“Especially Sophie,” he confirmed.
“You don’t call this putting mortals in danger?”
“This I call justified.”
“Threaten me all you like. We won’t stop, you know. Whether I’m locked up or not, we’ll find a way. And I’m old, Adrian. I don’t mind dying for a good cause.”
“There’s nothing good about your cause, and you will stop. Didn’t last night show you that your club isn’t even very good at what they’re trying to do?”
She chuckled. He felt the sound in his arm, locked against her throat. “Oh? Then you don’t know?”
He yanked his arm tighter. “I know Wilkes and his mate got themselves killed, while we’re all safe. Good enough for me.”
“Are you all safe? Have you accounted for everyone?”
His flesh went cold. Rhea, who hadn’t answered them, and whose soul could be in the Underworld to judge from her blocked signal…
He pulled Quentin back into the living realm. The upward bump of the floor’s reappearance made Quentin topple over as he let go of her. She landed on her knees with a grunt of pain. He walked to her land line and dialed 911.
“I’ve found Betty Quentin, who’s wanted for unlawful entry and arranging assaults on Sophie Darrow at OSU,” he told the dispatcher. “She’s at 4028 Kings, and I’ve tied her up.”
“And your name?” the dispatcher asked.
“Just come.” Adrian hung up, distracted by worry about Rhea—not to mention his own involvement in law-breaking now.
“This won’t do you any good,” Quentin told him.
“The threat still stands.”
“And I still don’t fear death.”
“Don’t you?” He bent over her, heart pounding in rage and fear and the thrill of saying something so unlike himself. “Then let me explain something. When you die, you come to my realm. And the more harm you do up here, the longer you stay in the darkness down there.”
“If that’s the nonsense it sounds like, I’ll fight you because you’re insane and dangerous. If it’s actually true, then all the more reason we need to get rid of evil creatures like you.”
There was nothing more he could say. She thought he was evil and would always think so. It was useless. She was the police’s problem now.
Meanwhile, he needed to make sure Rhea was all right.
He stormed to the window and looked out. The sound of a police siren moved closer. Within a minute, the car with its flashing lights pulled up in front of the house. He unlocked the front door to make it easier for the cops. Then he glanced briefly back at Quentin, verifying she was still confined in her cuffs. She stared into his eyes, undaunted. Adrian plunged into the spirit realm without another word.
Chapter Forty-Three
HOW SOON CAN YOU LEAVE? said the text from Adrian.
Glancing with guilt around the lecture hall, Sophie balanced her new cell on her thigh, and texted back, Class is about to end. Free soon. Is Quentin arrested?
Yeah, but please hurry. Worried about Rhea now.
Worried herself, Sophie jogged back to the dorm as soon as class was over. She hadn’t entered the room since leaving for dinner with Melissa before last night’s attack, nor had she seen Melissa. She would rather have avoided the dorm today, but needed to collect her clothes and books for the weekend.
Melissa entered when Sophie was almost done filling her backpack. Pausing tensely in the doorway, she said, “Are you staying a minute?”
“No.” Sophie stuffed in an extra T-shirt and zipped up the pack.
“Please. I could help you guys. If you need allies—”
“Allies like you, who needs enemies?” Swinging the pack onto her shoulder, Sophie bumped past Melissa and left.
On the way, the police called her cell. They’d captured Betty Quentin; they just wanted Sophie to know. They would keep Sophie informed about the arraignment and further details. Sophie thanked them, and hung up.
Adrian waited for her beside the football stadium, the giant structure silent and deserted today. She jumped into his arms, and he whirled her into the other realm.
“What have you found out?” she asked as they climbed into the bus. Kiri waited within, lying behind the front seat, and thumped her tail on the floor upon seeing Sophie.
“Well…” He wrapped his arm around Sophie, snapped the reins, and they shot off. As they flew, he explained his visit to Quentin, and the ominous hint she had dropped.
“All we can do is check the Underworld,” Adrian concluded. “Freya and Niko took off a few minutes ago. They’ll meet us there.” He sighed. “I should have just got Quentin arrested, and said nothing else. Threatening her was stupid of me. It did no good.”
“It wasn’t stupid.” She leaned her head against his chest. The contact eased the hollow fear inside her. “Or at least…even if it did no good, I’m glad you said it.”
“But acting as if I own people’s souls, when I don’t…”
“Own them, no. Stopping them from hurting others, that’s fair. That’s making the world a safer place.”
“That’s exactly what she thinks she’s doing.” Adrian sounded defeated.
With no answer to that, Sophie rested against him, watching plains, mountains, and finally ocean sweep past under the bus.
Upon arriving in the Underworld, they hurried through the entrance tunnel and stopped at the river’s edge. An unusually thick swarm of souls milled on the other side. A solid figure pushed through the glowing masses and emerged: Nikolaos, looking at them with an expression more somber and distressed than Sophie had ever seen on him.
“Oh, no,” she breathed.
Without a word, Adrian retrieved the raft and guided them across. On the other bank, the crowd of souls parted for them. In the middle stood two souls, the center of all the curiosity: Sanjay and Rhea.
Feeling sick, Sophie drew in her breath.
Adrian took her hand—his palm felt clammy—and they walked forward.
In front of Rhea, Freya sat on her knees on the white grass, streaks of tears on her beautiful face.
Rhea gazed at them with kindness and sorrow, all of it subdued, the placidity of the dead. “I went to visit Sanjay’s widow,” she said. “I brought her here from time to time, to see Sanjay. But somehow they found out I was coming, and captured me as I walked up to her house. They knocked me out quickly; I’m not sure how. It was a tingling pain all through me. And that was the last I knew before finding myself in the spirit realm as a soul.”
Adrian swallowed. When he spoke, he sounded tight-voiced, as if his jaw were injured. “Probably a stun gun of some kind. Something strong enough to…” His words faltered and stopped.
Sophie closed her eyes for a moment, imagining the rest: once they’d knocked Rhea unconscious, they were free to throw her into a furnace, or feed her into some kind of grinding machinery, or strap a bomb to her… She shuddered. How they killed her didn’t matter. It had worked; that was enough.
“Why didn’t you tell us where you were going?” Adrian shouted. “We have to check up on each other, make sure everyone’s all right. It’s easy these days, but you never did answer your phone, or tell us half of what you were doing…” He let go of Sophie’s hand and spun away, staggering in a circle, hands over his face. The crowd of souls drew back to give him room, as if in respect for their king.
“I’m sorry, Adrian,” said Rhea. “You’re perfectly right.”
“We were even tipped off,” said Niko quietly. “If only we’d been smart enough to notice.”
Adrian looked at him, his eyes bleak and questioning.
“Quentin’s email to Wilkes,” Niko said. “’We’ll have one less to worry about if we can catch our woman friend at her meeting.’ They were talking about Rhea. The message was about two attacks, not one. ‘The plan to fetch K.A.’ meant you, but that one meant her.”
Adrian sank to the ground at Sophie’s feet, drawing up his knees. “We’re the ones who are sorry,” he said t
o Rhea, without looking at her. “We failed you.”
“You didn’t. I’m proud of you. Look at what you’ve all become, in such a short time. I’m so glad I brought you back.”
“And we repaid you by letting this happen.” Adrian’s voice had gone gravelly. Sophie sank down beside him on her knees. He stared ahead, his eyes full of tears.
“If I can make a request,” Sanjay said, “could someone please tell my wife what’s happened, and check that she and the kids are safe too?”
“Better than that, mate,” Niko said. “We’ll fetch her here for you. You can tell her yourself.”
Sanjay nodded his thanks, and Niko extended his hand to Freya, who still sat upon the grass. “Up for a bit of travel to India?”
She sniffled, nodded, and took his hand.
“We’ll be careful,” Niko assured everyone. “Oh, and Ade, we asked around for Wilkes and his mate, but they aren’t up here, so, as expected…” His glance slid off toward the distant reaches of the cave, and he nodded in that direction.
Adrian acknowledged the remark with a slight lift of his chin.
Sophie began remembering the way now: a tunnel, at the far wall of the fields, leading down, down, down. To Tartaros. The sickening feeling strengthened in her stomach.
“See you soon,” Niko said, and left with Freya.
Sophie slid her hand beneath Adrian’s. “Do you want to stay, or walk?”
He said nothing, but grasped her fingers and got up.
Blinking away the tears that had risen in her eyes, Sophie paused to tell Rhea, in the old tongue they used as priestesses on Crete, “The world grieves to lose you. Your murderers will not go unpunished.”
As Persephone, queen of the Underworld, she had said it to souls. She remembered it now, another whisper from a time later in Persephone’s life. Now she spoke it not only as one friend to another, but as goddess to goddess.
Rhea inclined her head in thanks. “Go and live, daughter. I’ll linger here a good while yet.”
Adrian seemed to pick up energy, in a cold and determined way, as they walked. He led her straight across the fields, toward the passageway to the deep caverns they had eventually named Tartaros, in accordance with the legends people used to tell. Kiri trotted beside them.
Trying to quell the chills she felt, she asked, “What’s the point of us looking for them down there?”
“Information.” His voice remained tight. “They might have some. And now they can’t lie.”
Sophie understood that, and accompanied him without further questions. But she had to wonder if temporary vengeance played any part in Adrian’s motives: did he merely want to stand before Wilkes and humble him by showing him that he had, indeed, dared an attempt upon the king and queen of the Underworld?
Sophie saw the appeal in that, too. But she wasn’t convinced it would do any good.
They reached the entrance after walking in silence for several more minutes. It was invisible until you stepped up close to the wall and looked behind a thick stalagmite that concealed it: a jagged, narrow crevice rising from the floor to just a foot above Sophie’s head. Adrian switched on his flashlight and led Kiri and Sophie inside.
Blackness engulfed them for the first few minutes, as the tunnel descended in various large steps and steep slopes. The air grew warmer and stuffier as they negotiated the neglected path. Down and down they walked, deeper into the silent Earth.
Then a small spurt of flame, blue tipped with orange, shot out from the wall a pace ahead, startling Sophie. Adrian squeezed her hand to comfort her, and switched off his flashlight. He led her forward, and in a moment, the flame winked out, and another took its place, farther down the tunnel.
The cave sensed them, and was lighting their way as they proceeded. Sophie knew it in her bones, as part of her ancient memories. But although the Underworld was a friend to her, it had been ages since she’d seen such strong proof of its aliveness. It made her heart beat fast in alarm and wonder.
Soon they reached a place where the tunnel opened into a small cavern. A ring of flames burst up around the arched stone doorway, ushering in Sophie, Adrian, and Kiri. From the small cavern, dozens of narrow tunnels branched off, and within them lay a honeycomb of cells each—Sophie knew—containing a condemned soul. Soft moans and sighs echoed from the multitudes, blending in the close air.
She looked at Adrian in entreaty. All she wanted was to leave.
But he picked up a scrap of a willow-and-ivy rope from the ground—several lay scattered around them, dropped by souls on their way out as the cave released them—and he wound it around his hand, leaving a short length dangling. He waved the loose end into the flames around the doorway, where it ignited like a candle wick.
“Fates who guard these souls,” he said in the Underworld tongue, “guide us to those we seek: Bill Wilkes and his accomplice, who died yesterday in an attempt upon our lives.”
Sophie remembered this procedure now, too. Since the souls were all in solitary confinement down here and couldn’t speak to each other, you couldn’t send out a call among them when looking for someone. Instead, the living cave would guide the seeker, if the right protocol was observed.
A new flame burst from the wall in one of the adjoining tunnels. Adrian dropped the burning rope, stamped out its fire, and walked toward the flame. Sophie and Kiri accompanied him. Down the tunnel they walked, following flame after flame that shot out ahead of them to guide them forward. They passed hundreds of cells, into which Sophie was, at first, too scared to look. But eventually she took a glance, and then longer glances, and soon made it a point to send a compassionate look into the eyes of each soul they passed.
No one looked terrifying or dangerous, only unhappy. The cells were all the same: tiny hollows in the rock, with open doorways that had no bars or barriers. But the cave chained each captive to the wall with a willow-and-ivy vine around the waist so they couldn’t escape before their time. Aside from the rare occurrence of another soul or an immortal guardian walking past, they had nothing to look at in their cell but a single flame rising from the floor, and in it, Sophie recalled as a whisper from Persephone, they saw the harm they had done and the consequences it had caused. To feel joy or contentment was impossible here.
The trail of little flames stopped after five or six turns among the passageways. In the cell below the last flame, Sophie beheld the soul of Bill Wilkes, tied to the wall.
She felt slightly sick again as his eyes met hers, though he displayed no malice; only depression. A second flame burned on the opposite side of the corridor, two cells down, and she stepped aside to glance into that one. Indeed, there stood Wilkes’ taller accomplice—some man in his twenties or thirties with bristly blond hair and small, blue eyes.
How strange, Sophie thought, that she didn’t even know this man’s name, nor anything about his life, and not much more about Wilkes, but they had assaulted her and tried to kill her beloved friends, and now she was viewing their souls in the afterlife.
Her life had indeed changed in the last couple of months.
Adrian ignored the accomplice and looked at Wilkes. “Who killed Rhea?”
“I don’t know their names,” Wilkes said. “Street criminals. The guru found them.”
“How can we find them and have them arrested? And have the guru arrested?”
“You probably can’t. The plan was to incinerate her along with hundreds of dead bodies, so if they carried that out, there’s no proof of a murder or any crime at all.”
Adrian sighed in frustration. “How do we stop them? Quentin’s been arrested, but is this going to continue?”
“Of course. It will always continue.” Wilkes sounded defeated, not triumphant. “The group has plans for every setback. And Quentin probably won’t stay in jail long. We have a plan in place for that too.”
Adrian scowled down the corridor a while. Then he looked coolly at Wilkes. “What else did you do, other than come after us? To end up here, it must have be
en pretty bad.”
Wilkes’ face grew sadder, stormier. He gazed at the flame on the floor of his cell. “Murder—a man I hated; I got away with that. Poisoned him. Even he didn’t know who did it. Violence; beating people. Seeing prostitutes, girls I knew were underage—”
“I don’t want to hear any more,” Sophie interrupted softly, addressing Adrian.
“Enough,” Adrian commanded Wilkes.
Wilkes lifted his face and looked at the two of them. “So you really were Hades and Persephone.”
Sophie turned away from his gaze. Yes, Wilkes would have all the common Underworld knowledge now. A lot of good it did him.
“I suppose you won this skirmish,” Wilkes added. “But it never ends, you know.”
“We didn’t win. In here, no one wins. All I know is you should try to do better in your next life,” he regarded the ample gauge of the ropes holding Wilkes, “which appears to be in a long time.” He turned away. “We’ll be sure to tell Quentin you said hello.”
Sophie, Adrian, and Kiri left the caves and climbed up the sloping tunnel. As the flames disappeared behind them, Adrian switched his flashlight back on. His features looked hardened and gloomy in its cold blue light.
“At least they’re where they belong,” Sophie said, hoping it might soothe him.
“But like he said, we can never stop Thanatos, not really. And what good does it do, being locked up in Tartaros? It doesn’t work, evidently. You’ve seen how the world is. Evil people are everywhere.”
“They forget when they’re reborn,” Sophie said.
“Exactly. What’s the point, then? What is the cave doing? How am I supposed to help out, be some kind of god down here, when I don’t even know?” He sounded completely desolate.
On top of Rhea’s death and the violence they underwent last night, trying to work out the secrets of the universe was surely too much to ask. Sophie curled her arm around his, and leaned her cheek on his shoulder in consolation, unable to provide any answers herself, and feeling equally lost in the face of such questions.
Persephone's Orchard (The Chrysomelia Stories) Page 35
