There But For The Grace (21 page)

I pulled out a power bar, ate it, and watched the damned souls of Greed. It was a fucked up existence, but somehow, a gentler, less fucked-up one than either Lust or Gluttony. It’d be a good long while before I could forget the poor souls of Gluttony, scrambling over one another, shoving each other out of the way in the slime and the muck for rotted food that didn’t seem to do shit to assuage their hunger.

Here though, here was different, but much the same in many ways. Here the greedy souls toiled. Each picked up sharp gray shards of stone like they were precious gems from the ground. They plucked shards and chunks from the sharp rocks jutting out of the earth with bloody fingers, shoving them away in great big burlap sacks. Their backs were bent to nearly breaking with the efforts to carry their burdens up the steep slope. They would work their way up to the top, cramming the bags full to literally bursting. Before they could reach the top—and the taverns and inns just above them—to use what they clearly presumed were gems, their bags would split. The loot would spill to their wild cries of anger and dismay, and they would go chasing their spoils down the hill, often fighting one another over it.

“You gonna pick that up?” one would ask me occasionally as I sat. I would just shake my head mutely; they would snatch whatever bit of dull colored, sharp stone was catching their fancy, looking at it like it was something precious to be had, before shoving it in their bag and going after the next.

I took out the map and checked on Tab, who was making progress. He was out of the Eighth and edging a good ways into the Seventh in something called the ‘Forest of Blood and Sorrow.’ I worried, though: there seemed to be what looked like a great big castle wall between me and him where the Fifth met the Sixth, labeled on the map as ‘The City of Dis.’ I didn’t know what it was or how I was going to get over it or through it if I had to, but at the same time, I couldn’t worry about it too much. I had to get there first and lay eyes on it to see what I was up against before I could formulate any kind of plan.

I put the map away in my satchel and looked at my gloved hands. I wasn’t sure how a pair of fingerless driving gloves were going to protect me, what with the exposed bits, but magic guns were riding along the outsides of my thighs, why not magic gloves on my hands? I stood up, my protein bar’s wrapper sliding off my lap onto the rocky ground. I sighed, and bent to pick it up. I would be regretting my effort to keep Hell green in three… two…

A sharp gasp emitted nearby, and I cursed silently as I tried to dump Hadad’s amulet down the front of my shirt. Its dull, pulsating light had been obscured by the straps of my canteen and messenger bag, but bending had dislodged it, and at least one of the greedy damned had seen it.

“Give it to me!” she screeched, and then another cried “I want it!” and then it was a fucking free-for-all. I leapt and hit the scree sideways with my boots. I put my faith into Cahethel’s gloves and put one hand down to control my slide. It wasn’t to the point I had to draw down yet, but it seemed that what I had going on with the first two souls was a domino effect. Once they started coming after me, it any other nearby damned that looked up seemed to catch on that I had something of value.

I hit a flat part, my slide carrying me enough down the slope that I had a good lead on the souls chasing me down, but I had a problem: I had nothing on the ones coming up after me from the bottom to the top. For a ludicrous second, I had the thought that I didn’t want to hurt these people. Iaoel set my ass straight in a big damned hurry by reminding me that
these people were already dead
and that if I didn’t want to join the fun somewhere down here for all eternity, I needed to decide what I was going to do—and fast.

It wasn’t a hard decision, not with Tab still needing me to save his ass in return. I un-holstered one of War’s forty-fives, took aim, and pulled the trigger. The one closest to me, charging up the bank, snapped back with the perfect headshot and dissipated into nothing before it hit the shale slope. At least they weren’t messy like Sobel had been, though I had a feeling that had more to do with the alive versus already dead than anything.

I had too many coming down and up simultaneously, so I had to pull the other weapon and fire in each direction. Magic guns indeed. Though I was doing my
best
to aim them, I couldn’t possibly be as accurate as the results I was getting. Every shot found
some kind
of mark. If it wasn’t a critical hit, causing the damned soul to go poof, then it was at least the kind of hit that slowed them down. Not one shot went wide or missed completely. That helped. That helped a great deal as I concentrated my rate of fire on the ones coming up from the bottom to clear my way down, keeping an eye on the ones coming towards me from the top and only taking them out when they were getting too close.

Iaoel helped, giving me a warning when I needed to pay more attention one direction over the other. This allowed me to start progressing down the hill. It was a lot harder to keep both sides at bay once I started moving, but I managed. Progress was severely hindered by how slow I had to go to keep from falling, but in this situation, falling was the
last
thing I wanted to do. Falling was pretty much a final signature on my death warrant, and I was so not going to let that happen.

Iaoel flashed an image of me being ringed in, and she was right: with how slow I was going, I was going to be surrounded on all sides by the time I reached bottom.
Shit, shit and double shit.
I took a deep breath, pulled up my badass, and sent myself in another controlled slide, focusing on taking out as many in front of me as possible. Some of the ones coming down the slope were destroying themselves just trying to copy me to catch up: the rotting rags they had on was nothing against the sharp shale.

I was beginning to think the gloves had more oomph to them than just protecting my exposed fingertips because at one point, I went down on my ass and kept sliding. I expected the rock to slice through the denim of my pants, but instead, all the fall did was jar me something awful, making a few shots finally go wide on me. I slid on my ass, picking off targets, and my jeans held up to the abuse like I had some major thick cardboard between me and the ground. Score
two
for the good guys.

I made it to the bottom, picked off the few targets waiting for me there, and turned back. I yelped—one of them was right on me—and fired pointblank into their face. They puffed into that vapor or ash, and I fetched up hard against the three-foot-high rock wall at the bottom with its little garden gate. I leapt over it into the Fifth and blinked. The damned souls of the Fourth just stopped and looked in confusion first at each other, then around at the ground, where their eyes lit up. They started picking up shale like I’d simply never been there.

I breathed out a huge sigh of relief and holstered my weapons. Sweating and panting, I took the time to drink out of my canteen and catch my breath, all the while watching them toil, unnerved as… well… hell that they’d just stopped coming after me. Iaoel didn’t hesitate to mentally slap me for that one, and I chuckled.

“Yeah, I deserved that, but don’t get cute. Thanks, but I still don’t trust your ass as far as I can throw I,” I told her, and she fell quiescent.

What can I say about the Fifth? It was like the further one went down the rabbit hole that was…ahem… Luci-mort’s impact crater, the less civilized and more fucked up shit became. I guess that only made sense, but honestly, even the civilized portions weren’t what you would consider civilized. The loose, sharp shale and slate-like stone didn’t go much further passed the low-slung garden wall. It actually gave way to a sandy beach pretty quick.

The sand was odd, black, like in Hawaii on earth. The black sand beaches of Hawaii were made from crushed obsidian and volcanic rock, and I wondered if that was the case here, or if it was just supposed to look ominous. If it was the latter, then what’s-his-name’s interior decorator hadn’t needed to bother, because the immense dark river beyond the black sand was plenty ominous enough. Especially when you factored in the poor souls writhing in its deep, murky waters.

“Son of a bitch, how am I going to get across
that?
Swimming is damn sure not an option.” I sighed and busted out the map again. It was darker here past the wall separating the Fifth from the Fourth, making reading it a potential problem. I unfolded the map and fished in my hip pocket, coming up with Azrael’s lighter. I flicked back the top of the zippo with that satisfying soft metallic clang and hit the dial with my thumb. It rasped against the flint, gave off white sparks, and lit up the darkness like a magnesium flare for a split second before settling into the softer glow of, say, an LED flashlight.

I blinked, night vision ruined, and looked frantically this way and that, hoping that I hadn’t just sent up some kind of flare to the bad guys pinpointing my location. Even Iaoel sent me frantic images of fleeing the scene of the crime—if you could call it that, and I couldn’t say I blamed her. That shit was way brighter than it’d needed to be.

I quickly checked the map, found that I should conceivably be just up the beach from the ferry landing. I quickly folded the vile parchment made out of human skin and tucked it back into my messenger bag securely. I doused the lighter by giving it a sharp swing, the cover snapping closed, returned it to my hip pocket, and started out at a run in the direction I needed to go. A bunch of obscure information that by all rights I should have forgotten a long time ago from different things, such as high school and community college literature classes, flooded my brain as I ran.

The river was the Styx, the landing was where the ferry boat would pick up those needing to cross, and boy, did I ever need to cross. I would need coins to make the crossing, some kind of currency, and I had no idea what to do about that. The landing was a stone pier that jutted out into murky water, looking like something out of World of Warcraft, with large spikes that resembled dragon teeth curving out from the sides and jutting into the air. I swallowed hard and went out onto it, looking both ways.

It wasn’t long before the ferry pulled up along the end of the pier, the boatman looking like he ought to; hooded and, from what I could see, disfigured underneath.

I ransacked my messenger bag and nearly crowed in triumph when I came up with three gold looking coins. I smiled, the insight hitting me that one was to get me across and two were to get me and Tab back over. I palmed one of them, hid the other two back down where I’d found them, and thanked, God, the Archangels, the Four Horsemen, and my lucky stars that
someone
had thought of this eventuality.

The boat docked, and the Ferryman reached up palm out. I dropped the coin into his hand, and he brought it close to his eyes as if he was very nearsighted.

“Ah, interesting. Well, come quickly now! I haven’t got all day.”

I leapt into the boat and stood apart from him, and he used his pole, thrusting it deep into the dark water. There were three rings at the top that clanged against the rod itself as it hit bottom beneath the writhing bodies below the surface.

“What’s your name, Girl?” he demanded, and Iaoel warned me not to tell him.

“What does it matter? I’ve paid you for the ride.”

The boatman grunted his disapproval. “Clever, for names have power here.”

“So I’ve been told,” I muttered.

“It’s lonely plying these waters. I seldom see the living, let alone one that pays with Angel minted coin…”

I didn’t say anything, suddenly worried that the other two coins weren’t there to get us out, but were rather hush money. Somehow bribery would seem like it were a thing down here. I mean, come on.

“Eh, clever girl indeed…” he uttered as if he’d read my mind.

“What do you want?” I finally asked, cautiously.

“Just talk, Girl. I am fond of poetry. Many a fine poet has been on these decks, tell me a poem if you’ve got one. Maybe from someone who didn’t wind up down here, eh?”

I wracked my brain, and Iaoel sent me an image of frost on a railing.
Frost, yeah.
I supposed he wouldn’t have ended up down here, and I did remember one or two of his. I recited one that I did a report on back in high school, and the boatman seemed like it gave him a measure of peace, so I asked him, “Another?” He nodded and I recited the other one I knew. I finished ‘Acquainted with the Night’ just as we bumped into the landing down and across the river from where I’d embarked.

“A pleasure, I hope I see you again.”

“Two more coins, and maybe I can think of another poem by another good poet if you do,” I told him after I was safely on the dock.

He chuckled, “A deal, and you have nothing to fear, your kindness though hard won, has bought my silence.”

I nodded, “Thanks.”

He shook his head. “Don’t thank me yet, Girl. You’re in the Fifth now. I wouldn’t go beyond it if I were you. It’s so much worse beyond the Gates of Dis.” He thrust his pole into the Styx, and the rings rattled. He shoved off, away from the dock, and called back, “Ring the bell when you’re ready!”

I looked up at the old iron bell attached to one of the pilings thrust deep. It was over my head and had no clapper or pull, so I had no idea how I was supposed to do that. I didn’t have time to worry about it right now though. I had to get deeper into the Fifth and find Tab.

The boat ride had taken a few minutes, and so now I needed to get away from the dock in case anyone had seen the lightshow and were now looking for me. I was afraid if they got smart, they’d realize I’d make landfall here. I somehow figured that it would probably take less time as the crow flies—or in this case, a Fallen who still had a set of wings—to get from the point I’d taken off to here. So my best odds were to forge ahead and see if there was someplace to take cover or if there were a bunch of damned souls I could blend in with.