And Then There Were Dragons

by Alcy Leyva

  Behind the bird’s head, Palls spotted the enemy soldier that had killed him. There was something wrong with him. His skin was gray and his body was posed as if stuck in time. In the distance, frozen as they attempted to climb out of the truck as well, were two more frozen, gray soldiers Palls had no accounted for.

  Well. It has been great, the crow hummed. I should take momento. Great wars don’t come around too often, and the last guy I was in was blown to bits. The crow stared down at him. What do you say Gaffrey Palls? Want to keep living? Of course. Of course. There’s too much to be done. There’s so much.

  The bird plunged its black beak into the wound made by the dagger. The gash ruptured and blood shot from it like a crimson geyser. Palls felt his ribcage crack open as the massive bird slipped its entire body into the gushing scar and vanished into his chest cavity.

  Suddenly, sound flooded back to Palls’ ears as the world sped back into motion. Leaping up to his feet, Palls felt both pain and power coursing through his body.

  The enemy soldier, likely shocked that the man he had just killed was now standing upright with a dagger sticking out of his chest, screamed. Palls’ body moved instinctively. With one punch, he sent the enemy flying, the impact launching him several yards away—and not in one piece, either.

  The driver of the truck and its passenger, both fully armed, opened fire. Palls closed the gap with ease and shoulder-checked both of them with the velocity of a freight train. One man’s body was sent through the truck door and splattered against the inside of the windshield. The other’s hit the top of the truck and rag-dolled through the trees.

  Palls heard the turret of the nearby Panzer tank turn his way and set its sights on him. Instead of backing up, Palls stood his ground as the main cannon opened fire.

  With one hand, he cradled the explosive shell it fired, tucking it under one arm like he was catching a “beaut” from an all-star quarterback. The force made Palls slide back a few feet, but he dug his heels in the ground to stop his momentum and, in one simple motion, leapt a full ten yards onto the tank. Kicking open the hatch and diving in, Palls handed the live round to one of the infantry inside just as the whole thing exploded and engulfed everyone, including himself, in a column of pure flame.

  A few minutes later, Gaffrey Palls stepped slowly out of the inferno. His clothes had been burnt to a crisp, but the rest of him wasn’t marred by even a scratch. He stared down at his right hand and curled each finger. Reality felt different. Life felt different. Palls felt he could reach out to the entire world, and with his bare hands, throttle it to death.

  Palls pulled the blade from his chest and tossed it away. Even though he had slaughtered a small battalion of men, all he could think about was getting back home. He could go now. He could see her.

  “Wait for me, Mel,” Gaffrey Palls said aloud and then continued, repeating, “There’s too much to be done. So much,” as the wound in his chest slowly sealed itself shut and the soft hum of a crow echoed in his ears.

  CHAPTER 14

  As the memory came to an end, a force spit me back out into the white apartment from before. After surviving one of my memories, Palls landed somewhere behind me. As I tried to get my head to stop spinning, the last thing I wanted to do was stick around for another slide into Gaffrey Palls’ psyche.

  Like my own memories, I had not only been in the projection, but I’d been connected to the living, breathing Gaffrey Palls. I felt his pain. His anger. When the Shade tore into his body, it was as if it was tearing into mine. I had no control. I even felt the rush of power and the sick joy that came with killing those men. I wasn’t ready for the thrill of taking a human life, the bloodlust setting all of my nerves on fire.

  We both sat there not knowing what to say to each other.

  Finally, I broke the silence. “Palls—”

  “We need to get out of here,” he interrupted, standing and walking over to a wall.

  I picked myself up, too. “Yeah, that’s what I was about to say.”

  I understood why he didn’t want to go anywhere near the experiences we had shared or what I had to say about his memory. And yet, I had so many questions. The Shade had appeared to him as a crow, but mine was merely a shadow. Why was there a difference? And the name “Mel.” Whoever she was, she was important to Gaffrey Palls—or at least she had been. Neither of us was prepared to talk about it though, so we focused on the task at hand instead.

  Palls snapped his fingers three times, summoning three flames for each snap. He then spread the flames from his hand up his right arm. When he was done with this neat little magic trick—the same technique he’d used to free us from Mason’s trap—his entire arm was set ablaze in a bold column of fire from his fingernails to his elbow.

  But, unlike the time before, when Palls sliced the walls, nothing particularly remarkable happened. Sparks flew. Burn marks appeared on the walls’ surface. But he might as well have been throwing soggy matches at it. Flustered, he extinguished his arm.

  “Your friend Cain was supposed to help us out from the outside. I can manage enough hellfire to get me in, but making a hole big enough for the two of us to get out takes more power than I got. Where the hell is that dumb angel?”

  Clearing my throat and standing up straight, I tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Wild idea, here.”

  “The answer is no,” Palls responded immediately, but I could tell his back was against the wall.

  “You said it yourself, right? I’m a Warden. A Shade Wraith.” I smiled broadly. “Teach me how to be a fiery hell spawn.” And then I ended it with, “Pleeeeeaaassse.”

  Palls’ eyes went from his arm to me. “Amanda Grey, controlling hellfire?” He stood silently, mulling the whole thing over. Then he passed a hand over his face and groaned. “I’m going to end up regretting this, ain’t I?”

  I smiled. “Probably, but two Wardens are better than one. It’s a numbers game.”

  ****

  I must have been on my hundredth snap. Not a flame. Not a flicker. The most I was able to muster were two strings of smoke rising from my index finger. A hell-born savant, I was not.

  During this time, Palls was summoned to his memories on three more occasions. As long as I was far away from the projection, I was free from getting sucked into it. I entered mine and he entered his with no questions asked. Palls always stepped into the memory without resisting, but always came out…different. The first time, he’d picked himself up right away. The second and third times were far worse, and he stayed on the ground for a long time before coming over to help me figure out the flame trick. I never asked him what he was seeing and made a mental note to make his life at least two to three percent less difficult than normal.

  Palls trekked over for another beer (which seemed to be in infinite supply) and hunched over the counter.

  “How’s that going?”

  I held up my middle finger and Palls squinted at it disapprovingly. “No flames on it.”

  “Oh. Right.” I flipped to my smoky index finger on my other hand. “I’ve only been practicing with this one.”

  Whether he cared for my joke or not, I couldn’t tell by Palls’ chiseled chin and cheeks. “You gotta understand the way these afterlife bodies work. It sort of feels like you’re on autopilot, right? Like you’re numb? Use that. Consider yourself a candle no one has lit yet. Not much to you, you’re just this useless thing with no purpose yet.”

  I nodded. “Useless. Got that part down.”

  He tapped my finger with his. “Hellfire is what lights the candle, drawing it of yourself like a match hitting a wick. Except, of course, that hellfire can burn another soul down to nothing, so just be careful with it.”

  “You know, you’re kind of like my Yoda,” I told him. “The only difference is you suck.”

  Palls sighed. “I don’t get that reference, but I’m sure it was w
itty and somewhat topical. Just focus, Grey. Remember, snapping doesn’t create the fire. It’s just there to remind you what heat feels like. The moment you feel that friction, feed it. Pour yourself into it. Expand it like a balloon. You said you did this once?”

  I looked at him lazily. “Back when I fought the angels and Barnem, sure. But that was by using the other Shades as batteries. I’m just little-old-me now.”

  For the first time, Palls audibly gasped. “Wait. You’re telling me you had more than one Shade inside of you at one time?”

  Not understanding why he was freaking out, I nodded. “Except for D and one other who was hiding in a pen… uh, long story.”

  “So, including yours, you held five?”

  “Sure.” I shrugged and looked over. “Only one less than you. What’s the point?”

  I could tell Palls was choosing his words carefully. “I saw… I saw a hospital in your memory.”

  His words set me on edge. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

  Palls held up his hands. “I get it. I’m sure you saw what I had to deal with. I know it isn’t something you want to talk about right now. But I just want to know, how come your Shade didn’t corrupt you right away? You had it for your entire life.”

  I thought for a bit. “There was a phrase Cain taught me back in the land of the living. She called it the ‘Subjugation of Wills’. Heard of it?”

  “Can’t say I have.”

  “It means that my charming and all-around-shining personality was able to beat back the Shade inside of me. The demon that was feeding off my pain and misery got more than it bargained for and developed its own anxieties. Guess it screwed with the wrong person.” I smiled. “Even a Shade can’t out gloom and doom me.”

  I could tell Palls wanted to say something about this, but he changed the subject. “Keep practicing. They should be coming for us soon.”

  Rolling my eyes, I went back to it. “Do tell, Palls. Who are ‘they’?”

  “I wasn’t able to find the Warden. She’s someone I’ve met in passing. Not a bad gal. I don’t know much about what goes down here in Misfit, or in the Fourth Circle, but if the Warden is missing, then we need to be careful of who’s in charge right now. This prison is slowly draining us, Grey. We’re bleeding out negative emotions and whatever this is—whoever ‘they’ are—is getting us nice and primed for someone or something. They don’t know they have two Wardens locked up down here. For now, we can use it to our advantage.”

  Palls walked over and placed a hand against the wall. He pushed and tiny cracks formed in the surface. “This place is built for lost souls, not for folks like us. You must feel the hellfire welling up inside of you, right? It keeps us separate from the rest. Not much in Hell can stand up to us when we are powered. Probably only one group of creatures down here, but we don’t have to worry about them.”

  Palls lumping “us” together was somewhat infuriating, but I kept it to myself.

  “My power feels like there’s a cork in the supply in here. I’m guessing it’s either this room or because the farther away I get from my Circle of Hell, the weaker I get. Either way, that means your power is muffled in here, too. Which is a good sign. As soon as you get out, using hellfire should be easier for you.” I tossed him a doubtful look and he added, “Just think of it as training. Like running with weights on.”

  “This,” I replied, snapping my fingers over and over, “isn’t running with weights on, Palls. It’s more like running without legs. What am I going to fight with my fiery jazz hands of doom?”

  “Relax, we got enough time. It’s not like they’re going to burst in right now and—”

  “Prisoners! It’s time,” a voice shouted.

  I rolled my eyes. Of course. If I had a nickel for every time…

  A small crevice opened in the wall and dragged itself down to the floor. Four figures stepped through. Two were brown rats riding armored locusts the size of horses. Their ten-foot tails were raised over their heads and their sharp stingers sat pointed at us. Strolling in behind these creatures were two black-clad guards baring chains to bind us.

  One of these guards had a very familiar face.

  Cain spat and hid a wink behind her scowl. “You’re coming with me, prisoner scum.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Our armored escort led us out of the room and through a tear of reality as we stepped into the true version of Misfit, the city on the edge of the Fourth Circle of Hell.

  Misfit was nothing like New Necropolis. Where New Necro sported dazzling skyscrapers and valleys of running streets, Misfit was more of a dirt-laced factory. As my eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, I saw hissing steam jets shooting columns of white smoke while silent fans chugged away in the distance. Metal walkways ran in uniformed rows leading upward and downward and sideways across the expanse of grim factory floor. There was an assembly line for objects suspended from metal hooks. Each of these objects was about twenty feet in diameter, black, and circular, but the material wasn’t glass or metal. It looked—and unfortunately smelled—organic.

  I became very aware of the moans and screams coming from the black orbs around us, and, from this, how many of them were housed here. From what I could see—ceiling to floor and wall to wall—there were hundreds of the little black prisons, maybe thousands. They went on forever, disappearing into the distance among the various catwalks. Gazing at their unfathomable numbers, something told me that my previous guess of a thousand was probably missing several zeroes.

  “What are these things?” I asked, poking the flesh casing of one of the black balls with my finger. It wriggled, murmured like a dying calf, and went still.

  Palls looked around. “This is what they kept you in. They house small folds of reality. Infinite space in a finite package. They call them Black Bladders.”

  I sighed. “Not sure who’s in charge of your PR department down here, Palls, but I would make some phone calls. Or write a letter to someone. Calling these things ‘Black Bladders’ has got to be the worst combination of words I’ve ever heard. That’s right up there with ‘Phlegm Slurpee’ and ‘Thong Song.’”

  “Shut up!” Cain yelled at us. She was on edge. The rats on their armored steeds made a tight lap around us, while the guy walking beside Cain— a lobster-man in a black turtleneck—didn’t seem to care about anything.

  I couldn’t see where the danger was, but around us the temperature spiked as three very loud put-put-puts cut the silence and a fiery tear sliced open in the walkway above. The flames crackled and flickered as three figures emerged onto the metal grate a few steps ahead of us.

  Cain waved and her lobster coworker pushed us behind a wall and out of sight. Making sure we ducked our heads, it also gave our chains a meaningful tug to make sure we kept quiet. The locusts bore their stingers at these three new guests. From my vantage point, I could see little more than their outfits. They each wore heavy black coats with high collars that blocked off their faces. Two were tall and slender; the one standing in the center was as broad as a small couch. Their voices were female, but not entirely human.

  “We shouldn’t be here, sister,” one confided to the next. This voice sounded filled with gravel, but her coat moved as if there was something struggling to get out. I thought I heard the muffled giggling of children.

  “She finds us here, sister, and she will be angry,” spoke the second in a much more melodic voice. Purple hair sprung out of her high collar. Defying gravity, it was roughly the length of my entire body and it swayed, weightless, as if viewing coral underwater.

  The shortest one took a few steps forward and stepped up to Cain.

  “We would like a word,” she said. Unlike the others, this one looked and sounded human. She sported dead white hair and her collar was partially down, exposing nothing of her face but her milk-white eyes.

  “You are not allowed here,” Cain ordered, h
er voice shaking terribly.

  There was a quiet standoff and the fear was palpable. If something was scary enough to frighten Cain, the former Angel of Death, then I knew it must have been bad news.

  As if she hadn’t heard Cain at all, the sing-songy sister with the wavy hair informed the others, “Let’s go, sister. We will have our time with her. Besides, I’d rather not be around these Bladders. They smell of human skin and pickling regret.” She backed away from one and her hair moved with her as if in agreement.

  “We should go, sister, before the little ones get hungry.” From under the taller one’s coat, I heard the chattering of teeth.

  Even hidden behind one of the steel walls, I could feel the sister’s eyes piercing into me. I could see them in my mind. They were glowing and did not blink. These creatures were here for me and everything about them screamed violence and torment.

  Seconds ticked by without a word from anyone. Then, I heard the put-put-put sound again and the portal swallowed the dark trio up.

  I couldn’t believe how much these three women, if that’s what they were, terrified me. Even with the massive amount of oddball shit I’d seen in my lifetime, the thought of being in the same room with those three again nearly brought me to tears. If this is what Palls claimed life was like without a Shade to warp and distort my emotions—if this is what True Fear felt like—then my journey to the heart of Hell was going to be harder than I thought.

  It didn’t help when I looked over to Palls, his eyes showed nothing but fear.

  “Who were they, Palls?”

  “Those where the Furies,” was all he said.

  ****

  The rest of the escort went off with more surprise visits, but thankfully none from the murderous trio. Toward the back of the factory, the Bladders ran for what seemed like miles. Scattered amongst them were misshapen creatures that seemed to be human—if humans could have been wadded up into sacks of their own skin. These creatures had no hair, no eyes or body parts, just round heads with skeletal mouths and full, pink stomachs. Jutting out of their oval bellies were sharp hook points suspending them from the ceiling, like Christmas ornaments at Hannibal Lecter’s house.