by A. R. Kahler
“He’s lying,” Kingston says.
“Shut up, Kingston,” I reply. “I’ve known Eli longer than I’ve known you.”
I study Eli for a few seconds. Wondering if he’s telling the truth. Then I realize he’s right. Eli’s an asshole—it’s his defining characteristic really—but he also gets bored easily. He wouldn’t toy with us like this. In the grand scheme of things, it’s probably about as exciting as eating raw kale.
“So why didn’t it work?” I ask Eli directly. I don’t acknowledge that I trust him—he’d find it too sentimental. “I had her true name. I destroyed the contract. Just like you said.”
“I don’t quite know,” he replies. “It should have worked. Clearly, it influenced her somehow. She wouldn’t have found you so easily, otherwise. Something in the contract affected her.”
“But she isn’t weak. If she could withstand her true name, there’s no way destroying the contract actually hurt her.”
“Maybe it did,” Kingston mutters. I look to him. His hand is mostly healed, but he still nurses it, staring at Eli like the guy’s grown wings. (Which, I’ll admit, suit Eli, when he does.)
“What do you mean?”
“Hell changes a person, right?” Kingston asks. “What if . . . what if that wasn’t her true name? Not anymore. What if this new creature is more than Penelope? Because whatever you summoned, it’s not the Penelope I remember. This thing is too powerful. What if you ended the mortal part of her? Yes. But her true name . . . the one that could control her, and kill her . . . what if that’s something else?”
“Her name is writ in hell,” I whisper.
“Hm?”
“What my mother said. Her name is writ in hell. I thought maybe it was a metaphor.”
“It still could be,” Eli says. “After all, if she was reborn as a different creature, hell is where she got the start. It’s where her name would have begun.”
“But . . . what if it’s there? What if she’s hiding her true name in hell? I can’t sense it on her. I know my powers are shot, but I can read true names like body language. The fact that hers is a mystery says she’s gone to great lengths to conceal it. But it has to exist somewhere.”
“You want us to go to the netherworld? With him?” Kingston asks. “You do realize that he’s only contracted on this plane of existence, right? The moment you go down there, he’s off his leash. He could kill us in a heartbeat.”
“Then I guess you’re just going to have to trust me. Or”—Eli nods to me—“trust her.”
Kingston looks between the two of us. He opens his mouth, but I cut him off.
“Don’t you dare say this is suicide. We don’t have another choice. Unless you want to wait for Penelope to come and burn your house down.”
The muscles in Kingston’s jaw jut. But he doesn’t say anything.
“Come on, it’s not so bad down there,” Eli says. Then he pauses. “Actually, no. That’s a lie. It is rather bad. But at least you have a guide.”
“I’ll call you Virgil.”
“I’ve been called worse. And after this, you’ll probably want to call me worse.”
“How do we get there?” I ask.
Eli hesitates. Eli never hesitates.
“You won’t like it,” he finally says.
I already don’t like any of this.
“It involves a sacrifice,” he continues. “Hell is a very bad place. And mortals must do some very bad things to get there.”
“I’m listening.”
“Well. We’re going to need something innocent. And you two are going to have to kill it. Painfully.” He smiles. “On the plus side, this should be a great team-building exercise!”
I close my eyes. It’s a good thing I’ve already signed my soul away to Winter. After this, I might not have much of one left.
Twenty
“What the hell have we done?” Kingston asks, looking up from the bloody mess sprawled out before him.
“Pull it together, magic man,” I mutter from where I’m kneeling. “And Eli, for the love of all the old gods, stop giggling.”
Truth be told, it’s taking a lot of self-control to keep my vomit inside where it belongs, and Eli dancing about outside the summoning circle, wearing intestines like a feather boa, isn’t helping. At all.
He swears it’s necessary for the ritual. I swear he’s just doing it to be a dick.
We’re outside. Back at the warehouse where I usually summon him, to be exact. Snow coats the ground around us, but Kingston magicked away enough for us to construct our summoning circle. I let Eli draw most of the symbols. Partly because they involved fluids other than blood, and partly because a few of the letters are from a language I know better than to mess with.
I try not to think of the last few minutes. The screaming and crying. Both of our sacrifices and of Kingston, because hard as he is on the outside, dude becomes a blithering mess the moment innocents start begging for help. I tell myself this is all Penelope’s fault, that these are her deaths. But that doesn’t scrub the screaming from my ears. Did it really have to be triplets?
My hands are warm and wet, and as I finish a few of the sigils in blood, I remind myself that this is all a means to an end, and with the world hanging in the balance, any means are justified. Any means. Even these means. Even these.
Eli prances into the circle, smacking Kingston across the back of the head with an intestine before bouncing over to me.
“Why are we doing all this, Eli?” I ask.
“Few things still hold power in this world,” he says, his tone remarkably serious for his actions. “Innocence is one of them. Difficult to come by, easy to lose, and impossible to regain. The loss of innocence holds more power than any invocation.”
“I haven’t been innocent for a long time,” I say. I nod to Kingston. “And neither has he.”
“Perhaps. But, you haven’t spilled innocent blood. Not like this. Not with the intent of killing purely for the sake of murder. It’s an offering. It tells the gatekeepers you are serious about entering their domain.”
I glare at him.
“You’re not telling me there’s some sort of moral gatekeepers holding back the hordes of hell. You know I don’t believe in the devil.”
“Not at all. I’m saying it requires a great deal of power of a very particular sort. A tricky lock needs a specific key. And yes, there are gatekeepers—spirits entrusted to holding those in the lower regions of the netherworld down and preventing the innocent from stumbling in. Cosmic checks and balances, really. Nothing about morality. But this . . . this is how you gain that specific power. This is how you show you’re ready for what you’re going to face.”
I smack my hand back on the cold concrete and finish the Aramaic. I don’t want to admit that he’s right about this being a deeper sort of magic. I’m used to dealing in Dream, that fluttering, elusive stuff of imagination and nightmares. The power that floods around us is heavier, thicker, stickier. And a thousand times more potent. It clings to my skin and burns through my lungs. Three innocents killed, and all their unspent Dream coils around me. Three innocents killed, and the lives they never lived unfurl in the snow like bloody lotuses. It’s more power than I’ve seen in one place since, well, since Roxie made her own circle of the damned.
No wonder Penelope harvested all of those lives when she was resurrected. This much power could raise the dead. Literally.
“Now what?” I ask. Kingston is still sitting on the edge of the circle, hands held before him as though he’s making an offering or praying the blood away, his symbols complete. The power is thick around us. A closed room filled with gas, just waiting for the spark.
“You finish the equation.” But it isn’t Eli who responds. It’s Lilith.
She strides up behind us, oblivious to the snow and the cold, wearing a tiny skirt and a loose black tank top covered in esoteric symbols. Some sort of hipster-goth chic. If she’s at all disturbed by the scene before her, or the freezing snow
, she isn’t showing it. She’s actually smiling.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I ask, suddenly feeling naked.
“I invited her,” Eli says.
When I cast him a glare, he shrugs and looks back to Lilith. I almost expect him to extend a hand and help her into the circle. He doesn’t. He looks at her as if she’s an approaching wolf. One with rabies. And he isn’t quite certain he wants to be holding the leash.
“Why?” I ask.
“Because we need to go to hell. A place I haven’t exactly been. She has.”
“But I thought—”
“I live in the netherworld,” Eli says. “One level of it. Where Lilith was, and where Penelope was born . . . that is deeper than I have gone. I’d be happy to discuss the logistics and intricacies of astral travel with you over tea. After we’ve saved the world.”
Lilith steps over the edge of the circle and kneels beside me, her skirt soaking up the remains of our offerings. She doesn’t hesitate, dipping her hands in the blood. Kingston watches it all with his mouth slightly ajar.
“I thought you ran off,” Kingston says.
“I did. But apparently not far enough.” She sighs dramatically. “Here we are again. Facing the final battle. Just like old times.”
“Why are you helping us?” I ask. I know she is a demon, but this just raises a thousand questions: How is she here, if not bound by contract? Who dragged her up? And what was she before?
“I’m not helping you. I’m avenging the only creature I truly loved.” She looks at me, her green eyes perfectly blank. “Penelope killed my cat. Now, I kill Penelope. Again.”
I almost laugh at that. She’s after Penelope because the woman killed her cat? That makes no sense. It’s probably the weakest motive for revenge I’ve ever heard, especially from someone who calls herself a demon.
Her gaze remains blank. Dares me to say anything. I’m not stupid. I stay silent.
“Well, thanks,” I reply.
“Don’t thank me. Not yet.” She tilts her head to the side. “This is not going to be fun for you.”
Before I can ask if that was a threat, something completes—the missing symbol, the final equation—and the bloodlike power swirls around us, collapsing against us in a wave. It fills my lungs. Pulls me down. I can’t see. Can’t breathe. Not over the power. Not through the blood.
My vision pools red and then black, and then the world floods away with the sound of our offerings’ trapped screams.
“This is hell?” I ask.
The landscape around us is far from diabolical. Sure, the sky is reddish and coated with clouds, and the air has that heaviness of a summer storm moments before it breaks. But despite that, and the browned grass, and the rolling hills of dead and stunted trees, the place isn’t that scary. Just depressing. Like a Midwest town in the middle of summer. Where are the pools of fire? The giant devil-horned demons with three penises? I want a refund—no one here has a pitchfork for me to steal.
“This is part of it,” Lilith says. “Do not be deceived. We are merely at the entrance.”
She stands at my side, and it’s only then that I realize it’s just the two of us. Despite the heat, my skin goes cold with goose bumps.
“Where is everyone? What did you do with them?”
She starts walking downhill. It’s definitely not my imagination; her feet sink slightly into the earth, and red liquid pools around her shoes like we’re walking through a bloody bog. And rather than squelching, the sound that bubbles up is almost a moan. Not one of the good kinds.
Despite this, I walk forward. I’m not going to show weakness. Not here. And definitely not around her.
“They are elsewhere,” she says.
“Elsewhere? I swear to gods, if you hurt them . . .”
She looks over her shoulder at me. “The gods have no sway here. Besides, I wouldn’t hurt Kingston. That is why he is elsewhere. A higher level of hell. Where it is safe. Safer.”
“What about Eli?”
She shrugs. “He is with Kingston. For protection.”
“This is all your fault—”
She turns and her hand is on my neck before I can block it. Her grip is remarkably strong.
“I am your only hope of surviving this place,” she says. “Do not forget that. Having others around would only interfere. I cannot take care of everyone, and we would fail if my attentions were diverted. They are safe. Which is more than I can say for us.”
She drops her hand and keeps walking, her gait bouncy. Like she didn’t just surprise choke me. I definitely need to choose my traveling companions more carefully in the future.
“This place doesn’t look dangerous to me,” I say. I know those are Famous Last Words, but I don’t care. Bring it, hell. Show me what you got.
She just chuckles. “You are used to responding to the world and its dangers. This world responds to you. Be careful what you think lest you will it into being.”
I look around at the dim sky and bleak landscape.
“So if I think really hard about an orgy . . .”
I know it’s not the time or place for wit, but Lilith gets under my skin just by existing. I’m not in the mood to joke, not after what I just did to get here. But it keeps me from thinking about that. And the fact that I’m in the lowest regions of the astral plane with a girl that I’m 100 percent sure wants me dead.
Lilith sighs.
“Fine,” I continue. “How do we find Penelope? Or where she hid her name.”
“She will have guarded it,” she says. “And we will have to fight past those guards.”
I gesture to the empty landscape. “What guards? There’s no one around.”
“That is why you have me,” she mutters. “You don’t sense the danger you’re in.”
She pauses and looks around, then makes an about-face and begins walking back the way we came. I don’t follow right away.
“Don’t tell me you’re lost.”
She doesn’t answer. Just keeps walking, now up the hill. I have no choice but to follow.
Two steps up and the scenery changes. The sky darkens in a matter of breaths, and the damp beneath our feet begins to rush and pool, an inch-high stream of red. Something smacks into my foot, and I glance down in time to see a limb floating past. Not a tree limb, either.
“The fuck?” I whisper. Lightning streaks across the sky, making the trees around us flash white. I tell myself it’s my imagination that turns the branches to bone, but I’m also not willing to bet on it.
“We must continue down,” she says.
At her words, my gut wrenches as my perception shifts, and I realize I’m no longer walking up the hill, but down it. Another bolt of lightning flashes. The hills are gone, replaced by cliffs that shear straight up into the sky, the land below obscured with smoke. Our watery path cuts through the cliff faces, the only part of the landscape that isn’t a pure vertical. Something thick and wet plops against my shoulders. Rain. It’s raining. And this isn’t water—I can’t tell what it is, but it’s viscous and hot and, at times, solid. My gut reaction is to wipe it from my shoulders, but it’s raining heavily enough that that’s a pointless exercise. I just keep my mouth closed tight and try not to look up.
The path twists and turns down the side of the ravine. I stumble more than once, though Lilith continues to walk with her assured, bouncy gait, never stumbling, not seeming to mind the dark liquid that drips down her porcelain skin like tar.
“Stay close,” she calls back when I nearly fall on my ass because something wiggled past my ankle and tried to trip me. “We are nearing where she was kept.”
How do you know? I want to yell. But I don’t, because there’s no way I want to get any of whatever this is in my mouth. It’s already salty on my lips, and that’s bad enough.
She stops suddenly and I collide into her. If not for her quick reflex and a hand on my bicep, I’d have fallen right off the edge of the cliff. I’ve only been here a few moments and I alread
y hate this place. It’s not hellish. It’s just really annoying.
“Careful,” is all she says. Then she pushes past me and begins walking up again.
I grumble under my breath and follow. This is pointless—we aren’t getting anywhere. Lilith probably isn’t even trying to bring me to Penelope. She’s probably just trying to screw with me. Like everyone else has throughout my life.
The angle of our walking doesn’t change, but the landscape does. Dramatically.
Between one step and the next, the rain stops, the sky clears, and the moment my foot lands the world is completely changed. And Lilith is completely gone.
I curse under my breath and stop walking.
The chapiteau rises up before me, all green and black, and the promenade is awash with sound and color. A long line stretches along the path, patrons all waiting to get their tickets from the colorful booth out front. My heart hammers in my chest as I walk forward. My feet are pulled of their own accord, and I only barely register that the grass is soggy. Probably just recent rain . . .
There are performers ahead. Stilt walkers and fire-eaters and jugglers, all dancing up and down the line, entertaining the patrons while they wait for the show to open. It’s early evening and spotlights race against the overhead clouds, like they’re dancing to music coming from inside the tent. I head toward a woman near the end of the line. When I reach her, she turns around and smiles.
“Claire, where did you wander off to?”
She holds out her hand and I reach up to take it, looking up at her and Dad.
“I wanted to see the jugglers,” I say.
She pulls me close and pats the top of my head. “Well, you don’t need to wander off for that. Look, here comes one now!”
But it’s not a juggler—even I know that. She doesn’t have any juggling balls, and she’s dressed funny. She’s wearing a striped black suit and her hair is huge and pink.
“Are you Vivienne?” the lady asks my mom. My mom nods. She looks confused.
“I’m Melody,” the performer replies. “I’m here to escort you to your seats.”
“Our seats?” Daddy asks. “But we haven’t gotten our tickets yet.”
