Page 34 of I Hope This Email Finds You in Hell

I test my luck on making it to Luke, but my foot catches, tripping me. With my duffel slung over my shoulder, its weight propels me to the ground and I flip onto my back in time to see the monsters barreling toward me. Luke’s too far away.

My eyes slam closed against the impending assault. A few seconds drag by and a huff of anger makes me open them.

“Move!” a being with mottled blue skin snarls, fangs descending from his upper jaw. “Get out of our way!”

Over me stands the soul I was sitting beside. His head still hangs and Italian prayers tumble from his lips, but he acts as a barrier between the monstrous assault and where I’m sprawled on the ground. He’s joined by more souls, people who walk over me with their incorporeal forms. I wince as a bare foot goes straight through my stomach, though I don’t feel anything aside from an icy swoosh.

The same laws don’t seem to apply for my assailants. They push and snarl and swipe against the thickening wall of souls, but the souls hold firm. They’re protecting me.

A swell of emotion rises at the realization. “Come on,” Luke says, hauling me to my feet.

I step into the vestibule just in time for the door leading to the platform outside to slide closed. “No!” I yell, throwing myself against it. The platform blurs by as the train pulls away from the station.

“Move,” Luke orders. He digs his fingers between the space where the door meets the wall. The worn leather of his jacket pulls taut across his shoulders as, with a grunt, he pries the door open. “We have to jump!”

“Are you crazy?” I yell, wind whipping my hair into my mouth. “It’s going too fast!”

“Not yet it isn’t. We have to jump now!”

He pulls me to the edge with him. The ground swims before me. All I see is the spray of blood from Denim’s body hitting the tracks. I wonder if Flannel joined him, since Luke’s here and he isn’t.

“Ready?” he yells.

“What kind of question is—”

“Now!”

His hand is in mine, so I have no choice but to leap with him. The feeling of soaring through the air is one I could not possibly despise more. The weightlessness of it, the panic, the absurdity.

And then—the inevitable crash.

At some point we unlink, so when I hit the ground, I have no clue where Luke is. It’s just me, the grass, and the pain that explodes through my body upon impact. I roll and roll, losing my duffel in the process, until I finally come to a stop on my back with a mouthful of hair.

The train whistles away, literally leaving us in its dust. A groan slips past my lips as the breath sticks in my lungs, the force of the fall washing me in terror that something important is broken. I’m too scared to move and find out.

Luke apparently doesn’t harbor the same fear. From several feet away, he rolls onto his stomach, then pushes up to his knees. His black T-shirt is torn in the center and flapping open, revealing a strip of his abdomen. I rip my eyes away before I can stare too hard, focusing on the lavender sky growing lighter with dawn.

“Shit,” he groans, getting to his feet and checking his leather jacket to ensure he didn’t lose any weapons. “Are you alright?”

“I don’t know.” I wince, pushing up onto my elbows. Now that I can breathe again, a sharp pang spurs my side on an inhale. Bruised ribs, but hopefully not broken. Bruised everything, if the pain in my arms and legs is any indication.

His hand appears above me as an offering. I take it, letting him help me to my feet. Not expecting the strength of his pull, I stumble into him. His fingers dig into my waist to right me and sparks shoot up my torso. With the station out of view at least a mile or so back, it’s just him and me and the towering trees.

“What happened back there?” Any concern that was in his voice a moment ago disappears like the train, replaced by a bite that tells me the plan has gone to shit and I might be to blame.

Pissed that this is somehow my fault when he’s the one who left me, I launch into an explanation. “I stabbed the demon—her name is Melinda, by the way—and on her way to wherever the dagger sends her, she shouted that I’m a mortal. That caught the attention of all the monsters, who, apparently, are mostly cannibals, which would have been such helpful information to know beforehand, thank you very much. They were looking at me like I was a snack.”

“You are a snack,” Luke snaps. His hands still press into my waist to steady me, but being this close to him makes me even woozier. I wrench out of his grip and put some distance between us.

“You flatter me,” I mock. His brows knit, clearly not catching the reference to the modern compliment. The guy probably hasn’t been on a dating app in his life, along with not watching any movies that came out after 1990, apparently.

“That wasn’t a compliment,” he retorts. “Here’s your next lesson: most things here will eat anything, including you. If not a demon desiring your soul or humanity, then a monster ravenous for your physical form. So yes, you are a snack to them. And you’re also bleeding.”

“Am not,” I say, like a petulant child. But when I look down, my right knee is soaked in red. The denim is ripped to reveal a mangled mess of skin embedded with bits of grass and gravel.

“Take them off,” Luke orders, nodding at my jeans.

“What?” I sputter.