I whip my colors behind my back and shrug the leather on over my shoulders. I grab my crimson cell phone out of my pocket and sure enough, Auntie J's text finally pings through as the circle and buffer finally clear the screen. I clear her message without looking at it and send a text to my main group contact, the Hellcats.
New mark. Meet me in/garage for deets. Time 2 ride
The responses I get back are immediate.
Hell yeah! from Leo.
Already? from Tora. She just doesn't understand Hell is a busy venue. I'll let it slide. For now.
Who's the mark? from Faline. Fae is the true straight shooter of the crew. She's all business or she will mess shit up.
But I just did my hair! Tabby, my lil' Diva.
"Who's the mark?" I glance up.
Auntie J rises from the chair and comes over to me. I get the feeling she doesn't need to see my phone screen to know the responses I got. She's chuckling and shaking her dark head. Her ebony curls sway and bounce. She's rocking a blowout, apparently having lost track of time down here. So, sixties, man. Her red and black button-down bulges at the buttons and her jeans are stained with a viscous fluid making me curious, but not enough to ask about it. She places her hands on either side of my face and leans in.
At first, I’d been completely weirded out by the way the name was always given to me. I had a hard time coping with the fact it was just the way the ritual was done. I'd never been accustomed to affection or intimacy. Not from my non-existent Dad or my junkie mom and certainly not from my drug dealer ex-boyfriend who was one of the reasons I was in Hell. I hold still while Auntie J gives me a kiss on the forehead. Her lips are large and warm, and I close my eyes. It seems like such a gentle way to receive the info for a sanction from Hell, but the name slips into my mind as Auntie J exchanges the information. I have his name and location now, but I gasp, not trusting the info until his face swims up from the images of my memories. I stare at Auntie J. I knew this day was inevitable, but I’d just not expected it so soon.
"My ex-boyfriend? Zeke!"
3
"You son of a bitch, you knew!" I explode through my bedroom door and slam into Damien, who is standing at the fridge. His black t-shirt does nothing to soften the blow into his hard chest, but I enjoy hitting him like I hit the portal above in the garage. It’s freeing.
Bottles clink together as the entire GE white-refrigerator vibrates from the impact from our bodies. I hear growls and snarls behind me and I see colors flashing in my periphery as my crew launches out of their rooms at the sound.
Leo pounces, trying to pull me off him. A fight with Jeremiah is a far cry different than a tousle with the son of Satan. Damien's surprise has momentarily frozen his ability to react because he doesn't retaliate. I try to beat on him. My fists flail out in all directions. I'm a mass of rage and razor-sharp claws and fangs, but Faline joins Leo in holding me back. I'm panting, trying to fill my lungs with air because I knocked the wind out of myself too. Damien is rubbing his chest where I hit him.
"He was marked this morning.” His nose scrunches and I want to break it. The smug S.O.B. had been taunting me earlier, knowing all along what this would do to me. I see his boys crowd around us, their eyes blazing and their collars shimmering. Charles' haughty face looks bored, but the tension in his muscles speaks volumes. Phil, yeah, no idea where the kid is. Probably cowering like Tora next to the TV.
"Why?" I focus on Damien. Or try to.
Zeke. Oh man. The first of so many things. Kisses, sex, love. Well, maybe love. Who am I kidding? I loved him. I just doubt whether he ever loved me in return. Hell isn’t necessarily the confines of ten floors or torture in this dimension. Zeke was my escape up above. The first time I saw him, I knew he was something more. What I didn’t know was, the “more” was fate sealing itself. He was my escape, my freedom from a life of mediocrity. Even if it was slating my destiny as one of the damned.
I feel the prickling heat behind my eyes and force myself to blink it all back. Tears are rejoiced around here and I will never give Damien the satisfaction of seeing he's been the cause of mine. Zeke had been, when I first arrived down here. Betrayed. Broken. That’s what I was. Maybe it’s why I threw myself into rebuilding the broken motorcycle, Sugar. I needed to fix things. Anything. It had taken a few weeks to realize just because Zeke did those things to me, just because I didn’t seen the downfall for the slippery landslide for what it was until it was too late, didn’t mean the love hadn’t been there festering in my heart. Once he betrayed me, it opened up like a fresh wound, leeching into my tattered soul. But as broken as it and I was, it was still a form of love. What’s the saying, we hurt the ones we love? I try not to let myself wonder if he ever loved me. Right now though? Emotions march across my essence like ants intent on building my walls of hurt and despair back up. We’ve all hidden behind those walls. The path to healing lies in knowing there is something better on the other side of them. The path lay in slowly deconstructing the walls and letting myself hope for Heaven. A place where true love, or rather, untarnished love might actually exist.
"Catriona Clarke!" Auntie J's voice cuts through the tension in the room. The snarling and hissing ceased immediately because her tone is darkness itself. “Catriona, you knew his day of reckoning was coming. You can't blame Damien for carrying out the duties he's been charged with.” I blink and bite my lip to keep it from trembling.
Auntie J stands between us as she speaks to me. Damien looks murderous, his shoulders tense, like he’s ready to jump after me, and the lines of his face are pinched and tight, like he is straining to hold back his rage as his brain catches up with the fact he was just full on body checked by a woman half his size and weight, and in front of his boys no less.
"Can't blame him? Or shouldn't?" Sometimes my brain takes a hiatus in all the conflicting feelings because the warning look on Auntie J's face as her eyebrows lift and her lips press together, is enough to shut my smart-ass mouth the eff-up.
"Do we need to rethink the terms of your contract?" She taps a foot. My eye twitches, but I shake my head.
"That's what I thought, child. Now take your girls and go collect the mark. I tried to warn you. Remember that, Trina.” Her voice softens when she says my name. She alone knows the full story behind Zeke and I. Damien has guessed at some of it. Perks of preferential treatment from Daddy, I suppose. I shrug Faline, Tabby, and Leo off, and give Damien a once over, then turn away.
"Let's ride.” My voice is raw, even as hard as I have tried to hide the emotions. This is going to be the hardest mark to collect. The history slams into me and it hurts worse than anything this place could come up with for painful pastimes.
I stomp through the Dog Pound and shove my way past poor Phil. Just as I suspected, the kid looks petrified to be near any of us. I try not to, but I am already plotting ways to win over Phil as I glance one more time back at Damien. I'm surprised to see he doesn't look satisfied. I expected him to. Maybe throw down a cat got your tongue joke. Or tail. He likes to play with his prey. He even named the Dog Pound after his band of misfits. He was here long before me and it's like the Hellcats were given territory when I was brought on board, but only because he reluctantly permitted it.
His face is impassive, except the curiosity in the depths of his eyes. They flicker, observing and intuitive, across my face. It provokes my own inquisitiveness and curiosity is dangerous for my kind. Why isn't he smug? Maybe as retribution I can convince Auntie J to let Phil ride with us. Kind of a tit for tat deal. Damien marked mine so I'm taking his. Petty maybe, but it’s all I’ve got against him right now. I'll have to bring in Zeke without issue though. I've pushed the line with Auntie J far enough today.
Tabby presses the button for the elevator and doesn't crack a joke or giggle about the almost fight. My girls know me well. They may not know the story of Zeke, but they know enough to take this mark seriously.
When the elevator doors slide open, I step inside the boring tan box and stand
at the front facing the metal and glass as we pass Treachery, frozen shards of sadism are imprisoned within the faces staring back at us in horror. Fraud yields a glimpse of vast ditches with the souls enticing the demons with false promises to let them out. Violence is maybe the worst level. If the history of the human race has been a malevolent one, with an infinite number of cruel acts carried out against one another, it is petty compared to the ferocity taking place on this level. This is the level where my eyes flicker, remembering the brutal ring of a gunshot in a warehouse a few years ago.
Heresy burns bright with tombs lit up like torches, burning the screaming heretics encased within. Their eternal torture produces enough light it shines through the entire level. I can’t see past the brightness of the first few tombs that are alight, but the level goes on for what must be an endless amount of space if it is anything like the other levels. Souls fight one another in Anger, as the level is so appropriately named. I see them fall under the weight of the vengeful emotion, but the torture is they quickly get back up and rejoin the battle to vent their endless well of anger, but to no end. The emotion has already consumed them so they will never feel anything else. The crushing stones of Greed are thankfully the only thing I can see as we pass the level. I don’t need to see the bodies, weighed down by their own over-indulged vices being squeezed out like puss from a wound. Gluttony is hard to see in. Even with the satyrs and their torture racks, there is a constant rain of sludge pouring down, a melding of all of the gluttonous components of overindulgence from each person within.
Lust is a tornado of activity. Winds so powerful throw the souls around so they will never find peace within, and they shake and rattle the elevator. The occasional body thumps against the elevator doors and I think the ancient metal box we are contained within is purposefully slow so all who seek comfort and a false sense of security can witness the horrors contained within each floor.
As I force myself to witness the flashes of punishment taking place for each floor this time and see the specific torments being doled out on each, I wonder which one Zeke will end up on. I can't help it. Sometimes the macabre has a better hold on my mind than rationale does. I can't help but think I could have ended up on one of those floors. I should have. But thanks to Auntie J, I was granted a reprieve from those tortures. Zeke won't be so lucky.
I step out into the crowd in Limbo and push past people. I ignore the indignant cries and questions this time and head straight for the garage. The atrium, like the rest of the Underworld, is dark but small torchlights in lieu of the bulbs sit next to the enclave adjacent to the garage. I hadn't seen it when I first came in because the crowd was too thick, but the souls are scattering to get out of my way now.
In the narrow space, the boatman, the man who ferries the souls who aren't special marks, accepts some coins from those he just ferried down the River Styx. It’s probably where Fran, the lady I named when I first got back, came from. It makes sense since she was raving about having come in on a boat and not a motorcycle. I stop as Tora gazes down the river to the estuary where the Acheron, Lethe, Cocytus, and Phlegethon rivers meet the Styx and dump into Oceanus, the river circling the world and leads out of Hell. What most humans don’t know is the vortex of trash in the Pacific Ocean is where Oceanus becomes a portal to Hell. It’s like all the bad ocean junk is swirling in a disgusting maelstrom and dumping back down here, like a toilet into the sewer.
Tora watches as the other four boatmen, shrouded figures hunched and wraith-like, paddle their way toward the dock from their respective rivers of pain, forgetfulness, wailing, and fire. She shudders as she watches the souls come in and I touch her elbow, drawing her attention away from it all. Her pale skin is covered in goose bumps, but I'm not sure if it is fear or the cold. Hell can be heat and fire, but it can also be cold fire, depending on one's own personal version of it. She must not like the cold.
"It's easier if you don't watch and try to count them," I whisper in her ear and she nods.
We make our way back to the garage and I'm grateful I don't have to use the boats. I love the freedom of the open road with the wind and the sun’s heat hitting my face. It makes my situation less critically dire and more tolerable. I hold onto the feeling every time we ride out and enter the world of the living.
“Hold on to the feeling you get every chance we have to ride out of this place," I tell her. “It makes the rest of it a little less dismal.”
She bites her lip. “But it won't make getting this mark hurt any less for you?"
I wince. She means well enough. The question is innocent, if not a tad personal. She needs to lose the innocence in a hurry if she’s going to rock this gig. But so far, she has kept her cool, so it warrants a bit of an explanation.
“It’s the price I have to pay. We messed up in life. Now we're demons. Think of it this way though, we are the lucky ones because we still have fragments of our souls to hold onto and repair.”
"Yeah and being a demon doesn't mean we don't have feelings.” Tabby links her arm through Tora's as we walk and Leo falls into step beside me. Faline walks a few steps ahead to open the door to the garage.
Tora doesn't comment further. The afterlife is a hard situation to process and I think as humans, we always take it for granted we will just get to the pearly gates and all will be forgiven. We don't consider there is an alternative if we mess up badly enough. It's like a festering cyst we refuse to think about. It's always there in our minds, ready to burst and spew its raunchy puss and soil the purity of our happiness, but somehow, we lance it and forget about it.
I swing my leather-clad leg over my bike and begin backing it around and out of the line of other vehicles. Reapers have unique ways of riding out to collect souls. Some of us ride in style and then there are those who take the sturdy, ‘Merica approach in the rusted out green, red, and blue pickup trucks lined up at the far end of the garage. Satan has style though and his own line of cars. The one I always gawk at is the three-million-dollar McLaren P1 GTR. It's one of only 40 ever made. I try not to drool when I read the license plate, HADES.
When I turn the engine over on Sugar, the green flames spring to life from the paint. I glare across the garage at the Hounds’ bikes, which are parked on the opposite side of the garage. The one that stands out the most is the homemade Gothic-style hearse attached to the back of a Harley. Their bikes are twice the size of ours and black with red accents, but at least the alley in between the park jobs gives us enough room to rev up and burst through the other side of the veil.
Tora climbs on the back of Leo's teal and cream 1973 Bonneville Triumph, which has been altered into a trike. It makes sense to have Tora ride with her because the seat is wider and more comfortable for two. I watch as Leo glances down where Tora’s gray boots rest on the pegs, making sure she isn’t touching the chrome.
Leo brought the bike with her from her motorcycle accident in Meridian, England, where the bikes are made and she restored it in this very garage like I did. Faline came next and she too reveled in the process of putting a scrap of junk back together. Her clinical mind found solace in the process of mechanics and systems. It was methodical, which is a comfort to her. Some people rationalize, like Leo and I, and some people compartmentalize, like Fae.
It's apparent Leo doesn't mind Tora wrapping her arms around her waist though. She gives me a wicked grin and I can't help my lips twitch. Tora presses her face to Leo's colors, breathing in, and I see Leo's eyes light up when she does.
Shaking my head, I look behind me to see Tabby mount her 1950's burgundy and ivory Chief. The bike was made before the ivory ban and Tabby, liking high end, had to have a bike with the real deal. Elevator level Greed? Yeah, I've got your girl, Tabby, if she doesn't redeem herself. She’d come in after Fae and as much as I pleaded Auntie J to take the walking, talking catastrophe in pink and glitter, I don’t get to choose who a deal is made to. It took a few weeks for her to grow on me, painfully like an unwanted beauty mark. At first, I couldn’t t
ell if she was the fake kind, like the fashion trend, glaringly obvious and unnatural, but eventually the effect is less jarring when you look at her. It took a while to see some depth under the diva. But Tabby has proven to be the balm to the banes of our existence. Her naivete is less innocent and more doing whatever the heck she wants when she wants to, but it was initially rooted in the necessity of survival. Especially given she reveled in being a prostitute and hasn’t changed since she died, but at least it makes for some humorous anecdotes on a misery filled day. I think she tried to bone a Drude once. It didn’t go well based on the sounds of tantrum induced by rejection the day she made her attempt. Seriously, how does a demon deny another sex-addict demon the sins of the flesh? It’s kind of like a rite of passage down here, if we want.
Ethics and bikes aside, I pull a bandana up over my nose to keep the dust and bugs from hitting my face, and I rev my engine and drive at what looks like a solid black wall. It rises so high up the inky edge blends with the shadows of optical illusion. I'm not even sure the wall has an end or this place has a ceiling. Sometimes I think of the garage as a cave and other times it just seems like an industrial-sized warehouse.
I hear Tora scream as she did this morning when I hit the wall. Instead of smashing headfirst into it, sending body parts and mechanical ones into the air, I burst through the other side and the sun hits my face. The dry heat of the desert slams into me and packs more of a punch than the illusionary wall. Based on the surroundings whizzing by as I open up the throttle and take off, we are somewhere along Route 666, the Devil's Highway in Utah. I see a sign for the Devil's Garden as the gold and bronze landscape passes by. Flashes of green dot the horizon and I grin at the open road. Freedom. At least for a short while.
It's always disorienting when we transition from the Underworld to the living realm. There are thousands of what I call hot spots, named after Lucifer. They are thin enough for the magic to push us through the veil without tearing a rift in reality. The bikes are imbued with a mark of their own, enabling us to come out somewhere near the location of our marks. The souls of the damned act like homing beacons, to what I call the magical GPS, somewhere in the rides. My homing beacon is calling us west so we continue along the highway in the direction we came out on.
Highway to Hell Page 4