what the hellions were up to, but we
couldn’t help anyone from fifty feet away. I marched down the slight incline
toward the pavilion and both Tod and Nash followed me.

“—don’t need Madeline,” Thane was saying when we got within
earshot. “I told you, she can do it.” He looked pointedly at me.

“I can do what?” I asked.

“You lying, traitorous bastard,” Tod spat, but Thane only
shrugged.

“We do what we have to do to survive. You promised to try to
recover my soul if I helped you. Avari promised to give it back if I helped him.
The difference is that he can’t lie, and you can. I had to go with the sure
thing.”

“Is this a trade?” I asked Avari. “You want me? Fine. I’m here.
I’ll trade myself for all four of them,” I said, glancing at my friends lined up
on the bench.

“Oh, we’re way beyond a simple trade,” Belphegore said. “Avari
can no longer afford to keep you for himself, and these four meat sacks are all
necessary for our little project.” She waved one hand at the bench and its
occupants.

“But we are not unreasonable,” Invidia said. “If you do what we
ask, we will let both of your little men go free.” She gestured at Nash and
Tod.

“Hell, no,” Tod spat, just as Nash said, “No way.”

“We don’t even know what they want yet,” I said, without taking
my attention away from the hellions. And Thane.

“Doesn’t matter,” Tod growled. “They don’t get you.”

“They don’t get
any
of us. What do
you want?” I asked Avari again.

“You may have noticed that we’ve learned how to cross into your
world,” he began, and I nodded. They’d gone to great pains to make sure I knew
that. “The problem is that our current method of transportation requires a new
human soul for each trip. We would like a more efficient way to utilize our
resources. You help us, and both Hudsons will go free. You have my word.”

“What about them?” I asked, glancing at the full bench
again.

“Unfortunately, they are all part of the permanent solution. As
are you.”

“No.” Tod grabbed my hand and started to haul me backward, and
when I pulled free, he stood at my back, quietly fuming, strung so tight I could
hear his teeth grinding.

“What do you want?”

“You and the
necroanima
will bind
my life force with a resurrected soul already in my possession.”

One of the reapers he’d snatched? And what the hell was a
necroanima?
Were they talking about Luca?

“Then you will install both in the body of this young woman—”
Avari gestured to Lydia “—so that I can come and go from your world at will.
There is one for each of us.”

“What?” I frowned at the hellion. “I don’t even know what that
means. You want to live in Lydia’s body? Forever?”

“Of course not.” He frowned like my guess was preposterous.
“Only until her body wears out. Then I will select another.”

“What the
hell
is he talking
about?” Nash asked. But no one had an answer.

“You will do as I instructed,” Avari said. “I will have a
reusable body to use in the human world, and your men will go free. Or… I will
kill every single one of you and feast on your souls for eternity.”

“That’s not possible!” I insisted. “And even if it were, I
can’t do that. I
reclaim
souls, not reinstall
them.”

“You can do both,” Invidia insisted. “Just like Madeline.”

“Madeline?” I asked, and Luca’s gaze fell to the ground and
stayed there. I was missing something.

“Madeline reinstalled your soul,” Avari said. “After her nephew
reanimated your body.”

“What? Luca can’t reanimate dead people! He just finds
them.”

“Of course he can.” Belphegore laughed out loud. “What did you
think the
anima
part of
necroanima
meant?”

“I don’t know what any of that means! He’s a necromancer.
Right? Luca?” I demanded, and finally he met my gaze.

“Over here, they call me a
necroanima.
Which is technically more accurate. Madeline was afraid
that knowing too much would put you in danger, so she wouldn’t let me tell you
what I can really do. Or what
you
can do.”

“I can install souls? Into
corpses?
” As a
bean sidhe,
I’d only been
able to help put them back into their own not-yet-truly-dead bodies.

He nodded. “All extractors can.”

“But you’re more special than that, aren’t you?” Avari reached
out to touch my cheek, and Tod pulled me out of reach. After that, I didn’t want
to let his hand go. But I did, because I couldn’t afford to look weak.

“How? How am I more special?” And why the hell was I the last
to know?

“It takes the combined skills of both an extractor and a
bean sidhe
to bind a human soul to a non-human life
force,” Avari said. “There hasn’t been one of those—one of
you
—in nearly a century, by the human calendar.”

“What does that mean? It’s actually possible?” I asked Luca,
because even though Avari couldn’t lie, I didn’t trust him.

“In theory,” Luca said. “It’s never been done with a hellion,
but it was done once with a lesser Nether-creature, so he could cross over and
give testimony. The binding was done by a restored female
bean sidhe
. Just like you.”

No.
No.
Where the hell was my copy
of
History of the Nether?
Shouldn’t that have been
issued to me upon my death?

“That is the only reason I let your
necroanima
leave the Nether when he and your cousin crossed over by
mistake,” Avari said. “So that he could reanimate you. If you’d stayed dead, I
would have lost your soul.”

“You…?” Avari had planned this. Probably from the moment Thane
showed him how to cross into the human world.

“Okay.” I turned back to Avari, fighting to maintain focus.
“But even if I wanted to help you—” and I didn’t “—I can’t do it. I don’t know
how.”

“I think you’ll figure it out. Let’s practice the installation
first. All you need is the proper…motivation.” Belphegore hauled Emma off the
bench and shoved Luca down when he tried to pull her back. “This one is your…
What is the word? The one you care about. Your friend?”

Em was sniffling, tears pouring down her face, but her chin was
stiff. Resolute. She was
so
much braver than I’d
ever suspected. Braver than I’d ever
been.

My hands curled into fists. “Don’t touch her!”

“Pay attention, now,” Belphegore said, her featureless,
black-orb eyes trained on me. “We’re going to play a game. All you have to do is
catch the soul. Then we’ll move on to the bonding.”

“No!” I shouted when she reached for Emma. Em screamed.

Invidia snapped her neck with one hand.

Em crumpled to the ground and the scream that tore from my
throat had no equal. Sophie, Lydia, and Luca slapped their hands over their
ears. Even the hellions winced. The canvas overhead flapped, stirred by the
power of my voice. Tree branches shook in the distance, and several fat purple
fruits dropped to the ground.

Still screaming, I fell to my knees at Emma’s side. I checked
for a pulse, but there was none. I felt for breath, but she wasn’t breathing.
Her beautiful brown eyes stared up at the yellowish Netherworld sky through the
ripped canvas, but they had no focus.

Emma was dead. Not
un
dead, like me.
She was
gone,
her life stolen, her lifeline aborted
without a second thought from the hellion who’d ended it. And with her, I’d lost
a part of myself that could never be replaced. Emma was my other half. The
sister I’d never had. The cousin I’d always wanted. We’d shared every triumph,
every failure, and every secret.

I’d promised I would protect her. Instead, I’d gotten her
killed.

I held Emma’s head in my lap and screamed, and screamed, and
screamed. Tears filled my eyes and poured over. Inside my head was a maelstrom
of grief and fury that couldn’t be expressed by either thought or word. I was
made
of pain and loss.

Luca let go of one ear to stare at his hand, and distantly I
noticed that it was smeared with blood, more of which dripped from his ear.

Jaw clenched in fury, Tod took something from his pocket and
handed it to Nash, but I couldn’t see what it was through my tears, and I
doubted Nash could, either. Neither of them were bothered by the female
bean sidhe
’s wail. They heard only the song I sang for
my best friend’s soul.

I would have screamed for Emma forever. I would have screamed
for her soul until the earth crumbled beneath us both, just to keep from losing
her. But Belphegore knelt in front of me and clamped her smooth, hard hand over
my mouth.

“Nicely done,” she said in the sudden, deafening silence. “But
you cannot install what hasn’t yet left the corpse.”

In my grief and outrage, it took me a minute to understand. I’d
screamed so fast and so loud for Emma that her soul didn’t have a chance to
leave her body. I’d suspended it in place, still inside her.

But the moment my scream ended, her soul began to rise.
Belphegore opened her mouth and inhaled, and Em’s soul began to float toward
her.

My heart hurt. My head hurt. My throat hurt. My entire
existence was pain and bleak darkness. Em could
not
die.

But it was too late. She was already dead. And even if the
hellions would let me put her soul back in her body, there was no guarantee
she’d ever regain consciousness. Her neck would still be broken, her body
irreparably damaged.

So this time I screamed for her soul. Belphegore wouldn’t get
it. Neither would Avari or Invidia. No part of the Netherworld would have Emma,
or any of the rest of my friends.

I sang for Emma’s soul, and when I held my amphora out, her
soul slid into the heart around my neck like it was always meant to be there. It
wasn’t. But at least she was safe there. Even if they took the amphora, they
couldn’t destroy it, and they couldn’t remove her soul from it.

“Wonderful!” Belphegore clapped her flawless hands, her perfect
lips curled into a forgettable smile. “Now bind her soul to me. Pull her out of
your little heart and—”

“No.” I laid Emma’s body gently on the ground and stood,
clutching the amphora in my fist, glaring at the world through fresh, furious
tears. “
Hell,
no. You’re not getting her. You’re not
getting any of us. You can kill every single one of them, and I’ll put every
single soul in here, where you can’t touch it.”

Sophie and Lydia cried harder behind me, and Luca tried to
comfort them both through his own shock.

“And if we kill you?” Avari demanded. The hellions stood in
front of me now, all in a row, united in their shared rage. In power so strong
it radiated from them in waves that stung my skin.

“If you kill me, you will never,
ever
get what you want.”

Avari opened his mouth to make another threat, and Tod shouted
over him. A single word that approached the power and volume of my own
voice.

“Now!”

He charged Avari, and from the other side, Nash charged
Belphegore. Both hellions screamed, then bent at odd angles, reaching for
something behind them. When they turned, still reaching in vain, I understood.
The hilt end of my broken dagger protruded from the center of Avari’s back,
where he couldn’t reach it. The blade end was stuck in Belphegore, where she
couldn’t reach it.