Veiled (Ada Palomino 1)

She’s Ingrid. My mother. I’m Ada.

Names have power.

That’s right, Jay encourages.

That’s right, the voices leer. Very right. Silas Black.

Jay stiffens. His heartbeat slows.

Silas Black. The name means something to me.

Images of fire and screaming babies and gaping knife wounds.

Dead horses with their intestines cascading into a field.

Body parts scattered down a dark alley.

Birds with their wings chopped off.

Silas Black is evil.

Silas Black is holding me.

He is walking down the stairs with me.

Silas Black will kill me.

I start to fight against him with every muscle I have but Silas Black is huge, laced with black magic and preternatural strength.

With one swift movement I am tossed through the air. I spin, wet tiles sliding past my face and I land on the ground in excruciating pain. It shoots up through my knees, my hands, splinters my sense of self. I try to move but collapse.

It was over so fast. How long was Silas waiting inside of him to do that? For Jay to just switch, to forget. Jay was obliterated in the blink of an eye. A snap of the fingers at the demons’ indulgence. It was almost like they’d forgotten and had done it on a whim.

We’ll still hold the bargain, the voices say. They come from under me, rumbling the ground like passing train, they come from above me.

Inside me.

We’ll let your mother go if you stay here, they say. We promise.

The devil lies, I tell myself, my head pressed against the hard ground. I don’t even want to get up, to see.

We are all devils, they say. Every one of us. Maybe even you. If you let yourself.

The voices get closer, like they are whispering in my ear. I feel hot, sulfurous breath. We know all those little things you’d like to do. The things you would never admit to yourself. The pleasure you get from them. The difference between that world and this one is freedom, my girl. Here you are free to act in any way you please. The ways you truly want.

And yet somewhere, somehow, I hear Jay.

I hear him from a small, dark cage, like a bird under sheet.

Get your mom. Use the walls.

My heart glows in response.

And then it’s gone, snuffed out.

Hands dig into my hair and pull me up by the roots until I’m nearly on my feet.

I open my eyes and stare into the face of something I don’t have words for.

It yanks me up further and then shoves me back until my back hits a wall, my head cracking on it.

My eyes dart around, taking in the scene.

Jay is gone.

So are the people.

There aren’t hundreds of devils here.

There is only one.

CHAPTER TWENTY

I am alone in Hell.

Aside from the demon standing across from me.

Studying me.

Waiting.

I still can’t look at it, my retinas balking at its appearance before I can even take it in. It’s like looking at the sun if the sun held unimaginable, mind-bending horror in its rays.

So while I can’t look at its face, I can look at its clothes.

It’s at least ten feet tall, dressed in what looks to be a cloak of purple and black, the structure made from charred animal bones, leathery wings and human hair, with baleful and blinking eyes, and oozing blood, sticky as tar, filling in the gaps.

The demon takes a step toward me, the cloak making a whispering sound. I have no doubt that it’s compromised of captured souls.

You’re right, the demon says. Its voice causes my brain to cave in. Lost and forgotten. As you will be too.

My back flattens against the wall as it steps closer again and I move my head to the side in order to avoid its faceless face. It brings the smell of rotting meat, a cellar full of dead rats and feces and sour milk.

A bony, furry finger reaches out from the end of its sleeve—a hem of eyelashes, wavering like seaweed—and touches my cheek.

Softly at first.

Then it presses in until my skin is being punctured, the finger bones drilling down, down, down into my cheekbones and the gummy flesh beyond.

I scream. It is soundless. Endless.

The demon’s fingers are quick. It reaches into my mouth, pinching my tongue like forceps. Spiders, hundreds of tiny red ones, come skittering from out of the demon’s sleeve, over its black furred hand and onto my tongue. I can feel each one as it descends down the back of my throat, some slinging webs from one tonsil to the other.

Kill me, kill me, kill me, I think to myself. I am still screaming. I am crying. I am reduced to a shaking mass of fear. A second longer and I’ll lose my mind forever.

I welcome it.

Ada . . .

My mother’s whisper settles inside me like snowflakes.

My mother.

Love.

Heartache.

Loss.

It’s enough.

It’s enough.

I erase the demon from my reality. I create a new one inside my head. A reality born of fury and anger of determination and revenge. A reality built on hope.