The Deadliest Bite (32 page)

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying not to feel as if everyone I cared about was fal ing away from me.

That next I would have to watch Raoul bleed his last drop into hel ’s river, or see Vayl’s spirit waft away into its fiery skies. I said, “Okay. Raoul, quickly contact your guys. And then, for God’s sake, let’s get this over with.”

I felt Raoul’s hand, hard on my shoulder. “Consider it done. And remember, it’s a massive domain. Plenty of room for our scouts, and Cole, to sneak around in. We’ve got a good chance of finding him before any hel spawn do.”

Vayl turned to David. “You wil guard our return? We may come fast and accompanied by the worst hel has to offer.”

Dave nodded. “I’l make sure nothing blocks this door for you.” They gripped hands as Raoul began to chant and the scenery, once again, began to change. I realized the next time it landed I would be facing what could be my final destination. I looked at Lotus. She was purely fascinated by this whole exchange. Soon she’d feel differently.

“We are ready then,” said Vayl.

“What about me?” asked Aaron.

“You…” Vayl sighed. “Make sure you do not die again before I have a chance to know you better.”

Vayl stared at the three people he was asking to stay behind. “Please also attempt to contact Cole via the Party Line and any other contraption Bergman has left lying around his room, remembering that he adores combustible traps. We wil do the same from our location. Try to find out where he has gone. Astral may be of help in that area.”

The cat, hearing her name for the first time in a while, perked up her ears and said, “Hel o. Hel -o Hel ’s o-ver your shoulder.” She turned and looked at me, without blinking, and added in her purring kitty voice, “Don’t look over your shoulder, Jazzy, no matter what you do.” The chil that had clamped to my spine now tried to climb right up into my brain and explode out the top of my head. It left me with chattering teeth and the feeling that icicles were growing inside my eyebal s.

“We have to go,” I whispered.

The cat responded by lifting one forepaw and delicately licking it. I took that as permission, picked up the robokitty, and boogied my ass straight into hel .

Sunday, June 17, 8:00 p.m
.

Here’s what happens when you walk into hel without your sword drawn, with your robokitty in ass-grenade mode, and without letting your Spirit Guide go first.

You get sucker punched by a pint-sized demon with skul spikes that resemble rotten bananas.

I dropped the cat and doubled over. Pain shot up my chest and down my legs as I stared straight into the hel spawn’s bloodshot eyes. Then I grinned. “You little shit,” I said. “How could you tel I was spoiling for a fight?”

I planted my fist into his face so hard that he flipped head over heels and landed on his butt in a puddle of steaming glop that smel ed like burned cow manure. When he tried to scurry off I caught him by the high col ar of his green sequined jumpsuit and said, “Oh no you don’t. You’re coming with me.”

I turned around to find the rest of my party had arrived and was observing the fight from a narrow path beside the field I’d fal en in. Clear of weeds, or any greenery for that matter, its stark sunblanched furrows were planted in body parts. Arms, legs, and torsos stuck out of the nuked soil like crops grown by Jeffrey Dahmer in his FFA phase. I pushed the demon toward them. Vayl caught him, holding him at arm’s length like a piece of dirty laundry, and paying about as much attention to him, because Lotus had already begun to bug out on us.

“What the fuck?” she demanded. “No!” she said, slapping away Vayl’s arm when he tried to keep her from prancing around in circles like she badly needed to pee and nobody would tel her where the bathroom was located. “Seriously! Who
are
you people? I mean, I’m up for adventure and al ? I figured you for mega-mil ionares who recognized a fel ow thril -seeker when you saw one. But this?”

She was screeching now, jumping in place and shaking her fists at the mutilated bodies that would never have moved in her world, but in this one
would not keep still
.

Raoul strode up to her and grabbed her by the arms. “You are a bril iant young woman. Wrap your mind around this right now, Lotus. You nearly died today. You probably wil anyway, but at least now the choice is yours. This”—he gestured at the ghastly landscape—“is where you were going to end up. Satan’s field was your final destination because of how you chose to live life above.” She was looking around, her eyes wide and terrified. But seeing now, understanding as Raoul spoke. The greenish tinge to her face made me think he maybe shouldn’t be standing right in front of her, though.

He went on. “Vayl and Jasmine made a deal for your life. And this is it. You must walk through hel with us. The choices you make here wil determine your future.” His arm swept in a ful circle, making her see every horror around her. “You can stil save yourself. As Cassandra said before, it’s never too late.” He leaned forward and whispered in her ear. I only heard because I had the Party Line tapped into mine. Unfortunately, so did Vayl. His eyes dropped to the ground as he heard my Spirit Guide tel his daughter, “Personal y, I think you’re too high on adrenaline and too afraid to see what’s under the stunt costume to bother. Take my word for it. You’l be planted in this field before Jasmine takes her first hit at the gate.”

Leaving Lotus to stew on that piece of news, he strode forward and swept Astral into one arm.

“Are we moving yet?” he asked.

“Not in a straight line,” said Vayl. He motioned to the hel spawn, who was putting up a little fight, trying to kick Vayl in the shins when he wasn’t digging in his heels. He also made an attempt to head-butt Vayl, which would’ve been painful had one of those spikes impaled him, because they looked to be leaking some sort of greenish acid.

Vayl lifted his adversary completely off the ground. “I am sure Jasmine thought you might be helpful to us. Certainly newcomers to hel ’s shores need al the friends they can get. However, I find you quite rude.”

The demon shoved his head toward Vayl’s thigh like some sort of miniature bul . But the Vampere are particular about etiquette, and they react violently to being gored. Which was partial y why Vayl jerked the demon’s head backward and buried his fangs in its neck. He drank deeply, spat on the ground, leaving a tiny, smoking crater as he murmured, “Agh, it is like drinking vinegar.” But I understood his motives when his reddish black eyes bored into mine and he confessed, “I have missed the powers I lost, my Jasmine. Would you begrudge me this chance to regain something of what was taken from me?”

I stared at him for a moment, making myself truly see him. His fangs and lips crimson with blood.

His eyes bright and hungry, hands gripping his prey so tightly that the demon showed no more signs of resistance than the occasional twitch. This was the same creature who had chased me merrily through his house a few days before, shucking clothes and trading kisses until neither one of us could quite see straight. And I realized I loved them both equal y.

I said, “Take what you need.”

He drank again, deeply, like a desert hiker who’s just realized he doesn’t need to ration his water anymore. And then he snapped the demon’s neck like a chicken bone.

Raoul was already pul ing a garbage bag out of one of his jacket pockets. “Here,” he said, “put the body in this. We may need it later.”

I cleared my throat as Vayl fol owed his suggestion and he closed the top of the bag with a cheerful red-and-white-striped twist tie. “Do you always carry garbage bags for this reason?” I asked Raoul.

“Yes,” he said matter-of-factly. “Almost everything here feeds on flesh. It’s nice to have extra around so your skin isn’t the first target the monsters go for.”

“Oh.”

Vayl flung the sack over his back and set his cane to the path, and I tried hard not to think about horror-movie Santa Claus similarities as we headed onward, Raoul leading him while Lotus fol owed and I pul ed rear guard.

Now that I’d gotten over the first shock of brawling with a demon my training kicked in. Despite the fact that my eyes wanted to jump from horror to horror, never resting until they found a friendly face to ease the pain, I saw that the trail was built on a bed of human bones mired in salted earth and red clay. The appendage fields ran as far as I could see in either direction. And each body part imprisoned a diamond-shaped, multi-hued soul that was straining, and failing, to fly free. Without a complete physical form to make it whole again, the soul battered against the body part, flailing helplessly like a tethered eagle. And above them al , just like I’d remembered, a sky so ful of fire I couldn’t look at it long without imagining that the whole thing was going to drop down and incinerate us al .

“If we had a map, what would this particular region be cal ed?” I asked Raoul.

“You have probably heard it referred to as Limbo,” he said. “It is, in fact, right outside of hel ’s easternmost gate, of which there are thirteen. It is a place where souls are stored until they decide what they want out of the afterlife.”

“That sounds a little crazy,” I said. “I mean, to hear you talk before it sounded like souls could be kidnapped into hel , and that you and the other Eldhayr regularly tried to rescue them. Or that they came here because this was where they belonged.”

“Yes,” said Raoul. “But some are here because they want it. They’ve done something hideous in life that they were never punished for, and they feel they deserve to be here. Those are the ones Satan admits personal y.”

“Oh. And uh.” I hesitated. Did I real y want to know? Yes. Because we’d been to hel together before. And to have shared this horror once meant we had more of a stake in getting it right the second time. “What are you seeing?” I asked.

He glanced around, his face more pale under his natural tan than I’d seen it in months. At first he stared at me, like he couldn’t believe I’d asked. But then I could tel he understood. And he said, “It’s a great clearing in the jungle. Fires have been set everywhere around it, and on them are big boiling cauldrons.”

I almost asked him to stop there, but I could tel he had to finish now. So I clenched my teeth together as he said, “Inside the cauldrons are the bobbing heads of those who can’t decide what to do. Their eyes are rol ing, Jaz. They’re stil , somehow, alive. It may be the worst thing I’ve ever seen.

And I have seen so very much.”

I reached my hand forward past Lotus and Vayl and squeezed Raoul’s hand, tightly, for just a second. And then let go.

I glanced at Lotus. She’d gotten the shakes sometime during our march. After Raoul’s description I didn’t want to know what she saw. But I could tel , even if she’d started out in deep denial, she’d been unable to keep it up. She was seeing her future and it scared the shit out of her.

We walked on.

As we traveled among the undecided dead, Raoul, Vayl, Lotus, and I watched their souls fight.

Some of them, I thought, real y must have wanted to be free. But they couldn’t get past whatever they’d done in life. They knew time must be served. Maybe even forever. But others reminded me of moths battering themselves against a porch light. It seemed to me, after a while, that al they wanted was to cause themselves pain. And I imagined that even here, outside one of the most remote of his gates, I could hear the Great Taker laughing.

Only once did Lotus turn to me. Her eyes, wide with horror, begged me to make it stop. I said,

“This is hel ’s suburb, kid. Think of what it’s like inside.” She whispered, “I always knew I had to be punished. I just figured—” I said, “When you were sixteen and Vayl’s son, you got your brother kil ed. That was over two hundred years ago. How have things been since then?”

She fel silent, a single tear rol ing down her cheek as she turned back to the path.

Final y, after forty-five minutes of watching and walking, we came to the end of the fields and the edge of the great river that surrounded Satan’s domain. It had gone by lots of names over time, the most recent of which was the Moat. Sure I’d read about it. How you get across. Ways to pay the Ferryman. How the Ferryman, who also had lots of names, was one of Satan’s bosom buddies, which was why he’d landed such a swank job in the first place. Fight beside a guy long enough and, yeah, you’re going to get rewarded. Even in a shithole like hel .

This being sort of the back way in, we didn’t see him. Which meant we’d have to find our own way across water that, in some places, was rumored to be deeper than the Mariana Trench, containing whirlpools, undertows, and creatures so terrifying even catching sight of a fin or claw had been known to drive the dead mad.

I said, “Looks like it’s gonna be self-serve.”

Raoul nodded his agreement. “Just keep in mind what happens when we get to the other side.” To this point I hadn’t let my eyes or my conscious thought go to that spot, looming like a haunted house on the opposite bank. A gate fashioned to resemble a mastiff’s head, its snarling face daring us to enter uninvited, stood closed against us, tal er at its apex than a threestory building. Blood, fountains of it, dripped from a trough that ran along the top of the fence that bordered the gate, emptying out of the dog’s eyes, nose, and mouth and rol ing into the Moat, where it was quickly absorbed by the current.

The fence itself was built to crush the spirit, its black posts sprouting razor-sharp spikes at random intervals and angles so that any thought of trying to climb them was immediately fol owed by images of self-crucifixion. It ran so far to either side of the gate that I couldn’t see to the end of it.

And, even though this had been part of the report Astral had played for us when we wanted to know more about the Rocenz, I stil felt my heart drop at seeing the entrance to hel and knowing that what lay beyond it would come for me sooner or later. The worst part was that I stil didn’t know how to carve Brude’s name on the black metal face that growled at me like it was alive. And hungry.