Rachel Vincent - With All My Soul

“Pay?” Troubles? Eternity? Were his words supposed to make sense?

“It’s just a kiss, little fury.” He slid one hand behind my head and pulled me closer, and I shoved against his granite chest, fighting unburdened by the rational certainty that I’d break my own bruised arms before I could break his hold. “Shhh, it’s just a kiss.”

His mouth met mine, and my empty stomach churned. Then he sucked my chapped, cracked lower lip into his mouth and his teeth sank into my flesh. I screamed against his lips, and he devoured me whole, blood and outrage as one.

But that wasn’t all he took from me. As he sucked at my mouth, holding me in place in spite of worthless, wordless protest, my pain and fear began to coil up from some unknown depth at my center, swirling through me and into him in a roiling storm of suffering. Fire. Blood. Broken bones. Frozen limbs. Torn flesh. Bruised skin. Skewered hope. Ruined mind. Shredded reality.

I lost the torment infusing each excruciating memory as he sucked them dry, like draining the flavor from a Popsicle of pain, and as he swallowed the madness in each moment, older memories surfaced. Better times. People I loved.

My name.

I am Kaylee. Cavanaugh. I am Kaylee Cavanaugh.

I was Kaylee Cavanaugh, anyway, until the bottom fell out of my world and I tumbled into hell.

He drank from my mouth, drawing things from deep inside me, and with each second my pain and fear faded, leaving only thoughts I’d forgotten I ever had. That, and a deep, scorching anger that burned in me unlike anything I’d ever felt.

I put myself here. I’d done this to myself. For one long moment, I couldn’t move past that outrageous certainty. Why had I done this to myself? Why would I submit to such suffering?

When much of the pain and fear were gone, he got his first taste of the fury and self-loathing raging inside me, and he took it all, bit by bitter bit.

Then I remembered his name.

Ira. Evil, but useful.

Ira licked the cut he’d opened inside my lip, and...

“You want me to play nursemaid and courier?” His black, black eyes mock me. “That is a perverse sort of role-play indeed, my twisted little instigator.”

I roll my eyes. “I want you to protect them and deliver a letter.” My blood spells out his name on the cafeteria floor. It still pools in my palm, and I hope it will not dry before we are done negotiating. “ This letter.” I pull the folded envelope from my pocket, and blood streaks the front of it.

His brows rise in obvious curiosity. “What could you possibly offer, little flame, that is worth the performance of such insulting tasks?” He’s interested. I can feel it. I can see it.

“Madness. The profit of pain and anger.” I close my eyes, trying not to imagine it. “I guarantee that if you protect them while I’m gone and deliver this letter at the appropriate time, when you come for me, you will find the most dense concentration of agony and rage you’ve ever experienced. I’ll be a human bonbon with a bitter raging center. I’ll be insane with suffering. Completely out of my mind. And it’s all yours. Every single flame of fury surging through my veins. Every drop of pain I’ve been drowning in. Every mad thought jumping around in my head. They are all yours, if you do this for me.”

He sucked on my lip, encouraging the flow of my blood, and rage washed through me into him. I didn’t try to fight it. I let it go, because this was what I’d agreed to and because with every bit of anger he took, he gave back one of my memories.

Answers.

The long-forgotten promises that put me there...

“Why would Avari let you go?” Ira’s black, black eyes flash in the pale moonlight shining into the cafeteria.

“He won’t have any choice once he realizes he doesn’t really own my soul. He can’t own it if it wasn’t mine to surrender in the first place, so if the rightful owner comes to claim it, he has to turn it over. Right?”

Ira’s brows rise. “If it wasn’t yours, then you couldn’t rightfully give it to him, and he couldn’t rightfully accept it. So, yes, if the rightful owner demands its return, Avari would have to relinquish your soul.”

“But because he did take possession of it, his promise to me has to stand, right?”

“The wording of such a promise is critical, but yes.” Ira nods slowly, and his dark, dark lips curl up in a smile. “You are a clever one, little fury. But tell me, why would your soul not be yours to surrender?”

“Because I already gave it to someone else....”

My own blood filled my mouth as fast as it flowed into his, and dimly I was aware that I couldn’t have much more to lose. But that probably didn’t matter. I was dead, right?

“So then, there’s only the matter of duration. How long will you suffer for them? For me?” Ira’s blood-smile broadens in anticipation of my answer.

As little as possible, of course. “A week.” I say it as firmly as I can, because surely a week in hell is enough for anyone to endure, but he laughs in my face, and the sound is like glass shattering as it’s hurled against stone.

“A decade. I won’t work without the promise of a hefty profit. By which, of course, I mean your pain and anger. The hellion’s fury will be substantial, but you must suffer to make this creative venture worth my time, little fury.”

But we’re arguing about my time. My suffering. And I can’t do a decade. There wouldn’t be enough of me left to rescue.

“A year. You’ll be paid more than you can possibly imagine, and you’ll continue to collect from Avari for years,” I point out. “Decades, maybe.” If a hellion’s memory is infinite, who knows how long he can hold a grudge?

“Little flame, I have quite a capable imagination, as does your hellion of avarice. But if I am to protect your loved ones on your behalf, you must suffer on mine. For years. That is how this works.”

My heart races in panic. This will fall apart if I can’t secure Ira’s help. My father will die. He will suffer for eternity because I couldn’t save him. My friends will be hunted, one by one.

I have no choice. “Fine. Three years. As measured in the human world.” I can already feel the promised years slipping away from me, and I am terrified of what my time in hell will bring.

“Five. Not a day less.”

“Four, and you can feed from them, too.” A last-minute stroke of brilliance on my part. “While you protect my friends and family, you can have their anger. Their grief for me. Take it. Feed from it in my absence.” A reciprocal relationship that would surely benefit everyone.

Ira thinks for several minutes, staring at me until my skin begins to crawl in discomfort. Have I messed this up? Have I forgotten something?

Then, finally, he nods. “Shall we seal it with a kiss?”

“If I must. But there’s one more thing. I need you to make me forget about this. Take the memory of our bargain, so Avari can’t find it.”

“That will be my pleasure, my little roaring flame....”

When he pulled away, the world stopped spinning so fast that I almost fell over. I blinked. I licked the inside of my lip and tasted my own blood. Then I looked down at the dingy scrap of linen—maybe white, once—wrapped loosely around me like a towel.