Page 155 of Hell Bent

He flipped through the book and held it open to her. “Atlas,” he said, “at Rockefeller Center.”

The black-and-white photo showed a muscular figure wrought in bronze and poised on one knee, bent beneath the weight of three interlocked rings resting on his colossal shoulders.

“The celestial spheres,” Darlington continued. “The heavens in their movements. Or…”

Alex traced her finger around one of the circles emblazoned with the signs of the zodiac. “The Wheel.”

“This sculpture was designed by Lee Lawrie. He’s also responsible for the stonework in Sterling.” Darlington took the book from her hands, returned it to the desk. He kept his back to her when he said, “That night at Manuscript, it wasn’t just a wheel I saw. It was a crown.”

“A crown. What does that mean? What does any of it mean?”

“I don’t know. But when you crossed into hell through the circle of protection, you broke every rule there is. And when you carried me out again, you found another one to break.” He settled himself back in the chair across from her. “You stole me from underworld. That was bound to leave a mark.”

Alex could hear Anselm—Golgarot—screaming thief. She saw the wolf’s lips pull back to form the same word.

“Is that what those things are?” she asked. “Around your wrists and neck? Marks?”

“These?” He leaned forward, and the change in him was instant, the glowing eyes, the curling horns, the broadening of the shoulders. Without meaning to, Alex found herself scooting back in her chair. He was man and then monster in the space of a breath. The golden bands glowed at his wrists and throat.

“Yeah,” she said, trying not to show her fear. “Those.”

“These marks mean I am bound in service. Forever.”

“To hell? To Golgarot?”

He laughed then, the sound deep and cold, the thing at the bottom of the lake. “I’m bound to you, Stern. To the woman who brought me out of hell. I will serve you ’til the end of days.”

40

Her face went very still. Darlington had learned that this was what Alex Stern did when faced with uncertainty. Fight or flight? A survivor’s move was sometimes no move at all. He could see her in the basement on that night so long ago, a girl wrought in stone.

She raised a brow. “So … are you going to do my laundry?”

Fight, flight, or sarcasm. “What a horrid girl you are.”

“Ma’am. What a horrid girl you are, ma’am.”

Now he laughed.

But Alex’s brows had drawn together. Her jaw was set. She looked like she was squaring up for a fight. “There are too many mysteries. I don’t like the way they’re adding up.”

“I’m not certain I do either,” he said, and he wasn’t lying this time. “You can see the dead, hear them, use them for your own ends—and unless I’m very much mistaken, were it not for certain scruples that Marguerite Belbalm lacked, you could use the living in much the same way.”

All he got for that assessment was a short, sharp nod.

“As for me…” He wasn’t sure how to finish that sentence. As a man he had suffered in hell. But as a demon he had doled out suffering with ease and ingenuity. Sandow had come to them, murdered by Belbalm, his soul already consumed by her. He would never pass beyond the Veil, but hell was happy to claim him. Darlington’s demon self had enjoyed finding new ways to make Sandow miserable, to pay for the anguish he’d caused.

Darlington had been frightening to the shades of the Veil and even to himself. It had been … If he was honest, it had been exhilarating. He had been a creature of the mind since he was a boy—languages, history, science. The rest of it, the training he’d put himself through—fighting, swordplay, even acrobatics—had all been in service to the future adventures he’d been sure he would have. But the great invitation had never come. There had been no noble quests or secret missions. There had been rituals, glimpses of the world beyond, schoolwork, reports to write, and that was all. So he had kept honing himself like a blade that would never be tried.

Then Dean Sandow had sent him to hell. Darlington shouldn’t have survived, but he’d managed to hold on until at last rescue had come.

And now? Was he human enough? He had been able to sit at the table and hold a conversation. He hadn’t growled at anyone or broken any furniture, but it hadn’t been easy. Demons were not thinking creatures. They operated on instinct, driven by their appetites. He had prided himself on being nothing like that. Never rash. Guided by reason. But now he wanted in a way he never had. He had been tempted to bury his face in his soup bowl and lap at it like a greedy animal. He wanted to place himself between Alex’s legs now and do the same to her.

Darlington drew a hand over his face and gave himself a little shake, praying for sense to return. He was her mentor. Her Virgil. He owed her his life and he could do better by her. He was not some slavering beast. He would pretend to be human again until he was.

Darlington had been surprised by the way that the others had come together to work and plan. He almost hadn’t recognized the command in Alex, the confidence in Dawes, all of it born of his absence. They would have gone on without me. They would have grown stronger. Sitting there, watching them hatch their schemes with Turner and Mercy, he’d felt like a stranger in a place he’d once known he belonged. His understanding of his own lack of consequence had been both slow and sudden in its cruelty.

“As for me, I don’t know what I am,” he said at last.