Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 99935 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99935 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
“Stop calling her it! You’re not our fucking mother, what right do you have to speak of my sister that way!”
“But that was also my fault,” she gritted. “Lucifer put in the soul contract that I wasn’t allowed to mistreat his spawn in any way. I had to treat it the same way I treated you, or the contract was void, and his protection would be lifted. Of course, I couldn’t put your life at risk because of that thing, so I put on my greatest performance, but in doing so, I left you with a terrible burden after I was gone.”
“Dora is not a burden, you monster! Get me out!” I rocked and rolled in the invisible stretcher. “Let me out!”
“Eighteen years,” she whispered. “Eighteen years the three of us had together, before it all came crashing down. You see, when you make a deal with Lucifer, you have to be perfect. You have to think of every eventuality and every loophole. If you don’t, you’ll regret it for the rest of your afterlife... and I didn’t think of everything.
“When I made the contract, I thought the only serious threat against our family was the coven’s magic, and so that is what I told Lucifer to protect us from,” she said. “I never for a second thought that technology, tracking, and the internet would advance to the degree it did in the last two decades. All of a sudden, anyone could be found, and anyone can be tracked.”
“Enough with the fairy tale! Just take me to my sister!”
“At some point, my mother figured out that magic wasn’t going to find us, but technology could do the trick just fine,” she said. “Mother hired someone to find me, your father, and the thing and kill us. With the three of us out of the way, you’d be alone and desperate for the only family you had left—her.”
“No!” I was desperate to cover my ears—block out all the horrible lies she was spouting.
“As far as you were told, your father lost control of the car on a wet, slippery road. He and I died, while the thing ended up in a coma. But of course, she said, that wasn’t the whole story. What truly happened is that the hitman cut our brakes, and Lucifer let your father and me die—choosing only to save his spawn.”
Tears soaked my face. What was wrong with this lunatic? What was she getting from stuffing my ears full of this bullshit!
“But in so doing, he left his spawn without someone to raise it.” More clinking. More scratching. “Despite what you may have been told, it’s not that demons can leave hell when mortals summon them. They can only pass through the closed gates when a witch summons them through want or need.
“That is why he was so desperate for a witch of his own blood. Especially, a blood witch,” she said. “The thing gave him a very tenuous bridge that allowed him more freedom of movement than he had in three hundred years. The freedom to leave hell in the name of protecting his child.” She spat the word as if it didn’t apply to Dora.
“That is how he was able to save it from the crash, and how he was able to continue protecting you after the contract between us ended,” she explained. “If you hadn’t decided to become it’s guardian and raise it after I died, he would’ve abandoned you to whatever fate my mother had in store for you. It’s because you chose differently that he hid the two of you from magic and technology for four additional years.”
She scoffed. “A fact he’s loved reminding me of whenever I’ve mourned the derailing of your future. Apparently, your future would’ve been derailed by my mother anyway, so I have no right to complain about you giving up your life for his creature. Smug bastard.”
“Garbage. Lies. Bullshit. Nonsense,” I thought, dismissing every word out of her mouth.
“But that is the past, my sweet girl. Now, I have to tell you what brought us all here,” she said. “As I told you, making a deal with the devil is the one thing a witch can never do. Once I signed on the dotted line, the goddess abandoned me and let me be cast into hell.
“What you likely don’t know—because demons are too stupid to figure it out—is that humans aren’t sent to hell without souls. We have our souls when we pass. What actually happens is that our souls are immediately snatched from us by the lords of hell in a horrific ritual that gives them power, but turns us into nasty, twisted creatures with horns, scales, tails, fur, black blood, and red eyes. We become something that is no longer wholly human.”
Why is it that of all the things she told me, I had no trouble believing the lords of hell were stealing souls and lying about it?