by Alma Katsu
Surrounded by a quartet of demon guards, I was marched through the castle and down a series of halls to a set of heavy oak doors. Dona, who had led our party, did not confer with the two demons that stood at the entry with spears, but went up to one of the doors and knocked on it boldly. The rapping echoed down the great empty halls. No reply. He cleared his throat, ignoring the vague restless stirring of the guards, and knocked again, even more sharply and heavily this time.
You could hear a muffled moan of irritation from within, followed by a woman’s voice saying, “Oh, what is it? Must you interrupt me now? This had better be important.” Dona threw both doors open at once, radiating with pride over my capture, and gestured to the guards to usher me in. “I have caught her, Your Majesty. I found her and caught her and brought her here for you. Just as you desired.”
I was marched into a bedchamber. It was huge, a cross between the sort of royal apartment you’d see at Versailles and a neglected sepulcher. The room was vast but the furniture was clustered in the center of it, leaving the walls and corners hidden in woolly darkness. The silk wall coverings were mildewed and rotting; cobwebs hung from a giant unlit chandelier overhead. By far, the grandest thing in the room was the bed, a massive structure with posters that thrust heavenward like spires on a church. The bed curtains were great waterfalls of fabric, red velvet lined with gold satin and trimmed with braided swag. It was then, with a jolt of horror, that I realized this was the bed I’d seen in my nightmare. The coverlets were thrown back, as they’d been in my dream, revealing a woman astride a man like a succubus, their flesh tones stark against blindingly white sheets.
The queen. She was tall, almost painfully slender, and luminously white, as though lit from within. Her face was fiercely and coldly beautiful. From where I stood, all I could see of the man were his legs, protruding from under her. She rode him not with wild abandon but with prim control, her eyes closed and her face serene in concentration, pleasuring herself on him as though he were a toy, nothing more.
Dona made a low bow, his snout almost brushing the floor. “Your Majesty, I am proud to present to you the woman you have been looking for—Lanore.”
At this, the queen’s eyes opened and she turned her head, casting a quick gaze over her shoulder in our direction. She stopped rocking and took a deep breath, as though thinking about what she’d do next.
Finally, the man pinned underneath her acknowledged our presence by rising to his elbows. It was Jonathan, tousle-headed and slightly damp with sweat. He squinted at me and then his eyes widened in surprise. I think he would’ve tried to rush up to see me if it had been anyone but the queen sitting on his lap.
“Lanny!” he blurted out. “Good God, what are you doing here—”
“Silence,” the queen interrupted, looking down at him imperiously.
He held her gaze. “But that’s Lanny, that’s my friend. And if she’s here, that means she’s—”
“She’s not dead,” the queen interrupted him again, coldly.
Jonathan didn’t appear to be listening to her. He was upset and continued on. “If she’s here but not dead, as you say, then how could she have gotten here except through you? It’s impossible otherwise. You must’ve brought her here.” Then a look of shock and recognition dawned across his face. “You used me, used what I told you about the tattoo, and Adair. You shouldn’t have brought her here. This has nothing to do with her, she’s innocent—” He spoke faster and more hotly as he got madder, and the queen’s face began to curdle.
“Be careful how you speak to me,” she said, seething, but remaining cool to outward appearances. “There are limits to what I will allow, even from my favorites.” She swung off Jonathan as neatly as though she were dismounting a horse and snapped her fingers at the guards flanking me. “Take him away. I want to speak to this woman alone.”
Jonathan rose as the guard approached him. In the instant he stood naked, I saw that he didn’t look at all like the prisoner in my dreams. Jonathan was unblemished. He had no bruises, no barely healed wounds, no scars of any kind. He didn’t look at all ill treated. To the contrary, he seemed perfectly fine, and it occurred to me that I might’ve been tricked into coming here. Not only was he not abused; if anything, he looked better than the last time I’d seen him—that disconcerting mix of the familiar with a beauty so exquisite and extraordinary that it was nearly painful to behold. I’d forgotten that he was perfection, so perfectly sublime that he seemed almost to shine, as brilliant and luminescent as the sun breaking through the clouds after a storm.
The demon guard, seemingly resentful of Jonathan’s beauty or his favored position, grabbed Jonathan by the arm roughly to lead him away. Jonathan threw me a look over his shoulder—don’t despair, I’ll see you again, he seemed to say—and was hauled unceremoniously from the room.
Now there was only me, Dona, one guard, and the queen left in the room. She stepped down from the bed and reached for a sheer red robe as she passed by it, though it did almost nothing to hide her nakedness. She cast a sly eye downward at Dona, who bowed lowly a second time.
“What are you still doing here?” she demanded.
“A word, Your Majesty, if I may,” he said, twitching nervously. He knew he was taking an awful chance speaking up at this moment, but he might not have the opportunity to address the queen again, and certainly not when she was freshly indebted to him. “It is about the value of my service to you. I wish to raise the small matter of, um, a reward, your most gracious and generous Highness. While I, your loyal and humble servant, am most happy to have been able to bring Lanore to you, I would be most gratefully, most genuinely grateful . . .” Dona was starting to falter, the queen’s haughty silence beginning to unnerve him.
“A reward!” the queen squawked. She sounded insulted.
He lifted his shaggy head and looked the queen squarely in the eye. “I wish to be returned to my former body, Your Majesty. I wish to be made into the man I once was. This is what I desire. And if you do this for me, I pledge you my everlasting and undying gratitude. I shall be your faithful servant to the end of time . . .”
“Silence!” she bellowed, driving her fists to her sides as though the very sound of his voice shattered her nerves. He stopped speaking and cowered like a mouse in front of her, and the queen’s cool calm returned. A wickedly false smile surfaced on her face. “So you wish to return to your human form, do you, demon?” There was something in her tone that made my hair stand on end, an undertone that reminded me of the dry, ominous shake of a rattlesnake’s tail. Dona cringed before the queen in a hopeful and expectant bow, so blinded by his own desires that he could see nothing else, not even the tragedy that was about to descend on him like an eagle screaming down from the sky.
“Very well—your reward, demon,” the queen said, and with that a spasm passed over Dona. A look of surprise crossed his bullish face as a ripple warped the space around him, a distortion of light and air, and then, in the next instant he was gone. And in his place was a squat, fat bullfrog—olive with black speckles, his skin glistening with slime, his bulbous eyes rolling independently of each other in his head.
The queen leaned over and glared imperiously at the frog—and there seemed to be no question but that it was Dona. For a moment, I was afraid that she was going to step on him, crushing him underfoot. Instead, she gave a voluptuously triumphant smile at what she’d done and waved him toward the door. “Impertinent demon! You dare to expect gratitude for you to do what is, after all, your duty? You expect to be rewarded for merely doing your job? Well, there is your reward! Now, off with you! And if you are wise, you will not trouble me with your presence again, or next time I will turn you into a flea or a worm,” she warned. Dona did not even chirp in resignation, but hopped toward the door as he’d been commanded.
The queen then turned to me. Her icy stare sent a shiver down my back. She circled me slowly, looking me over. As she passed close by, I could make out her figure quite easily under the thin ve
il of her red robe. She may have been slender but she was muscular as well, and crackled with frightening energy—an energy similar to Adair’s, I couldn’t help but notice.
She plucked one of my curls, held it up as though she was examining it, and then let it fall. “So you’re the one he favors. For the life of me, I don’t see why—there’s nothing special about you.”
My blood began to race. I didn’t mind her insult, for it was true—there was nothing special about me. Even though she hadn’t said who “he” was, I knew of course: she was talking about Adair. It was then I noticed that, for all her coolness, she was seething. She was hurt.
The queen placed one bare white foot in front of the other as she circled me a second time. “Yes, you’re really rather plain, nothing extraordinary about you in the least. You’re like a little brown wren.”
I decided to put on a brave front. “It was you behind the dreams, wasn’t it? You tricked me into coming to the underworld.”
She laughed, bringing a hand to her sternum. “You accuse me of tricking you into coming here? It was no trick—you came for Jonathan, didn’t you? And he’s here.”
“So, let me speak to him,” I implored.
“In due time,” she said with an airily dismissive wave. She resumed pacing around me, studying me. She even ran a hand across my shoulders, along my back, like a child taunting me. Her touch was strong and electric and made me imagine, involuntarily, what it must be like for Jonathan when they were together, what it was like to couple with her, to be inside her.
I broke away from those thoughts. “It’s Adair—he’s the reason you’ve brought me here. I know that’s it, but I don’t understand. . . . Why do you need me? If you want him, why don’t you bring him here yourself?” I asked impudently. Desperation and exhaustion made me bold. After all, what more could she do to me? I assumed she needed me alive or else she would’ve killed me already.
She frowned, and I could swear the room dropped ten degrees instantaneously, a chill descending over it. “Indeed, the man you call Adair is the reason I’ve brought you here. Don’t worry, it will all be made clear to you eventually. A little patience, my brown wren. That’s all that’s required of you, a little patience.” She snapped her fingers at the remaining guard. “Take her away.”
SEVENTEEN
My head whirling, I was brought by the demon guard to a small room. Unlike the replica of Adair’s fortress with the doors that had transported me back in time, there was nothing dreamlike or evanescent about this castle. It felt oppressively real. The room was a room and not a portal. The plaster walls were solid, withstanding the beating of my fists. The heavy wooden door looked as though it could repel a battalion. The tiny room was as neglected and run-down as the other parts of the castle that I’d seen, with the same filth accumulated in the corners and a dull, greasy film over the windows. The only piece of furniture in this room was a small wooden bench. A few old blankets had been thrown in a corner, ostensibly meant to function as a bed.
I sat on the bench and looked down at my legs. They were still smarting after the fall, and it was then that I noticed I was nicked up and bleeding. Normally, I wouldn’t think twice about a cut or scrape, because within minutes I would heal as good as new. But this time, it didn’t matter how long I stared: the wounds remained, the scratches looking unreal and vibrantly red against my white skin. It seemed that a different logic applied here in the underworld—for some reason, I was no longer immortal. Adair’s curse had been stripped away from me.
I was hit by a sudden wave of longing for the world I had left behind. Even if my circumstances were a bit twisted, that world was familiar and normal; I knew what to expect. Here, I’d been drawn into a fairy tale, and not one of the sweet ones, either; this was one of those violent stories told to frighten children and make them behave. I was the prisoner of an evil queen who had an army of fiery demons at her command. I had been locked away in an unassailable castle surrounded by a dark, impenetrable wood that was home to evil, ravening spirits. The world I knew was a million miles away, impossible to return to—especially now that I had lost the vial Adair had implored me to hold on to as our only means of communicating in the underworld.
What I really wanted, I realized, pacing around the room with tears sprouting from my eyes as I grasped the seriousness of my situation, was Adair. I was in way over my head and he was the only person even remotely capable of dealing with this realm. By magic or sheer force of will, he could do something about this; he could make it go away. I knew in this moment that I trusted him implicitly and despaired that I couldn’t tell him, that I might never get the chance to tell him.
Oh, it was weak of me to think like this, to want to be rescued, and I hated to give in to such weakness. I also knew this feeling was only temporary. I allowed myself to indulge in this momentary despair because I’d come so close—I’d made it to the underworld, I’d made my way to Jonathan—before it was snatched away from me. I was exhausted.
I was sitting on the threadbare blankets in my cell, ready to cry myself to sleep, when there was a soft knock at the door. It opened abruptly and Jonathan strode over to me quickly, cradling my face in both his hands as he kissed me on the top of my head. I must’ve looked cold because he slipped off the robe he was wearing and gave it to me. “Lanny, Lanny—what in the world are you doing here?”
“Believe it or not, I came for you,” I said weakly, knowing how ridiculous it sounded.
He chuckled darkly. “I was afraid of that.” He led me over to the plank bench and we sat, him cradling me on his lap. My cheek pressed to Jonathan’s chest, I explained why I’d come after him. I told him how I’d dreamed that he was in trouble and needed me. As much as it sickened me, I told him about the dungeon, too, and how it had mimicked the basement of Adair’s own fortress and how the nightmares had seemed to hound me. I told him how I’d begged Adair to send me into the underworld.
He twined our fingers like we were children. “That was brave of you, Lanny, but very foolhardy. I hope you see that. I may not be happy here, but I’m not being tortured—though even if I were, you shouldn’t have risked your safety to come after me. There are limits to what anyone can do for another person.”
I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to believe that. There were some people in my life for whom I would go to any lengths, and Jonathan was one of those people.
“Are you listening to me, Lanny?” he said, nudging my chin. “You needn’t worry about me. I can take care of myself. And I have as good a deal as anyone could hope for in the afterlife.”
“Really? This queen seems to have made you her sex slave.”
His cheeks reddened and he ducked his head. “I prefer the term ‘consort.’ She was taken with me and insisted I remain. The day will come when she tires of me, I’m sure, and then she’ll let me go. She seems to tire of things easily.”
I lifted my brows. “But you don’t want to be here, Jonathan. Do you?”
“She’s the ruler of the underworld—it’s not as though I have a choice,” he replied. “What’s the alternative? Do you know what happens to your soul after you die, Lanny? You come here to the underworld, knock around for a few days—apparently to loosen the bond to your past life—and then you are dispatched, jettisoned, into the void. Returned to the great, wide cosmos from which we came, broken down into elemental particles and energy. Recycled for parts.” I thought of Luke’s last moments—when he realized what was happening to him, that the finale had finally come, and how the endless void of space had opened up to receive him—and shivered.
“That’s what Adair was trying to spare us by making us immortal,” I said softly. “And look what I’ve reduced you to by taking your life—I’ve made you a gigolo.”
Jonathan tutted and butted his forehead against mine playfully. “Have some respect. At least I’m gigolo to the gods.”
Gods. I still couldn’t wrap my mind around that. I leaned in conspiratorially. “What do you know about them
—the gods? Have you seen any others, besides the queen?”
He shook his head. “No. I’ve heard her refer to them. But no, I don’t know where the others reside except ‘elsewhere.’ I get the feeling that once you’re in the underworld, you stay here. There’s no coming and going.”
“So no one has escaped from the underworld? That can’t be strictly true. After all, you did, once. When Adair brought you back to life.”
“Right. You can’t imagine the excitement that caused. Here, it only seemed like I was gone for an instant, because time is so much slower here. And I think they already had their antennae up because of the tattoo. But apparently I wasn’t the only one to ever disappear from the underworld: I’d heard that one other soul did it a long, long time ago. They still don’t know how he did it, but they caught his accomplice and put him away under lock and key,” he said.
“I wonder who it was who escaped,” I mused. But I knew; I felt it in the pit of my stomach. Jonathan, too; he gave me a strained look.
He wrapped both his hands around one of mine. “There’s more I have to confess to you, Lanny . . . I’m afraid that your being here is all my fault. You see, I’m the one who told the queen about Adair. It’s because of the tattoo. When she saw the tattoo, she wanted to know how I’d gotten it and I told her about Adair, and you. . . . She must’ve sent you the dreams in order to trick you into coming to the underworld, Lanny. She’s been using you. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s hardly your fault. How were you to know?” He hugged me tighter against him, wrapping both arms around me. I continued, “What I don’t understand is why trick me into coming to the underworld? Why not go after Adair, if he’s the one she wants?”
