Soul Screamers Volume Four: With All My Soul\Fearless\Niederwald\Last Request: 4 (10 page)

“Ms. Hirsch? You okay?” Was she in shock? Was
I
going to have to counsel
her?

“You’re smaller than I expected,” she said. Only she said it with someone else’s voice. She said it with a
man’s
voice, deep and smooth, and...
rich,
somehow. And totally out of place coming from Ms. Hirsch’s slim, delicately curved feminine form.

She was obviously possessed, presumably by a hellion, but I didn’t recognize the voice.

My pulse spiked and chill bumps popped up on my arms, but beneath that an angry flush began to build inside me. I knew I should be scared—I was sitting across my guidance counselor’s desk from a hellion I couldn’t identify—but since my untimely death, I’d discovered that there was a limit to my capacity for fear. I could only be threatened, stalked, intimidated, manipulated, possessed, and actually killed so many times before I began to acclimate to the constant state of fear. Before terror lost its punch, like a scary movie watched too many times.

Anger, though... My capacity for anger at the Netherworld and at the host of Nether-creatures that had turned my afterlife into a living hell...that seemed to know no limits.

Much like hellions themselves.

My hands clenched around the arms of the chair. “Who the hell are you?”

Ms. Hirsch’s left brow arched. “You don’t know?” At the sound of his voice, that warmth inside me spread, not comforting, but seditious. Like a fierce flame burning within me, demanding action.

“Should I?” The fact that he couldn’t use her voice probably meant he hadn’t been in her body often enough to learn how to work all the gears and levers. Hopefully, he’d
never
been in her body before. I hadn’t even known she was eligible for possession....

“Not officially, but I’m a big fan of your work.”

“My work?” I should have been terrified, but what little fear I felt wasn’t because my guidance counselor had been possessed, or because whoever was possessing her had obviously known when and where he could get to me through her. I was scared for Ms. Hirsch. Of what he might do to her—or make her do to herself—if he didn’t get whatever he wanted from me.

Ms. Hirsch’s head bobbed and a strand of red hair—her bangs were long and trendy—fell across her forehead. “You’ve managed to thoroughly piss off not one but
three
of my most reviled associates. And to survive their anger.” He frowned with my guidance counselor’s pink mouth. “Sort of.”

Every word he said stoked the fire inside me until the flames of my anger grew hotter, taller, licking the inside of my skin like they wanted to burst free and roast the world.

I knew what he was doing. He was feeding my anger. Nurturing it, like fertilizing a garden until the veggies are ready to harvest. And devour.

The worst part was that whoever this hellion was, he knew exactly who
I
was, and that I wasn’t—strictly speaking—alive. And he knew who my enemies were. But I didn’t need to be told that when dealing with hellions, the enemy of my enemies was definitely
not
my friend.

“Who are you and what do you want?” The longer I sat there, the angrier I got. He’d hijacked Ms. Hirsch’s body. He’d subpoenaed me from my lunch period like I had nothing better to do than be ordered around by a monster from another world! “Never mind. I don’t care who you are or what you want. Get the hell out of my counselor’s body, or I’ll take you out myself.”

I stood and picked up the large, jagged chunk of pink quartz Ms. Hirsch used as a paperweight and hefted it, silently threatening to bash his hellion brains in.

“Nice. Decent buildup from irritation to anger, with a flare of true rage on the end. How long have you been harboring so much hatred, Kaylee? You were only a blip on my radar a few months ago, but now you’re a blinking light too bright to ignore.”

What the hell? I glared down at him, confused. Was the hellion actually trying to counsel me? Was this some kind of demon identity crisis?

“Oh, and you
do
understand that if you bash me over the head with that rock, your counselor will be the one who wakes up with a headache. Right? If she wakes up at all.”

Crap.
I
did
know that. Blazing anger did nothing to help my logic.

The twitch at one corner of her mouth looked suspiciously like amusement. “If we’re going to be any use to each other, you’ll have to learn to think through your anger.”

I desperately wanted to know what he was talking about, but I knew better than to ask. I needed to cruise
below
hellion-radar, not actively engage it.

“My name is Ira, incidentally.” He leaned back in Ms. Hirsch’s chair and crossed her slim legs, and the ease with which he moved told me that even if he wasn’t familiar with her particular body, this wasn’t his first time in human form. “In case you haven’t figured it out, I’m a hellion of wrath. And I’ve been
itching
to make your acquaintance of late. I think we can help each other out.”

“Not gonna happen.” I remained standing, but I put the rock down. I couldn’t hurt Ms. Hirsch, which Ira obviously knew.

“Oh, I think it might, if you knew what I had to offer.”

“No.”
Never make a deal with a hellion.
That’s the first thing they tell you in “Surviving the Netherworld 101.” Or it would be, if such a class existed. Hellions love to bargain, but they never agree to a deal if they’re not getting the better end of it. The
vastly
better end.

That
other
end tends to leave humans dead, or dying, or injured, or addicted. Or worse.

“There’s nothing I want from the evil incarnation of anger.” Nothing I was willing to pay for, anyway.

“Belittling my existence with understatement doesn’t change the facts. I am much more than an ‘incarnation of anger.’” Ms. Hirsch sat straighter and pinned me with a gaze too steady and merciless to come from anything other than a hellion. “I am in the clench of every fist. I am the hot thrum of blood rushing through your veins. Every thud of knuckles against flesh is the cry of my true name. I am the glint of rage in your ex’s eyes, the livid grinding of his teeth. My pulse is the wave of anger washing over the crowd. The swing of a corpse from the noose. The final twitch of a man murdered in revenge. I know you, Kaylee Cavanaugh. I know you very, very well, and I can give you what you want most in the world. What no one else can give you.”

“I don’t want anything from you,” I insisted, with less certainty this time, but repeating that didn’t make it true.

“Really? Not even justice for everything they’ve taken from you? For everyone they’ve killed? For everything they’ve cost your friends and family?”

Oh, crap.

The hellion smiled slowly with Ms. Hirsch’s perfectly glossed lips. “You want Avari, Invidia, and Belphegore to pay for what they’ve done.”

My chill bumps were back, and this time they felt like small mountains. I sucked in a breath I didn’t truly need and tried to swallow my fear and unease. I tried to bury that traitorous spark of interest piqued within me by his words—that soft voice whispering that it wouldn’t hurt to hear him out. Just to see what he was offering...

Because that
would
hurt. I
knew
better. Hellions don’t hand out free samples. But I couldn’t help wondering....

“And you’re going to do that for me?” Surely sarcasm disguised my curiosity. “Why would you conspire against your own kind?”

“My kind?” He actually laughed, and laughter looked nothing on him like it looked on the real Ms. Hirsch. “Avari is no more my kind than a garden spider is your kind. We inhabit the same world, but he would stomp on me with no more thought than you’d give to stomping on that spider.” He leaned forward, pinning me with a familiar brown-eyed gaze. “I would stomp on him, too. Then I would grind him into the dirt beneath my heel, just like you would, if you were capable of exacting justice on your own.”

“Hellions don’t deal in justice.” That was too noble a concept. “You’re talking about revenge.”

Ira shrugged. “That’s just as well, because justice isn’t really what you want.” He leaned forward again, and his gaze intensified, as if he were looking for more than he could possibly find in my face. Behind my eyes. “Your wrath is graceful. Has anyone ever told you that? Your anger has the bold, sweet overtones of blind rage, but the delicate tang of self-righteousness, because you actually think you’re after justice. But that’s not true, is it? You know there is no justice to be had. Hurting those who’ve hurt you and yours cannot undo what’s been done. Nothing can bring the dead back to life or unscar the wounded. But you still want to hurt them, don’t you? You still want to kill Avari in cold blood for what he’s done to you. That, my sweet, vengeful little flame, is revenge, not justice.”

I blinked, mentally denying everything he’d said. “So, I’m getting ethics lectures from demons now?” That was new.

“You misunderstand.” His smile was back. “I stand in full support of your thirst for vengeance. I would gladly feed it to you drop by decadent drop. I would see you nourished and strengthened by the taste of blood spilled in anger. Of course, that offer comes with a price....”

“We’re done here.”

He rolled Ms. Hirsch’s eyes. “And sanctimony rears its ugly head again. You are in denial, child. You won’t be satisfied until you get what you crave, and that can’t happen until you admit to yourself what it is you truly want.”

“You’re wrong.” Hellions couldn’t lie, but they could be wrong.
Way
wrong. “I’m not looking for revenge. I want
justice
for Emma and Alec, and everyone else Avari has hurt or killed.”

“And for yourself? Don’t you want this ‘justice’ for what he’s done to you? For commandeering your body? For putting possessed hands on you? For making you the instrument of your friend’s death? For abducting your loved ones? You
seethe
with anger, little flame. You practically glow with it. And some of that ire feels very, very personal.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” My pulse whooshed in my ears, which rarely happened now that I was dead. He was wrong. He had to be. “Get out of Ms. Hirsch. Now.”

“Don’t you at least want to know the price for your vengeance? It may be less than you think. I’m feeling generous.”

“No. Get out.” I turned and headed for the door.

“You’ll be back, little flame, and I’ll be waiting. When you’re ready to deal, you may summon me. You have my word that I will answer. You need only bleed and use my name.”

I fled the office as fast as I could go without running. I left Ms. Hirsch in the hands of a hellion, not because I didn’t know how to evict him without being expelled for attacking a staff member—though that was true—but because I was scared to listen to him anymore. I couldn’t hear one more loaded word from the hellion of wrath, because deep down, part of me wondered if he might be right.

And that wasn’t a question I was prepared to answer. Not yet, anyway.

On my way back from the counselor’s office, I was texting Tod to fill him in when I looked up and realized I’d wandered down the wrong hall. I was standing in front of the nurse’s office, which reminded me of Marco. Because that’s where we’d left him the day before—unconscious in one of the two empty patient rooms.

I should check on him.
And I would check on Ms. Hirsch, too. But I just couldn’t bring myself to hit my guidance counselor in the head, even to expel a demon.

I ducked into the bathroom, glanced around to make sure it was empty, then let myself fade from all human sight. Then I blinked into nearly two dozen different classrooms until I finally found Marco Gutierrez in a fourth period senior AP English class. Another jock with a brain. Which meant he was too smart to inhale unfamiliar substances from balloons just because some idiot like Doug Fuller handed it to him.

Marco looked okay. He was wide-awake and taking notes on
Heart of Darkness,
which—based on the title alone—sounded like a good reason to dread senior English. I had plenty of darkness already without reading about someone else’s.

A glance at the clock over the whiteboard told me most of the period was over, and I now had an unexcused absence for English. So I decided to wait and talk to him after the bell. One minute before class ended, I blinked into the hall, checked for onlookers, then willed myself back into human sight. When the bell rang, I stood outside his class, and when Marco appeared, I fell into step beside him.

“Hey, Marco, can I talk to you for a second?”

He glanced at me in surprise. I couldn’t blame him. We’d never said more than three consecutive words to each other, and none of those had been since Nash and I had broken up, officially severing any connection I had to the baseball team.

Finally he shrugged. “If you can walk and talk at the same time. I can’t be late for statistics.”

“So, I kinda just wanted to check on you. I heard you were sick yesterday? Or hurt?”

Marco frowned and stopped in the middle of the hall, and the steady flow of traffic parted around us. “Look, I don’t care what you’re into, or how many starting players you have left on your list, but I’m not into that kind of thing. I have a girlfriend, and I like her, and I’m not gonna...”

My horrified expression must have made an impression. If not that, my sudden inability to form a coherent reply obviously did the trick.

“Wait, that’s just some stupid rumor, isn’t it? That you’re working your way through the baseball starting lineup?”

“
Yes,
it’s a rumor! I guess.” I hadn’t actually heard that one. “A totally fallacious and false rumor, that’s completely unfounded in truth!”

“Sorry. I would never have believed it, except I know you were with Nash. And there was that thing with Scott. And there was talk about Doug. And someone saw you dancing with Brant Williams. And that guy you made out with in the hall after school.” That was Tod. And the only part of what he’d heard that was true. “So it did kind of look like you were...interested.”