Page 74 of Hell Bent

“We’re about to go to hell together. So yeah. It matters.”

Turner stared ahead. “Do you believe in God?”

“No.”

“Wow, not even a beat to think about it?”

“I’ve thought about it. A lot. Do you believe in God?”

“I do,” he said with a firm nod. “I think I do. But I definitely believe in the devil, and if he gets hold of a soul and doesn’t want to let it go, I think you have to try to pry it away from him. Especially if that soul has the makings of a soldier.”

“Or a knight.”

“Sure.”

“Turner, this isn’t some kind of holy war. It’s not good versus evil.”

“You sure?”

Alex laughed. “Well, if it is, are you sure we’re the good guys?”

“You killed those people in Los Angeles, didn’t you?”

The question hung between them in the car, another passenger, a ghost along for the ride. Alex considered just telling him. What would it feel like to be free of the secret of that night? What would it mean to have an ally against Eitan?

She watched the light from the highway splashing bright, then dark across Turner’s profile. She liked him. He was brave, and he was willing to stroll into the underworld to rescue someone he hadn’t particularly liked just because he believed it was right. But a cop was a cop.

“What happened to those people back in Los Angeles?” he pushed. “Helen Watson. Your boyfriend Leonard Beacon. Mitchell Betts. Cameron Aust. Dave Corcoran. Ariel Harel.”

The same thing that happens to anyone who gets close to me.

Alex studied the road slipping by, caught a glimpse of someone studying the screen of his phone against the steering wheel, a billboard for some band playing at Foxwoods in November, another for an accident attorney. She didn’t like the way Turner had rattled off those names. Like he knew her file inside out.

“It’s funny,” she said at last. “People talk about life and death as if there’s some kind of ticking clock.”

“There isn’t?”

Alex shook her head slowly. “That tick tick tick isn’t a clock. It’s a bomb. There’s no countdown. It just goes off and everything changes.” She rubbed her thumb over a spot of blood on her jeans. “But I don’t think hell is a pit full of sinners and a guy with horns playing bouncer.”

“You believe what you need to, Stern. But I know what I saw when I walked into that room back at Black Elm.”

“What?” Alex asked, though some part of her desperately didn’t want to know.

“The devil,” said Turner. “The devil trying to make his way out.”

22

Alex was glad Dawes wasn’t at Il Bastone.

She let herself in, grateful for the house, its wards, its quiet. It was nearly 8 p.m. Only a few hours had passed since she’d set out for Old Greenwich. The lights flickered and soft music floated through the halls, as if Il Bastone knew she’d been through something terrible.

She washed Reiter’s blood off the brass knuckles in the kitchen sink, returned them to their drawer in the armory, then dug through the cabinets to find the balm Dawes had used on her feet the night she’d sleepwalked to Black Elm. The schoolteacher had lent her enough strength to escape, but it was Alex’s body that had taken the punishment. She was cut up and bruised, her lungs hurt, and her whole body throbbed from her run across county lines.

In the Dante bedroom, she set out the first aid supplies she’d purchased on the pretty writing desk and then headed to the bathroom to peel back her bandage.

The wound on her neck was already closing, and there was no fresh blood. It shouldn’t have healed up so fast. Did that mean he actually had pierced her jugular and it had just started healing right away? She didn’t know. She didn’t want to know. She wanted to forget Linus Reiter and his angelic face and all of that pain and fear. She could feel his teeth sliding into her, his grip on her skull, the knowledge that she was nothing but food, a cup he held to his lips, a vessel to be emptied.

She hadn’t been afraid, truly afraid, in a long time. If she was honest, she had enjoyed facing off against Darlington’s parents, Oddman, the new Praetor. When Dawes had summoned a herd of fire-breathing horses from hell, she’d been scared but okay. She liked forgetting about everything except the fight in front of her.