by Donna Hosie
“Elinor is tired and hungry,” I replied. “But still as glorious as the sunset after battle.”
Lord Septimus smiled. “And how are you, Prince Alfarin? You are a changed Viking from the devil who appeared in Hell all those centuries ago. And changed for the better, if I am not mistaken?”
“I am very well, Lord Septimus,” I replied, honored that the great Roman was taking time from his busy day to talk to me—let alone notice any changes in my person. “I would even go so far as to say I have never been happier.”
“Death is not an easy state to exist in, but I much admire your stoicism, Prince Alfarin,” said Lord Septimus. “Your willingness to adapt to change is a quality to which we should all aspire.”
I laughed. “Little changes in Hell, Lord Septimus. Routine is a gift of the gods. Those not fortunate enough to be Viking would say the gift of routine was a present from the Highers.”
“Don’t dismiss change so easily. For our existences are in more hands than just the gods, and especially the Highers.”
“You are a Roman, I am a Viking,” I replied. “We worship different gods.”
“And yet it is in the souls of women and men that I truly believe,” said Lord Septimus with a wink. “It won’t be long now . . . ,” he muttered.
Lord Septimus turned away and was swallowed by the darkness before I had a chance to reply.
Madness.
Yes, Hell was full of it.
15. Elinor’s Bane
Exhaustion has totally claimed me: mind, body and what is left of my soul. Virgil appears to be the only devil in our group who is not suffering after the torment of the Seventh Circle. We stop for food and rest in the passageway to the Sixth Circle, but I barely have the energy to chew before my eyelids betray me.
I do not know who takes the watch, and I am relieved beyond measure when I awake to discover that none of the group has been harmed. I must not allow my exhaustion to overcome me again. We are moving through the Circles steadily, but if they continue to be this physically demanding, we will need to factor in more rest breaks. Time is not on our side—we all know that with each passing second The Devil grows more impatient. Yet we cannot rush, for if we do, our quarry might pass right beneath our noses without our knowledge. I must ensure that we do not miss Beatrice Morrigan. The pace of this journey is a delicate balance.
I look to my friends. Mitchell and Medusa are curled up together like spoons. Elinor has her head on my lap.
Apparently, I slept where I slumped.
From here on, though, I will have a renewed burst of vigor in my step. We may have started this quest at the wrong end of the Circles, but we have already traversed the horrors of the Ninth, Eighth and Seventh. We are a third of the way through, and while our souls have been tested to the extreme, Team DEVIL has endured.
It is time to carry on with our quest to find Beatrice Morrigan. It seems that my friends feel the same way, because they are starting to stir.
“So, next up is the Sixth Circle,” says Mitchell, stretching. “And in here is . . . ?” He trails off, but his pink eyes are wide and expectant. He’s looking at me, Medusa and Elinor, as if he doesn’t care which of us answers, as long as we prepare him.
“The Sixth Circle is for heresy,” replies Elinor nervously, grabbing at the back of her delicate neck. “Those who murder with righteousness in their black hearts after denying others the right to choose their own path of worship.”
“That is why it is getting even hotter,” says Virgil. “The murderous heretics are trapped in flaming tombs.”
Mitchell immediately puts a comforting arm around Elinor and gives her a quick squeeze before letting go.
“We’ll get you through this one. I’ll even sing to you if you want. You’ll be so appalled it’ll take your mind off where you are.”
My princess laughs, and I slap Mitchell on the back to show my appreciation. Elinor will not relive The Devil’s dreams in this circle, but it will surely bring back memories of her own entombment, before Mitchell and I . . .
I still cannot bear to think of it.
“Virgil,” calls Medusa. “Before we’re faced with the awful prospect of Mitchell singing, do you know which Skin-Walker looks after this circle?”
“Its name is Haeresilion,” replies Virgil; his opaque eyes are fixed on the roof of the tunnel. He sticks out his tongue and licks his chapped lips. “Why does it matter?”
“I like to know what I’m facing,” replies Medusa. “And giving it a name makes it less of a monster. I’ve learned that one the hard way.”
“Does anyone else find it weird that apart from Perfidious, we haven’t run into a single Skin-Walker yet?” asks Mitchell. “Not that I want to or anything. It’s just I thought they were going to be our biggest problem in here.”
“Maybe they’re busy,” replies Medusa. “Their kind of busy.”
“I do not want to think about how those monsters get busy,” says Elinor, hugging herself. “They are so evil.”
“You still do not understand what you have in your possession, do you?” calls Virgil. His voice is slightly higher than the mocking tone I have become accustomed to. It is almost as ladylike as the tone Mitchell sometimes adopts when he is agitated. I am compelled to tease him, as I do Mitchell in those situations, but Virgil is old and feeble and it does not seem fair to insult his manhood when he has so little of it to cling to. Instead, I just answer his question.
“We are aware that we have a Viciseometer, Virgil,” I reply. “And we have already acknowledged that we cannot use it until we have found the Banshee, for none of us has seen every circle, and we cannot travel to and fro without a destination to visualize.”
“You are not seeing what is under your nose, Viking,” snaps Virgil. “You have a weapon of war in your midst that you haven’t even begun to comprehend! Sheer luck has seen you through the Circles thus far. Nothing more.”
“Are you saying we have a weapon against the Skin-Walkers?” I ask. I stop walking to ponder this, and as I do, I am briefly distracted by a dense shadow behind us. Team DEVIL appears to now be in the center of two very different atmospheres. We have occasionally seen a bright light igniting a path before us, but behind us is nothing but darkness.
Virgil’s cracked lips rise up at one end. His sallow skin twitches. I hold my hand up to silence the others and they acquiesce without a word. Not for the first time, I wonder if Virgil has another sense he has not told us about. A sixth sense that can read minds. I do not doubt this ability exists. Elinor has often been able to read mine.
Elinor. Her name appears like a printed word across my field of vision, and once again, the blind guide reacts with a smirk.
Then I remember how Perfidious reacted when Elinor passed him on the way out of the Ninth. He yelped. Perfidious has been in her presence on a number of occasions, and even held her captive for a brief moment in the cemetery in Washington, DC, without fear.
But that was before . . .
“They are afraid of Elinor,” I say, my voice an awed whisper. “The Skin-Walkers now sense she was used as a Dreamcatcher. They cannot and will not touch her.”
“Those monsters cannot be afraid of me,” says Elinor. “I am nothing.”
“You are not,” says Medusa crossly. “You are everything, El, and you are amazing—brave, loyal and true.”
“You’re one of the smartest devils I know,” replies Mitchell. “And you’re self-taught. Do you realize the discipline that takes, Elinor? For you to teach yourself how to read, and then to go and read most of the books in Hell’s library? Other devils fall to pieces when they realize Hell is what they’ve got for all eternity, but you just go right on with existing. Septimus calls Alfarin and me stoic, but you’re even more stoical than—wait, is that a word? It doesn’t sound right. Stoical.”
“Elinor, we turned ourselves into weapons in the land of the living when we learned to immolate, but The Devil has turned you something into something far more powerful in
Hell, perhaps without even realizing it,” I say. “You saw the effect that little boy had on the Skin-Walkers when we were seeking the Dreamcatcher.”
“But I do not want to be anything that The Devil made me!” cries Elinor. “Especially not a weapon! And doesn’t that put ye all at greater risk? The Skin-Walkers need only separate us and they can take ye.”
“Time for the rope again,” says Medusa. She and Mitchell are no longer connected. I cannot recall them untying it, but then, as Mitchell would say, I was not completely with it during our ordeal in the last circle—whatever it is.
“I bet that’s why Beatrice Morrigan has been able to go through the Circles,” says Mitchell. “She’s the original Dreamcatcher. By the time she ditched The Devil, she’d probably absorbed so many dreams that she was practically a weapon of mass destruction. The Skin-Walkers have probably built her her own private lodge down here, just so she’ll stay away from them.”
“Finally, the new boy shows some brains,” cackles Virgil. Mitchell shoots him a filthy look, although not as mutinous as the one Medusa gives the guide. Her teeth are clenched so hard she looks as if she would love to pummel Virgil’s hooked nose across his cheeks.
“This is what I was trying to tell you all before that Minotaur creature came bearing down on Alfarin,” says Medusa.
“What?” asks Mitchell.
“I just couldn’t understand why the Banshee would come down here to find herself,” replies Medusa. “But it now makes sense. If you need some time and space to figure yourself out, you don’t need to be distracted by the one person who’s driving you crazy. So what do you do if you’re The Devil’s Banshee? You come to the Nine Circles. Because this is the one place in Hell I bet The Devil wouldn’t come.”
We all look at her quizzically.
“When I was bargaining with him to get Elinor back,” Medusa continues patiently, “he told me he couldn’t just leave his office to go traipsing around the Nine Circles looking for his wife. He said there’d be anarchy with him gone. So it makes perfect sense that Beatrice would come here. In a way, it was a test of The Devil’s love. Would he risk anarchy in Hell to come and find her? So far, he hasn’t taken that risk. So here she’s been, in the worst place in Hell, safe and sound. It wouldn’t be safe for anyone else, but it is for Beatrice Morrigan because she’s the original Dreamcatcher. Your analogy, Mitchell, of a weapon of mass destruction is a good one—”
“Why, thank you.”
Medusa rolls her pretty pink eyes and continues as if she hasn’t been interrupted. “—because I bet you anything she could tear this place apart if she wanted.”
“And yet I remember what you were saying, wise Medusa, about Purgatory and Paradise,” I say. “What if, after all this time, Beatrice Morrigan is satisfied with her time in the Nine Circles, and she’s given up on The Devil coming after her? What if she’s looking for an escape? A different existence entirely? What if she wanted to get to some kind of Paradise—like Up There, for example? What if she’s found a way?”
“Judging from what the angels have said, I don’t think Up There is the Paradise the living think it is,” says Mitchell.
“It is just a thought,” I say.
“But are ye saying she might not be here?” asks Elinor, a note of panic rising in her voice.
“I think we are definitely on the path to Beatrice Morrigan,” I reply. “But what if we don’t find her in the Circles? Are we to try to enter another realm entirely?”
“Either way, we don’t have a choice,” says Mitchell. “We have to go through all nine to get anywhere.”
“Hang on, though,” says Medusa. “Virgil, we need you in this conversation, and for once in your existence, save the insults, please. When you took Dante through to Paradise, you entered it via the Ninth. Why can’t we just go back to where we started and find the entrance to Purgatory that way? If she’s there, it’d be a lot better for us to find her without having to suffer through the rest of the Circles. And if she’s not, then at least we can cross it off the list of possibilities.”
“Because this is true Hell, child,” replies Virgil, massaging his wrinkled temples. “And to be worthy of leaving it for Paradise, one must suffer the torment of the nine.”
“Whoever built this place is seriously crazy. How can anyone be that sick?” wonders Mitchell.
“The Skin-Walkers were the first evil, Mitchell,” Elinor reminds him. “The hate and wickedness they must have been feeding on since man developed consciousness is something we cannot even comprehend.”
Medusa’s little nostrils are flaring. I know she is not truly breathing, but I have noticed that she—like Mitchell—spends more time using that natural reflex than Elinor and I.
“We have come a long way, Medusa,” I say. “We may have lost the book, but amongst us, it is clear that we have enough knowledge to continue.”
“Well, I don’t,” says Mitchell morosely.
“Perhaps not, Mitchell,” says Elinor. “Yet ye are the one who asks the important questions to start the discussion in the first place. Without ye, the rest of us would be silent with our thoughts for company.”
And she reciprocates the hug that he gives her.
“Perhaps you do not need me at all,” says Virgil hopefully. “I would be happy to part ways now.”
“Lord Septimus said you were to be our guide,” I reply. “So that is what you’ll do. You also test us with questions, although my friend’s manner is far more pleasing on the ear. Your mockery makes me want to throttle your stringy neck.”
Virgil hacks up phlegm as he laughs. He spits it on the ground, and Medusa yells as some of the green mucus makes contact with her sneakers.
“We’re clearly not far enough away from the Seventh Circle yet, are we, Viking?” he sneers. “But then again, perhaps this appetite for violence is simply your natural state.”
“Ignore him, Alfarin,” says Elinor.
“I will find that very easy to do,” I reply, but Virgil sidles up to me and whispers in my ear.
“How was Valhalla?”
I push him away. Virgil is weak, old and blind, but he is a snake in a penitent man’s cloth of red robes.
Red is the color of danger.
“You know nothing about me,” I growl. “Nothing about any of us.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” sneers Virgil, twisting his head toward Elinor. “But you are forgetting, I know this realm, and I know yours. I know The Devil and Septimus. And I know five ritual offerings when I smell them.”
“Five?” asks Mitchell. “That’s where you’re totally wrong, man.”
“Virgil is blind, Mitchell,” Elinor reminds him. “And ye have many intonations of voice. He could have mistaken ye for a girl.”
Medusa’s and my laughter is cut short by Virgil.
“There are five of you being sacrificed by Septimus,” repeats Virgil. “There is another here, ordered to stay out of sight unless absolutely necessary. The smell of burning flesh is but a rumor with the peasant, but with the fifth one, the stench is as strong as that of the burning heretics.”
“What the Hell is he talking about?” asks Medusa.
“He’s nuts,” whispers Mitchell, although his face betrays his genuine hurt. “Septimus would never sacrifice us.”
But Virgil has managed to take away the renewed energy from Team DEVIL with one sentence. We continue in silence through the passageway to the Sixth Circle.
We reach a wall with steep stone steps. The haze from the heat gathering above has distorted everything into an orange-tinged blur.
“After you, Virgil,” I say. “You are the guide, you go first.”
Virgil starts to climb; Elinor and Medusa follow. I stop to tuck my axe into my backpack, blade first with the handle protruding, as I cannot hope to climb such a steep incline one-handed, but Mitchell pulls me aside as I am fastening it.
“Virgil said there were five of us here,” whispers Mitchell.
“Ignore the o
ld fool,” I reply. “Elinor was right. There are times when you sound like the female of the species, my friend.”
“But he said the fifth smelled like burning flesh. That’s what the Skin-Walkers said, when we were at Stinson Beach, remember?”
“But there are only four of us,” I say.
But Mitchell is shaking his head. His grip on my arm intensifies.
“I think Virgil’s right. I think Septimus has sent someone else into the Circles. You know that bright light we keep seeing streaking past us? What if it’s someone immolating? Someone who’s always angry?”
“You cannot mean . . . ?”
Mitchell nods furiously.
“Yes. I think Jeanne is here.”
Sextán
Alfarin and Elinor
The central business district was known as the hub of Hell and was where many of us worked. Elinor’s workplace, devil resources, was located on floors 211 to 277. By the end of the year 1980, another floor was added to accommodate the teeming personnel files of the dead. No one understood why. No one read them. Yet in some way or another, bureaucracy has a way of infiltrating the heart of all civilizations, living or dead, over time. Why, even the Vikings had started taking minutes at meetings, though it was a bit pointless. There are only so many variations of the words fight, challenge and beer a Viking scribe could record on a scroll.
The higher up the CBD you worked, the more important the office. This tradition, like everything else, was dictated by The Devil’s whims. For instance, over the years his love for plush furnishings intensified. As a result, the floor where his drapes were embroidered and his cushions tasseled and his couches upholstered had been steadily climbing the levels of the CBD. When I arrived in Hell they were on floor 578. By 1980, they were on level 4, and rumor was that they were about to move higher.
Level 1, of course, was reserved for the Oval Office and The Devil’s most senior staff. Elinor and I never ventured that high. I did not have dreams of advancement within the ranks of any workplace, let alone The Devil’s, and neither did she. But we did like to step out onto the balcony of devil resources and gaze down upon those devils on the lower floors who were also venturing out. We did not suffer from vertigo. Indeed, we found the ever-expanding facade of the CBD rather special. With thousands of tiny flaming torches burning as far as the eye could see, we often thought it was as if the sky had been turned onto its side, and as we looked over the balconies, we could almost convince ourselves that we were looking out across the stars.
