by J. P. Rice
“Keep talking,” he said as he pulled on the tree roots, winding them in hand over hand, like he was leisurely tugging on a rope.
It was time to come clean and actually confess to my actions. “My friend Reginald Danforth. I betrayed him. I could make a million excuses, but I drove a stake into his chest. And I need to take responsibility for it.”
“You don’t say,” Lucifer commented snidely and continued pulling on the tree roots.
A mighty shadow conquered the light and an oak tree appeared in front of us. Tall and glorious. Lucifer yanked on the tree roots a few more times, pulling the trunk close to us. He dropped the roots and stepped back.
The tree trunk rotated and turned one-hundred-eighty degrees, exposing a soul that had been worked into the bark.
It was Reg.
Oh shit.
Chapter 7
His facial and body features were distinct, albeit crafted from the wood. A crazed, desperate look clung to his face. “Mike, you gotta tell Jonathan about me. He’s my only hope. I know you’re trying your best to bring me back, but I need Jonathan.”
How did he know what I was doing? His body hadn’t moved in weeks. How could he see that shit? “Reg, I’m so sorry about what happened. I wasn’t in my right mind. The implant had taken over. I’m so fucking sorry, man.”
The dryad version of Reg spoke in a softer tone, “It can all be forgotten if you just tell Jonathan.”
Lucifer started to pull me away. I slapped his hand and said, “Wait. I need to talk to this man.”
“The door shuts when the door shuts,” Lucifer announced casually and walked away.
I had to follow him. Plus, I didn’t know what to say to Reg other than I was sorry. “I have to go, Reg. I’ll take care of you. Don’t worry.”
“Promise me that you’ll tell Jonathan. Promise me that,” he demanded.
That put me in a vise. If I told Jonathan about killing one of the members of his vampire clan, he’d just kill me. I’d be right back where I was standing right now. I felt terrible about it, but I pretended that I hadn’t heard him and hustled after Lucifer.
I jogged through the automatic door and it slammed shut right behind me. We spiraled down for about a minute until we arrived at a strange marshland. The ground looked like spongy black wasteland. Suddenly, the ground began to quake. A large fissure split the nasty ground in front of me and several of the souls fell into the opening.
“It goes without saying, but here lies wrath. Beware the occasional quake or tremor. And the geysers of foul marshy waters, those are a real pest. There is Alexander the Great. Conquered half the world in his day. That was some serious wrath.” The corners of his lips curled up devilishly. “Lucifer approves of wrath. And there is another man who is a symbol of wrath.”
Adolf Hitler, dressed in his Nazi uniform, dodged a falling shower from a spurting geyser of funky liquid.
His red eyes lit up brighter with excitement. “Wrath is the last level because it takes the most intestinal fortitude. If many men are afraid of sheer violence, wrath can never be attained. It takes a real...commitment, shall we say. The Gods of War will always be battling and there will always be vessels to carry out their wishes. What know you of wrath, young soul?”
Little did he know that wrath was right up my alley. “I might be here as a young soul, but I’ve inflicted a good bit of wrath in my day. I’ve killed more supernatural monsters than I dare count. In fact my first two murders were a couple that I destroyed with my own two hands.”
“Lucifer is not convinced. Perhaps you are looking at an eternity in the circle of treachery.” He gestured to the land of funk.
He wanted me to be more specific and dredge the river of my mind for some more painful memories. “You know I’ve killed my best friend. I also gave my mentor up to the enemy. And my most recent bout of wrath happened just a week ago. I killed a Japanese sorcerer. His name was Kobayashi. I took off his arms with two fireballs, but I still wasn’t satisfied. So I got on top of him and choked him to death. I gouged his third eye out so he couldn’t look into my soul and watched as his eyes rolled back into his head for the final time.”
Someone in a hooded robe fought against the nasty conditions and approached us. As the man neared, he lifted his hood. Three eyes. Kobayashi. I squeezed my robes and felt the talisman.
Lucifer said, “That was what Lucifer wanted to hear.”
I heard the trap door to the next level open and the echoing bark of a dog erupted from the other side. Cerberus.
Fuck. I had a crucial decision to make. If I went after Cerberus, I couldn’t get Kobayashi to reverse the curse and my children would be in jeopardy. If I went after the sorcerer, I wouldn’t be able to get Cerberus’s tooth and get back into Sleepy Willow to save Alayna.
As I weighed the decision, I pondered going to the next level and wondered if I could get back to this level. And if I could make it back, would I find the sorcerer again?
As Lucifer tugged me toward the next circle, Kobayashi turned and ran. Assuming Cerberus would stay on the final circle, I jumped onto the mucky ground and raced after Kobayashi.
Raced would be a vast overstatement. Due to the nasty conditions and my feet getting stuck in the mud, it amounted to no more than a slow jog. Kobayashi was having a difficult time as well, weaving around the bubbling geysers and dodging falling materials.
The smell of death lingered in my nostrils as I caught up to Kobayashi. Stepping around an erupting geyser, I reached out and grabbed his robe. The stained burgundy fabric stretched, frayed and a small piece ripped from the rest of the robe.
My momentum pulled me away from Kobayashi, who took off running again. I threw down the red scrap of fabric and chased after the sorcerer again. My long steps caught up to him again and I reached out to grab him.
The marshy earth started to tremble. I wondered if Artoise was jumping in to help me, and scanned the area for his presence. As I tried to figure out what was happening, the ground fissured right in front of me.
Scrambling backward to avoid falling to a sure death, the divide widened, leaving me on one side and Kobayashi on the other. The smug bastard smiled at me, turned and walked away. My children were going to be cursed, I thought, as I looked across the twenty-foot separation. Much too wide for me to jump.
“Ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff.”
I spun around expecting to be eye to eye with Cerberus, but my trusty hellhound stood about ten feet away. She sauntered up to me and dipped her shoulder close to the ground. It took a few moments, but I deciphered that the animal wanted me to get on her back.
Carefully, I swung my leg over the animal’s back and tried to get comfortable. Without anything to hang on to, I wrapped my arms around Darkwing’s neck. The dog backed up and positioned herself facing the fissure.
One leg after the other, the hound charged ahead, quickly building up speed. As we got halfway to the jump, I panicked, wondering how this huge dog would be able to make it across. That wasn’t even taking into consideration that I was hanging on her back.
It was too late as the dog reached a full sprint, having no issues with the sloppy ground. Mud and muck flew from her paws as we approached the opening. I fought off the urge to vomit and felt Darkwing lower her body, preparing for launch.
Her legs propelled forward like a spring, and we were airborne. I made the mistake of looking down. The bottomless pit made my stomach churn and I raised my chin to face forward again. The hound had made a mighty leap, but as our forward momentum started to die, we fell like a boulder.
Falling into a bottomless pit in the furthest depths of hell seemed like it had been scripted by an untalented screenwriter. It was almost too comical. When faced with death, my mind went blank. I was about to die in hell and spend the rest of my days down here.
As we plunged into darkness, I heard a faint flapping sound start to build up speed. We stopped dropping like a rock and hovered for a few moments. The wing beats now sounded powerful and close. I imagine
d some winged creature sent by the Morrigan had flown under the hell hound in an attempt to save us. Perhaps a giant crow or raven?
We began to rise, and as light started to pour into the pit, my eyes widened in wonderment. Two obsidian-colored wings had somehow sprouted from the sides of the hell hound. How hadn’t I felt that? The wings moved with such ease that they didn’t interrupt the hound’s body movements.
As we flew toward the surface, I realized the Gods had been having fun with me, not revealing why the animal had been dubbed Darkwing. We flew out of the opening and landed on the other side of the fissure. Kobayashi turned around, met my eyes and took off in the opposite direction, fighting against the conditions.
Darkwing retracted her wings and they disappeared, leaving only a little bump on each side of her body. A shadow hellhound with wings, huh? I could get used to a partner like this. The hound took off after the sorcerer and I firmed my grip around her neck, so I didn’t fall off.
The powerful animal charged ahead, quickly closing in on Kobayashi. I leaned off to the side as we neared the sorcerer. Hanging onto Darkwing with my left arm, I reached out with the other one, setting up a good old-fashioned clothesline. Within moments, my extended arm crashed into Kobayashi’s back.
I hit him with my forearm first and grabbed hold of his robe as I started falling off the hound. As I hung on to the fabric, Darkwing rushed ahead, completely unseating me. My momentum carried me and the sorcerer forward and we tumbled into a heap on the nasty ground.
I rolled on top of Kobayashi and lunged for his neck with my right hand while I held down his arms with my knees. I grabbed his throat with one hand and used the other to dig into my robes and find the talisman. Reaching into a fold in the robes, I felt the straw object and yanked it out.
One of two things needed to happen. Kobayashi had to reverse the spell orally or I had to stuff it back into his mouth. The problem with the former was that he would be saying it in Japanese, so I had no way to verify if he’d really broken the curse.
I shoved the talisman near his face, but Kobayashi turned his head away, mouth clamped shut. As I continued choking him, he thrashed around, trying to throw me off. Without magic, I should have a nice upper hand in the strength department.
We wrestled around for another few minutes, but I couldn’t jam the little doll into his mouth. How could I get him to open his mouth?
I moved my hand from his neck to his underarm and started tickling the sorcerer. It probably looked like a move The Three Stooges would approve of, but I needed him to open his mouth. Maybe a bout of laughter could make that happen.
The stone-faced bastard didn’t even giggle. As I moved my hand back to his throat, Kobayashi wiggled around, pulling his arm out from underneath my knee. A blurry object appeared out of my peripheral vision and clocked me in the nose.
My eyes watered, and Kobayashi bucked around, trying to get loose. I heard a strange suctioning sound like a toilet plunger in action. Two seconds later, a rain of sludge, blood and rancid body parts covered Kobayashi and me.
I maneuvered myself to pin down Kobayashi’s arms again and resumed my chokehold. Fighting off the urge to puke and squeezing the talisman in my palm, I punched the sorcerer in the nose three times. Hoping he would scream in pain, I planned to follow up by jamming the talisman into his mouth.
I hit him a few more times in the face, but the bastard’s lips never parted. He gagged as I continued to choke him, but killing him wouldn’t help. I needed the curse to be taken away.
Running out of strength and covered in shit in the deepest circle of hell wasn’t completely out of the ordinary for me. Perhaps the setting was different, but these types of things seemed to happen pretty regularly in my life. My hand cramped up and I couldn’t tell how much pressure I was putting on the sorcerer’s neck. My hand had locked in place.
“Ra, ra, ra, ra, ra.”
I caught a flash of black fur coming from my right and pushed the talisman from my palm to my fingertips. With lightning speed, Darkwing closed in on us and opened her mouth. Trying to keep one eye on Kobayashi’s mouth and the other one on the incoming hellhound proved difficult and I started to go cross-eyed.
I diverted all my attention back to Kobayashi’s mouth and waited for the sound. With a nasty growl, Darkwing sank her teeth into Kobayashi. The sorcerer yelped in pain, creating the opportunity I was waiting for. With his mouth open and screaming, I stuffed the talisman back into the place where it had come from.
Kobayashi tried to spit it out, but I held my palm over his mouth, preventing the action. Darkwing ran off and I thought it was all over until Kobayashi’s jaw snapped closed. He chomped down on the area of skin between my thumb and forefinger.
I ripped my hand back in reaction and pulled a chunk of skin away. Screaming in pain, I dropped three right-handed punches on Kobayashi’s cheek, right under his eye. The third punch caused Kobayashi’s eyes to roll around until they finally closed.
As I jumped up in excitement at having eliminated the curse on my future children, I realized I still needed to get to Cerberus to complete my mission. I started to jog through the nasty environment, but my feet kept getting stuck in the muck.
Frustrated and tired, I was ready to give up. As if she were reading my mind, Darkwing appeared again, running past me and stopping right in front of me. She leaned down again to allow me to get onto her back. I took a few unsteady steps and reached the animal.
I hooked my leg over the beast and secured my arms around her neck. Before I was fully comfortable, Darkwing took off. I slid off to the right, almost falling off the hellhound and crashing into the disgusting ground.
Using my left forearm, I held onto the dog’s shoulder and pulled myself back atop the animal. My body bobbed up and down with Darkwing’s movements as we stormed toward the circular path of the circles of hell. The hound raced right up to the entrance of the marshy land and stopped abruptly.
I fell head over heels in midair and landed on my back on the stone rotunda. Jumping up, I turned to thank Darkwing, but the shadow hellhound had disappeared. Without Lucifer in sight, I walked down the spiral and was relieved to find that the door was still open.
I went through the door and was surprised to find that it was pitch black. The final circle. Holding my arms out, it felt like I was still on the same circular track as before.
“Ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff.” The barking echoed off the walls and chilled my nerves. Could somebody light a fucking match or something? If I had the use of my magic, I would just conjure up a fireball to help me see. Without my magic, I was at the mercy of the elements.
My fingers slid free of the walls on either side and it got hotter as I continued forward in the darkness. I extended my hands in front of me so I wouldn’t run into anything. A blast of fire appeared ahead of me and I stepped back in reaction.
The momentary flash lit up the room long enough for me to check it out. It was a square, empty stone room with a wooden door built into the wall in front of me. My heart raced as I walked in the dark toward the door.
Another plume of flames shot out of the walls and disappeared quickly. I caught sight of Cerberus and his six red eyes. The image was burned into my mind as I took a few steps back to prepare for the epic brawl.
Chapter 8
The three-headed dog came up to my chest and had a thick body like a wine barrel. He stood on all fours and had a three, long reptilian tails that were curled around his back leg. The beast had a black coat of hair that carried a purple shine. The fangs in his open mouths looked like little pyramids and the ears on top of his heads stood at attention. The dog wore a leather collar mounted with silver spikes around each neck.
“Ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff.” The barking echoed off the walls and I determined that it was coming from my left. As I shifted my feet to meet the sounds, another blast of flames burst out of the wall for a moment.
The slobbering Cerberus was already in mid-air, leaping at me. The room went
pitch again as I shuffled my feet to the right. I felt Cerberus’s moist, warm coat brush past my left arm as he narrowly missed me. The dog barked again. This time in an angrier tone.
As soon as I made my one-eighty turn to face Cerberus, something solid blasted me in the chest, knocking me back. I nearly went down but maintained my balance by putting my right palm on the stone floor and pushing myself back up. Another blast of light came as Cerberus was closing in on me and lowering his heads to use as a battering ram.
The room went dark again and before I could jump aside, the top of Cerberus’s middle head smashed into my sternum and launched me backward. As though that wasn’t enough, through my blurry vision and guided by another blast of fire, I noticed that another sizable animal had entered the stone dueling yard.
Before I had time to think about the other beast in the room, a fierce pain rattled around my calf. Another shot of momentary light showed that Cerberus’s right head (my right) had sunk his nasty yellowing fangs into my flesh.
As a natural reaction, I lashed out and punched the animal on the nose a few times, but he didn’t budge or loosen his killer grip on my leg. The dog jerked his jaw from left to right, sliding my body across the floor like a mop.
“Ra, ra, ra, ra, ra.”
Another flash of fire illuminated a big obsidian beast lunging at me. Fuckin’ fantastic. The majestic animal veered away at the last second and bit into a very compromised area of Cerberus. As Darkwing chomped down on Cerberus’s testicles, the beast stopped biting me to focus on the bigger problem.
With Darkwing diverting Cerberus’s attention, another plume of fire gave me exactly what I needed—a close view of Cerberus’s heads. As the flames died out, my hand sprang forward at the closest head. My hand clutched onto the long, fanglike incisor and gave it a good yank. No movement whatsoever. His severe overbite made it so I could clutch onto his tooth without him being able to bite me.
Cerberus continued to moan in pain as Darkwing snapped her neck around mercilessly. I pulled harder, but the damn thing wouldn’t budge. Realizing the hell hound wouldn’t be able to maintain that grip forever, I panicked without my magic. I thought about how easy it used to be to just call on some strength from the Dagda.
