An enchanted city they called Vilokan—a place that had been, back in the day, a refuge for slaves where they could practice their religion and exercise other taboos—like learning to read—without interference from their masters.
Nico had told me all about it before. It was more impressive in person, though, than I’d ever imagined. A blue glow illuminated the place—some kind of magic that cohered in something of a firmament suspended above the place.
I suspected it doubled for a barrier, considering that a vast underground place like this in a city like New Orleans, which is largely at or below sea level, was practically impossible without magic.
I knocked on Maman Brigitte’s door. She opened it, revealing an office that more closely resembled a mortuary than a place of study. The whole room was illuminated with candles, dozens of them, in candelabras mounted to the walls. There were several shelves containing jars holding a brown substance of various hues.
“What’s in the jars?” I asked.
“Grave dirt,” Maman Brigitte explained. “All with the decomposed remains of various bodies—quite powerful if used properly. Should you decide to continue your studies here, perhaps you’ll learn in time.”
I bit my lip. “Time is one thing I might not have to spare if this plan doesn’t succeed.”
“Then we should get right to it.”
I nodded and placed the candle and oil I’d purchased, along with Edwin’s urn and the fetish the Caplata had given me years ago, on Maman Brigitte’s desk.
She retrieved a mortar and pestle and set it in front of me. “Grind the ashes together with the oil into a fine paste. The ashes should be fine enough as it is that it won’t take much.”
I broke Edwin’s urn, exposing his ashes. They don’t make those things to be opened easily. I did as Maman Brigitte instructed, mixing a little oil with the ash, until I had enough of the paste that she deemed it sufficient.
She guided me through the rest of the process. We lit the candle and then dressed it with the oil-ash mixture. As the candle burned, the ashes combined with the wax and we poured it in small drops over the fetish until the whole thing was covered in a thin layer of wax. It didn’t do much to make the fetish aesthetically pleasing. But this wasn’t an art project. We were imprisoning a soul—a task that, by definition, wasn’t exactly pretty.
“Well done,” Maman Brigitte said, beaming with a certain degree of pride. “And best of luck to you, Mercy.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll need it. Any tips for navigating hell?”
“If you intend to go with Miss Mulledy, make sure she’s dressed appropriately.”
I raised an eyebrow. “How do you mean?”
“You will have no problem there, my child. For you are already dead, strictly speaking. But for one of the living to enter hell, it will surely raise the attentions of the wraiths who may not take kindly to her foray into their realm.”
“But if I dress her… properly?”
“Traditional sugar skull makeup should do the trick,” Maman Brigitte said. “It is how the Aztecs once appeased those from whom they sought counsel in the realm of the dead. It will not fool the dead, vampire or human, in hell. But it is a way to pay them respect. Enough that they may leave her be long enough for you to accomplish your task, and she might still be able to open the gate for your return.”
“Thanks for the tip,” I said. “I think I can pull that off.”
“And do not forget my husband,” Maman Brigitte said.
“You’ll be reunited soon. You have my word.”
35
ANNABELLE WAS MORE than a little upset that Pauli had apparently been detained after he “attacked” me. I wasn’t sure if she’d be angry at me for it, for just being here and providing occasion for the supposed incident, or if she’d empathize with me. In truth, her emotions were mixed. I could deal with that—a little empathy wouldn’t hurt. Now, it was my chance to try and earn even more favor.
“Are you ready to go?” I asked, pulling Annabelle aside as she attempted to enter the dormitory.
“To hell? Now?”
I nodded. “I don’t want to waste any time.”
Annabelle sighed. “We can try.”
“Try?”
“When I carve a gate with my soul-blade, it’s difficult to say where it will open to. It doesn’t always open into hell. It could take us into Guinee, into any dimension of the Otherworld.”
“I believe in you,” I said. “If at first you don’t succeed…”
“Try and try again,” Annabelle said. “I know the saying.”
“In that case, sit down. I need to prepare you for death.”
“Excuse me?”
I grinned widely. “To prepare you to encounter death. I don’t intend to kill you. I’ll require your abilities in order to return, so it’s in my interest to see to it that you’re protected. In this guise, you won’t fool anyone. But you will honor the dead as such, and they will permit your passage into their domain.”
“Prepare me, how?”
“The traditional death mask was used by the ancient Aztecs who had apparently summoned a gateway to the realm of the dead. When the elders would travel there, they weren’t going to deceive any of the souls who lingered there that they were truly dead. But the mask was a way of honoring the dead—of showing that the living did not take their lives for granted. For them, death was a mystery every bit as profound as that of life. It was a way to exist that was not less than living. It was simply the next chapter in our cosmic existence.”
Annabelle squinted as I began applying white sugar paint to her face. “I didn’t take you for the… scholarly type.”
I huffed. “I’m not. Not usually. When you’ve lived more than a century, when you’ve seen everyone you’ve known in life die, you come to realize that you’ll never join them, that you’ve been somehow spared a death… or robbed of it, however you choose to look at it.”
“I never thought about how hard that must be,” Annabelle said.
“As a vampire, you have two options. Use that to fuel your rage. In that case, you’ll be condemned to a death of sorts. But as you will see, the vampires who die are not whole, even in death. They linger on the outskirts of hell, lacking a soul, unable to get through. It’s where we go, temporarily, when staked. It’s where your blade sends us in total—leaving us there without any hope of coming back, without a staked corpse that might one day revive.”
Annabelle cringed as I added a few flourishes to her death face with a fine-tipped black brush. “I never thought about it that way. You said you have two options? What’s the second one?”
“If we don’t use that to fuel our rage, then perhaps we can use it to fuel our… perseverance. It’s the path Nico has taken, and the one I hope to follow. As we gradually recover something like the humanity we lost, even as we grow more powerful, the hope is that some power, some ability, some opportunity might arise that we could become whole again. That we might recover our souls. Or something like a soul, at least.”
“And that’s why you’re using me…”
“You represent an opportunity,” I explained. “Nico clings to a hope that you, the same girl who damned him, could also be the one who redeems him.”
“And that’s your hope, too?”
I pressed my lips together. “I’m older than most vampires. But not nearly so ancient as Nico. Still, I’ve gone more than a century without being staked. All I know of the realm of the dead is what Ramon has told me. I know enough from his example that being there too long can make us more monstrous rather than less. It makes us more dangerous when our stakes are removed than we were when they went in. But Ramon has spent more of his years as a vampire in hell than he has on Earth. He cannot be faulted for his… eccentricities.”
“Isn’t calling a serial killer ‘eccentric’ a bit of a euphemism?”
I dropped my brush and looked Annabelle directly in the eyes. “You have not felt the craving that I live with
every single day. When a human being kills, he acts contrary to his better nature. He is warped, diagnosed a sociopath. He’s told he is less than what he is, less than human. When we kill, we’re acting according to our nature. For a vampire, to kill and eat a human is no different than it is for you to raise and slaughter cattle.”
“Then why are you any different?”
“I’m not.”
“You don’t rip limbs from their bodies. You don’t bury them under your precious tree. You don’t kill out of sport. Not like Ramon.”
“I don’t?” I leaned over and whispered in Annabelle’s ear, “What makes you so sure?”
“There’s a spark of humanity in you, maybe something left over from before, maybe something new that has come with time. But there is a goodness in you also, I can sense it.”
“All the better to trick you into becoming my next meal, my dear.”
Annabelle rolled my eyes. “I’m no Little Red Riding Hood. And you’re not a Big Bad Wolf.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I ate the Big Bad Wolf for breakfast.”
“Besides, you don’t have to trick me. If you wanted to feed on me, you’d just command it.”
I huffed. “You’re right. I could. But that would ruin the thrill of the hunt. There’s no sport in that.”
“You really do like to hide behind a vicious facade, don’t you? But at your core you want the same things anyone does. You want your life to mean something. You want to love and be loved.”
“Love?” I asked. “You think that’s why I want to rescue Ramon?”
“Why else?”
I shrugged. “When Nico is gone, I’ll be alone.”
“You could make other vampires to keep you company,” Annabelle said. “You could make other vampire friends. Why go to hell to rescue Ramon specifically if you don’t love him?”
I bit my lip. I didn’t have an answer to that question. All I knew was that I couldn’t leave him there. I wouldn’t leave him there, not forever. I’d sooner allow Edwin to move on and join him there than live an eternity on this Earth without him in it. But surely that wasn’t love. It had to be something else. Mercy doesn’t love.
36
THE DORMITORIES WERE empty at the moment. Just Annabelle and myself—and her familiar, of course. She told me her familiar was named Isabelle. How fucking annoying is that? Annabelle and Isabelle? It was so cute I almost wanted to vomit. Though as I finished Annabelle’s makeup, I had to admit she looked beautiful—almost as gorgeous as me.
I was still out of her league, of course. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a few uncouth thoughts about the girl. Vampires don’t have the same kind of lusts that humans do—we have no evolutionary basis that demands we reproduce through intimacy.
We experience that kind of craving through bloodlust. But we do still enjoy a tryst here and there, a little carnal fun. Not to mention, when we do it with humans it really gets their blood pumping. They can’t deny our allure, and in turn, the hormonal release they experience gives their blood a unique flavor, sort of like a dessert.
Not the same sweetness that comes with innocence. It’s a richer sweetness, like a devil’s chocolate. Combine that with other various flavors of human and you never know what sort of treat is in store.
I had to chase those thoughts from my mind. We had a purpose—we had to go to hell. Annabelle summoned her blade and cut a portal, revealing a luscious grove of green grasses.
“I don’t think that’s it,” I said.
Annabelle shook her head. “I’ll try again.”
She tried three more times. Still, no gateway to hell. “The magic I have,” Annabelle explained, “it’s drawn from the Tree of Life. You’re wanting me to take you to the realm of the dead. I’m not saying my blade can’t do it, but something about my magic is resisting it.”
I nodded. “Then look at me.”
“Wait, no… You can’t…”
“Open a gate to the land of darkness, the realm of the dead, the vampire hell,” I commanded.
Annabelle took a deep breath and followed through with my command. This time, the gate opened up directly into a dark abyss.
“How about that,” I said. “I think you like it when I’m in control.”
Annabelle rolled her eyes, apparently choosing not to respond to my comment.
I grabbed her by the hand—the one that wasn’t holding her blade—and pulled her with me into the gate.
Annabelle screamed.
“What is it?”
“It’s Isabelle… she’s in pain. I don’t know if we can do this.”
I placed my hand on the back of Annabelle’s neck. “Fight against the pain, Isabelle. And whatever you do, don’t use your magic to dampen the pain.”
“Why can’t she use her magic?” Annabelle asked.
“As you said, her magic is life itself. You let that stuff loose in a place like this, who knows how the wraiths here would respond? Creatures starved of life… they’d probably descend on you in an instant.”
“Look, just get Ramon, do what you need to do, and we need to get the hell out of here. No pun intended. But her magic… her healing magic. It’s almost like an instinct. Too much pain, too much suffering. She can’t hold it back forever.”
“Trust me,” I said, “I don’t want to linger here any longer than necessary.”
“It’s dark,” Annabelle said. “I can’t see a thing.”
“I can see perfectly. Probably best you can’t see. Don’t get me wrong—I have an appreciation for the gruesome. But this is a lot to take in, even for me. So much suffering, so much pain.” I really couldn’t begin to describe what I saw. The wraiths—vaguely human-shaped spirits—writing in agony, twisting and shrieking in pain. How Ramon had managed to endure this for so much of his existence, how Nico did it for nearly two decades, was more than I could fathom. And Edwin… he’d been here as long as I’d been a vampire, for more than a century. I might be ruthless, but I had to admit, seeing so much pain, thinking about Edwin’s suffering especially, started to ache in my cold heart.
“What do you see?”
“This is like a purgatory. It’s like the souls here are trapped in perpetual torture. Maybe that’s why it hurts Isabelle so much. She is dead, after all, right? This place, it’s like torture to the dead.”
“Aren’t you dead, too?” Annabelle asked.
“Not really. I don’t have my own soul. I’m undead.”
“But you do have the souls of others, the souls you’ve stolen in your… meals.”
“But they’re incomplete. Just slivers of a thousand different souls all mixed together.”
A wraith came charging toward us, and narrowly dodged both of us. It didn’t even seem to notice Annabelle.
“Your death mask,” I said. “I didn’t realize it would work so well. The wraiths, it’s like they think you’re one of them.”
“The wraiths?”
“A wraith is like a lost soul. No longer human, but not a ghost. So accustomed to their tortures that they’ve forgotten who they once were. They’ve become addicted to pain, unable to move on to the afterlife. They can’t let it go. It’s what vampires become when they’ve been here long enough. No soul. No destiny in the beyond. Just stuck here. For vampires, this is our hell.”
“That’s a fucked-up way to spend eternity,” Annabelle said.
“When you stake a vampire,” I said, “perhaps you should think about that.”
“All those neophytes that Nico sent to my house… All those I killed…”
I huffed. “I’m sure they’d be delighted for a chance at revenge. Better keep the ghost in your head in control.”
“Mercy, we have to go. Now.”
I grabbed Annabelle’s arm. “You will not go, you will not summon your blade until we find Ramon. And you will not leave without both of us. Say yes to your goddess.”
“Yes, goddess,” Annabelle said through a grimace, fulfilling my compulsion. “I mean, bi
tch.”
I laughed. “I can be both.”
I looked everywhere. How would I even recognize someone here? “Ramon?” I called out. No response. I took a few more steps. Walking through hell was like wading through tar. It was sticky. It was thick.
Another wraith darted by us.
Annabelle tried to dodge it. Her body moved, her ankle stayed in place. She screamed. Instantly, a green glow emanated from her eyes.
“Oh shit,” I said. “Hold back the magic!”
It was no use. I tried to grab onto her hand, but it was like a jolt of sunlight burning my touch. The magic coursing through her was life magic—it was in some ways the opposite of what I was. No wonder it hurt.
A thousand wraiths descended upon us.
With a blinding burst of green energy, something within Annabelle seemed to explode. She returned with a glow in her eyes. From the look on her face, I could tell it wasn’t her…
“Isabelle?” I asked.
She nodded.
“What happened to Annabelle?”
“I’m not sure… We can’t leave without her.”
“Hopefully we don’t have to,” I said. “I still have some things to do.”
“You don’t understand,” Isabelle said. “We literally can’t leave without her. Summoning the blade, the one we need to escape, it requires both of us.”
“Fantastic,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Well, you work on getting her back. I’m going to try and find Ramon.” I wasn’t sure if he was one of the wraiths—he’d been sent here in his body. I pushed through a crowd of the angry spirits, feeling their rage as they encircled me.
I felt something grip my arm.
“Ma cherie?”
I wrapped by my arms around Ramon and kissed him on the lips. Then I pushed myself away from him. I wasn’t sure where that had come from. “Quick,” I said. “We have to get out of here! And we have to find Edwin.”
“Just this way,” Ramon said. “The other wraiths are swarming the magic. Brilliant idea bringing that here.”
Gates of Eden: Starter Library Page 90
