by Tara Fuller
“Don’t…” he growled. “Just…don’t.”
I pulled away and wrapped my arms around my knees, hugging them to my chest, blinking away the darkness. My heart beat against my ribs, tapping out an unsteady rhythm against my legs. Something sharp and fiery was racing through my veins. Fear, maybe? I didn’t like it. I didn’t know what to do with this body. I didn’t know what to do with this reaper. I just knew I couldn’t give up. I gave him time to catch his breath and pull himself back together. Finally, he sat back on his heels and his violet eyes scanned the room. His gaze caught on something behind me and he squeezed his lids shut, intent on blocking it out.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I have a feeling you’re about to find out.” He climbed unsteadily to his feet and grabbed my arm to haul me up with him. The dim blue light in the room faded, and the floor vibrated beneath us. The room around us began to crumble, and a new world took its place. Black vines crawled along the walls and floor, weaving into an impenetrable barricade.
At my feet something squeaked. I stepped back to find a small white mouse staring back at me. When he was done inspecting my boot, he skittered away after a trail of bread crumbs. A little girl with a dark, heavy braid draped over her shoulder peeked up at me as she tossed bread crumbs out of her pocket. She was so thin, too thin, her cheeks too sharp, her eyes dark and hollow.
“Ich bin hungrig, Bruder,” she whispered. The bread crumbs in her hands turned to ash, and a pained sob ripped free from her throat. Her hunger, her desperation, they were like thorns pricking me from the inside out.
“Seline…” Easton shook his head hard as if he were trying to clear it. “No. Not real. She’s not real.”
She looked up at him with tears in her eyes, offering a handful of ash. He stumbled back, refusing to see.
The scene began to change. The girl faded back into the dark, and the ground began to rumble again. Trees burst through the floor, creating a forest to close us in, and I latched onto Easton’s arm, dizzy from confusion, from fear. Between the skeletal branches, shapes took form, the flickering of torches lighting their path as they moved forward. People. All around us, their chanting began, low and terrifying.
Witch! Witch! Witch!
The anger and hungry need to hurt and destroy whistled around the room like a cyclone.
“No…” Easton stumbled back, jerking the blade from his belt. “We have to get out of here, Red. Now.”
“W-what’s happening?” I said. “What do they want?”
“Me. They want me.”
“Easton!” A shrill voice echoed through the cave and suddenly a girl stood before us, shivering and worn. She resembled the first girl, but older. This one was maybe fifteen. Her skin looked too pale, her eyes too flat to be alive. Easton grabbed my arm and reeled me back against him. His heart hammered against my spine, and despite the fear consuming me, I took a moment to memorize the feeling. As long as I could feel that insistent pulse of life, I knew he was with me. He wasn’t lost to this place.
“Who is she?”
“My sister,” he whispered, backing us toward the exit.
“Your sister?” I looked at the girl, who was inching toward us, sobbing. I could see it, in the sad curve of her mouth, the shape of her eyes. There was no mistaking that she was a part of him. Sorrow billowed off her in thick, choking smoke, strong enough to make my knees buckle beneath me. Fear. Anger. Pain. I could barely breathe through it all. The room was full of emotions, intent on burning us all to the ground. A horde of black-hooded figures gathered around the girl, pulling at her hair, setting fire to her tattered dress.
“We have to help her!” I pulled against Easton’s hold, but he refused to let me free.
“Bitte, Bruder! Lassen Sie mich nicht!” The girl stumbled forward, pulling away from the hands tearing at her, and fell to her knees. Behind her, the crowd parted, and a man approached, dripping wet and laughing. His pale, knobby fingers grabbed her by the hair and hauled her up on her feet. It was him…the man from the water.
“Won’t you save her, Easton?” He laughed. “No? Just as well. Her death will be so much sweeter with you here to hear her screams. Perhaps even sweeter than the screams of my men you slaughtered…maybe we should compare.”
“Don’t look at her. She’s not real.” He stopped at the wall and tore at the vines blocking the entrance. “She’s not real. None of it’s real,” he whispered more to himself than to me.
He was afraid. This…everything happening had been designed to obliterate him.
Shock stunned me for a moment before I leaped to help him tear down the wall of vines that blocked our escape. I grabbed the blade from his shaking hands. It felt awkward and heavy between my palms. Wrong. But it didn’t stop me from lifting it above my head and swinging at the writhing wall in front of me. I didn’t know what was about to happen in this room, but I felt deep inside that Easton must not be here to see it. We had to get out. The fear making my heart race didn’t matter right then. Only Easton. I blinked hard to clear away the fuzziness coating my mind and fought against the vines. Easton paused, breathing hard, and looked at me as if he’d never seen me before.
“Face me, coward!” The man behind us shouted, and a gurgled scream followed. I started to turn, but Easton grabbed my arm and stopped me. His eyes met mine, burning, pleading.
“What are you afraid of, Red?”
“What? Why?”
“Because if we can’t get out…I’d kind of like to know what to expect next.”
Before now, fear wasn’t something that existed in my world. The only thing my Father had ever let me be afraid of was never escaping my box. But now…I was afraid of losing Easton and being alone in this place, of never finding Tyler. But most of all…I was afraid of missing the chance to show him what happiness really was. But instead of admitting any of it, I took a deep breath and said, “I…I don’t know. I’d never been afraid of anything before I met you.”
He shook his head, looking me over like it might be the last time. “I never should have brought you down here.”
“Well, you did,” I breathed, swinging the blade again. “Now are you going to help me get back out or not?”
Behind us, a blood-curdling scream ripped through the air, and Easton winced. I touched his face and forced him to look at me. I didn’t wait for his permission. I simply pulled a layer of his fear into myself and replaced it with a sense of calm. I exhaled a shaky breath, fighting past the panic I’d swallowed down.
“Not real. Remember?”
After a moment he finally nodded, and a fierce look crossed his face. He grabbed the blade from me and hacked through the vines, slicing and grunting. The screams grew more brutal. Louder. Closer. The heat at our backs felt like flames, demanding we turn around and give in to the pain behind us. Soon there would be no escape. Only this artificial world created to destroy the man at my side. I collapsed against the wall, unable to block the chaos out. The need to turn around and take their pain, to give them relief, was more than I could resist.
“Don’t give up on me, Red,” he breathed. “Not yet.”
“I’m not.”
Easton growled and swung the blade one last time. The vines withered and fell away. He grabbed my hand and shoved me through the small opening that was quickly weaving closed, then climbed out behind me.
I dropped to my knees in the dark, stony corridor, exhaustion taking over my body. Easton’s blade clattered to the ground just before he sank down beside me. He stared blankly into the dark, eyes on fire.
“What was that?” I asked. “Did that really happen to your sisters? To you?”
He didn’t answer.
“It did…” I looked back at the cavern, which was once again a deceptively peaceful escape. The vines were gone. A blue light rippled out from the cave’s mouth. “Is that why you killed those men? Because they hurt your sisters?”
He looked up, his face hopeless, haunted. “Does it matter? It still got me
here.”
I slipped my hand over his, marveling at how hot his skin felt against mine. At how my fingers fit perfectly between his. His sorrow and regret flowed just under his skin, pulsing against my palm. I didn’t take it. How could I when he didn’t even want me to know it was there?
“It matters to me,” I said.
He stared at our hands for a moment before inhaling sharply and pulling away, severing our contact. He balled his hand up into a fist, flexing his fingers as he looked away from me.
“It was just a nightmare, Red. Don’t worry about it.”
“A nightmare? Don’t you have to be a asleep for those?”
“Not here.” He watched the cave entrance we’d just escaped. He looked like he was reliving it all over again. “Hell digs deep. Finds what you’re most afraid of. The thing you’re hiding from. And then brings it all to life.”
“And the man in the water?” I asked, inching closer. My thigh pressed against his, and he didn’t move away.
“Dietrich,” he said, flatly. “His name was Dietrich.”
“You’re afraid of him?”
He looked at me, and I’d never in my existence seen someone look so hollow. “I’m already dead, Gwen. What’s left to be afraid of? Everything I was ever afraid of losing is already gone.”
Dead? Is that how he saw himself? The man I saw was anything but dead. He was fierce and brave and stubborn and beautiful. Dead was rotting flesh, and brittle bone buried deep in the earth. Not this. This…was just another kind of life. Perhaps a twisted, dark kind of life, but life all the same. Death was a moment. A vehicle to get you to the other side. Didn’t he see that?
I grabbed his hand before he could push me away and pressed it to his chest. I knew he could feel the heart beating under his palm, because I could, too. It thudded like a drum, pulsing through my veins, making me feel awake and alive.
“Does that feel dead to you?”
“It’s not life.” He looked down at our clasped hands and swallowed. “You look at all of this, eyes wide with wonder, like it’s some kind of gift…”
“It is a gift.”
“It’s a loophole,” he said. “A way to inflict the maximum amount of pain a soul can feel. This body isn’t a gift, Gwen. It’s a curse.” He pushed to his feet and holstered his blade.
“Have you ever known anything but pain?” I asked, climbing to my feet, refusing to let him dismiss me. “When you were alive, surely there was someone, something that brought you joy.”
He stopped, eyes fixed on the ground as if he were a world away, and a wall of sadness erected itself around him. He’d lost so much. I could feel it. If I could only—
“Don’t dig for things you know nothing about, Red.”
He turned and strode into the shadows that wove themselves around him like chains. He wanted me to be afraid of him. Wanted me to leave him to exist in his bonds alone. He wanted me to run. I stood on shaky legs and looked over my shoulder to the dark corridor that led to home. Then returned my gaze to the boy venturing into the depths of Hell ahead.
I should have heeded his warnings, should have listened to my father’s ever-present voice in my head, telling me to turn back. But I didn’t. I did the only thing I could. The only thing the newly beating heart in my chest would allow me to do.
I followed.
Chapter 12
Easton
“Stop looking at me like that, Red.”
My irritation spiked as I stopped walking and my boots sank into black sand. Beside me, Gwen wrapped her arms around her middle and looked out into the vast darkness ahead. Thanks to the nightmare caverns, she’d seen inside my head. Witnessed the pain and anguish that lived there. And she was still…here. Trusting me to lead her into the worst parts of Hell, to keep her safe. I didn’t know what to do with that. I knew what I wanted to do—run like hell from the acceptance in her eyes, the way she made me feel.
She’d seen more of me than anyone ever had. And now she was itching to work her happy magic on me to make it all better. I could see it in the sad, hopeful way she looked at me with those big bottomless blue eyes that didn’t know a lost cause when they saw one. There was no happily ever after for me. No redemption. Only Hell. The sooner she realized that, the better.
“Where else would you like me to look,” she said, sullenly. “Everything else is so…”
“Ugly? Terrifying? Against God’s plan?” I raised a brow. “I have a slew of other adjectives if none of those apply.”
“No. I think those work just fine,” she said, rubbing her arms. “What’s that sound?”
In the distance, a symphony of moans blew in on a foul-smelling breeze. It was impossible to decipher the words. It was one unending sorrowful song of a thousand souls, forever trapped in the restless grey waves of regret.
“It’s the Sea of the Dead.” I tossed the handful of black sand into the dark to gauge how close the water was. A second later a surge of fresh screams rose from the waves. We were close. Closer than I normally liked to be to this place, but we didn’t have another option. “We need to cross it to get to the city.”
Gwen stepped forward to peer across the sea, and I watched a bit of her wonder wither away. A breeze blew in and stirred the loose hair that tickled the side of her face, and despite everything…I couldn’t stop wondering what it might feel like to reach out and smooth those threads of fiery satin back behind her ear.
This. This was why she didn’t need to be here with me. I didn’t need to be fantasizing about finding excuses to touch her. I needed to focus on finding this soul. She was Balthazar’s daughter, for Christ’s sake! I ripped my gaze from her and stalked down the beach, searching for the little two-person boat I’d paid Cyril three souls to get me. I’d had to keep those souls in one piece all the way to the city just to get them to him, but it had been worth it. When I’d been new at this, long before my alliance with the imp, there had been only one way to cross the Sea of the Dead. To dive in and fight the current of tortured bodies. It took days to cross that way. Not my favorite method of travel.
I spotted a glint of silver down the beach and made a mental note to let Cyril win one next go-around.
“Over here!” I called to Gwen as I dragged the rusted metal boat to the edge of the water.
“We have to go in there?” Her voice held a slight tremor that she quickly covered up, but I’d heard it. She’d never had to be afraid of anything before she met me. Well, she’d have plenty to keep her up at night after this. If there was anything Gwen would regret at the end of her existence, it would be meeting me. I gripped the side of the boat and looked up at her through the hair hanging into my eyes.
“I’m not going to let anything happen to you, Gwen.”
She smiled, and the sight of it, here, in this place, did unforgivable things to my insides. Things I didn’t deserve.
“You called me Gwen.”
“Don’t get used to it.” I smirked and nodded to our vessel. “Get in the boat, Red.”
She glared at me as she stepped aboard. I jogged back to dig up the metal paddle I’d buried on my last trip in, then hopped in and shoved off. The vessel bobbed in the water. The current of hands pulling at the bottom quickly caught us and carried us out. Beneath us, agonized moans rose, curling up over the edge until I could hardly hear myself think. I jerked the paddle out of the grip of bony gray fingers and shoved it back down, using the floating bodies around as leverage to push forward.
“H-how long will we be out here?” Gwen shouted above the screams that grew louder with each stroke of the paddle. I grunted and shoved past another begging face peering up from the waves.
“Please,” the face pleaded. “No more. Nomorenomore nomore…”
The begging faded into the clutter of voices behind us, and I shook my head trying to find clarity among the noise.
“Not too long. Just focus on that connection,” I said, pausing to calm the screams in my head. My blade had been burning the flesh at my
side for the past hour. People were dying above us. And I was down here. Even if I did get Gwen out safe…I was screwed. Balthazar would never excuse putting her in this kind of danger. Once he realized where we were, I was as good as dead. A second time. I could only hope that Scout was picking up the slack while I was gone.
Above our heads the sky growled, thick and dark with heavy-looking clouds. Acid rain. I glanced over at Gwen, and fear threaded itself through my insides. It had been so long since I’d felt this. This cold, consuming fear for someone else. It was the kind of fear I couldn’t afford. Yet there it was. Driving me, pushing me to paddle harder, to keep her safe. Thunder rolled across the sky again, and I picked up speed, praying to the Almighty above that I could get us to shore before those clouds began to empty. There, I’d be able to find cover. Out here, we were sitting ducks.
“No…” Gwen whimpered, and that small sound of distress dragged me away from the screams. I looked over my shoulder and found her slumped against the side of the boat, her arms dangling over the edge.
“Gwen?” I pulled the paddle out of the water and dropped it in the bottom of the boat when she didn’t answer. “Gwen!”
I scrambled across the boat and stopped cold when I saw her. She slid her hands through the water and closed her eyes. Her fingertips brushed over the sea of floating faces, and tears slid past her lashes and down her face.
“There’s so much pain…” she whispered. “They feel lost. So lost…”
“You can feel it?” I followed her gaze to the writhing bodies, barely lit under the bloody glow that burned across the horizon. “You can feel them?”
She nodded and braced a palm on the edge of the boat to keep her balance. The water between her fingers glowed. The light spread, crawling over the dark, unforgiving sea of faces. One by one their screams were extinguished. Sighs of relief and laughter took their place. Shock paralyzed me for a moment as I watched the impossible unfold before me. Souls bound to Hell were never spared from their pain for even a moment. Their eternal torment was just that…eternal. I tore my gaze from the gilded glow spreading over the sea of bodies and looked at Gwen.
