Hellbound Series: Books 1 to 3 Bundle

Chapter 4

Lark’s breath misted as it passed her chapped lips. Rubbing her hands together, she stretched her neck just enough to peer over the back of the seat before her. The cold didn’t bother Trent as he pulled the bus into the next stop. People exhausted from their workday shuffled onboard. Each one complained about the cold, demanded he turn the heater up, and glared at him when he just shrugged. Trent kept his smile despite the growing resentment of the crowd, and Lark wondered if that was a sign he wasn’t possessed. It was hard to imagine a demon being so cheerful. A shadow passed over her, and she stifled a yelp. A woman standing in the aisle heaved a sigh and gestured to Lark’s feet.

 

“I’d like to sit down.”

 

“Oh, sorry.” Lark pressed her back against the side of the bus and drew her knees tightly against her chest.

 

“You could just put your feet down,” the woman said.

 

“It’s warmer like this.”

 

Lark exaggerated her shiver and slightly widened her eyes, making herself look as vulnerable as possible. The woman scowled but eventually dumped herself into the free end of the bench seat. Lark still took it as a win. After a day of numbing cold and boredom, she was ready to relish anything resembling a victory. Peering over the seat again, she used the rearview mirror to glimpse Trent’s face. He whistled a happy tune as he pulled the bus back onto the street. Suddenly, his reflected eyes flicked up to meet hers. Lark breathed on her gloved fingers to cover her face and sunk deeper into her hooded coat. Being able to hide within layers of clothing was the one upside of the bus being so insufferably cold.

 

They passed through an intersection, and Lark craned her neck to check the street names. Then she picked her phone up from her lap and typed out a quick text to Wren. The battery was struggling to keep a charge in the cold. The incoming call from Shrike almost killed it. She hurriedly answered.

 

“I was just about to text Wren,” Lark said. “I was barely two minutes late—”

 

Shrike cut her off, “Plans have changed. Get to the hotel, now.”

 

“What happened?”

 

“Wren—”

 

The phone call cut off. Lark cursed under her breath and looked at the dark screen. The battery was completely dead.

 

The woman sharing her seat tried to subtly avoid Lark’s gaze.

 

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to bother you, but would you mind if I borrowed your phone?” Lark asked.

 

“I’d prefer not,” the woman said.

 

“Oh, sure I understand.” Lark fiddled with her phone and worried her bottom lip. “It’s always that way, isn’t it? The one time you leave your charger pack at home is the one time your mom…” She cut herself off and shook her head. “Sorry, I babble when I’m nervous.”

 

The woman watched her for a moment out of the corner of her eye. “What happened to your mom?”

 

“The phone cut off before my sister could tell me. It’s okay. It’s not much longer to the hospital, right?”

 

The woman huffed and rummaged in her purse. They had gone a few more blocks before she pulled out her phone. Instead of handing it to Lark, she cursed under her breath, got to her feet, and hit the bus call button.

 

“This is my stop.”

 

“But you just got on,” Lark said.

 

“I’ve got three more transfers before I get home.” The woman shoved her phone back in her purse and gave Lark a quick sympathetic smile. “Good luck with your mom.”

 

She was moving to the doors before Lark could respond.

 

“Well, that sucks,” Lark mumbled.

 

Unfurling a little bit, she peeked over the seats, scanning the crowd for someone else she could approach. All the people crowding around the exits blocked her view. She decided that it would act as enough of a cover and stretched out her aching legs. Sitting upright, she took a proper look around. They stopped and the doors opened with a hiss. Most of the crowd had filed out before she realized that she was the only passenger not moving. Tension gripped her chest. Lark stood up and darted for the exit. But between her heavy snow boots and her numb legs, she couldn’t move quickly. She lumbered into the aisle and followed the last person to the back door. It snapped shut in her face and the bus lurched forward, throwing her off-balance. She staggered across the narrow aisle and dropped onto a seat. Bracing herself, she hurriedly looked around. The bus was empty. She was alone with Trent.

 

Chapter 5

The sweat-drenched sheets clung to Shrike’s legs as she rolled over. She had barely fallen asleep before the first rays of sunlight had cut across the ocean. The glass walls allowed it in and trapped the growing heat. Squirming, her eyelids fluttered, and she glimpsed a dark shape looming over her. She kicked wildly at it, one hand blindly searching for the fishing knife she had hidden under her pillow.

 

“What on earth do you think you’re doing, young lady?” the shadow chastised her.

 

Shrike squinted into the morning glare. “Doris?”

 

“Well, who else would it be?”

 

The scent of coffee caught Shrike’s interest. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she watched Doris shuffle across the room with a tray of assorted breakfast foods and steaming mugs.

 

“I don’t know how you managed to get any sleep in this sauna. Three bright young kids and not one of you could figure out how to open a window? And I thought we agreed that you wouldn’t put up the garlic. It’s either going to roast or rot. Either way, I’m the one stuck getting the smell out of the furniture. I trust that you lot will be taking them down this morning.”

 

Shrike left the knife hidden, sat up, and rubbed her face again. “What?”

 

“Oh, you’re not a morning person, are you, dear? Well, that won’t do in this town.”

 

Doris slid the back wall open and welcomed the sea air with a contented sigh. The beach looked a lot closer in the daylight. It was hard to see the sand through the sea grass, but the water sparkled like sapphires. Shrike shivered as she remembered what might have washed up on the golden shore overnight.

 

“How can anyone lounge around on a day like this, hmm?”

 

Shrike took a deep breath, trying to keep a grip on her temper as the older woman bustled around the room. She wanted to go back to sleep. To pretend for a little while longer that last night hadn’t happened. She wanted to escape her crushing guilt.

 

“What are you doing here?” Shrike snapped.

 

“It’s a bed-and-breakfast, dear. This is the breakfast part.”

 

“I can’t handle this. I’m going to get the others.”

 

Doris arched an eyebrow. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

 

“What?”

 

“You should really cover up a bit before they come down.” Doris purposefully trailed her eyes over Shrike. “It’s okay to sleep in your underwear but—”

 

Shrike glanced down at her running shorts and crop top. “What are you on about?”

 

“Well, it’s okay when it’s just us girls, of course, but boys will always be boys and—”

 

“Are you talking about my brother? What the hell is wrong with you?” She flipped her head back and screamed at the ceiling. “Lark!”

 

Doris jumped. An instant later, footsteps thundered across the second floor. Lark and Wren almost toppled off the stairs in their rush to get down.

 

Wren fumbled with his glasses. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

 

“Are you okay?” Lark asked.

 

“You can’t come down yet, sweeties,” Doris called out. “She’s not decent.”

 

“Huh?” Wren and Lark asked in unison.

 

They hurried the rest of the way down. Lark made a beeline for Doris. She used pleasant conversation to lure the older woman as far away from Shrike as the small space would allow.

 

Wren leaned against the back of the sofa and whispered, “Why did you let her in?”

 

“I didn’t.”

 

She turned to look at him and noticed their duffle bags. They had left them lined up on one side of her wide bed. Their father had raised them to always pack their things away before going to sleep, so the open zippers were instantly noticeable. She nudged Wren and motioned to the bags.

 

“She went through our stuff,” Wren spoke too softly to be overheard.

 

“Can I hit her now?”

 

“We agreed to let Lark handle her.”

 

“Mrs. Brown, we do appreciate all the trouble you’ve gone to—”

 

“It’s no trouble at all,” Doris cut Lark off. “Have you heard from your friend Barsotti?”

 

“No.” Lark hid everything she was thinking behind an easy smile, but she couldn’t resist nervously tucking her hair behind her ears. “He’s not actually a friend. We don’t really know him that well.”

 

Chapter 7

Lark

“I swear, this is not a prank.” It didn’t matter how many times Lark repeated the promise. No one believed her. “Please, I can explain. If you just let me—”

Everyone tried to shut her down.

 

It made the laptop speakers squeal and crackle. The videos began to lag, twisting the women’s faces into grotesque deformities.

 

Sitting with her back against the bed’s headboard, Lark ignored the chaos on the screen. Instead, she looked for her brother. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the darkness.

 

Wren had started pacing as much as the makeshift barbed wire would allow. The repetition helped him. After checking that they hadn’t missed a text, he’d stare out the peephole for a few minutes. Then he’d creep across the room to the balcony door.

 

Lark wasn’t sure how he saw anything when he barely moved the curtain. He’d stay there, frozen in place, before starting the process over.

 

“Lark,” Circe snapped, drawing her attention back to the screen.

 

While the witches online insisted that there wasn’t any hierarchy, Circe was the one that hosted these calls. And that gave her the ability to mute everyone else.

 

Lark refocused her attention back to the screen and met the woman’s stern gaze. Circe styled herself after the witch from Greek mythology.

 

Lark didn’t know how historically accurate it all was, but the dramatics suited her.

 

“Circe, this isn’t a prank,” Lark said.

 

“You want me to believe that it’s all a coincidence? Do you often have encounters with satanic covens?”

 

“No. But we are in trouble, and you know that.”

 

“How would we know?” Circe snapped.

 

Lark struggled to keep her voice low. “I’ve been trying to ask you about demons for hours. Why did you think I wanted to know about them?”

 

Circe dismissed that with a snort. “Why did you pick Okobach? Did you just Google search demon names?”

 

“I didn’t pick it.”

 

Circe studied her for a moment before sneering. “So, this is all your friend’s doing? She decided to mock us all by herself. And it just so happened—”

 

“My sister isn’t a liar,” Lark snarled.

 

A distant scream made Lark’s head snap up.

 

Wren was back at the door.

 

Lark raised her eyebrows in a silent question. Did you hear that?

 

Illuminating his face with his phone screen, Wren nodded once. Then he turned to the balcony door. Carefully, he started back across the room.

 

“I am being very patient with you,” Circe said. “And I’m willing to listen to your explanation. But don’t think that I’ll endure this disrespect.”

 

Lark stopped listening when she heard the soft metallic squeaks.

 

They came randomly, sometimes lost under Circe’s voice.

 

Wren paused and turned to her.

 

She nodded. I hear it too.

 

The squeaks grew louder.

 

Illuminating his face again, Wren frowned. Where is it coming from?

 

She shrugged.

 

The next squeak was longer, louder and made them both turn to the balcony doors. The thick curtains blocked out everything but the faintest trace of patio light.

 

Lark silently placed the laptop on the bed beside her.

 

Circe kept talking, her annoyed voice little more than white noise.

 

All of Lark’s attention was on the balcony doors.

 

Her socks and the carpet muffled the sound of her tiptoeing across the room. She weaved around the clotheslines and joined Wren by the door.

 

He tucked his phone into his pocket as they listened.

 

Circe demanded she come back.

 

The Crock-Pot bubbled and steamed.

 

An owl shrieked somewhere in the distance.

 

Everything else was silent.

 

Then the squeaking started again.

 

Swallowing thickly, Wren hooked a fingertip around the edge of the curtain. He lifted it just enough to peek outside.

 

They watched as the hooked lock flipped open.

 

Wren and Lark lunged forward and blindly grabbed the handle. The door had only slid open an inch before they slammed it back shut. With the curtain bunched up around their fingers, Lark struggled to find the lock.

 

Whoever was outside laughed.

 

“Oh, there is someone still in there,” a woman cooed.

 

Why isn’t the garlic keeping them out? Lark thought wildly. They shouldn’t be able to touch the door!