by Cate Corvin
A simple stone construction stuck out of the dunes in front of us. A human man stepped up to a roughly hewn altar and laid a pure white dove on it.
Then he buried a dagger in the bird’s heart, saying a familiar name along with an incantation.
Shadows rose from the stones, and a tall creature stepped out of the stone construct like it was a doorway, shrinking to become the size of a human as he emerged.
I knew him so well, and yet he was so different. Primal and savage, not the clipped, neat man I knew.
Tribal marks decorated Azazel’s face. His dark hair hung down his back in tangled locks, and a pair of black feathered wings rose behind him.
He reached out and caught a wisp of shadow rising from the dove’s corpse, then closed his hand. The shadow was gone when he opened it again.
The present Azazel pulled us toward the stone gate. As we passed the memory of the ancient Azazel, the memory looked at me, cocking his head.
I looked back, my heart hammering in my chest.
He stared, then turned back to the sacrificial dove, and I could suddenly breathe again.
Of course he hadn’t seen me. It was ridiculous to think a memory would be able to see us now, but his gaze had felt so knowing.
Before I could look back, the real Azazel pulled me through the stone arch. I had the slightest glimpse of a black-haired woman rising from a puddle of moonlight near the memory-Azazel, and then they were gone.
We were no longer in the desert, but in yet another corridor, this one lined with thousands of mirrors.
Haru finally snapped. “How many fucking hallways are there?”
I was rooted in place, still shaking from the feral look the ancient Azazel had given me. He’d been almost animalistic himself.
“Did you think this would be easy?” Azazel rounded on him. “We would walk right in, and out into Irkalla?”
Haru bared his sharp teeth. “We’ve been walking through this shit for hours. I’m tired of watching people get sacrificed and eaten.”
Azazel chuckled, the sound bouncing off the walls in an eerie way. “This is the territory of the gods, idiot fox. You’ll see what they saw, and what they wanted the most- which was usually sacrifices.”
Michael made a low, pained noise in his throat.
We all stepped aside as a beautiful female archangel walked out of thin air, striding down the corridor with her snowy wings held high… and into the waiting arms of a demon god of pure night. They wrapped around each other, kissing almost violently and whispering desperate words of love.
“Lailah,” Michael said, looking after her sadly. “Gabriel never forgave her for that.”
Dark claws wove through Lailah’s long gold hair, stroked through her white feathers, and as her demon lover pressed her against a wall, they faded out of existence.
“Did he kill her?” I asked hollowly, still staring at the spot where they’d been. She’d looked like she’d loved her dark god as much as I loved mine, and kissed him like she knew it was the last time she’d ever get to be in his arms.
Michael nodded grimly, meeting Azazel’s eyes for only a brief moment before looking away. “She was the first archangel, made from the stars. Of course she loved the night. It’s what she was made for.”
“He killed Lailah.” Azazel’s voice was short. “Not Nakir. That was someone else.”
It was hard to wrap my mind around the fact that some of these memories were eons old, but they also belonged to the same people I was here with now.
I’d never felt so young and inexperienced before, just a tiny blip on the cosmic scale. There were millennia of memories stored in this awful place.
“Let’s go. The longer we remain in one spot, the more active the memories will become.” Azazel stared at Haru. “You will see many more terrible things, but you can’t stop now. Just think of Irkalla.”
Haru was looking where I was, at the place where Lailah and Nakir had vanished. “I won’t stop.” He sounded cool and collected now, straightening his shoulders.
I wondered if he was thinking of Vyra when he saw the two dead lovers, and had realized there were far worse things than old memories to contend with.
None of the mirrors we passed reflected us or the corridor. After looking into several of them, I quickly learned to keep my eyes straight ahead.
Until one of them, so familiar, caught my eye.
I knew his silver hair and blue eyes by heart, because they were etched there with hatred. Gabriel stepped through a smoking battlefield, the fighting over, and loomed over a beautiful Nephilim woman.
She had horns and dark hair, with blood spattered across her dress. She looked back up at him hopefully.
I gritted my teeth, wanting to kill Gabriel all over again. She’d looked at him like he was her savior, and he’d abandoned her to a terrible life.
I quickly stepped away, tearing my gaze away from the mirror.
“Not over there,” Belial said. Panic crushed my chest as I realized I’d almost left the group behind. I ducked into a side hall, following his dark mane of hair.
“Over here, you silly bitch.”
My panic turned to ice, freezing through my veins and stopping me dead in my tracks as I took in the difference.
Belial was wearing armor I’d never seen before, and we were standing in sand again, under a blazing hot sun.
A thirty-foot tall golden sphinx towered over us, looking down at him with a heart-stopping but impassive female face. Her tail switched, the tip bursting into white-hot flame.
“Sorry to do this, Mother.” He grinned up at the sphinx, twirling a sword in one hand. “But I am what you made me, after all.”
I’d followed a memory. And there was nothing behind me but empty air.
25
Melisande
“Fuck,” I croaked. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
The memory of Belial shifted forms, becoming a lion as the mountainous sphinx plunged forward through the sand, charging towards him.
I closed my eyes against a spray of sand, but nothing hit my face. When I opened them, both Belial and the sphinx were gone. I was alone in an empty desert.
My breath stuttered, my chest tightening like it was caught in a vise. I whirled around, but there was nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing.
Except for a faint glimmer in the sand where Belial and the sphinx had been. I edged forward, finding a single clear puddle of water at complete odds with the desert around it.
If there was no way but forward in the Between, then I had no choice but to continue on. The others wouldn’t be able to circle back and find me.
It was hard to keep my breathing even, but I managed that. What I couldn’t manage was the painful gallop of my heart in my throat as I reached for them through our mate marks.
I felt them, but they felt distant… like they were a thousand miles away from me.
“Fuck.” I repeated the word a few more times for good measure.
The only way through was forward, even if I was alone. If I sat here and waited, I’d eventually become one of those crumbling skeletons, a sacrifice to gods who were no longer around.
I clenched my fists and stepped into the puddle, falling straight down into darkness.
And hit a solid floor, the water gone and the air cool around me.
It was another hallway. This one was empty, both to my relief and chagrin. It’d been too much to hope that the Between would just deposit me right back in my men’s laps.
All I could do was keep walking and think of Irkalla.
One end of the hall ended in a blank wall, and the other opened on darkness. I chose darkness, my ears pricked up for the sounds of my men.
The darkness became a white rotunda. I ducked around an orgy being held on the body of a lightning-wreathed god, who laughed as he watched people fuck on his chest, and through another door.
There was a Sin Eater at the end of the next hall, charging directly towards me with a guttural roar.
His fist connected with my jaw with a crack like thunder. I went flying backwards, throwing up my magic shields a second too late.
The doors to the Between had remained open, and the itch between my shoulder blades hadn’t been an anxious hunch at all. One of them had actually been insane enough to follow us in.
The Sin Eater gripped my hair and slammed me into a stone wall. Agony ripped through my shoulder, followed by the horrible sensation of his hot breath in my ear.
“Did you have to make it so hard to find you, fucking cunt?”
My mouth was full of blood, hot and sickening. I spat it in his face, shoving him away from me and buying a few seconds of time.
It was impossible to get the Spear unwrapped, but I ripped it from the holster on my back, aiming the bagged head of it at him. “How did you find me in here?” My voice came out harsh and raspy, and my tongue was still bleeding from the force of hitting the wall.
The Sin Eater unsheathed a cruel-looking sword. “Followed your smell.”
I shivered despite myself. The Sin Eaters disgusted me on a visceral level. I could just imagine one following my scent through the Between like an animal, tracking every step I’d taken.
He charged at me again, and I ducked aside, unable to make a clean stab through his armor.
“You killed us all,” he growled, rounding on me again. I backed through the nearest doorway, praying that something horrendous enough to stall him was on the other side. “I might be the last one, but I will fucking gut you before I die, woman. I swear it.”
Pure light washed over us as the Sin Eater charged again, sweeping out with his sword. The edge skated off my gilded armor, opened a thin line on my arm, and I whipped the Spear around.
The angle was wrong, and the blades just bounced off his side. The Sin Eater laughed as he circled me.
All I needed was one good opening, and he’d be cinders before he knew what hit him.
The Between finally did me a favor.
He flinched as a god with a wide rack of antlers and cloven feet passed between us. We barely reached the god’s ankles. The scent of pine trees and cold, wintry air followed in the memory’s wake, but I’d been prepared for a memory to disrupt us.
The Sin Eater was unprepared when I dove right through the god’s intangible hooves and drove the Spear into his chest, right through the leather bag and his armor.
Only the bare tips of the pronged spear points plunged into his skin, but it was enough. Even the tiniest contact with the Spear’s essence was catastrophic for anyone besides me.
White fire gushed out from under the Sin Eater’s helmet. He screamed and ripped it off his head, but there was no way out for him now. The fire tore from his eyes, nose, and mouth, burning him alive from the inside.
Within seconds, his empty armor dropped to the floor. Only a charred pile of demon remained inside.
I braced my foot on the chest plate and ripped the Spear free, crouching down as I carefully untied the bag and revealed the golden points. I’d been so panicked and terrified over losing everyone that I hadn’t even felt the pain when I’d gripped the Spear, although my palms were dark red with fresh burns.
I exhaled a deep breath. He’d said he was the last of them. The remaining Sin Eaters had all died trying, and failing, to kill me.
Now, at the very least, I knew I’d no longer be tailed by assassins. It was a cold comfort next to the thought that I was completely alone in the Between, and in my hurry to get away from the Sin Eater, I had no idea which direction I’d gone.
Not that it mattered much in this place.
The fight had been cathartic, burning off the last of my terror in a burst of adrenaline. I cupped my jaw, using the tiniest possible bit of my healing magic to take down the swelling and heal my cut tongue. It’d be sore for a while, but I couldn’t afford to waste any more magic. Not when I didn’t know what else was coming.
I stood up, determined to get my bearings. The forest god was gone, but old autumn leaves were crushed on the floor in drifts. The Sin Eater’s remains would stay here alongside them.
There was a trapdoor set in the ground, half-buried under a drift of leaves. I brushed them aside, and they crumbled into dust under my hands. The ring on the trapdoor was red with rust and the hinges squealed loudly when I yanked it open.
“That ladder does not look safe.” I gave the wooden thing masquerading as a ladder a stern look. “But we’re doing this anyways.”
There was something about the Between that made me want to talk to myself. Like the silence was too loud, and if I didn’t say something in a human voice, I might disappear into the memories, too.
I lowered myself into the narrow hole, gripping the splintery wood ladder with one hand. The Spear’s golden light lit the walls around me as I climbed down several yards and found myself in a tunnel, up to my knees in icy water.
It splashed with every step I took, bouncing off the walls and coming back even louder. I took the passages on faith alone, choosing left instead of right, following a small waterfall downwards because the air smelled better in that direction.
The entire time, I kept thoughts of Lucifer and Vyra, and that rocky ledge in Irkalla, in my mind. Take to Irkalla. Take me there.
At one point the coils of a snake’s body rose out of the water near me, each scale the size of a dinner plate and gleaming deep blue. I froze as the memory moved, coiling sinuously through the tunnel, and when it was gone, I kept going until I found stairs heading back up.
They went on for ages. I groaned to Sarai at one point, my legs trembling after what felt like thousands of steps. “At least the trip is easy for you.”
An enormous wolf bounded past only inches in front of my face when I found the top, but I kept going. The only place I wanted to be was out of here.
Irkalla. Irkalla. Irkalla.
It was starting to feel hopeless. I had no idea how many hours I’d been alone, only that the constant trudge was beginning to wear on me. Maybe that was how the Between got its sacrifices: it just sent people in circles until they laid down from pure weariness and died.
I thought of Lailah and Nakir, far overhead now, and their desperate love before their deaths.
There was no way in Hell I was going to die in here and let my love become nothing but a memory trapped in amber. When the next people passed through here, would they see a vision of me walking until I gave up and died?
“Fuck you, Between,” I snarled under my breath. “Fuck your memories, fuck the bullshit.”
I finally reached the end of the endless hallway.
Two doorways were in front of me. One shimmered like it was covered with a layer of black glass that dripped upwards, superimposed over the image of a bleak landscape.
I renewed my grip on the Spear. Even though it wouldn’t help me against memories, its golden light was as comforting as a human voice, and the place beyond the doorway looked like it was going to have some pretty Hellish memories.
But the other door… it was lighter, promising something less horrendous. There was a field beyond it, bursting with flowers in soft shades of rose and lavender, the sunlight warm and welcoming.
Or was it a trick?
Something pale and bright moved near me, and I jumped away, my heart slamming back into overtime.
It was Lailah again, her lover’s hand in hers. She was as bright as the sunrise in a place like this, looking lovingly up at Nakir’s face with violet eyes. Her star-like brightness lit the waves of night spilling from his shoulders.
“This way, love,” she said playfully, pulling him through the darker door. Her white dress trailed behind them and vanished as they stepped through the glass.
It felt like a sign.
“I’m coming, Vyra,” I murmured, and followed them through the dark glass without allowing myself to second guess my decision.
My ears popped and the prickle of magic ran over me. The Spear threw off an arc of light in protest.
Cool air brushed a
cross my face, tasted bitter on my tongue.
A flake of ash landed on my cheek. I brushed it away with a shaking hand, but it was followed by another, and another.
My lungs contracted tightly as I stepped into a pile of gray ash, then bent down and frantically brushed it away. The ground beneath the ash was pitch black.
I spun around, but the doorway was gone. There was no ceiling overhead, no walls. Only an endless expanse of jagged mountains.
I exhaled, so close to tears my throat hurt. “Thank you, Lailah.”
The Between had finally spit me out, right into Irkalla.
And I was now in actual danger.
I ducked behind an enormous boulder and crouched down, lowering the head of the Spear. Its light was obvious, warm and brilliant, and I’d already screwed up in those first few seconds of believing I was still in the Between.
But where was everyone else?
I chewed my lower lip, studying the landscape around me. I’d stepped out of the Between right onto a broad shelf of rock, and the ash was disturbed, my footprints clearly imprinted into it.
There was no way of knowing if they’d come out in the same area, or miles away. Those footprints looked like someone had dropped right out of the sky, and that someone could’ve been Lucifer.
I yanked out my boot knife and began scratching at the boulder, pausing every few seconds to stop and listen. The only sound was the lonely wind and my own breath, and when I was done, I tucked away my blunted blade.
I’d carved four distinct symbols. A swirling sigil, a star, an upside-down cross, and an eclipse of light. If they came across it, they’d know I’d been here.
There was no time to sit around and wait. If I wanted Lucifer and Vyra, I needed to go hunting by myself.
I rubbed ash on the head of the Spear and in my hair, hoping to dim a little of the weapon’s light and the violet tones that stood out like a beacon in this place, and crept out from behind the boulder after making sure the sky was empty. My spine prickled in warning, but there was no sign of Lucifer in the gray clouds overhead.