by E. A. Copen
He’d do it to Remy in a heartbeat, too. The realization nearly stopped me cold. I was only alive because he thought I was useful. After the attack in the arena, he had to know I’d be coming for him again. Morningstar knew me well enough to know I didn’t give up. He’d have prepared. If we failed this time, it wouldn’t just be me that suffered. He’d go after Remy, Pony, Moses…Everyone I knew would suffer.
I looked over at Khaleda curled up in Josiah’s arms. Hunting down the demons that had hurt her wasn’t something I could do. That was her fight if she chose to do it. Vengeance was too personal a thing for me to butt in on. If I knew Khaleda, she definitely would once she was back at full power. And if she came to me for help, I’d give it in a heartbeat. Not because I owed her, or because there was anything even close to resembling romantic attraction there any longer, but because she wanted to be a good person. Yeah, she was a little rough around the edges, and maybe she sustained herself by drawing on the life essence of other people, but she wanted to do good. I’d seen her try. She deserved her chance at a normal life just like anyone else.
Yama was right about one thing. I was full of anger and wrath.
“I’m sorry I messed up last time.” I hoped she was still awake to hear me. “I’m going to fix things. I’m going to kill him so he can’t hurt anyone ever again. I know you wanted to be the one to do it, Khaleda, and I took that away from you. I don’t expect you to excuse that, especially after everything that happened with Osric. When you’re better, if you ever decide you want to settle that score, all I ask is that you settle it with me. You leave everyone else out of it.”
Khaleda sighed. “I’m not going to kill you, Laz. Not anytime soon. I’ve got other names on my list now.”
“Whatever history you two have, sort it out later.” Josiah said, shifting Khaleda’s weight. “Look there.”
I looked up from staring at the black path underfoot. Ahead, a brilliant orange light lit up the darkness. As we got closer, the source of the light appeared, a huge gate made of bones stacked on top of each other. Flames leaped from between joints, empty eye sockets, and gaping mouths. The Gate of Fire.
The wall of heat hit us about a hundred feet from the gate itself, so hot it threatened to melt the skin from my bones. Of course, I had no skin and no bones. Everything I was experiencing in Naraka wasn’t happening to my physical body, but to my soul. If my soul burned up, I’d have no chance of getting back to my body. I survived the road to Yama’s palace. I could survive this door. Yet as I took another step, and the heat washed over me, I could no longer convince myself it wasn’t real. The pain forced me back a step.
“The skull,” Josiah urged. “Use it.”
I unwrapped the skull and held it out in front of me. Heatwaves parted, creating a small pyramid of survivable space behind the skull. Josiah fell into step behind me as I slowly moved toward the door, flames crackling in the air on either side in brilliant red and orange. It would’ve been beautiful if it wasn’t terrifying.
One opening remained in the gate where the skull would fit. I wedged it in carefully and stepped back. The flames died with a loud hiss, and the gate creaked open.
“After you,” I said turning to Josiah.
He squatted and carefully lowered Khaleda. “It’ll just be a minute. I’ll be back for you.”
She tried to glare at him, but I still saw the hurt and fear in her eyes. “You’d better be.”
Josiah walked through the gate without so much as a goodbye to me. Bastard.
“You didn’t come here for me,” Khaleda said, staring at the door. “You’re doing this for Emma.”
I sighed and stretched out on the ground next to Khaleda. “Don’t take it personal, but yeah. You mentioned there was a way to get her back, but you weren’t around, so I found another way.”
She offered a tired smile. “I like this way better. Not many women out there whose men would walk through Hell to get her back.”
“Literally,” I added. “And don’t forget killing the Devil. Then again, I’m not like most men.”
“No, you’re definitely not.” She pushed herself up, careful to avoid moving her broken leg. “You do know killing him won’t be the end of it. Morningstar is a monster, but he’s been the monster the underworld needed. With him gone, there will be a power vacuum. Demons and gods fighting for control over his domain.”
“I thought you’d take it over.”
She shook her head. “At one time, maybe. But I couldn’t do it now. I want no part of it. I just want to tear it all down. I’ve spent my life hating and hurting, taking and never giving back. I’ve been exactly what he wanted me to be.”
I shrugged. “So why don’t you try being human? It’s not so bad. I mean, we might not have the awesome ambience of eternal pain and suffering, but if you get desperate, there’s always New York. I hear it’s pretty miserable there.”
Khaleda chuckled and launched into a coughing fit. “Thanks, Lazarus. For the laugh. I suppose that’s a point in humanity’s favor. No matter how bad it gets, there’s always someone out there making other people laugh. We’re sitting at the gates of Hell, naked, beaten, and battered, and you’re making jokes.”
“First lesson in being human. Take your joy where you can. You never know when you’ll get another chance.”
A bright light flashed, and another tear in reality opened up, revealing the darkened tomb on the other side. Josiah stood looking haggard, his arms outstretched. Blood dripped from his nose, eyes, and ears. The trip back must’ve been rough.
Josiah gritted his teeth. “You’ll have to bring her. I can’t enter.”
I turned to Khaleda who nodded. I tried my best not to make direct contact with her skin, but she still whimpered in pain when I picked her up. I brought her to the portal and passed her to Sybille who held her arms out. When I tried to step through, however, Josiah put a hand on my chest.
He smirked, showing bloody teeth. “Sorry about this, mate, but rules are rules. You’ve got to come through the gate,” he said and pushed me back through the portal.
I fell on my ass but managed to get back up just in time to see the tear snap closed. That son of a bitch. When I got back to Earth, I was going to kick his ass.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I walked through the gate exhausted and into a turn-of-the-century Irish pub with walls made of faded gray stone held in place by dark, stained wood. Hand-sewn curtains adorned a frosted glass window while gas lamps flickered, illuminating tired faces. The men gathered in the pub provided a window through time to when knee breeches and linen shirts were the standard garb.
It was such a surprise I stumbled and nearly lost my footing. Everyone at the bar twisted to glare at me, their stern gazes silently judging.
“Well, if t’isn’t the Pale Horseman himself.” The woman spoke with a gruff, scratchy voice. She sat at the closest table with her back to me, a fine gray trail of smoke drifting up in front of her. Bright red-gold curls flowed over wide shoulders from beneath a black felt hat with a crimson feather in the band.
I walked up to the table, hands in my pockets to look at her face. Not because I needed to; I was already mostly sure of who I was supposed to be talking to since there was only one red-headed woman Loa that I knew of.
“Maman Brigette.” I inclined my head.
She removed the cigar from her lips and grinned, showing teeth yellowed by age. “Look at you. I’d invite you to sit, but then I’d have to stop staring at that ass.”
“Well, I’m flattered, but it’s been kind of a long walk. I’m dying to plant it.”
She chuckled and pushed out a chair with her foot. “Aren’t we all?”
I sat. It was as close to Heaven as I’d ever been. Until my butt hit the chair, I hadn’t even realized exactly how tired I was. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get back up.
Brigette waved her cup at the bar. “Hey, who do I have to blow to get another drink around here, eh? And bring another for my date. Bloo
dy poor service in the After. Not like in the old country.”
Too bad Josiah missed out on meeting Brigette. They’d have gotten along perfectly.
She folded her arms on the table and leaned in. “Kerrigan, that’s an Irish name, no?”
“My grandfather’s still kicking it with the New IRA in Belfast as far as I know. That Irish enough for you?”
He was the reason I knew anything about Maman Brigette. She was an imported deity from Irish lore, adopted by practitioners of voodoo once it reached the New World. In Ireland, she was Brigid, goddess of healing and life. Guess she got tired of that and came to the States where she married Baron Samedi and adopted Nibo. I knew more about her time as an Irish goddess than her more recent role as a Loa of death.
Brigette pressed her cigar into a glass ashtray just as our drinks arrived in wooden tankards. She took hers and raised it to me in a toast. “To displaced souls.”
We clinked our cups together, and I took a deep drink. It was a mistake. The rum in my cup tasted like it’d been infused with hellfire. I dropped the cup and doubled over, spitting and coughing as the drink traced a line of fire down my throat and into my gut.
Brigette roared with laughter. “Hot enough for ya? What’s the matter? You can walk through Naraka naked, but you can’t handle a little scorpion pepper in your drink?”
I blinked away tears and ran a sleeve over my mouth and nose, mopping up the fluids leaking from them. “You could’ve warned me! Christ, that burns.”
“Weak stomach but a strong heart. I like you, boy. I don’t see why my idiot husband gripes so much. He could’ve done worse.” She crossed one leg over the other and chugged until she drained her cup. Impressive. “So,” she said lowering the cup, “I’m tasked with offering you some sort of advice.”
I snorted. “Is that what you guys have been doing? Offering advice?” Guess you might call it that if you stretched the definition as wide as it would go.
Brigette shrugged and brought out another pre-trimmed cigar. “Can’t speak for the boys. Bet they were all vague assholes, right? Kriminel give you a rough time? He was dropped on his head as a baby, you know. Violent, but not too bright, picking a fight with a Horseman. Give us a light, would you, sweetie?”
I looked around and spied a candle on another table. It was the only open flame I saw, so I grabbed it and held the fire under the cigar for her to light it.
She puffed a few times, really getting it going, then removed it from between her lips to blow out a pair of perfect circles. “I’m going to put it to you straight, Laz. The road ahead is the roughest yet. You’ve still got to make it through Irkalla and the Nightlands before you ever make it to She’ol. Provided you make it, and you win, I’ve got to ask you the hard question. What next?”
For the last few days, I’d been so focused on getting Emma’s soul back, I hadn’t made plans for the future. Vaguely, I knew I’d have to fix her body before I could put the soul inside it, and I’d have to confront Loki about whatever he was up to, but that all still felt distant. I’d deal with it when I got to it.
I shrugged. “I figured I’d close the shop for a few days, stay with Emma until I was sure she was okay. Have that drink with Moses. See Josiah off. Just life.”
“You know that ain’t what I meant.” She tapped cigar ash into the ashtray. “I mean long-term. The end. Say you beat this. You get the girl, you get your daughter, your house, your life. Then what? You’re smart enough to know you don’t get a happy ending.”
I swallowed, blaming the tightness in my throat on the peppered rum. “I don’t care what happens to me, as long as Emma and Remy are okay.”
“You should care.” She gestured at me with the cigar. “I don’t know what it is with you, whether you think you’re not worthy of peace and happiness or what, boy, but you’ve got to quit fighting it. You want to be happy? Shut up and look around you. Stop chasing the impossible all the time. Accept that there are just things in this world you can’t change and get back in line.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I can’t. I don’t care if it sends me to an early grave. I’ve made peace with that. I’m not going to just stand by while assholes like Morningstar screw people over.”
Brigette smoked her cigar in silence for a few moments. “Well then, you’d best get a hell of a lot stronger. You know what that means, don’t you? How a Horseman gains power?”
“Souls.” My blood chilled. In the past, I’d used souls to heal myself or to get a temporary power boost, but only in an emergency. I couldn’t become like Morningstar and Baron Samedi, keeping a collection of souls to top myself off whenever I needed it. Souls were raw power, but any soul I kept wouldn’t flow downriver to be reborn. I’d become everything I hated.
But if the choice was between that and letting even bigger monsters prey on the people I cared about, I’d do it. Just like I’d worked with the Archon last summer. I’d have burned the whole city down to save Remy and Emma. That realization scared the hell out of me. How far was I willing to go?
Brigette nodded slowly. “You don’t like it. I can see it in your eyes. That’s good. Men who like power should never have it. Unfortunately, once you have it, it’s hard to live without it. I wonder if you can do it. Only time will tell.”
She put the cigar down and stood with a grunt. “Well, we’d better get you on home. You think about what I said now.” She waddled to the door of the pub and pulled it open.
Bright light flooded the bar, and I stepped into it, feeling more unsure than ever.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The tomb was dark, cold, and smelled like fresh blood. Josiah knelt in the center of the room covered in it as if he’d just climbed out of a literal bloodbath. On the floor around him were circles painted in rapidly drying blood. Two headless black roosters lay on the floor in front of him. Their heads were nowhere in sight.
He huffed out a breath and stood. “There you are, mate. Was starting to worry.”
I marched out of the portal and punched him square in the jaw. He staggered back. He’d be down for the count if I hadn’t pulled the punch at the last second.
“I suppose I deserved that.” He wiped a small streak of blood from his bottom lip. Hard to say if it was from the hit or if it was there before.
“You think?” I gestured to the tomb. “What’s with the chickens? Where’re Khaleda and Sybille?”
“The spell to open the portal between Hell and Earth requires some very specific ingredients. As for the second question…” He gestured to the exit. “Sybille objected to the ritual I chose and left after doing her part. She took Khaleda to the truck to warm her up.”
I studied the blood-covered Josiah. If Sybille objected, he had to be doing some seriously dark magic. She was a witch. I’d never seen her get squeamish over a spell. Then again, this was Josiah. I’d seen him nearly get ripped apart by a demon and laugh about it. Something was broken in this guy’s brain.
“You done playing around with your cocks?” I kicked the feathery corpse toward the door. “Clean up after yourself. Last thing we need is for the voodoo queen’s ghost to come and haunt us.”
He picked up the chicken bodies and went through the door.
Limping through a cemetery with a blood-covered, chain-smoking Australian in the wee hours of the morning should’ve been a sign my life was headed in the wrong direction. If only my dad could see me now. He’d piss himself out of fear. Part of me wanted to go and visit the old man, if for no other reason than to show him he was wrong about me. His good-for-nothing son had saved the city more than once now, and an entire fae kingdom. What’d he do? Assault, fraud, public drunkenness. Yeah, I’d turned out great compared to that.
At the gate, I shed the power I’d taken on inside the cemetery walls and followed Josiah out to the sidewalk, even more exhausted. Thankfully, Sybille had pulled the truck up for us. She didn’t want Josiah in the cab covered in blood, so he stripped to a faded pair of purple boxers and climbed in to sit
in the back with Khaleda. That put me up front with Sybille.
I buckled in and turned around to check on Khaleda. She lay in the back seat wrapped in Josiah’s trench coat. She looked like she’d lost twenty pounds since Naraka alone. “Be careful with her,” I said to Josiah.
“Why?” He tapped out a cigarette and put one in his mouth. “Does she mean something to you?”
“She’s a succubus. An injured succubus. I don’t know what she’s capable of in her condition.”
“Do tell.” Josiah tried to light his cigarette, but all he got were sparks from his lighter. He sounded like I’d just issued him a challenge.
I probably should’ve told him what a bad idea it was to sleep with a succubus, but he was a grown-up wizard. He could look after himself.
Sybille lit up her cigarette and tossed her lighter to him. “You two look like shit. Where can I drop you off?”
Between the two of them, they’d smoke me out of the car so I put my window down.
“Paula’s bar,” Josiah answered.
I made a face and hung out the window as we pulled into the street. “Why do you want to go there?”
“It’s where I’m staying. Room upstairs. Dodgy place, but I’ve slept in worse.”
You’ve got to be kidding me. Paula was renting my old place to Josiah? It shouldn’t have bothered me, but it felt weird. All my old furniture was still there since I’d left without notice. I’d told Paula to sell it off to pay my back rent, but she wouldn’t have if she was renting it out again.
I wanted to go out to Pony’s and pass out, but Josiah wouldn’t be able to carry Khaleda up the stairs by himself. I’d find a spot on the floor to pass out if I had to.
Twenty minutes later, with me on one side and Josiah on the other, we slid through the door into my old apartment. It was exactly like I remembered it. Tiny living room with a pull-out sofa, an armchair, and a flat screen on the wall that barely saw any use. A breakfast bar without any stools. Wood cabinets in the kitchen in desperate need of an update. Squat little fridge with scuff marks on the door. It was like going six months back in time.
