Grave Mistakes (Hellgate Guardians #1)(45)

I bend over, my hands on my knees, and try to pull enough oxygen into my lungs to chase away the black spots speckling my vision. Someone is rubbing my back, and I can hear other voices speaking to me, but I can’t focus on any of them right now.

I’m a demon having a panic attack in Hell.

I look up to find Crux looking at me, his green eyes filled with pity-laced concern.

“Get me out of here,” I huff between labored breaths.

“It’s okay, Delta, you’re safe here,” Iceman reassures me, but the dismissal of what I want pisses me off even more.

“Get me the fuck out of here!” I scream, my panic jumpstarting a rush of rage.

I have no idea how I even have enough air in my body to force that level of fury and terror out of me, but my voice slams against the stone walls around us and reverberates back to me.

I can hear myself breaking in my own voice over and over again, but there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Warm tears drip down my cheeks, and I feel like if they don’t get me out of Hell’s Embrace right this second, I’m going to die.

“What the fuck do we do?” someone growls.

“Take her out!”

“But—”

“Take her the fuck OUT!”

Suddenly, I feel a hook-like sensation in the middle of my stomach, and in the next hyperventilated breath, I’m yanked back. The world as I know it contracts and then explodes, and in a blink, I land hard on the cold stone floor of the mausoleum we started in—the non-Hell side.

As soon as I have my feet steady beneath me, I scramble out of there and promptly empty the contents of my stomach in the bright green grass growing along the side of the building.

Yep. Breakfast tastes just as bad coming up as it did going down. Fuck you, Grumpy Lurch.

Someone tries to hold back my hair, but I bat them away as the dry heaves kick in. “Don’t. Touch. Me.”

“Delta, let us help you. We know this can’t be easy.”

“I told you she couldn’t handle it,” Jerif says with cruel arrogance, and that’s it.

That’s the final straw.

I round on him, not even caring that I just puked my guts up. “You know what? Fuck you!” I scream, pointing in his face. “I don’t need this shit. I don’t need to fucking help you with the Gate.”

Iceman’s blue brows pull together in a frown as he steps forward. “Delta—”

“No,” I say, cutting him off. “Ever since I first came here, my life has turned upside down. I’m pretty fucking easygoing. I’m used to shitty things happening to me, but this? I don’t have to do this,” I snap, looking at each one of them in turn. “I quit. I want nothing to do with you guys or Hell or the fucking Gate. It is not my problem.”

“Pathetic,” Jerif snaps. “You take one look inside the very outer edge of Hell, and you’re bailing?”

I swipe the back of my arm across my mouth, grimacing at the taste of bile still on my tongue. “Yeah, I’m bailing. Who the fuck wouldn’t? I have no stake in this. You four are the Gate Guardians. If you can’t stabilize the Gate, that’s your problem, not mine.”

He gives off a humorless, harsh laugh and looks at the others while holding a hand out at me. “See? Unreliable. Weak. Scared.” He says each word harsher than the last, making me flinch at the disdain in them. “I don’t give a shit what Ring she’s from, a Diluted would be better than her.”

His words are sharp pricks in my pride, just adding to the hurt and fear I already feel. “Fine!” I say, chest heaving. “Then go fucking find a Diluted.”

“We can’t,” Crux says, intervening. “We’ve been trying to fill this position for a long time, Delta. Every time we get an Outer Ring or Diluted in here, they don’t last and we have to start all over. Our Gate isn’t stable. We’re barely holding it together as it is.”

“Then find someone from the Inner Rings to help,” I reply.

Echo laughs bitterly. “The last thing any Inner Ring would do is give up their life to become a Gate Guardian,” he tells me. “The only reason the four of us do it is because it’s our familial legacy—a vow that’s been passed down to us through the generations.”

I dig my heels in, crossing my arms in front of me just to feel like I can close myself off from them. “If you’ve been doing it this long, then you shouldn’t need me.”

“Unfortunately,” Iceman begins. “We do. Without a true Gatekeeper, this Gate has needed more and more power, and therefore Guardians, to come forward to try to stabilize it, but like Crux said, nobody lasts.”

“Because they all die,” I point out. “I’m not fucking interested in dying, Iceman.”

His blue eyes soften at my use of my nickname for him. “You won’t die. We believe you’re more powerful than that.”

“But you don’t know for sure,” I argue.

“Which is why we want to take you to Hell and see which Rings you have access to. Once you do that, we’ll know for sure,” he answers.

I’m already shaking my head before he can even finish his sentence. Just the thought of being sucked back down there, where the air felt like it was crackling with electric otherness...the thought of being away from the Mortal Realm that I know...it’s enough to make me want to heave again.