Both flying and on foot, the demons behind us had surged toward the bridge, but for whatever reason, they didn’t follow onto its surface. Even those in the air hovered, and I feared that they knew something we did not.
Cerberus whimpered, and I patted his neck.
“Is there no other way down?” His right mouth yipped, and I wondered if William was all right. I couldn’t see or hear him. I began to fear that we had gone as far as we were able. That we had to turn back, we had failed and been defeated by so ludicrous an impediment as faulty engineering.
But one should never underestimate the strength and will of a hound that desperately wishes to please its master, and though I still do not believe I was ever truly the hellhound’s master, he had grown fond of me and I of him.
So I shouldn’t have been surprised when he backed up, crouched low, and burst toward the edge of the bridge at unfathomable speed. Then he tensed, bent his knees, and hurdled into the unknown.
29
The Familiar
We landed on the far side of the gap with a jarring thump … and began to slide backward. Cerberus’s back paws scrabbled at the earth, sending rocks and dirt into the crevice. Though I shouldn’t have, I dared to look over my shoulder and nearly loosed my hold out of fear, for Cerberus’s paws were barely finding purchase.
“Release William,” I shouted. “He can help pull us up.” I thought that losing the weight might also help, and since I could do nothing else, I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed for mercy.
And then we were on solid ground, and the hound began to shrink beneath my limbs.
“You can open your eyes now, Ellison.”
I did. My mouth dropped open. Before us was a new horde, but not the demonic kind. These were people, men and women with hooded cloaks pulled over their eyes. What skin remained visible was painted with swirling, black symbols. I thought I recognized some of those symbols from the engraving on William’s medallion, and on Samia’s book, and from the king’s robes. But these were not quite the same. Instead of six points to a star, there were only five. Staurograms had been drawn backwards and IX monograms bore twisted, bent spokes. The images caused me to shudder with revulsion—and also a strange familiarity.
Their cloaks were also gilded—again, like the paladins’ talismans and robes—and their mouths were turned down at the corners as though overly laden with weariness and defeat.
“Who are they?” I asked William, whose face also reflected a measure of sadness and, to my confusion, fear.
“Look at them,” he said. “Do you see the markings they bear?”
I nodded. “I know those symbols. They should be holy, but there’s a wrongness about them.”
William gestured to the one on his left. “This is Hans, my father’s childhood friend who lived at the castle, and who swore to dedicate his life to my father’s service … right before he plotted against the king in jealousy and tried to use heaven’s favor to assassinate our own kind.” Then he gestured to his right. “That is my Great-Aunt Elizabeth, who conspired with a necromancer to overthrow the throne, using a dark perversion of her talisman.”
My breath caught as I began to understand. “They’re paladins? But surely you’re not fated to this … ” But my words trailed off as William’s shoulders drooped, his own weariness as evident as that shown by the dead. “You do good work, William. I know how deeply and with how much reverence you hold the scriptures, and how you strive to live by the Almighty’s guidance. This will not be you.”
“I know them, Ellison.” He shook his head. “I might not be willing to pervert the scriptures myself to use necromantic powers, but I’m in league with … ” His voice trailed to a whisper, but I caught his meaning.
“You believe because you’ve allied yourself with me, that your soul is damned? No. That condemnation belongs to me alone. You haven’t touched my powers, and you’ve shown no inclination toward swaying from your God-given duty as a Protector of Light. You’re not doomed to spend eternity in the lowest circles among the heretics.” I strode past him, for I was unwilling to entertain such a notion. “But thank you for your assistance, hooded ones,” I said to the cloaked dead.
I meant to walk on, but one of the hooded folk blocked my path. “If you value your life and your soul,” he said, “turn back here.”
“You can speak to us?” I looked to William, who only stared at the ground. I wished I knew what to say that would convince him this place was not his fate. Then I turned back to the hooded figure. “I value my life as much as the next person, but my eternal soul is wholly suspect already. Tell me, have you seen a woman pass this way? Radiant, beautiful, as if she shouldn’t be here.”
The hooded spirit clasped its hands together. “We have seen nothing of the like. Women, yes, but not of a kind as you describe.”
“What kind, then?” They gave no reply, so I pressed. “If you saw women, tell me what kind?”
“Beyond this valley and into the next,” he said, “are many women. Some men too. But all with powers we sought and failed to wield, or which consumed us in the end. Powers you hold, devil’s daughter.”
I recoiled. Devil’s daughter? “I serve no devil,” I hissed.
“You are mistaken if you think so,” he said.
William joined me, gesturing onward, still shrunken in stature. “We should continue.”
I extended my arm to block his route. “No. Hold a moment. Who are you to cast judgment on the actions of another?”
“You aim to control forces that should not be controlled.”
“I don’t aim to. I do.” And because I have too quick a tendency to anger, I flipped my palm up and called my will, which blazed with spirit fire of a violet flame. Cerberus barked with excitement and danced around my legs, and I felt the unconscious pull of a spirit summoned to my side. I would keep it at a distance, however, and only tug the thread if needed, for I still worried about Oliroomim’s deception.
The hooded figures, to my annoyance, were not as frightened nor deterred as I’d expected. Rather, they leaned in, and I sensed a desperate hunger rise within them.
“Oh, you are damned,” said the one before me, and in the same moment, William grunted as if struck.
“Are you well?” I reached for his arm, but he pulled away, still stooped and weary. My heart squeezed with concern and, truthfully, hurt. “What is it? Let me help you.”
I released my will to try assisting him, but the hooded figure began quite suddenly and quite loudly to laugh. Yes, laugh, with cruel mocking.
“Come, William,” I said, sensing an urgency to leave. “We should go.”
William followed without protest, leaving behind the laughing damned, and I couldn’t help but wonder how long it might take to raise William’s spirits again. When we returned home, I would ask Hette to bake his favorite pie, and I might pack a lunch for a picnic. Perhaps we might take Edward to the countryside for a day of adventure—William was so good with Edward, and Edward craved the attention—and then plan for tea with Liesl, who always made William laugh with her dry wit and good humor.
I imagined Liesl on a journey like ours, encountering the monster Jealousy and scolding it for its narcissism. I imagined she would sample everything on greed’s banquet table, declare it wanting, and then demand the room show her the way out. I imagined she might sock a demon in its wrinkled face, then lecture it for acting like a puppet among the crowd. I doubted she would have hesitated even a moment among the hooded heretics and instead would’ve strolled through them the way she does lewd callers in the marketplace. Or, she might have popped them in the nose. Or sent a message to their mothers regarding their behavior.
So wrapped up was I in thoughts of my dear friend that I’d paid little attention to where our feet had taken us. Down into the next valley we’d gone, and with surprise and fright I realized that the tops of the high towers were now visible from where we stood. So close, they were almost within reach.
We had traversed the lower circles and nearly come to the center.
And then I observed our present location, and wanted nothing more than to abandon our quest, banish all hope, and flee without ceasing to the mouth of hell and never look back.
The heretic paladin had spoken truth when he said he’d seen women, and men, many of a kind and not the one after which I had asked. I’d simply not fully listened to his response.
We had entered the circle of hell reserved for people like me.
We’d reached the torment of the necromancers.
30
The Inevitable
First, I retched. Acid stung my throat and tongue as my empty stomach heaved, over and over. Cerberus buried his nose in my neck and whined, while William stared with bloodshot eyes at the scene before us.
People of all ages, of all kinds, lay and stood and walked and crawled in a churning cauldron of snakes. No earth remained visible on which to tread, for the ground was made of serpents that not only tripped the feet of the dead, but also coiled around their wrists to bind their hands behind their backs. Some were also bound by their ankles, while others were held fast around the neck with a serpent tight around their lips.
I knew they were necromancers, the darker perversion of the paladin heretics, when the first soul I laid eyes on thrust forth her hands and murmured strange words in quiet desperation. But instead of calling up a spirit to do her bidding, a great green serpent rushed up her leg and struck without hesitation. It bit where the neck meets the shoulders, and when the serpent’s fangs left her neck the wound caught fire and consumed the soul in an instant. Her ashes fell to the ground and other souls rushed toward the ash with ravenous hunger, but before any could lay a hand upon it, the ash began to reform and reshape until once again that same necromancer stood within the pit of snakes.
It was a torture wholly fit for necromancers alone: denied use of the tools of our will, separated from the life essence of the one most loved to fuel our conjurings. Worst of all was the punishment that burned our bodies to ash—a substance that could otherwise be used for conjuring—and then snatched away the futile hope felt by the other condemned souls a moment later. And gauging by the scream of the woman as she burned, the bite was far from painless. To endure it endlessly for eternity? I could not bear it.
“William—” I said, but my next words vanished from my lips as two black pillars of smoke descended from above. I had forgotten about the swirling black shadows of the ceiling. I had forgotten that Cerberus had only fought Jealousy in the hall of greed—he had not battled the two true enemies that now reappeared.
The black smoke coalesced to reveal the hideous true forms of two large demons, each with a gaping hole in the center of her chest where her disease-ridden heart had once lain. As they landed, folded their wings, and took first steps across the serpentine earth, their bodies shrank and colors bloomed across the surface of their skin. No, not colors—the shades of their opulent dresses, forever stained with blood. Ivory and blue with crusted crimson streaks for Victoria, lavender and peach with slick scarlet stripes for Charlotte. My insides lurched at the sight.
“How do you like your new chamber, sister?” they said as one.
Already I was so weak and sickened by the sights and sounds around me that I didn’t react with speed. Cerberus, however, growled low in his throat with menace. His lips curled over his teeth and the fur along his back stood on end.
“Oh, the pup still thinks to guard and protect her,” said Charlotte. “How sweet.”
“More effective than her other dog, at least,” said Victoria with a sneer, flicking her chin at William. “I imagine more obedient too.”
William lunged, but I caught him with the back of my arm. “Hold,” I said, and my stomach dropped as I realized what I’d done.
“Oh!” Victoria feigned surprise, pressing a hand to her gaping chest. “He is better trained now. My, how you’ve been busy.”
“What do you want?” I spat each word, anger rising with each passing second I had sight of them. “I destroyed you once before, and I will do so again if you continue to interfere.”
Victoria sighed and spread her arms wide to gesture at the horrors around us. “You think to defeat us on our own ground? You’ve always been a vain and selfish sister, but you forget this is our home.”
I had always been vain and selfish? Oh, how rich!
“You came into my home and destroyed it with your wickedness,” I said, feeling a strange bubbling in my veins. A tingle, a flash, like an ignited spark. “Now I’ve come to return the favor.”
Charlotte giggled while Victoria offered a haughty retort. “The only favor you return us is the chance to destroy you once and for all. Thank you for making our revenge a simple thing, since we can no longer roam above.”
I felt a smile creep across my lips, and I curled my hands into fists one finger at a time. The spark traveled up and down my arms, into my fingertips, down to my toes, settling inside my belly with a heady rush. It coiled there with a newfound familiarity and I shivered with pleasure. I felt the gazes of the deceased turn upon me, but I had no interest in their wonder.
“The only favor here,” I said, “is that I have been granted a second chance to obliterate your existence, whereas before I had only the power to banish you back to this place.”
The confidence on my stepsisters’ faces faltered, only enough to notice should one have been watching for it—and that is when I struck.
I called my will and thrust out my hands, palms up, and tugged on the thread that drew the dead to my side, the way I had while buried in the bank of the Styx. In an instant, the necromantic souls of the valley inclined their heads toward my stepsisters. They stood, bound and unbound by serpents, some igniting and reforming as they moved and surged as one toward the false women.
Cerberus began to grow by my side, but I patted his neck and said, “not yet,” and so he stayed. Behind me, William grunted, I suspected with frustration at this repeating scene, and so I focused on the task ahead.
Charlotte bared her teeth and hissed, knocking aside the first of the dead who reached for her and tore at her dress. Victoria wasted no such energy. She growled and shuddered off her humanlike form, transforming back into her demon body in the flutter of a lash. Her jaws clamped onto the nearest dead and flung them away, tearing off limbs. Gore and blood spilled onto the writhing snakes, but with every wound sustained, these damned were healed within seconds. It may have been their eternal torment, but it presented a strategic advantage against a nearly immortal enemy.
This is your fate, too, whispered doubt. This is to be your eternity.
The thought made me nauseated once again, and the hesitation caused my focus to falter and the dead gave pause. It was only for a moment—I shoved the thought aside and concentrated instead on the delectable surge of strength—but it was enough.
Victoria struck down the necromancers that blocked her way as Charlotte bit the heads off of three bodies and spit them across the earth. The torsos collapsed as the heads rolled away … and then rolled back again to reattach, raising the bodies back to undead life.
“Hold,” I said again to Cerberus, who still whined and pawed at the ground. “Not yet.”
I don’t know what I was thinking. I had no plan. I could not pull out their hearts. I had no way to banish them. I had no idea how to defeat a demon for good. I only knew that I wanted to taste their blood and cease their interference in my life, and secure my family’s safety and our future, once and for all.
My stepsisters bounded across the plain of snakes toward me, thick black blood dripping from their jaws. I pushed my will and sent wave after wave of the dead toward them, swarming and clawing at the sisters’ hides, but they slashed the tormented bodies off and kept coming.
Cerberus’s whines grew louder. The urging in my belly grew stronger. The hum in my ears intensified to a fever pitch as my hunger increased.
“E
llison,” whispered William behind me. “Ellison, please.”
“Don’t be afraid,” I said, for I thought he feared the slathering beasts that converged on us. “I only need a moment to visit with my sisters.”
They had nearly reached us when Victoria roared in fury. I had not moved an inch. I sent one final wave, a piling of a hundred dead to swarm them at once, but it slowed them only a moment before they burst from beneath the crushing mob, sending limbs and entrails flying. Even the snakes seemed repulsed, for I could hardly tell where they began and the viscera ended amidst the carnage. The beasts leaped at my face as I thrust out my hands and my will with all the strength and fortitude and learned focus of my dark gift. For unlike before, this time, I’d spent years fighting hell’s forces upon the earth. This time, I was not afraid.
So as they bore down on my fragile, mortal body, I closed my fingers around their throats and inhaled.
I drank in the energy that gave them life, swallowing their essence like the sweetest wine, sating the hunger for power that boiled my blood and thrummed inside of me like a fever.
I drank and drank with my hands clamped around their throats. They screamed, paralyzed and helpless, and I reveled in the sound.
Never again would they threaten me or my family. Never again would their vile laughter echo in my ears or disturb the peace I had rightfully earned.
When I had drained them both, their once-beastly bodies became weak and empty sacks of flesh in my hands. I uncurled my fingers.
They fell to the serpents like wet rags.
“Now, Cerberus,” I said. The hellhound sprang forward like a dove released after forty days at sea and tore at their limp corpses. A deep sense of satisfaction filled my bones at the sight of my loathsome stepsisters finally, wholly, and fully destroyed.
In the back of my mind, I knew I should feel sickened by the scene. I knew it should not be pleasurable to gaze upon destruction of any kind. I knew that the sense of wrongness I’d felt when overlooking this circle had extended to me.
Cinderella's Inferno Page 17
