Waltzing into Damnation

by Rita Stradling

  Pursing her bee-stung lips, she waves almost lazily toward the guard, though the hatred burning in her eyes undermines the nonchalance in the gesture.

  Grunting, the large security guard shuffles out of my path. His neon-eyes follow me as I push open the door and head into the small atrium outside the management offices. As soon as I exit, I’m running for the crew stairs.

  All evening, the boat was continuously jolting and shaking as the tree receded back into the ocean, and Andras had taken it upon himself to follow me around, all wing-y and loom-y everywhere I went. It took hours to lose him, and I only managed it after fake sleeping in my room well past midnight—even then, it was a near thing.

  Knowing exactly where Santiago is supposed to be this night, I take the crew stairs to the fourth level and stop at a guarded crew-only door.

  “Is this the way to the backstage?” I ask the demon who sits beside the door.

  The moment he sees me, he hurries to his feet. This demon puppets an old man, probably eighty-five or ninety. Wide gaps gape where most of his teeth should be. “Yes, Your Magnificence. Right through here.”

  I clench my jaw and nod. That’s twice a demon called me that. While I definitely object to the insinuation that I’m Andras’ whatever, I’m not about to do it out loud.

  When the elderly-looking demon uses a keycard to open the crew door for me, I simply jog through and call back a quiet, “Thank you.”

  I rush out of the glaring halogen-lit hallways and into a small room filled with threadbare couches. On one wall, a lit sign reads: ‘Show in Progress.’

  José and Theo stand to one side, huddled together with anxiety written all over their features.

  “Hi,” I whisper as I slow in the carpeted space.

  They both startle, spinning to look at me with wide eyes.

  Reaching to my back, I pull the rolled paper free from my clothing.

  They don’t do anything for a moment, both just staring.

  “Is it…?” José mouths at me.

  I nod. “Signed in blood.”

  Theo clasps a hand to her chest, falling to the floor. Tears drip over her luminescent scales, falling off her chin. Stuffing a fist in her mouth, she sobs into her hand.

  Tears wet the hair on José’s cheeks too, and he just stands there, his fingers outstretched, like the paper is still somehow unreachable.

  Crossing the room, I set it into his hand.

  It unrolls slowly in his fingers.

  “Cue final bow,” someone hisses backstage.

  No one moves, and thirty seconds later the voice growls back, “You both missed your entrance. Stay backstage.”

  Theo and José don’t even move an inch, as if they’re living statues, one weeping and the other crying silent tears while staring in awe. I feel like an interloper on their joy, especially since I’m waiting here for what is tantamount to a reward.

  Santiago rushes into the room, followed by an angry-eyed female demon puppeteer in a business suit. The moment the demon sees me though, she spins on her high heels and sprints in the other direction.

  Santiago freezes, his dark gaze darting between Theo, José, the paper, and me. He doesn’t weep like the others, but a tear falls off his eyelashes. “Thank you—”

  “Don’t thank me, please,” I choke out. “I did this for all the wrong reasons. Just take your release and leave with your friends, and thank Theo because she’s the one who saved you. . . I’m not the good guy here—I’m doing this for selfish reasons. I was going to leave you here—an-and I still need the information that’s locked in my head before I go. Don’t thank me.”

  He nods as if maybe he understands how much I don’t want anyone to feel indebted to me—or maybe how much I don’t deserve it. Crossing the room, he takes my hands.

  His fingers feel a little rough gripping mine. His dark eyes hold mine captive as if they see right through into the deepest part of me. He asks, “What do you need to see of this past life of yours?”

  I clear my throat, trying to get rid of the boulder that took up residence there. “A man named Ulric told me how to destroy Andras and save the magician that Andras inhabited. I need that information. And I feel like the worst kind of person for saying this to you right now, but I need the information, like, ten seconds ago. Andras can’t find me with you guys, for all our sakes.”

  “I understand that, but before we do this, I feel I must warn you, I’ve helped people recover memories from infancy, and it is horribly disconcerting for them. I cannot imagine how disturbing a memory from a past life will be.”

  I squeeze his fingers. “I’m prepared. I’ll be okay.”

  He closes his eyes and bids me to do the same. When I do, he says, “There is a bright stream that connects you to all of your memories. Can you see it?”

  In the darkness behind my eyelids, I see nothing. But as Santiago begins to describe the stream, how wide, deep and bright it is, bands of multicolor light stream through the blackness. It reminds me of the colorful light that radiates off the only angel I know, which comforts me.

  “Are you ready to jump in?” Santiago asks from far away.

  “I think so . . .” I whisper as I reach out toward the stream.

  “I won’t let you drown in there. When you hear the words ‘wake up,’ I want you to return to me. Do you understand?” he asks me in a soft, calming voice.

  “I understand,” I say, but my voice sounds far away, like an echo in a cave.

  “You can always breathe no matter where you are, remember that. I’ll guide you down the river, but you may not be aware that you hear my voice.” He squeezes my fingers. “When you’re ready, jump in.”

  I run my fingers through the colorful light as a reluctant part of me whispers to turn back. Don’t keep pushing forward—and I know what I’m about to see can’t be unseen. The same nagging thought blasts through my reluctance: I have no choice, Barbas made sure of that.

  Taking a steadying breath, I dive into the stream.

  Immediately, the current pulls me under. Fighting for air, I kick and fight my way to the surface when a word thrums through my head: breathe. I gasp in air and light, pulling it deep into my lungs. If Santiago is still talking, I can’t hear him. But suddenly I know I have to stop trying to fight the current and just submit to its pull.

  I do.

  Light ripples all around me as it pulls me downward, upward and around. The water feels cool as it runs over and around me. It tastes like honey as I breathe it in.

  The speed of the current suddenly slows, and I see an offshoot of the main river of color and light up ahead.

  The knowledge that I have to swim for it slams into my mind with complete and absolute surety. I do a couple strokes in freestyle toward the outlet I’m approaching at speed. I expect the river to fight me, but instead, I feel the flow propelling me along. And when the outlet approaches, I push myself through it and tumble onto a bed.

  A curtain of blonde wavy hair covers my vision as I hold my face in my hands. My cheeks are wet and raw, and I realize I’ve been crying—really, actually crying. That’s what it feels like—water on my face and soreness around my eyes. My tongue tastes salt as another heave ripples through my chest.

  “You must listen to me, Lady Elena,” says a man’s rough voice. He speaks a centuries-old dialect of Swedish, but as in my dreams, I understand him.

  A hand grasps my shoulders and shakes me violently.

  I might be upset, but in that moment, anger surges through me, and I unsheathe a knife. Throwing back my hair, I raise my dagger between us. Letting all my fury boil out through my eyes, I glare at the young soldier who stands before me.

  “You will let go of me now. After breaking into my house, you tell me all these horrible things and lay your hands on me. Why shouldn’t I kill you?” I ask him. And for a moment, I see young Hampus where the soldier stands. The knife shakes in my hand, and I grip it tighter as the soldier reappears.

  His blonde mustache twitches
as he glares back down at me. Redness also rims his dull blue eyes. Even though we are far to the north and east of home, he wears the blue doublet and breeches representing his service to our king. Though his uniform is pressed and clean, sweaty, bedraggled hair falls messily about his face.

  “You are the only one in the world who can kill the Grand Marquis and save my brother,” he says, completely ignoring my knife at his throat. “Agree to do it, or I will kill you.”

  “I am the one with a knife. And I will never kill the man I love. I will never kill my husband,” I grit out as more tears fall onto my tender cheeks.

  A light clicking grabs my attention from somewhere in the house, and the moment of inattention is enough for the soldier. He grabs my wrist and twists, forcing me to drop my blade. Quickly, he scoops it off the bed and tucks it into his leather belt.

  “It is not a legal marriage—you are still married, and Andras is not a man, he’s a demon,” the man yells into my face, coating my wet cheeks with his foul spittle.

  In my heart, I know it to be true. This isn’t the first time the young soldier cornered me while Andras was away on one of his voyages. He’d given me tests to put Andras through, and against my better judgment, I tested the man I love.

  “How do you know I can kill him—why me?” I ask the soldier. “If you think he is this undefeatable devil, then why do you think I can do anything against him? I have no powers . . . I am not truly a witch.”

  Grim and grisly thoughts brim from the man’s eyes as his grip loosens. “I paid a high price for the information. I will tell you if you promise to kill him—”

  “I promise nothing,” I spit at him.

  He exhales slowly out of his nose, regarding me with that same fixated intensity. “Lucifer told me you may do it whether you intend to or not, but I should tell you because one day you would be compelled to follow through with this task whether you willed it or not. The devil said to destroy a greater demon into non-existence, you must first turn the demon human. And to turn mortal, the greater demon must learn to do the only thing they cannot say. Satan told me you would know the one word Andras never says to you.”

  The world spins—the thatched roof hut I sit in, the soldier, and everything around him. My stomach flips over and over while a stone lodges in my throat.

  All I can think—all I can hear is the word ‘love’ screaming through my mind.

  Love.

  The only way to kill Andras is for him to learn to love, turning him mortal . . . and then killing him.

  “Wake up,” I hear Santiago say in his accented voice from far away.

  And damn it, I don’t want to.

  But I blink open my eyes slowly to see the kind face of the master hypnotist. His features take form out of the blurriness.

  “Are you okay?” he asks.

  “No,” I whisper, “not even the smallest amount okay.”

  I’ve never spoken truer words in my life.

  His hands wrap around mine again. “Do you want me to stay and help you?”

  “Thank you, but you’ve helped me more than enough. The rest of this, I really have to face on my own.” Squeezing his hand once, I give the kind man as much of a smile as I can manage and rush back toward my cabin and the Grand Marquis of Hell, who’s committed to kidnap me in the morning.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Day One

  Andras stands beside me as the cruise ship pulls into the Port at Puerto Quetzal. Aside from a few crew workers, he’s the only one who stands on the unloading deck. We’re first off the ship—scratch that, our luggage is first off the ship and on its way to Antigua. Demons flew off with all of my new possessions this morning.

  The rest of the passengers wait in some undisclosed location for us to disembark—the passengers who survived yesterday wait, that is. Most of the demon puppeteers who went up against Madeline got a one-way ticket back to Hell and are waiting for the next soulbound to die.

  “Are you going to say something?” Andras asks.

  I yank my gaze away from where I’m staring at a large pyramidal thatched roof building central at port. Blinking up at Andras, I try to think of an answer. “What am I supposed to say?”

  He studies my face. “I’m taking you with me today; you don’t have any complaints or demands?”

  Rubbing my forehead, I try to think of some complaints and demands, but I’m coming up blank.

  Well, that’s not even close to true—I have plenty of complaints. The first complaint, my ex-demon lover is inhabiting the body of the boy I love. Second, the only way to destroy that demon is to teach him how to love, effectively redeeming him from demonhood, redeeming him into humanity. Last, because of this deal with Barbas.

  I’m not honor bound to try to seduce him or anything else that would be abhorrent to my core—thank all that’s holy that I made that provision to our deal. But if Andras does fall in love with me in these days that we’re together, I’ll have to let him—and then I’ll have to kill the human Andras or be dragged to hell.

  And yet again, Satan gets the last laugh. Turns out, he’s been laughing all along.

  Clear confusion crosses Andras’ face, and I realize I’ve just been staring up at him. His hand comes out toward my cheek, but he hesitates to touch me. “Something is the matter.”

  “No.”

  He flinches infinitesimally with my lie. “Do you want me to fly you away from here, Raven?”

  “No,” I say, but I’m not surprised when his forehead wrinkles with the lie. It isn’t completely a lie, though, so I amend, “I don’t want to straddle you or press my body against yours—but I’m more than ready to leave the Sanctuary.

  After Santiago and his family flew off last night, the ship held literally nothing I cared about aside from Stephen.

  I continue. “If you can carry me in some other—less intimate way, then yeah, get me the hell out of here, please.”

  “All right, I will.” He doesn’t hesitate a moment. His arms go under my back and legs, he scoops me into his arms, pushes off into the sky, and we’re flying.

  As we soar away from the ship, I close my eyes. Part of me is throwing up my hands at the fact that I’ll probably get this one chance to see Guatemala and I’m closing my eyes. But I just can’t.

  I just can’t.

  Warm air whistles around me, and it smells like lush earth and many varied plants.

  Andras’ thumb rubs ever so slightly along the back of my arm, and I want to yell at him to stop, but I don’t. The truth is, I don’t know if I’d be telling him to stop because this slight amount of affection from him is abhorrent to me or because I don’t want him to fall in love with me.

  If I’m protecting only him, I can’t tell him to stop.

  “How does a person truly deserve to go to hell, Andras? I don’t mean selling your soul or getting infected by a demon, I mean earning your spot with a deal,” I say, though I’m pretty sure the wind is too loud for him to hear me.

  “Getting infected by a demon doesn’t mean you’ll go to Hell. Actually, it’s very rare that a demon infected human earns a place in hell.” Andras squeezes me tighter to him. “Humans earn a spot by committing deeds you would never do.”

  “See, I figured out something a while back. You can say things that aren’t true as long as you believe them one hundred percent. So, demons can actually lie—in a way.” Finally, I open my eyes, but only to peer up at the uneven lines of Andras’ jawline.

  The vast blue sky is his backdrop. The early morning sun creates an ironic halo of light around his blond head. His giant black wings beat the air around us, creating our very own wind channel.

  The side of Andras’ mouth tips up into almost a smile, but it doesn’t look happy. “What you might be forgetting, Raven, is that I’ve lived through all of the ages of men and women, first as an angel and then as a demon. I lived among humans—pretending to be one of them for all these centuries. If any demon aside from the great deceiver himself understands th
e nature of humans, it is I. And, I believe that you would never do something that would truly earn you a place in the lower dimensions of Hell.”

  “Except I am going to hell. You made sure of that,” I say, finally able to muster a little of my well-deserved anger back up at him.

  He snorts a laugh. “Purgatory is not a lower dimension of hell. It is not even under Satan’s sole dominion, but a place of access for both sides of the War of the Rebel Angels. It is a place of waiting—a place of calm reflection. Your soul was not unhappy there. I checked on you almost every day, though you could never perceive me that I could tell. I brought you back to Earth solely because I wanted you.”

  “I can’t talk about this anymore. Please, stop talking.” Pointedly, I focus down at the landscape we fly over. Below us lie farms separated by lush green forests. Ahead, mist twists around high peaks interspersed throughout the otherwise relatively flat landscape. Buses and cars moved to and fro on the roads below us, looking about the size of toy cars.

  We head in the direction of one of the peaks, descending toward a city stretched out at the base of what I’m pretty sure must be a volcano. As we descend, the colorful details of the old buildings come into better view.

  Antigua appears to be a network of cobblestone streets webbing through brightly painted houses, archways, towering churches and crumbling ones. Flowers overflow from upstairs balconies, and with my above view, it looks like multi-colored blooms fill the cobbled streets.

  We land on the cobblestones before a high yellow archway with a clock tower at its top. Behind the arch, mist feeds over a volcano.

  On the way in, people crowded the streets, but we find this central street empty.

  Andras starts to put me down, so I have one leg hanging out when he awkwardly grips me to him.

  “Dude, let go,” I say as I push at his chest and kick toward the street.

  “Raven,” he says harshly, trying to scoop me up again, but I’m really awkwardly hanging now.

  “This is a very interesting way to deliver her to us, Andras.”

  The unfamiliar male voice booms through the street, and I look up abruptly to find three figures crossing the space toward us. ‘Figures’ is much too small a word for what they are. Each of them stands at perhaps twelve feet tall, and their bodies are proportioned like Olympian gods.