He trailed off, glancing at me, then Sarah, and then Anya.
Interesting.What was that about?
“You’re still keeping secrets from me?” I asked with a frown.
He chuckled. “And you aren’t keeping secrets from us?”
“Of course not.”
“You won’t talk about your illness.”
Okay, he had a point.
“That’s different,” I argued. “That has nothing to do with this.”
“Going round and round in circles isn’t going to help any of us,” Bael said, pushing up from his chair. He grabbed another beer and took a chug. “Let’s just be real with each other, alright? Because we’re all we’ve got right now.” He turned to me. “We’re pretty sure they want to try to open the hellgate.”
“Oh.” My shoulders relaxed. “I already knew that.”
“The hellgate that is beneath this club,” he added.
My eyes widened, and my lips formed an O. Heart thundering, I glanced down at my boots, as if that would somehow give me a view of the portal to the underworld. I focused on the slick stone floor, half-wondering if I could catch an eerie buzzing that they liked to drown out with the thumping bass of the club’s music.
But there was, of course, nothing. No sign that Hell sat directly beneath my boots.
“So,” I said, glancing up. “You guys are pretty much the guardians of the gate to Hell.”
“Why do you think we picked Hell’s Kitchen for this club?” Stolas asked.
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I mean, it makes sense. It’s a neighborhood called Hell’s Kitchen. A club namedInfernalrun by a bunch of demons? Seems like a logical fit.”
“It’s named Hell’s Kitchen because of the gate in the tunnels beneath us. Humans just don’t remember that’s the origin of the name. Over the years, truth turned to myth turned to forgotten or suppressed memories.”
I nodded. “Okay. I guess that makes sense.” I turned to Caim. “But why didn’t you want to tell me?”
“I didn’t want to scare you,” he replied. “Infernalis one of the safest places you can be inside this city now that we have the newly-installed security. I thought if you knew about the hellgate, you wouldn’t want to step foot inside the place.”
“Then, you don’t know me as well as you thought,” I said dryly.
Phenex chuckled, and Caim shot him a glare.
This new tidbit of information brought a lot more questions to mind. And a strange part of me wanted to...see it? For a lot of reasons. For one, I was dying to know what a hellgate looked like. Two, I was curious to know how the darkness inside of me responded to it. Would she sense the gate? Would she want to rip it open like the others did?
As my mind had wandered so had the conversation. The Legion were back to making their plans for the night. They would wait for a report on another attack, and they’d be ready with their weapons when it inevitably happened. For now, they would ‘kill’ the demons, and then bring them back here to the dungeon that was ready-fitted with some supernaturally-protected cages.
Phenex made more arguments for destruction, but he was out-voted by the others. No destruction. At least not yet.
At that, the demons dispersed to prepare themselves for a fight. Sarah and Anya wandered out of the room with Bael while Caim pulled me aside behind the bar. He dipped beneath the shelves and produced a gleaming dagger with a hilt made out of silver and gold that interweaved into a design that looked eerily like horns.
“I want you to have this.” He placed the dagger on the bar top with such reverence that I was kind of scared to touch the thing.
I eyed it, half-wondering if it was going to, I don’t know, wink at me or something. Caim had a weird sword. It lusted for blood or something. Maybe this one did, too.
“Thanks?” I said. “But I’m not entirely sure why you’re giving this to me.”
“I want you to be able to protect yourself. That pepper spray I gave you isn’t enough.” He nodded at the dagger. “Go on. Don’t be shy. Pick it up.”
“Will it try to eat me if I touch it?” I couldn’t help but ask.
