by P. J. Hoover
Reese.
I look around, and even though the scent of Reese is so strong I want to gag and breathe deeply at the same time, the room is empty. I’m alone, and I have no idea where I am.
The room has no doors and no windows. Only grotesque tapestries cover the walls, giving the otherwise dismal room a hint of color. I stand and move to the first tapestry, a bloody scene with bodies impaled on poles, pull it aside, and look behind it. There must be a way out of this place. Behind the tapestry, mortar holds together stones the size of Cerberus. If there is an exit, it’s not here.
I move to the next tapestry, a scene depicting an ocean of blood with body parts floating on the surface, but find the same thing—solid construction sealing in my doom. And so I keep moving, circling the room, trying not to breathe in too deeply. Reese may not be in here with me, but his scent—his drug—lingers everywhere.
The next few tapestries turn up nothing better, but when I get halfway around the room, my search is rewarded. I find a loose stone.
I push on it, attempting to shove it through the wall. It wobbles a bit but won’t budge; the cracking pieces of mortar wedge it in place. And so I shove harder, fighting to keep the fear building inside me under control. What if there is no way out? What if I never see Shayne again?
“Shayne,” I whisper, hoping that Reese can’t hear me. Shayne can find me here and help me. But he doesn’t come. I whisper his name again and turn to look around the room. It’s still empty. Wherever Shayne is, he hasn’t heard me.
I try to steady my breathing, but I’m shaking too hard. I shove on the block with renewed effort, but the results are the same. Nothing. I bite my lip, letting my teeth pierce the skin, trying to focus on the pain and not the panic. And then I think to look up.
Overhead, a chandelier hangs, fashioned of wrought iron and human skulls. Their mouths gape open, frozen in screaming terror, and chains wrap through their eye sockets, holding them in place. My eyes follow the chains from the skulls upward where they twist around, knot together, and then continue on to the ceiling. At the point where they meet the ceiling, there is a hole through which the chandelier is raised and lowered. I think I can fit through it if only I can find a way up there.
I run back to the center of the room, to the sofa. It’s some kind of antique piece, with a black moiré cushion and a solid wood frame. A frame that should hold my weight. I move to one end of the sofa and rock it forward until it’s propped up on its side, perpendicular to the cold slab of the floor. And then I walk behind it where my weight is least likely to tip it, and I climb to the top.
I’m standing on top of the sofa, inches from the wrought iron of the chandelier, when I hear Reese.
Going somewhere?
His voice is low, a sound that echoes through the room but doesn’t seem to come from within it. I’m being watched. I don’t hesitate but jump upward, catching the iron with my fingers. I swing my legs up over a couple of skulls and pull myself up. If I can get inside the ceiling, I can get away from the watchful eye of Reese. And into the skeleton of the fortress.
I climb the knot of chains, crunching skulls under my feet. I don’t look back. I’m at the hole in the ceiling, and though it’s a tight fit, I manage to squeeze my way through and get inside. I reach back down through the hole and grab an unlit candle, but there are no matches around. But I remember the match at church and the fire in the Underworld. I have power. Light bursts around me as the candle ignites, illuminating steel tresses that span a distance tall enough to crawl but nowhere near tall enough to walk. And so, with the candle in one hand, I crawl forward.
I stick with one direction at first, but when a low chuckle rumbles through the walls, I realize this makes me easy to follow. Does he know where I am? I turn left and continue on, looking for some new way out. Some way to get out of this place and get back to Shayne.
I come to a wall blocking my path. A light glows between the place where the wall and the ceiling should intersect. I blow out the candle and lower myself down until stone meets my feet. I walk between the walls, and with each step, the light brightens. It’s drawing me closer, and I imagine it’s coming from the outside. My escape from this place.
My path ends with a screen which slides when I push it, and I move through. I’m behind a tapestry, but when I peek out, there’s a long hallway stretching to either side. On the wall, sconces are lit with blazing candles, and I realize this, and not the outside world, is the source of illumination.
Piper.
My name is an echo coming from the hallway to my left. A whisper which hangs in my mind.
I ignore it and walk to the right, quickening my pace when I hear my name again. There’s not a door or window in sight. I’m in a fortress of stone, and my feet slap on the floor so loudly each step sounds like the beat of a drum.
Don’t be afraid.
Reese’s voice is soothing, but I’m not finding an ounce of comfort in his words. They’re filled with deception.
I want you, Piper.
His voice persists, echoing behind me, never far away. I start running, but the hallway seems endless. It curves around, and the sound of my feet softens. There’s now a shadowy carpet under my toes. And at the end of the carpet is an obsidian door. Open and waiting for me.
I have to go through.
Through the door, I see a window ahead. And a window means escape from Reese’s domain. And escape means leaving Reese far behind forever.
I move in and shut the door behind me. Immediately, Reese’s scent pumps into the room. I scan my surroundings; what I thought was a window is a set of glass doors that open on to a balcony, and I run to them. With a single click, I unlock the doors, hoping to dilute the room with some fresh air. To get rid of the smell of Reese before it overtakes me. And to escape. But as I stand there, I feel eyes on me, and before I open the doors, I turn.
“Where are you?”
Nothing. The eyes are still watching. My skin crawls under their weight, and I glance around, hoping to find him.
Fresh flowers are placed everywhere. On every table and every shelf. And on a bed off to the side. All of them are severed at the stem.
“I hate cut flowers.” I say it to the eyes I know are watching. To Reese who’s here as sure as I am.
He chuckles softly—to my right. I whip my head around, but only two wingback chairs and a long sofa table greet me. Above the table hangs a picture—a blood strewn battle, people drawn and quartered, decapitated heads decorating posts. And high on a mountain, a figure of a man watching it all. A man who looks just like Reese.
“I thought you enjoyed breaking the rules,” Reese says. And then he appears on the bed, holding Shayne’s Helm of Darkness in his hands. “Or was all that just an act?”
With the helmet off, his smell flows around the room, and within seconds, it moves high in my nostrils and begin it’s descent to my lungs.
“Take me back right now, Reese. I do not want to be here.” I fight the air entering me, trying to will it to go away.
Reese stands and smiles. “But you are here, and we have such a wonderful future ahead of us.”
“Shayne!” I call for him again, praying this time he’ll hear. He has to come and get me.
Reese starts laughing and walks toward me. “Shayne can’t come save you this time.”
I shudder, feeling revulsion mixing in my throat with his odor. I hate him. He is everything I despise. My brain knows he is nothing but a liar. A master of deception. It tries to tell my body this, but with each second that passes, my body is refusing to listen.
“He’ll come,” I say.
But Reese shakes his head. “Shayne isn’t allowed here. This is my domain.” He’s made his way to me now, and he leans in, kissing me on the lips, trying to force my lips apart with his tongue.
I don’t let him, and I don’t kiss him back. I cannot kiss him. Can’t go down that path again. Even if I go crazy with my internal fight. I just can’t do it.
Reese leans away,
but the taste of him lingers on my mouth. I want to lick my lips, to taste the sweetness, but I keep my teeth clenched so tight they might shatter.
“Let me show you something, Piper.” Reese walks away, toward the glass doors, and swings them both outward. The wonderful smell of fresh air pours into the room, and I gulp in as much clean air as I can. In this reprieve, I remember I have to get out of here. I reach to a nearby table and pick up a metal sculpture of two centaurs fighting. It’s small enough for me to hold in one hand, and I hide it behind my back. And then the breeze dies, and Reese’s smell again takes over.
Outside are the sounds of battle. Guns. Yelling. Screams of men dying. Reese walks onto the balcony and turns to me, holding his hand out palm upward. His fingers curl in, beckoning me. I’m powerless to resist, and my legs carry me forward until I’m there next to him looking down on a desert full of men killing each other.
“Do you know what your presence on Earth has done for battle, beautiful Persephone?”
I try not to watch, but I can’t take my eyes off the horror below. These are not dead souls as I’m used to seeing in Hell. These are the dying. Life is seeping out of them one heartbeat at a time. They’re in a place between the living and the dead. A place of pain and suffering—like a Tartarus on Earth.
“What?” I say before I can stop myself.
Reese laughs and takes the hand not hidden behind my back. Shivers run up my arms, down my stomach. And I know I need to fight them. But they just feel so good.
“Men fight over anything these days. Battles can last year round. They kill each other over the simplest things. Like water. And shelter.” He smiles and waves outward with his other hand. “And I get to watch it all. Help make it bloodier. Gorier. I get to feed off their miseries.”
I look at him then, and want disgust to show on my face, but I have the horrible feeling the only thing showing there now is desire. For the battle. For Reese. For his smell. His drug which I must fight.
He lifts his hand, taking my chin in his fingers, and holds it like a delicate flower. “We’ll be happy together, Piper. I promise you.”
No! I want to scream it at him. At myself. But my voice won’t work.
His hand traces away from my chin to my neck, down my chest, to my tense stomach. I want to pull away and run. To leave. Go somewhere. And I want to be with him and feel him always.
“My domain will be yours. I’ll keep you safe. Protect you.” His hand moves lower, slipping into the front of my shorts.
I shift against the screaming thoughts in my brain and give him room. I have to stop. This is so wrong I want to cry. But he’s rubbing me, and for every scream my brain is giving, my body is giving double. His mouth comes for mine, and I meet it, letting the gasp I’ve been holding behind my clenched teeth escape. His hand moves down. I want it to go on forever. And I want it to stop right now.
“No.” I manage the words, forcing them out from inside our kiss. And I swing the hidden statue from behind my back directly at his head.
In a flash, Reese catches my hand midair. He grabs my wrist and twists it, and I cry out. The statue slips from my hand and falls to the floor.
His mouth is back on mine just as fast, pushing my cry of pain away, and he pushes me to the floor. He’s heavy on top of me, and the air flies from my body, and I’m kissing him again, trying to remember why I want to say no. My brain is screaming at me to stop, but my body has a mind of its own, and it’s refusing to listen.
“We were meant to be together, Piper. We should have always been together.” His mouth moves to my neck.
“Yes.” My body is in control, and my brain is trapped behind steel bars with no hope of escape.
“So much time has been wasted.” His hand roams up my shirt. Down the inside of my legs. “So much time we need to make up for.”
So much time. Why hadn’t I been with Reese forever? I want to be with him now. Haven’t I always? Nothing will ever keep me from him. No one. Nothing.
What kept me from him in the past? Who could possibly do that?
And then my brain pushes through the instincts of my body, and it comes to me. I remember Shayne. He’s there in my mind. Unable to reach me here in Reese’s domain. It’s Shayne I want to be with and not Reese.
“No.”
Reese doesn’t stop. He kisses my stomach, sending shivers everywhere.
“Stop now!” Firmer this time. “I don’t want this.”
Reese lifts his head, his fingers and hands still moving. “Yes, you do.”
And in his eyes, I see I do. But Shayne’s in my mind, and I know Reese’s love is nothing but a horrible deception.
“I want you to stop now.”
Reese shakes his head. “I’ll never stop. You are everything to me.” His hands are moving fast now, trying to pull off my shorts, trying to lift my shirt. They’re everywhere, but instead of making me feel good, they are like monsters. Monsters that need to be destroyed.
I’m fighting against him, twisting like a viper, but his body is so strong, I may as well be doing nothing, and I realize he’s not going to stop. Not now. Not ever. I need to stop him, or I’ll forever be sorry. His head is down, kissing, trying to draw me back to him, and when he looks up and his eyes meet mine, I remember I am a goddess. I know what I need to do. I don’t need to wait for Shayne.
I look at him hard then, and drawing upon the powers of Hell which I know are mine, I ignite him into a mass of flames on top of me.
Chapter 45
Descent
Reese leaps off me, covered in fire. His face is burning. His hair is burning. The harsh odor of his burning flesh hits me, and I suck it in, happy to be free of his drugging aroma. I only watch him for a second; he’s moving backward, knocking into a chair, falling to the ground. And then I start running. But when I come in from the balcony, I realize there are no doors and no windows and nowhere to go. The door I came through has vanished into the stone wall. I bolt through the doors back out onto the balcony, and leap over the side. Escaping the boundaries of Reese’s world. I fall.
I hit the hard-packed sand, but I keep falling, moving through the ground and the river of sentient silver. It embraces me on my way to the safety of the Underworld.
Shayne is there waiting for me, and I rush into his arms, and I don’t need to say anything. He holds me until I’m not shaking anymore, and then we turn to the boat, and Charon helps us onboard.
“Reese said you and Chloe—” I begin. I try to find the words, but I don’t want to voice them.
Shayne pulls me close on the boat. “Reese is a liar.”
I turn so I’m facing him, looking into his dark eyes, and I watch the red flashes. “But Chloe—” The god-awful image of Chloe telling me she’d been sleeping with Shayne won’t go away. I know it’s not true, but I have to ask.
Shayne shifts around and puts a hand on either of my shoulders. His warmth seeps into me and gives me a feeling of security so strong nothing could tear it away. “Reese lied. He got Chloe under his control.”
“Just like he did with me.”
Shayne nods.
How had I ever been so naïve? “I didn’t believe him. I mean once I got away from him, I knew it couldn’t be true.”
“It will never be true,” Shayne says. “I would never be with anyone but you.”
His eyes are so sincere. They’d always been that way, even back when I was Persephone. His lips part, and he leans until his mouth is so close to my ear, I’m sure he’s going to kiss it. I hold still and wait for the kiss, but it doesn’t come.
“Please don’t ever leave me again.”
I feel the words on his breath as he says them. And they are better than any kiss ever could have been. They erase any and every doubt I ever had. And then he does kiss my ear until I’m sure I won’t be able to stand another second without him. But we’re still on the boat with Charon moving across the River Acheron. So I force myself to finally pull back and settle into the crook of his arm.
>
The water stretches calm before us, and every so often, a monster nips into the air, causing ripples at the surface.
“What was Chloe’s sorrow?” Reese had deceived her and drugged her just as he’d done with me. One day, Reese will get his punishment. He will make a perfect addition to Tartarus.
Shayne is holding both my hands, but releases them. I wonder if he’s going to tell me not to listen to the sorrow. But this is Chloe we’re talking about, and I want to know.
“You can find it,” he says. “You don’t need me to show you.”
He’s right. The Underworld is my domain. I don’t need Shayne for this. I turn my head to the right until I’m looking out across the water. And I send my heart out searching. Looking for a piece of Chloe.
The water of Acheron is as still as the ice of Cocytus, but I remain focused. The river will listen to me. It has in the past. It will in the future. And so I wait. Something touches the surface from below, and concentric circles grow from the spot. A bubble rises, pushing its way up until it sits on the water, and then it skims along the surface as it makes its way toward me. It grows as it gets closer as if it’s a thing alive. And when it reaches the side of the boat, I open my mind and listen.
I never meant to hurt Piper.
There it is. So simple. So selfless. Her final sorrow had been about me. By keeping her alive in the first place, I’d been responsible for her demise on Earth, and here, her last thoughts were concern over my well-being.
There is no better friend than Chloe.
Cerberus greets us on the other shore, and I open my arms to him, letting him knock me to the ground. His three heads fight over who gets to lick me until Shayne finally pulls him away. We say our goodbyes to Charon, and then Cerberus leads us down a tunnel to the safety of Shayne’s home.
I’m with Shayne then, and it’s wonderful and perfect. Exactly how it is supposed to be. His touches wake me up in places I never knew were asleep, and his kisses bring back memories I’m only too happy to relive. As we’re together, I know I’m never leaving again.
