I woke with a groan, my eyes crusted from the dirty air. “Need to replace the air filters,” I muttered, climbing to my feet. I ached from sleeping on the stone floor. Even using my coat as a pillow – although I didn’t remember taking it off – hadn’t helped much. My fingers also ached from gripping the stupid spear, which I had apparently slept with like a security blanket.
I walked the room in an effort to alleviate my tight muscles.
Also, to make sure I was still alone and that no one else had moved in.
I realized I was staring at the opening to the darker cell. “Or moved out,” I said out loud.
No one answered. “Hello?” I asked, peering inside, but not taking a step closer. No one responded. I scanned as much as possible from the safety of my own cell before taking a deep breath. In an intimidating shuffle, I scooped up the War Hammer and bravely ran away from the opening, breathing nervously as I glanced over my shoulder. No one attacked me.
I studied the War Hammer in my hand, sitting down where I had gone to sleep. I hefted it curiously, trying to sense it with my mind. But I gave up with a grunt, because I had no magic available to me. It was just a rock on a stick to me. A pretty one, but that was it.
The word carved into the side mocked me.
Birthright.
With an angry sigh, I set it down so the hilt stuck straight into the air.
I soon pulled out the Hourglass from my satchel, the one my parents had stolen from the Fae Queens so long ago. It controlled, or at least prevented time slippage between the two realms – earth and Fae. So that one didn’t have to worry about spending an hour in Fae and returning to find a month had gone by. I set it before me and stared at it, replaying everything my parents had said. All the cryptic shit that didn’t matter anymore since I was trapped down here, in Hell, with these oh-so-important things that somehow needed to help protect the world upstairs.
To protect my friends.
And the items were locked up here with me, Anubis’ new enslaved Uber driver, working only for tips, thank you very much.
I set it down beside the Hammer. No magical solution appeared.
Just to be thorough, and because my calendar was pretty open, I pulled out the Hand of God. A glass pyramid with the crumbled sand from the original stone Hand of God I had stolen from Athena. I lay on my stomach, lifting it up occasionally to study it from every angle. I tapped at the glass with a fingernail, making sure different sides didn’t have a different sound or something. I even shook it lightly and made a wish like a magic eight ball. I stared at the sand inside, scowling as I imagined a response.
Ask again tomorrow…
I almost hurled the glass pyramid across the cell at the imagined response. Instead, I calmly set it down beside the other two items my parents had left for me.
I waited, studying them one after another. I even rearranged them in all possible orders. I stacked them. I spoke nicely to them. I cursed them.
They stared back at me with pompous sneers.
I found a sharp rock and began drawing on the wall. Thinking of my parents, I drew an H. Then a letter A. I stepped back, studying them. I glanced back at the three items on the floor and then back to the letters on the wall.
I continued writing the letters, hoping that repetition would yield the desired answer, like with sports, dribbling a basketball for hours every day paid off in the long run. I wrote the letters in different sizes, fonts, and angles, peering at them studiously. I found myself very angry after half an hour or so of this when the piece of rock suddenly broke in my hand, halting my very important analysis.
I stepped back to inspect my work, and realized I was staring at a wall that said…
Ha hahahahahahahahahahahaha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Hah!
The wall was laughing at me. I sat down with my back to the laughter so I wouldn’t see it and lose what little sanity I had left. The three inherited items before me laughed anyway.
I closed my eyes, thinking on my conversation with my parents. Because I needed it, I spent the most time remembering those first few moments. Hugging my mom. My dad. Carl asking my mom about her vast experience with the D. I felt myself finally smiling, so moved onto the rest of the conversation. Their words had been so freaking cryptic. They knew we were being watched and, finally, had wanted to tell me everything. To come clean.
But because of whoever was watching us, they couldn’t.
After going over it what felt like a hundred times, I came up with no new answers. At least, no answers that would help me now. These items were important, and I needed to do something with them. To stop something from happening on earth – or in Fae, possibly. But now they were trapped down here with me. Untapped potential.
I spent some time studying the spear, but other than being exquisitely pretty and well made, it was just metal and wood. I could sense nothing special about it. Probably due to the wards on my cell, since I had failed to touch my magic – about a dozen times now so far. It looked like one big feather from Grimm, and the two feathers hanging from the blade were also identical to my alicorn. I again considered Talon’s spear. It was very identical in style to this one.
I reached for my necklace and unclasped it, staring down at the coin. I closed my eyes and tried to feel something. Anything. The metal disc was cold in my fingers, not even a flicker of response. I didn’t need magic to use it, at least I was pretty sure, so it should have worked.
I tried imagining it into looking like one of those Candy Skulls. Maybe I could use it as a disguise. Changing it from Mask to a random item that could be concealed had never taken magic before. It simply changed if I needed it to. Like the other Horseman Masks. A way to conceal what it was. Also, so they didn’t have to walk around with those frightening Masks on all the time.
The coin sat in my fingers, unchanging.
“Looks like Anubis was right,” I muttered. He’d said he had blocked my Horseman’s Mask, but then again, Death had warned me not to even attempt using it, so it was probably for the best. I might accidentally end up letting some other poor bastard out of his cell.
I reached inside my satchel, pulling out a large, black feather. Grimm’s feather. It was a perfect match to the feathers on the spear. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and deciding it couldn’t hurt, I called out to my friend again.
“Grimm.”
Nothing happened.
“Grimm, Grimm, GRIMM!” I shouted.
I waited ten seconds before cursing, tossing the feather on the ground as I bumped the back of my head against the rock wall. I felt nothing. Heard nothing. Sensed nothing. Grimm’s arrival was always… climactic. Black lightning, murderous scream, sparking hooves, enemies dying…
Looked like the architect of this place knew his stuff. Either these things didn’t work in Hell, or they didn’t work in this cell. Seeing as how I had been able to use magic as I traveled with Dante, Talon, and Carl, it must be the cell. If I could only find a way out…
A whole lot of nothing happened for a few hours.
At one point, I glanced down at the spear to see that Grimm’s feather had landed beside the other two. I frowned, studying them, but gave up. It didn’t really matter if I couldn’t find my way out of this fucking cell, did it?
More hours went by.
I spent a good two hours stacking rocks in aesthetically pleasing piles around the cell in an effort to establish some Zen in my afterlife.
Then I spoke to the rocks, asking how long they had been down here. What kinds of things they had seen. What their favorite place to visit was. How old they were…
Realizing what I was doing, I spent ten minutes kicking them all down as I cursed up a storm.
Good grief, I wasn’t good at this whole solitude thing.
I realized I was staring at that open cell again and looked away angrily.
“Not a good idea. Only bad things can happen from going in there…” I told myself as I climbed to my feet. “What if it closes up behind me?” Maybe I
would be able to spot something from the outside, from a safe distance away, of course. I flung out my hand to cast a fireball of light inside. Nothing happened. “Right, no magic, you dumb boob,” I cursed myself.
With a sudden thought, I went back to my satchel, reaching inside in hopes that Anubis hadn’t shaken it out in his search for… whatever he had been looking for. The keys.
With a triumphant shout, I brandished three glow sticks, courtesy of raiding Yahn’s sock drawer – rave accessories. I snapped the tubes, the cavern suddenly glowing with neon light, and tossed them into the open cell, spaced apart for maximum light.
My eyes widened in disbelief. The hole was… tiny. Maybe ten paces across and six feet deep. “Heh. Six feet deep. Hell…” I sighed, refocusing back on the walls. The green light cast strange markings on it so I took a few steps closer, not enough to let anything grab me, but close enough to squint.
I froze, blinking several times. The same few words were written thousands of times on the entire wall. The reason I hadn’t at first recognized them was because – as the occupant had used up the last clear space – he had begun to scratch the words in a second layer over his previous etchings. My skin pebbled, both in confusion, curiosity, and amazement. To do this… thousands of times… he had either loved or hated these things. Since we were in Hell, I was leaning towards hate.
Camelot.
Arthur.
Merlin.
I stared at the wall for a very long time, wondering if I had just made things upstairs one hell of a lot worse – even from my locked prison cell.
I closed my eyes and said a prayer. “Help me, Brothers…”
I spent a long time waiting, but no one came to do so.
Chapter 50
In my dreams, I sat on the cliffs over the edge of the lava ocean. Charon zipped back and forth, doing tricks or drinking beer behind his pilotless boat.
I was crying, but I didn’t turn my head to see my mother and father behind me. I just stared out over the ocean of fire. Well, that was a shitty part to remember. It would have been nice to see—
My mother’s face suddenly hovered before me, crying and sobbing uncontrollably as she nodded her head at me. Then my father’s face, complete with tear tracks, and his face appeared desperate.
Then, nothingness.
I slowly woke again, this time holding myself with both arms wrapped tightly around my chest. I was curled in a ball and I could see my breath. Was it a change of season or was this some new form of torture? I pondered my dream. Memories. Whatever. Some form of torture?
I had at first hoped that it was Grimm or Hugin or Munin flying down through Hell to save me. But I had been here too long for that to be likely. I’d even considered it being Alex, since Pandora had been so adamant about me needing his help one day. And he was taller than me. Since the dreams always felt like they were aerial, it made sense.
But none of them could make it into Hell. Not without Death’s help. And that would take time. It had taken him months to arrange for my trip here. Had it been months, topside? I waved away that thought. Unlikely. Even if Death did help them in, none of them could survive the long way down here. I knew that now, being the new guide and all. There was literally zero chance any of my friends, even a swarm of them, could make it past all the Circles of Hell.
To put it bluntly, I wasn’t even sure if the Four Horsemen and I, at full strength, could have fought our way down here. Because I realized where I was now. I was in one of the deepest pits that existed in the Underworld. Not as punishment – my pit was actually quite pleasant, even compared to some of the Nirvanas down here. Well, that was pushing it, but it wasn’t a lake of fire or anything.
I was near Anubis’ pyramid. Really, it was just a palace shaped like a pyramid, but it was the simplest way to put it. Basically, I was in his personal prisons. Not for a crime, but so that he could keep an eye on me.
Not that he had visited, the bastard, or he would have realized I was close to boredom-induced insanity by now. I wondered if he cared.
The only other option for my friends to come down here was to acquire a guide – me.
I would have been called to… well, guide them.
I realized I was laughing at the ridiculousness of it. Called out of my cell to guide one of my friends down to Hell to save me – their guide – from my cell. Which would culminate in Anubis ripping out my heart and handing it over to them to eat and take my place.
Worst rescue mission ever.
Which meant the dreams were probably just memories. Or something to do with the map. Or it was a form of torture unique to Hell. Or I was hallucinating from not eating or drinking anything in quite some time. Regardless, it wasn’t helpful.
I sat up with a sigh, looking to my left out of habit, again checking to make sure I was alone. Not that it really mattered. I could have been murdered twenty times in my sleep, only to wake up again alive and well a few minutes later.
In case you’re wondering, I was still alone.
Then I turned the other direction, yawning. My yawn turned into an awkward shout as I saw a cloud of tightly condensed mist not two inches away from my nose. I scrambled back instinctively, trying not to breathe any of it in, just in case it was a being of some kind. Accidental possession, or something. The cloud zipped back a few feet, quivering as if just as agitated as me. I didn’t sense any malevolence to it, not like that dark cloud from the other cell, but it was still enough to scare the shit out of me.
“Wh-who the hell are you?” I finally gasped, realizing that it wasn’t intending to apologize. “Don’t you know to never creep up on a ninja when he’s sleeping?” I panted, trying to regain my breathing. As I looked closer, I realized it wasn’t entirely opaque. Faint green light shone through almost a silvery sheen, but maybe that was just a result of the glow-sticks not far away.
“Dad?” it said in a soft, frightened tone.
My heart stopped.
Chapter 51
I opened my mouth and then closed it. The cloud quivered harder, drifting slightly back and forth as if afraid. I stared harder, noticing the green flecks inside weren’t caused by the glow-sticks. They were brighter. And the silver was actual silver, like mercury. They were familiar.
I gasped in disbelief, my eyes welling up as I slowly shook my head. My jaws ached in that way when you’re watching a sad movie and you’re struggling not to cry in front of your girlfriend. Or so I’ve heard – softer men describe it that way, at least…
I didn’t quite know how to answer, but I managed to smile. A painful smile.
Like seeing a lost child reunited with his frantic mother after being missing for an hour.
“Your mother must be very worried…” I whispered gently, slowly lowering my hands before me. “This place is very dangerous. You should go. Your father would want you to go…” I whispered to…
The Baby Beast.
Falco’s son.
Kai’s son.
My… family.
It shifted back and forth uncertainly. Then it dipped down to the ground, lifting it up somehow. I unfolded my fingers to reveal the brand in my palm. The Temple Crest. A lone drop of silver and gold liquid splashed down onto the brand, and my body rocked with sympathy at the celestial teardrop. My crest suddenly grew warm and I felt something deep in my bones. Something alien and…
Protective as all hell.
“This is my mother…” the cloud whispered in a quivering voice, on the verge of more tears.
Ohmygod.
This was too much. My heart was ripping in half. Something about a child in danger just shredded me. But a Baby Beast? My Baby Beast? I suddenly recalled my palm flashing with heat and pain while walking through Hell. Had that been… Falco giving birth? My brand had flared with heat at this cloud’s teardrop. Falco had felt it. But the sensation had been weak. Full of rage and anxiety and relief, but far, far away. Whether it was the distance that held her back, or whether she was too tired from giving bir
th, I didn’t know. Too far away to protect her baby.
Tears poured down my face as I nodded, sucking in ragged breaths. “Yes, my boy. That is your mother, and she is very… special to me. She keeps me safe. Has always kept me safe…”
“I love her,” the Baby Beast whispered longingly. “I miss her, but she was so scared for you.”
My spine froze rigid, but the Baby Beast continued.
“I searched everywhere for you,” it said. “I didn’t know who you were, but my mommy misses you. She’s so sad. I followed the signs,” he said, another green and silver teardrop striking my palm for emphasis. “I followed them all. Then I followed your friends. Anyone who spent time inside my mother. I thought you must be my father. I wanted to protect you. To keep you safe for mom. To meet you… Aren’t you proud of me?” he asked nervously, as if terrified to hear the answer.
I broke down, dropping my face into my palms and wept. I didn’t know where to begin. To thank him, to scold him for being so reckless, to hold him tightly…
To tell him how incredible his father was. How he had sacrificed his life to keep me safe?
How his mother had kept my family safe for generations. Centuries.
How his father had done the impossible… That this beautiful Baby Beast – who wanted nothing more in his so far short life than to go find and protect his unknown dad – was the first Beast born into freedom, perhaps in millennia. Or ever.
“You have no idea how proud I am…” I rasped. “Or how proud your father would be to see you now. Or your mother… You are extraordinary, my boy.”
Suddenly, the silver and green cloud pressed against me, wrapping misty arms around me in a hug that only a child can give.
Those hugs that wrap around you like a Bandaid, conforming to every fold, crevice and bulge in your body without fear, judgment, or concern.
Nine Souls Page 26
