Hell Bent (Alex Stern, #2)

by Leigh Bardugo

His gaze was dark and assessing, like he was studying a new text.

She felt nauseated and tired, all the gleam of carrying Darlington’s soul within her siphoned away. She’d let the demon feed on her like some kind of amateur. And what the hell had just happened?

“It’s … it’s not a trick is it?” she said quietly.

“It’s him,” Alex said. Dawes sobbed and lunged forward. She threw her arms around Darlington. “Hey, Pammie,” he said gently.

Maybe that was what she should have done, what someone without so much blood on her hands did.

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.

“Come on,” Darlington said, his arm over Dawes’s shoulders, ushering them all back inside, slipping into the role of Virgil as if he’d ne...

The door creaked softly on its hinges, a high whine of anxiety, as if it was deciding whether there was danger on its doorstep or not. Then the house made up its mind. The steps went still and solid, the door sprang wide, every window came ablaze with light. Even the house could say what Alex could not: Welcome back. You were missed. You are needed. Part demon or not, the golden boy of Lethe was back, and human enough to pass through the wards.

Darlington looked skeptical. “I suppose this is a reasonable time to ask why you brought Tripp Helmuth, of all people, to hell?” Alex threw up her hands in annoyance. “You try putting together Team Murder on short notice.”

Now Dawes hesitated. “Look at you,” she said quietly. “You aren’t … you aren’t completely human anymore. You’re bound to that place.” She glanced uneasily at Alex. “You both are.”

Dawes had said that Alex and Darlington were tied to the underworld, but the truth was that they were all bound together now. They had seen the very worst of each other, felt every ugly, shameful, frightening thing. Four pilgrims. Four children trembling in the dark. Four fools who had attempted what should never be dared. Four shoddy heroes on a quest who were meant to survive this reckless endeavor together. But Tripp wasn’t here.

Both demon and man remained in hell. Both demon and man were bound by the circle of protection.”

But Alex liked Tripp. He was a dumbass, but he’d tried to do his best for them. I like being one of the good guys.

“I really missed having no idea what you’re talking about,” Alex said. And she meant it.

“Does anyone want to tell me and Turner who Pierre is and what he weaves?” asked Alex.

“They’re only going to get stronger and more savvy,” Darlington said. “Personally, I would prefer not to see you all eaten and then have to deal with a bunch of vampires wearing your faces.”

I saw a demon tear another demon in half. I saw you covered in fire that shouldn’t exist in our realm and I saw you use it to keep him in check. Anyone want to explain all that?” Darlington shrugged and reached for seconds of soup. “If we could, we would.” Alex could tell from Turner’s look that he thought Darlington was lying. Alex did too.

“Mercy, if anyone fucks with you, I will teach them a new word for violence.”

“I’m just not made right, Mercy. I don’t know if it’s remorse or conscience that I’m missing or if the angel on my shoulder decided to take a long vacation. But I don’t lose sleep over the bodies on my scorecard. I guess that doesn’t make me a great roommate.” “Maybe not,” Mercy said and turned off the light. “But I’m glad you’re on my side.”

Darlington was sprawled in a chair by the fire. He’d changed into Lethe House sweatpants and an old robe—or maybe it was called a dressing gown. She wasn’t sure.

She just knew that she’d been looking at him without a stitch of clothes for weeks, but that something about seeing him this way—feet propped on the ottoman, robe open, bare chested, a book in his hand—made her feel like a Peeping Tom.

“Something you want, Stern?” he asked without glancing up...

“Are you going to hover in that doorway all night or come in?”

Alex made herself enter. Why the hell was she so nervous? This was Darlington—scholar, snob, and pain in the ass. No mystery there. But she’d held his soul inside her. She could still taste him on her tongue.

His smile was rueful.

“You weren’t meant to survive.” “No,” he mused. “I suppose you and I have that in common. Was that almost a smile, Stern?”

He had always been indecently appealing, the dark hair, the lean build, the air of some deposed royal who had wandered into their mundane world from a far-off castle. It was hard not to stare at him, to keep reminding herself that he was truly there, truly alive. And that somehow he seemed to have forgiven her. But she couldn’t say any of that.

He moved with the same easy confidence he always had, but now there was something sinister in those long strides. She saw the demon. She saw a predator.

But when you crossed into hell through the circle of protection, you broke every rule there is. And when you carried me out again, you found another one to break.” He settled himself back in the chair across from her. “You stole me from underworld. That was bound to leave a mark.”

“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.

“These marks mean I am bound in service. Forever.”

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

Her face went very still. Darlington had learned that this was what Alex Stern did when faced with uncertainty. Fight or flight? A survivor’s move was sometimes no move at all. He could see her in the basement on that night so long ago, a girl wrought in stone.

She raised a brow. “So … are you going to do my laundry?” Fight, flight, or sarcasm. “What a horrid girl you are.” “Ma’am. What a horrid girl you are, ma’am.” Now he laughed.

“I’m not certain I do either,” he said, and he wasn’t lying this time. “You can see the dead, hear them, use them for your own ends—and unless I’m very much mistaken, were it not for certain scruples that Marguerite Belbalm lacked, you could use the living in much the same way.” All he got for that assessment was a short, sharp nod.

As a man he had suffered in hell. But as a demon he had doled out suffering with ease and ingenuity. Sandow had come to them, murdered by Belbalm, his soul already consumed by her. He would never pass beyond the Veil, but hell was happy to claim him. Darlington’s demon self had enjoyed finding new ways to make Sandow miserable, to pay for the anguish he’d caused.

Darlington had been frightening to the shades of the Veil and even to himself. It had been … If he was honest, it had been exhilarating.

Darlington shouldn’t have survived, but he’d managed to hold on until at last rescue had come.

But now he wanted in a way he never had.

He had been tempted to bury his face in his soup bowl and lap at it like a greedy animal.

He wanted to place himself between Alex’s legs now and d...

Darlington drew a hand over his face and gave himself a little shake, praying for sense to return. He was her mentor. Her Virgil. He owed her his life and he could do better by her. He was not some slavering...

Darlington had been surprised by the way that the others had come together to work and plan. He almost hadn’t recognized the command in Alex, the confidence in Dawes, all of it born of his absence. They would have gone on without me. They would have grown stronger. Sitting there, watching them hatch their schemes with Turner and Mercy, he’d felt like a stranger in a place he’d once known he b...

But when he had looked into the great mirror, he had seen that Alex was something more than her mortal self.

And he’d understood that he wasn’t the hero he’d always dreamed of being. He’d been a knight, and what was a knight but a servant with a sword in his hand? For the first time he had known himself and his purpose. At least it had seemed that way at the time.

All he had wanted was to serve her, to be seen an...

He hadn’t known he was looking int...

“That I engaged in a kind of emotional cannibalism to survive? That I ate pain and enjoyed it? I’d think even you might be troubled by that.” “You’ve been in my head now,” she said. “Did you get a look at the things I did to survive this life?”

“We do what we have to,” Alex said. “That’s the only job of a survivor.”

“What if I told you that some part of me still hungers after suffering?” Alex didn’t flinch. Of course she didn’t. It wasn’t in her repertoire. “I’d tell you to keep your shit together, Darlington. We all want things we shouldn’t.”