by Seana Kelly
Owen’s eyes darted to me and then back to Schuyler. His gaze turned strange and distant. Disbelief was etched in his features. He moved further away, eyes narrowing as he said, “What have you done, Schuyler?”
“Nothing. She’s the crazy one who attacked. She’s a werewolf. They’re animals.” Chin lifting in anticipation of his censure, she continued, “I think a better question, Owen, is why you’d side with her kind, rather than our own.”
“Excuse me?” Owen was a step behind and seemed to be struggling to find an explanation that didn’t cast either Schuyler or myself as the villain.
“What is so special about her?” Schuyler grabbed at Owen’s arm, but he moved before she could latch on. “Wicches, demons, vampires, even the fae defend and protect her. Why? Because of her, good people have been lost. Why shouldn’t she have to pay for that?”
“What the hell are you talking about? I haven’t hurt anyone—”
“You have no idea the pain you’ve caused,” she ground out.
And then I sensed it, just like at the Tonga Room, a barely-there scent lingering in the air. Wolf and vampire. And…demon? I’d never been here before, so I couldn’t be sure, but an odd scent hung in the air. I was surrounded by a brew of candle fragrances battling for dominance, but what caused my pulse to jump was the sulfurous undertone. It was similar to the way Dave smelled after moving heavy boxes in the storage room.
Feeling we were in over our heads, I started to back toward the door, my shoulders tight, sweat forming on my brow. My wolf wanted to come out and deal with all possible threats. This close to the full moon, she was hard to rein in. The woman was unhinged, and she could do magic. We needed to get away from her before something very bad happened.
Owen, however, wasn’t moving. “Since when do you do black magic, Schuyler? Your aura has black running all through it. Have you been working with a wolf, using the torture and death he inflicts in your magic? Is that where those black streaks are coming from?” Owen looked formidable, staring down the psycho wicche.
Schuyler blanched. “Of course not. How could you accuse me of such a thing?”
That didn’t smell right. Was it a lie, an evasion? I didn’t know if she was the one who was torturing women or the one who kept sending me horrible visions. Maybe neither, but she was dirty.
“Owen.” The shop appeared empty except for us, but the lingering reminders that others had recently been here had me ready to go.
“Oh, yes, by all means. Run along home and tell your vampire and your demon. Who will die this time? Go home and cry so all your big protectors can tear the city apart looking for whatever scared you.” Her voice dripped disdain.
“Listen, Glinda, I don’t know what the munchkins have been telling you, but you don’t know me. You have no idea what I have or haven’t done, so back the fuck off! Owen, it’s time to go now.” I walked forward and grabbed his hand, pulling him towards the door. I would not let Owen get hurt because of me.
“Schuyler, you’re being used. Look at her. There isn’t a stain on her. She’s never hurt anyone or encouraged anyone to hurt another. Think about what you’ve been doing. If you want to help us stop the murder of innocents, tell us what you know.”
When Schuyler only glared, Owen reluctantly left with me. On the drive home he was so quiet, I was worried he was thinking about doing or saying something that would put him more firmly in the crosshairs.
He slammed his hand down on the steering wheel. “She knows something, Sam. She’s involved in this. I can’t believe it. How could she be involved in something so evil?”
I didn’t know how to respond. Someone, maybe a few someones, had a hand in these deaths. At this point, I wasn’t sure if the why of it was as important as stopping them.
Owen dropped me off in the Land’s End parking lot. “I’ll stop by my parent’s house on the way home, talk to my Mom. She knows everyone and has an ear for gossip. If anyone knows what’s going on with Schuyler, my Mom will find out.” He grabbed my hand. “Hey, I’ll ask about you, too. Maybe she knows something about your Mom or your family line, something.”
I leaned over and kissed his cheek. “You’re a good person, Owen. Thank you.”
“Sam Quinn willingly kissing someone? The world has gone topsy-turvy.” Shaking his head, he squeezed my hand. “Okay, go away. I’ve got to get my Scooby-Doo on, and Dave has probably scared all your customers away.”
“True.”
“I’ll wait until I see you go down the stairs.”
“Thanks, Mom!” I left Owen with a wave and a backward glance.
The night was cold and clear, the moon heavy in the sky, its reflection dancing on the water. Jogging down the stairs, I realized something was wrong, the night unnaturally still. No roar of the surf. No car engines revving. No dogs barking. No footsteps sounding, not even my own.
“Ssssssaaaaammmmm,” hissed a voice in the stillness.
Panicked, I scanned the bushes near the path, the murky shadows at the base of the stairs. Face raised, I scented the air. Nothing. And yet I knew someone or something was watching me. I was close to home and wards that would hopefully keep me safe, if I could make it.
Before I’d taken more than a few steps, the ground swooped out from under me. Sliding, I was pitched into total darkness. I threw my arms out, scrabbling for something to hold on to, something to slow me down, but there was nothing. I screamed and yet the silence remained unbroken.
Tumbling around an unseen turn, I realized the darkness was taking form. My arms and legs were inky shadows silhouetted against the dark. Light. There had to be light source somewhere far ahead. Perhaps a way out. Whatever the reason, the tunnel I was racing through was gaining definition.
Throwing myself backward, I barely avoided an outcropping of rocks from taking my head off. Stomach turning inside out, I tried to think. I’d been falling too far for too long. It was impossible. If it was impossible, it was a spell.
A blast of heat from below took my breath. Sweat prickled my scalp as the light increased almost imperceptibly. I reached for my mother’s necklace before I remembered. The cuff. Grabbing my wrist, I needed to dispel the vision, to grind the bracelet into my skin. I ripped up my sleeve. Nothing.
I hadn’t taken it off, not even when—Schuyler. She’d grabbed my wrist when she sent an electrical current through me. She’d known I had it. Or one of those visitors I’d sensed in her shop had told her. It had all been a ploy to strip me of another layer of protection.
I was slowing. The light was growing, and the passage was beginning to level off. This vision wasn’t as terrifying as the previous ones. Maybe Owen was right, and my natural powers were growing, my mental barriers getting stronger.
Sliding around another bend, the passage seemed to widen. Dull red light and another blast of heat hit me. And then I was plummeting through the air, into a deep cavern. Fires flickered in the oppressive dark as I dropped like a stone through the void.
Stalagmites rose from the rocky floor of the cavern. Certain death raced towards me, as I hoped against hope for a miracle. A shadowy figure emerged, watching as I dropped like a stone.
Twenty-Two
In Which All Hell Breaks Loose. Literally
I had no way to know if this is what it felt like to simultaneously break every single bone in my body, but I had a pretty good idea it was. Skull crushed, my head rested on the ground like a sack of wet cement mixed with shards of glass and gray matter. I wasn’t sure if my body had exploded on contact. It felt as though it had. As my eyeballs were currently pressed against the back of my skull, I couldn’t look.
Except…this wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. There had to be a glitch somewhere in the matrix. I needed to look for—Cacophonous sirens and drums battered my brain, making me weep. How? How could this much pain dwell in one body? There was something important I was just thinking about. What was I—
Wait. Oppressive heat, deep underground, shadowy figures, unending pain. How did
I end up here? And was this really my eternity, splatted face down on the floor of a cave? Damn, whatever I’d done to deserve Hell, it must have been epic.
“Ms. Quinn?” Someone was tapping my eyeballs, via the back of my skull. I didn’t know how to respond as I no longer had a working mouth. Or vocal cords and breath, for that matter.
“Why are you lying there? Get up, for evil’s sake.”
I tried to wiggle a finger. Shattered bones ground against one another, but the finger did wiggle. I tried with a foot. An avalanche of pain made me seize.
“Pathetic.”
I was yanked off the floor and righted on broken legs. Swaying, I tried to remain standing and was mostly successful, though I did require the stalagmite I was leaning on to stabilize me. The darkness began to take shape, my vision returning. Everything was drenched in red, although that may have had more to do with the blood in my eyes than anything else.
Spine splintered, my head fell forward, chin resting on my chest. Two polished black shoes appeared within my limited view. “What do you want?” is what I intended to say. Unfortunately, the noises leaking through my crushed face sounded more like, “Mmuuhh.”
“I want you to be more interesting than this. If I’d wanted a broken meat puppet, I’d have asked for one. Snap out of it.” He slapped my face, causing my head to spin around backward.
“Now, you’re just being grotesque. This is it. You’re dead. Do you really want to spend your eternity flopping about like a carp?” He grabbed my hair and yanked my head around. “Now, listen. All this wet noodling about is ridiculous. That’s your mind telling you how it thinks a broken body should behave. Look over there. That bloody heap of flesh is what remains of your mortal life. Now, stand up straight and speak properly. I have no desire to spend the next few millennia listening to garbled grunts and watching you slide down walls.”
I couldn’t tear my eyes from the carnage that was my life. It was really over. I’d never see my bookstore and bar again. Dave, Owen, Helena, Meg, Liam, all gone. Clive. Cool gray eyes and strong, safe arms. That elusive grin that felt like it was mine alone. And kisses. Kisses that made me forget every painful memory because there was no room for anything but Clive when his lips touched mine. It was all gone. But…he wasn’t gone. He was waiting just on the other side of this vision. They all—BOOM! A bomb detonated in my head, scattering my thoughts.
Heart shattering, I forced my gaze away from my own remains and turned back to my tormentor. Standing straight, cold numbness taking the place of pain, I realized I was talking to one of the demons who had been playing poker in that strip club. It was the male model with the golden-brown skin and the predator’s eyes.
“I am Irdu. I’ll be your orientation guide this evening.” He threw out his arms, grandly taking in the whole fire-lit cavern. “Welcome to Hell.”
“This is Hell?” God, how did I end up here? No. Seriously, God, I’m asking.
“Hell is vast. This is little more than a way station. We scoop up the souls and assign them to the circle of Hell they’ll least enjoy.” He winked. “We have a reputation to uphold.”
Looking up, he pushed me to the side. “You’re in the splash zone.”
A strange whistling sound grew in intensity. Following the demon’s gaze, I looked up and saw a man falling, heading right for where I was standing. I scrambled back ten feet right before the body hit. It was every bit as gruesome to watch as it had been to experience.
“The quiet ones have already accepted death. Come on. Lots to do.”
He led me toward a tunnel cut into the side of the cavern. As I glanced around in the gloom, I noticed many similar tunnels, some larger, some smaller. Did they lead to different layers or circles of Hell?
“What did I do to deserve this place?”
“Hmm?” He looked over his shoulder at me and shrugged. “I’d have to check the paperwork and I don’t actually care. Maybe because you’re a werewolf. Aren’t you guys soulless monsters? Like I said, though, don’t care.” He turned into a dark passage. Torches were scattered about the long tunnel, too few to light the way properly.
Soulless? Was I—it felt like I had a soul rattling around in there. Wait. Wasn’t this my soul following the demon deeper into Hell? And why the frick was I doing that? Why had I accepted my death and damnation as though they were my due? This was not the time for quiet politeness. There were no perks for good behavior in Hell. At least, I didn’t think so. He hadn’t come to that part of the orientation yet.
Irdu was walking with his head down. When I glanced around his arm, I saw a phone in his hand. Huh. Phones apparently worked in Hell. Dave had mentioned that demons had ADD problems, never finishing one threat before wandering off to stir up other shit. Maybe, like Irdu, they were too busy tweeting to focus. Perhaps this was where the internet trolls lived.
I stopped walking to see if he’d notice. When he continued on without me, I began walking backward. If he turned around, I’d look as though I was still following him, while actually going in the opposite direction.
“Wrong way,” he called, without breaking his stride. “Although, if you wander off, I won’t have to finish this orientation. So, ta!”
He turned a corner ahead, and I was left standing in an endless, deserted tunnel. Confused, I assessed the situation. Shouldn’t they be goose-stepping me to a demon with a whip fetish? Was the fact that I had been abandoned due to a short attention span or were they confident there was no way out, so I was free to wander until I stumbled into a random hellscape of my own choosing? Maybe the fact that I mattered so little, could be so easily forgotten, was part of my punishment.
But this wasn’t real. This was a vision. I needed to find a way to fight my way ou—Screeching nails on a chalkboard tore through my head. The pressure behind my eyes was unbearable. Oww. Wasn’t there someone with me a minute ago? Spinning in a circle, looking for a clue, I decided to walk in the direction of the way station. Maybe there was a way out of here.
When I passed a side tunnel on the right, I paused to look in. The smell that hit me was horrendous. I peeked my head around a pillar of rock and found a sea of people eating in a crazed frenzy. I watched the emaciated man closest to the entrance and realized he wasn’t actually eating. He was trying to eat. Every time he opened his mouth to take a bite of the loaded burger in his hands, it disappeared and reappeared on his plate. Looking around, I realized it was true of everyone. The harried, unwashed people were different, the food varied, but the maddeningly frustrating inability to eat was the same. Hell, indeed.
Ducking out, I continued down the main passage, looking for the way back. I found the spot where it should have been but wasn’t. I had an excellent sense of direction and spatial awareness. An entrance should have been carved into the rock on my left. I looked up and down the passage and saw no tunnels on the left side. There was no way back. Which explained why Irdu didn’t give a shit if I wandered.
A murmur of shouts came from a tunnel on the right. As I got closer, I started to make out words. The question, ‘How do you like it?’ echoed over and over in the deafening din. Silently ghosting in, I saw men, mostly men, huddled on the ground while women with rage in their eyes used their shouts and over-large fists to beat and berate the men whose impotent cries filled the cavern.
Stomach roiling, I backed out and found myself again in the main passage. At least I wasn’t being trapped in these side caves. I needed to check each of them for a way out, but I worried that if I stumbled into a hell tailored to my sins, I might not escape.
I walked the passage for hours—maybe days—listening at cave entrances, becoming more and more depressed by all the ways in which we hurt ourselves and others. The more Hells I passed, the more a pattern began to form. Self-loathing. They hated themselves and that hatred was either directed inward in horribly self-destructive ways or it was directed outward in horrifically cruel ways. At the core, though, were people mired in pain and anger because they felt themselves
worthless. They had been taught they were worthless by others afflicted with the same hopelessness.
Something dripped on my shirt. Glancing up at the dark rock above, I saw nothing. Belatedly, I realized it was coming from me. Face awash in tears, I shuffled down the endless passage to nowhere.
I’d wasted so much of my life hiding in fear. My mother had trained me early, moving from town to town, apartment to apartment. She was trying to protect me. I knew that. What I’d learned, though, was to disappear. Hide in my hobbit hole, hide in my books, hide from emotions that scared me. Look what happened when I’d reached out to my uncle. I’d been attacked and mutilated, and so I’d hid again.
And yet there had been wonderful people in my life, people who’d cared about me, even when I’d kept them at arm’s length. Passing another cave entrance, the sound of sobbing trailing me, I wished I’d chosen differently. In life, I’d found some twisted comfort in isolation. And now here I was, cut off from the rest of the world, this endless, lonely passage my Hell.
Cold saltwater splashed against my legs and pooled at my feet. I spun, looking for the source and realized that the passage was thigh-deep in seawater. How had I missed the tunnel flooding? Where was it coming from? Gasping, as the water hit my waist, I looked for a side passage with higher ground. The side passages were all gone, the rock walls smooth and unbroken. Torches sputtered out as the water rose. No! Damnit, this wasn’t real! Cymbals crashed in my head again. Alone in the dark, ears ringing, the freezing water hit my chin and splashed over my face.
A shout sounded nearby. I couldn’t make out the words, but someone was with me in the black teeming water. Another wave capsized over me, knocking me off my feet. Disoriented, I couldn’t determine up from down. Kicking and struggling, I was trapped beneath the water.
A strong arm wound around my body and yanked me into the air before slamming me against the ground. Around me, Hell was drowning, but I felt cut off from it, adrift. My eternal isolation was complete.
