“No, Gabriel. I’ve no body to return to. If you send me back now, my soul will be cursed to roam for eternity. No peace.”
“And you’ve found peace here, have you?”
“Yes, I—”
A burst of red lightning split the sky, chased by an explosion of thunder that rattled their very bones. All around them, the air turned hotter, dryer, brimstone stinging their eyes.
Malcolm sighed. “Well, maybe not peace. Acceptance, though. I suppose there’s a peace in that.”
“They’ll find one,” Gabriel pressed. “A vessel. Not the same as the old Mac, of course, but maybe—”
“Are you trying to upgrade me, brother?” Malcolm laughed, another hint of warmth in his eyes, stoking the flames of Gabriel’s hope.
“Oh, absolutely,” he teased. “So if you’ve got any requests, now’s the time.”
“Bit taller, you’re thinking?”
“Better hair, at the very least.”
“What? What’s wrong with my hair?”
“It’s pretentious. Suits you, but it’s pretentious.”
Malcolm bristled. “Ifmyhair is pretentious, yours is downright—”
Gabriel grabbed his arm, as warm and solid as it’d ever been in life. “Gohome, Mac. To Ravenswood. To your family. Let me help you.Please.”
Malcolm’s smile faded, the warmth draining from his eyes. He turned to look out over the pit again and sighed, his shoulders slumping. “I’m not leaving here.”
“Problem with that, brother,” Gabriel said, “is I made a vow.”
Never again…
His brother was alive. Or at least, not entirely gone. He wouldn’t—couldn’t leave him to rot. To burn. To lose whatever shreds of humanity were left of the man inside to this brutal, terrible place.
“I won’t turn my back on you, Mac.”
Malcolm shook his head. “I’m already gone, brother.”
Gabriel got to his feet, and another bolt of lightning arced across the sky, setting the black clouds on fire. The acrid air sizzled in his lungs like hellfire, making it nearly impossible to take a full breath.
This was his life now, he realized. An eternity of pain and suffering.
But it didn’t have to be Mac’s.
“Father’s life tore us apart,” Gabriel said, his voice cracking from the scorched air, from the heartache, from centuries of regrets slithering out from the darkest places of his soul. “His death brought us back together. And for the first time in fifty years, I thought maybe there was a chance we might… But then Chernikov and Duchanes betrayed us, and you… you left us, Mac. You died a traitor, an enemy. Now you’re telling me that’s not how it happened at all, and here you are, still breathing, still… something. Something, Mac! If Dorian knew—”
“He canneverknow. Not about what I did. Not about this place.” Malcolm stood up, grabbed Gabriel’s shoulder. “To you and the others, I’ve been gone a few months. But to me, a thousand eternities have passed. I don’t expect you to understand, but…” He glanced down at the blade still gripped in his hand, then back out across the wasteland, shaking this head. “This is my life now. No home. No family. Nothing but this weapon and a lifetime of regrets keeping me warm at night.”
The hope fizzled in Gabriel’s heart, replaced with a new heaviness, hot and sticky. Mac was a man of many secrets, but Gabriel knew his brother well enough to know this battle was lost.
“Not entirely true,” Gabriel said, attempting to find the bright side. Malcolm may have nullified the mother’s contract, but Gabriel was still dead—it happened as soon as they got back to the crypts. That, too, was part of the deal, just as it had been for Jacinda’s father all those years ago. “I was always bound for hell. Just happened a bit earlier than I’d planned. So yeah, best get used to this face, brother. You’re stuck with me for eternity.”
“As much as I’d love to wander the realms of hell with my baby brother, I’m afraid that particular threat has an expiration date of about…” Malcolm’s gaze shifted to a spot behind Gabriel, then narrowed. “…soon.Verysoon.”
Gabriel spun on his heel, bracing for some new attack. A demon. Hellfire. Some new, unspeakable nightmare custom-made by his own shame and guilt, ready to welcome him to his eternal suffering.
But there, sparkling in the air before him, was a sight that stole the breath from his lungs.
