"Alex, stop!" Octavian shouted at her. "I don't know how you know Meaghan's dead, but it wasn't me who killed her. Mulkerrin returned and brought Lord Beelzebub with him. Meaghan sacrificed herself —"
She spun on him, unsure, fingers flexing on the axe. "Not what I heard."
"From who? Lazarus? How could he know what happened? He's been here the entire time that you have. When he and Meaghan came to rescue me, we used the Gospel of Shadows to open a portal back to our world but one of the spires impaled him, trapped him even as he finished casting the spell. We were already passing through the portal and it was closing! My thoughts and memories were a mess, just like yours are now. It took a long time for me to put it all back together, to remember all the magic I'd learned. When I did, I should've come back for him —"
"For us!" Alex cried, but some of the red had left her eyes.
"I thought you were dead. We all did. Think about it, Alex. If Meaghan had known that you were still alive she never would've left you here. She'd have let the portal close with her on this side if it meant she could have stayed with you."
The vampire hesitated. "I . . ."
Then she whipped her head back and forth as if trying to shake loose thoughts and voices that troubled her. The axe remained in her hand but she had forgotten it had been Squire who had tried to kill her with it. She had eyes only for Octavian.
"I know your story. He told me," she said. "He told me you were human now, and I can smell that it's true. Smell your blood."
"Pete . . ." Squire said, his tone full of warning. The hobgoblin reached into his coat and drew a small dagger, but if the axe had done nothing, he could not possibly think this blade would be any more effective.
"It's been so very long since I've tasted human blood," Alex said. Her body bent forward and her arms began to elongate, fingers turning to talons. "And it's only right. It's what Meaghan would want . . . what she deserves. We came to save you and you got her killed."
Octavian swore under his breath. Deep inside, his magic waited. He had sublimated it as much as he could, buried it in his heart and his gut and held the reins tightly. But he had come to Hell to rescue his friends and he was not going to let anything stand in his way. If that meant using magic — even if it sent up a flare that would bring every demon in Hell down on their heads — he would fight.
"What else did he tell you?" Octavian asked. "Did he tell you I'm a magician? A sorcerer? Did he tell you I know a dozen ways to kill a vampire, even a Shadow in full control of her abilities?"
Alex crept toward him, eyeing his hands warily. Octavian felt the tingle in his fingertips and understood why — a silver aura had begun to crackle from his hands and he could feel the power misting from his eyes. No, he thought, tamping it down, tightening his hold on the reins of his own magic.
Squire shifted, moving directly behind her. The ugly little man glared at Alex's back, yellow eyes narrowed to slits. He held the dagger loosely, and then he reached his left hand into his jacket and withdrew a heavy revolver. Octavian had not seen him pick it up at the armory and it seemed much too large for him to have hidden in his coat, which made him wonder if the voluminous inner pockets of that coat might be somehow supernatural.
The click of the hammer made Alex freeze.
"Silver bullets, honey," Squire said. "It doesn't have to be like this."
"The thing is," Octavian went on. "You're not in full control. I don't want to hurt you, Alex, and I really don't want to kill you. But if you could shapeshift with a thought the way Shadows are meant to, Squire and I would already be dead."
"What are you doing here?" Alex screamed. "I know you didn't come for me. You thought I was dead. So why the fuck are you here? You finally came back for Lazarus?"
Octavian considered lying. Instead, he shook his head. "I have other friends I believe are here. You know some of them. Kuromaku. Taweret. Santiago. There are no Shadows left in our world, no vampires at all. They were all shunted here. At least I —"
"No. You're lying."
"He's not," Squire said quietly.
"Meaghan —" Alex began.
"She loved you," Octavian interrupted.
"I know she loved me!" Alex screamed, and tears of blood began to run down her face. "You son of a bitch, I know!"
"She loved me, too," Octavian said quietly, the hot wind and flying ash nearly stealing his words away. "Doesn't that mean anything to you?"
Alex stared at him with wide eyes, her eyes fading from vivid red to her own warm and beautiful brown. The axe fell from her hand and she began to crumble, folding her arms across her chest as grief overcame her. Bloody tears dripped from her chin and vanished in the ashes at her feet.
She turned to mist again, but this time she did not reform. The searing wind blew burning cinders across the surface of Hell and took Alex and her grief along with it.
Phoenix's World
Ardsley-on-Hudson, New York, USA
As she drove north with Ronni in the passenger seat, Phoenix felt remarkably calm. Her grip on the steering wheel stayed light and her pulse and breathing both remained steady. It couldn't have been a lack of fear; only a fool or a madwoman could have chosen the path they were taking without being terrified of it. Yet her heart swelled with purpose and she kept her eyes on the road, and when they came to a roadblock in Dobbs Ferry she rolled down the window and waved to the police officer standing in the street, then turned and weaved her way along back roads that would still get them where they were going. She hadn't grown up here, but knew the area well enough by now.
As they drove, making their way along old roads and through neighborhoods of aging Victorians and 1960s Colonials, they could see smoke rising off to the northwest. Not from the hospital, as least as far as Phoenix could gauge their location; the smoke had to be coming from the surrounded woods or homes. Hell hadn't just come to Earth . . . it was spreading.
"This is . . ." Ronni began, followed by a hollow laugh. Phoenix turned along a narrow, curving road lined with dense forest, grateful they couldn't see the smoke anymore. "Holy shit, this is . . ."
Phoenix glanced at her, cold autumn breeze blowing through the window she had forgotten to put back up. Ronni had high cheekbones and full lips and a wide nose that amounted to a kind of perfection, but she also had a long scar on the left side of her throat and several smaller ones at the temple and hairline on the same side. Phoenix had noticed these scars before but paid little attention to them. They had spoken very little during their journey together, mostly about their parents and the houses they had grown up in, and a little bit about the Uprising, the topic that seemed foremost on Ronni's mind tonight.
"Are you okay?" Phoenix asked.
Ronni twisted in her seat, staring. "Fuck no! How the hell are you okay?"
"I'm not okay."
"Bullshit, look at you. No wonder you survived the Uprising. I always figured you had to be pretty damn chill to be able to do what you did, but we're going back to the hospital after . . . I mean, they're demons! I just don't know how you can —"
"I said 'I'm not okay!'" Phoenix snapped.
Her hands gripped the wheel and she looked at Ronni.
"I'm as terrified as you are. But my father is at the center of this. He died this morning but he's . . . they're using him, Ronni. I don't know what that means for his soul, if it's already at peace or whatever, but I know either way that what they've done to his body is an abomination. I'm going to put an end to that, whatever it takes, and yeah that's given me a kind of weird serenity. But it doesn't mean I'm not afraid or that I don't know how crazy this is or what we're up against, okay?"
Phoenix exhaled, tried to focus on the road, and realized she'd missed her intended turn. She swore under her breath as she slowed and made a U-turn.
"Sorry," Ronni said, her brown eyes wide and searching. "I'm freaking out."
"You're not alone," Phoenix said, as she drove a short distance to the dead end circle at the end of Tomko Road, put the ca
r in park, rolled up her window and then killed the engine.
The engine ticked loudly, cooling.
Ronni reached over and covered Phoenix's hand on the wheel with her own.
"Neither are you."
Phoenix nodded slowly, then plucked the keys from the ignition. "You don't have to come, y'know? This isn't your fight."
When Ronni didn't immediately reply, she popped open her door and climbed out. It took a second, but then the passenger door swung open and Ronni emerged, looking at Phoenix over the top of the car.
"It's everybody's fight."
"You know what I mean."
Ronni slammed her door. "Yeah, I do."
"People are going to be running away, not toward this. They're going to leave it to the cops and the National Guard and get as far away as possible as fast as they can. It's what I would have done during the Uprising if I could have, if I didn't have to look out for my dad and if I wouldn't have been ripped apart and eaten alive the second I reached the street. It's what I would do tonight, right now, if this didn't involve my father."
"I don't believe that," Ronni scoffed.
Phoenix slammed her door and clicked the button on the key fob that engaged the locks. The chirping sound made her frown. Locking the doors? Apparently she thought she might actually be coming back. The odds were ridiculous, but the thought gave her hope. She went to the rear of the car and opened the trunk, hefting out one of the plastic gas cans they had bought and filled up at a Shell station on the way.
"What about you, Ronni?" she asked. "Why are you here?"
"I already —"
Phoenix smiled. "Nah, come on. Maybe you've told me part of it — the surface part — but there's got to be more. You live in Westchester County but other than some casual friends, you don't have anyone here. No way did you have to come all the way across the country to get a nursing job, so that's not it. Maybe you feel like you've got nothing to lose or nothing to live for, but I don't think that's it, either."
Ronni knitted her brow and wetted her lips with her tongue, as if she had something to say but couldn't find the words.
"Is it redemption? Something you feel like you have to do penance for or something? Because I know all about penance."
Ronni rubbed at her arms, but Phoenix didn't think it was the October evening that had put a chill into her.
"I told you when I met you today how much you inspired me," Ronni said.
"And that's sweet, and maybe it's even true," Phoenix replied. "But?"
Ronni took one of the gas cans from her and started walking, heading for the path that led from the circle into the woods.
"Hey!" Phoenix called to her, not moving. Ronni turned to face her. "If I'm about to do the stupidest, most terrifying thing imaginable, if I'm basically walking into Hell, I deserve to know who I've got beside me."
She could see the conflict in Ronni's eyes, but after a few seconds the woman shook her head with a laugh.
"I don't talk about this."
"I get that," Phoenix replied.
"But I figure we're probably going to die, so . . ." Ronni said, and shrugged.
Phoenix walked over to her and they stood together at the entrance to the woods. The hospital was maybe three hundred yards away, along the path and up a steep hill. If they had any chance of sneaking in without being torn apart by demons, this was it.
"Okay," Ronni said, and she took a shuddering breath. Her eyes brimmed with tears but she fought to keep them from falling. She swallowed hard. "My senior year of high school I was out of control. A party girl. The guy I was seeing — Spence — he had a party one night when his parents were away and he thought it would be funny if we got his little brother drunk. Matt was fourteen, a freshman, and kind of a dweeb. You could see he was going to be handsome once he grew out of his nerdiness, that he was gonna be something one day, but all he wanted was to impress his older brother and I know he thought I was hot."
Ronni gave a soft laugh. "Shit, I was hot." Any other time, Phoenix would have told her that she still was, but the pain in her eyes and her voice went too deep to be interrupted. Ronni gazed off into the trees but it was clear that she was really looking into the past.
"We got him so drunk. Outrageously shitfaced. All the girls loved him and they took care of him and babied him even after he'd puked. But even as drunk as he was, he knew enough to be embarrassed and when me and Spence had found something else to amuse ourselves — screwing in his bedroom upstairs — Matt left the house."
Ronni lowered her gaze, staring at the pavement beneath her feet. Phoenix had never seen anyone look so hollow, or so alone.
"I got shitfaced that night, too, even though I was driving. I always told myself as long as I could walk then I could drive, and somehow I always managed to get the car back into the driveway back at my house without wrapping it around a tree. But the thing is, Mattie . . . he was so drunk that he just fell over. Just passed out right where he landed, which happened to be at the end of his driveway."
Phoenix's heart lurched.
Ronni began to cry. "Backing out . . . headed home . . . I ran him over."
"Oh my God," Phoenix said, reaching for her arm.
Ronni pulled away, refusing to be comforted, the heavy plastic gas can swinging in her hand. "He was dead by the time the ambulance came. Really, he was dead pretty much the second I ran him over. I knew that, but we all waited for the ambulance like somehow they'd be able to perform a miracle."
She lifted her teary gaze and stared at Phoenix. "Nothing was ever the same after that. Nothing was ever right or good, and every time I looked into the eyes of the people who somehow, after that, still managed to love me, all I could feel was their pity and my own shame. My own guilt. I couldn't stand seeing that in people's eyes anymore, and so when I decided to be a nurse — that being a nurse was the only way I could live with myself — I came out here for school. I've never gone back."
Ronni wiped at her eyes and then threw up her hands. "So now you know who you've got beside you. Another killer. But you killed someone to try to save the damn world, and I did it because I was a drunken little bitch who thought it would be okay to make a fool out of a fourteen year old boy."
Phoenix wiped at her own eyes and found that she was crying, too. There'd been far too much of that today. She reached for Ronni again, but this time when Ronni tried to push her away she would not be pushed. She held her by the shoulders until Ronni had no choice but to look into her eyes.
"Don't tell me I don't have to do this," Ronni said, her jaw clenched.
"Whatever you think of yourself, whatever mistakes you've made," Phoenix said, "you're here now. Almost anyone else would have run screaming."
Ronni shuddered but only nodded, all out of words.
Phoenix nodded in return. "All right. Let's go."
And they turned together and started into the woods. From the top of the hill ahead of them, through the trees, they heard someone begin to scream, a long, horrible keening — the most completely hopeless sound that either of them had ever heard.
But they kept walking.
Nothing would turn them back now.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Hell
Drenched in the blood of demons, hacking his way through minor imps, damned madmen, and enormous armored worms that he thought might not be demons at all, Peter Octavian lost track of the days. His swinging sword was the pendulum that marked the passage of minutes. He could taste the filthy ichor on his lips and every inhalation brought its stink inside him, but he had been here before — been coated in the blood of hellions and had the rotting stench of hell seeping into his clothes and hair and skin — and he had survived. Octavian set his jaw and narrowed his eyes and fought on.
They were on the Stairs of Remembrance, fighting their way down the spiral passage carved down through solid rock, and images kept firing in his brain. As he and Squire descended those one hundred and sixty-nine steps, Octavian had to fight more than just the
demons in their path. His thoughts whirled with ugliness, from the girls' hearts he had broken as a boy to the lives he had taken as a vampire; every moment of blood and sorrow played across his mind, including the deaths of all those whom he had loved. But these horrors — meant to haunt the damned as they rotted in the dungeon of Dis — only hardened him and honed his purpose. Once, perhaps halfway down the steps, he glanced at Squire and saw that his eyes were red and damp, but the hobgoblin did not hesitate.
They had moved from battle to battle, sometimes walking for eons without encountering any resistance, but as they had approached Dis they had found it all but abandoned, another ancient ruin where one of Hell's greatest cities had been. In the crumbled ruins they had relaxed their guard as they sought the entrance to the Stairs, and only then had then stumbled upon an orgy of heaving, grunting demon flesh, as Chermosh and other sons of Moab raped the damned, both male and female. There had seemed neither joy nor malice in this torment, only a listless cruelty, as if the sons of Moab had forgotten the point of their evil entirely and performed out of rote obligation.
The sight had made Octavian feel sick. He had urged Squire onward, but it was too late — they had been spotted, and that suited Squire perfectly well, for the ugly little man had turned on Chermosh then and loosed a volley of profanity and disapproval, after which he and Octavian had been forced to run. There were too many demons and too many places in the ruins to hide. They had made it to the Stairs of Remembrance, and now — as they descended — they whittled down their attackers one by one.
Octavian found himself a dozen steps from the bottom, Squire safely below him, and turned to face Chermosh himself, the last of the demons who had pursued them into the cramped little spiral Hell of memory. Black spines covered his body and they rippled with even the slightest motion. A constant hiss escaped the demon's lips, as though the spines stabbed his flesh as he moved, and perhaps they did. Upon his chest was a soft slit with labial folds the color of midnight, and it was from there the hiss originated, a voice of pain that seemed to rise from the very heart of him.
King of Hell (The Shadow Saga) Page 16
