With All My Soul (30 page)

I put myself here.
I’d done this to
myself. For one long moment, I couldn’t move past that outrageous certainty.
Why
had I done this to myself? Why would I
submit to such suffering?

When much of the pain and fear were gone, he got his first
taste of the fury and self-loathing raging inside me, and he took it all, bit by
bitter bit.

Then I remembered his name.

Ira.
Evil, but useful.

Ira licked the cut he’d opened inside my lip, and...

* * *

“You want me to play nursemaid and
courier?” His black, black eyes mock me. “That is a perverse sort of
role-play indeed, my twisted little instigator.”

I roll my eyes. “I want you to protect
them and deliver a letter.” My blood spells out his name on the cafeteria
floor. It still pools in my palm, and I hope it will not dry before we are
done negotiating. “
This
letter.” I pull the
folded envelope from my pocket, and blood streaks the front of
it.

His brows rise in obvious curiosity. “What
could you possibly offer, little flame, that is worth the performance of
such insulting tasks?” He’s interested. I can feel it. I can
see
it.

“Madness. The profit of pain and anger.” I
close my eyes, trying not to imagine it. “I guarantee that if you protect
them while I’m gone and deliver this letter at the appropriate time, when
you come for me, you will find the most dense concentration of agony and
rage you’ve ever experienced. I’ll be a human bonbon with a bitter raging
center. I’ll be
insane
with suffering.
Completely out of my mind. And it’s all yours. Every single flame of fury
surging through my veins. Every drop of pain I’ve been drowning in. Every
mad thought jumping around in my head. They are all yours, if you do this
for me.”

* * *

He sucked on my lip, encouraging the flow of my blood,
and rage washed through me into him. I didn’t try to fight it. I let it go,
because this was what I’d agreed to and because with every bit of anger he took,
he gave back one of my memories.

Answers.

The long-forgotten promises that put me there...

* * *

“Why would Avari let you go?” Ira’s
black, black eyes flash in the pale moonlight shining into the
cafeteria.

“He won’t have any choice once he realizes
he doesn’t really own my soul. He can’t own it if it wasn’t mine to
surrender in the first place, so if the rightful owner comes to claim it, he
has to turn it over. Right?”

Ira’s brows rise. “If it wasn’t yours,
then you couldn’t rightfully give it to him, and he couldn’t rightfully
accept it. So, yes, if the rightful owner demands its return, Avari would
have to relinquish your soul.”

“But because he
did
take possession of it, his promise to me has to stand,
right?”

“The wording of such a promise is
critical, but yes.” Ira nods slowly, and his dark, dark lips curl up in a
smile. “You are a clever one, little fury. But tell me, why would your soul
not be yours to surrender?”

“Because I already gave it to someone
else....”

* * *

My own blood filled my mouth as fast as it flowed into
his, and dimly I was aware that I couldn’t have much more to lose. But that
probably didn’t matter. I was dead, right?

* * *

“So then, there’s only the matter
of duration. How long will you suffer for them? For me?” Ira’s blood-smile
broadens in anticipation of my answer.

As little as possible, of course. “A
week.” I say it as firmly as I can, because surely a week in hell is enough
for anyone to endure, but he laughs in my face, and the sound is like glass
shattering as it’s hurled against stone.

“A decade. I won’t work without the
promise of a hefty profit. By which, of course, I mean your pain and anger.
The hellion’s fury will be substantial, but
you
must suffer to make this creative venture worth my time, little
fury.”

But we’re arguing about
my
time.
My
suffering. And I can’t
do a decade. There wouldn’t be enough of me left to rescue.

“A year. You’ll be paid more than you can
possibly
imagine, and you’ll continue to collect
from Avari for years,” I point out. “Decades, maybe.” If a hellion’s memory
is infinite, who knows how long he can hold a grudge?

“Little flame, I have quite a capable
imagination, as does your hellion of avarice. But if I am to protect your
loved ones on your behalf, you must suffer on mine. For years. That is how
this works.”

My heart races in panic. This will fall
apart if I can’t secure Ira’s help. My father will die. He will suffer for
eternity because I couldn’t save him. My friends will be hunted, one by
one.

I have no choice. “Fine. Three years. As
measured in the human world.” I can already feel the promised years slipping
away from me, and I am
terrified
of what my time
in hell will bring.

“Five. Not a day less.”

“Four, and you can feed from them, too.” A
last-minute stroke of brilliance on my part. “While you protect my friends
and family, you can have their anger. Their grief for me. Take it. Feed from
it in my absence.” A reciprocal relationship that would surely benefit
everyone.

Ira thinks for several minutes, staring at
me until my skin begins to crawl in discomfort. Have I messed this up? Have
I forgotten something?

Then, finally, he nods. “Shall we seal it
with a kiss?”

“If I must. But there’s one more thing. I
need you to make me forget about this. Take the memory of our bargain, so
Avari can’t find it.”

“That will be my pleasure, my little
roaring flame....”

* * *

When he pulled away, the world stopped spinning so fast
that I almost fell over. I blinked. I licked the inside of my lip and tasted my
own blood. Then I looked down at the dingy scrap of linen—maybe white,
once—wrapped loosely around me like a towel.

I was dirty and bruised, but not scarred and no thinner than
when I’d arrived. Avari must have just put me back together, intending to rip me
apart all over again.

I glanced at the filthy room around me, and I almost asked how
long I’d been there. Was it four years to the day? The memories felt numerous
enough to fill a century, though they were eerily hollow now, without the pain
and anger he’d drained from them.

It worked.
I hardly dared to
believe it. What if this was part of the torture—what if Avari was letting me
believe I was free, only to pull me back into hell, where I would suffer anew?
He’d certainly done it before.

My toes curled in the dirt on the floor. “Is it over?” I looked
up at Ira and found him smiling the smile of the thoroughly intoxicated. He was
drunk on my pain and fury. On the insanity he’d slurped from my soul, leaving me
only the bits I could handle.

So far, so good.

“Ira, is it over?” Candlelight flickered over the scrap of my
clothing, and he finally looked down at me.

“Almost, little flame. Your knight has arrived.”

“You’re not my knight.”
Please say you’re
not my knight....

“No, that was a temporary role, and one that has never fit me
well. Knights appear to work for honor, a concept I’m not sure I even fully
understand. I work for profit.”

Of course he did. He was a hellion, and hellions were evil. He
hadn’t helped me—he’d performed services in exchange for payment.
Years
worth of payment. Could it really have been only
four? It felt like eternity....

“Your knight is fairer than I, and less powerful, but much more
determined on his mission. Did I mention that he’s here?”

He’s here.
Tod had come to say the
words I’d left for him. Words he’d had no way of understanding until Ira
delivered my second letter to him. Until he’d read—in my handwriting—that Levi
had lied, and that I wasn’t gone.

I stood up straight and buried the memories, ignoring the
desperate impatience nipping at the edges of my miserable existence. “Let’s
go.”

The hellion held his hand out, and I took it. A second later,
we stood in another room, so fast I had no time to process the change. This room
was larger, and populated with dozens of terrifying species I didn’t quite
recognize, but didn’t find unfamiliar, either. Had I seen them during my
torture?

My bare feet were silent on the dusty stone floor. Linen
whispered against my skin as I moved. Avari’s voice was like needles shoved
through my ears and into my brain.

“Just because I cannot hurt you does not mean that no one in
the Nether will. I cannot decide if you are flaunting courage or idiocy today,
reaper.”

Reaper!

My heart jolted back to life when I saw him, standing alone
among monsters, feet spread, fists clenched. His curls were golden like pure
sunlight, which had surely never shone in the Netherworld. He looked the same.
Like time had stood still around him while it had stretched monstrously around
me.

“Neither. I’m flaunting words.” Tod’s voice touched places
inside me that had not felt kindness in...longer than I could even comprehend. I
had to bite my tongue to keep from calling out to him through the crowd. My
hands itched to touch him. My mouth
longed
for a
taste of him. But I couldn’t let Avari see me until the formalities were over.
Until he knew he was bound by his own word to let me go. “Specifically, the ones
she said to you.”

“Which words were those?” Avari demanded, and I could tell that
he wasn’t yet angry, because he didn’t know what was coming. “She’s screamed and
moaned a great many things to me over the years, though few of them have been
coherent of late.”

Tod stiffened,
livid
with
indignation on my behalf, and I wanted to cry out and tell him I was okay.
Because he didn’t know. He didn’t know what had happened to me, or what state I
was in, or whether I would ever again be the girl who’d kissed him in the school
hallway, scandalizing everyone around us with what now seemed like such an
innocent expression of attraction.

Ira stood in the background with me, practically buzzing with
anticipation of the rage destined to glut him.

“My soul is yours,” Tod said, and the words burned through me.
I remembered saying them, just like that. Just like I’d practiced. Just like I’d
written...

“Yes? And?” Avari was losing patience, and surely soon he’d
realize I was no longer suffering. That my pain was no longer feeding him.

“Her soul wasn’t her own to give, which means she had no right
to surrender it to you or to anyone else. You had no right to accept it.” He
stood straighter, confident and bold in spite of the monsters restlessly milling
around him.
“You can’t keep her.”

“Nonsense!” Avari roared, and Ira’s hand tightened around mine.
He practically
swelled,
lapping up the anger Avari
had started to exude like sweat from hellion pores. “Who else would own her
soul?”

“I would.” Tod’s voice was strong. Clear. “Her soul is mine,
and I have proof, written in her own hand.” He pulled a folded envelope from his
back pocket, and even from a distance I recognized his name, in my handwriting.
It was my first letter to him—the one I’d left for him the night Levi had told
his lie. Tod opened the envelope and pulled out a piece of paper that had
obviously been folded and unfolded so many times it was nearly falling apart.
Then he read from it.

“‘I am yours, body, mind, heart, and soul. And I always will
be.’” Tod looked up, and Avari’s eyes narrowed until they were slits leaking
darkness into the Netherworld night. “See? She is mine, body, mind, heart, and
soul.
And if she’s
mine,
she can’t be
yours.
Let. Her. Go.
”

The demand was a formality. Avari had no choice but to stand by
his word. To break it would mean rendering his promise to me a lie, and if I was
sure of anything about hellions it was this: they cannot lie.

I knew I was free even before he opened his mouth, but the
bellow of rage that he unleashed upon the Netherworld at large was more than
confirmation. For a moment, I couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t do
anything but cover my ears, trying to protect my brain from the sonic
assault.

Ira spread his arms, like a child bathing in sunlight, and
began to laugh. The sound of his joy swallowed Avari’s rage like a sponge
soaking up water.

Avari’s mouth closed, and his eyes narrowed. Even without
pupils, I could tell when his gaze found us. “You!” he thundered, and Ira
laughed some more.

“Kaylee!” Tod shouted. He tried to run to me, but monsters
poured into the path between us.

“It has been my
pleasure
to
conspire with the young
bean sidhe
to provoke your
wrath, an emotion certain to feed me for centuries to come, as you watch her
live on, beyond your grasp.” Joy dripped from Ira’s voice. “Now, return her
soul, and let the fun begin!”

Avari roared again, and again I covered my ears. His fists were
clenched, and his featureless eyes glowed like black lights, gleaming in fury.
He lifted one arm, and for a moment I was afraid his gesture was calling me
closer for yet another demon kiss. Instead, he opened his hand and twisted it,
curling his fingers in my direction, and something deep within me
unfurled.
It felt like a snake uncoiling in my
stomach, a great, frozen serpent, chilling me from the inside out.