And Then There Were Dragons

by Alcy Leyva

  CHAPTER 19

  We drove for what felt like days. Palls rolled up his sleeves and took off his tie. Cain, in the back, stayed silent. I wasn’t sure what to tell her to make her feel better, so I kept to myself. There was no sign of Hel’s army or any other life, and there was no way to make sure we weren’t being followed. So, we kept driving.

  Muddled within this dread and doubt, with the endless nature of Abaddon and the fallen angels, I had honestly given up hope of escaping the Fourth Circle.

  That is, until we reached its end.

  In the horizon, the landscape vanished. Palls made a stuttering sound and everyone in the car sat forward as the road dipped out of sight in a smooth decline. We took a hill, and emerging over its crest we saw what was waiting for us.

  We were still miles away, but the world in front of us was a gray mass, a sea as far as the eye could see—an entire ocean that had been summoned from out of nowhere.

  I spun back to our guide. “I thought we were headed to the River Styx.

  Not-Mark casually flicked his blue finger to the body of water in front of us. “This is it.”

  It took us ages to actually get to the beach. The road ended and I couldn’t recall there being any space for turns or coming traffic. It was as if the road were set down for us to go to that specific place at that specific time—kind of like Not-Mark had implied earlier.

  As our odd-looking crew left the car and started down to the beach, I stayed behind to take a good look at the thankless chariot that had brought us to this place. The fender had fallen off. Rust had eaten away at the doors to the point most were missing their handles. The tires were all flat and weeds had grown up and into the axel. The question I was left with when I walked away to join the others wasn’t how this contraption had gotten us here in one piece, it was how this car was able to move at all.

  I found my crazy troupe staring out into the ocean. Not speaking, not moving. I wanted to tell them about the car we just left. “Hey, guys. Just saw something that kind of freaked me out.”

  Then I looked out to the sea and froze.

  Up close, I could see the ocean wasn’t made of water.

  It was made of bodies.

  Gray, swollen bodies. Millions and millions of naked, hairless corpses piled atop each other. Men and women, swirling about. Swerving back and forth as if on a current. Rising in waves and crashing down against the shore in ragged lumps before being dragged back out to rise and fall again. If water makes a dashing sound as it splashes about in an ocean, the sound of a million bodies crashing into each other just sounded like someone stirring a wet bowl of spaghetti on a speaker turned up to max volume.

  What made things worse was that the corpses weren’t exactly dead. I mean, they were all definitely removed from their mortal coils, but they seemed completely content with how bad their situations were. They stared at everything with yellowed eyes but offered no complaints, only a dull grunt or two when they butted heads. Then a quick sorry cleaned it up and nothing else was done.

  “What the hell is this?” Palls asked. He looked ill. Even Cain looked disturbed by the sight of this, and she had “heaven-sent reaper” on her resume.

  The four of us stood there, on the edge of the Sea of Corpses. We had no way across and no way back. Without saying a word, I already knew. Everyone was too afraid to ask, but I knew.

  I can’t tell you how much this tore the resolve from my body. I hadn’t given up when up against a city of demons. The terribly named Black Bladders hadn’t stopped me. I even killed something that was supposed to be eternal and hardly had time to process it, before this. This was the absolute low I was so afraid of feeling. Getting to Petty in one piece and facing up against the Dark Lord was already a long shot.

  But this … this was worse than anything I could have imagined. To me, this was a reminder of that girl I saw replayed in the Bladders. Amanda Grey: the fire starter. Amanda Grey: the self-imploder. “Mental Mandy” strikes again.

  Frustrated that no one was saying anything, frustrated at the sea, and more importantly, frustrated I was unable to finish what I started, I picked up a large, smooth rock from the ground and launched it into the ocean.

  It sailed high and carried far. Everyone watched it make the distance and then turn sharply downward before plummeting into the corpses. The result was not the soft thud I had anticipated, but a distant “ow” by one of them. On the heels of this came an eruption beneath the surface of the bodies. It shot hundreds of the flopping corpses into the air as if a bomb had gone off.

  At first, I thought it was my rock, but just beside the high arching cascade of corpses rose the nose of a wooden ship. The mass of this vessel coursed through the corpses as if on actual waves, tossing the poor schmucks aside with its keel and punctuated by the odd plops and oofs from the folks it was rolling over.

  The ship looked like someone had bound a scrapheap together and set it afloat. Its wooden planks and railings seemed to be held together with nothing but good intentions. Three massive sails made of black fire slipped open from its masts and began fluttering in the wind.

  And then, from out of the main cabin, a lone figure stepped out to greet us. He wore a long black pea coat with the collar up around his ears and a black knitted cap on his head.

  “Are you just gonna stand there or can we get going? Parking’s kind of a bitch around here,” D shouted.

  And then he waved at me and gave a simple, “Yo.”

  And all I could do was wave back. I’d never been so happy to be rescued by a demon.

  CHAPTER 20

  From the deck of the ship, I watched as land slipped coldly into the distance, grew small, and vanished. This was the last memory I had before setting out from Abaddon to the River Styx—now the Sea of Corpses.

  Everything changed once the land disappeared. There was no sun out at sea. There was no moon. The sky itself was endless gray and black cloud cover with strips of purple thrown in, reminding me of dead veins hanging limply from the sky. Any semblance of normalcy I had felt in the ride over, however small, was left back with the ancient car.

  Cain never left the lower quarters. She claimed the movement of the ship was not her style and kept to herself down where no one could see. I knew the sickness from losing the SoH was affecting her, and that the rotting parts of her skin were spreading. None of us knew how to help her, though, so we let her be.

  Palls stayed outside at the head of the ship and never moved. Once or twice, I saw him fiddling with the bind collar he had brought along, but I didn’t say anything.

  I kept to myself in the rear. That’s where I saw the land creep away so that’s where I stayed. Meanwhile, D and Not-Mark stayed midship conversing. D had been shocked when he first saw the little blue streaker. Actually, I couldn’t tell if it was shock or distrust, but it was definitely a rotten cocktail of both. Not-Mark never left his side, either because he wanted to or because it was an order.

  After what felt like days of staring at the same grumbling ocean, I had enough. I marched right to where D was perched, intent on having it out with him. The two of us hadn’t said a word to each other since I came on board and the silence was starting to suffocate me.

  On my approach, D flashed a smile. Not-Mark was hunched over beside him and only managed to scowl at me as I got near.

  “Aren’t you cold?” I asked, pointing toward his dangling, naked nether-regions.

  “No,” replied the liar, but as he walked by I could literally hear his teeth chattering.

  Grimacing, I turned back to D. “You sure we can trust him?”

  Still within earshot, the blue man turned back to me. “For your information, I was set to spend my days trapped in a frozen lake until kingdom come. But then, I was set free.”

  “And who do we have to thank for that?” I replied sarcastically.

  Not-Mark threw his gangly a
rms up. “Why does it matter?” Glancing back toward the ground, the little blue man shook his head. “Still, it calls. My hole. My rut. The frozen bite draws me back. But I will not go back. I deserve to be out. I deserve … I deserve…” His voice trailed off as he turned and slouched away.

  I sighed. “It’s amazing how safe I feel with everyone here. Such an amazing team, we are.”

  “It’s good to see you, too, Grey.” D tucked his hands in his pockets. “Don’t worry about him. I promised to set him free once he leads us back. The route he took here wasn’t the normal one, so it should come in handy.”

  D’s demeanor made me uneasy, and it didn’t take me long to figure out why. The way D looked at me, his eyes soft and posture reserved, was the way two strangers interacted. To me, this could only mean one thing.

  “You told me the last time we met that time works differently down here.”

  I went searching for something in D’s eyes. Could he meet me halfway? Did I have to ask?

  The demon that used to be my roommate dropped his head. “It’s been a while, Grey. The last time we spoke, back in Limbo, right before we got this little traveling hellfire show on the road … that was a long time ago.”

  My leg started to tremble. “How long?”

  “I don’t think—”

  “I’m not asking you what you think. How long has it been?”

  D looked out into the sea where the bodies were reaching swells of ten to twelve feet in height before spilling over onto themselves.

  “It’s going on seven years since I saw you last, Grey. Just about seven years since I walked out of that meeting room in the First Circle.”

  I had closed my eyes, hoping it would soften the blow. But the news still bit into me so violently that I felt I had dreamed everything up and my body was hanging limply out of the jaws of that canine, Fen. When I opened my eyes, only D was standing there—and he knew what I was going to ask next. He slowly shook his head and grabbed me just as I felt the wail blossoming in my chest. Like a hot bubble, the feeling burst out of my throat.

  The next thing I knew, I was on the ground. D had caught me, but I was groaning louder than the Sea of Corpses.

  I hadn’t saved Petty in time.

  Dad was gone.

  ****

  D explained the circumstances.

  Dad had felt sick one morning. Felt slow. Mom pushed him to see a doctor, as she always would. For once, he didn’t give her lip—a sign he was just as worried. The docs ran tests and spotted it for what it was: a minor stroke.

  His health corkscrewed shortly after and he was bedridden. Depression does this—it can amplify a sinus infection and make it feel like a full-blown flu. The whole body can’t fight everything at once, especially if you’re not emotionally sound. Losing both of his daughters in one night was the catalyst to all of this.

  D told me that Dad fought extremely hard. He said he hadn’t told either of my parents about fetching me and Petty from Hell, but it was like Dad could sense it. He never gave up, though he couldn’t convince his body of the same thing. My mom was by his side the entire time.

  “I constantly came down to check in and see if you got here, but you never showed,” D began as part of an apology. Not wanting to hear it, I reached up and touched his lips. He stopped talking. After a long time of us huddled there, me leaning up against his chest, his legs forming barriers around me, D placed his chin on my head.

  “Where do we go from here?”

  It was a loaded question, one that was either attached to the two of us, or the ship and the fate of its crew. I only had the drive to answer one.

  “My mom? How is she?”

  D laughed. “Still kicking ass. She made this lasagna the other day that had five layers of cheese. A real shame the cooking gene skipped you completely.” I gave him a soft shot in the ribs. D laughed again and added, “She misses him a lot. She misses all of you.”

  “Who are the Old Gods?” This was not how I had planned on asking, but my emotions were flushing out of me.

  D, being D, answered reluctantly. “The Old Gods were here from the start. I’m talking way back—The Holy War. Every foul creature you can think of. When the Dark Lord fell, they became his generals and served as the architects of Hell.” He paused. “I heard about the Furies. And I heard you killed Fen.”

  I sighed. “Who snitched?”

  “The blue guy.”

  Finally, I pushed away from D and sat up on my own. “Any idea how I was able to blow up an eternal creature? I’m pretty sure that’s nowhere in the ‘So Now You’re a Warden: User Manual’.”

  D shook his head. “The hierarchy in Hell has always been the same. The Wardens run the Circles, which were created by the Old Gods. After them, there’s only the Dark Lord himself.”

  Recalling Hel’s words, I had to ask. “What about dragons? Where do they fit in?”

  D’s confused face said it all. “Can’t say I’ve seen or heard about dragons down here. Look, I don’t believe you killed an actual Old God. That’s just … it’s just not possible. Fenrir is a beast of the apocalypse, Grey, not some yappy dog someone forgot to curb. There’s no way you could have killed it. Now for the increase in your power … the only way I can make sense of it is that you must be getting close to your Circle. Wardens get stronger as they get closer to their worlds. This is mine and I hold dominion over it.” D popped the collar on his pea coat and added, “Don’t know if you were paying attention, but, uh, I made this here ship with my will alone.”

  A curl of wind picked up and slammed into the side of the ship, causing one side of the vessel to rupture as rain splintered wood out into the sea of bodies. From out of the hole it left behind, I spotted Cain, still sick and half asleep, climb out of her bed, shuffle over to the only open window the implosion left behind, shut it with one hand, and flop back onto the mattress.

  “Four stars for craftsmanship!” I gave D a slow clap and felt dirty for it. “So, I’m getting closer to my Circle. Does that mean I’ll be able to decapitate demons, or create a reality show that doesn’t seem exploitative of another human being’s suffering?”

  “You’ll get stronger the closer you get to yours, but don’t get cocky,” he warned. “An Old God can come and pluck my eyes out in a hiccup if I look at them wrong. Even here.”

  “Sure,” I replied, but not because I believed what he was saying. He wasn’t on Hel’s show with me. I still remembered that beast leaping at me. I remembered thinking it was all over and then, just a snap later, its fur disintegrating in midair, the cry it let out … Hel screaming and tearing at herself in grief. I had done the impossible and the fact even D couldn’t explain it scared the hell out of me.

  The two of us stood, and D leaned against the banister. “I didn’t know how to tell you about your father. He was … he was a great man.”

  “It’s fine.” And in truth, it was. I knew I couldn’t hang on to that grief. I had made a decision. I decided to come down to get Petty instead of going up to see him one last time. I knew I had to carry the weight of that with me for as long as I existed. But I realized it didn’t mean going to see him would have been the “right” choice. Dad was going to leave, whether I was there or not, and then it would be just Mom and me, mourning that half of our family that had been taken from us.

  A dull worry set in. Sure, my mom was still alive and the city was in one piece. But by this time, my mom had already set into her mind that her two girls had been dead for almost ten years. Is that something I could go back to? I only had four more floors to go. I was so close, but time was not on my side.

  “There’s no turning back now. I know it. We made it this far.” I ran my fingers through my hair and took a deep breath. Sliding next to D on the banister, I asked, “And what about you? How far are you coming along with me this time, D?”

  Carefully bumping his shou
lder against mine, the demon replied, “Well, you know. I figured we already survived one apocalypse together. Might as well see this one to the end, too. I mean, we make a great team.”

  “I died the last time we teamed up,” I corrected. “At best, we’re hovering around an F to F+.”

  D snickered. “I’ll take it.”

  There wasn’t a lot to say after this. There was just us, the dark sky, and the large waves of bodies thumping against the ship’s hull. I know it sounds strange, but I liked having D there. Even if he wasn’t saying anything. I enjoyed knowing he was close by. And I honestly felt like we both would have been content staying right there—silent but in each others’ orbit— until we crashed the damned ship right into Satan’s crotch.

  Of course, that’s not what happened.

  “Screech!” Palls yelled as he came running to where we stood. He pointed to the sky and there it was, flapping its oversized wings as it managed the wind. It made two turns over us and then plummeted down to land just a few feet from where we stood. Even Cain and Not-Mark came up to see it.

  Opening its beak slowly, the distorted voice came spilling out again. This time, not only did it know whom to address, its message was only three words long.

  “COME GET HER.”

  I pushed D aside and stepped to where the creature could both see me and hear the three words I wanted it to understand.

  “ON MY WAY.”

  I flicked my fingers and snapped at the same time, causing long sparks to leap onto the creature and set it ablaze. The five of us just watched in silence as the monster bird burned, withered, and entered non-existence.

  CHAPTER 21

  D and I met to strategize. According to him, the Six and Seventh Circles were going to be problematic.

  “The Furies are sisters who rule the lower City, Pandemonium. Just imagine the inverse of New Necro and you’ll start to understand what I’m about to tell you. It’s a city of demons—pure ones. The worst of the worst. The air down there is thick, the hellfire is as pure as it gets, and there’s nowhere to go if we get overrun. That’s not counting the Furies themselves.” Choosing his words carefully, D added, “Now, I know you’re not going to like this too much, but it’s the truth. We’re going to need all hands on deck if we’re going to survive that place.”