Hell Bent (Alex Stern, #2)

by Leigh Bardugo

“Listen, Wheelwalker. The circle is a doorway.” “But—” “You are a doorway.”

What if he’d been trying to explain she didn’t need to walk the path, that there was a portal right in front of her, a crack between worlds that only she could slip through? As you like, Wheelwalker. You choose the steps in this dance.

“Darlington!” she shouted and yanked the box from her pocket. “Danny, it’s me!”

He remembered her. He knew she’d tried to bring him home.

“Alex?” She held the box open. “Trust me. One last time. Trust me to get us out of here.” But the look on his face was one of terror. Too late she realized it was a warning.

Alex had only ever claimed the dead.

But what if she claimed the living?

She remembered Darlington leading her up the stairs at the Hutch, into the hall at Il Bastone, down haunted streets, and through secret passages. He’d been her guide, her Virgil. How many times had he turned to her and said, Come with me?...

just as Darlington had to her again and again.

“Come on along,” she whispered.

His soul flooded into her like golden light. New-leaf green. Morning bright. The sweet vibration of the cello’s bow. The ringing, triumphant sound of steel on steel. Her bo...

But she had Darlington’s spirit inside her and it was nothing like the power the Grays bestowed. If the strength of a Gray was a candle lit inside her, this was a thousand searchlights, a bomb blast.

He leapt over her toward Darlington, orange flame streaking from his fingertips—but fell into a crouch, hissing, held at bay.

By Cosmo.

Darlington’s protector.

Alex could hear that singing steel sound, could feel Darlington’s spirit inside her. She knew now the pleasure that Belbalm had felt when she’d consumed the spirits of the living.

Greed is a sin in every language. Darlington’s voice, chiding, bemused. She could hear him, the thoughts clear as if they were her own. She didn’t want to relinquish this feeling of power, this elation. He tasted like honey. But she knew better than to get used to a drug like this. She could only hope she wasn’t too late.

He coursed out of her, a river of gold. She could still taste his soul on her tongue, hot and sweet. He flowed into the body on the stairs.

His markings began to glow, light shining through the cracks of his burned flesh. Again Alex tasted honey on her tongue.

His voice sounded right, the echo gone, but horns still curled back from his temples, and his body looked too big, not entirely human. His markings had changed too. The symbols were gone, but there were golden bands around his wrists and neck and ankles.

Darlington seized Anselm in his massive hands and lifted him off his feet. With a single, furious snarl, he tore Anselm in two. The demon’s flesh gave way as if it were paper, dissolving into a mass of wriggling maggots. Alex sprang back.

Darlington’s body seemed to shift again, retracting. The horns vanished, the golden bands. He looked mortal. He stood there for a moment, gazing at Anselm’s remains, then turned and started up the stairs.

“Darlington?” Alex stammered. “I … Where ...

“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...

The gentleman of Lethe ha...

Darlington had been asleep and in his dreams he’d been a monster. But now he was awake and brutally cold. And maybe a monster still.

Each step made a drumbeat: anger, desire, anger, desire. He wanted to fuck. He wanted to fight. He wanted to sleep for a thousand years.

He had been many things in hell, jailer and jailed, torturer and tortured, but he wasn’t ready to think about that and he was only relieved that there were some secrets he could still keep from Galaxy Stern.

He could sense her standing at the bottom of the stairs, hesitant, and he was ashamed of the thoughts that entered his head.

Alex was waiting in the kitchen, eating dry cereal from a box. She was the same too—skinny, sallow, ready to take a swing at anything that looked at her wrong.

I have been crying out to you from the start.

He had a sense that they had entered into an uneasy truce, but he couldn’t quite name the war.

She was more beautiful than he remembered.

No, that wasn’t true. It wasn’t that she had changed or that his ...

He was just less afraid of her...

Darlington was tempted to laugh. Alex Stern had gone to hell twice for him, but the basement was a step too far. He dug in a drawer for a flashlight and headed down the steps.

“Mors vincit omnia,” he whispered. It was all he had to offer. He’d been washed up on a familiar shore, but the sea had changed him. Grief would have to wait.

How could this scrap of a girl have so much power? How could she see into the hidden world that had evaded him for so long?

And after a year in hell, why did he still give a damn?

“They never shut up,” ...

She’s trusting me, he told himself. Alex was handing him knowledge that he knew, with complete certainty, Lethe didn’t have. Another offering. He found h...

“If it makes you feel any better, I’d smother him right now if I could.” Darlington was startled by his own abrupt laugh. Maybe Alex could have stopped him from being eaten that night in Rosenfeld Hall. Maybe she’d wanted his discovery of her crimes to die with him in that basement. He supposed she had betrayed him.

But in the end it had taken this monstrous girl to drag him back from the underworld. There was nothing he could say that would shock her, and that was powerful comfort.

a peace offering to Alex of his own.

“Why don’t we take the Mercedes?” She winced. “Stern, what happened to my car?” “Long story.”

“Who are these guests I don’t recall inviting?” Darlington asked as the demons moved out of the shadows across the street.

“Demons,” she said. “We brought them back.” “As an exchange program?” “It was an accident,” she said as their ride pulled away. “They set fire to the house.” “Why am I not surprised?” “We were trying to rescue you, Darlington. There were bound to be hiccups.” “I’m not sure I’ve ever noted your gift for understatement, Stern.”

Darlington leapt in front of her and snarled. His shape altered before Alex’s eyes, his golden horns curling back from his forehead. Alex tasted honey. Her body burst into blue flame

Darlington charged forward like a bull, slamming into the demon and pinning it to the sidewalk. He rammed his horns against it as it shrieked. The other demons cringed back into the shadows between the houses. “Darlington!” Alex said.

“Darlington, enough!” Her flame unfurled in a crackling blue wire, snapping around the glowing golden band that had appeared on his neck where the yoke had been. It snaked around Darlington’s throat and yanked him away from Not Hellie. The rest of the demon’s torso dissolved into squirming grubs. Darlington fell back on his haunches with a growl. Like a hound brought to heel.