by Jenn Stark
“No,” I gasped, barely able to breathe. I knew this place, this room. I’d been here before.
This was not someplace that Hell had any right to.
The floor burst into a constellation of gorgeous stars and planets and supernovas, all set against a deep indigo blue. The mosaic swirled out and around, and unlike the last time I’d seen it, this time it was pristine. The entire room was pristine, in fact, and I gaped and stumbled forward, trying to remember that I was supposed to be fleeing, not standing stupefied in the middle of a chamber, even if it was a chamber I’d last seen on the island of Atlantis.
The circular room was surmounted by an incredible dome with a center oculus, the whole of it painted with the richest colors imaginable. At the far end of the chamber, an enormous throne stood, bigger than me by far, but not bigger than the Minotaur. That thing had a serious steroid problem if I ever saw one.
But as I swung around searching for a door, it was the massive paintings above the throne that stopped me anew. High above me, a woman strode forth with a set of scales swinging from her arms, wielded almost as a weapon. And in her right hand, she definitely carried a weapon—a long fierce sword. She was Justice off her throne, and she was heading for retribution.
And unless I was seeing things, she looked almost exactly like—
A roar broke forth behind me, and I yelped as the Minotaur burst into the room…and dissolved. Then the room itself dissolved, flashing to nothing all around me, leaving me standing on a naked stone platform with high walls and no ceiling. The sky was sunny above, bathing the room with light, its intensity blocked only by the half-dozen robed figures who stood around the hole, staring down at me.
“Like fish in a barrel,” one of them said.
I knew that voice. But I was more impressed than pissed for one hot second.
“You knew that building, that room? You could see it?” I demanded, scowling up at the dark mages of Las Vegas. They weren’t really inside Hell staring down at me, of course. The way they were oriented and given the muddiness of their images, I expected they were standing around a cauldron in one of their little home dungeons, the kind meant for a kink of a totally different sort than usual.
The man with Bob’s voice, who I decided to call Bob if simply to keep hold of some shred of my sanity, shook his head. “What you see in Hell is what you are meant to see, not of our choosing,” he said. “The illusion was merely needed to lead you to this place, then ensure that you stopped.”
Now fury took the lead. “And why are you stopping me? I got your stupid bauble. I was bringing it out.”
“Yes…and no.” The voice that rasped over my nerves wasn’t exactly audible, but it made my bones vibrate all the same. This wasn’t Bob. A figure in a dark robe shifted forward, lifting his hand, and my own hand suddenly crumpled. All the bones compressed. I screamed and reflexively dropped the compass box, grabbing for it as it winked out of sight. “You recovered it. But you will not be coming out. Not for a very long while.”
In an instant, I knew this person, for all the good it did me. Gamon, had to be. Still, no matter how powerful the guy was, the compass trick was new to me. I didn’t realize you could spirit something out of Hell so easily. Or that someone could crush my hand with merely a mean thought. I wanted to learn that one.
Unfortunately, I wouldn’t be learning it today. A dollop of thick, wet goop dropped on my head. I flinched back, scraping the muck off with my uninjured hand. Then I smelled it. Wet concrete.
No. Oh no, no, no.
My brain seized up as another dollop of cement landed on me, and then more poured down all around me in huge, glumping plops. No. This wasn’t happening, this couldn’t be happening. Fortunately or otherwise, my mind seized on that thought, everything that the Devil had told me about Hell rushing together in my mind. An attack like this couldn’t be happening, Hell was a separate place, unable to be affected directly by anyone outside it, though able to be influenced indirectly, depending on the location. The location….
The location!
The compass. The dark mages hadn’t sent me after a random item after all. They’d sent me for something specific, something that would lead me exactly where they needed me to go. The whole thing had been a setup, an elaborate trap to get me to come here, to this place. I’d crossed the River Styx at a precise point of their choosing, and from there I’d played right into their hands. This little foothold marked an access point where they could catch me, bait me, make me believe that I had the MacGuffin when all along, I was the MacGuffin. I was the prize. Even if it was all mental bullshit, I’d been the stooge.
I’d been betrayed by a group of people who called themselves Spinners. That was completely not cool.
None of this solved the fact that I was presently knee-deep in wet concrete. But this, I could manage. Kreios had said that the fastest way for me to get out of Hell was to concentrate on my tether, but I didn’t want out of Hell. He needed me to stay focused, well, I could stay focused. I could stay focused all the way deep into the very pits of this place. I wanted to sink into its lowest ranks and endure the deepest, darkest pain it had to throw at me.
I wanted the man I couldn’t have.
I closed my eyes and steadfastly ignored the dropping concrete. I could tell what I was doing was working when the volume of the dropping goo picked up, along with its speed, but it didn’t matter anymore. Nothing mattered. I reached out and flung my full senses into every circle of hell Dante had ever described, and a few more that hadn’t made the cut.
“Armaeus,” I beseeched, carefully tacking down all my mental cubbies and nooks and holes that had been filled to the bursting point with the memories of our week or month or lifetime together, those sunsets and sunrises and endless days of wandering that had never happened, would never happen. Could never happen. I shoved them all behind me and reached out with my full senses. “Armaeus, please…I need to find you.”
At first, there was nothing but the sucking sound of cement as it landed around me in a thick, plopping muck. I’d covered my mouth and nose with my hands, in case my mind took a little too long to get with the program that this was an illusion not of my own making, and replayed my message to Armaeus again, flinging it out to the universe. I could no longer hear the people above me, could no longer hear the concrete before long. Eventually, the air got a little…heavier.
“Armaeus, so not joking here,” I said, the tiniest thread of panic popping up despite my very best efforts.
Armaeus’s laughter curled dangerously through my mind. “Then come to me, Miss Wilde.”
Chapter Seventeen
It was dark again, but not the dark of, say, a cocoon of drying cement. So this was progress.
I opened my eyes as wide as they would go in the heavy gloom, wishing for the lodestone compass again. I fished in my pocket, startled when my fingers brushed against the familiar shape of the ebony box.
I pulled it out and rotated it gingerly in my hands. It was real, and it was legitimately here. The illusion of the dark mages from Las Vegas—Gamon himself—had been powerful, but in the end, it had been simply an illusion. I’d thought that the compass had been part of their elaborate trap, but apparently it was a legit artifact all on its own. So of course, my first thought was: Who can I sell this to?
I wasn’t proud.
Before I could open the box, a light brightened in one corner of the darkness ahead and to my right. I pocketed the compass and fixated on the tiny beacon of illumination. “Armaeus?”
There was no response, but there didn’t need to be. The glow felt decidedly Magician-like. I strode through the space and realized—there were no walls or floors here. I didn’t know what I was walking on, exactly, but it seemed to have the consistency of a playground mat, encouraging me to run, to bound, to bounce up in the air.
Maybe if I hadn’t been recently covered in cement, I would have. Instead, I contented myself with taking one step at a time.
At length
I realized that the brightness was spilling through a rectangular opening fixed in the center of nothingness, either the pathway to an alternate dimension or a doorway to Narnia, take your pick. I was a fan of Narnia, and my heart lightened as I approached the light, but it was so bright that I couldn’t make out anything on the other side. How many times had I done this, I grimaced. How many times stepping into the unknown—and landing somewhere completely insane?
I hesitated, but there really was no choice. It was the bright glaring step forward, or life in total darkness.
Squinting against the impossible blast of light, I stepped through the doorway—into springtime.
As I straightened without any of the usual duress that Hell dished out over me—not chased by Minotaurs or boiling water, not covered in cement or coated in ice, not caught in a swoon of the past or the impossibility of a future I could never have—I marveled at the completely ordinary space around me. It was a slightly rolling hill leading up to a promontory, and there were blossoms on the trees, as if Hell had morphed into eternal April. A slight breeze brushed the hair off the nape of my neck, and I lifted my face to the sun, realizing somewhat belatedly that I desperately needed a shower.
Details.
The sound of laughter carried to me from the copse of trees at the top of the rise, and I headed that way. As I did, I kept a wary eye on the world around me. This was an illusion of some sort, I knew, because all of Hell was an illusion. An illusion partly of my own making, but not completely, not this time, I sensed. Some of it had existed before I’d gotten here, and would exist after I left. Some of it had been put in place by beings far stronger than me.
As I walked, I pulled the Tarot pouch out of my shirt and plucked a a couple of the slender disks free, flashing them up to the sunlight. I rolled my eyes. The Magician and the Hierophant. Not super helpful, but at least I knew I was on the right track. Ever the glutton for punishment, I dropped the disks back in the pouch and rooted deeper, and this time I pulled three free. Tower, Hermit, and Lovers.
I slowed to a stop, letting the sunlight pour over me another moment. Tower meant cataclysm, a sudden bolt of lightning, or a total breaking down of previously held structures. It also showed people flinging themselves out of the top of a burning tower. Fair enough. The Hierophant had been responsible for throwing the great dragon Llyr out of Heaven, and that was pretty heady stuff.
The Hermit was more interesting. Now that I knew the Hermit existed as a real live person with a face and a robe and quite possibly a bona fide relationship to me, a situation I had yet to truly process, drawing his card took on the same sort of challenges that drawing many of the majors did. How did I know if the card meant to share with me its esoteric meaning or its personal meaning—what was more real, the man or the idea?
In this case, though, I took the card as bearing out what Kreios had indicated before I’d ever stepped foot in Hell. A search. The Hierophant was on a search for the proper way to handle humans after his triumph over Llyr. He’d barricaded himself in Hell to conduct that research, for reasons I had yet to figure out. Either way, he was hunting for truth and maybe, finally, he’d found it.
The Lovers card, however, was a whole new bucket of crazy. Although traditionally querents expected this card to depict some kind of sizzling new love affair, there were other cards in the deck better suited to that. What the Lovers typically meant was a choice that one must make after a challenge or trial of some sort. It could mean romance, but it was more about the logistics of that romance, how each element of the relationship would work out after careful consideration or arbitrary decision making.
And the Lovers made no sense here. The Hierophant didn’t have a choice in front of him between two equal options. He could stay in Hell or leave, yes, but one was passive, the other active. There were better cards to represent a simple choice, not the kind of judgment-riddled debate that the Lovers typically called for.
In addition, I hated pulling the Lovers. With its two central figures surmounted by an angel or some kind of divine force, it frankly had too much going on for a clean, obvious interpretation. It nearly always needed some kind of clarifying card, and I simply didn’t have time for that nonsense.
“Miss Wilde.”
I glanced up, startled. Armaeus stood in front of me, looking so impossibly handsome I almost cried out. As it was, I stood back sharply, my barriers up in a second to block my mind from him. His brows lifted, but his manner didn’t change. If anything, it grew more curious, more intrigued.
“You’ve grown stronger,” he murmured, and he held out his hand to me. He watched as I dropped the Tarot chips into my neck pouch, his smile deepening. “Jewelry. I hadn’t thought of that. A brilliant device.”
“Thanks, it was Kreios’s idea,” I said gruffly. I took his hand because I was too weak not to, but the agony of the electric connection between us took real strength to endure. Armaeus felt the push-pull of my reaction, and his expression sharpened further.
“There is so much I want to share with you,” he murmured. “And much you should share with Michael.”
“It’s really him? Michael? As in seriously an archangel—like an archangel of God.” As I babbled on to cover my emotions, I schooled myself not to look at Armaeus with my shattered gaze, and instead focused on the man standing at the top of the hill, watching us as we wound our way toward him. We were on a path bordered by river stones and flanked with trees, their blossoms falling gently in the breeze. “Michael the Archangel,” I said again, to ensure there was no question.
“It is.” The Magician’s voice was rich with satisfaction, and something more too. Contentment, I realized. He truly did enjoy it here in Hell, and of course I knew why. Jealousy knifed through my gut.
That said, I could play it cool. I was all about cool, in fact, totally frosty. “What have you been doing down here, anyway, these past few days?” I asked with an impressive chill factor. “You know they’re waiting for you up top. The longer you stay in Hell, the more worried Kreios gets.”
“He said that?” the Magician laughed. “The immortal Kreios worried about anything is difficult to imagine. But me?”
“And interesting, this idea of up and down, don’t you think?”
This new question came not from Armaeus but from the man at the tip of the promontory. I tried to look directly at him, but I couldn’t, my gaze shearing off until I stared over the far horizon, where the hills fell gracefully, tumbling over into dappled meadows to the far-off glorious Caribbean-blue sea.
The sea. Yeah, no.
I squinted toward the Hierophant.
Michael the Archangel was not, for the record, sprouting wings. But he pretty much didn’t need to. He was one of the most singularly beautiful men I’d ever met, and he had a long line of Arcana Council members before him who’d cornered the market on “hot.”
But Michael’s beauty wasn’t carnal, truly. There was nothing remotely earthy or sexual about the man’s face, his body, his expression. I couldn’t truly get a fix on his face, though. My gaze kept sliding away, and I was unable to tell if he was black or white, Asian or Hispanic, blonde or dark haired or ginger or…
His expression shifted, and I stiffened. The angel’s face had settled into a skin tone so achingly fair that it almost hurt to look at him. His hair was straight white, his eyes eerily light. “You’re albino,” I blurted, too shocked to worry about the possibility of being rude. “How is that possible?”
“Am I?” Michael shifted again, and his skin became the deep, rich color of chocolate, and then he shifted to the olive-toned skin of Kreios, gleaming with a Mediterranean tan. Then back once again to purely fair. “It is unsettling to you.”
His voice made my knees wobble, and Armaeus firmed his hold on my arm. When Michael spoke, it was closest to the vocal projection the Magician had used on occasion with me and others, to compel us to an action we weren’t entirely sure we wanted to make. But there was no compulsion in Michael’s words; he’d m
erely issued a simple statement. Yet I felt compelled to reply.
“Are you like this all the time?”
His gentle smile was meant to reassure me, but merely made me sad. Not your garden-variety level of sadness either, but a deep wellspring of pain that opened up within me, whispering of incredible isolation, loneliness, and resignation.
“You’re tired, Sara Wilde,” the Hierophant said, and his voice drifted through me like the petals from the trees above us, seeking out the broken places and holding them gently in a whisper-soft embrace. “You’ve suffered much.”
I shot a startled glance to Armaeus, who stood there observing me like I was some sort of bug. Good to know that some things never changed, I supposed. Before I could return my glance to the Hierophant, Michael turned away from me, and the relief I felt at his attention moving from my face was palpable. It wasn’t that the Hierophant’s regard bothered me, exactly. It wasn’t painful or judgmental or harsh. It was…the exact opposite of that, in fact. It was unconditional acceptance, that no matter what I said, what I did, I would be blanketed with care and understanding and…
“Do you know why I’ve remained so long in this place that humans fear most?” Michael had started walking down the winding path, and I realized that the landscape had changed while I’d stood there gaping at him. Instead of a hill filled with trees rolling down to a far ocean, we were descending into a grotto hung with lush vegetation. There was no far distant shore to contemplate, no ocean of memories. I blinked and refocused on Michael’s back, grateful that he could not see my face. Had he known? Had he done that on purpose? Had he…
Armaeus squeezed my hand, and my brain bumped back online. The Hierophant had asked me a question.
“Um, no,” I said. “I don’t know why you’re here, in Hell. I mean, I don’t buy that this is where all human souls go in the aftermath of their lives, if they’ve been bad or whatever, but that does seem to be the prevailing theory. Which makes you being here somewhat strange, you gotta admit.”
