Page 142 of Hellbound

“Marian,” Vale said quickly. “You fool.”

She’d played her part; where did he get off speaking to her in such a scornful tone as she lay dying?

He pressed a hand to her cheek, and suddenly, her mind was not her own.

With a sharp inhale, she plunged into cool darkness.

There is too much time inside her mind. She can’t hold it all. She knows the truth now. She knows what they are. She knows what he is. But she can’t bear it.

He came the instant she called, found her in her tomb of rot and brought her into the light. Vale, the demon she almost dared call “friend.”

“It’s not Hell,” she weeps as she digs her fingers into her scalp and they come away bloody. Her hair tears out so easily. Vale takes her hands from her head and holds them in his. He looks at her with a mix of compassion and quiet fury.

“No, it’s not. This mark was not meant for you. How did you find it?”

“He showed me,” she sobs and sobs. “He told me what I have to do. And then a monster freed me from the Rem … the ixyura.”

Marian can hardly choke out her next words.

“We’re all damned. We’re all going to that place. Every single soul. I—I can’t—this is too big, And I see … I hear them. The dead, Ours. Yours. Oh god. Va’hael. You’re the one they’re waiting for. You’re Death.”

His hold is all that keeps her from crumbling. Death was never an escape or the end. It was him. The answer. And it took her to the beginning of something horrible. Now she’s got an eternity of it she can’t contain.

“Then you must know you are the only one who can end it now. Help me.”

But she can’t. She can’t. She knows what’s at stake, but she’s not the one he needs.

“It hurts so much. I hear them screaming. I hear hope die over and over. I see them. All things must end. That’s what you promised them.”

She grips his shirt collar so tight, a button springs loose and clatters to the floor.

“That’s who you are. Va’hael, The End of All Things. The end that will not come.”

His eyes hold hers and all she sees is the pale blue light at the end of the dark tunnel between life and nothing.

Her friend, Death.

“Marian, I need you.”

“Make me forget. Please.” Her voice breaks. “I know you can.”

“My power was intended to provide relief to the dead, not the living. I don’t want you to forget. You may lose more time than you’re prepared to.”

“I don’t care. I promise I’ll help you. Just make it stop, please. Make it stop, make it stop.”

The convulsions start again, and he is achingly careful as he eases her to the floor to hold her through them.

The solemn face he wears tells her he’s made up his mind.

“I’m sorry, Marian. This is not what I wanted for you.”

Her apartment fades to black. The curtain rises on a montage of time she’d not known she’d lost. Countless conversations with Vale in his office, in the world, texts late at night on the phone she no longer has. Time enough for trust to grow, cold though his words are. There are so many moments between deaths where he demands her company, but never once compels her to die for him, for trinkets lost in a dead world.

There is more.

Moments he never intended to take, a distant murmur assures her.

The neighbor boy teaching her how to ride his brother’s bike when Marian’s parents aren’t home. A school overnight trip to the woods, where Marian falls in love with Ponderosa pines and the smell of duff. So many memories of staying up until dawn, gaming with friends halfway across the country.