Desolate (Desolation)

by Ali Cross

  “Oh, all right then.” Helena huffed. “Party poopers.”

  She placed a hand on the ice, right above Heimdall’s chest, palm flat, fingers spread wide. “Wakey, wakey Dally. You’ve got company!” she said in a sing-song voice.

  Heimdall’s eyes dilated as the ice rapidly melted away. As he came alive, his gaze flicked first to Michael, then to me. Then they narrowed on Helena’s face, who stood with her arms crossed in front of her. She’d resumed her pout.

  Heimdall didn’t even glance at it, but I instinctively knew the first thing he would do is reach for his sword. And I wasn’t the only one who guessed that. As soon as he could move his hand, Heimdall reached—but Hel wrapped both her hands tightly around the hilt and pulled the giant weapon free.

  My head felt like Father had placed it in a vice. The pressure worsened and I bent forward, my stomach suddenly nauseous.

  “Uh, uh, uh,” she sang. Then she dropped the sword to the ground. “Wow. That’s heavier than it looks.” She laughed, tinkling bells, but I could barely hear her over the roaring in my ears. “And it looks pretty darn heavy!”

  Heimdall found his voice. “Leave it be!” he shouted, causing the cavern to rumble and small rocks to fall from their crevices.

  “Temper, temper, Dally. You don’t want to bring the whole house down, now do you?”

  Heimdall stepped free of the ice and shook himself like a dog. Ice cold droplets rained down on me.

  Heimdall glared at Helena before glancing at me—but it was Michael who drew his attention. Between one blink and the next he had Michael’s shirt in his fist and Michael held high, pressed to the rock wall.

  “You,” he hissed.

  “I’m sorry.” Michael spread his hands wide, his eyes imploring.

  “You did this to me.” He tightened his grip, pushing Michael into the wall. The rock ground to sand behind Michael’s back.

  “I swear I didn’t mean to—I didn’t want to.” Michael clasped onto the arm that held him aloft, but he didn’t apply any pressure. His jaw muscles popped but he splayed his fingers on Heimdall’s arm, making it clear he would not resist him. “I’m so sorry.”

  “He’s telling the truth—Father made him do it.” I forced the words out like a gasp or a groan. Barely audible. Father’s vice had become a leash threatening to tear me away, to bring me scurrying back to his side.

  Heimdall swiveled and his eyes burned into mine. Though it cost me, I concentrated on meeting his gaze. “You expect me to trust you? Loki’s child?”

  He had a point.

  Helena sighed, long and low and overly dramatic. “He is telling the truth.” She spoke in a bored sigh and bit at a hangnail. She inspected her nails and tsk tsked over them. When she had everyone’s attention she waved her hand toward Heimdall and Michael. “So go on, kiss and make up or whatever it is you two do, and let’s get out of here.”

  She walked past us, stepping into the hallway. I stumbled forward, wondering how I’d break free of Hell with Father’s grip on me. At the entrance to the rough hall, I stopped and braced myself against the rocks.

  “And remind me to never come down here again. It’s horrid.” She disappeared around a bend, but I could hear the clack of her heels as she trudged away.

  Without a glance for Michael, Heimdall dropped him, and set out after Helena.

  Michael bent over, his hands braced against his knees. He took long, even breaths. I wondered if Father had laid claim to him as well—though the charm should keep him safe from that. I hoped. But he stood and nodded at me, before setting out after the others. I thought about reaching for him. About asking his help, but when he walked past me without even looking my way, a cold hard nugget of ugliness settled in my heart.

  For the first time I thought, Maybe it’s Michael who doesn’t deserve me.

  chapter thirty-seven

  Michael

  We climbed upward into Hell and the pressure in my skull lessened. I wondered why Hel didn’t do her disappearing act and whisk us back to Earth. Or why Heimdall didn’t just open a Door—he was the god of the Bifrost, after all. But I found the more familiar my surroundings became, the less I cared about what they did or didn’t do.

  Hell’s frigid fingers caressed me, soothed me. Called me. I stayed on my feet. I kept moving forward though it took every ounce of my strength. I concentrated on Heimdall’s broad back in front of me. He didn’t stop moving so I didn’t stop moving. My mind followed a constant loop of, Just keep moving. Just keep moving. Just keep moving.

  When we first left the cavern where Heimdall had been imprisoned, I’d waited for Desi, though why she lingered I didn’t know. Shame had become so much a part of me I feared it would forever define me. Since dropping me, Heimdall hadn’t spared me even a glance. I felt his scorn like a bitter brand on my soul.

  I slowed my pace and turned to find my love walking some distance behind. “Desi.” I kept my voice low, worry and tension making it hoarse. Her face jerked upward, startled, almost as if she’d forgotten she wasn’t alone. Her eyes held emotions so like my own it felt as though I was looking in a mirror. This place was an albatross for the both of us. “We’d best hurry.”

  She nodded and jerked forward as if a puppeteer pulled her strings. I held my hand out to her, but she didn’t even seem to notice as she passed me. I fell into step behind her.

  Just keep moving.

  Only the tiniest of sounds, a scrape of claw against stone alerted me to the danger that had come up behind me. I spun, reaching for my Halo, for my sword which I always kept with me—only to find myself abandoned by both. I didn’t have time to consider why—I only had time to react.

  As pale and dull as the rough granite around me, I thought at first the creatures were demons or the damned who had wandered deeper than the lowest tier of Hell. But when I stumbled back from a blow to my stomach I got a better look.

  The creature spread frail, jointed wings and screamed its hatred through a maw that revealed a few pointed teeth and many rotted holes.

  “Michael.” Desi’s voice echoed in the stone tunnel, the sound drawing nearer until the creature in front of me screamed—another answering its call behind me. I had the briefest of fears for Desi before the creature pounced on me with claws and teeth.

  “Zabaniyah!” Desi shouted. “Don’t let its blood touch you!”

  At that very moment I was more concerned about its teeth. The creature’s clawed wing joint pressed me to the wall, sharp shards of rock digging into my skin, drawing blood. I strained against its shoulders with all my strength but the creature still had its open mouth dangerously close to my neck.

  “Be gone!” Desi shouted.

  The dragon-like monster jumped back from me as if he’d been hauled off by a god—but it was only Desi standing nearby, her hands on her hips and her eyes alight with fury.

  Two zabaniyah cowered against the far wall.

  “Be gone, I said.”

  The creatures hissed and bowed while they backed down the corridor.

  “Those were no zabaniyah,” I said once they had disappeared from view.

  “Rejects.” Desi stared down the empty corridor. Her voice sounded empty, distant.

  “Yoohoo! Are you coming?” Helena’s voice echoed down to us. I turned toward it.

  I took a few steps, but Desi lingered behind. I touched her shoulder and she jerked away.

  “Sorry,” she said, her eyes zeroing in on my face. “I’m sorry.”

  She took my hand then, but dropped it a moment later when we were forced to climb over some stone that had tumbled across the path. She fell into step behind me and when I glanced back at her she said, “I’m coming.”

  Just keep moving.

  chapter thirty-eight

  Desi

  Helena sat on a rock, filing her nails. Her bright red uber-high heels shone in the luminous light of Hell. Beyond her, I saw Heimdall approaching the river’s edge.

  “Why didn’t you just do your thing? Trans
port us to the Door? Michael was nearly killed back there!” I climbed over the rocks until I was as close to the goddess as I could get. She merely glanced at me and shrugged exaggeratedly.

  “I didn’t feel like it.” She held her hand away from her, examining her nails. “Can you recommend a good manicurist?” She looked past her fingers toward me, then pouted. “Oh, I suppose not. You don’t exactly look like you care about your looks.”

  I lunged up the rocks and grabbed her stupid emery board from her fingers, crushing it to dust in my fist. “Enough with your stupid nails! Michael nearly died—died! We’ve gotta get him out of here!”

  She didn’t flinch, didn’t even budge. But this up close I saw the glint in her eye that belied her spoiled-rich-girl persona. “I don’t care about Michael.” She spoke as a god, every syllable dripping with power and disdain. “I don’t care about any of you.” And she disappeared, leaving me with a fistful of mist.

  Michael stood on the path beneath me, sweat drenched his back despite the frigid temperature. “Where’d she go?” he asked.

  With no words, I climbed down to join him.

  I shouldered past him and continued forward, keeping the towering black granite mountain before me. Between here and there we’d have to cross a molten river and I wanted to get that over with as soon as possible.

  “Well, wherever she went, she took Heimdall with her.” I grabbed Michael’s hand and pulled him after me. “Come on.”

  We made our way around the largest of the boulders until we stood at the very base of the mountain that is both home and prison to the people of Hell. From here I could see that the stairs that wound their way up the side of the mountain were crowded with Lost Souls forever trying to get somewhere when there was nowhere they could go.

  I looked upward. Before returning to Earth, I’d seen Hell every day of my long existence. I knew every step up the mountainside, every turn in the river. I knew the landscape, the fiery sky. I knew it all. But I had never, not once, stood outside the granite walls of my prison. I had preferred staying in my rooms to exploring my world. I had trained with Akaros and counseled with Father in the Great Hall. I had endured the passage from each of these three places with a single-mindedness that excluded adventure and exploration.

  Now I understood—I had existed here. I had not lived. And my world was as foreign to me as Earth itself.

  chapter thirty-nine

  Michael

  “Where’s the ferryman?” I asked after we’d stood by the river long enough to catch our breath. Beside me a polished black granite wall rose high into the sky, with only a few balconies disturbing the face of it. I recognized it as Lucifer’s palace, recognized this view as the one I’d seen from the balcony in Desi’s rooms while I’d lived there. Recognized the steep stairs that climbed the side of the mountainous palace, crowed as usual with the desperate damned.

  Desi glared at me as if I’d grown two more heads.

  “This is the River Styx, isn’t it?”

  “How would you know?” Her words were clipped, all made of sharp edges.

  I tried to laugh it off. “Well, I’ve read a few stories . . .”

  I expected her to smile, to laugh, even. But she only snorted. And this time, there was nothing cute in the sound, nothing endearing. She turned her back to me.

  She lined herself up with a series of boulders that dotted the river and I finally understood what it was she intended to do.

  “You’re crazy! There’s no way we can make that.”

  She turned and looked at me—and I didn’t like what I saw in her. She seemed . . . dark. And not only a reflection of all the black around us. She seemed dark from the inside out. As if she was becoming one with her Shadow. I stepped closer. I half expected her to move away, but she didn’t. Instead she watched me warily.

  I brushed my hands up her bare arms. I didn’t look at the tendrils there, commanded myself not to judge based on their color—though I couldn’t miss that where once her right arm would flare with golden light it now seemed tattooed with the same inky black as her left. I took my hands up her shoulders, her throat, until they rested beneath her hair at the nape of her neck.

  She closed her eyes then. Smiled. She was still mine.

  I leaned in, lingered for a breath mere millimeters from her lips. And when I kissed her, I thought, We are perfect for each other, now more than ever. She would never have to hide the darkness in her soul, because I had my own sins, too.

  But beneath my lips, beneath my hands, I felt the cold creep in. It felt like an undercurrent of electricity, this humming that worked its way through her and stopped short of crossing from her lips to mine. When I opened my eyes I found her already watching me.

  And her eyes . . .

  Oh, her glorious eyes that shone like granite flecked with gold, now swallowed all light—my light—like the endless hunger of a black hole.

  “Desi?”

  I saw it then. Saw where the shoulder of her tank top had slipped down, revealing a circular wound above her heart. I reached out to touch it, though I knew what it was—I bore a similar mark.

  But where mine had faded into my flesh, hers rotated in a counter clockwise direction, the snake chasing its tale. My thumb hovered over the mark, wishing to touch it, so I could know—know—but recognizing that I didn’t need to touch it. I already knew.

  I pulled back, just a hair, just a breath, and Desi transformed to Shadow.

  She drew herself up until she blocked out all the light, until ice formed on my nose, my lashes and lips. She screamed at me, a bone-crushing scream that drove me to my knees. Down and down I crouched until I had curled into a ball, my hands over my ears, my head pressed against my knees. I thought she would crush me.

  I wished she would crush me.

  Because if she was no longer mine, why did I survive? Why did I ever come back if not for her?

  chapter forty

  Desi

  With only a thought, a wish, I arrived in Father’s throne room. He held court, as he so often did. The usual collection of cronies sat in their chairs of rank around his dais. The velvet bench on which Akaros once sat still stood in its usual position, unoccupied.

  Beside Genges Kahn sat Emperor Xin. His lips curled into a wicked smile, the sharpened points of his teeth blackened from the poison he religiously applied to them, even in death. Next to him sat, ironically, Ophelia. Her wide eyes bugged out at me as I stepped closer, her hair a wild halo around her once-pretty face.

  But I didn’t care about them. Not any of them, save for one only.

  Sitting on my throne, her fingers curved possessively into the eye sockets of the skulls that graced the armrests, sat Helena. She wore no Shadow but she filled the throne, filled the room with her presence. Next to her, my father seemed small in comparison. Weak. Common, even.

  In response to my thoughts, he stood and between sitting and standing adopted the glorious form of his Shadow.

  He stood as tall as two men, easily as big as Heimdall. Skin as black as onyx, leather-like wings that spanned so wide he cast all of us in darkness. Pitch-black ram’s horns curled back from his skull and he opened his mouth to reveal the wide, sharp-toothed maw of a demon. He breathed ice and hatred, fire and perversion, but I stood unmoved.

  For the first time in my considerably long lifetime, I did not cow at the feet of my father. I approached, did not bow, and sat on Akaros’ bench.

  Father descended from his dais, each of his feet, now cloven hooves, clattering on the stone like deafening drums. But when he stepped toward me, between one step and the next, he discarded that form and adopted his preferred countenance—the benign face of an elegant man in his late thirties. He used to do it to annoy me, but now I thought the affectation pithy, nothing more.

  He stroked his hand on my cheek. “Ah, Desolation.” His tone dripped with sorrow at my condition—the Gardian in my DNA robbing me of the glorious darkness of a demon, trapping me in this disgusting no-man’s land wh
ere I pretended to be part Gardian, part demon. I wanted rid of the Gardian. I wanted no part of my Halo.

  “Get it out of me,” I whispered.

  “My child. I would if I could.”

  “She could.” Because I had come to understand something. Helena was much stronger than me. Stronger even than Father. Michael had been wrong.

  He paused, as if consulting with her, as if considering it. He stroked his fingers down my hair. He leaned in, his breath on my ear. “Her allegiance is as yet . . . undecided.”

  I didn’t bother to follow his lead. “And yet you let her sit on my throne.”

  Hel laughed out loud and slumped back in my chair, kicking off her stilettos and tucking her feet beneath her. She shook her head from side to side as if she couldn’t believe my naiveté. Her lips moved and I knew she was saying, “You’re so silly.”

  I looked back at my father, a man who had never chosen my needs over his own, and saw my fate written in his eyes. He would not help me. In fact, the pleasure he took in my discomfort fed him, enlivened him.

  He rocked back on his heels, the smile never leaving his face, and said quietly, “Go.”

  My resolve weakened. My grip on my Shadow slipped.

  But the spark, the one thing that had made me feel okay about not being all that my father—and Akaros—had hoped of me, was nowhere to be found. It seemed I belonged nowhere, to no one.

  And Daughter, Father said in my mind. I have prepared a gift for you. If you wish to atone for your betrayals, accept the gift. Then you and I both will be united in purpose. You will be glorious—as you were meant to be. You will bring desolation to Odin’s precious Midgard. You will be my fist of retribution.

  When he released me from his mental grip, I was only a mere girl, and far less than I’d been when I’d left Hell two months ago. I no longer had Aaron’s coat to wrap around me, comfort me. I would not go back to Lucy’s friendship to protect me, mother me. And I could never again forget who I’d been. I Remembered it all. Every joy, every victory. Every kiss, every embrace. Every hope. Every betrayal.