Hell Bent

She read paperbacks too, one after the next like she was chain-smoking—romance, science fiction, old pulp fantasy. All she wanted to do was sit, unbothered in a circle of lamplight, and live someone else’s life.

Welcome home. Welcome back. We missed you. I missed you more than I should have, more than I wanted to. I went to hell for you. I’d do it again.

That was the problem with love. It was hard to unlearn, no matter how harsh the lesson.

Galaxy Stern,” Darlington said, his eyes flashing gold, “I have been crying out to you from the start.

She was more beautiful than he remembered. No, that wasn’t true. It wasn’t that she had changed or that his vision had sharpened. He was just less afraid of her beauty now

His monstrous queen. His gentle ruler.

I will serve you ’til the end of days.

All worlds are open to us. If we are bold enough to enter.

Maybe they were just two killers, cursed to endure each other’s company, two doomed spirits trying to find their way home. Maybe they were monsters who liked the feeling of another monster looking back at them. But enough people had abandoned them both. She wasn’t going to be the next.

I’m bound to you, Stern. To the woman who brought me out of hell. I will serve you ’til the end of days.

Stories were immutable. And what was a library but a house full of stories?

Stories exist in all worlds. They are immutable. Like gold.

Why raise children on the promise of magic? Why create a want in them that can never be satisfied—for revelation, for transformation—and then set them adrift in a bleak, pragmatic world?

You rescue me. I rescue you. That’s how this works. To pay your debts, you had to know who you owed. You had to decide who you were willing to go to war for and who you trusted to jump into the fray for you. That was all there was in this world. No heroes or villains, just the people you’d brave the waves for, and the ones you’d let drown.

They watched each other in the quiet of the kitchen. They knew everything about each other. They knew nothing at all. He had a sense that they had entered into an uneasy truce, but he couldn’t quite name the war.

You know your problem?” “A predilection for first editions and women who like to lecture me about myself?

I was a really lonely kid. The advantage to being unpopular is you get a lot more reading done.

That was the truth of magic—blood and guts and semen and spit, organs kept in jars, maps for hunting humans, the skulls of unborn infants. The problem wasn’t books and fairy tales, just that they told half the story, offering up the illusion of a world where only the villains paid in blood, the ogre stepmothers, the wicked stepsisters, where magic was just and without sacrifice.

Life is cruel. Magic is real. And I’m not ready to die

Come on Darlington,' she said. 'Let's give them hell.

You're all right Alex.' He put up his hand for a fist bump. 'I just really want to eat you.' Alex nudged her knuckles against his. 'I know, buddy.

Comfort was the drug she hadn’t understood until it was too late and she was hooked on cups of tea and book-lined shelves, nights uninterrupted by the wail of sirens and the ceaseless churning of helicopters overhead.

I like this life better.” “Better than what?” “Better than what I was living before. Better than a world without magic. I think I’ve been waiting my whole life for the moment someone would see something in me that wasn’t ordinary.

And what tools did Alex have? A little magic. A talent for misfortune. The ability to take a beating. It would have to be enough. 'This is my home,' she vowed, and nothing will take it from me.

Why is it always blood? Why can’t it ever be jam or blue crayon?

Do we all hunger for this? Alex wondered as she shepherded Mercy into Il Bastone, watching her eyes grow wide at the sight of the sunflower staircase, the stained glass, the painted tiles that framed the fireplace. Why raise children on the promise of magic? Why create a want in them that can never be satisfied—for revelation, for transformation—and then set them adrift in a bleak, pragmatic world?

As for opportunity, she knew better than anyone: You had to make it for yourself.

To get some clothes, Stern,” he said, climbing the steps and leaving bloody footprints behind. “A man can spend only so much time without trousers on before he begins to feel like a deviant.

Is that what those things are?” she asked. “Around your wrists and neck? Marks?” “These?” He leaned forward, and the change in him was instant, the glowing eyes, the curling horns, the broadening of the shoulders. Without meaning to, Alex found herself scooting back in her chair. He was man and then monster in the space of a breath. The golden bands glowed at his wrists and throat. “Yeah,” she said, trying not to show her fear. “Those.” “These marks mean I am bound in service. Forever.” “To hell? To Golgarot?” He laughed then, the sound deep and cold, the thing at the bottom of the lake. “I’m bound to you, Stern. To the woman who brought me out of hell. I will serve you ’til the end of days.