The Truths We Burn (The Hollow Boys, #2)

by Monty Jay

Most say Lucifer fell due to his rebellion. I say God’s favorite of all the angels fell in love. Captivated, enthralled, consumed with the only woman he could never have. The only woman to exist. Adam’s first wife, Lilith. He watched from the heavens, furious that Adam made her lesser. Refused to make her his equal, although they had been created from the same pit. Oh, the fury that burned inside Lucifer when God punished Lilith for her rebellion against her husband, turning her into a demon. And so, Lucifer fell. Like lightning from the heavens, he fell. So that he could raise the kingdom in the underworld. Carving a throne from the ashes of Hell, becoming a king. Creating a home for Lilith. A place where he could make her more than an equal. A place where he would make her his queen.

Masochism.

A taste for suffering.

sadomasochism.

You see, I really love pain.

deserve punishment for. The constant reminder that even on Earth, we must all pay for our sins.

Did sins rank worse in the underworld? Different punishments given based on your crimes against humanity?

The devil. El diablo. Lucifer. I had been an angel once, when I was a kid, before I was cast out of his good graces and left to burn.

Fire is a key element to my existence. Every strike of a match, every flick of a flame is a compulsion. There is no stopping it. I’m always thinking about it, dreaming, contemplating it.

“Who are we without each other?” The question soaks into their skin. While all of us have our own secrets, ones that we’ll take to our grave, there is a mutual understanding that connects us. One that others would never comprehend. A darkness, a hunger that lives inside each of us.

Separately, we are just kids born with tragedy leaking from our split veins. Together, we are utter chaos.

The psycho. The vengeful one. The schizo. And the devil. The Hollow Boys.

But sometimes, very rarely, I wonder what it would feel like for someone to look at me like that. Like I’m more than a problem. A mistake. A monster. Lucifer.

Sage is a poison apple. Too pretty for her own good, but could kill you with one single bite. Even at the thought of that, I’m still ready to sink my teeth into her. I was never the one who thought things through. I act on impulse only, and right now, the only thing on my mind is showing her exactly what she’s been missing. “I can’t wait for the day you come searching for trouble, princess. I’m gonna have so much fun with you.”

So, fear doesn’t work for me. We found out early in our lives that fear doesn’t work on any of us. Not when you’re already dead on the inside. When you’re racing the Grim Reaper to the grave.

I’m destroying his car now, but the next time, it will be him I watch burn.

“Tell me, what do they say about sadistic pyromaniacs with bad tempers who people call the devil? Did your books tell you what I’ll do to you, what I like?”

“And I can promise you, princess, there is no handling me without getting burned.”

“Let’s be honest, Sage. I’m a fire hazard,” I joke, but it doesn’t land the way I want.

“What happened to you?” I ask accidentally, meaning to say it in my head. “Enough to know better.”

There are only two people who can look the pits of hell in the eyes and not flinch. Those in Hell and those who already made their way out.

And that’s what Lucifer saw when he was cast out of Heaven. The green of our planet before entering the flames of Hell. The story behind Rook’s catastrophic nickname ties into him more and more.

“I need you to help me take the mask off. You’re the only person I know not hiding from the world. You burn for it. This place, it’s eating me alive, turning me into a person I don’t recognize. Show me anarchy, show me something violent.” I shake my head, needing to feel that escape. “Show me all your truths, Rook. And I’ll show you mine.”

“You wanna take the mask off?” He picks up his helmet, pushing it towards me, the cool material pressing into my stomach. “Then take me to the place you hate most in the world, and I’ll show you how to make it choke on the ashes of the girl they left to burn.”

Burning down places with ghosts. With memories. Something with substance—those are all my Achilles’ heel, watching as all those suspended memories shoot up in a burst of orange haze, succumbing to nothing but ashes that would sink into the ground.

You know, the whole point of this was for you to set the fire. I’m just the manufacturer behind it.”

“And if you see someone who can down vodka without a chaser like that? They have wounds that sting worse than the alcohol.”

“I don’t think I’ve talked this much about myself or my past in, well, ever really.” She laughs. “This feels like a confessional. I think you missed your calling, Van Doren. You should’ve become a priest.” “Well, I’ve got bad news for you, Theatre Geek.” My hands feel twitchy for a different reason all of a sudden, my grip tightening on her. “You’re confessing your truths to Lucifer. Who knows what I’ll do with them.”

“You believe them, don’t you? All the people who call you the devil?”

“When you are told things so often, even if they aren’t true, you start to believe them.” I raise my hand, pushing a piece of hair behind her ear. “Make no mistake, Sage. I’m not a good person. It’ll be good for you to remember that.”

This is my ultimate transgression. The snake luring Eve into the Garden of Eden for a taste of the forbidden fruit. I just can’t tell if Rook is the snake or the fruit—maybe both.

“Homer, he wrote in The Iliad about the natural gases that sprout from the cracks of limestone in the mountains near Olympus. He called them ‘the fire which never goes out.’ I think that’s you.”

“We aren’t right for each other. This is going to end tragically. We don’t end up together in the end.”

You are going to hurt yourself, hurt him. You know there is no light at the end of this tunnel. No way out from underneath your parents’ thumb without them taking Rose.

“Because I’d become a serial killer trying to fend off men falling in love with you.”

I promised myself, and I have broken it, because now I think I’ve fallen in love with the devil.

I’d never been able to keep anything I cared about. I just want this one godforsaken thing.

Act II: The Rise of a Fire God He doesn’t just feel like fire. He is fire. He is the flame, the flint, the burn. Like the Egyptian god Ra, he encompasses all that is warm. He is my fire god, and I live to burn for him.

Nothing is more enjoyable than watching a man who always thought of himself as a wolf become the scared, frightened lamb in the pasture. Real wolves are coming for him now. “Oh, you really are fucked,” I add, laughing almost joyfully.

“Now you’ve got hounds from hell coming for your throat, Dad. And they aren’t going to stop, no matter what you do.” I look over at Cain, driving my point home. “Not until everyone who hurt Rose is dead.”

When in reality, I have the chance to work with four people just as resentful. I have the opportunity to help them, to help Rosie.

“Just how far are you willing to travel into the dark before you see nothing good remains there?”

“You’ve allowed the world to sit wickedness on your shoulders, honey, turning yourself into this image because it’s what they wanted, but is that what you really want? Is that who you are?”

“Stubborn boy.” She arches her eyebrow. “I’m telling you the high priestess”—she taps the card in the middle— “is coming for you. You can only run so far before you run headfirst into your past. You’ll have to face her, that pain, that heartache. Soon. Covering it up is only burying you further into your grave. Facing her can give you the redemption you need.”

I’m driven by the image of my father’s death, watching all the life go out of his eyes while I stare him down into the grave. It’s the last thing I can do for Rose. The only good thing I can do for her, and it’s the least she deserves.

The Rook I’d once known. The one who’d so desperately wanted to keep me. The boy I thought could love me… Is gone.

I was baptized in gasoline as a child. Born to ignite. Born to live and go down in flames. Raised in the house of the Lord but christened by a touch of rebellion.

To me it was pretty cool, like X marks the spot, ya know? And as a kid who loved Pirates of the Caribbean, I thought this fun fact would be neat to share with my classmates. But they didn’t see it as the marker of buried treasure or even the twenty-fourth letter of the alphabet. They saw it as an upside-down cross. The Antichrist. The Mark of the Beast.

I could have done it myself, taken a razor blade to my thighs or my wrists. But I knew that Thatcher needed to cut. It would have been selfish of me to keep this to myself. The impulse that feeds my soul to burn things is the same one that flows inside of him. Instead of needing fire, he needs to see crimson.

And I think she feels what I do—what we all feel. This is special. It’s different.