“Use...the spear...”
Ryan gestured for me to retrieve Areadbhar and reached up to bare his chest, exposing a patchwork of hideous scars and—in the space where his heart should have been—a shimmering globe implant that I recognized as the core piece of Polyphemus’ mechanical eye.
“Oh, Ryan,” I whispered, my stomach churning at the notion of what had been done to his body. “Jesus, I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be such...a girl...about it.”
“I always know when you’re tryin’ to rile me up, Ryan O’Rye,” I said, fighting back the urge to slug him on principle. Though of course that would have been a lot easier to do if I weren’t constantly having to wipe at my cheeks. Still, I managed to pick up my spear without having to be asked twice—even if it did tremble in my hands. “And I want ye to know...it’s not goin’ to work. Because I love ye, ye idget, and I can’t stay mad at...someone...I love.”
“You...too.”
“And ye better not go wanderin’ too far after this, alright?” I swallowed hard past the lump in my throat, wishing I had sleeves to wipe my face with. “I tracked ye down in the afterlife once already. When the time comes, I’ll do it again.”
The faintest smile flickered across Ryan’s face as he guided the tip of my spear to the hollow of his throat.
“I’ll be...closer...than you think.”
Then, before I could say anything else, Ryan thrust himself forward. I managed to shut my eyes just before the blade buried itself in his neck, then braced myself for sounds of pain, for the inevitable spasms, for the gruesome realities of dying. But none of those occurred; instead, there was light.
I opened my eyes to find the devourer glowing, its cracked surface mending itself even as Ryan’s blood spilled down his chest and pooled into his shirt and trousers. I felt Areadbhar twitch, saw the green flames ripple along her blade until they reached the Faeling’s mortally wounded throat. Within seconds, Ryan went up like a match soaked in lighter fluid; his skin seemed to curl and wizen before my very eyes, caving in on itself as though what had remained after his passing was more shell than person. The heat soon became unbearable, and I had to step clear of his body lest I, too, get burned.
When it was finally over, there was little left of Ryan to mourn but ash and dust. And yet, I said nothing over his remains, mainly because I had nothing left to say.
To anyone.
46
I’d been sitting—staring at the gilded gravemarker I’d created by plunging the blade of Charlemagne’s singing sword into the ground next to the chest which had once held Thiazi’s heart but now represented mine—for so long I completely lost all sense of time, when the ground started to shake. The tremors were slight at first—hardly enough to rattle the ribcage. But, as the quakes continued to occur, I began to notice panicked Atlantians gathering what they could from what was left of their homes before fleeing towards the great mounds. They looked terrified—more so even than when they’d stumbled upon me squatting amidst the wreckage I’d helped create. The correlation between the two suggested that the quakes, like me, were not indigenous to Atlantis.
And they were getting worse.
Due to a lack of alternatives—and because I trusted their judgment more than my own—I decided to follow the natives and find out whether they had access to shelter. But first, I rolled gingerly to my feet and patted myself down to make sure I had everything I’d come with, including the sack of god biscuits and the empty bottle which had contained Charon’s concoction. Once satisfied I wasn’t leaving anything except my aching heart behind, I started limping across the landscape, conspicuously trailed by a floating Areadbhar. The mythical spear appeared to have made a full recovery, though I still wasn’t entirely certain how that had come to pass—nor was I eager to dwell on it, just yet.
My trek became more arduous by the moment, however, as the tremors increased in both duration and severity. I began skipping between aftershocks to keep from putting too much pressure on my bum leg, genuinely concerned for the integrity of this realm; whatever was happening below the surface, it was bound to be causing seismic damage the likes of which Atlantis had never seen.
By the time I reached the great mounds, the Atlantians I’d followed were nowhere in sight. Overhead, the branching rivers churned and surged, both larger and closer than I’d ever seen them. And yet, there were no storms in sight—no debris raining down from the heavens. Prompted by a sudden desire to reach the top of the nearest mound and look out across the horizon, I began hiking up the side using an overqualified Areadbhar as a walking stick, stopping only when another quake threatened to send me tumbling to the bottom beneath an avalanche of lost items.
When I finally reached the summit, I was panting and as exhausted as I could ever remember being, which was why it took me a moment before I turned to find all of Atlantis spread out before me, the view even more stupendous than the one Ryan and I had shared from the stairway outside the mausoleum. Or it would have been, were it not for the dozens of fissures spread across the landscape, scarring the entire terrain. As I watched, another appeared, branching from the nearest crevice with an audible cracking sound.
Within seconds, I felt the resulting shockwave.
Larger even than the last, I had a moment to wonder if I wouldn’t be joining Ryan sooner rather than later before I teetered and ended up staggering along the edge. In an effort to keep my balance, I began pinwheeling my arms, only to clip something withered and dry. I glanced up in surprise to find a dessicated arm reaching for me from the other side of the frothing river overhead, its skeletal hand beckoning.
A hand I definitely recognized.
With no other alternatives besides falling to my presumable death, I snatched hold of the offered metacarpus mere moments before the mound beneath my feet started caving in, swallowed by an ever-widening crevasse. Dangling in mid-air, I stared into that gaping hole, wondering what could possibly have triggered destruction on such a massive scale. Could Frankenstein really have caused some sort of chain reaction, earlier? I shook my head as the hand gripping my wrist began towing me skyward, realizing I was ascribing natural phenomenon to an unnatural place; seismic activity in Atlantis was far more likely to be caused by a stomping giant than it was by tectonic shifts.
Then, just as my arm slid into the frigid river waters, I caught a glimpse of something emerging from the gaping hole as what looked like a single, solitary finger—easily taller and wider than any skyscraper I’d ever seen—rose up from the depths before curling onto the earth with a colossal, dirt-spewing boom.
I opened my mouth to say something, perhaps even to scream, only to find it full of brackish, unbearably spicy river water as the hand yanked me through to the surface. I came up spluttering, my tongue swollen as though stung by a dozen fire ants at once, my exposed skin scalded and raw as what little glow had remained in my veins after my battle with Frankenstein sputtered and died. A second skeletal hand snatched me by the pauldron and pulled me onboard a familiar riverboat, then handed me an ice cold beer.
“I sure hope you didn’t swallow any of that swill,” Charon said, his voice slithering across my mind, tilting his head in the general direction of the river even as he fetched a second brew for himself. “Go on, drink up.”
“Will it help?” I asked, though out loud it sounded a lot more pathetic, not unlike that moronic kid’s in A Christmas Story who got his tongue stuck to a frozen pole.
“No idea.” Charon toasted me. “But it won’t hurt.”
47
I nursed the beer between my throbbing hands, taking judicious sips, wary of whatever hellish homebrew Charon had given me this time. Fortunately, the beer embodied the bland, nigh flavorless quality I’d come to expect from your everyday dimestore brand. The boatman must have realized I was pathetic enough as it was without getting me white girl wasted on fermented river juice.
“So, how d’ye find me?” I asked, glad to be able to use my tongue again.
“Had a hunch you’d end up down there before it was all said and done,” Charon replied, shrugging his bony shoulders as he worked the oar. “You had that lost feel about you. That’s why I gave you that shot.”
“Oh, right!” I retrieved the empty bottle and passed it over. “What the hell was in that, by the way?”
“A little Lethe cocktail I put together a while back. Does wonders for the memory, but it’s got a real kick.” Charon palmed the shooter, oblivious to my gaping stare. “Anyway, once I saw what was going on down there, I thought you could use a hand.”
“What was goin’ on down there?”
“Foundation trouble, by the looks of it,” Charon replied, matter-of-factly. “That sort of thing happens here a lot more than you’d think. Break-outs. Break-ins. Whole wings that weren’t there before going up where old annexes used to be. You get used to it.”
“Sounds awful, if ye ask me.”
“But I didn’t.”
Charon reached down, took hold of the beer he’d sat on the lip of the boat, and took a long swig as though he could care less what I thought about his workplace. Then again, if I were him, I supposed I’d have gotten all that out of my system centuries ago; there was no use complaining about a situation you could never hope to escape from. Besides, who was I to judge?
“Where are ye takin’ me, by the way?” I asked after several minutes of silence passed, realizing he hadn’t yet revealed our intended destination—though I assumed there was only one place left for a wandering spirit like me to go now that my time in the afterlife was at an end. “Me body is in the Titan Realm, by the way, if you’re lookin’ to drop me off.”
“Actually, we’re headed the opposite way,” Charon replied. “The boss said you had a message to deliver, and that you’d know what it was.”
I frowned, the gears in my head revolving so slowly that I couldn’t for the life of me puzzle out what Charon was talking about. The fact was I was a shell of my former self; emotionally eviscerated, physically battered, and mentally exhausted, I found the mere concept of speech draining, let alone the act itself. I’d come to save Max and confront Ryan and—within those limited parameters—gone two for two. And yet, it felt like I’d failed.
Ryan, it turned out, was right.
I really wasn’t fond of half measures.
“Give me a hint,” I urged as I held out my hand for Areadbhar, then cradled her across my chest like a security blanket. “And don’t be your usual, cryptic self, please? I’ve had a long day. Or days. Weeks? Jesus, how long have I been here?”
“Yeah, things don’t work like that, here. Once you cross over, night and day are mostly tied to geography. If there’s a moon where you are, it’s night. If there’s a sun, it’s day. If you’re somewhere with a lot of fire, it’s a bad day.”
“Very funny,” I drawled, though I quickly realized Charon’s offhand explanation largely accounted for my goddess’ dormancy. After all, the only moon I’d seen during my entire stint had hung in the sky above Valhalla. The other realms I’d visited—including Niflheim, Helheim, and even Atlantis—had all been suffused with at least some form of natural light.
Of course, he hadn’t exactly answered my question.
“Charon, how long has passed in the Titan Realm since I got here?”
“Couldn’t say. Time can be fickle down...” Charon drifted off, cocking his head as a sound drifted out over the water that didn’t belong to the frothing waters we sailed upon. “They must be doing construction again. Anyway, it looks like we made it.”
Intrigued, I draped myself over the side of the boat, craning my neck as we rounded the bend to the rhythmic tune of dozens of hammers striking steel and at least as many saws cutting through wood. Of course, nothing could have prepared me for what I saw when at last we turned the corner; I leered, struggling to process what I was seeing, though under normal circumstances I’d have sworn I was looking at a colony of some kind.
Except these weren’t normal circumstances.
And this was Hell.
“Uh, Charon,” I said, alarm propelling my voice an octave higher than usual. “When ye say we made it...where, exactly, are we?”
“The warden calls it Cell Block F. But everyone else calls it Temple Island.”
48
Charon left me stranded on the riverbank only after I’d extracted a promise from him that he’d return to collect me once I’d spoken with Calvin and Makayla Temple—a condition I’d insisted upon after learning Hades seriously expected me to pass along his stupid message after he’d done exactly jack squat to bring Max and I together. In hindsight, I was pretty sure Charon couldn’t have given a shit about my grievance one way or the other; he’d simply wanted me off his damned boat. As insurance, however, I’d left Areadbhar behind with instructions to keep the boatman honest.
After all, nothing incentivizes quite like the threat of violence and mayhem.
I spun and marched farther inland, initially determined to deliver my message and be done with it. But, as I passed the first half dozen or so mangled spirits bustling about the barren crag with their rusted metal beams and charred wood planks, I began to rethink that policy. After all, the Temples knew things other people didn’t—truths about me, about my parents, and about my destiny—which only they could reveal. Not that I felt I could trust them; they’d kept secrets from their own son, for crying out loud. Big, hefty secrets—the kind with literally world-shattering ramifications.
Of course, first I had to find them.
I stopped a spirit dragging a sack full of rocks across the ground, though I found it hard to maintain eye contact; half his face was caved in as though he’d been stepped on by a horse as a child. His good eye locked onto my waving hand like it was some sort of majestic bird until he realized it belonged to a person.
“Hello,” I said, uncertain of the social protocols involved in addressing a ghost. “Can ye tell me where to find the Temples?”
“You must be new,” he replied, patting my arm reassuringly. “Look for the biggest house in town. And don’t worry, they’ll get you sorted. Back when I was alive, they used to say ‘the devil always gets his due.’ Well, the devil never had to collect from the Temples, I can tell you that much!”
The spirit chortled at his own joke, flashed me a lopsided smile, and went on about his business, chugging right along as though lugging rocks from one place to another was a perfectly acceptable way to occupy one’s time.
“Uh, t’anks,” I mumbled after him, unsure what to make of his anecdote. Had the Temples really set up their own little colony in Hell? And, if so, who had authorized it? For some reason, I couldn't see Hades letting anyone do anything that wasn’t strictly by the book. Plus, Hades had sent me to deliver his message, as opposed to one of his phantom emissaries. Which meant the Temples must have struck a deal with someone powerful enough to make the god of the dead think twice before interfering in their affairs.
Good to know their reputations weren’t exaggerated, I supposed.
I found the house the spirit mentioned not long after walking into the heart of the dilapidated village the colonists had fashioned for themselves. Not that it was hard; the three-story monstrosity rose like a castle fort above the rest of the buildings, its facade made entirely of soot-stained chrome and shaped like a leering skull with windows where the eyes should be. Frankly, it should have looked like a gimmicky Halloween house—the sort of place that would make toddlers cry and have teenagers rolling their eyes in disdain. But it didn’t; it looked fucking scary. And, somehow, expensive.
Of freaking course these were Nate’s parents, I thought as I banged on the front door, my every knock reverberating along the skeletal face like the clanging of a gong. After only a few seconds, the skull’s two front teeth were thrown wide to reveal a plush red carpet snaking into a dim, candlelit room. The effect was both ostentatious and eerie, meant to simultaneously entice and repulse.
“Oy!” I yelled, eager to dispe
nse with the pageantry. “Get your dead asses out here, I have a message from Hades!”
Two startled people popped up out of the gloom as if by magic, looking remarkably as though they’d been lying in wait for someone. They took their time stepping into the light, which gave me the opportunity I needed to study their faces without being too obvious about it; I’d seen the Temples before from afar, but had subsequently hoped for a closer look. Calvin’s, I noticed, hadn’t changed much at all—as stately and shrewd as I remembered, his bolder features were drawn fine and thin so as not to offend, his hair dusted grey but still luxuriously full. On the other hand, Makayla’s—though it bore more significant signs of aging—remained the more conventionally attractive of the two, her eyes large and faintly doll-like, with the sort of brilliant, effervescent smile that so often propels a woman from leading lady to starlet.
“Sorry!” Makayla said, hitting me with that megawatt smile as she ushered me inside. “We thought you were someone else.”
“Someone ye planned to invite to dinner and then eat?” I ventured, eyebrow cocked at the room’s decidedly Gothic ambiance.
“Of course not!” Makayla laughed and waved that away. “Can I get you something to drink? And Calvin, would you mind grabbing a couple chairs from the foyer? Or the sunroom, whichever works. But not the patio! You know how they get when it acid rains.”
“Yes, dear.” Calvin leaned over to lay a peck on his wife’s forehead, stepped through a doorway brimming with infernal light, and reappeared moments later carrying two robust armchairs that could have gone for a couple grand at auction. Once he’d arranged them, the middle-aged wizard began patting his forehead with a handkerchief retrieved from his breast pocket. “My apologies for the delay. So, young lady, you said you came here with a message? Who was it from, again?”
Brimstone Kiss: Phantom Queen Book 10 - A Temple Verse Series (The Phantom Queen Diaries) Page 24