Desolate (Desolation) (25 page)

Without a glance for Michael, Heimdall dropped him, and set out after Helena.

Michael bent over, his hands braced against his knees. He took long, even breaths. I wondered if Father had laid claim to him as well—though the charm should keep him safe from that. I hoped. But he stood and nodded at me, before setting out after the others. I thought about reaching for him. About asking his help, but when he walked past me without even looking my way, a cold hard nugget of ugliness settled in my heart.

For the first time I thought,
Maybe it’s Michael who doesn’t deserve me.

chapter thirty-seven

Michael

We climbed upward into Hell and the pressure in my skull lessened. I wondered why Hel didn’t do her disappearing act and whisk us back to Earth. Or why Heimdall didn’t just open a Door—he was the god of the Bifrost, after all. But I found the more familiar my surroundings became, the less I cared about what they did or didn’t do.

Hell’s frigid fingers caressed me, soothed me. Called me. I stayed on my feet. I kept moving forward though it took every ounce of my strength. I concentrated on Heimdall’s broad back in front of me. He didn’t stop moving so I didn’t stop moving. My mind followed a constant loop of, Just keep moving. Just keep moving. Just keep moving.

When we first left the cavern where Heimdall had been imprisoned, I’d waited for Desi, though why she lingered I didn’t know. Shame had become so much a part of me I feared it would forever define me. Since dropping me, Heimdall hadn’t spared me even a glance. I felt his scorn like a bitter brand on my soul.

I slowed my pace and turned to find my love walking some distance behind. “Desi.” I kept my voice low, worry and tension making it hoarse. Her face jerked upward, startled, almost as if she’d forgotten she wasn’t alone. Her eyes held emotions so like my own it felt as though I was looking in a mirror. This place was an albatross for the both of us. “We’d best hurry.”

She nodded and jerked forward as if a puppeteer pulled her strings. I held my hand out to her, but she didn’t even seem to notice as she passed me. I fell into step behind her.

Just keep moving
.

Only the tiniest of sounds, a scrape of claw against stone alerted me to the danger that had come up behind me. I spun, reaching for my Halo, for my sword which I always kept with me—only to find myself abandoned by both. I didn’t have time to consider why—I only had time to react.

As pale and dull as the rough granite around me, I thought at first the creatures were demons or the damned who had wandered deeper than the lowest tier of Hell. But when I stumbled back from a blow to my stomach I got a better look.

The creature spread frail, jointed wings and screamed its hatred through a maw that revealed a few pointed teeth and many rotted holes.

“Michael.” Desi’s voice echoed in the stone tunnel, the sound drawing nearer until the creature in front of me screamed—another answering its call behind me. I had the briefest of fears for Desi before the creature pounced on me with claws and teeth.

“Zabaniyah!” Desi shouted. “Don’t let its blood touch you!”

At that very moment I was more concerned about its teeth. The creature’s clawed wing joint pressed me to the wall, sharp shards of rock digging into my skin, drawing blood. I strained against its shoulders with all my strength but the creature still had its open mouth dangerously close to my neck.

“Be gone!” Desi shouted.

The dragon-like monster jumped back from me as if he’d been hauled off by a god—but it was only Desi standing nearby, her hands on her hips and her eyes alight with fury.

Two zabaniyah cowered against the far wall.

“Be gone, I said.”

The creatures hissed and bowed while they backed down the corridor.

“Those were no zabaniyah,” I said once they had disappeared from view.

“Rejects.” Desi stared down the empty corridor. Her voice sounded empty, distant.

“Yoohoo! Are you coming?” Helena’s voice echoed down to us. I turned toward it.

I took a few steps, but Desi lingered behind. I touched her shoulder and she jerked away.

“Sorry,” she said, her eyes zeroing in on my face. “I’m sorry.”

She took my hand then, but dropped it a moment later when we were forced to climb over some stone that had tumbled across the path. She fell into step behind me and when I glanced back at her she said, “I’m coming.”

Just keep moving
.

chapter thirty-eight

Desi

Helena sat on a rock, filing her nails. Her bright red uber-high heels shone in the luminous light of Hell. Beyond her, I saw Heimdall approaching the river’s edge.

“Why didn’t you just do your thing? Transport us to the Door? Michael was nearly killed back there!” I climbed over the rocks until I was as close to the goddess as I could get. She merely glanced at me and shrugged exaggeratedly.

“I didn’t feel like it.” She held her hand away from her, examining her nails. “Can you recommend a good manicurist?” She looked past her fingers toward me, then pouted. “Oh, I suppose not. You don’t exactly look like you care about your looks.”

I lunged up the rocks and grabbed her stupid emery board from her fingers, crushing it to dust in my fist. “Enough with your stupid nails! Michael nearly died—
died!
We’ve gotta get him out of here!”

She didn’t flinch, didn’t even budge. But this up close I saw the glint in her eye that belied her spoiled-rich-girl persona. “I don’t care about Michael.” She spoke as a god, every syllable dripping with power and disdain. “I don’t care about any of you.” And she disappeared, leaving me with a fistful of mist.

Michael stood on the path beneath me, sweat drenched his back despite the frigid temperature. “Where’d she go?” he asked.

With no words, I climbed down to join him.

I shouldered past him and continued forward, keeping the towering black granite mountain before me. Between here and there we’d have to cross a molten river and I wanted to get that over with as soon as possible.

“Well, wherever she went, she took Heimdall with her.” I grabbed Michael’s hand and pulled him after me. “Come on.”

We made our way around the largest of the boulders until we stood at the very base of the mountain that is both home and prison to the people of Hell. From here I could see that the stairs that wound their way up the side of the mountain were crowded with Lost Souls forever trying to get somewhere when there was nowhere they could go.

I looked upward. Before returning to Earth, I’d seen Hell every day of my long existence. I knew every step up the mountainside, every turn in the river. I knew the landscape, the fiery sky. I knew it all. But I had never, not once, stood outside the granite walls of my prison. I had preferred staying in my rooms to exploring my world. I had trained with Akaros and counseled with Father in the Great Hall. I had endured the passage from each of these three places with a single-mindedness that excluded adventure and exploration.

Now I understood—I had existed here. I had not lived. And my world was as foreign to me as Earth itself.

chapter thirty-nine

Michael

“Where’s the ferryman?” I asked after we’d stood by the river long enough to catch our breath. Beside me a polished black granite wall rose high into the sky, with only a few balconies disturbing the face of it. I recognized it as Lucifer’s palace, recognized this view as the one I’d seen from the balcony in Desi’s rooms while I’d lived there. Recognized the steep stairs that climbed the side of the mountainous palace, crowed as usual with the desperate damned.

Desi glared at me as if I’d grown two more heads.

“This is the River Styx, isn’t it?”

“How would you know?” Her words were clipped, all made of sharp edges.

I tried to laugh it off. “Well, I’ve read a few stories . . .”

I expected her to smile, to laugh, even. But she only snorted. And this time, there was nothing cute in the sound, nothing endearing. She turned her back to me.

She lined herself up with a series of boulders that dotted the river and I finally understood what it was she intended to do.

“You’re crazy! There’s no way we can make that.”

She turned and looked at me—and I didn’t like what I saw in her. She seemed . . . dark. And not only a reflection of all the black around us. She seemed dark from the inside out. As if she was becoming one with her Shadow. I stepped closer. I half expected her to move away, but she didn’t. Instead she watched me warily.

I brushed my hands up her bare arms. I didn’t look at the tendrils there, commanded myself not to judge based on their color—though I couldn’t miss that where once her right arm would flare with golden light it now seemed tattooed with the same inky black as her left. I took my hands up her shoulders, her throat, until they rested beneath her hair at the nape of her neck.

She closed her eyes then. Smiled. She was still mine.

I leaned in, lingered for a breath mere millimeters from her lips. And when I kissed her, I thought,
We are perfect for each other, now more than ever.
She would never have to hide the darkness in her soul, because I had my own sins, too.

But beneath my lips, beneath my hands, I felt the cold creep in. It felt like an undercurrent of electricity, this humming that worked its way through her and stopped short of crossing from her lips to mine. When I opened my eyes I found her already watching me.

And her eyes . . .

Oh, her glorious eyes that shone like granite flecked with gold, now swallowed all light—
my light
—like the endless hunger of a black hole.

“Desi?”

I saw it then. Saw where the shoulder of her tank top had slipped down, revealing a circular wound above her heart. I reached out to touch it, though I knew what it was—I bore a similar mark.

But where mine had faded into my flesh, hers rotated in a counter clockwise direction, the snake chasing its tale. My thumb hovered over the mark, wishing to touch it, so I could know—
know
—but recognizing that I didn’t need to touch it. I already knew.

I pulled back, just a hair, just a breath, and Desi transformed to Shadow.

She drew herself up until she blocked out all the light, until ice formed on my nose, my lashes and lips. She screamed at me, a bone-crushing scream that drove me to my knees. Down and down I crouched until I had curled into a ball, my hands over my ears, my head pressed against my knees. I thought she would crush me.

I wished she would crush me.

Because if she was no longer mine, why did I survive? Why did I ever come back if not for her?

chapter forty

Desi

With only a thought, a wish, I arrived in Father’s throne room. He held court, as he so often did. The usual collection of cronies sat in their chairs of rank around his dais. The velvet bench on which Akaros once sat still stood in its usual position, unoccupied.

Beside Genges Kahn sat Emperor Xin. His lips curled into a wicked smile, the sharpened points of his teeth blackened from the poison he religiously applied to them, even in death. Next to him sat, ironically, Ophelia. Her wide eyes bugged out at me as I stepped closer, her hair a wild halo around her once-pretty face.