Beyond by Katie May

6

Bianaca

The silence was unnaturally tense when we convened in the shed a few hours later, the moonlight splicing through the cracked window and bathing the distressed wood in shades of yellow and white.

Aiden chewed on his lip ring, pacing the small expanse of flooring, while Tanner stood beside me, a silent and protective sentry. A part of me wanted to lean into his embrace, seek comfort from his strong arms, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. I needed to remain levelheaded, and being with Tanner made me anything but.

Still, that didn’t stop me from inhaling his unique, spicy scent and tilting my body so that my hip brushed his. His hand lowered, his pinkie touching mine before he pulled it away and crossed his arms over his chest. Ripples of fire danced along my body as my mind replayed our lovemaking from a few hours earlier. The way his sweat soaked skin brushed against mine. His cock filling me so completely. His bruising kisses.

Fuck. This was not the time to get horny.

“Where the fuck are they?” Aiden murmured, his eyes flashing to the closed door of the shed.

“They’ll be here,” I replied immediately, though I didn’t know if that was true or not.

So far, only the three of us had arrived at the shed.

No Kace. No Beau. No Heath.

No Kelly.

I chewed down on my nail as worry warred with fear inside of me. What the hell was taking them so long? Did they get caught?

I had the sudden, vivid image of the reapers feeding them to the monster in the basement—the monster that, according to Heath, symbolized death. An icy chill that had nothing to do with the weather crept down my spine, chasing away the heat from before, and I took a step even closer to Tanner until my arm was able to brush his.

“They’ll be here,” I repeated. They had to.

Aiden spun towards me, his eyes wild, before cursing and brushing a hand through his tangled black hair. “Fuck, I’m not so sure.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Tanner asked suspiciously.

“Kace has been…” Aiden trailed off when the sound of approaching footsteps reached our ears. Immediately, both men moved to stand in front of me, their large bodies blocking me from view. As one, they relaxed, the stiff muscles in their backs and shoulders loosening.

Kace and Beau appeared at the entrance of the shed, backpacks over each of their shoulders.

“Sorry,” Kace murmured, dropping his gaze to his shoes in a subservient way. His normal ebullience was nowhere to be seen. “We had to take the long way around.”

“It’s fine.” Aiden dismissed his words with a wave of his hand, but I could see the relief in his eyes. I had no idea what Aiden had been about to say concerning Kace, but I could assume it had something to do with the way the redheaded man had been behaving. “But we need to get going.”

“Heath was behind us—” Kace began.

“Heath is right here,” the man in question declared, pushing past them to enter the tiny shed. For the first time since I’d met him, his hair wasn’t immaculately groomed but disheveled instead, and he wore a pair of gray sweatpants that did wonders to my overactive libido. He flashed a bright smile, his glacial eyes sweeping over the men present, before his gaze settled on me. “And I see you invited more than just your harem.”

“Harem?” Aiden scoffed at the same time Tanner asked me, “Who did you invite?”

I barely got a chance to open my mouth before the shed door opened once more and Kelly stepped inside.

Along with four somewhat familiar guys.

Guys I’d never thought I would see in this context.

Guys I’d last seen tormenting her while she cowered.

Her bullies.

“What the fuck?” Aiden hissed as Kelly stepped inside, the men surrounding her. It made the tiny shed seem even more cramped than ever before. He spun his glare around to fix on me, his eyes spewing vitriol like a caustic acid. “What the fuck did you do, Bianaca?”

I straightened my spine, owning my decision, even as my stomach muscles tightened into thousands of intricate knots. I refused to cower beneath his pitch-black stare, refused to show how much he affected me. He both scared and entranced me, though I would never let him see either.

“I wasn’t going to leave her here,” I snapped angrily.

“And the others?” He nodded his head towards the four men—boys—surrounding her.

“I couldn’t leave them,” Kelly whispered, her voice hoarse.

“What the fuck is going on, freak?” demanded the ringleader, whose name I still didn’t know. He was the tallest of the bunch, with dark brown hair that curled across his forehead. His emerald green eyes were speckled with tiny streaks of brown and gold, giving him an innocent, guileless look. He appeared to be a year or two younger than me, though he emanated a hardness that far surpassed his age. As I watched, he turned towards his friends. “Let’s go, guys.”

“Wait, Caleb,” the largest of the group said. He was shorter than the ringleader, Caleb, in height, but easily eclipsed him in muscle mass. Despite being only fifteen or sixteen, his entire body was covered in thick, ropy muscle. His arms rippled as he unintentionally flexed, his black shirt straining against his biceps. He was also the scariest of the group, with a permanent glower plastered on his face that made fingertips of ice brush down my neck.

“Wait for what, Brett?” Caleb threw his hands up in the air before turning towards the other two. “Don’t you guys think this is kinda creepy? I mean, she comes to our room, tells us we’re going to die, and then demands we follow her.”

“And yet you all came,” Tanner pointed out, a smirk evident in his voice. “Obviously, you trust the creepy human a little bit.”

Caleb’s eyes narrowed into thin slits when Tanner referred to Kelly as creepy. The large man, Brett, took a step forward until the smallest one with glasses and messy brown hair pulled him back.

The fourth one stood there in silence, his shrewd eyes surveying all of us present without a single word leaving his lips. I could’ve been mistaken, but it almost appeared as if his eyes were violet, the shade looking hauntingly beautiful in his stone-cold face. His blond hair was buzzed close to his scalp, giving him a severe visage, and his elegant eyebrows were currently arched in suspicion.

“These are my…” Kelly began, trailing off. She tilted her head to the side as she thought up a suitable word. I remembered her wistful ramblings from the other day, how she claimed they were her harem. I’d wanted to roll my eyes at her ridiculousness, especially since it seemed as if they hated her.

But at the same time…

They stared at her with lovestruck eyes, as if the world revolved around her smile.

Oh my god. Maybe Kelly truly did have a harem.

A harem I doubted any of the men knew they were a part of.

“Friends,” she decided on at last with a decisive head bob, and Caleb scoffed.

“Apparently she’s delusional,” he seethed, but she ignored him.

“That’s Caleb and Brett.” She pointed to the ringleader and the muscled man respectively before turning to the man in glasses. “Travis.” Finally, she pointed to the gorgeous, blond-haired man. “Sev.”

“And why the fuck are they here?” Aiden demanded. I could tell he was trying really, really hard not to lose his absolute shit. When he thought I wasn’t looking, he would hurl daggers at the side of my head with his eyes.

I wondered what he would do to me if I decided to flip him off.

Kelly’s lips pursed into a stubborn line. “I’m not leaving without them.”

“You don’t get to just fucking choose who comes with—”

“All right. All right.” Heath held his hands up and moved to stand in the center of the group. “As much as I enjoy the discord currently transpiring” —he flashed a blinding smile— “we should get moving. Now.”

“Fuck.” Aiden tossed his head back, glaring up at the ceiling as if searching for patience. When he lowered it, he speared me with another unreadable glare that had every hair on my body standing on end. “All right. Let’s go. All of you—Who the fuck invited her?”

I wrinkled my brows together, turning towards the doorway where a familiar female stood, her expression decidedly uncomfortable. Her blonde tresses were pulled back into a low ponytail, and her cherry red lips were pursed. Despite wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt, she looked almost ethereal in beauty, the type of person every boy wanted and every girl wanted to be.

The last time I saw her, she’d been giggling in Beau’s bedroom, her hair mussed and shirt unbuttoned.

Maria.

Betrayal filled my veins, caustic and slimy. It crawled through my body like a slow-moving sludge.

I tried my hardest to keep my expression passive and unaffected, to not shoot accusatory eyes in Beau’s direction.

I didn’t have to, thank God, because Tanner did that for me.

“Did you invite her?” Tanner demanded, and Beau held both of his hands up placatingly, shaking his head from side to side.

I couldn’t help but note that Maria’s expression fell, devastation sparking to life in her eyes, before she cleared it away.

“I came on my own,” she said with an imperious set to her chin. Her eyes gleamed with defiance. “I overheard—”

“You overheard?” Aiden pinched the bridge of his nose. “Which fucking idiots were talking about it where you were able to ‘overhear’ it?”

Oh…

Oh fuck.

I remembered the glimpse of blonde hair in the corridor during my conversation with Kelly. I suddenly wished I could disappear in the floorboards, becoming nothing more than a puddle of goo that everyone overlooked and ignored.

Nothing to see here, folks. Just a disgusting goo puddle. Move right along, thank you very much.

The glare Aiden threw me? I had a feeling he knew exactly who to blame for this fiasco.

“Guys…” Heath warned in a singsong voice. “We don’t have a lot of time.”

“Fuck. Okay! Fuck!” Aiden ripped at a lock of his hair once again. At this stage, he wouldn’t have any hair left by the time we got to…wherever we were going to go. Turning to address the group at large, he said, “I know a lot of you don’t know what’s going on, but I have to warn you…it’ll be dangerous. Extremely fucking dangerous, so if that bothers you, then stay behind. I won’t be coddling any of you.” At the last statement, he turned towards me to stare directly into my eyes.

I flipped him off.

Kelly took a step forward, her expression one of determination, and the four men she’d brought with her stepped forward as well. I didn’t even think they realized they were flanking her in a protective formation—one in the front, one at the back, and two on either side—but they were. Caleb’s hand twitched as if he wanted to grab her and pull her against him. Or maybe he just wanted to spank her for getting him and his friends into this mess.

“Oh my fucking god!” Aiden threw both of his hands up into the air before leveling us with an incandescent glare capable of burning the hair off of our arms. Heaving out a sigh, he turned towards the hidden staircase. “Let’s go.”

“Where are we going?” Maria asked anxiously, inching a step closer to Beau. He immediately glanced in my direction, his blue eyes pained, before hurrying away from her and towards me. His hand went to the small of my back, guiding me towards the staircase, but I shrugged him off and hurried down before he could catch up.

Behind me, I heard Tanner release a bark of laughter, though I didn’t dare look behind me to see Beau’s reaction to that.

We ventured down the steep, rickety staircase in relative silence. All I could hear was the deafening sound of my heart pounding in my ears.

“What the fuck…?” Brett, the muscleman, murmured from behind me when we reached the bottom of the stairs. Kelly gasped.

“We found the tunnel months ago,” Aiden told them, and I would’ve almost described his tone as casual if I hadn’t known him as well as I did. There was an edge to it that hinted at the anxiety he wanted to keep hidden. The fear that this entire plan would go to shit because of what I did, who I trusted. “We believe others were attempting an escape before a cave-in blocked the entrance. Kace, Tanner, Beau, and I were able to break through the rocks to get to the other side. From what we gathered, these tunnels will lead to…um…it will lead to a way out of here.”

Heath chuckled drolly from behind me, and when I turned to stare at him, he rolled his eyes, almost as if he found Aiden’s antics both hilarious and exasperating. I wanted to glare at him, but I understood where his amusement was coming from.

We weren’t telling the newcomers the truth. How could we, when we believed that the tunnel would only lead to the next circle of Hell…or the next circle of Purgatory, as the case might be?

Lust.

Who would believe us when we said we were traveling to the realm of Lust?

“We’ll stick together, at least until it’s safe to separate,” Aiden continued, once again stepping into his role as the unofficial leader. He had a way of innately commanding respect from anyone who listened to him. No one would dare question his decisions, at least not to his face. “We don’t know what we’ll face—”

“What we’ll face?” The man Kelly introduced as Travis broke into harsh, nervous laughter. “What the fuck are you guys talking about? We’re at school. There’s nothing nefarious going on—”

“Then turn around and go back to your dorm,” Aiden retorted, glancing at his watch. “But I recommend waiting twenty minutes, when the monster is away.”

“Monster?” Maria’s voice shook.

“This is your last chance.” Aiden twisted his head to meet everyone’s eyes, including mine. I held his stare defiantly, not allowing myself to be cowed, and I swore I saw his lips twitch into the beginnings of a smile. “Turn back now.”

Travis nervously glanced down at Kelly, nearly a head shorter despite him being the smallest of all the males, before swallowing and straightening his spine. The poor kid looked absolutely petrified, but he kept his chin raised like a real trooper.

Maria once again moved to stand beside Beau, who in turn, moved to stand on the other side of Kace.

“I always had a feeling that there was something weird going on,” Maria admitted, glancing from face to face anxiously. “But I don’t… I mean…” She shook her head slowly, a strand of blonde hair escaping her ponytail. “I want answers.”

“And we don’t have time to give you those answers, Miss Maria.” Heath flashed her a sharp smile before tilting his face upwards. His eyes fluttered shut, and his head cocked to the side. He held up a single finger as if to say, ‘wait for it.’

A second later, a loud, ear-shattering scream reverberated through the night. My heart battered my ribs with a frightening speed as I twisted my head to stare up the staircase.

“What the fuck is that?” Kace’s eyes were wide in his face, all of the blood seeming to drain from his cheeks. Before I could stop myself, I moved so I stood directly beside him, interlocking my fingers with his. His head snapped down to our joined hands, shock splaying across his face, before he gave it a tight squeeze and pulled me closer to him.

My blood sluiced in my veins as fear and anxiety wrought havoc on my thoughts.

What was that noise?

Or maybe the better question was…

What creature made such a wretched sound?

The scream was quickly joined by another and another, until above us, the air was alive with a cacophony of noise. The sound… It was unlike anything I’d ever heard before. It scratched at my soul, reminding me distinctly of nails on a chalkboard and making my entire body tremble with fear. There was something so predatory about it, so innately lethal, that ice-cold fear encased my heart in an impenetrable vise.

“The reapers.” Aiden’s face lost all of its color as he ripped his gaze off of the staircase and focused on the caves. Tunnels branched in all directions, a labyrinth of rocky walls and pitch-black darkness we would have to venture through in order to escape. “We need to go. Now.”

“Reapers?” Maria whispered.

Aiden began distributing lanterns to Beau, Kace, and Tanner, keeping one for himself. He surprised the shit out of me by handing me a flashlight.

“Stay within my sight at all fucking times,” he hissed as the warm glow from the flashlight illuminated the craggy rock walls and the water dripping from an unknown source. The air was muggy and tepid, but it did little to stop the goosebumps from pebbling on my arms.

I tried to shut my emotions down, tried to make myself impassive in order to block out the fear and helplessness that gnawed at me, but it was impossible. Both of them sank their teeth in me, tightening my muscles and refusing to be shut out.

“I thought you wanted us to separate,” I retorted, and Aiden’s eyes flared, chips of obsidian in the scarce lighting.

“Now is not the time for your sarcasm, Bianaca.” Spinning on his heel, he took a step inside the cage. “Let’s move.”

Kace gripped my hand even tighter, dragging me along, as Tanner and Beau moved to stand at my back. Beau’s pomegranate scent combined with Tanner’s leather one overwhelmed me, giving me a sense of safety and security, which overrode the fear that threatened to suffocate me.

I was fucking terrified. I could only remember one time when I felt such fear, the day Dylan, my step-brother, had—

Shaking my head from side to side, I took a step into the tunnel.

Behind me, the screams of the reapers got even louder, the noise stabbing at my ears. Pain exploded in my skull, but I pushed the feeling aside as I focused on putting one foot in front of the other. One step. Another step. And then another.

My light bounced off the walls as I walked, trusting Aiden to lead the way.

Directly in front of us, the path broke into two separate tunnels, each one leading in a different direction. Tanner cursed from behind me, and Kace’s grip in mine turned to iron.

But then Heath moved forward, his gait decidedly cocky and nonchalant, and headed down the right pathway, whistling beneath his breath.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” Aiden hissed, and though I couldn’t see his face from where he stood in front of me, I detected the slightest hitch to his voice I’d never heard before.

He was absolutely terrified.

“Did you ever read the poem concerning the Nine Circles of Hell?” Heath asked, his tone almost casual. “They had to cross the River Acheron on a boat to reach Limbo.”

“What the fuck does that have to do with anything?” Tanner demanded.

I could practically hear Heath’s answering smile. “Because it tells us where we need to go.”

“How does that…?” I trailed off as the answer came to me, my eyes darting to the water dripping from the walls. “Oh. The water.”

“According to the poem, Limbo is full of people who were never baptized. People who didn’t have enough faith to enter Heaven.” Heath paused, allowing us to catch up. I swore with every step we took, our lights became more and more unreliable. My flashlight went from a dull golden glow to a nearly non-existent stream of white, barely able to penetrate the darkness a few steps in front of me. Tanner’s lantern constantly burnt out, despite his repeated attempts to light it.

What the fuck was happening?

“But the poem isn’t true,” Heath continued, just as my flashlight sputtered once before turning off completely. Panic infiltrated my lungs as I banged my flashlight repeatedly against my leg, willing it to turn back on. Only Kace’s hand in mine and the thin glow of his flame allowed me any peace of mind whatsoever. “Limbo is actually where the souls rest while they’re waiting for Judgment Day. Where they are either devoured by Death…or returned to the land of the living. But if you choose the latter option, you need to fight. You can’t stand idly by. You need to—”

“What the fuck was that?” Tanner interrupted, his voice unnaturally shrill. I spun towards him, keeping my hand locked with Kace’s, to see his head turned in the direction of one of the passageways we didn’t take. Beau held his lantern up as well, trying to see what had captured Tanner’s attention, but the tunnel was empty, nothing but darkness and stones as far as the eye could see.

“I don’t see anything,” I whispered. Somehow, I found that I couldn’t raise my voice above a breathy exhale. I couldn’t explain it in words, but the silence felt…fragile. I feared what would happen if I spoke above a soft murmur.

“No! Right there!” Maria screeched, and we all whipped our heads towards where she stood in the back of the group, pointing. Her entire body shook as she slowly began to back up. “Is this some kind of joke? I want to go home! Now!”

“I don’t see anything,” Caleb told her gruffly, though I noticed he took a step closer to Kelly, as if he planned to physically shield her with his body if it came to that.

“I don’t—” My flashlight flicked back on, the soft golden glow illuminating the passageway directly to the right of me.

Terror expelled all coherent thoughts from my mind.

A…a creature lurked at the very end of the tunnel. I didn’t know how else to describe it, except that it was a monster, something plucked straight from my nightmares.

It had no face.

It was nothing but a slab of gray skin, as if someone had used sandpaper to rid it of all distinguishing features, including eyes, nose, and mouth. Its body seemed to be made entirely of shadows, dark tendrils coiling around a form that was twice the size of me, with a reptilian-like tail and tiny claws for hands. As I watched, horrified, the creature darted away.

“What the fuck?” My voice was nothing but a whimper.

“As long as we stay on the pathway, we should be fine,” Heath whispered. “Walking the path of the righteous.”

“How the fuck do you know that?” Brett demanded, but Heath didn’t answer, continuing to follow the trail of water trickling down the stone walls.

Another creature raced through the darkness directly to the left of me, its featureless face twisted in my direction. But when I turned to stare directly at it, there was no one there. Nothing but unrelenting, oppressive darkness.

Maria began to cry behind me, and both Beau and Tanner put their hands on my shoulders. I let them, mainly because I needed their comfort now more than ever.

A growl echoed through the tunnel, and we all jumped, pausing in our movements.

“What was that?” Kelly whispered, her tiny voice trembling.

“Just keep walking,” Heath told her, already picking up the pace.

“What are those…those things?” Maria demanded.

I didn’t think Heath was going to answer, so it surprised the shit out of me when he did. “Souls,” he responded, just as in front of us, brilliant white light exploded from the end of the tunnel. “Souls who have tried to escape and wandered off the path. Souls who have become lost in the darkness, becoming nothing more than monsters wanting to feast on the flesh of the righteous.”

Silence reigned after his announcement, broken only when Tanner exclaimed, “Holy fuck.”

The light in front of us seemed to beckon me forward, and I found myself practically sprinting to reach it. I needed to get out of here, needed to get away from these shadowy, faceless monsters lurking in every direction.

We took another right, closer towards the mysterious tunnel, and the only sound we could hear was the stomping of our shoes on the compacted dirt.

Just before we entered the bright tunnel, Heath paused, turning towards us. His expression was uncharacteristically grave, his lips curved downwards.

“The next circle we’ll be entering is Lust,” he explained. “You guys need to be prepared for that.”

“Circle?” A slightly hysterical laugh escaped Maria. “Where the fuck are we? Can someone please explain what is happening?”

“Lust?” That was from the blond man who’d arrived with Kelly. His expression remained utterly impassive as he fixed his glacial eyes on Heath. “We really are in the Nine Circles of Hell, aren’t we?”

“Purgatory, technically,” Tanner murmured, but we ignored him.

“What should we expect?” Kace interjected, his hand tightening around mine. “All of us to begin pawing at each other and removing clothes?”

I tried to give his hand a reassuring squeeze, tried to remind him that I was there, but I knew his mind was too far away to focus on that.

Amusement and sadness flared in Heath’s eyes, a corrosive mix I couldn’t even begin to understand.

“I guess we’ll know in a second, now won’t we?” And with that, he turned back towards the tunnel of light, took a deep breath, and stepped through.