The Tower

by L. A. McGinnis

  “Give us the names of the antechambers.”

  “Regret, Anger, Disease, Pain, Fear, and Death.”

  “And Death will take all our souls?”

  “Every single one of them.”

  “And you swear to restore them when we make the return trip?”

  “I promise.”

  Somewhere there was a catch, Gabriella thought. Somewhere, in the words—or the promise, or Hel’s intent—this was a trap. “Swear it. Swear it on your freedom. Swear to me you will restore all of our lives to us, on our return trip, or your freedom is forfeit.”

  Fire burned in Hel’s eyes, but she bit out the words. “I swear.”

  “Well, then,” Hunter observed drily. “I suppose that’s the closest we’ll ever get to a promise.”

  “Hunter, please,” Hel’s tone turned pleading. “I’m trying…”

  “Let me stop you right there, before you make a fool of yourself.” Hunter’s eyes remained cold. “We’re a team. A family. And while I know you don’t have a clue to what that means, I do expect you to keep your word. As my mother, I have every right to expect it. Don’t let me down.”

  For a moment, Gabriella wasn’t sure she’d heard right. Not until Hel offered, with no trace of sarcasm, “You can trust me, Hunter. I won’t let my daughter down, not this time.”

  There were six of them, one more than they’d planned.

  But one of the six was blind and a total pain in the ass, so he barely counted.

  Seven, actually, counting Hel, although who knew what would happen to her if they didn’t make it through this. She’d probably end up in a vineyard in Bordeaux.

  Thankfully, they all fit into one vehicle, since gas was running low, and the roads were terrible.

  Gabriella ended up plastered between Odin and Balder in the backseat, Tyr and Hunter in front, Mir and Hel crammed into the rear storage area, the goddess bitching the whole way. “I honestly don’t understand why I’m back here with this oaf. Hunter’s smaller than I am, she’d fit better. My neck hurts. And my pants are getting wrinkled.”

  “Shut up,” Hunter and Tyr yelled in unison, before turning up the music so high it made the windows vibrate. Gabriella double-checked her knives. Not knowing what terrors awaited them made this ride all the longer. And that was the horrors they expected. Once they reached that island…

  “It’ll be all right, Gabbie. I’ll take point once we get down there, after that, stick close to me.” For once in her life, she didn’t argue. She was busy praying for enough strength to make it out of the vehicle and through this first portal, whatever that might entail. Her legs were already shaking from the short walk from the house to the truck. She needed sleep. Three days’ worth. But there was no way she’d risk sending anyone else in her place.

  Balder gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. “I’ll make sure you get your chance.” He held her eyes. “Even if I have to carry you into that cairn, do you hear me?” Suddenly everything went blurry, and when warm tears slid down her face, he wiped them off. “Now, none of that. We go in as a team, and we come out as a team.” It was all she could do to nod.

  Odin was to her right, studiously ignoring the whole thing, thank God. Staring out the window as if there was anything to actually see except blank whiteness.

  “When we get down there, it’s going to be different from what you expect,” Odin kept his voice soft, so only she could hear. “There’ll be some Grim skittering around, and you’ll be able to see the ghosts of the dead, hear their voices, too. The Grim should keep their distance. It’ll be cold, a different sort of cold, so keep your coat on, and no matter what, don’t get wet. Don’t let yourself get separated from Balder, do you understand?”

  “What about you, Odin? You can’t see?”

  “I can take care of myself well enough. You’re the only mortal on this mission, Gabriella. And don’t think that Hel hasn’t considered that. You stick close to Balder and Hunter, they’ll watch out for you.” Tyr eased the truck onto the Lakeshore, speeding toward the monolithic, black spires of the city, dodging hulks of abandoned cars. “If we get separated, you focus on surviving, do you hear me?”

  “I understand. But I still think you need to…”

  Odin cut her off. “I can look out for myself, otherwise, I wouldn’t have come.” He dropped his voice even further, his words feathering her ear. “If we get separated, concentrate on getting yourself out. Don’t wait on me. Focus on what you’re doing and pick me up on the way back if you have to.”

  Downtown was a whiteout when they parked. And Burberry’s, even with its front windows smashed out, still somehow managed to impress. Cooing, Hel shook the glass off a sweet woolen pea coat, then walked toward the middle of the store and disappeared into nothingness. Without a backward glance, Mir and Odin followed, and Balder wrapped his arm around her waist, and then…

  Gabbie thought it was like being squeezed by darkness, an unrelenting pressure pushing in from all sides, from within and without. Then she was free of it, and standing inside some kind of cave, where water roared in the distance, and small, indescribable echoes rattled around them, stretching out into the vastness of the space.

  Hel took a long, deep breath. “Ah, it’s good to be home.”

  And marched off into the dark.

  The place had the smell of death. Of rot and decay, something Gabriella had not prepared herself for, although, in retrospect, she should have. When Balder offered his hand, she gripped it tightly, then reached out and took Odin’s hand. Down and down they descended, slippery, gleaming steps, slick with condensation, dribbling with small rivulets of water, lined with slimy algae, and she paid attention when Mir told her to watch her step. Up ahead, she watched Tyr’s feet almost go out from beneath him. Heard the clear, crystal sound of Hel’s laughter rebound over rock in response.

  And then the floor leveled out, the stone underfoot became grittier, softer. “Is this one of the antechambers?” she whispered to Balder, pulling him in close, if only to smell his clean, familiar scent over all the noxious fumes filling up her nose.

  “This is the Hall of Seven Days.” Odin’s voice. “It is the first stop on a soul’s journey into the Underworld. From here, things will only get worse, I’m afraid.” But his hand, still firmly in hers, gave a hard squeeze. “Remember what I said. Keep close to Balder, don’t get separated.”

  A single burning torch illuminated a small part of the darkness, but she could feel the vastness of this place swallowing them up.

  “This way, come on, don’t be shy.” Hel beckoned them on with a wave of her arm, pea coat swaying with every step she took. “The chambers are up ahead. Once you enter, there’s no order.” She spun around, warning in her eyes. “It depends on what’s inside of you, if Death chooses you first, then you’ll exit on the other side, into a small, lit chamber. Wait for the rest of us there. If you are unlucky, well then…” She pursed her lips. “There’s a chance, slim, really, that you’ll have to go through all the chambers, and reach Death last, but I suppose anything’s possible.”

  Regret, Anger, Disease, Pain, Fear, and Death.

  Gabriella recited the rooms in her head.

  All of them applied to her, in one way or another, she realized uneasily. She’d lived with each of those emotions—monthly, daily, minute by minute. Her hand tightened on Balder’s, and he gave an answering squeeze. She wondered if she’d ever trusted anyone as much as she trusted him right now. Hand in hand, they stepped through the first doorway, and the second they went through, her hand was torn from his, and she was alone.

  The gale that tore through her was fire lashed with pain, a lancing, tearing sensation that flayed skin from bone, pulled her eyes from her sockets, burned her flesh. Oh God, it hurt. Into some small, rational part of her brain, a single thought floated. Pain. The Room of Pain.

  And then, Odin’s voice echoed right behind it. “If you get separated…focus on surviving.”

  Survive.

  One wobbly
step, then another. Once before, she’d thought she would to die. In the desert, covered in stab wounds. So thirsty she thought her mouth would shrivel up. Another step. She hadn’t died that day. Another step. She wouldn’t die today.

  But the pain. It chewed into her, with sharp, clever teeth, gnawing away at flesh, all the way down to bone. Another step. Another. Her hand reached out, found a wall. A doorway. And then she was through. Only to be ripped apart again, this time, from the inside out.

  Faces floated in front of her face, dead, mottled, bloated faces, one after another. The man she’d killed that first outing, in her pretty red dress, slipped the knife into him, after practicing for hours and hours. The men she’d killed after that, the family from the limo. Each and every one of them asking why? Why?

  She pushed through them, past them—and they floated back, bloodier, festering, horrible reminders of who she had been, what she had been. What she’d taken money to do, money she’d spent, money she’d enjoyed for God’s sake. She whirled, the faces moving with her, taunting her. She stumbled away, shoving at them. She had to get away from them, it was too much, she couldn’t believe how many there were, and her energy was flagging; she went down to her knees and buried her face in her hands.

  Oh God, why did she have to remember them now? It had been so long since she’d thought of them. A small, niggling thought wormed its way between the faces. Regret. You’re only inside a room, she reminded herself, none of this is real.

  But it was real. All of them were real, or had been, until she’d killed them. For money.

  For her job.

  Job. She had a job to do. Find the Orobus. Kill him. Get Ava back. Pushing to her feet, she closed her eyes, willing the faces away, and found the next doorway with trembling fingers.

  And so it went, one after the other.

  The red-hot fire of anger, her blood electrified with rage, so much so that rational thought was blotted out. Except for Odin’s voice, somehow implanted in her head. Survive.

  Disease ravaged her, tore at her, and drained the last of her flagging energy until she crawled into the next room.

  And found her father waiting. “Well mi angel,” he said, his voice like cream, “I have to admit. I never thought you’d end up down here.”

  Rising to her feet, Gabriella finally faced Fear.

  He still had on the black suit. Neatly pressed, as if he’d just pulled it off the thin, plastic hanger, and his shirt was so white and crisp she swore it was brand new. His thick hair was swept to the side, immaculate, exactly how she remembered. Dark, of course, like hers, but neatly cropped in a sedate way that wouldn’t attract attention. He was also handsome, a trait she remembered he used to his advantage more often than not.

  “The last time I saw you, Angel, you had blood on your hands,” he remarked casually, his favorite knife in his hand, the handle glinting blue-white as he approached, until he towered over her. He kept his voice pitched in that low, commanding tone that she instinctively obeyed. Always. “You had such promise, the day you were born. But you turned out to be such a disappointment.”

  He cocked an eyebrow, those hazel eyes lighting up with something akin to excitement. “Nothing to say? Your mother would have said something, Gabriella.” He drew her real name out, rolling the rrr’s.

  She faced him while he circled. She knew what he was capable of. She’d seen the things he’d done, the things he enjoyed doing to people. His clever way with a knife.

  “I must say, these are the times I miss your mother. She and I made quite the team. You, however, left us before you reached your full potential.” She made some kind of strangled sound, and then?

  And then the bastard smiled. The same cold, blank smile he’d smiled just before he’d killed her mother, right in front of her. Same smile as when she’d killed him in the brick row house in Chicago, right before she’d buried him in the backyard. The same smile he would be smiling forever. Because this was who he was.

  Fear.

  Then somehow, he appeared behind her, and before she had a chance to parry, his cold, sharp blade slid into her, the point popping through the skin, slipping through muscle and sinew, making its cunning turn to miss bone and find her vital organs.

  He was fear incarnate. How many men, women—perhaps even children—had disappeared because of him?

  How could she have ever called such a monster father?

  Truth was, she never had.

  Watching red blood bloom on her shirt, she wondered if she had been stabbed moments ago, or years ago. It was hard to remember, time blurring together, all her life lost as she stared into those cold, dead eyes.

  “Aren’t you going to say anything? I have to admit, I expected more out of you.” He sounded bored, almost. “I never thought I’d see you again, not after you shoveled dirt on top of me. Watching me with all that hate in your eyes. You were glad to be rid of me, and I should have never turned my back on you.” He smiled that horrific smile again, his gaze following the blood sliding down the front of her. “My Angel.”

  How could he say that name?

  His eyes met hers, and she recognized the anticipation in them, the perverse delight he was taking in all of this. In the torture. In the fear itself. As if the dread became a living thing, filling up the room.

  Blood trickled over her hands, onto the floor, and Gabriella went to her knees, the pain shattering flesh and bone and determination. He came up behind her, and she felt the slice of the knife as it stroked up along her spine, felt a fresh rush of blood gushing down her backside.

  Her father leaned over and pulled the hair away from her face. “You could have been perfect. My own angel of death, my lovely killing machine. The day you were born, I knew you were destined for greatness—you were both born with a caul, and blessed by the Lima bruja herself. Your mother believed you were part demon, but I… I saw your potential. You only needed a direction.

  “But you were too weak. You could have embraced what made you special. You ran away, instead.” The fear began to shift inside of her, her breathing almost stopped as he continued, sounding bored. “And now, hija, I will kill you.”

  “And then, Gabriella, we get to do all of this over again.”

  He can’t be here. This can’t be real.

  “Over and over again. Just like when you were a child. Practice makes perfect, does it not? And that is what you and I shall do until you get it right.” He leaned in, those dark eyes devouring her. Drove the pearl-handled knife in again. “Until we get it perfect. You killed me, mi angel. You gutted me like a fish, and now you are going to pay.”

  Gabriella could still smell his blood on her hands. Still feel the way the knife had slid through his flesh. Still saw the surprise in his face, as he realized who had finally gotten the best of him, after so many years.

  None of it would have happened, except he had killed her mother. Slaughtered her, in a manner so nonchalant, so offhand, the act seemed eerie. And when he’d come for her next, she’d killed him before he’d had the chance…

  “…focus on surviving.”

  A man’s voice, deep and commanding, rang in her head—like an insistent memory—or from somewhere far away. For a second, a sense of purpose licked up inside her, then died away, the ember cooling.

  “Such a waste of a good blessing,” he went on, playing with the tip of his knife, eyeing her as if looking for the next place to push the point in. “You could have been anything. But no matter, now you are mine.”

  Her teeth clacked together as his attention drifted back to her. She didn’t have the energy to climb to her feet. Instead, she knelt, bowed, beaten, on the floor.

  “Of all the ways I thought I’d spend my eternity, I never thought it would be like this.” The pool of blood encircled her, and her father skirted it, his shiny loafers keeping outside the widening pool. “But who am I to argue with Fate?”

  “You killed her.” The words that came out of her mouth surprised her as much as they surprised him.
The crunch of a leather sole on stone stopped abruptly. And she braced herself for the next slice.

  But there was only an empty silence behind her, and when she dared to look, he was staring down at her. “That’s right, though it pained me to do it. Would you like me to tell you why?”

  No. Yes.

  “I killed her because we only had enough food for three weeks. With her gone, it would have lasted six. With you gone, it would have given me nine. Simple rule of survival. But you just had to fight back, didn’t you?”

  Survive.

  There was that voice again, with its superior, bossy tone, demanding she listen, that she remember…

  “…focus on surviving.”

  “Why…” Thought came in spurts now, flashes interspersed between the waves of pain. “Why did you call me Angel?”

  “Ah, mi nina, because you were born with a crown on your head and ordained for great things.”

  “Yes,” Gabriella managed, pain a throbbing ache. “You’ve said. But of all the names, why that one? We weren’t even religious. And I was surely never an angel.”

  “Our midwife was a powerful bruja from an ancient coven. She demanded the caul from your birth, which I sold to her, in exchange for a single fortune. She foretold you would slay a dios oscuro—a false god. She decreed you were the angel of death, with judgement in one hand and a knife in the other…” Her father’s words trailed off as her gaze whipped up to his.

  Holy shit. She was here for a reason. Odin’s vision had been true. The embers of purpose banked hot again, and she straightened. She had to get out of here and onto the island. Her father might stand over her. But he had not beaten her.

  She had a god to kill. Pushing to her feet, Gabriella rose.

  This wasn’t the end.

  Because she knew what the end of things felt like. And it had been the day she watched Balder plummet into a plume of fiery ash and disappear. And she’d charged straight into that hellfire after him. Not caring about the outcome.