Hell Bent (Alex Stern, #2)

by Leigh Bardugo

Culebra que no mir morde, que viva mil anos. May the snake that doesn’t bite me live a thousand years.

Alex approached Black Elm as if she were sidling up to a wild animal, cautious in her walk up the long, curving driveway, careful not to show her fear.

The kitchen was the most functional room of Black Elm, alive with regular care, a tidy temple of light. This was how Dawes dealt with all they’d done, with the thing lurking in the ballroom.

Darlington’s cat was mad at being left alone.

Or frightened by not being quite so alone anymore.

Push her worry and anger aside, and try to solve this puzzle, even though she didn’t want to complete the picture emerging with every new and nasty piece.

Call Dawes. Alex leaned against the counter. Back out of the kitchen and call Turner.

She glanced up again, thought of the golden shimmer of the circle, the heat it gave off. I have appetites. Had those words excited her when they should have only made her afraid?

Was it her voice she was hearing? Darlington’s?

Hers, of course. Darlington would never swear.

Two bodies lay heaped on the old brick. They looked like cast-off clothing, piles of rags. She knew those faces. Heaven, to keep its beauty, cast them out. There was so much blood. New blood. Fresh.

“Who did this?” she asked them and the woman moaned. The man pressed a finger to his lips, eyes full of fear as they darted around the basement. His whisper drifted through the dark. “We’re not alone.”

Alex loved every minute of it. She’d been surprised at how much she’d missed Lauren and Mercy over the summer,

This is my life, she’d told herself,

Alex had asked Lethe for a bike and a printer and a new tutor at the end of last year. They’d been happy to agree, and she wished she’d asked for more.

Their freshman dorm on Old Campus had been the most beautiful place Alex had ever lived, but the residential college—JE proper—felt real, solid and elegant, permanent.

but there was also something comforting about lying in bed at night and hearing Mercy snore across the room.

she could feel Darlington with her, peering over her shoulder.

It was comforting and troubling at the same time. Invariably, that steady scholar’s voice turned accusing. Where are you, Stern? Why haven’t you come?

After a loved one had been lost at sea, the net could be thrown into the ocean while attached to a stake on shore. The next morning, the body would be returned, which some found comforting and others distressing, given the possible state of remains. Gifted by Book and Snake when their attempts to recall specific corpses failed.

Why is it the boys at Book and Snake don’t seem to be able to cook up anything that works the way it should?

What had happened back there? And how was she supposed to keep it from happening again?

She’d wondered where Hellie was buried and hoped it was someplace beautiful, someplace nothing like that sad, scraping-along river, that collapsed vein.

Only Darlington’s ghost chased her here.

His voice telling stories of the Winchester family and how their descendants had mixed and married with the Yale elite, or the hulking mass of Sarah Winchester’s grave across town—an eight-foot lump of rough-hewn rock, a cross pressed into it like a child’s school project.

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.

Alex wanted to wallow in it too, to remember that she was safe, she was okay. But there wasn’t time.

She’d called them to her and offered them her name. They’d answered. They’d saved her. And of course rescue had come at a price. All her life, she’d been able to see Grays; now she could hear them too. They were that much closer, that much harder to ignore.

But maybe she hadn’t really understood what salvation would cost her at all.

There was no point needling Dawes. Much like Alex, she didn’t like people, but unlike Alex, she avoided confrontation. And really, it wasn’t her job. Oculus kept Lethe running smoothly—fridge and armory stocked, rituals scheduled, properties kept in order. She was the research arm of Lethe, not the harass-board-members arm.

Darlington was with her here, picking away at Yale’s mysteries.

“There would be signs, symbols.” Michelle had shrugged. “Or at least that’s one theory. That’s all hell and the afterlife are. Theories. Because the people who get to see the other side don’t come back to tell about it.”

Alex and Dawes had gotten their big break: a single, lonely paragraph in a Lethe Days Diary from 1938.

She didn’t like spending real time at the Hutch. She didn’t want to be reminded of the lost days when she’d hidden in these secret rooms, wounded and hopeless. Pathetic.

She wasn’t going to let that happen to her this year. She was going to find a way to keep control.

That had been almost a year ago exactly. Tonight she was alone.

“Virgil?” Alex nodded.

The societies never asked about Darlington anymore. To the new delegates, she was Virgil, an expert, an authority.

They’d never met the gentlema...

I am devastated

They didn’t know they were getting a half-trained pretender. As far as they were concerned, Alex w...

Because that was what she was supposed to say. Virgil was calm, knowledgeable; she’d seen it all before.

Darlington had rolled his eyes as he gave the translation on one of their visits.

He’d actually smiled. “Everything sounds more impressive in Latin.” They’d been getting along well then, and Alex had felt something like hope, a kind of ease between them that might have grown into trust.

If she hadn’t let him die.

in the shadowy comfort of Il Bastone’s parlor,

The ritual had to be protected by the circle, but she’d set a gate at each compass point, and one would be kept open to allow magic to flow in.

She and Dawes didn’t want any trouble, didn’t want to give Lethe any reason to split them up or interfere with what they had planned.

What had he imagined? Some muttered words, a voice from the beyond? Had he thought there would be dignity in this? But this was what real magic looked like—indecent, decadent, perverse. Welcome to Yale. Sir, yes, sir.

Alex considered the veiled and bowed heads of the Lettermen, the scribe. You’re right to hide your faces, she thought. When your time comes, someone’s going to be waiting for payback on the other side.

“Dawes, trust me. Whoever this guy is, he’s not going to sanction a field trip to hell.”