Better off Dead Book Three Read online

  With relief pounding through me, I managed a nod.

  He pushed up onto that tiny section of the floor around me then opened his hands. Magic spilled between them. It arced around us, growing in a crackling force field that blocked us off from the growing void.

  I could see the void pushing in now. All the objects that were flying around us came closer and closer. It looked as if we’d all been shoved in a blender and someone was about to turn it on to high speed. Before I could be crushed by magical bullion, jewels, and rare hexes, we escaped with a pop.

  Chapter 2

  I appeared in the atrium of the main building. The first thing I noted was that the box was still in my hands. I’d forgotten to drop it.

  I screamed and tried to jerk back from it. That just made me bash into the minotaur. He placed a large furry hand on my shoulder. “Do not fear, Sonos’s bride. You made it out of there alive.”

  “I forgot to leave this behind,” I spat in a shaking breath as concierges and security staff flooded in at the sight of the minotaur. “It’s got Hilliker inside,” I hissed.

  Anyone who heard that came to a screeching stop.

  “You need to send me back inside. I have to trap him in there—” I began.

  I heard footfall. On the face of it, it was unremarkable. It was just a steady thumping getting closer. I should’ve paid attention to the fact that the crowd parted for it like water for Moses, however. I didn’t. I turned my tear-struck face back up to the minotaur. “Let me back in—”

  “Why would we take you back there when we risked everything to get you out?” That set of pounding footfall stopped behind me.

  I slowed down – like I was a plane that was about to fall from the sky, like I was a robot that had just had all its wires cut.

  “Eve?”

  Slowly, agonizingly, I turned. I couldn’t control my expression. It would’ve looked as if someone had taken my face and beaten it with embodied grief for hours. My eyes opened wide, tears rimmed my lashes, and my lips wobbled until it looked as if they’d been made from wavering grass. “Sonos?”

  He was standing there. He was in a ripped, burned, bloodied suit, but apart from that, he looked fine. In other words, he wasn’t dead.

  My whole life, I’d lived for the moment when I would face Sonos, wrap my hands around his throat, and make him pay.

  Now I dropped the box by my feet. It clanged but did not open. Long before I could think things through – long before I could even note how many people were in the room staring at us – I threw myself at him.

  I didn’t think. I didn’t want to. I just locked my arms around his neck. I didn’t squeeze until I killed him. I simply embraced him until tears rained down my cheeks.

  Sonos did nothing. He didn’t hug me back. He didn’t throw me off, either – but he did remain perfectly still.

  It took too long for me to catch up to what I was doing.

  This was Sonos, dammit.

  I... pulled away.

  I was intensely aware of the fact that there was a massive crowd in this atrium. It wasn’t just made up of the staff of the tunnel system. There were guests too. There were even magical police officers. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were journos out there. I had just acted like... like we really were engaged.

  The minotaur reached down and picked up the box. He wasted no time in handing it over to Sonos. The whole time, Sonos looked at me. His eyes... there was an endless question playing through them. One he obviously didn’t want to utter out loud. He simply nodded to me once, accepted the box between two magic laced hands, then turned.

  ... Really? I threw myself at him – and didn’t strangle him – and he couldn’t even be bothered to utter a word?

  The crowd parted for him again – though this time they got as far away as they could, packing in like sardines until there was a clear thoroughfare for Sonos that took him directly to the door.

  I stood there, seething, angry, yet so relieved, all I wanted to do was burst into tears. I’d told myself over and over again that Sonos was dead. He was fine. So... why hadn’t he come to save me?

  My mind quickly dovetailed into that question. You’d think it would take some time. You’d think a little of the old me would still function. Not just the me that hated Sonos, but the version of me that always knew she could ultimately protect herself.

  I hadn’t needed him to save me. But had I wanted him to?

  Sonos stopped at the doors. “Someone get her some medical attention. And for the love of God, ensure the tunnels remain closed.” With that, without a goodbye, without an acknowledgment that I was fine, he walked away.

  I watched him head down the steps and out of sight.

  The minotaur placed a hand on my shoulder again. I wasn’t expecting it, and I tensed up.

  “You have lost a lot of magic. You require intensive magical charms. Come this way. There is a clinic on the grounds.”

  The minotaur led me forward. I just followed meekly. All the while I kept my head turned in the direction of where Sonos had disappeared. What was he doing with that box? Throwing it down to Hell? Finding a handy volcano to chuck it into? None of that would work, would it? Yeah, the box was fancy, but all it would take was a matter of time until Hilliker would be able to escape. It had been better off in the closed tunnels – at least then there’d be a further buffer between that bastard and me.

  Somewhere at the back of my head, a suspicion rose. What if... what if Hilliker had been working with Sonos all along? What if that was the reason that Sonos wasn’t dead? And what if Sonos was just walking around the block to somewhere quiet so he could open the lid and let Hilliker out again?

  I could think those thoughts – I could throw my mind into them – but my heart would not follow. I just felt empty inside.

  The minotaur led me through the winding atrium until we reached an elevator. I was somewhat reluctant to take it considering the last one I’d used had led to one of the worst priest fights I’d ever encountered.

  The minotaur rode with me. He was so large that the elevator had to change its shape to allow him to fit inside. He kept a hand on my shoulder. If I’d been thinking straight, I would’ve realized it would look like I was a criminal.

  Screw it. I’d been to Purgatory today. I’d been killed... I don’t know how many times. And Sonos had walked away without talking to me. I had listed all of those in the order of their emotional import. So I did not have the brainpower to care if I was walking into another trap.

  When we reached the clinic, I was impressed by how large it was. It was also exceptionally well-stocked. I let my gaze dart over to the far wall. There was an open set of shelves that ran right up to the ceiling. They were completely filled with every kind of colorful charm and hex you could possibly think of. The bottles crackled and spat – some of them even making gurgling and hissing sounds. It sounded like a particularly uncoordinated orchestra.

  Several staff in long black robes with white cuffs immediately walked over. The chief doctor instructed that I be taken to one of the beds. The minotaur plucked me up. It would’ve felt – to him at least – like carrying a feather. He placed me down on a floating medical gurney. My body tensed. Fair enough – the hospitals I’d been to today had not been particularly friendly. All I could do was think of the memory I’d seen of my mother. As I squeezed my eyes closed and opened them quickly, I waited for the resurrection mark to burn above me, but it didn’t.

  I felt the doctors start to attend to me. Some of them offered support by chanting. It was materially different from what the priests had done, but I still winced and turned my hands into tight fists. I kept them locked against my legs. With my eyes still squeezed closed, memories of what I’d seen in the hospital assailed me. My mother screaming, her face contorted in pain – and that mark, that mark burning above in the air, waiting to descend.

  As soon as I thought of the word descend, I shook. It was this great big internal move that powered through my body
. It would’ve looked to the doctors as if I was starting to convulse. One of them jolted back then rushed over to the wall of charms.

  I thought I heard the minotaur growl – not in an angry way but one that was shaking with worry.

  I wasn’t about to die. But... I couldn’t keep running anymore, could I? I knew that wasn’t the first time I’d decided that. Multiple times over my journey I had faced the truth, and always it had given me the strength I required. But I had not gone deep enough, had I? And that right there – the word deep – was the point.

  As I tightened my hands into even harder fists, I thought of everything that Hilliker had told me. I was a child of the Deep, and the magic I had would be used to call the Banished. But if I learned to access that magic, it would give me a chance. He’d said that ultimately wouldn’t matter, but screw him. I would take absolutely any chance I could right now.

  I ignored the doctors, even when they asked me questions. They quickly assumed that I was unresponsive. The chanting became louder. I had no clue how many charms were thrown over me. Heck, I even felt some hexes. Before I could conclude that these doctors secretly worked for Hilliker, hexes could be used to counteract other strong hexes. They weren’t in and of themselves bad things. My whole body crackled with magic, but it wasn’t my own. Meanwhile, I pushed deep, then deeper again.

  I had no clue if I could access this so-called Deep realm with my mind. One would quickly assume that I would not be able to. From what I understood of it, it was at the very heart of Hell. You could not simply will your way to that realm by thinking too hard. Sure, you could do it with certain heinous actions – and you could certainly hop a ride to Hell if you knew the right kind of demon. But the mind could not penetrate Heaven or Hell without an invitation.

  The world became nothing more than a background hum to me. Occasionally I felt my hands being plucked up and various spells being injected into my palms and wrists – but apart from that, I completely disassociated.

  One or two muttered statements shifted in through my fugue.

  “She’s unlikely to get her magic back again.”

  “The damage seems permanent.”

  ... Permanent, ha?

  Five times. Hilliker had said that he only needed to kill me five more times until the Banished arrived.

  My entire life, I’d treated the resurrection curse as if it would never end. At the back of my head I’d kind of understood that one day – just like everything – I would die. But I certainly hadn’t been able to attach a number to that. Now I had one. And it was perilously small.

  I still didn’t know how many times I’d died today, but it was a lot more than five. If Hilliker broke out – sorry, when Hilliker broke out – all he would need to do was capture me one more time. He could kill me that many times in five minutes.

  ... I felt like I’d been given a terminal diagnosis. But one that could kick in at any moment.

  I thought I heard the minotaur leave the room. Presumably he’d call Sonos and tell him the news – if Sonos was even still interested. I knew that sounded petulant, but I couldn’t stop myself from thinking it. He hadn’t even bothered to face me and tell me what was going on.

  Eventually, the doctors stopped. They’d given me as much first-aid as they could. They’d pumped me full of so many charms, I instantly wondered who was paying for all of these. The rare incense burner I had would certainly not be enough collateral. It had to be Sonos. But how many people were on his side that they would do his bidding? I got it – he was a popular guy, but the owners of the tunnel system were not Hell groupies. Yet they trusted him. So many people did.

  As I squeezed my eyes tighter closed, I thought of the memories that had resurfaced of the orphanage. Had I made it up when I’d dreamed that Sonos had been with me the entire time, always there as a hand on my shoulder – as an invisible presence helping me?

  It would be easy to assume I’d made it all up. But I had to answer one question. Why him?

  I needed to speak to Sister Mary. I needed to open that box in my room. I wanted answers—

  ... And I had them.

  I opened my eyes.

  The minotaur was still by the doorway. The doctors had walked away to deal with other patients, assuming I was stable.

  The minotaur walked over. “You are to rest.”

  I nodded. “I’m fine. I don’t want to take up an active hospital bed, though,” I said as I tapped the floating device below me. “Is there a private room?”

  He frowned. Considering how large his mouth was, it was an obvious move. “You are better off where the medical staff can see you—”

  “I want to be alone,” I said flatly. I tried to ensure there was no emotion in my voice, but all that meant was that there was nothing but emotion in my voice. It shook, wavering like a hand that would never hold steady again.

  You would not think that a minotaur would be a particularly caring nor empathetic soul, but you would be wrong. He nodded, walked over to the head doctor, and organized a room for me. There were several branching off the main area.

  I didn’t even have to get up from the bed. It floated in there.

  “The door must remain open,” the doctor said before turning around and leaving as another patient ran in.

  I was not the only person who’d been injured. Hilliker’s priests had gone all out on the tunnel system and any staff and patrons unlucky enough to be in there.

  The minotaur waited around in the doorway for a while until his phone rang. And yeah, he had a phone. It was tiny. He could barely clutch it up in his massive hands. He walked away from me. Only when it sounded as if he wandered out of the clinic did I bother to sit up, swing my legs over the side of the bed, and reach a hand behind me.

  I concentrated. Dammit. They were right. I just didn’t have my magic anymore. There were a faint few charges, but that was it. Compared to what I’d once had, it felt as if I’d lost almost all of my magic reserves. I was worse than a newbie again. I just clenched my teeth, squeezed my eyes closed, ignored my tears, and concentrated with all my damn might. I told myself I could do this. Surely my magic couldn’t be completely gone if I was a child of the Deep? If I had the ability to access that power, then it could come back, right?

  I kept repeating that over and over again in my mind, my hand still reached behind me.

  It took an agonizingly long time. It wasn’t until I clutched my cross, my fingers squeezing in tightly, that I finally did it. My subspace pocket opened up behind me. It wavered. It was bad enough that I thought it would collapse. I immediately shoved my hand in. I fortunately didn’t have to search through my stuff. My adoption records were the last thing that had been put in there. I pulled them out. It was a laborious affair. By the end of it, my entire body shook. I wanted to turn right back around and flop onto my bed, but I managed to hold myself up. I took in rocking breath after rocking breath. Shaking backward and forward, it took me a while to regain the motor control I needed to actually stare down at the file in my lap. It wasn’t massive. Nor was it fancy. It was just a manila folder with a wad of paper inside.

  But its simple design could not hide the importance of its contents. As soon as my fingers tightened around it, my whole body stiffened. Tension wound around me, getting tighter and tighter like a boa constrictor trying to crush me.

  I ensured that I didn’t make a sound. If I gasped – let alone screamed – the medical staff would run in. They’d ask what I was doing. When they found out, they’d confiscate the files and tell me to relax. But how the hell could I relax when I didn’t know what was going on?

  With a shaking hand, I finally opened the manila folder. Taped to the back of it was a photo. It was my mother and father. They were smiling. There was a bassinet behind them, and you could see a baby’s hand reaching from it. It was me.

  What’s more, I could see the faintest outline of my resurrection mark.

  I stiffened. I had already appreciated that I had not been cursed with the resu
rrection hex on my sixteenth birthday. It had simply been activated that day when Hilliker had killed me for the first time. But I hadn’t been afflicted with the resurrection marks as a kid.

  Had I?

  Shaking, realizing everything I thought I knew about my childhood was about to crumble before me, I started to read.

  I’d come to the orphanage at the age of six. My parents had died in a terrible fire.

  As soon as I read that, I began to hyperventilate. I knew I couldn’t afford to draw any attention to myself, so I locked a hand on my mouth. I closed my eyes and forcibly controlled myself. Tears continued to trail down my cheeks, but I didn’t dare try to stop them. They were my body’s last-ditch attempt to release the god-awful pressure building within me. And if the pressure wasn’t released, I would explode.

  When I was certain that I would no longer hyperventilate, I dropped my hand and continued to read.

  I had always assumed that I had killed my parents. I thought I could remember that day – when the house exploded in fire, when my mother screamed as magic raced around me.

  But clearly I did not remember it as it had occurred.

  The adoption records were detailed – like a forensic report. Horrified, I read that a contingent of priests had been seen around my house. They had chanted, despite the fact my father had desperately tried to stop them, until the entire house and everyone inside it had been incinerated.

  Even I had died.

  Except death meant nothing to me.

  I was rocking back and forth now. I couldn’t take it anymore.

  So I hadn’t died for the first time on my sixteenth birthday, then? Maybe the importance of that day came back to the fact Hilliker himself had been the one to kill me.

  Did it matter?

  My parents....

  I was forced to close my eyes again. I rocked back and forth. I ensured that I didn’t make a sound. Fortunately the medical bed was an expensive one, and considering it floated, there weren’t any legs that could grate across the floor.

  I continued to use absolutely everything I could to calm myself down – or at least take the edge off my terror.