The Descent: Book Three of the Taker Trilogy

by Alma Katsu

  Perhaps death wouldn’t even be the worst of it, for I was traveling beyond death this time. What lay on the other side could be even worse. I thought of all the representations of the afterlife described in stories and poems. The nine rings of hell in Dante’s Inferno came to mind, and I supposed that if I were lucky, I would be consigned to the second ring, the repository for those who have given in to the sin of lust. It seemed pretty tame compared to the ninth ring, the place where those guilty of treachery were kept. For I’d been treacherous, hadn’t I? Most notably by imprisoning Adair behind a stone wall for two hundred years (for which he’d forgiven me, remarkably).

  It didn’t matter that I tried to turn my mind to more benign depictions of the afterlife: my thoughts stubbornly returned to hell, as though it was predetermined that this was the place where I would go. Maybe my dreams were a warning to me. The underworld would be a dark, cold place. The queen was surely there—the demon, too, and here I was, rushing toward what other people (those with common sense) would flee in terror. As frightened as I was, I knew I would go through with it. I was like a soldier collecting my thoughts in the moments before leaping into battle: there is no turning back, there is no getting out of it. I would never be able to live with myself if I gave up now, and, for me, never would last forever. I could just manage to keep from panicking by reminding myself that I had survived the unknown and the impossible the first time.

  As I sat in the sunlight streaming through the window, eyes closed and absorbing heat like a cat on a sunny ledge, I half expected Adair to show up at my door with a certain request, one that I was surprised—and a little disappointed—that he hadn’t made already. I could understand why he hesitated to invite me into his bed, constrained as he was by the presence of two Englishwomen and by my recent widowhood. But we were about to be separated by a huge cosmic gulf, the future uncertain. Although I had great faith in Adair’s powers, I had to accept the possibility that we might never see each other again. Surely he would want us to be intimate at least once before he sent me into the unknown. When I considered that I might never have the chance to experience Adair’s love again, I was starting to feel this way strongly, too. I would regret it forever if I was unable to return to this life. Besides, for all I knew, it might even strengthen his link to my soul and enhance his ability to transport it back and forth from the underworld.

  Desire awakened inside me like a thousand tremulous butterflies as I warmed to the idea of going to bed with Adair again. As Terry had pointed out, he was a very good partner (as well he ought to be: he’d had a thousand years of practice and, in all that time, probably let few opportunities to practice pass him by). He didn’t lack for confidence, or the right equipment, and the cock between his legs was a magnificent thing with such heft that it had to be held with two hands. He had been a good teacher, too. Jonathan was my first lover and had been good in his way (though, as a seventeen-year-old, I’d hardly known the difference), but he could not compare with Adair for technique or sheer lustful enthusiasm. From Adair, I learned to enjoy sex and not to fear it. In many ways, it was Adair who ushered me into adulthood.

  Since coming to the island, I’d felt there had been moments when he was waiting for me to relent, to take him by the hand and lead him to his bedroom. Or maybe to my room, where there wouldn’t be the scent of the other women infused in the bed linens or stray hairs of brown and gold on the pillows. We would go to my modest room and lock the door against surprise, and he would pull me on top of him on the narrow bed as he looked deeply into my eyes. In bed, he could have any of a hundred different moods, but he was always eager for more: more tactile sensation, more cresting pleasure. Thinking about him made the urge all the harder to resist. How easy it would be to give in. I suppose it meant my heart was healing after Luke’s death, that I would even consider it.

  Adair had probably known all along that I’d wanted him. He would’ve only needed to kiss me and I wouldn’t have been able to resist him. Should I find him now and have one last pleasure with him before heading to the underworld? I was struggling to extinguish this spark of desire when there was a knock at the door, jolting my eyes open. Adair stood in the doorway as though he’d been summoned by my thoughts. Only he didn’t look aroused. He didn’t even look happy. He was glum and fretful, full of misgivings. In one hand, he carried a mug.

  “Is it time already?” I asked weakly. “You found the spell so soon?”

  “I already had an idea where to look. It was only a matter of putting the ingredients together,” he said as he entered the room. He put the mug on the table next to the bed, then ran his hands over the mattress, smoothing the sheets. “You will lie here, on this bed, while your soul is in the underworld. Come, sit.” I did as I was instructed and perched on the edge of the bed.

  Adair reached into his pocket and pulled out something that he pressed in my hand. “I’ve been thinking about your return, about how I will know to bring you out of suspension. We need some kind of signal. I want you to hold this. Carry it with you at all times, wherever you go. And when you are ready to come back, just let it go. I will see it fall from your hand, here, and I will know to bring you back.” He closed my fingers around the object, looking earnestly into my face. “Will you do that for me?”

  “Of course,” I said. When I opened my hand, however, I couldn’t believe what I saw: it was the vial that he’d worn around his neck when I first met him, the vial that had contained the elixir of life. The one I’d stolen from him and used to make Jonathan immortal—to make him my immortal consort, with disastrous results.

  “This is impossible,” I gasped as I held it up in the light so I could get a good look at it. It was the same filigreed cylinder of silver and brass, its stopper and chain intact. “It can’t possibly be . . . Luke told me, on his deathbed, that he’d found it among my things. He said he’d crushed it under his heel and threw it out the window.”

  “I found it on the beach here when I was out walking one day,” Adair said, not astonished in the least. As though he knew all his possessions would come back to him, given enough time. Like the books of secrets I’d returned to him. Like me.

  I turned the vial around in a complete circle. It wasn’t crushed. It wasn’t damaged in the least. “I don’t understand . . .”

  Adair closed my fingers around it again. “Understanding is not necessary for this spell to work. Faith is.” He handed me the cup. “Drink this.”

  Like his previous elixirs, it smelled of grass and mud, things of the earth not meant to be ingested in such a raw form. I wrinkled my nose at it. “Another potion? Why must it always be a potion?”

  “I suppose you’d rather have it be a dram of whiskey,” he observed.

  “Or even a piece of cake,” I said, and sniffed.

  He tapped the mug. “Drink up.”

  If I had reservations, now was the time to bring them up. If I didn’t wish to go, I could’ve handed the cup back to Adair. I could’ve asked him to assuage my fear of pain or of being lost forever and wandering like a ghost between the planes of existence. I could’ve encouraged him to climb onto the bed with me and blank out all my misgivings.

  But I did none of those things. The abyss was waiting for me, yawning before me like a great black chasm, and I knew if I hesitated now, I might not go through with it. I took a deep breath and swallowed the potion as quickly as I could, so as not to taste it. Despite my efforts, I caught the tail end of it, and to my surprise it didn’t taste of weeds and dirt but of the finest vanilla cake frosted with buttercream. I wiped the last drop from my chin with the back of my hand as I handed the cup to him.

  As he took the cup from me, I couldn’t resist . . . I gazed deeply into his eyes as I leaned against him, and kissed him. For one moment, we were locked together and made one, and it was as though I could feel every emotion he was experiencing at that instant: surprise, elation, gratitude, longing, regret—so much regret—and happiness. I felt happiness, too, and it surged between
us for one long minute, even after our mouths had parted. That kiss was all it took for me to know that I loved him, despite all that had happened between us, despite any doubts I might still have had. I loved him and there was nothing I could do to change that; I’d been stupid to try to deny it.

  Adair felt it, too, in that kiss. He knew that something fundamental had changed between us and he hesitated, waiting for a sign from me. I could’ve stopped it right then, I think. I could’ve told Adair that I’d changed my mind and that would be that. We’d start to explore what could be between us—but it would be tainted from the very beginning. Adair had said as much himself: not knowing what happened to Jonathan would prey on my mind. Adair understood when I said nothing, did nothing, and without another word, he helped me lie back on the bed, and spread a blanket over me as though I was only about to take an afternoon nap.

  I held on to the edge of the mattress to steady myself. “Something’s happening already,” I told him. “It feels like the bed is falling, as though the house is collapsing underneath me.” I tried to smile reassuringly as I spoke, but there are few feelings as frightening as suddenly losing all sense of balance.

  “Will you be okay?” he asked, closing my hand tightly around the vial.

  “I’m a little scared,” I admitted.

  “I’ll be right here. I won’t leave your side. Don’t forget: the vial. Release it and I will bring you back in a heartbeat.” He ran a fingertip over my forehead, brushing a lock of hair aside in a tender moment of concern, my last image of him as I felt myself falling for real, halfway inside another world, with the world I knew galloping away from me. Adair disappeared from my view and I saw nothing but blackness, walls of blackness falling away from me. I held on to consciousness a moment longer, enough to realize that it didn’t feel like the transformation at all. There was no pain, only the feeling of being pulled along at an incredible speed through utter darkness—where was the light everyone talked about seeing as they were dying? And then, just as suddenly, there was nothing. No reassuring presence at my side, no vial in my hand, no lingering taste of vanilla on my lips. No blackness or the rush of wind on my face as I fell. Nothing at all.

  NINE

  When I regained consciousness, I saw that I was in the fortress. I was surprised; I’d expected to be transported to another world, one that was familiar and biblical in nature, like that of Dante’s Inferno or Milton’s Paradise Lost. I don’t know why I’d made this assumption, though it seemed to prove that old saying that wayward souls will turn back to God on their deathbeds. Given my nightmares and the role that the fortress had played in them of late, I probably shouldn’t have been surprised to find myself there, and at least I was on the upper floor and hadn’t woken in the hated cellar.

  As a matter of fact, I shouldn’t say that I “woke up,” as though I’d been asleep, but instead was suddenly aware of my surroundings, as often happens in dreams. Everything looked just as it had in Adair’s house. I was in a wide hall with a long red runner under my feet, and the familiar wooden doors to the bedrooms faced me on either side. The same iron sconces hung on the wall, the same rough-hewn Italianate chairs sat at intervals the length of the corridor. It was so clearly Adair’s home that, for a minute, I wondered if the elixir hadn’t worked and I had only sleepwalked from my room. But when I looked at my surroundings more closely, I noticed that the hall ran longer than the ones in Adair’s house; as a matter of fact, this one seemed to telescope out like a fun house in both directions. If I took a step toward either end, it seemed to snake out farther still.

  The hall was as quiet as a library. I walked up to one door and put my ear close, listening for sounds on the other side, before trying the handle. I strained, but I heard nothing. Had I any reason to choose this door over the one next to it or the one down the hall? I considered this predicament for a minute, but reasoned that I had been set down in the fortress at this precise spot for a reason, and that was to go into the room in front of me. I gripped the cold metal doorknob, gave it a turn, and stepped inside.

  It was obvious that I’d stepped into another dimension. The room I entered wouldn’t have existed in Adair’s fortress. It seemed like the lobby of a grand hotel with groupings of chairs, rattan with pale green silk cushions, flanked by potted palms. The ceiling was high, the room itself very wide. Tall shuttered windows held back harsh white sunlight, throwing sliced shadows onto the floor. Huge ceiling fans circled overhead, pushing around hot, humid air. Streams of people walked by in all directions wearing clothing from an earlier era. The women wore dresses with long, full skirts and wide sleeves, and tall hats perched on elaborately done hair; the men wore tight-waisted morning coats and long trousers, despite the heat. The crowd consisted mostly of Westerners, but there were a number of Arabs, too, in spotless white tunics as a kind of livery. It was a hotel, obviously one that catered to Western travelers, and by the looks of the people and the surroundings, not to mention the heat, it appeared to be somewhere in North Africa or the Levant. As I stumbled along, trying to make sense of the location, I realized that I recognized this place. I’d been here before.

  As I walked slowly down the lobby, gaping at the hotel guests passing by, it started to make sense. This was the hotel in Fez where Jonathan had abandoned me nearly two hundred years ago. I felt a jolt of pain at the recollection, but I told myself that it was only the last, lingering traces of an old embarrassment and didn’t mean that I was still hurt by his cruelty. However, I couldn’t imagine what it meant that I’d been brought here to this time and place. That fateful day, the day I woke to find Jonathan had abandoned me, was not one I wanted to relive. I’d already felt the pain of that betrayal a thousand times. Perhaps that’s what happened in the underworld; perhaps I would be forced to relive all the worst moments of my life. The thought terrified me; I tried not to panic. Hang on and let’s see what happens next, I thought gamely to calm my nerves.

  As I walked through the lobby, I realized that the people all around me couldn’t see me. They couldn’t hear me or feel my presence, either. I was like a ghost to them, here to observe them, not vice versa. But why I’d been sent to this place at this particular moment in time, I couldn’t guess.

  I was about to turn around and look for a way out when my gaze fell on a man in a tall, fan-backed rattan chair. I knew this man. He wore an impeccably tailored suit of light wool, a swallow-tailed morning jacket in a dove gray, with a pale-pink-and-gray foulard silk cravat wound high around his throat. His blond curly hair was tamed with pomade, and a charcoal top hat sat jauntily atop his head. His gloved hands rested on the silver handle of a fine gentleman’s walking stick, and he looked at me over the rim of a pair of dark spectacles, with an amused look on his face.

  “I was wondering when you were going to turn up, Lanny. I’ve been waiting for you for a whole five minutes. You’re late.” It was my old friend Savva.

  I took the chair opposite him, as I’d done in an earlier life when he found me in this same lobby and brought me back from the brink of despair after Jonathan had left me. That was the first time I’d met him, and it was this meeting that made me realize there were more of Adair’s companions walking the earth than I’d hitherto guessed. After our initial meeting, Savva and I traveled together for a number of years, through northern Africa and along the Silk Road for the most part, trying to avoid detection and eke out a living. It had been a precarious existence, mainly because neither of us had any useful skills beyond being decorative and charming. I was only a woman, a fact that counted for little in those days, and Savva was a wildly unreliable drunkard, opium fiend, and homosexual. We were, in short, a suspect pair as far as society was concerned but not a threat to anyone. As long as no one took special notice of us, we managed to skate by.

  The man who sat in the chair in front of me was nothing like Savva as I’d last seen him four years ago, ravaged by heavy drug use and alcoholism. By then, it was clear that what had been thought of as his nature—indolent, c
apricious, and naughty, by nineteenth-century standards—was actually a serious personality disorder, bipolar or some other manifestation, which he’d tried to endure through the increasingly heavy use of drugs. The man in the chair opposite me was the Savva of old, charming, devilish, and sweetly beautiful. He was like a boy bent on playful anarchy, who—with a mischievous glint in his eye—beckons you to join him.

  “I thought I’d never see you again!” Savva exclaimed, at the same time I said, “What are you doing here?” and we both laughed.

  “Are you dead?” Savva asked delicately.

  “No, I’m not. Are you?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.

  Savva nodded. “Yes, for . . . well, a short while. One loses track of time here, one day bleeding into the next, if there are actually ‘days’ at all.” He pulled a gold watch from a vest pocket and waved it nonchalantly on the end of its little chain. “Completely useless here. It reads the same all the time, regardless of whether it’s light or dark. Doesn’t matter if I look at it all day. Useless.”

  “If you’re dead, then it must’ve been . . .” I’d been putting the pieces together and broke off, unable to finish the sentence.

  “It was Adair, yes. He found me and released me,” Savva said calmly. “He told me that you’d sent him. Now, don’t look so shocked; I know you meant it as a kindness. It was a very enlightening encounter and I will tell you all about it, but not right now. I would much rather hear your news. How in the world did you come to be here if you haven’t died? Wait—don’t answer that yet. I want to show you something first. Come with me. We’re going for a stroll.”