Hellfire and Brimstone

by Angela Roquet

  Vince grinned at my jab, seeing that I was enjoying getting under Ruth’s skin. “Every good resistance needs an inside man, or woman,” he added, glancing back at Ruth. “When Saul’s soul on the inside was about to retire from the factory, he recruited her for us. She made the choice to leave and join the Army of Souls before her own retirement, giving up the luxury of being born into a celebrity family on this side.”

  I balked at the confession and unwillingly lost some of my grudge against the girl. “You’d rather live as a ghost on this side, with no one able to hear or see you?”

  Ruth’s gaze met Vince’s briefly, and a coy smile turned up her lips. “I’m heard and seen well enough.” Ah, love. Even the crazies couldn’t escape Cupid’s arrow.

  “So what’s the plan? Gonna storm Limbo City and form a picket line in front of Reapers Inc.? Demand shorter factory terms? Insist on a new afterlife for nonbelievers who didn’t earn a ticket to Heaven?”

  “You’re smarter than that, Lana.” Vince smirked. “We have half a dozen original believers in our midst. The souls are beyond the point of asking or demanding. It’s time to take what’s rightfully theirs.”

  Ruth wrapped an arm around his neck and leaned in closer to me, as if she was sharing gossip between friends. “We’re going to seize the Throne of Eternity and fix everything wrong with the afterlives.”

  “Good luck with that.” I leaned back against the pole and shook my head. “I can’t believe Naledi wanted to offer you asylum in the throne realm.”

  “Naledi is a puppet of the enemy,” Ruth said, a hoity bite to her voice. “She wasn’t chosen by the souls. She was chosen by the council—”

  “Actually, she was chosen by me.” That got both of their attentions.

  “But the papers—the press conference,” Ruth stammered, her gaze jerking from me to Vince.

  “They wanted everyone to think they’d chosen Naledi, to think they were still in control of the situation. But I found her on the mortal side, and I brought her to the throne realm, and she assumed the throne long before any of them even knew there was a throne to assume.” Okay, that wasn’t entirely true. Horus and Maalik had known about the throne. I suspected some of the other council members had an idea too, but they’d kept their mouths shut for the sake of peace.

  “Why you?” Vince asked, pointing the hunting knife at me with a thoughtful look, as if he’d forgotten what he was holding in his hand. “You’ve been all over the papers these past few years, for everything from dating a council member to launching a rescue mission through Hell to shutting down the ghost market.” He paused to give me a scolding frown. “For which I’m still upset with you over, by the way. I was one of their top bidders.”

  “Of course you were.” I snorted. “And I’ll bet the souls were so grateful when you bought them from their demon captors, never once thinking that they wouldn’t have gone through all that in the first place if assholes like you didn’t keep funding the horrible practice.”

  The point of my hunting knife looked less casual as it neared my face. “I was one of their top bidders. Not their only bidder. All of the souls downstairs would be in someone else’s possession if not for me, and I can guarantee that those someones had far less honorable intentions.”

  “Whatever,” I said, trying to keep the panic out of my voice as I leaned away from the knife. “You’re no better than the rebels.”

  Ruth shook her head. “The rebels wanted to destroy Eternity. We want to fix it.”

  “And how exactly do you plan to do that?” I snapped. “Seizing the throne is a pretty vague plan. Did it take you the whole century to come up with that one?”

  Her expression turned malicious again. “Don’t forget that you’re the one who’s tied up, honey.”

  “Look,” I said, trying to restrain the swell of clashing emotions flooding through me. “You need to come with me to the throne realm and talk to Naledi. Work all of this out with her, where it’s safe.”

  My heart tightened as I remembered the rip through the throne realm sky and the blood on Morgan’s hands. But Naledi had said she could fix it. I was hoping she could also fix this mess with Vince and his Army of Souls. She had requested that I bring them to her. I hoped this was still a good idea. I didn’t want to be the idiot on the field who scored the winning goal for the other team.

  Vince circled me, tapping the tip of my knife against his shoulder. “You want to bring us to the throne realm, do you?”

  “No. Absolutely not,” Ruth said, her eyes widening at him as if he’d lost his mind. “We can’t trust her to lead us there. It’s obviously a trap orchestrated by the council.”

  “Please. Naledi sent me, not the council. They have no idea I’m here. They don’t even know that Seth’s dead yet, or that Grim’s hunting down original believers and consuming their souls so he can make a grab for the throne himself.” I wanted to enjoy the rise I was getting out of them, but the truth scared the shit out of me too much for gloating. “That’s right,” I said. “Your half a dozen fancy souls are in big danger.”

  Ruth and Vince edged away from me, moving closer to the desk so that they could share a private moment. They stared at each other, guarded expressions tightening their faces. Whatever silent language they were speaking was lost on me. My head hurt. My shoulders hurt. And I was freezing without my jacket. That would be the first thing I fixed when we got to the throne realm. The bitch would be returning my jacket, and Vince would be giving my knife back. If this went on for too much longer, I was going to add interest in the form of black eyes for both of them.

  “Come on, guys.” I groaned and yanked at the rope around my wrists again. “I wouldn’t have bothered coming here at all if it wasn’t so important. Naledi wants to unite forces or bridge gaps, some crap like that. Grim needs to be stopped, and the original believers need to be protected. We can at least agree on that much, can’t we?”

  A sad look passed through Ruth’s eyes, as if Vince had given her the wrong answer, even though he hadn’t said anything I could hear or understand. “A hundred years,” she said, a hand pressing over her heart. “I’ve been faithful to this mission, to you. And you want to throw it all away?”

  “Ruth.” Vince set my knife down on the desk and took both of her shoulders in his hands. “This mission is supposed to end in peace. If there is a way to achieve that without violence, don’t you think we should take it?”

  Angry tears filled her eyes as she turned them on me again. “You really trust her that much?”

  Vince snorted out a soft laugh. “Saul was her mentor. That tells me all I need to know. Besides,” he added, turning to look at me, “if she betrays us, I’ll gut her with her own knife.”

  “Can’t wait,” I said dryly. “Now would someone please—”

  A scream from outside the office cut me off, freezing my heart in my chest. Another scream followed, and then a whole chorus of nightmares rang in my ears as Vince opened the door. He and Ruth ran from the room. I wanted to shout after them to stop. To come back. That it was too late.

  But I couldn’t get the words out. I could hardly draw in my next breath.

  Vince had left the door ajar, and the deafening sound of Death hard at work filled my ears, rattling me to the core. My legs slid out from under me, and the metal pole at my back pressed achingly into my spine as I slumped to the floor.

  I pushed my cheek against my shoulder, wishing my hands were free to hide my face in, and sobbed silently as I waited for my turn to come.

  Chapter 23

  “The dead cannot cry out for justice. It is a duty of the living to do so for them.”

  —Lois McMaster Bujold

  The screams of those dying downstairs in the warehouse couldn’t have lasted more than a few minutes. But I swear it felt like an eternity. Their raw, ethereal swan songs ricocheted through my skull, tearing at my mind. When they tapered off, panic flooded in. My limbs shook with fear as silence settled around me, and my breath grew shall
ow as I listened for footsteps, for flapping wings.

  I sat there like that, in trembling comatose, long enough that my muscles cramped. Cold air seeped through the crack in the door, and I began to blame it for my shaking, dismissing it as a violent case of the shivers. I had to clench my teeth to keep them from chattering.

  With my final moments lurking dangerously close, my thoughts slipped off into the past, and Saul entered my mind. Why would he have done this? What did he have to gain from starting a soul rebellion? What did Vince have to gain?

  Ruth seemed like a clue in and of herself. Had Saul had a soulish lover later in life, too? I thought of Adrianna and all she had said about him. She claimed her ambitions had been what ended their relationship. Had that been what crippled my friendship with Saul too? There were no concrete answers. I felt like I had a million more questions than I’d begun with. And now I’d never have the answers, I thought, as something scraped across the floor of the warehouse, echoing a warning that reached up to me in the office.

  I bit my lip and willed my breath to steady and be silent. A thread of hope that Grim wouldn’t find me had crept into my mind, and I wasn’t ready to give it up just yet.

  “Lana!” Bub shouted.

  My heart leapt into my throat, and tears poured from my eyes. “Up here.” I choked the words out and had to try twice more before I was sure he had heard me.

  A buzzing swarm spilled through the door, slamming it back against the wall, and then Bub materialized. He gasped and knelt before me, his hands touching my face first and then my shoulders, searching my body for injuries. When he worked his way back up to my head and his fingers prodded the tender spot on my skull, I winced.

  “I’m okay,” I said. “Just a concussion. My shoulders hurt worse.”

  Bub’s concerned face hardened a bit. He pulled a knife from his boot and sliced through the rope around my wrists. My shoulders ached as they fell forward and the circulation returned to my arms, renewing my grateful tears.

  “I thought you were dead,” Bub hissed through clenched teeth. “You have—had—a soulish doppelganger. And she was wearing the jacket I helped you pick out.” He sucked in a tense breath and then wrapped his arms around my shoulders, crushing me to his chest. “Don’t ever go off to save the world without me again. Ever. Do you hear?”

  “After the night I’ve had, the world can burn,” I said, only half joking. “How did you find me?”

  “That rebel harlot you helped escape last spring.”

  “Tasha?” I pulled away to look at him. “She tracked you down?”

  Bub raised an eyebrow. “Naledi helped me track her down. I’m amazed she hasn’t been caught by the guard. She’s rather careless about revisiting places that are compromised, isn’t she?”

  I shrugged, grimacing when my shoulders protested. “How many casualties are downstairs?” I asked next, not sure I wanted to know the answer.

  Bub’s face turned somber. “It was a massacre, love. Counting them will take time we don’t have.”

  “Time we don’t have?” I echoed back. He stood and helped me to my feet.

  “The throne realm is broken—”

  “I know.”

  “—and Naledi is missing.”

  “What? But she called you. You said she helped you find Tasha.” I shook my head, unable to believe this was happening.

  “She did,” Bub said. “She also called Gabriel and Kevin. And Maalik,” he added, the fear in his expression outweighing jealousy. “They’re searching the city for her now. We need to return and help.”

  “Vince and Ruth,” I said, turning toward the open door. “They had just agreed to free me and bring their souls to Naledi in the throne realm.”

  Bub touched my arm. “They’re gone, love. There’s nothing more we can do here.”

  “They had six original believers. We need to know if any of them survived.”

  “You won’t be able to pick them out. Your soul vision…” he let the sentence hang, knowing I could fill in the rest. The council had screwed the pooch big time.

  “Dirty bastards,” I grumbled under my breath.

  Bub nodded knowingly. “Let’s go, love.”

  “Not yet.” I stalked across the room and grabbed my knife off the desk, tucking it back in my boot where it belonged. Then I headed for the door. Bub followed close behind.

  Outside the office was a small, metal balcony attached to a set of stairs that led down into the warehouse proper. Yellow paint chipped off the railing, revealing several layers of various colors beneath. The upkeep of it had been so neglected, I didn’t realize that the abundance of red as it neared the ground level was blood until my eyes took in the bodies layered across the warehouse floor.

  I’d been a reaper for over three hundred years, and I had put in plenty of long hours on the Posy Unit, so I was no stranger to carnage. But the sight took my breath away. There had to be a thousand souls in the warehouse. Many of them were withered and blackened, like they’d been caught in a giant furnace and burned for so long that their skeletons had shriveled down to doll-sized proportions. Only a few were left in recognizable condition, and as I did the math I understood why.

  Six souls had been dismembered, their heads torn away from their bodies, nowhere to be found. I couldn’t see their unique auras, and I had a feeling I wouldn’t have been able to even if Naledi hadn’t revoked my special vision. Grim had sucked them dry. I could feel it in my bones. Somehow, this was so much worse than a human death. There was no coming back from this. Not for anyone. Not ever.

  Vince and Ruth had survived the scorching and decapitation, but they were just as dead as everyone else. Vince was sprawled backwards over a piece of machinery, his head twisted around at an unnatural angle and one knee bent the wrong way. His vacant, gray eyes looked surprised, like he couldn’t believe how fast it had all happened. I knew I couldn’t.

  Ruth lay face up over a pile of bodies not far away. My jacket had slipped down her arms, and one sleeve was torn across the elbow. A ragged hole in her chest made me visualize Grim tearing her heart out with his bare hands, and I shuddered. I was ready to be out of there, but I needed the skeleton coin. I raced over to Ruth’s body and dug my hand down in the jacket pockets.

  “Leave it, love,” Bub shouted from the stairs. A disgusted look stained his face as he took in the room a second time. “You have other jackets.”

  “I’m not after the jacket.” My fingers closed around the coin and I held it up for him to see.

  As I crossed the room, I couldn’t help but pause to give Vince one last look. We’d almost fixed this mess. Or we had almost had the chance to. Now we’d never know. Either way, he wasn’t the enemy. Not anymore. I put a gentle hand to his cheek.

  “I’ll make this right,” I said, not just to Vince, but to them all. It wasn’t only Saul who needed avenged now. And while I was plenty terrified of Grim, I wasn’t tied up any longer. And I had a knife.

  And one hell of a handsome demon who had my back, I added, stepping up beside Bub. He wrapped an arm around my waist, and I flipped the skeleton coin, taking us directly to the throne realm.

  Even though I’d already seen the molested sky in the throne realm, it took me by surprise. The angry rift that separated night and day seemed to have widened, but the rain had stopped. The ground was wet and muddy, and it reminded me of the soggy graveyard in Atlanta.

  “The others are in the city,” Bub said, giving me a questioning look.

  “Naledi was supposed to be here. She was going to fix that.” I pointed up at the celestial damage. “I don’t know where else she would have gone, so best to start here. Let’s check the cottage.”

  We headed across the lawn and up the front porch. The front door hung open, and I wondered if Naledi had come back through here or if this was how we’d left it. The foyer looked untouched. The living room too. In the kitchen, I found a serving tray stacked with unwashed teacups and saucers, likely leftover from the Apparition Agency me
eting she’d hosted before I arrived and all hell broke loose.

  “I’m sure the others checked this realm thoroughly,” Bub said. “We should be searching new terrain, covering more ground.”

  I sighed and headed back outside. There was something I was missing. It had to be here. I felt it pulling at me. My eyes were drawn back up to the sky again and the gaping void that divided two halves of a whole. Except, it wasn’t a void at all.

  Beyond the shadows of the furled edges of the atmosphere, I could see golden leaves rustling in a gentle wind. A twinkle of light slipped through them, and my breath caught. It was the light set into the hand of Coreen’s memorial statue.

  “There,” I whispered, pointing it out to Bub. “We need to go there.”

  He hesitated. “We don’t know what’s through there.”

  “I do,” I insisted. “And we need to go now. It’s happening now.”

  I could feel the pull again, like an invisible hand clenching around my insides and dragging me toward my destiny. There was something I had to do. I wasn’t sure what it was yet, but I would know it when I saw it. At least, I hoped I would.

  Bub pressed his lips to mine in a sudden kiss, and then his dark eyes locked on mine, the flecks of gold swirling anxiously. “Take your coin. I’ll go in first and buy you some extra time.” He dissolved into his swarm slowly, the flies pixilating him from the feet up, leaving his longing eyes for last.

  I wanted to go with him, hand in hand like a terrified child, but he was right. Taking on Grim was going to require every advantage we could summon. And maybe a few more that we couldn’t. I had a horrible feeling that I knew where Naledi was, and that she was responsible for the invisible leash on my psyche.

  I took a deep breath and flipped the skeleton coin.

  Chapter 24

  “A man who won't die for something is not fit to live.”

  —Martin Luther King, Jr.