Penemue's Inferno

by Ramy Vance

  “OK, fine. But there is a way out, right?”

  “Yes,” Penemue said.

  “And?” I looked around frantically.

  “It is the way that you entered by,” Penemue said.

  “Then let’s go!” I grabbed Bella’s hand and pulled her in the direction of the entrance.

  But Bella resisted, biting her lower lip in that way she did when mulling something over. It was a look I knew well … she was debating with herself.

  And that kind of debate usually ended in her doing something I wasn’t going to like.

  ↔

  Bella walked over to Penemue as Hell shook. “Twice-fallen. The Angel Penemue. Architect of the Grand Library and the one who knows all that is written. Answer me this one question in a manner that my limited, mortal mind may know.” She paused. “Are human souls necessary for any of this to exist?”

  Bella’s tone was far too formal, given where we were and how well those two knew each other. As she spoke, she drew something in the air with precise hand gestures, outlining an invisible image.

  Despite their friendship and familiarity with one another, Penemue’s posture changed. He responded in an equally formal and reverent tone. “Human souls power the celestial domains. Without them, nothing could exist.”

  Bella nodded in comprehension. As she did, both of them returned to normal, dropping their formal facades.

  “That was weird,” I said.

  “Not really.” Penemue eyed Bella with a look that was one part admiration, one part love and two parts fear. “You have mastered ‘the Request.’ ”

  “I learned about it, you know, up there.” She pointed skyward.

  “The Request?”

  “It is a”—Penemue searched for the word—“style of speech that we angels are compelled to answer in a direct and honest manner.”

  “And all that hand-waving?”

  “She was tracing my name in the air between us,” Penemue said. “Once my name is invoked I am compelled to answer, even if the knowledge requested is forbidden. Where did you learn my name?”

  “At the Columns of Creation,” she said.

  “Ahhh, of course. With the gods gone, no place is forbidden to mortals.”

  “OK, can someone please spell it out for me?” I said.

  “Simply put, Bella here knew that I could not answer such a direct question about the inner workings of Heaven unless compelled.”

  “What? There’s a way to get you to talk straight?” I slapped my forehead. “And I’m only just learning about this now.”

  Bella chuckled before turning to Penemue. “I’ve noticed that Heaven has sections that are falling apart, but seem to repair themselves as soon as I enter. Now I see why.”

  Penemue sighed as he searched for the words. “With only one soul inside, Heaven is severely under-staffed.” The twice-fallen chuckled at his own joke. Much to my surprise, given we were in a domain that was literally falling apart, so did Bella.

  Talk about inside jokes at a cosmic level.

  “I figured,” she said, “because as soon as I’d enter those places, they would start to repair themselves without me doing anything.”

  “Ahhh, that is where you are wrong,” Penemue said. “You are doing everything. Your presence—your soul—is what powers that domain. You see, the greatest trick the gods ever performed was offering you an eternal afterlife in exchange for your powers. That was the pact they demanded of each and every soul before granting entry.”

  “From what I’ve learned, that makes sense.”

  “What makes sense?” I yelled as Hell continued to shake.

  “Human souls power the heavens and hells,” Bella explained. “And when we enter one, the gods make us sign a contract of sorts. In exchange for living forever, we help keep the lights on.”

  “So?”

  “Not ‘so.’ What you mean to ask is ‘and?’ ” Bella said.

  “OK, ‘and?’ ” I gestured for them to hurry this little conversation along.

  “And what the gods never explained is that they need our souls’ energy to even exist. That is why Heaven is empty—they took all the souls with them. And from what I’ve seen, against their will, too.”

  This time the ground shook so hard that I nearly lost my footing. “Fine, the gods didn’t let us read the fine print of their terms and conditions. I get it—bad them. No worse than Apple’s terms and conditions. But still, you’d think the gods would have had higher standards.” I took a breath. “Now that we’ve had our little pow-wow, can we please go?”

  Bella ignored me. “I suppose that’s what Hell is … a place for the souls who refused to grant the gods their powers.”

  “Very good, Human Bella. That is exactly right. That is also why Hell is now, for if time cannot progress, then one cannot learn.”

  “And over the last few centuries, more and more souls were opting for Hell, weren’t they?”

  Penemue nodded. “It was a dilemma that truly baffled the gods. Why condemn themselves? Why? They did not understand what was at play and yet somehow, they did. As more and more souls refused to power the heavens above, the gods grew dissatisfied and confused. Then they did something I could not have predicted in a thousand millennia.”

  “They left,” Bella whispered.

  “Indeed.”

  “Yes, indeedie, indeedie,” I said. “Now that that’s done …” I started for the back door, but neither Bella nor Penemue moved.

  “What?” I said.

  Bella had that look she always gave me whenever she was about to do something that would hurt me.

  “What?” I repeated, my voice softer.

  But Bella didn’t say anything. She just stared at me as a single tear rolled down her cheek.

  “I fear that the human Bella has opted not to return to Earth,” Penemue whispered.

  ↔

  “What the holy fuck does that mean?” I said.

  “I need to go back to Heaven. I need to learn more,” she said. A piece of Hell ripped itself away behind her.

  “No you don’t,” I said. “You need to come home. With me.” I reached out a hand as my heart beat furiously with fear and anger. Bella was back. She could return to Earth. We could be together. We could be happy.

  “Jean,” she said, her hands pushing against the side of her dress as she tried to flatten some wrinkle that wasn’t there, “there is more going on here than we know. The gods … I think they’re planning something that will mean the end to everything. Their departure, it was only part of the crap they had in store for us. They’re coming back—at least, some of them are. And when they do, they’re going to take over this domain and wipe us out. Replace us with other kinds of souls who will be more obedient.”

  “And you know this, how?”

  “The pillars, the souls sent out to explore other domains. Their limitations and the growing number of souls choosing to be damned. It’s all starting to make sense. They didn’t abandon us—they left to find others to replace us.”

  Hell shook again, its fabric of reality nearing the end. “OK, OK, they’re coming back. But that might not be for centuries. Come home. Let’s live out our lives together and—”

  “Jean.” She said my name in that way that always managed to make the world stop. She used it whenever I was spiraling, whenever she needed to break through whatever shield I had up. The way she said my name always disarmed me. Just because I was standing in Hell didn’t change that at all. “I have to go back. I have to study. Prepare.”

  “Then I’ll go with you,” I said.

  “You can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “You know why.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Because someone has to take care of them.”

  Penemue had been listening despite all that was going on. “You can’t. You are not a soul yet. You do not have the power to traverse these domains.”

  “And she does!” I screamed.

  Penemue nodd
ed, tears of light streaming down his cheeks. “I fear I have done you yet another disservice. Hell is now, which limits one’s ability to learn. Bella was losing herself here because she could not progress—grow—evolve. But I broke the cycle of now, and her powers have returned. She can return to Heaven as herself—as the wonderful soul who earned entrance the first time.”

  “No, no,” I said, wondering if I could die of a broken heart. “But you’ve done so much already.”

  “Not enough. Never enough.”

  “And me? What about me?” I said through blinding tears.

  “You will go home, take care of the Others and find a way back to me. You have to. We have to find a way back to each other so that, together, we can save the world.”

  “But …”

  The truth was, deep down, I didn’t want to save the whole world. I just wanted to save us. Her and me. But that was the selfish part of me that my time with Bella had tempered.

  She had made me want to be a better man, and now I was reaping the consequences of it.

  Bella looked at Penemue. “Help him find a way back to me. Do you understand? You owe us both. Help him! Promise me.”

  Penemue nodded. “I promise.”

  She turned to me. “As for you, we have already found our way back to each other twice before. Now I ask you to do so one more time. Find me again. Promise me that you will find me again.”

  “I … I …”

  “Say it,” she said. “Please.”

  “I promise.”

  “Then it is done.”

  “No,” I started. “It’s not done. We have to talk about—”

  But before I could say anything else, she took my hands and pulled me in close. “I love you, Jean-Luc Matthias, only missing the Mark. Now and forever. In this life and the next.” She kissed my forehead. As she did, I felt myself falling into a peaceful sleep.

  ***A Brief Interlude***

  As Penemue pulls Jean’s sleeping body out of Hell, he contemplates how he can keep two promises that directly contradict each other. On the one hand, he owes his life to EightBall … a life that the boy plans to end.

  On the other hand, he has promised to help reunite two souls he dearly loves. How can he do so if he is dead?

  At the exit of Hell, he contemplates his dilemma until a thought occurs to him: How does one find another entrance back into Heaven? Through research, study … knowledge.

  And where can such knowledge be found?

  “Why, in a library, of course,” he whispers to himself.

  Summoning the last of his hellish powers, he flies to the heart of his Grand Library. There the Pearl of Wisdom still resides. Through his will and desire, he pulls in all the knowledge ever conceived, just as he once did so long ago when the gods first threw him out of Hell.

  It takes time and energy, but when it is done, Penemue holds an object no larger than a marble. Within its glass walls resides everything ever known from the moment of creation until the moment the gods left.

  “Something in here will guide you back to your Bella,” he says to a sleeping Jean, placing the pearl in the human’s pocket.

  Part VII

  Earth

  For Whom the Bella Toils

  I woke up somewhere above Paradise Lot’s downtown. I was in Penemue’s arms, the last place I wanted to be, heading toward the Millennium Hotel, the last place I wanted to go. Neither of us looked at each other as he flew us home. Neither of us spoke or even acknowledged the bleakness of what was happening.

  I was going home to be without Bella.

  He was going home to die.

  ↔

  I’m not sure what I expected upon returning home to my Bella-less existence. What I can tell you is precisely what I didn’t expect: two dead fae witches—one young, one old, presumably from burning time—on my lawn. And not just dead; one had been riddled with bullet holes and the other had a dagger sticking out of her neck. Both were just lying there for everyone to see, and given how their green blood was still flowing from their yet-to-contort-from-rigor-mortis bodies, they hadn’t been there long.

  In other words, the bodies were still, as the saying goes, warm. If that wasn’t enough, bullet shells littered the lawn all around the Apache warbird, a helicopter that belonged to my former employer, Mr. Cain from Memnock Securities. An employer who, I might add, was now dead and lying in a pool of his own red blood in a lighthouse on the island I’d just left.

  I’m no detective, but everything screamed guilty, á la moi. Hell, even Detective Steve (the local Paradise Lot investigator, somewhat of a buffoon and the youngest of the Billy Goats Gruff) would point his cloven-hoofed fingers at me.

  Something needed to be done about the bodies and the overwhelming evidence, or I was looking at life in prison with no chance of finding a way back to Bella … unless of course the local prisons expanded their library resources.

  I was just starting to form a plan (that mostly involved finding Marc, kicking his ass and making him clean his mess up) when I heard the unmistakable whoomp, whoomp of an angel flying.

  From the proverbial heavens above, Michael—as in, archangel-cum-Paradise Lot’s police chief—descended to the lawn. He had Judith in his arms and a scowl on his face.

  Judith, not seeing Bella by my side, did something I never expected … she burst into tears. She didn’t know Bella had chosen to stay behind. All she knew was that Bella wasn’t here. And that was enough.

  Without saying a word, Judith rushed into the hotel. I thought about going after her, but I had a murder conviction to face.

  Looking up at the towering archangel, I didn’t even bother with the usual, “Michael, I can explain.” Instead, I simply presented the scene like a magician might reveal that the lady he’d sawed in two was actually in two pieces.

  He looked at the scene and said in an uncharacteristic manner, “The Erlking’s wives came here for revenge. This was self-defense, although in the eyes of mortal law that will translate into years of investigations, litigations and, given the human’s propensity for enjoying tragedy, a made-for-TV movie.”

  A joke? Was Michael, the original boy scout and archangel created before humor was invented, making a joke?

  Looking down at me, the police chief added, “I cannot have you so encumbered.” And burning a bit of time, literally made this crime scene disappear.

  “What the holy—?”

  “One pass!” he boomed, the personality I knew and detested coming back full force. “One!”

  He downgraded his voice from the wrath of God to the wrath of James Earl Jones. “For what you did for the children, and what you sacrificed in the process.”

  Turning to Penemue, who stood uncharacteristically quiet, Michael punched the twice-fallen angel square in the nose. A spurt of fluorescent angel blood sparkled around his face like a blossoming firework as Penemue went down with a momentous thud, all eight feet of him falling to the ground.

  “You have broken so many laws, I cannot begin to contain my—” But the archangel stopped mid-tirade and took a deep breath that betrayed his obvious penchant for yoga. With a somewhat calm, almost even breath, he said, “Given no permanent harm came of your little reopening of Hell, your role in saving the children and the fact that your actions righted a great wrong by returning Medusa to us … I shall give you one pass, too.”

  So Michael was going to let us go, but what was more revealing was how he’d perceived our respective crimes. I got a pass for saving the kids, but Penemue needed to literally resurrect someone to receive his Get Out of Jail Free card for opening Hell.

  Angelic priorities. Go figure.

  “Jean,” Michael said, “we must speak.”

  “OK,” I said, “but first I need to—” I was going to say, “Stop Penemue from doing something stupid,” but the angel had already gone inside.

  I started after him when Michael grabbed my shoulder, forcing me to turn around.

  ↔

  “The children are safe
, but that is about all that is right with the world. Already the humans are talking about setting up camps to contain the Others. And the Others are not making this easy. Small factions are taking up arms. They are preparing for battle. Another war is unavoidable.”

  “And?” I said.

  Michael gave me a curious look, as if he didn’t understand my meaning. And I guess that made sense. Before, I was the guy in the muck of it. I was the one who stuck his nose in the middle of all the shit and rummaged around, looking for some semblance of a solution. He wasn’t used to the new and improved, I don’t care version of me.

  “Let me spell this out,” I said. “Why are you telling me?”

  “Because you are … you,” he said, as if that explained everything.

  “And me, being me, is done with all of this. I’m going to my cabin up north to do nothing, see nothing, hear nothing.” I gestured like the three wise monkeys.

  “But—”

  “But nothing, Michael. I’m done. I have given literally everything I have to give and I’m done.”

  “And your promise,” Michael said, “to Bella?”

  Hearing her name broke the seal I had so carefully placed over my heart on the way home. With a cry of rage, I screamed, “I owe her nothing! She broke her promise to me. Not once—twice. She left me twice. And why? For them. For the Others. Don’t you see? She left me, choosing death over a lifetime with me for them … And now you want me to help? Why? So that I can endure more misery. More pain.” I pounded my chest. “I can’t feel any more pain. I can’t do this anymore.” My voice wobbled under the weight of my own words. “I just can’t.”