Either way, Jenna had probably just said that as a figure of speech. Besides, she seemed to alternate between kindness and hatred on a regular basis. Assuming we survived our jaunt through Hell, she was pretty likely to hate me by the end of it. I pushed it out of my mind, deciding to worry about it if and when it came up.
After they’d gone far enough up the ladder that I wasn’t worried they’d fall on top of me, I began to climb up after them. I grabbed the bars, and as I pulled myself up a few feet, a horrible realization filled my brain. The higher I went, the hotter the bars became. I was only halfway, but it was already so bad that every time I touched the next rung, I had the urge to pull my hands back, only if I did, I’d fall. I gritted my teeth, concentrating on anything and everything but my throbbing hands and kept going. By the time I reached the top and pulled myself on the tiny platform, my hands were throbbing so badly, I was sure they were going to blister.
The door ahead of us was open, but like most of the other doors I’d seen in Beleth’s lair, it didn’t reveal where it actually led. The threshold was filled with crackling storm clouds, and as arcs of lightning shot from the space, I felt myself cringe backward. I wasn’t sure what the Bat in the Hat had done to me when he’d made my curse twice as bad, but I was sure it couldn’t be good. Thankfully, my left arm still looked pretty normal. Part of me had worried I was going to wake up with two blackened arms, but it looked like I’d managed to dodge that bullet.
Either way, I was betting my demon knew exactly what had happened. Getting her to tell me on the other hand… That was the trick. Still, it was worth a try.
“Do you know what he did to me?” I asked the cat demon, broadcasting the thought through the annals of my mind.
“Yes,” she said, quirking an annoyed eyebrow at me. “Don’t worry. It’s not as bad as you think.”
“Awesome,” I muttered as she put her head back down and shut her eyes. “Care to tell me more?”
“No,” she said, and with that word, my mental image of her vanished, leaving me to stand there alone and wonder what had happened. Still, she did seem to have a vested interest in my future and if she wasn’t worried, maybe I shouldn’t be either? Okay, yeah, that was a stupid thought, but since I had nothing else, I went with it.
“Ready?” Jenna asked, her hand drumming anxiously on her leg as Marvin and Vitaly made their way through the door. “Cause I’ll be honest, I’ve had it up to here with these doors.”
“Same,” I said and stepped through the clouds because if I stayed out here with her, I was going to want to comfort her, and I didn’t want her to get the wrong idea.
I won’t lie, the clouds hurt, but then again, I was sort of getting used to the whole stepping into an electrical storm thing. If this kept up, I’d soon be worthy to hold Mjolnir myself. You know, assuming the only criterion was willingness to step into a thunderstorm while being as metal as possible. If it wasn’t, well, I might just have to break out my Thor Underoos, brush my teeth, and eat all my vitamins for a few days. Either way, I had a plan.
The landscape on the other side of the door was a frozen wasteland. Rolling hills of snow filled the horizon in every direction for as far as I could see. For a second, I worried we were going to have to cross it on foot, but then I spied an icy staircase stretching upward into the sky like a stairway to Heaven. Knowing my luck, there was no chance we wouldn’t be taking the stairs.
To be fair, I wasn’t sure that’s where we needed to go, but I was also going by intuition based upon the heated argument my compatriots were having with a snowman. That’s right. There was a snowman. In Hell.
The snowman, complete with a corncob pipe, a button nose, and two eyes made out of coal, stood next to the first step, one branch-like arm clutching a velvet rope while the other arm angrily waved a clipboard in front of Vitaly and Marvin.
“I’m sorry, but the rules are quite clear. Your name is not on the list and therefore you must make the requisite sacrifice to go up the stairs,” the snowman said in a voice that reminded me of Chris Pratt in Guardians of the Galaxy. “It’s right here in subsection C.”
“And what is the sacrifice?” Jenna asked, padding over to me. I hadn’t even heard her come through the door.
“That stupid snowman wants us to cut open our palms and give it our blood,” Marvin said indignantly. “As if.”
“So what’s the big deal?” I asked, quirking an eyebrow at them. “Just give him some blood and let’s get this show on the road.”
“If he has our blood, he can hex us. I’m not talking minor stuff here. He could literally make our skulls explode from the inside,” Marvin said, crossing his arms over his chest. “I’ll come back to life so it doesn’t really bother me, but still. It’s the principle, you know? I like to follow a whole ‘avoid certain death’ policy when I can.”
“Yeah, that’s understandable,” I said, walking up to him and putting one hand on his shoulder. “I mean there’s only kids down there, trapped and alone. A little bit of our blood is definitely not worth their lives.”
“Exactly,” Marvin said, smiling at me like I was his best friend in the world. “See, Mac gets it. The trade isn’t worth it.”
“Then don’t go up,” the snowman said, shrugging. “It’s no skin off my nose.”
“I will make sacrifice,” Vitaly said, holding out his palm to the scarecrow. “Take enough for all to pass.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” the snowman replied with a shake of his head. “I’m not sure if you’ve heard the saying ‘about as much chance as a snowball in Hell’ but let me tell you, that shit won’t fly.”
Well, that settled it. If we were going to get to those kids and save them, Marvin was going to have to donate some damned blood. If that came back to haunt him, well, I could live with that.
Vitaly ground his teeth together, and as he turned to look at Marvin, I snatched the straight razor from the teen’s hand, and as he instinctively reached for it, I slashed open his palm. Marvin’s bright red blood splattered across the steps in front of us, and before he could protest further, I’d cut open my own palm, adding my blood to the mix.
“Whoops,” I said as my blood hit the icy steps.
“Two more,” the snowman said, gesturing at the velvet rope. Its substance had faded so the entire rope was translucent and insubstantial.
“What the actual fuck, Mac?” Marvin said, clasping his bleeding hand to his chest while I tossed the knife to Vitaly. Without a word, the big Russian, cut open his palm and added his blood to the pile. “I thought we were bros.”
“You do realize we’ve been bleeding all over the place and we’ve left your sister’s corpse back there behind us? If they wanted our blood, they’d have it already,” I said, shaking my head at the pouting teen.
As Vitaly’s blood hit the snow in front of us with a hiss, the rope practically vanished.
“You too, Miss. It has to be all of you or it won’t work.” The snowman smiled broadly. “That’d be too bad.”
Jenna gritted her teeth as she took the razor from Vitaly. “I’m not a huge fan of self-mutilation,” she said, before slicing open her own palm and spilling her blood onto the steps. Frozen air whooshed by, chilling me to the bone as the snowman vanished along with his rope, leaving us staring at a staircase that stretched upward in a series of endless loops.
“Well, I hope you fuckers brought your climbing gear because it’s a long way up,” Marvin said, anger filling his voice as he snatched the razor back from Jenna and shoved it in his pocket. Then he marched past us like an angry toddler and began making his way up the stairs. As I watched him go, a sigh escaped my chest. Why did it have to be stairs?
Chapter 18
I won’t bore you with the details of how much it fucking sucked to walk up slippery ice stairs, but it did. Not even a little bit either. It was a whole boatload of suck and was completely unlike everything I’d come to expect based on Disney’s Frozen. The people who made that movie are fucking
liars. No one dances up a staircase made of ice singing, that’s for damned sure.
The only upside to this particular staircase was the distinct lack of a homicidal ice queen and her abominable snowman. Yes, I was a little sad there was no Olaf, but I was taking the good with the bad.
“I guess this is where I do my thang!” Marvin said, clambering across the landing and approaching the frosted metal door in front of us. It was set in between bricks of solid blue ice in such a way that made me think it might be easier to just try to melt the surrounding area. If we did, wouldn’t it just fall out onto the floor?
Then again, while it didn’t feel cold to me, the others were shivering like crazy. Maybe it’d be harder to melt than I thought? Even though I couldn’t feel it on my skin or in my lungs when I breathed, I knew it had to be cold because the couple times I’d spit over the edge of the staircase, my spittle had frozen the moment it left my mouth. I wasn’t sure how cold it needed to be for that to happen, but I was willing to bet the temperature had to be significantly below freezing. So why wasn’t I cold?
Was it because I was a Cursed or was it due to my magical trench coat? I was really hoping it was from one of those two things or some combination thereof and not because of whatever the Bat in the Hat had done to me. If it was because of the bat, though, I wasn’t sure how it was a bad thing.
I sighed and rubbed my face with my hands. As soon as I got out of here, I was going to sit down with a witchdoctor and get a meta-physical done. Unfortunately, given my limited resources I was pretty sure that meant I was probably going to have to strip down in front of Sera and cough. It was official, she was definitely the least fun female to be naked around ever.
“What’s your thing?” I asked, crossing the landing so I was standing next to Marvin. Gooseflesh stood out on his skin as he pressed his cut hand against the steel door handle. As he did, the metal door shuddered violently.
“I said ‘thang’ not ‘thing,’” he said as he calmly unzipped the backpack, pulled the Wendy doll out, and shoved it into my hands. “And my thang is dying.” He shrugged. “Mostly.”
“What?” I asked, watching him toss the straight razor into the pack and hurl it a few feet away.
“If you don’t stand back you might get blood on you.” He looked me up and down. “Then again, I’m not sure it matters at this point.”
“Is this another one of those sacrifice doors?” I asked, taking his advice and moving back a couple steps. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen, but even if he was lying I couldn’t see why standing back a few steps would hurt me. Then again…
“Not in the way you’re thinking,” he replied, twisting the door handle and pulling on it.
As the door creaked open, and snow fell from the sky, a hand of pure darkness reached out from the crack in the doorway and grabbed Marvin. Its jet-black fingers were so large, the only thing I could see of the teen through its grip was the top of his head and the bottom of his feet.
“The door is trapped,” Vitaly said from behind me. “Anyone can open it, but one who does, dies.”
His words made me realize why Marvin had opened the door, and also why he’d been getting testier by the moment. He was going to go back to being a doll, and if I was in the same situation, I’d have probably been pretty pissed off too. It made me wonder why they were doing this job at all. Was Vassago paying them or did he just have some scratch on them like he did me? Whatever it was, I hoped it was worth it.
“Sayonara—arg!” Marvin cried as the black hand squeezed, causing Marvin’s head to shoot off like a champagne cork. Gore fountained from his neck, spraying me even though I was a couple feet back. Guess I should have moved farther away… and brought a raincoat.
As Marvin’s head hit the ice next to me, the hand evaporated into mist, leaving Marvin’s crushed corpse to fall emptily to the ground. Blood poured out of it as the Wendy doll began to glow in my hands like a nuclear sapphire.
“Put me down,” she said, and her voice startled me so much I dropped her. As she hit the icy ground on her butt, I realized a full-grown Wendy sitting on the ice in front of me. I hadn’t even seen her transform from doll to teenager per se. One moment she’d been the doll and the next she was all grown up as it were.
“Well, thanks for dropping me, jackass,” Wendy said, brushing herself off and glaring at me. “Don’t bother to help me up, either.”
“Oh, erm, sorry,” I said, reaching out and taking her hand. I hauled her to her feet still unable to comprehend what had just happened. I’d been holding Wendy while she transformed, and I still hadn’t managed to see the nuts and bolts of it. Man, I needed to get on the ball and fast, otherwise there was no way I was going to succeed in rescuing those kids.
“Apology accepted,” Wendy said, walking past her brother’s corpse to the discarded backpack. With practiced ease, she jerked the razor from the pack and dropped down on her knees next to her brother’s corpse. One quick slash later and Marvin’s broken, bloody corpse was slit open from crotch to throat. Plumes of steam rose from the wound as Wendy pocketed the straight razor and pulled the gore-covered Marvin doll free.
“Thanks—” Wendy clapped her hand over the doll’s mouth, cutting him off.
“Don’t mention it,” she said before unceremoniously shoving him in the backpack. “I’m serious. One word out of you and I’ll zip the backpack shut. You’ve been a real jerk to me, and this time I haven’t been in doll form long enough to be grateful I’m free.”
Marvin looked like he was going to say something, but evidently decided on discretion because he sank back into the backpack until I could no longer see him. I wasn’t sure what their relationship was, but I was glad I wouldn’t have to deal with either of them much longer. As soon as this job was over, I could leave all this weirdness behind and go back to my own special blend of weirdness.
“So what happens if you can’t recover the body?” I asked as Wendy pulled the bloodstained letterman jacket off of her brother’s corpse and put it on. It seemed a bit macabre, but then again, she was shivering so violently, I almost gave her my trench coat. I didn’t because it didn’t seem to matter if she died, and besides, what would Jenna think? She was huddled against Vitaly for warmth, and I hadn’t given her my coat either.
I’d almost done it a couple times, but something told me I should keep wearing it at all costs. Just because these people were on my team didn’t mean they were on my team, if you know what I mean. The last thing I needed was to get caught in a double-cross without my bulletproof trench coat. No amount of good intentions would block bullets, and I doubted good deeds would make me feel better as I bled out on the ground.
“I’m not sure. It’s never happened, and we’ve never bothered to find out for obvious reasons,” Wendy said, staring at me so hard I almost flinched. “Now, if we could get out of the cold, that’d be great.”
“That sounds fucking awesome,” Jenna snapped, her words coming out in a spray of icy fog. She pushed past us and as she stepped up to the door that had just killed Marvin, glared at us over her shoulder. “There were three guys, and none of you offered your jacket to the girl in a skin tight black dress.”
I’ll admit it, her words made me feel like a bit inconsiderate, but then again, I hadn’t told her to go adventuring in a black cocktail dress. It was a little weird too because as I thought about it, the outfit didn’t make sense. Jenna seemed like a trained operative, and I doubted she’d normally go on a job in a dress unless it was required. She definitely seemed more like a jeans and sweater type of girl.
So why had she worn a short, tight-fitting dress? Was it just because we had gotten caught off-guard by the nuns at Le Château de Tissu Extraordinaire? It seemed possible but unlikely. Maybe when this was over, I’d ask her. Then again, maybe not. After all, it wouldn’t be wise for me to critique her fashion sense after what I’d done to her.
“You are American woman,” Vitaly said, apology heavy in his voice as he stepped past Wend
y and I and followed Jenna through the doorway. “Is it not offense to offer you jacket?”
I didn’t hear her response because Wendy turned and looked at me. Her eyes burned as she grabbed my hands, pulling me down toward her as she spoke. “Mac, we’re close to Beleth. I can feel her presence.” She swallowed hard. “Whatever happens when we get there, remember the mission. We need to get the Prescott’s daughter out of here. If we don’t…” She looked at her shoes like they were the most interesting thing in the world. “Since you’re the only one who can resist Beleth’s charms, make sure you get the girl out of here. No matter what.”
“Are you asking me to leave you behind if something happens?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at her. I could hardly believe she would suggest something like that to me, of all people. Judging by what had been going on, I was the least likely one to leave anyone behind, even my teammates. Besides, it didn’t matter, the only reason I’d leave her behind was if it was the only way to get all the kids out, and even then, I wouldn’t want to.
“Yes,” she said, nodding very slightly. “If it’s a choice between us and her. That is exactly what I’m asking you to do.”
“I don’t think I can do that,” I said. It was one thing to kill people for the greater good but leave my team behind? That was a whole different matter. Then again, all of them were monsters. Maybe leaving them trapped in Hell was a good idea after all. Still, I’d seen enough television shows to know how that ended. They’d survive and come looking for me bent on revenge.
“You’d better,” Wendy said, reaching up like she was going to touch my face. She evidently thought better of it because she blushed and spun on her heel. “Come on.”
It was a little weird because I wasn’t sure what was happening with her. This had been the second time she’d blushed around me, and I still didn’t know why. I mean, okay, maybe she was attracted to me, but for some reason, I didn’t think that was it. Ugh, the women on this mission were going to drive me crazy.
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