“Autumn.” Irdu stepped beside her, looking as if he were searching for the words to let her down gently.
She spun to him, gripping his arms. “Please, Irdu? Just try. Please?”
He looked at her for a moment, his inhuman features set in a grim mask. After a moment, his shoulders sagged, and he sighed. “Fine. I’m not saying we will go anywhere, but I will wear the things you’ve brought.”
“Thank you!” She spun back to the clothes, handing him a t-shirt and hoodie. “Put these on.”
He looked askance at the heap of clothes, then with an air of long-suffering patience, began struggling into the pants.
“Been a while since you wore pants, huh?”
“I’ve never worn pants.”
“What? Oh.” Autumn remembered the draped robes everyone had worn when he’d taken her back to his time in a dream. “Huh. Well, maybe it’d be easier if you sat down.”
Irdu sank to the edge of the bed and Autumn helped him work the pants legs over his feet. Since they had the elongated shape of an animal paw, they slid in fairly easily, though his claws snagged on the seams occasionally. When they got the pants to his knees, he stood, and Autumn helped him thread his tail down the left pant leg. He hoisted the waist up and looked down at his clothed legs, bemused.
“Okay. So, this is a zipper,” Autumn said.
“I know what a zipper is.”
“Do you know how to close it?”
He grasped the tab with two claws and pulled it up.
“Impressive,” Autumn said with an eyebrow waggle.
“Don’t patronize me,” he said with cool dignity—then ruined it was a self-satisfied smirk.
Getting the t-shirt on over his horns wasn’t terribly difficult. But the hoodie ended up tangled all over his head, with one drawstring looped around his left horn, and the hood twisted around the right. The rest of the sweatshirt dangled limply over his face. Only his vivid blue eyes peered out from the neck hole, looking entirely unamused.
Autumn, on the other hand, was folded in half, barely able to breathe. “Oh my god—you look—you look—” She descended into a helpless fit of laughter.
Ignoring her, Irdu struggled with the sweatshirt on his own, but he was only making it worse.
“You have to stop!” Autumn gasped. She wiped at her streaming eyes, hauling in a desperate breath. “You’re going to—”
Irdu snarled and tugged at the hoodie. He only managed to cover his face and tangle a sleeve around one horn.
“Ack!” Autumn fell to her knees, clutching her sides. “Going to—kill me!”
“Would you please get ahold of yourself and help me?” Irdu’s voice came muffled through the cover of the hoodie.
“I’m sorry!” Autumn crawled forward, still hysterical, and pulled herself up beside Irdu on the bed. Still apoplectic with laughter, she managed to clumsily work the sleeve free, then the drawstring. It took some more wrestling to work the hood over his horns, and when they’d finally gotten it pulled down around his neck, Irdu’s face was flushed lilac and Autumn had managed to start breathing normally again.
“Note to self,” Autumn said on a giggle. “Only zip-up hoodies for Irdu.”
He looked down at himself. His clawed feet looked odd poking out of the bottom of his pants, and his clawed fingers weren’t exactly human-like, but Autumn had bulky snow boots for his feet and mittens for his hands. But before they bothered with those, something needed to be done about his face.
She pulled him into the bathroom and made him sit on the toilet. The color-corrector she’d bought was for disguising the bluish hue of under-eye circles and wasn’t meant to be spread over the whole face, but that was what she was going to do with it. It was a small tube, but Autumn had bought three of them, just in case.
Irdu sat patiently while Autumn daubed it over his face. When his face was evenly covered, she stepped back to survey the results.
“Not bad, actually,” she said. “Once we put the foundation over the top, you’ll totally pass for human.” She used a big makeup brush to generously layer several coats of Desert Sands over his face and neck. When she was done, he was wearing enough foundation to paint a house. But the important part was that most people would look at his face and think, somebody went overboard with the concealer, instead of, that dude is clearly not human.
Autumn slid the sunglasses onto his face and stepped back again. He looked a little bit like a cadaver prepared for a funeral by a second-rate mortician. But he looked like a human cadaver, which was key.
Irdu got up and looked at himself in the mirror. He was quiet for several long seconds. Finally, he said, “If it weren’t for the horns, this could actually work.”
“You underestimate me, sir!” Autumn caught his hand and dragged him back out to the living area. She pushed him to sit on the bed and picked up a black slouchy knit hat.
“That will look absurd,” he said.
“There are several layers to this solution, Donnie Doubter.” She worked that hat over his head. It stretched between his horns, forming a large, wooly crest across the top of his head. It did look ridiculous. But she wasn’t done. She grabbed the parka, and helped him into it, then flipped the hood up. The big, faux fur-lined hood covered his horns and hung down to his forehead.
“Go take a look,” Autumn said, grinning broadly.
Irdu walked back to the bathroom. He was quiet again for a long time. Autumn went to the door and peered in.
“Well?”
“This may work,” he said quietly.
“I know it will. Come on, I’ve got boots and mittens for you. The movie starts in half an hour.”
“My hair is still blue.” Irdu pointed to a few unruly locks poking out from under the hat.
“Every other teenager has rainbow colored hair these days. Nobody will think anything of it.”
“My teeth?”
“Just pull your upper lip over the fangs.”
Irdu stared at himself. He adjusted the sunglasses. Straightened the hood. Pulled his lip over his protruding fang tips. Stared some more.
“Alright,” he said finally.
Autumn had bought snow boots with thick liners, hoping the voluminous padding would help with the unusual shape of his feet. He took a few practice steps. His gait was a bit odd, but nothing ridiculous.
Hand in mittened hand, they stepped outside together. Irdu stood on the sidewalk, looking around. Autumn’s block was filled with old Polish flats. The big front windows were lit, revealing the movements of their inhabitants—watching television, wrestling with their kids, making dinner, petting their dogs, and in one elderly man’s case, doing naked calisthenics.
Irdu’s hand tightened on Autumn’s.
“Come on,” Autumn said, tugging him along the sidewalk. It was a twenty-minute walk to the budget cinema. They passed people on the sidewalk, who barely spared Irdu a glance. Those who did mostly seemed bemused by the guy wearing sunglasses at night. Irdu stared wonderingly at each passing person.
“I can’t believe this.” His hand had begun to tremble in hers. “I can’t… I can’t believe it.”
Autumn’s heart swelled until she felt likely to choke on it.
When they reached the cinema, Irdu froze in front of the doors, pulling his hand out of Autumn’s. “I don’t think I can do this,” he said rigidly.
“You can. We passed a bunch of people on the street and they didn’t react at all.”
“But it’s dark out. There’s so much light in there!”
“Only the lobby is lit up. Just stand behind me. I’ll do all the talking so that your fangs don’t show—you need to pull your lip down again, by the way.”
“I—I can’t.”
Autumn grabbed his hand. “Yes you can. Please? For me?”
Irdu’s shoulders sagged. He let out a heavy sigh. “Yes. Alright.”
“Okay.” Autumn kept his hand and pulled the first set of doors open. Irdu’s hand squeezed hers like a vise. She l
ed him through the next set of doors. The bored teenager at the ticket kiosk didn’t even look up at them. Autumn collected their tickets and pulled Irdu quickly past concessions and into the dark of their theater.
“You’re really big,” Autumn said, leading him to the back row. “We’ll sit here so we don’t block anyone’s view.” Plus, if they were behind everyone, nobody would be able to look at him too much.
Autumn had to show Irdu how to flip the seat down. After sitting for a few seconds, he began to shift uncomfortably.
“What’s wrong?” Autumn asked.
“My tail,” he whispered. He shifted more aggressively, kicking one leg like he had a squirrel in his pants. After a minute he let out a little sigh and eased back.
“Alright?”
He caught her hand, folded it in his. “Yes.”
As more people filtered into the theater, Irdu straightened. He watched their movement with total absorption. Autumn smiled to herself and settled back in her seat.
Autumn couldn’t remember anything about the movie. She spent the whole time watching Irdu from the corner of her eye. She’d bet he didn’t remember anything about the movie either. His head had turned slowly as he scanned the theatre. Little movements kept pulling his attention—a couple giving each other a little kiss, two friends squabbling over their shared popcorn, an old man shushing noisy teenagers, a woman checking her phone.
When the movie ended and lights came up, Irdu started. He gazed around at the other people as they gathered their things and pulled on their coats.
“What’d you think?” Autumn asked.
“I don’t know what to think.”
“I’ll try to come up with some other places to go. Bars can be kind of dim… we could find a quiet one and find a corner table. You’d have to order a drink for show. The only problem is, a lot of places have bouncers, and you don’t have any ID. Plus, the hood and the sunglasses are going to make them suspicious. Maybe we could try a—”
Irdu kissed her. When he pulled back, the makeup had smudged from his lips, revealing a hint of blue. “You’re lovely,” he said, emotion making his voice tight.
“You’re lovelier,” she told him. She reached out and gently tucked his lip over the points of his fangs. The ushers were beginning to clean the theater, so Autumn pulled Irdu to his feet and they made their way out. He walked through the brightly lit lobby with less urgency this time, looking around with the same hypervigilant fascination as in the theater.
When they emerged onto the sidewalk, Irdu pulled her to a halt again. He let out a burst of shaky laughter and wrapped her in his arms for a lung-crushing hug. He kissed the top of her head, again and again.
“Get a room,” a passerby groused.
“I think we will,” he told the guy, looking thrilled beyond measure to be speaking to another person.
Autumn let out a shocked laugh. “Irdu!”
He grinned at her. The night was dark, but under the streetlights, she could see his fangs very clearly. Still smiling his wolfish smile, he took her hand, and began the walk back to her apartment.
Back home, Autumn helped him out of the clothes—it was a lot easier to pull the hoodie off than it was putting it on. In the bathroom, she helped him remove the makeup and handed him a towel after he’d washed his face. Still smiling, Irdu wiped his face, tossed the towel to the side and threw Autumn over his shoulder.
She gave a delighted shriek as he carried her to the bed and tossed her down. He stripped her clothes away with cheerful urgency, his eyes shifting to black as he peeled her panties down her legs. Autumn stared breathlessly.
That’s his own desire, she thought, certain of it. She was definitely in the mood, but she hadn’t yet reached that single-minded need that was once necessary to turn his eyes black. In fact, it was Irdu’s passion that was stoking her own. Each fevered touch of his lips against her skin, each panting breath coasting over her neck and ear, each drag of claw tips down her flanks, had her rising higher and higher into the pull of Irdu’s arousal. She was a passenger to his need, responding to his urges, following his desire.
When he finally slid inside of her, the need between them bordered on painful. Hand in hand, they surged together, driving higher and hotter until they tumbled into mindless ecstasy. A split second before Autumn let herself fall, she witnessed Irdu’s surrender. Satisfied, she followed him. As the pleasure of climax coasted over and through her, Autumn fell abruptly from bliss into sharp awareness of the void pressing around her.
The faces were clearer this time, closer. They crowded against the blue veil surrounding her. A low murmur emanated from them—the buzz of infinite whispering voices, angry, sorrowful, beseeching. A slithering cold draft penetrated the protection of the blue haze. It curled sinuously around her body, so cold it burned.
She jerked away from the sensation, and back into physical reality with a sudden jolt. Her skin still burned where the invisible coldness had touched her. Irdu loomed over her, a contented smile on his face. His eyes had already returned to normal—no blue aurora, no infinite black.
“There she is,” he said, his voice lazy with satisfaction.
This was new, too. It was the first time he’d recovered before her. She looked into his pleasure-softened gaze and the painful cold was all but forgotten. She looped her arms around his neck and rolled with him until they were cuddled together, laying on their sides.
“You came before I did,” she said smugly.
“We came at the same time. As we always do.”
Autumn shook her head. “You were just a split-second ahead of me. Like you were last night.”
Irdu shook his head, but he said nothing. They lay in each other’s arms, quiet, thoughtful. Irdu let out a heavy breath.
“I don’t know what this means.” He seemed to be conceding the point.
“Is there anybody you can ask? Is there some ancient tome of demon lore that I can check out at the library?”
“No, and no.”
“Hmm.”
They fell into a curious, but comfortable, silence. Autumn was beginning to drift to sleep when Irdu’s voice rumbled in her ear, “I don’t know how, but you’ve made everything different.”
Heart glowing, she curled into him, and surrendered to sleep.
9
Autumn spent her lunch researching various Underworld descent myths. She read several different versions of the Persephone myth—from Hesiod, to Homer, to Virgil, to Ovid. She read about Orpheus’s attempt to retrieve Eurydice from death, and Odysseus’s visit to the Underworld in his effort to return home to his wife Penelope.
Lunch ended, and she wasn’t even a quarter of a way through all the tabs she’d opened on various Underworld myths. She packed her things and sent her erstwhile manager an email letting him know she was taking a half-day. Before going home, she popped into the Big and Tall men’s store again, and bought a zip-up hoodie that would fit Irdu.
Back at her apartment, with the sun still up, she continued her research. She read about the Old Norse afterlife, Hel, and the various deities and mortals who had journeyed there. She read translations of Old English poetry about Christ’s “Harrowing of Hell” and the Eastern Orthodox Church’s tradition about Lazarus’s four days in Hell. She read the Finnish myth of Lemminkäinen in which a mortal man dies upon entering the Underworld, but is retrieved and resurrected by his mother. She read about Obtala, a Yoruba resurrection deity. She learned about the Hindu myth of Yudhishthira’s descent into Naraka. In Welsh myth, the hero Pwyll spent a year and a day as the ruler of the Otherworld, called Annwn. She spent a significant chunk of time combing through the details of Osiris’s death, and Isis’s efforts to resurrect him.
Autumn’s brain was buzzing with a thousand different stories, but she began to piece together several patterns emerging from them all. Figures associated with fertility enter the Underworld and die there. They are saved by a loved one, who puts their pieces back together and resurrects them with life-
giving food or drink. The underworlds, by whatever name, are always underground. Getting to them requires passage over rivers or walls.
She found another Mesopotamian myth, this one about a mortal entering the Underworld. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh’s companion Enkidu is killed by the gods as a punishment. There he sees the goddess Belet-Seri, also known as the Scribe of the Dead, who was one of the gods who took Inanna’s place after Inanna was rescued by Enki.
A scribe goddess…who took the place of a sex goddess…in the underworld. Autumn tapped her chin, thinking. She grabbed her sketchbook and flipped to the page where she’d drawn Irdu’s tattoos. She’d made little notes beneath each ideogram, based on the email Dr. Kader had sent her with full translations for all the characters.
Irdu wore Inanna’s mark. But he also wore the mark of Nabu, a scribe god. He was a sex demon, whose skin was covered in writing. He’d been a mortal, enslaved and forced to construct Nabu’s temple. But now he was an immortal, toiling in service to the Underworld.
Life. Sex. She touched the ideogram that meant body. She slid her finger from ideogram to ideogram, whispering the meanings as she touched upon them. “Death… night… slave.”
She stared at the cuneiform drawings, willing them to make sense to her. But she couldn’t pull them into any logical combination.
“Hello.”
Autumn screamed and pitched right off the foot of her bed. When she scrambled upright, she found herself staring at a horrified Irdu.
“I’m sorry!” he said, reaching for her. “I didn’t mean to frighten you!” He eased her back onto the bed and began a careful examination of her limbs. “Mortals are fragile,” he said fretfully. “An infected cut. Stagnant drinking water. A blow to the head. A sharp—”
“I’m okay, Irdu. Really.” She caught his hands, stopping his anxious search for fatal injuries. “I was just surprised. I completely lost track of time.” She closed her computer and sketchbook, setting them both on the nightstand. With her secret research out of sight, she turned back to Irdu and put her arms around his neck, letting her body melt against his, soaking in his warmth and his strength.
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