I awoke in a confused state of panic, choking, clutching my throat as my lungs failed to pull in air. Lurching into an upward position, I remembered what I was. Undead. I didn’t need oxygen.
I shut off my lungs and heart. Breathing from time to time was a force of habit, an odd occasional comfort that shadowed me into immortality.
It took a moment to get my bearings straight. I’d been in the corn maze, and now I was sitting in the heart of Times Square, but the world was drained of color. The flashy HD advertisements and vibrant billboards stretching across the lengths of the buildings like light show collages were all blank. No blaring horns, no pedestrians rushing to get from place to place.
But there were souls. The corporeal ones moved sluggishly all around me, zombies, eyes sunken in, skin pale and translucent.
Some of them wore clothes from hundreds of years ago. None of them spoke a word, only an occasional grunt or sob. My head tilted heavenward. Dark-gray gusts of energy swirled around the sky, shrieking and moaning as they whirled through the realm.
I leapt to my feet and violently swore.
Limbo. I was in Limbo, a realm between Heaven and Hell, where memories and lost souls wandered.
I’d been so close. So close to bringing Faith voluntarily back to Hell for Lucifer, and then Malphas interfered. He’d taken the perfect opportunity to draw magic into the ground and trap me in the corn maze. The next thing I knew, he’d used Latin to separate my soul from my body. I was completely debilitated inside of the sigil.
Although I’d known Malphas had been having me shadowed by his underlings, I hadn’t expected him to be so bold as to attack me all alone. This begged for a war from Hell, and he didn’t have the soldiers to fight Lucifer’s legion.
There was more to this plan of my father’s. It was written all over Faith Williams’s expression. As my soul ripped from my corpse, I’d seen the guilt in her eyes. She blamed herself for what’d happened to me, which meant she’d been in on it. Malphas must have found a way to communicate with Faith without my knowledge, perhaps through the slash on her forearm from the attack in the alleyway.
Maybe he seduced her.
The twisted thought set me off. I unleashed a thunderous roar, and a stabbing sensation cleaved the center of my chest. I clutched at my shirt; it was soaked, sticky with blood. I ripped the clothing over my head, uncovering an intricate pattern of deep puncture wounds around my heart in the exact design of the sigil Malphas had drawn. I recognized the pattern of symbols. A wandering spell, which trapped anyone or anything in Purgatory.
“I should have taken her the moment we met in that pool house,”
I raged out loud. “I should have thrown her ass over my shoulder, kidnapped her, and forced her into complacency. To hell with the rules, I’d kill anyone in my way. That would have been fun. But no!
That would have been too easy!”
I hurled my torn shirt to the side, a complete meltdown in my wake. Fangs lengthened in my mouth. Pure rage rippled through me at the thought of my cloak being gone. My scythe was gone too.
Actual steam expelled from my bare skin as my temper flared against the cool, damp weather of this realm.
“I had to get curious and get to know her! I had to start worrying about her safety and feel things, like a weak, pathetic mortal!” I gripped both sides of my skull and squeezed. “And it turns out she doesn’t even like normal, or behaved! She likes me!”
Another snarl tore out of my throat. Energy pulsed through my veins, limitless and unpredictable.
Faith Williams had betrayed me. For my father.
My nostrils flared. She was so dead.
“GLENN!” I bellowed. All I heard was the groans of the lost souls around me. It was driving me insane. “Glenn, I summon you!”
Nothing.
Worthless worm.
I looked down at my empty hands. My scythe. Malphas had my scythe. My scythe allowed me to travel between Earth, Limbo, and Hell. Lucifer knew the routes between the realms like the back of his hand, but not me. Now I regretted my extreme lack of care in not memorizing the paths myself.
You’ll find I am not the only one who won’t stay dead.
My eyes widened as it hit me. “No . . . ”
Surely, my father hadn’t meant Ahrimad. The original death god who had cursed me. I’d destroyed him. Then again, I was certain my father was gone forever, and he’d weaseled his way out of the graveyard aviary. Damn. Ahrimad would sure be one spiteful bastard because of the whole you wrecked my ass in the arena two thousand years ago thing.
My mind harked back to all the Light Angels Malphas had killed.
How had I not seen this coming? He’d taken their eyes. And he’d kept them. Trinkets of sacrifices. Depending on how many angels he’d killed, he could probably fuel a resurrection spell. Because my soul was no longer within my corpse, my body was up for grabs for any soul. Was it possible Ahrimad’s soul had somehow survived that fateful fight?
If that were the case, Malphas could use my corpse as a conduit for Ahrimad’s soul. Or worse, Ahrimad could take control of another body and control my corpse like a puppet. Ahrimad would be temporarily, or maybe even permanently, freed. Lucifer would not get Faith’s soul by midnight either.
And I would be here.
Trapped.
This was an unmitigated disaster, to say the least.
I’d thought I was in control. I’d thought I had everything under control, but I’d been wrong. This wasn’t just a small miscalculation on my part—it was an impending cataclysm of epic proportions.
Adrenaline propelled me to finally move. I paced in fierce strides, gripping the sides of my skull again to concentrate. I tried to search through every book, every memory I had read and encountered about Purgatory, but my thoughts were too chaotic, like J-walking across a six-lane highway at rush hour.
I stood in front of the display window of an abandoned store.
There, I found my reflection. An exotic creature with mismatched, slitted eyes glared back at me. My lips peeled back in a feral grin.
Bingo.
Holding my bare hands out, I carved into the glass with my nails and murmured an enchantment. The only way to communicate from Purgatory to Earth was to create an enchantment in a mirror, or, in this case, a reflection in a window.
A display of numbers and letters floated onto the glass pane. I selected English as my preferred language and the state of New York as my last residency. Hello! Welcome to Purgatory. Please insert three quarters, the screen promptly read.
“Oh, come on!” I heard footsteps and pivoted on my heel. A lost soul with a hoodie strode by me. Barreling toward the soul, I snatched him by the nape. I rummaged through his pockets, coming away with one condom and a handful of change.
I glanced at the condom package and snickered.
The lost soul stared blankly at me, hunched forward.
“Thanks for the change.” I wanted nothing more than to take my anger out on this man. Too bad he was only a soul, and I couldn’t do much damage at this point. “With a bankroll of eighty-five cents, I doubt you’ll be needing the condom.”
The lost soul held the same blank, uninterested expression.
I scowled and pocketed the condom. Bullying wasn’t fun when my victim was silent. Unless it was Glenn, my everlasting demon servant.
“Get the hell out of my sight. You’re freaking me out.”
The lost soul continued to wander down the block.
Cracking my neck from side to side, I returned to the enchantment and inserted three quarters. Then I impatiently tapped the screen in hopes of moving things faster along. “Come on, baby,”
I sweet-talked the enchantment. “Get Daddy out of this shithole.”
“Hello, and thank for using Limbo to Earth Communication Services!” the enchantment said in a female automated electronic voice. “If you wish to leave Limbo, please press one—”
I smashed my finger into the button, twitching all over.
“If you seek reexamination of your situation through appointment, please press one. If you seek penance, press two. If you would like to speak to a representative in respect to selling your soul, press six-six-six.”
Rolling my eyes, I grudgingly dialed six-six-six. The moment I told him where I was, Lucifer would burn the skin and flesh off my bones until I looked like a top Google search of the Grim Reaper.
Better than being stuck here.
“One moment, please, as we process your entry.”
I propped a leg on the enchantment, tapping my talons against the glass as I glowered at the lost souls of this parallel universe.
My energy was depleting, fast. Hunger gnawed at my insides, and I shuddered. Being stuck in Limbo meant being surrounded by a scrumptious buffet of souls that I was unable to devour. Each wandering soul had a small tattoo beneath their ear, indicating their spirit was claimed by Purgatory. The last thing I needed on top of everything was a vicious lawsuit from the in-between.
Normally I had thousands of duplicates of myself feeding off human souls, plus my reapers pitching in. Now that I was in here, stuck in another realm, I had nothing. No source of energy. Zip.
Nada. Which was exactly why I never stayed long in Purgatory.
Only in passing did I visit here. When I had the patience to guide a lost soul through the afterlife to their forever home. It happened more often with adults and the elderly, depending on how they died.
But rarely with children, like when I met little Faith. Her soul had wandered in the in-between, and I could sense she’d needed guidance.
When a young, deceased soul leaned toward good, guardian angels would often help their charges pass into the realm of Heaven. For some reason, little Faith had not been assigned. I’d intended to send little Faith off to Heaven myself. As impersonal as my job had begun to feel centuries ago, allowing a child to walk through Purgatory alone was a cruel and unusual punishment I did not agree with.
Faith was no longer that innocent child. She was a woman, and she’d made a drastic decision to turn against me tonight. The mere thought of the backstabbing bitch sent my blood pressure through the roof. I didn’t even have blood pressure.
When I was done with her, she’d be begging for forgiveness. Just the thought of Faith on her knees with her cosmic blue eyes all red and tear-filled reduced my anger. Oh yeah, I would have the last laugh.
The thought of punishing her sent my hormones straight down Horny Street, to a forbidden place—when I’d kissed her in her bedroom. Her soft lips, her hands on my body, the push and pull of that undeniable attraction . . .
Blood. Kill. Murder. Ridding myself of any of those illicit thoughts, I worked my jaw and seethed with evil intentions.
A dial tone hummed from within the enchantment.
“Hello, my name is Ron, and I’m a trusted representative at Limbo,” Lucifer answered.
Ron? Really?
“It’s me,” I rushed out. “Malphas has Faith—”
“You’ve reached Extension 666,” Lucifer’s voice added. The pause in his words had been a small break in the line.
Wi-Fi wasn’t exactly easy to come by in Limbo.
“I’m unavailable at this time,” the recording continued. Claws sprung from my fingertips, destroying yet another pair of leather gloves. “However, if you leave your name, age, cause of death, and social security number, I will get back to you as soon as possible.”
I ended the call with a monstrous hiss. I knew damn well he never checked his voicemails. Gripping the sides of the enchantment, I proceeded to bang my skull repeatedly against the glass. The fissures it formed in the windowpane rapidly mended together. “And you tell me I don’t know how to use a phone, old man?”
“You have two remaining calls,” the enchantment said. “If you would like to contact a specific person, please insert one dollar and fifty cents.”
Spinning around, I limbered up my shoulders, bulleted forward, and slashed my talons into the steel of a street trash can. I tore straight through the webbed structure of the bin and sent the trash can flying thousands of feet, smashing into a window at the upper floor of a skyscraper. As if I was trapped in a video game simulation, the building restored itself instantly and the bin returned to its original place on the curb, unmarked.
None of the wandering souls seemed to notice this outburst.
Figures.
Once I simmered down from wrath to moderate irritation again, I pickpocketed six wandering souls to get enough change for the enchantment. Scraping my talons down the short hairs along my jaw, I paced back and forth like a caged animal in the zoo. I ticked through a list of names to call in my head.
It was a short list. I didn’t trust any of them enough with my existence.
Wow, I really have nobody.
“Call Glenn,” I bit out.
Glenn’s face popped up on the screen. He held an armful of papers and was rushing around my office to organize various folders.
“Glenn.” I noticed he wore headphones and raised my voice.
“Glenn, over here!”
Glenn bopped his hips, singing an off-key Britney Spears song as he watered two indoor snake plants by my television and the devil’s ivy behind my desk.
“Glenn!” I barked.
Glenn shrieked and wrenched his headphones from his ears. Papers went flying in a hazardous rain of impending paper cuts. “My lord?”
He glanced skittishly around the room. “Wh-wh-where are you?”
“You have sixty seconds remaining for this call,” the enchantment said.
Limbo was officially on my hit list. “Glenn, this is urgent. I’m in the mirror.”
Glenn’s eyes locked onto mine as he found the only mirror in the room. His eyes bulged. “My lord, why are you . . . ”
“I’m trapped in Limbo. I need you to tell Lucifer I’m here.
Tell him I don’t have my scythe. Malphas trapped me here with a wandering spell, which means my corpse is unattended.” I didn’t even want to think about what that could entail. “Also, tell him Faith Williams . . . ” I grated my fangs together. “She’s with my father, and he’ll want to hurt her. I can’t escape Limbo alone. I need some sort of guide, or map from Lucifer. I don’t know the pathways between these worlds well enough to sift through them.”
“Does anyone else know you’re trapped?”
I blinked. “No?”
Glenn bit back a laugh. “Oh, this is gold. This is gold.”
I bared my teeth in a snarl. “I’d watch your just-grown-back tongue, Glenn. I could make a smoothie out of you and drink you down with one of those quirkily shaped colorful straws. Remember who you work for.”
“I’m afraid you’ve mistaken me for somebody else. I no longer work for anybody.” Glenn kicked at the papers on the ground and fired middle fingers at them. He loosened his tie. “Seems like my boss went on vacation and won’t be coming back!”
“Excuse me?”
Glenn fell into uneasy laughter. “Let me get this straight. You expected my help to escape Limbo, when nobody knows where you are?” Glenn balled up his hands into fists. “After everything you’ve put me through, you really think I would help you of my own free will? You know, I wet the bed once because of you!”
“Call will terminate in twenty-five seconds,” the enchantment said.
I worked my jaw several times, and then attempted to sound as pleasant as inhumanly possible. “Glenn, listen to me, buddy. I know you hate me. There’s nothing I can say in twenty seconds to change that. Just think of her. Faith. She’s a good girl. You’ve heard about Malphas, you know what he’s capable of. This isn’t about me, Glenn.”
For a demon, Glenn was about as evil as a newborn puppy. He was a low-class demon, which meant his sins before death were only slightly above normal. I thought he would change his mind and be sensitive to the girl’s safety.
“It’s always about you, Death,” Glenn said. “You—you deserve this!”
The call went dead.
“Glenn!” I pounded on the glass. “I’m going to slice you into cubes and stew you in a Crock-Pot!” I went off in another language as a deafening crash of thunder shook the ground and lightning shattered the sky in spiderlike white fractures. Limbo was known for its melodramatic, shitty-ass weather. My mood made it worse.
“You have one remaining call,” the enchantment said.
I speared my fingers through my hair and called my last resort.
The line picked up.
“Bonsoir, my old friend.” Ace’s thick French accent slid out of the enchantment. He stood before a mirror, having anticipated the call. Clearly, he’d received one of his premonitions. “You have gotten yourself in quite the dilemma on this mystical night.” He spoke in a cruel, condescending way, enjoying every moment of this.
“Another ghost from your past has perhaps awakened, and you are there. Imprisoned. Unable to feed, deteriorating. And poor Faith, votre amour . . . ”
My fangs shot forward with a hiss. “I want out, Ace. What do you want in return?”
A slow, wicked grin twisted the warlock’s mouth. “The Book of the Dead.”
