So many unanswered questions, so much pain. He only just arrived, and already Gabriel felt as if he’d spent a thousand years locked in this darkness, dying a brutal new death with every beat of his heart.
“Um, Angel?” Demetria said softly. “Hate to break up your little existential crisis, but it looks like you’ve got company.”
Gabriel stopped pacing. Lifted his head. Readied himself for another battle—the first, he was certain, of many more to come.
A dark figure emerged, lines and colors slowly sharpening, like an old photograph coming to life in a chemical bath. The angular face. The broad shoulders. The familiar, purposeful gait.
Then the scent washed over him—the barest hint of bergamot, a whiff of cologne so faint it could only be a memory—and for a moment Gabriel forgot he was in hell.
For a moment, he was back at Ravenswood.
For a moment, he was back in his childhood home in West Sussex.
For a moment, time stopped, and the all-encompassing darkness fell away, and the wretched ache in Gabriel’s heart evaporated.
He forgot about the cruelty. The betrayals. The treachery that had nearly destroyed their family from the inside out.
And all that remained, standing before him as if he’d just stepped out of a dream, was the brother he’d once so fiercely loved.
“Malcolm,” he whispered, and the name felt as musty as old parchment in his mouth. “But you’re… you’re dead.”
Malcolm cocked his head, cold eyes narrowing. “And you’renot, if memory serves.”
“Excuseyou?” Demetria stepped between them, glaring first at Gabriel, as if he should’ve warned her this was coming, then at Malcolm. “You lost, bloodsucker?”
“And who the fuck mightyoube?” Malcolm asked.
“Imightbe the only friend Angel’s got down here. Who the fuck mightyoube?”
“Oh, don’t mind me. I’m just an allegedly dead vampire trying to determine why thefuckthis allegedly live one is in hell.” He turned his cold eyes back on Gabriel. “And you,Angel, have approximately eight seconds to tell me.”
The emptiness in those once golden eyes was startling, finally snapping Gabriel out of his momentary shock. He sucked in a deep breath. The memories rushed right back with it.
Malcolm, siding with their enemies against Dorian.
Malcolm, intentionally undermining the royal family.
Malcolm, punching a hole through Charlotte’s torso, nearly ending her life.
“Or what?” Gabriel said. “You’re going to kill me? Newsflash, brother. You’re a little too late.”
Malcolm laughed, a sound as vapid as his eyes.
“I’m not going to kill you,” he said. Then, nodding behind Gabriel and Demetria, “But I’m pretty surethatbitch might.”
“Come now, Malcolm,” the bitch in question practically purred, the sound of her voice turning Gabriel’s stomach. “Is that any way to speak about your brother’s new master? We’re practically family now, aren’t we? Something I’m in dire need of now that one of my daughters has abandoned me and the other has gotten herself killed.”
As if the loss of her precious daughters were merely an annoyance, the mother shrugged and snapped her black-tipped fingers, and all at once, the darkness fell away, revealing the scorched wasteland where he’d met her earlier.
The place where he’d signed away his eternal soul.
Gabriel blinked, his eyes adjusting to the change of scenery. Red sky choked with black clouds, just like before. Piles of smoldering bones. And behind the mother who now owned his soul, a great maw stretched across the earth, a fathomless black abyss that glowed red in the center, pulsing like a heartbeat.
“What is she talking about?” Malcolm demanded.
Gabriel crouched down and picked up a black stone, then cast it into the pit. He waited for it to hit the bottom, but the sound never came. “She and I made a deal, Malcolm. A binding agreement.”
“Worst idea ever,” Demetria said, glaring at the mother with a look that could tear another hole in the veil.
