by Laura Bickle
“What are they doing?” Anya shouted.
“Feeding.”
“But salamanders don’t eat—”
“Salamanders, like any other elemental, need energy to survive. Sparky gets what he needs from the electrical appliances in your physical world, from the occasional ghost you allow him to snap at, and from you.”
Her brow wrinkled. “What do you mean, from me?”
“Lanterns put out a surprising amount of energy. Salamanders are attracted to that. He’s probably licking at your aura as you sleep.”
Anya tried to shake off the uncomfortable feeling of being a salamander snack, when a little newt disengaged itself from the seething mass. It waddled heavily across the yard, groaned, and lay on its back with its legs splayed open, displaying its full belly. It had grown a few inches since it had begun feeding upon the hapless night watchman, its belly distended as if it had swallowed a golf ball. Sparky gave it an approving lick.
Charon released Anya, but she remained rooted in place, staring at the salamanders wolfing down the shredded remains of the ghost. What was left looked like papier-mâché, a soft, ectoplasmic goo that was rapidly losing illumination, like crushed fireflies. Snorkling nasal sounds emanated from the scene as the salamanders licked ectoplasm from their snouts.
“Oh, my God,” she breathed.
Charon smirked. “I think your children are ready to go to war.”
A baby salamander ran gleefully away from the remains, scuttling over Anya’s foot. His speckled tail kinked in joy, he trilled and scrambled away with glowing goo smeared on his face.
“I’M NOT FOLLOWING YOU ANYWHERE.” Anya crossed her arms over her chest. It was hard to take a serious stance with dozens of overstuffed salamanders crawling all over her, but she was going to try. She picked one up who was standing on her shoulder, licking her cheek, and set it on the ground to clamber on Sparky.
Charon frowned. “Look, need I remind you what’s at stake? Now that Hope has Pandora’s Jar, she’s got enough storage to suck up half the ghosts in the Midwestern U.S.”
“That’s not the problem. The problem is that I can’t trust you to take me where you say you will.” Anya couldn’t imagine a worse hell than the fire that had consumed her childhood home, but wasn’t entirely sure that one didn’t exist. Either way, she didn’t want to find out.
“I don’t have any control over where the ghost train takes us. You had to go here to resolve your… issues.” Charon rolled his eyes. “I don’t like wasting time any more than you do.”
“Seems to me that you enjoy being psychopompous.”
“Whatever.” Charon turned his back. “I’m walking back to the train to see if it will take me to Hope now. You can come, or not.” He ground out his cigarette with his heel and struck off down the street.
Anya glanced back at the house. Fire had chewed it down to a pile of blackened beams, stinking burned vinyl, and glittering glass. She didn’t particularly want to sit around and watch it be reduced to embers. And she had no desire to pick through the wreckage for her mother’s remains… or to see if that man-shaped creature of fire still lingered. Sighing, she clunked off after Charon. Sparky trotted along beside her, and the little salamanders tumbled along in their wake, nipping at her heels. Anya hoped they weren’t still hungry. But maybe they could be convinced to gnaw on Charon.
The streets stretched out in ribbons of black and white, bits of snow spangling the darkness. Anya could feel the cold seeping into the seams of her armor as the warmth of the fire faded. Where the little salamanders hitched a ride, she felt scalding heat, as if they still retained some of the fire they’d hatched in. Sparky plodded along, his tail switching through the skiff of snow and obliterating Charon’s footprints. Cold air whistled along the neck of Anya’s armor like the sound of a child blowing across an empty bottle.
Charon paused at a railway crossing, then turned west on the tracks.
“It’s shorter, this way,” was all he said. He walked along the rail, boots sure-footed on the ice.
Anya’s armored feet were too clumsy to walk like a bird on a wire. She lifted her feet and marched, stepping from one broad wooden railway tie to the next. Sparky hopped along beside her, with the little salamanders springing like grasshoppers behind them in the gravel and pieces of green slag.
After what seemed like hours, a now-familiar rumble echoed in the distance. Anya moved to get off the tracks, calling for Sparky and the salamanders. She could feel the vibration in the metal.
Charon stood on the tracks. “We can catch the train from here.”
Anya blinked stupidly. “On the tracks?” She could see the train lights in the distance. “We’ll get run over.”
Charon shook his head. “It’s just like at the train station. Not pleasant, but you won’t get killed.” He extended a hand.
Grudgingly, Anya took it, clambered up on the slippery second rail. Sparky huddled up against her leg, and she could hear the metallic clinks peppering her armor as the little salamanders clung to her.
Every instinct told her to run as the train plowed into view, a dark shape with a yellow headlight. Even though she knew it wasn’t real, the whistle sounded real, the thundering on the tracks felt real, and her heart threatened to hammer out of her chest.
She glanced sidelong at Charon, balanced on the first rail. His expression was one of cool indifference, and his hand was cold in hers.
The lights washed over her, and Anya sucked in her breath, bracing for the terrible impact that would flatten her like a soda can and fling salamanders all over the tracks for the next mile…
… but the ghost train roared through her, sucking her up in a whirl of darkness and snowflakes. Anya felt a sense of weightlessness, spiraling through black and tasting cold snow on her lip. As the roar diminished, she remembered to move her legs, to hit the ground running as Charon had warned…
… and her copper-covered feet slapped down on broken concrete. She pitched forward, dizzyingly, her stomach lurching into her throat and her feet rattling on the ground like a broken muffler dragged by a car. She managed to stay upright, despite Sparky’s unbalanced weight clinging to her leg. She skidded to a halt.
It was raining salamanders. Little salamanders were spewed out of the darkness that washed over her. They rolled and scrambled on the pavement, aggrieved at the lack of gentility by the conductors of the ghost train, but seemed to be otherwise unhurt. Anya counted fifty. Had she lost one?
In a panic, she cast about, recounting, searching for the missing one. The ghost train receded in the sky like thunder, and Anya was already desperate to get back on board.…
“Lose something?” Charon pulled a salamander out of his pocket by its tail. Anya growled at him and snatched the writhing creature, clutching it to her chest.
“Poor baby,” she cooed over it.
“It was eating my cigarettes,” he muttered.
The salamander belched, and it smelled like incense.
Anya turned on her heel. She scanned the empty lot they stood in. A traffic light strung over a nearby intersection cast red light on blacktop broken by weeds. A broken chain-link fence dissolved at the far end, beside a battered Dumpster. The topography looked familiar, but she couldn’t place it. “Where are we now?”
“We’re on Hope’s doorstep,” Charon told her grimly.
Anya frowned. Yes… this was the place where Hope’s headquarters stood in the physical world, but there was no building here. Nothing but trash blowing around the empty lot.
Charon crossed the broken pavement to the Dumpster. He put his shoulder to it and pushed it aside. Rats skittered out of the bottom, and it gave a rusty groan as it scraped across the ground. Anya blinked. That Dumpster had to weigh at least a ton. Either physical laws worked a lot differently here, or Charon was decidedly more inhuman than she’d thought. Maybe that was why the salamanders showed no interest in nibbling on him.
Charon paused to pluck away a yellow cheeseburger wrapper
that had blown into his hair. “Here.”
Anya stared down into a hole that had been covered by the Dumpster. It reminded her of storm cellars in old houses: a stone frame and steps leading down into blackness. It occurred to her that this was the same spot that the basement had occupied in the footprint of the original building. But somehow she doubted that she’d find an old store of office supplies and shelves full of dusty bottles in this place. Nothing was as it seemed on the astral plane, and she expected this would be no exception.
“How does this remain hidden?” Anya wondered if there was a truck that came by every week to pick up the astral Dumpster.
“It’s an illusion. A bit of camouflage Hope’s using to cover her tracks on this plane.”
Charon descended the worn steps, and Anya followed. Sparky oozed down the stairs beside her, while the young salamanders leapt down the stone risers like Slinkies. There seemed to be no light in this place, but Sparky and the newts gave off a shifting amber glow that was sufficient to see by, casting writhing shadows on the earthen ceiling. Plant and tree roots reached down from above as they descended down the broken spiral staircase. The place smelled like winter, like cold earth: sterile and barren, with nothing living.
She heard water, wrinkled her nose. “What’s that? The sewer?”
Ahead, Charon shook his head. He didn’t seem to need the light of the salamanders to see by; he walked down the uneven steps as if he’d known them well enough to wear the dents in the tops of the steps. “No. It’s the Styx.”
Anya’s breath caught in her throat. The staircase spilled out onto a silty causeway, into the broken edges of a canal hewn into the stone. It was man-made; the arches curved as far as the meager light reached over the shallow black water.
“Are you sure it’s the Styx? Because it looks like a sewer.”
Charon sighed. “It’s not the Styx. Just a weak tributary. If you remember your mythology, it wrapped nine times around the perimeter of Hades.”
“I thought we were going after Hope.” Anya clenched her fists, trying to resist the urge to strangle the psychopomp’s laconic throat.
“This is where she’s retreated, at least on this plane. We’ve got to bring the fight to her.” Charon began to pace beside the bank, kicking at pieces of trash: moldering newspapers, plastic cups, soda cans. The salamanders seemed to recoil from the water. Perhaps fire elementals didn’t care much for the Styx. Given its dubious origins, Anya didn’t blame them.
“Does she know we’re coming?” Anya clunked to the water’s edge. There was no way she could swim across in her armor. She ran her fingers along the seams. She had no idea if her astral self was wearing clothes under her armor, but she figured that death’s ferryman had seen it all. She took her helmet off and set it in a clean patch of gravel by her feet. She began stripping off her gauntlets.
“Probably not. Not yet.” Charon was piling up empty milk jugs and was counting caps in one hand. In the other, he was dragging a dented green plastic kiddie pool in the shape of a turtle.
He stared at her trying to open her breastplate. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Getting ready to swim across,” she said matter-of-factly, though her cheeks burned.
Charon looked at her as if she was stupid. “Humans can’t get into the water. This is the Styx.”
“First of all, jackass, this is a sewer. But I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, and say it is, at best, a tributary of the Styx. Second of all, the Styx made Achilles invulnerable. And lastly, you seem to have survived it. So kiss my ass.”
Charon made a slicing gesture with the hand full of plastic caps. His expression was dark. “You don’t know the cost. All magick has a price, and the Styx is no exception. But, hey, if you want to walk around naked, don’t let me stop you.” Charon turned away and began fitting caps on the plastic soda bottles and milk jugs, but Anya thought she saw a spark of wry amusement in his expression. Just for an instant.
“So… how the hell am I getting across? Is there a bridge somewhere?” Anya concentrated on wriggling her fingers back into her gauntlets.
Charon was tying the plastic bottles together with a piece of electrical cord, lashing them to the hard rim of the turtle pool. “If you would stop talking and stripping and doing other distracting things, you’d see that I’m working on that.”
Anya gave him a sour look. At least he found the prospect of her nudity distracting. That was the only flicker of humanity she’d seen in him.
Charon turned his creation over. The kiddie pool resembled a warped artist’s conception of a jellyfish, constructed of trash. Bottles of air were trapped under the rim, and Charon cast it in the water with a splash that made the salamanders scatter and hiss. The pool floated, tentacles of plastic and wire reaching out behind it.
“Here’s your fucking boat.”
Anya stared at the makeshift craft. “Um, thanks.”
Charon pulled the raft close to shore, and Anya climbed on top of the contraption. The plastic wobbled and turned under her weight, crumpling even more when Sparky and the other salamanders leapt aboard. The newts squeaked and minced their way around the perimeter, afraid of getting their delicate toes in the water.
Anya shot Sparky a look. “You don’t mind water in the physical world. Hell, you gave birth in a bathtub.”
“The Styx is different.” Charon released the edge of the boat, and it began to turn in a lazy circle.
Anya clutched the rim of the pool, under the turtle’s chin. There wasn’t room for Charon aboard the good ship Turtle. “What about you?” For a moment, she thought he wasn’t coming along, and a pang of alarm struck her.
Charon walked into the water, his black coat flaring after him like the wing of a raven. He grabbed the electrical cord towline and dragged the turtle to deeper water.
“I took one bath in the Styx. Another won’t fuck my karma up that much more.”
Anya swallowed. Despite his cool demeanor, she was certain that this had to cost him something.
Charon waded into the water, up to his chin, and began to swim. Anya clutched the rim of the raft, while the salamanders cowered under and around her. She could hear their feet scraping against her armor as they clutched her tightly. Perhaps they were right to be afraid of the water.
The towing was slow going into the darkness, where water dripped in tunnels that wound around themselves. Though Anya couldn’t detect much current, it seemed as if Charon occasionally struggled with an undertow that caused the electrical cord tether to groan and strain. More than once, she thought she saw something else moving under the water, and whispered to Charon in alarm. He merely grunted an acknowledgment and kept towing them into the black.
Anya shivered, and the newts rattled and reorganized themselves around her like locusts on a tree. Sparky blinked up at her, and she felt a stab of guilt. The way the newts had devoured the night watchman’s innocent ghost bothered her. Anya never devoured a ghost without cause, but they were not encumbered by her sense of morality. Their atavistic hunger shocked her.
And yet… she was leading them into battle against Hope. Anya expected that Hope would level whatever spirits still remained under her control against her, including the contingent of missing museum ghosts. Many of them were ancient warriors and would know how to fight, whether they wanted to or not. And those ghosts, like the watchman, were blameless in all this. Could she destroy those innocent spirits, in order to keep others out of Hope’s grasp?
She shook her head, dislodging a salamander perching on her head. It dropped back to her lap, huffed, and began to crawl up her arm. Never before did she have such doubt about her work as a soul-devourer. She liked to think that she was different from the salamanders, that she didn’t mindlessly eat ghosts out of primitive hunger. That she was human, capable of choosing right from wrong.
But her mother’s revelation had cast doubt on that. Her memory shied away from the burning shape in her mother’s bedroom. Her father. Anya’s mo
ther had never spoken of him before. Anya had always assumed that he was simply a man, perhaps a deadbeat guy with a drinking problem who had no interest in her. Anya had grown emotional calluses over the idea long ago, though some blister deep in her soul still wondered if he ever wanted her, ever wanted to know her.
And now… she knew that he did want her. And that he was a monster.
What did that make her?
A newt sat on her knee and chirped adoringly at her. Its tail twitched and it blinked, giving a tiny purr. How could she blame these creatures for doing what came naturally to them? It was like being horrified by watching lions take down a gazelle—there was no good or evil, just instinct. But it offended her human constructs of right and wrong.
Anya petted the salamander with the tip of her finger and wondered, Was she really any different? Would she be able to force herself to kill innocents to avert a larger disaster?
She knew in her heart she would kill to protect the newts. Perhaps that was the only answer she needed for now. She’d sort out the humanity and the guilt later.
Charon had pulled the raft down a narrow tunnel and was tugging it to shore. It seemed as if the water weighed a great deal on him as it streamed down his coat. He dragged the raft up to the graveled shore and stumbled to the ground.
Anya leapt clumsily out of the turtle boat, the salamanders hopping out behind her like springs, squealing.
“Are you all right?”
Charon sat with his arms on his knees and head bowed, dripping . “Yeah. Just gimme a minute to rest.” He lifted his head and stared up at the ceiling, breathing heavily.
His blond hair hung dripping over his burning blue eyes. Without the stiff punk spikes, he was actually an attractive man. Anya had the urge to brush Charon’s sodden locks off his face.
