That was never the case.
Not until she met Spider. Not until Spider saved her.
She had been nailed to the wall, almost crucified like the man whose ideals she defied while living in the Mortal world. Funny how that works out, she remembered thinking. Gunner himself had been administering the punishment. He liked Aqua. Down here in Hell, it didn’t matter what color the skin of a bitch was, as he had put it, just as long as she was warm because Hell was oh so cold. He whispered that into her ear each time, and each time she thought she was going to puke.
This was it, she had thought, this is the time I die.
Aqua sat on the bed, the same side where Harold Storm would lay tonight. She pressed her hand into the softness of the pillow where his head would seep fresh blood from a wound where a long, slender blade would jut up from between his yellow eyes.
Of course, Aqua’s soul had not died. But the pain was worse than it had ever been, and she dozed in and out of consciousness after he was finished. His laughter swam in her head, echoing far away, but so close. Oh so close. She felt a tickling on her chest, a deep tickling that burned with a searing hot mixture of pain and pleasure. It didn’t feel real, none of it had.
Now her dark hand drifted up to the scars beneath her clothing where three crudely etched letters were emblazoned on her skin.
His voice echoed in her ears. It sounded real enough to raise the hairs on the back of her neck.
“Can’t kill ya, but I can claim ya, blacky.”
She traced the letters with a shaking finger.
G-U-N.
His face floated before her eyes, mangled, mutilated.
Spider had found her; she was the first; she was the leader. She chose to rebel against the madness when no one else wanted to. She chose to redeem herself. A creature from the Black Pits. A creature bent on death and destruction, without feeling, without remorse, and she had risen up and done the impossible…she had changed her ways.
For awhile those ways rubbed off on Aqua. She began to see the good in people, and the bad. But even on the nights where they did good, Aqua was reminded of what Spider had done to Gunner and the rest of his crew.
You can’t die in Hell, but you can get pretty close. Pieces of him still lay in Ghul, rotting and rancid. Other parts of him can be found in the Mines of Fulark. And Aqua kept a finger, now locked away in a box beneath her bed.
Then, after the reclamation of Ghul, Spider had gotten a vision, and she had forced Aqua to dig up that book and read it aloud to her. Electus was coming to Hell, and he would need help. Isn’t that what the Renegades did?.
Aqua didn’t know for sure, but she knew Spider would do everything in her power to help. Then Boris had gone and gotten himself kicked out. It was only right that Boris was the one who found Harold Storm. It was some kind of destiny, she supposed. Redemption. And she’d almost had them all killed because of the little Centaur. How stupid.
Still, they formed their plans without Boris. They were to meet the Electus and defend him from the Shadow Eaters, Satan’s own minions. Aqua knew they were overmatched so when she escaped the fortress under the cover of the darkest night Hell had ever seemed to have, she figured she’d kill two birds with one stone.
She had met Charlie in the highest part of the black spire beyond the jagged gates. He sat at a dusty table, his eyes blacker than the sky and fixated on something in his bookshelves which traveled into the endless ceiling.
His breath was like ice, and when he spoke he froze her blood.
“He will come to you beaten and broken and tired. It will be the only chance you have, do you understand?” Charlie had said.
Aqua nodded.
She wasn’t a stranger to murder. It was, after all, the reason she found herself in this godforsaken Realm in the first place. No one would’ve expected a woman. Women were weak, frail, dumb, they said. Women were meant to be nice to look at. Women never got their hands dirty. But Aqua had. Fourteen men. She would travel the States, lay up in a big city for a couple weeks here and there. She’d hit the night scene — clubs, bars. She’d wear wigs, loads of makeup, high heels, the short dresses.
Dance. Love. Laugh. Kill.
Move on.
The men were always rough, always threw her around, called her names, spit on her. They loved the control, and she would let them have it, too. And when the loving was over and the men had passed out in their beds (always their place) usually drunk and still naked, her heart would beat with the frantic pace of excitement — a pace that was absent during sex.
They’d wake up hogtied, a fat wad of washcloths or socks or underwear in their mouths, and she would hover above their faces smiling a wide smile. Some of them thought it was round two…until the knife slid across their skin. First she was as gentle as a lover, then the next time it would draw blood and louder, muffled screams.
They’d beg. They’d plead. The knife would go deeper. Her heart would beat faster. The screams. The looks.
She had never meant to stop, but she pushed her luck. Daniel Flagstone, according to his Colorado driver’s license, pimple-faced and ten pounds lighter when his picture was taken on his twenty-first birthday five years before, had been a small man, only a few inches taller than Aqua.
She thought she could take him. The killing was beginning to lose its fun. Sure, they’d buck and fight, but they’d never escape one of Aqua’s knots; her daddy had taught her and he’d learned it in the Army.
No way. So she left one hand untied with the hope of Danny reaching out and maybe choking her while she drove the crusty knife into his belly, maybe he’d try to gouge an eye out or shove his fingers down her throat.
How was she supposed to know about the .38 wedged between the headboard and the mattress. Turned out Dan’s daddy had been in the Army, too. And he’d taught him all about guns.
It was fun while it lasted. There was no pain. The pain came after, came in this horribly cold place.
But not as cold as the way Charlie had looked at her.
“And he will try to fight back. He may be hurt and weak, but his mind has advanced. He’s hardened. His heart. He will kill if he has to.”
“I know,” Aqua said. “This is Hell. There’s no room for hugs and kisses.”
A bit of humor passed over Charlie’s face then went stone-serious.
“The sword. He will have a sword that is dear to my Master. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. It was the sword of — ”
“Orkane,” Aqua interrupted.
Charlie smiled, a smile lacking warmth and happiness. “Good.”
“Spider is a bit of a enthusiast,” Aqua said.
Charlie’s jaw flexed at the name. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but seemed to change his mind on what he was going to say at the last second. “You get that sword away from him and you keep this between us,” he said, “and you will be rewarded immensely for your contributions.”
“Then we’re square? You’ll find Gunner’s soul, and you’ll leave Spider and the rest of the Renegades alone?”
“Oh yes, we will find him.”
“And you’ll erase him.”
“Like he never existed,” Charlie said, that same smile on his face.
Aqua’s hands absentmindedly went to her chest where the letters were etched in her skin, healed over, a pale brown. “The Renegades?”
There was a long pause as Charlie’s eye flitted toward the bookshelves behind Aqua. His brow furrowed. Finally, he said, “They will remain untouched by me and my own.”
“Good,” she said.
“But you will not kill Storm, that is agreed upon. He is meant to be only incapacitated until my men arrive. My Master has something special saved for him.” And the way he spoke sent shivers up Aqua’s back. She nodded again, not meeting Charlie’s black eyes.
Eventually, he got up and went to the bookshelf. She dare not look at him while he did so. There was no telling what this thing could do to her, this Shadow Eater, fabled black knight of a
forgotten age. He would make Gunner and his gang of roving rapists look like the Minor Leagues. But she had died once, and she did not fear dying again. There was no room for fear in Hell, she learned that the hard way. Fear wins out and your mind goes insane. She’d seen it happen firsthand. So she did look.
Charlie was a thin figure. Throw on a tattered robe and give the guy a scythe and he’d look more like the Grim Reaper than the Grim Reaper actually did. His hands parted a row of books, sending a dust cloud up in the air, Charlie coughed and waved it away. The candlelight glimmered off of a large-glass ball. For a second, Aqua thought she’d seen herself inside of it, but not her present-day self. It was an older self, a bloodier self. She quickly glanced away and looked down at her feet.
Charlie had a vial of reddish-black blood in one hand, and a blade only a few feet short of being considered a sword. The edge of it seemed to cut the air itself. Aqua stepped back half a pace suddenly worried about the point getting too close to her.
“When the time is right, you will cut him with this,” Charlie said. He brought the blade up in front of his face with one hand, eyes tracing the length of the sharpness; in the other, he brought up the vial, now uncorked, and tilted the contents forward until a fat and goopy drop fell onto the tip.
“W-What is it?” Aqua asked.
“His own blood.”
“How?”
“You don’t get to ask questions,” he said. “You will take the blade. You will cut him. Cut him, that is all. A fatal wound will displease my Master.” He paused, his eyes studying Aqua’s face — which she hoped remained impassive and as void of emotions as it had when Gunner and his gang had hurt her. “And you do not want to displease my Master.”
Those words echoed in her head now. Displease him? She didn’t give two shits about the Shadow Eater’s Master. All she cared about was herself, and if there was a chance to end this war, to end her suffering and pain down here, she would take it.
The blade was in her hand now, slender but heavy. The blood at the tip of it had congealed completely, leaving a thick layer of goop around the point which didn’t do much to dull the deadliness of it. It smelled of death, and though she didn’t know what death exactly smelled like before, she was sure of it now.
I can end this, she thought. I can change the fate of this world. But the thought was half-hearted. She was no one special, no matter how many times her father had told her that before he passed away while she was in her mid-twenties.
Outside of the room, through the crack in the door, she heard the faint hoof claps of Boris and two more sets of footsteps behind him. They were coming. She got up and slowly slid a loose stone near the door open. Then she placed the blade in the foot deep hole and covered it up again after a moment’s hesitation. It was the same place she kept the drugs at. The sleep-inducers she had crossed death with, brought over from her previous life. She wasn’t sure if they would still work, and there were only two. The rest had been lost in her time — Years? she wondered — here. One had been placed in the cup of wine the Realm Protector drank from, while the other had been given to the old man. She thought of giving it to Spider, but realized she’d need a higher dosage to knock her out. Besides, if she got caught, it didn’t matter who was sleeping or who was awake. Her guts would be torn out regardless.
She stepped down on the loose stone, making sure it wouldn’t jiggle if one of them stepped on it, and she put a large smile on her face.
Just in time.
The door opened. In walked Boris with Harold Storm who did not possess eyelids, but had he, Aqua figured they would be heavy. She could see the sleep in his eyes, not the look of exhaustion he had come in with, but the drugged look she’d seen on all fourteen of her victims.
The drugs worked.
“Welcome to your bedchambers, Electus,” Aqua said.
CHAPTER 20
Almost five hundred feet up in the air where their heads brushed against the black clouds hanging over the land of Hell, Beth and two of the Eater’s most trusted and skilled warriors looked out over Ghul. The wind was frigid, and each gust felt like Death’s claws ripping away at her skin. Still, she loved the cold; she loved the subtle reminders of death because she had escaped it so many times in the past.
Within the next few hours — and these hours could drag on for weeks or seconds in Hell — a burst of light would escape the building opposite them. That is, if the dark-skinned bitch didn’t stick to her plan. She was supposed to fail.
Octavius turned his head toward Beth, his jaw working on a piece of bubblegum he’d had since entering Hell many years ago, and said, “I say we storm ‘em. They’re weak. You saw the fight, too, you know?”
“Not the plan,” Beth said.
“Octavius is right,” Worm answered.
“He might be,” Beth said. “But we stick to the plan.”
When the light escaped from the Renegade’s building, it would undoubtedly blow a crater-sized hole in whatever room the Realm Protector was in. The other two of Beth’s crew did not know this, and she would not tell them either, because an explosion as big as the one she expected was liable to knock them clean off their own building. She’d need them poised, confident, and ready to fight if it came down to it.
“When the girl gives me the signal, we storm,” she said, feeling the lie on the tip of her tongue as it escaped her mouth. “It is Charlie’s wish.”
“Yeah, yeah, Charlie this, Charlie that,” Octavius said.
Worm grunted in approval.
“We take the Realm Protector unharmed,” she said. Her eyes narrowed at Octavius. He may have been a great fighter, nearly as great as Charlie, but he had a poor attitude, not giving in to authority, insubordination. She knew if the Dark One was free — and he would be soon, she could feel it — he would not have let this man walk and talk amongst the rest of his army. Still, he was cute, and she had felt the allure of sexual attraction toward him on more than one occasion. She never dared act on it, not while Charlie was around. In the view of others such as Worm, she kept her demeanor icy, her will strong, and her legs closed.
“I’m getting tired of waiting, that’s all,” Octavius said. “Cold as…well, cold as Hell up here,” he said, smiling.
Worm echoed his grunt of approval almost perfectly.
“Just be quiet and be ready,” Beth said. “Both of you.”
Charlie’s concoction came from a book — they always did. He had so many of them. He was always reading, but this one in particular was not one she’d recognized. And she knew why. It had come from the Witch, a Witch who had vanished out of thin air on the morrow, leaving him with fake baubles and a head full of hopeless dreams. She did not tell him her real thoughts on that matter. How it was all hogwash, how the only way to truly rise to the top is use the throats of your enemies as stepping stones. Charlie was sensitive. Sure, he was strong — possibly the strongest being in Hell besides their Master — but he was frail at the same time.
Back in the Mortal Realm, Charlie had stolen Storm’s blood. They no longer needed the second key, though he kept it all the same. That blood being from Electus was enough to wipe out the entirety of the Eaters when used correctly, or, as the rumors persisted, enough to break a millennia-sealed lock, and enough to free their Master.
She begged him to do it, but Charlie refused.
“Why free him when there is still a threat? He’s been locked up for as long as I can remember. He will be weak, no match for one Realm Protector, let alone two. We owe it to him to clean up this mess before we let him walk,” Charlie had said one night after the two of them laid together. He walked around the room shirtless, the scars of war and battle gleaming silver on his skin. The room had smelled like bad decisions and Beth savored it. In Charlie’s hands was that same book. It was gray, thick, the cover worn and bent hundreds of times since he had obtained it to the point of a long crease running down the length of the spine.
“If I can get Storm’s blood — ”
&
nbsp; “You can break the chains that have enslaved our Master!” Beth screeched.
Charlie’s eyes had gotten wide and he rushed over and whacked her across the face. “Quiet, you whore. If they hear us — ”
“Let them,” Beth said.
Her face had stung, but not as much as her pride.
Charlie turned back to the book. “There’s a way we can kill him without being near him. He is stronger now, and we are weak. We just need the right pieces. We need a martyr.”
Beth had not believed him, but sometimes, as she watched the black clouds swirl in the dead of night from her chamber’s balcony, she thought to herself how everything always works out in the end. Her Master would be freed; he would clean up the mess that had become of their army; the Realm Protectors would be no more.
Sure enough, the martyr had come at dawn the next day. Destiny, she remembered thinking. Her name was Aqua — a pretty, lithe woman who had pledged herself to a band of rebels. How cute. She could see just how cute she was by the way Charlie had looked at her, the way his eyes danced up and down her torso, her long legs, and it bothered her more than she cared to admit. She had to leave the room, had to go to her chambers, had to get the barbed rod, had to bite on her shirt sleeve. She took her pants down, exposing bare thighs and raised the rod up. It came down with a sharp smack, and tears ran from her eyes. In her head, she said the words over and over again: I am his. No one else’s. The Dark Lord owns us all. He is my love. I will not betray him. I will not betray —
An explosion far away snatched her out of her daydream. She felt Octavius tighten then cower down under the cover of the old stones.
“What was that?” Worm asked.
Beth’s eyes flicked over to the large Shadow Eater, she saw the fear written on his face. Maybe, she thought, she brought the wrong two along for the job.
It was not the explosion she was hoping for. “I don’t know.” But in her mind, she heard the words over and over again: I am his. No one else’s. I am his. No one else’s. I am his —
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