by Jim Butcher
“I understand you,” I said. “I really do. I get it.”
I raced the words out as fast as I could. Hopefully, I could finish before the creature changed its mind and decided to ram its stabby end through me.
“I get you,” I said to her. “Because I’m your kind. I’ve spent my life alone, always on the outside.” I held my hand out to the creature. Moving with care, it inched closer to my touch, and just as the crackle of my power began to kick in, I pulled my hand back. “I’ve seen your life, Agatha. I know your loneliness. This ‘gift’ of mine has been more a curse than a blessing. It’s who I am, and I can barely control it. It’s done nothing but ruin every relationship I’ve ever tried to have. Every person I’ve ever tried to get close to has had their secret histories revealed to me almost against my will. I know awkward. If my life’s been anything, it has been nothing but.”
I slid my gloves back on and stepped toward the massive glass animal.
“They called you Hagetha,” I said, running my gloved hand down the creature’s neck. It pressed back against me gently. “Just like they called me a criminal. But I’m more than a word. One word does not define me, nor does it define you. Let your spirit rest, Agatha. Let yourself go. There will be a better place, where you’ll be among your kind. Whatever there is out there, I have to believe it is a better world than this, one filled with like-minded souls who love what you love, with just as much passion and with the openness that you craved in life. Me? I’ve found my tribe.” I looked to Connor, who watched me in stunned silence. “My partner here and the people we work for are the kind who can help me. You can be with yours too.”
Connor turned away. Maybe he felt a little bad about browbeating me as a criminal earlier, but I wasn’t worried about what he thought at the moment. This was about Agatha.
I dropped my hand from the unicorn’s neck and picked up the original unicorn I had scooped up earlier. I hesitated as I watched the light of day shine through it. It would be easy enough to simply slip it into my pocket—a memento of this kindred spirit’s soul—but after lingering a moment longer on it, I strode across the atrium and returned it to the pedestal at the center of the room.
“Go,” I said again. “It will be better. It has to be.”
The piecemeal creature stood to its fullest height, an impressive display of pride. Sunlight shone through it like a prism, filling the room with a thousand shafts of multicolored light going off in every direction. Then, one by one, the menagerie came apart, its pieces falling to the ground.
Glass tinkled like chimes on the wind, a euphoric sound, but as the last of them joined the rest in the pile on the floor, a bittersweet ache filled my heart.
I stood in silence before Connor edged toward the pile, gently prodding it with the tip of his shoe.
“This house is clean,” Connor said, in one the worst little-old-lady-from-Poltergeist impressions I had ever heard. “Good job, kid. You reminded me that this isn’t just about busting ghosts. Didn’t know you felt so strongly about a heaven.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know if I do,” I said, “but I know there has to be somewhere better to go for a spirit like her.”
Connor nodded, then gestured toward the doors, pulling one of them open to reveal swords, spears, and knives sticking out of it like pins from a cushion.
“Let’s hope so, kid,” he said.
I gave the broken menagerie one last, lingering look, tried to settle my soul, and headed out the doors. “So where do they go?”
Connor shrugged as he stepped into the quiet of the great hall. “We’re bound to find out,” he said. “And being Other Division, probably sooner rather than later.”
“At least we won’t die from paperwork on this one,” I said, trying to shake off my melancholy mood.
I knew there was clear proof of hope for me and my powers, a chance to fit, to redeem myself, to be less of an outsider. But what the hell did I know of the afterlife I had promised Agatha?
“Score one for freelancing,” Connor said.
I stopped in the middle of the great hall. “But seriously . . . Where do we go?”
“The poet Robert Louis Stevenson once said ‘To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive,’” Connor said, leaving me behind as he headed toward the doors leading out. “The version of the great ever-after you sold Agatha on sounded nice to me. What’s wrong with that one?”
“But what’s the real answer?”
“Does it matter?” He turned back, some of that old, familiar annoyance on his face again. “Like I said, we’ll find out soon enough. The lifes pan of the average Department of Extraordinary Affairs agent is at least seven years shorter than that of the average New Yorker.”
He turned and walked off. I sighed, starting after him, hoping I’d fare better than the average agent, if only to prove to him that, like Agatha, I was not defined by one word, that there was a chance for me to find peace among my own.
Although looking at the rampant destruction of art, armor, and tapestries all around me, I wanted to cry.
“Sometimes I miss my life of crime,” I muttered to myself, and headed off after Connor.
I guess the things we were—the things we are—never truly die. I had to believe it, and I held to the tiny winged hope that I had sent the last occupant of this castle to a place where it was true. If not for her sake, then at least for mine.
PEACOCK IN HELL
by Kat Richardson
They’d fled into a cul-de-sac where a wall built of eternally tormented bodies of the damned moaned and writhed on three sides, rising toward the billowing fire of the sky for at least thirty meters. Peacock turned back with her knives at the ready, but the only thing still behind her was Lennie Redmayne. He was as dark skinned and blood covered as any hellhound, but he was the spoils, not the spoiler. She flicked smoking ichor off her baneforged blades, and they gave off an eerie green glow before she sheathed them. Then she pushed against the wall to test its stability.
The wall shrieked from all its mouths as she touched it. Redmayne jumped and spun in panic, his thin dreadlocks swinging and spattering gore against the rampart and Peacock. “The bloody hell is that?” he croaked. His voice hadn’t recovered much yet—years of screaming in agony weren’t repaired in an hour.
“Lost souls,” Peacock replied. “Just the garden variety—nothing fancy like you. Pile up like garbage here.” She ignored the blood now streaking her messily cropped blond hair and disappearing into the surface of her red leather garments as she studied the barrier for a moment. “We’ll have to climb.”
Redmayne goggled at her. “Climb . . . that? It’s undead bodies as far as the eye can see!”
Peacock shrugged. “It’ll be a little slippery, but there’re plenty of handholds. Not too bad, unless you put your hands or feet in their mouths—that could get messy.”
“Fucking hell,” Redmayne muttered.
“Where else did you think you were?”
“Smartarse.” He was healing quickly—his voice more South London gutter and less advanced case of throat cancer now.
Peacock grinned. “Sometimes. Up you go,” she added, and crouched, offering Redmayne a leg up. He was a few years older and nearly a head taller, but he was thin and couldn’t weigh much in his current condition, though physics didn’t always function normally here.
He glanced between her and the wall with his singed eyebrows raised in horrified bemusement. “Me?”
“Unless you’d rather be tail-end Charlie. We stay down here, those hellspawn will find us. I don’t see any other way out that doesn’t put us back where we came from. Frankly, I prefer the climb.”
“Bugger,” Redmayne grumbled, and put his bare foot into her open hands.
His naked and savaged groin was uncomfortably close. Peacock closed her eyes and turned her head aside. “Don’t get any idea that I’m
enjoying this,” she said as she hefted him upward with a mild grunt. “The view’s not spectacular.”
“Sod off.” He sank his hands and off-side foot into the wall’s bleeding flesh. “It in’t you who’s had his skin peeled off in strips every day for eternity.”
“Don’t be melodramatic. It’s only been eight years.”
“I’d tell you to go to hell, but as we’re already here . . .”
She chuckled as she pulled the crimson hood over her light-colored hair and then scrambled up below him. “Think brutal thoughts, Redmayne—it keeps me going.”
“I am. I’m just thinking ’em out loud.”
Peacock rolled her eyes.
The damned shifted and howled as Peacock and Redmayne hauled themselves upward until the noise became background. They climbed for unmarked hours wrapped in the stink of blood and bones and brimstone. Their motions became mechanical—tug from one hand- or foothold, sink into the next, and on and up, on and up. . . .
Teeth bit into Peacock’s foot, and she jerked free to drive her boot heel into the dead thing’s head. As she glanced down, Redmayne’s foot flailed past her face. She jammed her toe into the wall, anchored herself deep in unseen flesh and bones with one hand, and looked up. “Careful,” she said while grabbing his loose heel with her free hand. “You don’t want to fall now.” She pulled in tight against the grotesque wall to keep her hold and didn’t flinch as teeth gnawed at her leathers.
“What? You think it would hurt? I’m fucking dead, mate.”
She held steady until he got his foot planted in the grim cliff again; then she pulled loose from the hungry dead and continued upward. “You know that there’s worse can happen. Only hellspawn and lords can die here—for fairly weird definitions of ‘die,’ that is.”
“And you know this how, Miss Peacock?”
“I’ve been here before.”
“You’re dead?”
“At least mostly dead—pretty much the only way to get here.”
She remembered falling. She even remembered hitting the ground, though some other details were fuzzy now.
Run . . . Just run like hell. She’d bolted across the rooftop, vaulting the vents and dodging behind any available cover. They’re back there and gaining.
She’d glanced over her shoulder as she’d run and spotted the men behind her. Holy shit . . . That can’t be. . . . Her recollection was foggy, but the roof’s edge had been coming up and she’d burst desperately for it. She’d dug her toes into the graveled surface and pushed off. . . .
But she’d stumbled, or the parapet was slippery and she’d launched wrong. She’d flailed and smashed against the next building with her full force. Pain bloomed in her chest and back. Then she’d slid down. . . .
The giant terra-cotta faces around the upper story had projected her out into empty air, and she’d tumbled down without control. Only three stories, but enough to smash her like a ripe plum.
“Answers how you got here, but not why.”
Peacock shook off her memory. “What?” she asked.
Redmayne kept climbing, but called down, “I’m asking why you, in particular, are pulling my raggedy arse out of Hell.”
“Because Peter Fiore wanted you filched out of Hell, which would take the best thief in the business. And that’s me.”
“You? Work for that bastard?”
“Whether I like it or not.”
“He heads up the Directorate of Occult Incursion Control now, yeah?”
“Thaumaturge in Chief,” Peacock replied. “But that begs the question: What does he want with you?”
Redmayne scoffed. “Couldn’t just call him Lord High Inquisitor, could they? Right. So . . . I’m an artificer—was at any rate. Worked with him at DOIC back in the day.”
“Jesus . . .”
“Watch it.”
“Things must be worse than I thought if he’s fishing guys like you up from the pit.”
“Guy like me—singular. No more left, living or dead. That’s my ‘get out of Hell free’ card.”
“Free I can’t manage—Fiore owns me,” she added, bitterly. “I’m taking you straight to him as soon as we’re on the other side.”
“Well, that’s proper fucked, in’t it?”
“Proper as it comes.”
They climbed in silence a while.
“Hey, you got any other name?”
“Peacock.”
“A first name, wisearse.”
“Why do you want to know?” she asked.
“As you’re half-dead and I’m all dead, and we’ve both worked with Peter Fiore, I was thinking we might have a few other things in common. I’ll trade you a bit of magical blackmail for it.”
“I already know your first name, so that’s not gonna wash.”
“Nah, this is better—secret about me no one but me mum knows. C’mon . . . it’s worth it. I promise.”
Peacock considered the offer for a couple of meters. “You ever call me by it, I’ll shove you back down this cliff and let you make your own way up.”
“Deal.”
“It’s Emily Anne.”
“Peacock suits you better. I’m Lennie.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Lennie Redmayne must be retrieved. I can’t send an army into the Nether to get him, so it’ll have to be done by stealth. Which is exactly the sort of job I hired you for.”
“One of which got me killed.” Peacock looked at him askance. “Thanks for the reminder.”
Peter Fiore was a big guy, bald and white-bearded, and he was good at intimidation, but Peacock wasn’t having any. Once you’ve been dead, your shit-taking limit drops way down, even with master mages.
Fiore narrowed his cold gray eyes at her. “Don’t blame me for your mistakes. I had to scrape you off a sidewalk, Peacock, so I don’t see where you have much cause to complain. I gave you that power—”
“I already had the veil talent. That’s why I’m the best thief in the country.”
“Best in the worlds, now,” Fiore added. “And that you do owe to me. Along with the fact that you’re up and breathing.”
Peacock snorted. “Breathing . . . in a manner of speaking.”
Fiore shook his head. “Don’t get bitter, Emily. Would you rather I’d abandoned your broken body in that alley? I don’t leave my assets behind—even if I have to raise them from the dead.”
“Asset.” You smug bastard. Time to change the subject, before she gave into her continual urge to throat-punch him. “This Redmayne—he’s one of yours?”
“One of us,” Fiore corrected, and glanced away. He wasn’t capable of embarrassment, so it might have been remorse. “And yes, he was.”
“I notice you didn’t raise him from the dead, O mighty necromancer.”
He cast a glare back at her. “I didn’t have that option.”
“What’s so important about him that I have to go to Hell to get him back?”
“That’s not something I can tell you. You know how this works. Just remember: There’s a reason he is where he is and you can’t trust what the damned tell you.”
Peacock rolled her eyes. Like we aren’t all damned. Fiore was laying it on thick, but she couldn’t refuse; he was the only person who had the literal power of life and death over her and, bitching aside, she’d rather have the former than the latter, even if it required putting up with Fiore.
“All right, I’ll go get him. Where am I gonna find your tortured soul? Hell’s a big place.”
“Are you familiar with Dante?”
“Not really.”
“Good, because he only got close.”
“Is this secret what got you sent down here?” Peacock asked.
“No, I— Oi! I think we made it!” Redmayne kicked and disappeared over the cliff top, as if he were
swimming away into the cinder and flame of Hell’s sky. Then he choked back a scream.
Something nasty up there . . . Peacock hauled herself over the last of the damned and onto the upper surface. Her left palm sizzled on something hot, but there was no place else to put her hands. She sucked her breath through her teeth and endured the searing until she’d cleared the drop-off. Then she got to her feet and searched for Redmayne.
Beyond the crumbling edge, the land was as black and gritty as an ancient stovetop. Intense heat and the reek of burning iron rose from it. Peacock spotted Redmayne a few meters away. He whimpered in pain as he stumbled toward a line of low gray mounds and scattered rubble nearby, leaving burned footprints on the dark surface. Peacock’s leathers and boots smoked as she jogged forward and grabbed him. She wasn’t strong enough to carry him, but she could tug one of his arms over her shoulders and get him to cooler ground quicker.
She dumped him on rotting stone in the shadowed slope of a chalky mound. Then she crouched near him and studied the area.
Redmayne crawled away from the heat of the iron ground and huddled on his backside, watching her. “Your cheek’s burnt,” he said.
Peacock held up her palms without turning her attention. “Yeah. These, too,” she said. “But not as bad as you. I think we’ve got a little breathing room now, so long as nothing flies by and spots us before we’re healed up enough to move.”
Satisfied with what she saw, Peacock sat back against the stones and turned to Redmayne. “How are you doing on that score?”
He glanced down at himself. “Major bits are coming along, but the surface is still a bit tatty. Burns didn’t help.”
Peacock just nodded.
“You think we’re safe? I mean . . . don’t you think that outfit stands out a bit?”
“Have you noticed the color scheme around here? We blend right in. And red’s a short wavelength. The hellspawn don’t see in color, so it just looks gray to them—same as most of this place. You’re dark to begin with, and with those wounds you look like any other forsaken soul out here. Now, if a lord passes by, that could be a problem, but only for as long as it takes me to kill it.” She paused, thinking. “Actually, that might be a good thing. Since lords aren’t he or she, they just wear armor and draped cloth. You could wear the cloth like a toga or something.”
