by Julie Hall
2
Zombies
Despite the heat, chills raced up and down my spine.
Joe sheathed his sword and turned to continue our journey. We wordlessly followed, each one of us likely processing the information he’d just given.
We walked and walked, and the scenery never changed. This journey felt like an exercise in futility—like a nightmare where we were running from something without actually getting anywhere.
I struggled against the feeling of despair as much as I fought to remain upright. Romona stayed suspiciously close, with her gaze on me as often as our surroundings. As my best-friend-slash-grandmother turned kick-butt huntress in the afterlife, her concern for me was expected—if not slightly overbearing at times.
Kevin was up ahead with Joe and peppering him with questions like an inquisitive child trying to make sense of the world around him. For his part, Joe was playing the patient parent well. Kevin wanted to know how big the realm was—Big. How many different demons resided here—A lot. Why was the ground red—It was, in fact, made up of volcanic cinder. When would we run into another being—Hopefully not for a while.
“So where is the light coming from in this place? It looks like we’re in a giant cave.” Kevin tilted his head up to survey the stone-like sky above.
“It comes from the lake of fire that makes up the innermost ring. The flames shoot up from the lake like a pillar.”
Kevin jerked his head toward Joe, mouth hanging open.
“But we won’t be going anywhere near there.” Joe’s steps halted. “Okay, everyone, we’re here.”
Here?
I looked around. We stood in the same barren wasteland we’d been trudging through for hours.
“Wow. Yep. This is . . . something?” Kaitlin’s confusion was mirrored on the faces of my other companions.
The corner of Joe’s mouth twitched as if he were struggling to hold back a smile. “This is the beginning of the next ring.”
“But how can you tell?” I asked. Scanning our surroundings, the landscape was still a flat plane of red sprinkled with black rocks.
“I can feel it,” Joe answered with a frown. The strain around his eyes told me there was more he wasn’t saying. “Join hands.”
I bit my lip and grasped Romona’s left hand with my right. I was at the end of the chain. Joe held Kevin’s hand and walked forward. On the second step, our leader disappeared.
I gasped as Kevin said, “What the—” before he disappeared too.
I started to pull back on Romona’s hand, trying to slow my steps as Jonathon was swallowed by the nothing, but the momentum of the group propelled me forward.
“This is trippy,” Kaitlin said a moment before she vanished.
“Romona, are we sure—” Romona turned her head toward me, and I watched her fade out of sight. I squeezed my eyes shut. I was next.
A flash of heat washed over me—like when passing a finger through the flame of a candle without lingering long enough to actually get burned.
My eyes popped open when the feeling passed.
The world had transformed. The ground was still red, but that was where the similarities ended. The terrain was dotted with the skeletal remains of trees. Gnarled and bone-white branches protruded from twisted trunks at awkward angles, a distorted mass of intertwined appendages that appeared to have grown with the intent of hiding from the life-giving light rather than reaching for it.
Beyond the blanched dead forest was a blackened mountain range that cut a jagged line across the horizon.
Not comparing the frightening sight with the peaceful landscape of our own realm was impossible. They were opposites in every way. But just as the mountain range had been the first site to captivate me in the heavenly realm, the hellacious mountains were what drew my attention now. Rather than standing in awe of its majesty, my attention was captured by its grotesqueness. Lined up like rows of shark teeth, multiple peaks were completely black except for occasional pustules that oozed red magma down the sharpened slopes like never-ending streams of tears.
“This is seriously disturbing,” Kevin said, and I couldn’t have agreed with him more.
Bile churned in my stomach with the wrongness of this place.
“Why do the trees grow like that?” Jonathon asked.
Several heartbeats passed before he received an answer. “They are the pathetic attempt of a creature trying to create life in its own image. But even in this desolate place, there is only one Creator.” There was a hollowness to Joe’s voice, and his face was stoically masked, hiding whatever emotions might lie beneath. “Let’s go, everyone. We have several more rings to go through until we reach Logan.”
That I could have forgotten about Logan even for a moment caused guilt to settle into my gut.
“Yeah, let’s get going.” I started forward without waiting for direction.
“Yo! Audrey!”
I stopped walking and turned in the direction of Kevin’s bellow. He—along with the rest of the group—was about thirty feet behind me.
“It’s this way.” He hitched his thumb in the opposite direction.
“Oh.” I grimaced. “Sorry.” I scurried to join back up and this time waited for Joe to lead.
After five minutes of traveling in the eighth ring, the sensation of being watched washed over me like a surge of static electricity.
The fine hairs on the back of my neck prickled. I swiveled my head, searching for the source of my discomfort.
Was that movement in my peripheral vision? I snapped my attention to the left. The only thing there was one of those creepy dead trees.
My gaze stayed glued to the tree as we passed. Nothing there. Just as I turned my attention forward, a cracking noise like brittle twigs being snapped in half echoed in the gloom. I cast a glance over my shoulder to see one of the bleached branches of the tree I’d just passed stretching in my direction—reaching out to me.
I yelped and tripped over some rocks—okay, my own feet—in my haste to get away. Landing with a thud on my right hip, I threw my arm out to catch my upper body.
Without bothering to stand, I scurried on my hands and knees to put distance between the tree and me. Thank goodness for the body armor. I would have been a scraped-up mess without it. Nothing about this realm was soft.
“What are you doing?” Jonathon’s voice held only disgust.
Jarred out of my fright, I assessed him. Where was the compassionate guy I knew? Had he never been that person to begin with, or had I somehow broken him?
A gentle hand tugged on my arm and helped me to my feet. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say Joe was trying hard not to laugh at me.
My companions stared at me, waiting for an explanation. “Dude, I think those things are alive. And I don’t mean like they’re sucking-nutrients-in-from-the-ground alive, but rather they’re-moving-their-branches-at-will alive.”
“They’re not alive,” Joe assured me. “They’re reanimated.”
“What? Reanimated? Like . . . like zombies?”
Joe just blinked once but didn’t expound.
“You’re telling me we’re walking through a forest of zombie trees?” I let out a yap when I accidentally brushed up against one of the boney branches, almost flattening Kaitlin in my haste to get away. “Oh my gosh! Are they going to try to eat us?”
Finally my point was getting through. The others shifted on their feet and started looking around with wary eyes. Jonathon even pulled out his sword, although what he expected to be able to do with the thin blade he carried against a hardened tree limb, I had no idea. We needed a machete . . . STAT!
Oh wait, I had a sword that caught fire. That was, if it worked down here. If so, I could char these things in no time. As dry as they were, they’d probably ash as quickly as kindling.
I followed Jonathon’s lead and pulled my sword from its sheath on my back. With a sigh of relief, I watched the blade catch fire like usual. It looked like the holy fire was ready to torch
some petrified zombie bark.
A deep belly laugh had us all looking in Joe’s direction. Seriously?
“Are you messing with me right now?” I asked. I wasn’t willing to put my sword down until I knew we were safe. A quick look around the group said that despite Joe’s blasé attitude, they all agreed with me.
A long few minutes passed before Joe composed himself enough to speak.
“I’m serious. These things aren’t alive. Reanimated is the best way to describe them, but they aren’t going to try to eat your brains.” The last few words were spoken with a chuckle.
“Well, what do they want then? Because they are definitely interested in something.” Over the time we’d been standing still, a few more branches had slowly stretched my way.
“They’re attracted to what you have that they don’t.”
“Which is?” I prompted.
“Life.”
I wasn’t willing to lower my sword just yet. “But I’m dead.”
Joe shrugged a shoulder.
I swung my sword at a branch that was a little too close for comfort. My blade cut through it as easily as warm butter. In response, the tree let out an ear-piercing shriek—from where exactly I wasn’t sure, because it’s not as if it had a mouth—and I stumbled back a step. The remainder of the limb retracted, burying itself within the tangle of branches closest to the trunk.
Hands down the creepiest thing I’d ever seen. No lie. And I’d seen a lot of creepy things since becoming a hunter.
“What. Just. Happened? That was a very lifelike reaction for something that’s not supposed to be alive!” I held my weapon out in front of me like a flamethrower rather than a sword and turned in a circle to make sure no other limbs entered my personal space.
“This place is seriously messed up,” Kevin muttered, and I nodded my agreement. We were so in sync at the moment.
“Okay, my vote is we get through this forest of horrors as fast as—” My words were cut short as my body convulsed violently and I dropped my sword.
I fell to my knees hard, and my back bowed in pain. A scream caught in my throat. One I desperately wished I could expel.
My vision flickered to another scene.
A smirk appeared on the sadistic face in front of me. “I told you the fun had only just begun.”
The pain at my side was beyond what I thought I had the capacity to feel. My instinct was to fold over and protect myself from the worst of it, but with my arms restrained, I could do nothing but bear it.
I blinked. Romona’s face blocked out part of the rock-like sky overhead.
“Audrey!” someone screamed and reached for me.
I sucked in a lungful of air, and with my next blink, I was gone.
3
Logan
“That’s enough playtime for now, Adramelech.” The dark being cocked his head to the side. “He looks properly tenderized for the moment.”
If I weren’t in so much pain, I might have laughed. Through my non-swollen eye, I could see bits of my flesh. Whatever wasn’t torn was covered in layer upon layer of blood. These short reprieves from the torture would give the blood just enough time to dry before the next round began and the sticky wetness started flowing again. I was like a bloodsicle now—nothing more than a battered hunk of flesh.
My human body would have failed long ago, and at this moment I wasn’t sure whether to be glad for or curse the new one the afterlife provided me.
The creature who had just been dismissed bowed and scampered out the room on all fours.
The creature left standing in front of me was less vile in form but infinitely more so beneath his façade. His attractive illusion was only that: an illusion. “Ah, Logan, this all feels so familiar to me.”
I lifted my chin and stared him straight in the face—right where his eyes should have been. He was right. We’d been in this position before. And just like the last time, I would endure.
“I believe I recognize that look in your eyes. Excuse me, I mean your eye. One is out of commission at the moment. The look I’m seeing is”—the sockets narrowed around where his eyes should be—“ah yes, I’m right. It’s defiance.”
He leaned in closer and put a hand on my bruised shoulder. I flinched involuntarily but refused to look away from the face of pure evil.
Satan.
The sharpened tips of his fingers grew into claws that slowly cut into my skin, sending trickles of hot blood weeping down my shoulder and onto my exposed chest. The liquid was almost cooling in the oppressive heat of this place.
He ripped his hand from my shoulder, increasing the blood flow from the wounds he’d inflicted, and took two leisurely steps back.
“That look is fine by me.” The cruel twist of his lips said that the shredding of my flesh pleased him.
“Whada you wa?” Like honey clinging to a jar, my words stuck in my throat.
Blood started to ooze from a crack on my lip.
I didn’t bother trying to spit the coppery substance from my mouth. It would have only dribbled down the front of me anyway.
He heaved a breath as if this was all a giant bore. “Haven’t we already been over this? From you? I want nothing more than exactly what you are already doing. And might I say you are doing it beautifully. Even the weakest bond would be pulsating in agony right now. You’re acting as a beacon, drawing in exactly what I want.”
Audrey.
Fear sliced through my heart. Not for myself but for her. Oh God, I sent up a desperate prayer, Please don’t let her anywhere near this horrific place.
A pull deep inside me said it might already be too late. I’d been trying hard to ignore the feeling. The torture drowned it out, but during my few short respites, I’d sensed she was close.
I hoped I was simply delusional, that the sense of her being near was a fabrication of my psyche that wanted her close even as my rational mind wished her as far away from this place as possible.
“Hmm. I wonder if He’ll answer whatever pathetic plea you just lifted up to His name.”
The sound of footsteps echoing off the walls outside my cell halted our conversation.
“Ah, a visitor.” Satan clapped his hands together as a figure entered the chamber.
The air punched out of my gut even as my brain scrambled to put together the pieces.
Alrik. My friend. My closer-than-a-brother friend.
Yes, a deeply buried part of me had considered this as a possibility ever since I’d woken up in this God-forsaken place, but seeing reality was more painful than any of the wounds that had been inflicted in this realm. I had been betrayed.
Again.
Something inside me began to boil.
“You were right.” Alrik’s voice was steady. “They’ve been spotted in the eighth ring. They’ll cross over to the seventh shortly.”
A flicker of annoyance crossed Satan’s face before the emotion was wiped clean. “Perfect. It’s like they heard the dinner bell and have come running, not realizing they’re on the menu. Let me know when—”
“You!” a shredded voice bellowed. A moment passed before I recognized the shout as my own. What I lacked in clarity, I made up for in volume. “How could you?”
Pure rage punctured my skin like rusty nails. With energy I shouldn’t have possessed, like a rabid animal I struggled against the manacles that kept me tethered to the stone wall.
Alrik had led me to Earth and directly into an ambush. We’d been attacked the moment we’d materialized. I’d lost track of him when I was taken down and feared he’d been captured as well. To think, this whole time I’d been hanging here I’d also been concerned for his safety. The snake.
“History does seem to be repeating itself, doesn’t it?” Satan mocked.
“Betrayer!” I spat at Alrik. My gaze fixated on my ex-friend even as staring at him made me sick.
Deadened eyes stared back at me. I’d seen that look from him on the battlefield, but I’d never been the recipient of that expression be
fore.
I breathed like a raging bull. Before I even realized what I was doing, electricity crackled to life inside me, building in my heart and then exploding outward. White-and-blue zigzags of energy shot from my hands, harmlessly scorching the walls of my cell rather than the two beings at whom my fury was directed.
I’d revealed my hidden power.
Big mistake.
Yet the dread that should have settled in my chest was snuffed out by my righteous anger.
I strained against my chains with an otherworldly power. They groaned, and for a moment I thought I might be able to free myself. That was until Satan flicked his wrist and a second set of binds clamped down on my forearms, further securing me to the jagged rocks at my back.
“Interesting. You might be worth more than I thought.” Satan tilted his head in a birdlike manner, examining me like an alien specimen. “That little trick of yours betrays your alliance. Interesting that you’ve been able to hide it from me for so long.” A grin spread across his face. “My arms are always open to welcome another solider as fodder for the battlefield.”
He turned from me and addressed an uncharacteristically stoic Alrik. “I think it’s time we thin the herd a bit, don’t you agree?”
Alrik merely shifted his weight and gave a quick nod of agreement.
They both turned to leave, but before stepping out of sight, Satan turned his head my way.
“It appears that prayer of yours has gone unanswered after all.”
Logan!
I jerked upright with a silent scream lodged in my throat and my face wet with tears. Turning to the side, I retched not once but twice onto the ground. The measly amount of food and water in my stomach was expelled the first round, and yellow bile came up the second.
A face filled my watery view, and hands came down on my shoulders, straightening my hunched form.
“It’s okay.” Joe’s voice soothed me. “It’s going to be all right.”
