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Chapter 29

Cash

I knew I wasn’t dead yet. If I’d been dead I wouldn’t be able to feel pain. Unbearable pain. Pain like a living thing that held a grudge against my very existence. Pulsing and clawing its way through my insides. I’d never felt anything like it before, but I sure as hell felt it now.

When a bead of sweat trickled into the corner of my eye, I cracked my lids open and blinked it away. The heat burned my eyes. Scorched my skin. I tried to suck in a breath, but the sour, smoky smell made me gag.

“He’s awake,” a guy’s voice said. It echoed as if we were in a cave. Once my eyes adjusted to the hazy dark, I could see that’s exactly what this was. It sort of reminded me of the Carlsbad Caverns

Dad took me to once when I was a kid. Rocks shaped like fangs jutted up from the floor and down from the ceiling. Like I was sitting pretty in an enormous set of jaws. Part of me was waiting for them to close in and chew me into tiny bite-sized bits of Cash.

A muted blue glow blanketed the walls, me, and everything in between. Something thick like saliva dripped onto my boots and jeans. I tried to raise my hand to rub the sting out of my eye but it wouldn’t budge. I squirmed and looked down. My hands were tied behind me, crushed between a rock that felt like it had been pulled from a campfire and my back. I tried to stand up, but my legs wouldn’t work.

“What’s going on?” I said, peering into the dark. “Why am I tied up?”

Something moved in the dark. A flash of gray emerging from the writhing shadows that slithered along the walls. Finally, Noah stepped out of the darkness and looked down at me. His ash-blond hair dangled in wispy strands just above his cold, steel-blue eyes.

“They’re afraid you’ll try to get away,” he said.

“From where?” I jerked on the ropes. “Where the hell am I?”

A hiss echoed through the cavern, sending a chill racing up my spine despite the heat. Noah turned around and squinted into one of the dark corners, his shoulders tense. When the hiss faded, he relaxed a little.

“Umbria,” he said. “You’re in the shadow land now.”

“You’re kidding me, right?”

He raised a pale brow. “Does it look like I’m kidding?”

I let myself look around the cave and swallowed. Smoke clung to the ceiling, where some kind of red liquid dripped to the ground around me. A drop landed on my cheek, so I rubbed it off with my shoulder. I stared at the red smudge and a fresh wave of fear crashed over me. Blood. It was raining blood. I gasped for a breath the room didn’t want to give me. A breath my lungs didn’t want to hold.

“It’s just the blooderflies,” he said. “They make a mess but they won’t hurt you.”

“Blooderflies?” My voice cracked.

He pointed to the ceiling, where you could see flickers of glistening red wings through the layer of smoke. Each one was small enough to sit in the palm of your hand. In the blue light, you could see right through their bloody, liquid wings to the veins pulsing inside.

“They sleep up there,” he said. “They’ll leave soon.”

I shook my head and closed my eyes. Maybe if I closed my eyes tight enough it would all go away.

Maybe I’d wake up to the credits of some horror movie where stuff like this belonged. Because it sure as hell didn’t belong in reality. “Why did you do this to me?”

Footsteps squished and squeaked across the wet floor. When I opened my eyes, he was kneeling in front of me. “Because I need a replacement.”

“What?” I jerked on the restraints. “You said you wanted to help me! I trusted you!”

“Stop taking it so personal,” he said. “You’re a good kid, Cash. But I’m done here. I’ve put in my time. You think I want to live out the rest of eternity being some kind of delivery boy to these things?”

“If it’s so awful, why do you do it?” I gasped, my lungs fighting for air. “Why don’t you leave?”

“You think I’d be here if it was that easy?” He glanced back at the shadows lurking behind him.

“Around here, it’s feed or be eaten. Those are your choices. There is no third option.”

Choice. Looking at the desperation in Noah’s eyes, I could see that’s exactly what he thought this was. He thought he could bring me in and get a ticket to go roam the Earth, free as a bird. He was fucking delusional. Why would they let him go when they could have two of us? Noah watched me with a crazed, empty look in his eyes. There wasn’t going to be any convincing him. Not today.

Probably not ever. I needed to come up with something else. I needed to stall him.

“So why not go to work for Balthazar?” I finally asked.

Noah stood and paced in front of me, biting his thumbnail. He laughed humorlessly. “After the things I’ve done?” He raised a brow. “No, thanks. I don’t need a one-way ticket to Hell.”

“I can help you. Anaya can help you.”

Noah’s cold glare snapped up. “Stop begging. You sound pathetic. And if you expect to last longer than a day down here you’re going to have to toughen up. Now, what’s it going to be? I suggest you decide quick. They’re not fond of waiting.”

I stared at the glistening rock between my dead legs and felt my jaw clench. Sweat dripped into my eyes. Or maybe it was blood. I didn’t care. I’d made my choice. Hell, I’d even made peace with it. And this wasn’t it. Apparently that didn’t mean much to the scum that had dragged me down here.

“I’m not even dead yet,” I said, reaching for some way to stall. “Don’t I have to be dead to do whatever it is they want me to do?”

Noah sighed and sat down beside me. He stared at his boots, which were coated in ash, and played with one of the laces. He avoided looking at the crowd of shadow demons creeping out of the corners, filling the room until there was barely space left to breathe. How the hell could he be so calm? My fingers balled into fists against my back.

“It won’t take long. There’s no way a human body could survive more than a few days down here anyway,” he said. “They just collected you now because they knew that piece of reaper ass you’ve been tapping was going to bring you in if they didn’t.”

“Don’t talk about her like that,” I growled, feeling the sound that came out of me burn my throat. If my legs had worked, I would have done more than growled at him.

Noah chuckled. “Defending your dead girlfriend’s honor should be the last of your worries. Because after that body of yours gives out…there’s no escaping this place.”

I rubbed my forehead on my shoulder when another bead of sweat trickled into my eyes. Noah finally looked up and acknowledged the horde of shadow demons inching closer. Slipping across the slick red floor. The big black one that looked as close to a man as one of them could get broke away from the crowd and stared down at us both. It growled something I didn’t understand to Noah.

“What’s it going to be, Cash?” He cocked his head to the side to look at me, giving me a glimpse of the black vein etched into his neck. “Are you the pizza? Or are you the delivery boy?”

“What if I don’t want to be either?”

Noah laughed and combed his fingers through his hair. “Then they’ll choose for you.”

I looked past Noah, at the deceiving soft blue light rippling through the cave. The room was packed with shadow demons, their darkness dueling for dominance. They hissed and snapped at the blooderflies that fluttered around in a circle, creating a bloody cyclone before being siphoned out into the hazy twilight beyond the cave opening. Fear closed up my throat when they turned their attention back to me. Howling and writhing with the need to feed. My legs tingled and I managed to pull them up to my chest, pressing as close to the rock behind me as I could get. None of this sounded appealing.

But the thought of letting these things devour me made me want to vomit. And Anaya…what would they do to her if she came down after me? Did she even know I was gone yet? I couldn’t imagine her in a place like this. I didn’t want to.

“She’ll come after me,” I said. “You know she will.”

Noah stepped in front of me and lowered himself until his face was level with mine. “Is that supposed to scare me? Do you have any idea how many shadows are outside this cave?”

Fear crept up my throat and I jerked on my restraints. There were more? This cave was packed.

“One little reaper would be nothing for them. A snack,” he said. “They’d shred her piece by piece.

Devour her. But first…” He grinned. “I think first they’d play with her. Is that what you want?”

No. The fear in my throat was everywhere now. In my chest, making it even harder to breathe. Not

Anaya. What was my plan here? To just sit around playing nice with these things, waiting for her to walk into a trap? No freaking way. I couldn’t let her do that. I wouldn’t. Even if that meant being like

Noah. Maybe if she believed there wasn’t anything good left inside me, she’d leave it alone. Forget about me. It was a chance I was going to have to take.

I closed my eyes and took as deep a breath as my lungs would allow. “Teach me how to be a delivery boy.”

“I hope you have a strong stomach,” Noah said as he grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me up out of the bubbling black puddle in the ground that looked like an oil spill. I couldn’t stop shaking.

Convulsing. What the hell had I just seen? If that place wasn’t Hell, then I didn’t want to know what

Hell was.

“Strong stomach? Are you saying it gets worse than that?” I looked over my shoulder where the pit had been. All I saw now was wet, glistening pavement.

Noah snorted. “You have no idea.”

Around us, abandoned buildings with windowless faces stared back us. They lined the desolate street. The only things that looked alive were the streetlamps buzzing overhead. There wasn’t so much as a rat. But a city wasn’t far off. Even from here, you could smell the smog, hear the sirens and signs of a bursting metropolis. I wondered if I yelled for help if anyone would hear. I doubted it.

“Where are we going?” I stumbled behind Noah, grabbing my chest. It hurt to breathe. Noah stopped at the steps of an abandoned brick building. The insides looked charred, the walls crumbling. Noah closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

“Do you feel it?”

“Feel what?”

He pointed ahead, where a pale blue color flashed in one of the windows. “Them.”

Another blue blur flickered behind the broken glass and a cold sensation pricked at my insides like needles. I took a step closer and the pinpricks hummed under my skin. Holy hell… “I do feel it.”

“Good.” Noah glanced at me and took the concrete steps two at a time. “Let’s go fishing. You’ll normally try to lure in a bigger group, but for your first time we’ll just take a couple.”

I stumbled up the steps after him. Noah dissolved right through the door, leaving me standing on the other side. Looking around the abandoned street, I pushed the door open and stepped inside.

“Noah?”

“Shhh.” He hissed from behind me. I spun around in the dark and he held up a finger to his lips. I nodded, wishing I knew what the hell we were doing here. Or where we even were. It didn’t look like it was anywhere near Lone Pine. I’d been to places like LA and New York with Dad before. This place might fit into one of those places, but how the hell had we gotten that far so quick? A flash of white zipped past us and Noah nodded toward a dark hallway. The orange glow from the streetlight outside spilled in through the broken windows. I stepped over shattered glass and chunks of molded drywall.

Fear throbbing in my chest almost as hard as the pain.

“Grab him!” Noah shouted. I looked up in time to see a white glow split the darkness in the hall.

Without thinking, I reached out and grabbed on to it. It felt like a burst of electricity crackling through my fingers and I winced as the force of it shot up my arm. Someone screamed and suddenly, cold flesh wriggled under my fingers. It was…a kid. He was just a kid. He looked up at me, his face pale and gaunt. His curly black hair dangled just above his big brown eyes. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen. He looked like he belonged with the skater kids at school who took over the park every

Saturday afternoon. He didn’t look like he should be dead.

“W-what are you gonna to do with me?” he stuttered.

“I…I…” I didn’t know. What was I going to do with him? I knew what they wanted me to do, but could I? Looking down into his innocent eyes, I didn’t think so. I may have been a lot of things in my life I wasn’t proud of, but this…

Another scream erupted in the silence and we both looked up. Noah. He came pounding down the stairs, a girl behind him. He had a fistful of her long brown hair in his grip. Her face was twisted up in a scowl. She swung out, trying to connect a punch into Noah’s side, but he jerked out of the way and chuckled.

“Let go!” she shrieked.

“If you wouldn’t have run like that, maybe I wouldn’t have had to grab you by the hair in the first place,” he said.

His eyes landed on me and they brightened. “Look at that. You got one on your first try. Aren’t you just an overachiever?”

I stepped out of the hall, shaking, but keeping my grip on the kid. Everything in me was screaming to let him go, but I couldn’t seem to make my fingers follow the direction. “What are we doing with them?”

He rolled his eyes. “You know damn good and well what we’re going to do with them. Unless you’re willing to take their place.” He raised a brow.

The kid wriggled under my grip. My heart pounded so hard in my chest I could feel it in my toes.

“Well, are you?” he asked again.

I thought about those things at the foot of my bed at night. Trying to get to my soul, right through my skin, the day of Dad’s funeral. They’d do that and worse to Anaya if she went down there trying to save me.

I couldn’t let that happen.

For a moment I let myself linger with her memory. The way her lips tasted, the little sounds she made when I kissed her. Her smile, warm and sweet against my skin. If I did this, she’d hate me.

Memories would be all I had left. I took a moment to mentally lock them all away with the piece of myself I’d never give to the shadows, then steeled myself for what was to come.

I looked at Noah and shook my head. The fear thrumming in my chest for the girl I was pretty sure I was in love with wouldn’t letting me answer any other way. A satisfied look spread across his face and he nodded.

“Good,” he said. “Let’s get this over with.”