Chapter 4
The little demon tied a rough rope around my ankles and dragged me away as the crowd jeered at me. The last thing I saw of the stadium was the Jumbo-Tron’s Kiss Cam, showing two green-skinned demons smooching in a heart graphic. The tunnel from the stadium back into the Pit’s prison was jagged and craggy, and every bump and bounce tore at my skin and jarred my broken bones. When Carmilla had broken my spine, I’d lost all the feeling in my legs, and now I was wishing for that, as Gualtano’s blow had somehow left all my nerves intact. Scathiks chattered on about all manner of things as he dragged me, mostly about how excited he was that he’d witnessed a god’s breaking, but I managed to tune him out by focusing on just how much ever-loving pain I was in.
After a time, the little demon stopped in front of a wooden door. “Here we are,” he said, tracing a rune on the door’s surface. The door swung open and Scathiks hauled me inside. At first glance, the room was… nice. There was a bed, a TV, a little fridge, and a writing desk and chair. The carpet was that blue, industrial kind that’s nearly indestructible but about as comfortable as sandpaper, which I discovered as Scathiks dragged me across it.
“Understand, this is just a temporary space for ya, Vincent Corinthos. Now that you’ve been broken, there’s some paperwork that has to be done to process ya.”
My healing had done enough repairs that my body was only in partial agony, which let me ask, “Paperwork? Seriously?”
“Mmm hmm. Paperwork is hell for a lot of folks, and so that’s one of the great punishments down here, the endless filing of pointless, redundant forms. And the real kicker is you humans came up with that one. With all the infernal tortures we have, you lot completely outdid us there. Now then, bein’ as this is yer first day and all, you’ll be assigned a guide, someone to help you get to know your way around the Pit.” He leaned in conspiratorially. “From what I’ve heard, they’ve already assigned someone to ya. Someone from Circle Nine. Yer quite the big deal if that’s the case, bucko. Anyway, enjoy the room.” He snickered as he left and shut the door behind me.
My spine chose that moment to right itself, sending pins and needles along my legs. I crawled as best as I could, hauling myself up onto the bed. Just touching the blankets made my skin erupt in painful, itching sores. I snatched my hand back, scrambling away from the bed. I overbalanced and crashed backward into the fridge. I rolled my eyes as I looked at it. What was in here? A head in a jar? Maybe some Chinese takeout that was so old the mold on it had become sentient? I pulled open the door and saw it was a normal hotel fridge, with bottles of water, some chocolate bars, and a few cans of Pepsi. I reached for the soda, and the inside of the fridge stretched and warped away from me.
“Son of a bitch,” I muttered. There’s a story about a guy named Tantalus, who, if you know your mythology, was a complete and total asshole. He carved up his own son and served him at a feast on Mount Olympus. Zeus found out what he’d done, threw him out of Olympus, and cast him into Tartarus, where he was placed under a tree whose fruit was always just out of reach, and by a pool of water that would recede when he tried to drink. It seemed the Pit’s denizens had modernized that particular punishment for the rest of us. Wonderful.
I rubbed my hand against the rough carpet to scratch the painful boils and leaned against the wall. The stump of my arm was starting to itch, too, and I could only hope that meant it was starting to regrow. I tried to conjure a portal, and again felt like I was being dunked in acid as the extradimensional energy fizzled and died. Honestly, I’d been expecting something like that, but I had to try.
I was desperate to think, to come up with a plan, but my head was still spinning from Gualtano’s beating and being severed from the kobolds. Thoughts weren’t forming as they should; Petra’s face floated in my mind, and all I could think was that I needed to contact her. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been down here; it wasn’t like there were clocks or even a sun in the sky.
With luck, things would go as Orcus described, and when the kobolds drank Astral, I’d be affected just as they would. That should enable me to get out of the Pit for a short time, enough to let Petra know what had happened, at least. While my breaking was a spectacle to the Pit’s lesser denizens, I didn’t think it would make the news for people like Uncle Heph.
I started feeling woozy a few minutes later. When I’d drunk Astral directly, it had immediately ejected me from my body. But it seemed things worked a bit differently when drinking it by proxy. Instead of my body collapsing to the ground and my spirit hovering above it, leaving my body was more like shrugging out of a jacket. My soul shifted and drifted a foot into the air, the exhaustion, throbs, aches, and agony vanishing from me. I let out a huge sigh of relief and just enjoyed the sensation of not feeling pain for a moment.
Now for the part I’d been afraid of. Did the Pit have security to detect that a soul was escaping? I imagined it would, but I also figured there would be a difference between a true escape and astral projection. Plus, I’d been brought here in the flesh, not just as a spirit. I was banking on the security systems figuring that if my body was here, living and breathing, then they would assume my spirit was still here, too.
And it seemed to work. I shot up through the ceiling of the room and felt the familiar shift as I crossed dimensional planes. I was back on Earth, a ghost, to be sure, but back just the same. The last time I’d had Astral, it had lasted around twenty minutes. No time to waste.
My first destination was Cather’s place in the Undercity. But as I shot through Boston’s skyscape, I realized something was following me. It wasn’t something I could see, more something I was aware of at the edges of my consciousness, the way you can know someone is watching you but not be sure where they are. I dove and wove through the city, taking as circuitous a route as I could without wasting too much time, trying to shake that feeling. It wasn’t until I shot past Park Street Church that I had the idea to try using my other powers. The brands inhibiting me were on my physical body, and weren’t present on my astrally projected form. I tried Opening a portal and was rewarded with a shimmering hole in reality that led me straight outside Cather’s place. The feeling of being watched vanished as the portal closed behind me.
I let out a relieved breath and looked around. The Undercity looked washed out in the Astral realm; the colors and smells that made the place so vibrant were mere shades of gray here. Cather’s place, which normally seemed so welcoming, looked about as cheery as a crypt. I phased through the door and went inside. A moment later, I found twenty spectral kobolds drifting about in Cather’s library, all of their faces lined with concern. When they’d drunk the Astral, they’d astrally projected themselves, too. Their expressions brightened at my appearance, and I put my hands up to forestall their questions. “I don’t have long,” I said. “I’ve been taken to Tartarus, and I’m not sure when I’ll be able to get out. Stick with Cather and be safe. I will come back when I can.” Out of habit, I tried to bless them, but nothing happened. Some of the kobolds were humming the drinking song prayers, but hearing these was like being sprayed with ice water. Not painful, but an unpleasant shock.
“Lord Corinthos,” Jeal said. “What can we do to help you?”
“Do you have any more Astral?” I asked.
“We drank nearly all we had,” Kleep said. “There are but a handful of doses left. We can make more when we wake, but it takes a few weeks to brew.”
Weeks. I was hoping to be out of the Pit long before that much time had passed, but having a Plan B was always a good bet. “Okay, you guys get to brewing, and if you haven’t heard from me by the time that batch is ready, drink as much of it as you can.” Of course, I wasn’t sure if this trick would work twice. “In the meantime, take care of each other and be careful. I need to go now.” I wanted to say more, to do more, to tell them more, but there just wasn’t time. I had to hope that I’d have enough time left to do wh
at I’d come up here for.
I left the kobolds and headed for the new Caulborn HQ. I wanted to see Petra, but I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to communicate with her while I was on the Astral Plane. But I had an idea of how I could communicate with Gearstripper, and if it worked, he’d be able to inform Petra and everyone else of what had happened. I came up on Woof’s, closed my eyes and phased through the front doors, giving a sigh of relief when I passed through them without issue. While the wards against extradimensional travel had been already set up, the team hadn’t gotten to the ghost banishment part yet. In the grand scheme of things, we were always at a higher risk of having a bomb or a demon gated in to us than of a poltergeist causing problems.
I phased through the walls and found Gearstripper. He was gutting the kitchen area, turning it into his new workshop. But while most people would’ve had the industrial appliances removed, Gears was disassembling them, using them for component parts. The gremlin was currently inside the open oven, pulling out the heating element and humming the theme from Firefly. Now came the tricky part. Gears was in the physical plane and I wasn’t. I was gambling on something here, and now it was time to see if it was going to pay off.
Over to the right, Billy, Gears’s cosplay mech, was plugged into the wall, recharging his batteries. I drifted over to Billy, then stepped into him, like I was putting on a set of coveralls. A second later, I was looking through Billy’s eyes. It was like seeing through the Terminator’s heads-up display. There were targeting lines on everything, readouts of Billy’s current power levels and ammo, and a handful of other symbols that I didn’t immediately understand. I found I could move Billy’s arms as if they were my own, and while I couldn’t exactly feel, there were sensors that told me about the environment. I punched a triumphant fist in the air. Yes! It had worked!
Billy’s systems had come online when I’d possessed him, and one of Gearstripper’s computer screens lit up like a Christmas tree. “Whoa,” he called, scrambling over to the console. I tried to take a step forward, and clamps closed around Billy’s wrists and ankles. “Hang on there, fella,” Gears said. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“Gears,” I said, my voice sounding completely unlike me. “It’s Vincent.”
Gears froze. “Vinnie?” His golden eyes were huge.
“Yes, it’s me. Gears, I’ve been taken to Tartarus, I need you to get a message to Petra —”
Gears stabbed a button on the console and several of the icons on Billy’s HUD went dark. I couldn’t speak or move. Gears pressed another button, his three-fingered, clawed hands shaking as he did so. “Mrs. Rita, Code Red, Mrs. Rita to the shop.” A few seconds later, Mrs. Rita came hustling into the room. The older woman’s bulky frame nimbly dodged around the disassembled ovens and refrigerators as she rushed to Gearstripper’s side. Her hair was pulled back in a bun, and her white lab coat hung open over a World’s Best Grandma sweatshirt.
“What is it?” she asked, her Cajun voice concerned.
“Billy came to life and is claiming he’s Vinnie,” Gears said, as he pressed a button and the icons on Billy’s HUD reilluminated.
“Mrs. Rita, it’s Vincent. Ask me anything you want, I’ll prove I’m me.” There wasn’t time for this. I’d burned through a chunk of the Astral already, and I needed Gears to get a message to Petra.
“It will take time to prepare truth runes,” Mrs. Rita said. “Spiritual identification is a delicate process.”
“Please,” I said. “I’m in trouble. I only have a few minutes.”
Gears’s mouth was a thin line. “Mrs. Rita, how hard is it to put up a barrier to prevent our minds from being read?”
“That is simple enough.”
“Then do it. I have a sure fire way to tell if this is Vinnie or not.”
Mrs. Rita looked skeptical, but made a handful of gestures in quick succession. I could practically hear the clock ticking down my remaining Astral time. As she finished, a blue haze settled over herself and Gearstripper. “It is done.”
“All right,” Gears said. His gaze locked with mine — Billy’s — and he pointed a clawed index finger at me. “You get one chance. Brothers.”
I knew exactly what Gears meant and rattled off, “One seven three four six seven three two one four seven six charlie three two seven eight nine seven seven seven six four three tango seven three two victor seven three one one seven eight eight eight seven three two four seven six seven eight nine seven six four three seven six. Lock.”
Gears’s eyes went wide. He rushed over to me and threw his arms around Billy’s neck. “Vinnie! It is you!”
“What was that?” Mrs. Rita asked, obviously not convinced.
“It’s the access code from hell,” Gears explained, turning to her. “In an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called ‘Brothers,’ Data takes over the Enterprise, and he locks Picard and everyone else out of the computer using that code. Even if this was some monster impersonating Vinnie, and knew all about his past, there’s no way that monster would be a Trek fan, too, let alone one who could memorize that.”
Mrs. Rita shook her head. “Your logic is terrifying sometimes, Gearstripper.”
“I don’t have long,” I said. “Gears, tell Petra I’ve been taken to Tartarus because I failed to keep my promise to Megan.”
Gears’s face screwed up in confusion. “What do you mean? Has something happened to Megan?”
“Treggen killed her,” I said. “He’s impersonating Croatoan.”
“Wait, Vincent, Megan is dead?” Mrs. Rita asked, her face wrinkling in concern.
“Yeah, didn’t you guys find the bodies in the conference room? Treggen killed Xavier and Megan, and when Megan died, I got hauled down to the Pit.”
Mrs. Rita was shaking her head. “I saw Xavier, Croatoan, and Megan leave the conference room a few hours ago.”
“A few hours —” Jeez, had everything that had happened in Tartarus really only taken a few hours? I supposed it made sense; it wasn’t like time was going to fly while being tortured, but still, just a few hours? “Did they speak to you? Did they say where they were going?”
“No,” Mrs. Rita said. “I did not think anything odd, as Xavier and Megan had been discussing many things lately. Though now that I look back on it, Xavier’s features did look a bit glazed.”
“Treggen shot him through the head with a laser beam,” I said. “Didn’t you see the hole?”
“He was wearing a knit cap,” Mrs. Rita said.
I waved Billy’s hands. This wasn’t important. “We’ll need to deal with that later. Gears, get that message to Petra. Treggen’s up to something, I just don’t know what yet. I’m going to do everything I can to get out of the Pit and back to you guys, but it’s not going to be eas—”
And with that, the Astral wore off and I was being sucked back into my body.
Chapter 5
When I re-entered my body, everything hurt a thousand times worse than I remembered it. The boils on my hand had ruptured and were oozing pus down my fingers. My other arm burned and itched, but it looked like it was an inch or two longer than when I’d left, so the regrowth was underway. My ribs were throbbing, and my back was nothing but agony and rage. I ground my teeth and screwed my eyes shut against the pain. Breathe through it. Just breathe —
“Wow, Vincent, you look like shit.”
My eyes snapped open. A man with neatly parted blond hair sat at the writing desk. He wore a short-sleeved orange jumpsuit with “Property of Circle 9” stenciled across the front in black. Dark hollows were etched beneath his blue eyes, and he was just as pale as the moment when I’d watched him die.
“Nathan,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
Nathan Singravel had been a Caulborn operative once upon a time. He was brilliant, resourceful, and clever. Many in the o
rganization thought that he’d be Codex someday, the Care Taker’s own personal secret keeper, and the person who essentially knew everything worth knowing. But then he’d decided it was more lucrative to sell Caulborn secrets to our enemies, and it had fallen to Miguel, Kristin, and me to bring him down. During the crisis as Ashgate Penitentiary, Nathan had been killed by a civatateo, and now I knew what happened to him after that.
Nathan’s smile was mirthless. “I get to be your tour guide,” Nathan said. “They think it’s funny to do stuff like this. I get a reminder of the people I screwed over, knowing I can’t change anything, and you get to see just how fucked you are down here. Two for the price of one.”
My gaze lingered on the words on his jumpsuit. “Circle Nine,” I said. “As in, the ninth circle of Hell? The place where traitors go?”
Nathan pointed at me. “Got it in one, and I’m sure your English Lit professors would be proud of you for remembering that bit of trivia from Dante’s Inferno, Vincent. But yes, as I am a traitor, I was grouped in with the likes of Benedict Arnold and Judas Iscariot. Circle Nine is quite the place, not exactly as Dante described it, but it’s close.” He leaned forward. “But that’s not part of your tour, I’m afraid. I’ll be showing you—” Nathan cut off, and his voice became mechanical. “The United States purchased Alaska from Russia on August 1, 1868 for seven-point-two million dollars. The US paid less than two cents an acre for nearly 600,000 square miles of land.”
“Um, what?” I asked, my brow furrowed.
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