Witch Road to Take (3 page)

Damien jumped to his feet, cocked his hands
back and threw a fireball at Father’s head. The impact pushed
Father across the room and just outside my bedroom doorway.

Wolf and Zombie growled.

Father’s head twisted around before his body
did. Blue smoke flared from his ears and nose. “YOU DEFY ME?!”

Damien pushed me further behind him. He
growled, “Father, you are being unreasonable. I think you should
listen to my proposal.”

“I’m the ruler of the underworld, I don’t
negotiate.”

“You’re our father; I’m asking you to
try.”

With all the tension circulating the room,
Zombie and Wolf paced back and forth, waiting to fulfill my
father’s commands. I could tell that they could think of nothing
better than to sink their teeth into our human flesh.

Father’s clawed toenails clicked on the
concrete floor while he paced in front of us. Finally, he spoke.
“Make your point. If you don’t convince me, then you’ll spend the
rest of your life in the pits as well.”

“I’m a soul catcher! You wouldn’t dare,” my
brother whispered.

“I’m fucking Hell! Of course I would.”

I could tell that my brother was
contemplating his duty to protect me. He loved his way of life and
the freedom to navigate both worlds—the world of tormented souls in
hell and the world of confused souls on Earth.

I whispered at his back, “You don’t have to
protect me, Damien. I’m not afraid of the pits.” I was a terrible
liar. I was shaking with fear.

“Shut up. Let me handle this.”

I watched my brother get into the right
frame of mind and use his negotiating skills. “Father, you are the
king of evil.”

I inwardly laughed at the way he opened his
first line.
Brilliant! Praise Father first. That always does the
trick to calm him down.

Then I listened as Damien continued, “And
because you’re the king, I’ve no doubt that you will make the right
decision. With that said, Dhellia has a way with humans. They flock
to her in the way . . . well, let us say in the way that Wolf and
Zombie flock to you. They have befriended her, listened to her, and
they like her.”

“I’m listening.”

“She is a valuable asset to us, Father.”

“Go on.”

“You know how you and”—Damien pointed upward
because Father forbid us to use the Halo Man’s name in our
home—“fight over souls? He usually gets mad at you because a pure
soul sometimes will end up here with us.”

Father nodded.

“Why don’t we use Dhellia’s abilities to fit
in with humans to our benefit? We can have her decipher souls
before they die.”

“Wait!” I belted out, but Damien’s foot came
down hard on mine and the pain stopped me from opening my mouth
again.

Satan didn’t say a word, so Damien
continued, “It’s brilliant. She can live on Earth with them and
check in with me. I’ll report to you once a month. Then she’s
actually contributing to the family business and staying out of
your horns.”

“Or, I could ban her from leaving here and
throw her in the oil pit and watch her burn for a few
centuries.”

I gasped and gripped my brother’s arm.

“Yes, Father, you could do that,” Damien
said. “It is within your power, but her torment would serve no
purpose except for your amusement. With her on Earth, among the
souls, she would be able to infiltrate them and discern which souls
warrant enough of your attention to eventually come
downstairs.”

“No. I need her here. I can’t take a chance
of anything happening to her on Earth.” Father turned but stopped
before he left my room. “I will consider all options before I make
my final decision. If I use your scenario, I will release Dhellia
from punishment. If I don’t, then you will both suffer the same
fate.”

“His bark is worse than his bite,” I
whispered in my brother’s ear.

Damien’s foot pounced on my foot again.
“Fair enough, Father.”

My bedroom door slammed shut, hanging on one
hinge. Father used his powers to bolt my door closed once again.
Damien and I stood in my bedroom alone. He turned around to face
me. “If this doesn’t work, and I have to pay for your righteous
behavior, I
will
make you suffer,” he growled.

“It’ll work. You’re exceptionally skilled at
negotiating with Father.”

“No, I’d be
skilled
if I kept my
mouth shut and let you serve your punishments. But somehow, I’m a
sucker for my rebellious, red-headed, smart-mouthed sister.”

I smiled and kissed him on the cheek. “I
guess we’ll find out tomorrow morning how smart you actually
are.”

Damien finally grinned. “Get some sleep.
Father will confront us at
his
will, and when he does, we’ll
want to be rested.”

I gave him the thumbs up and watched him
leave my room.

I paced back and
forth in
my small, drab bedroom, waiting for Father or Damien to arrive.
Morning had come and gone, night had passed me by, and now it was
morning again. This was not a good sign. I wondered if Damien had
successfully convinced our father to give me my freedom, the
freedom to live among humans upstairs. I was hopeful. Always
hopeful.

One thing that my father had said kept
replaying in my mind:
I need her here. I can’t take a chance of
anything happening to her.

What did he mean? He hadn’t said those words
in the loving way in which a father might talk about his daughter.
He’d said it in a possessive way. Perhaps, if he had me trapped in
Hell, he’d benefit from that in some way.

My father’s agenda had always included what
was best for him. He was a selfish business guru with every
intention of challenging others, both morally and spiritually.

When Damien and I were children, Father
would have long talks with us, reminding us that we were his
offspring. In being his offspring, we had a duty to uphold in order
to make him proud. When I’d beg my father to release a petrified
soul from the grips of Hell, he’d lock me away in my room and
forget about me for months on end. I couldn’t bear the family
business. That was something that I couldn’t even tell Damien.

It was Damien who would find the key to my
room, come inside and comfort me or dry my tears and then sneak
back out when my guard—whomever that might have been—wasn’t
looking. Balance always came easy to Damien. He knew how to make
our father proud, yet maintain compassion when needed. I, on the
other hand, infuriated my father and he reminded me often that I
was a complete and utter disappointment to him.

I grabbed my long hair and pulled it over to
one side, twisting the thick mane nervously as I paced and waited
for someone to share with me what my fate was going to be.

Standing alone in the dark, uncertain how
drastically my life was going to change always left a bitter taste
in my mouth. I’d been in this situation before. I’d fought against
my father in order to have what little freedom I had—a bedroom, a
desk, a bed, and a computer with a line to the upstairs world—but
this time was different. This time, the outcome of my request of
Father was taking longer than it had in the past. I needed my
answer and I hoped it would be the answer that I desperately
wanted: to be out of Hell.

I paced and twisted my hair.

I paced and wrung my hands.

I paced in fear of my future and for the
future of my brother.

I stopped, inhaled deeply, exasperated, and
released the breath slowly as I closed my eyes and cleared my
thoughts. I needed to find my inner peace and harness what was left
of my patience.

When I sat down at my desk to turn on my
laptop, Damien cleared his throat. My frustration was at the
surface of my facial features. I sighed a moment of relief, just to
know that my brother had come back for me and without turning
around I asked, “What is my fate?”

He didn’t respond.

I knew the news was bad.

“Damien?” I pleaded for an answer.

I heard him sigh. “It doesn’t look good,
Dhell.”

My body released a discouraged moan. I
dropped my chin to my chest and mustered the strength to turn
around and search his eyes for some glint of hope—something that
would set the uptight nerves in my stomach at ease.

“What do you mean?”

“I heard that Father was going to leave you
here, in your room, until your twenty-first birthday in two
weeks.”

“Why?”

“That was my question as well, so I poked
around, pulling in favors to get information about Father’s
plans.”

“And?”

“And for the most part, no one is
talking.”

My shoulders dropped.

“But I found a warlock who said he knows a
powerful yet young wizard who could help us.”

“Help us? Damien, please get to the
point.”

“This warlock said that we can trust this
wizard as much as we can trust each other.”

“Warlocks aren’t a reliable source. Do you
believe him?”

“He’s a reliable source. Trust me. If he
betrayed us, he’d have to answer to me. And he knows what his fate
would be.”

“I’ve always found warlocks to be masters of
lies.”

“Dhellia, he wasn’t lying to me.”

I didn’t say anything.

“The second thing he told me was that your
fate is sealed on your twenty-first birthday.”

“My fate is sealed? What in Father’s home
does that mean?”

“I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me more than
that. He’s powerful and he’s agreed to help me get you out of
here.”

“No matter where I run, Father will find
me.” My words were almost a surrender of sorts.

“Not with the help of that powerful wizard.
No one in Father’s kingdom will know where you are. I can promise
you that.”

“So, what are we waiting for? I’m ready to
go.”

I decided that I’d trust my brother and his
questionable contact. The last thing I wanted was to hide from my
father, but I’d be damned—ha!—if I would let him trap me down in
the dungeon cell that he called my bedroom for two weeks until my
fate would apparently be sealed on my birthday. He had control over
many lives, but he didn’t need control over mine, too.

“It’s not time. I’ll come back for you when
it’s time to move you, but right now, you have to wait.”

“What if Father comes back?”

“He won’t. He’s busy with a serial killer’s
soul who accidently gassed himself when he was trying to kill his
victim. Father’s seeing to his trial by fire and then he’ll
personally usher him to the acid pit.”

I cringed and cocked my head, waiting for
him to tell me how long that might actually take. My patience was
surely running out and my brother seemed to be stalling on the
information. I crossed my arms over my chest and waited.

“You’ve got a day or so. I’ll be back and
you’ll be gone before
he
even notices that you’re no longer
here.”

“If he finds out that you helped me…”

“Don’t worry.” Damien came to my side and
placed the back of his hand against the side of my cheek.

With me, Damien was always gentle, but evil
dwelled inside my brother and his human love interests were not
always so lucky. Many of the women he’d bedded had seen his pure
evil thrust to the surface and dominate him. Anyone who encountered
that side of him was a mental wreck afterward. I was happy to be
his sister. I pitied the ones who fell for him. Literally.

When my brother disappeared from my bedroom,
I sat down at my desk and turned on my laptop. My desktop wallpaper
was of a happier time. Two years ago when Damien and I had spent
the day at Disneyland, we had taken a picture together. Damien
rarely stood in front of a camera willingly, but this had been one
of those rare times.

My cursor rested on the Internet Explorer
logo while I waited for my computer to boot up. It didn’t take me
long to discover that the service had been disconnected when I
pressed the link.
Ugh.

“Father!” I cried out loud and then threw my
mouse at my closed bedroom door and screamed out in frustration.
Nothing was going right for me. How could my father put me in
solitary confinement like this? The only company I’d had for two
days was a cook who Father had hired to feed me after he’d managed
to reel me in from my adventures upstairs.

I flopped, stomach first, on my bed and
after a few curse words and some informal mental plotting of my
revenge against my father, I allowed myself to drift off to
sleep.

I pulled up my
blanket
over my head and tried to continue my vivid dream. Birds were
chirping, kids were playing outside and the warmth of the sun was
lapping at my face—that dream environment made me want to stay
right where I was. After all, my room down here didn’t provide such
comforts, or pleasures.

This dream sent wonderful goose bumps all
over my body. Why wouldn’t it? I was upstairs on Earth, and I was
able to bask in all that was good, rather than the dungeon of the
underground.

The minute I allowed my eyes to flutter
open, I knew I’d come face to face with the rancid smell of rotted
flesh and the darkness of my bedroom cell, with the echoes of
screams from the tormented occasionally wafting into my sharp
hearing. Father thrived in the bowels of disparity and loved to
keep others there with him. That didn’t mean I wanted that same
existence.

How badly I wanted Damien to get me out of
the nightmare that my father kept insisting to put me back into.
Be strong, Dhellia. Face your day and your life head on.

The chant of my positive affirmation gave me
the strength to wake from my dream and try to summon my brother to
get me out of Father’s home.

My eyes fluttered open. I tried to adjust
but something was weird…off even.

I froze.

On my side, under my covers, my eyes
adjusted to a window with the blinds open and the sun peeking
through the slits. Outside, children were playing hiding-go-seek
and harmonious birds chirped. One in particular perched on my
windowsill, and repeated the same lovely sound.