And Then There Were Dragons

by Alcy Leyva

  “YOU CALL TO YOUR DEATH IF YOU CALL HERE.”

  The ground shook as this monstrous creature, the one I had confused for a mountain, rolled over onto its stomach and clenched a mighty cigar between its bus-sized fingers. It had the face of a bull crowned in a massive mane, most of which was made into tight braids using ropes. It sported highly-defined muscles, each with carvings of symbols scarred into its black flesh. The two horns on its head were pierced with hoops you could park a few cars in. It was a Minotaur large enough to accidentally inhale me.

  “We’ve only come to talk,” Meg called to it.

  The Minotaur scoffed and nearly blew us away in the process. “LET’S TALK ABOUT HOW YOU KEEP BRINGING ME THINGS AND I KEEP MAKING MESSES OF THEM. LET’S TALK ABOUT THAT.”

  Resting its snout on its folded arms, the monster squinted at me. “THIS ONE IS SMALL. I’VE FOUND MIGHTIER THINGS IN MY DROPPINGS.”

  Meg stepped between us. “This isn’t a Dragon to kill. She is on our side. Our offer still stands. Throw down this fruitless calling. You do not need to do his bidding. Ever since he came back, he has done nothing but poison Pandemonium and the rest of Hell.”

  Slamming its palms on the ground to silence us with an earthquake, the Minotaur rose up onto his hooves. It was easily taller than the apartment building my parents raised me in.

  “I DUNNO,” it said, half-humored. “I KINDA LIKE WHAT HE DID TO THE PLACE.”

  The colossal Minotaur flicked his cigar and it landed so many miles away that I lost sight of the butt. Scooping up a few stacked trees it had by its hooves, it held the end in the air and, using a flaming meteor, lit the end to its new stogie.

  “LOOK AROUND. I USED TO GUARD THIS PLACE, THIS CESSPOOL. HE LET ME DESTROY EVERYTHING HERE. HE LET ME KILL EVERYONE. THE SEVENTH CIRCLE IS NOTHING MORE THAN WHAT YOU SEE BEFORE YOU AND I’M ITS LONE SURVIVOR. NOW, IF WE’RE DONE TALKING HERE, I NEED TO GO FIND MY MURDERING CLUB, WHERE DID I PUT THAT THING?”

  I felt two taps on my shoulder and both Meg and Alec were backing off.

  “All yours from here, Lady Grey.”

  “Yes. Good luck, Lady Dragon.”

  As the Minotaur struggled to find its weapon, I chased after them. “You didn’t say anything about fighting something that can wipe its ass with Long Island.”

  “Kill it so our armies can invade. Or do you want us to hurt your friends?”

  “I choose neither,” I yelled and snapped both of my fingers at them. Expecting the attack, the two Furies dodged as a torrent of sustained black fire singed the ground in both directions. A few feet away, I saw the blasts had at least sent the ass backward-centaurs into a panic (the brain parts were also horse), giving Palls all the breathing room he needed. Breaking out of his chains, he freed Cain and grabbed D—who was still unfit to fight—and came running toward me with Not-Mark at his heels.

  “HERE IT IS,” bellowed the Minotaur as it found its murdering club.

  The Furies circled around and started clamoring for their army to reform and attack us, while, ahead of us, the minotaur took a long drag from its cigar while propping up a beaten club the size of a small housing complex onto its shoulder.

  With his bare hands, Palls tore the black spears from D’s body and pushed him to stand.

  “All right, Grey. What next?”

  “Why does everyone think I have a plan?” But even as I said this, watching the creature walk toward us and seeing the Fury’s armies set their ranks gave me an idea. A terrible one, but a plan nonetheless.

  “We’ll only get one try at this. It looks like it’ll take forever for it to swing that thing. All we need to do is hit that club with everything we got, all of us. If it breaks, we should be free. If not, at least it might get off balance. Either way, we run past it and into the gate.”

  But Palls said, “That’s not going to work. I heard the Furies talk already. That gate behind it is locked and only the Minotaur has the strength to open it.”

  D pushed the blue man forward and Not-Mark pointed. “Another entrance. A tunnel just to the side. That’s where I came up.”

  With everyone looking to me for approval, and the Minotaur slipping the cigar into its mouth to grip his club with two hands, and the Fury’s army now charging, I shouted, “Sure! This isn’t going to suck at all.”

  The next thing I knew, the club was coming down on us. It was so large it cast a dark shadow both on our tiny party and the entire army behind us.

  Cain let her wings out and summoned her god of death scythe.

  Palls formed a massive hellfire ball so large he could barely contain it with both hands.

  Burning chains sprouted out of D’s body, which he wrapped around his arms like armor.

  Not-Mark pleaded for his life.

  My hellfire gown flared and raw energy poured out of me, nearly blowing my friends away in the process. Forming a small sun in my hand, I wound back to pitch.

  This was it—all or nothing. I wasn’t planning on dying here, not when I was so close to seeing Petty again.

  The mighty weapon came down just as we attacked it with everything we had.

  The moment our blows met the club, a sonic shockwave spread from the point of impact in a ring. The sky changed. The ground rumbled. The gathered armies and even the Furies were scattered to the wind as hellfire and ash flew everywhere. A small tornado formed. Lightning struck random places around us.

  The club didn’t break, but the blast from our combined efforts tore the Minotaur’s whole arm clean off of its torso. The monster roared as its severed limb sailed over its horned head, still clenching the club.

  With our chance in front of us, we dashed between its staggering legs and made for the small edge of the curved gate shaped like an all-seeing eye. Just as quickly as it appeared, the fiery cloak began to dissipate as I ran until it was nothing more than tiny pockets of flame that blew out in the wind.

  Not-Mark saw to it that we spotted the crack he was about to climb into and dove in, his blue ass vanishing through a space I would have never guessed was possible.

  Cain went next.

  Just as it was my turn, I spun around to make sure D and Palls were close behind. But what I saw instead was another mammoth shadow closing in from the sky. We hadn’t taken into account how fast the monster could recover and the rage it would feel for losing a limb. Palls and D were looking up at the Minotaur’s fist as it came to down to crush us, but it was Palls who acted first. He shoved D into me, knocking the two of us off balance, and then crammed both of our dumbfounded bodies into the secret tunnel.

  I fell backward but recovered in time to see Palls take a step back. The tunnel was too tight for the three of us to climb into and he knew it.

  Still, I shouted “Palls!” and stretched out my hand for him.

  He stuffed his into his pockets. “She’s not down here, Grey,” he shouted with a smirk. And then the fist landed like an atom bomb.

  Gaffrey Palls was gone, punctuated by an explosion outside the cave entrance that brought most of it down around our heads.

  CHAPTER 25

  Tons of boulders and rocks had fallen around my shoulders, chest, and waist. This, coupled with the fact I had just seen Palls void out in front of me, made my body not want to move. It was dark and most of my energy felt like it was seeping from me. I was also cold, which was bizarre since the Seventh Circle was a burning wasteland.

  Being trapped beneath the rocks and stones did nothing for the emotional pain that was hammering through my joints and chest. I never thought I would shed a tear for Gaffrey Palls, but there I was, crying my eyes out. I had blamed him for many things, maybe even a few he had no control over. He was a friend, a reluctant one, for sure, but he was there. Out of all the people in the world that understood what I had gone through—losing my sister, putting up with manipulative angels and Shades, living my life with cripplin
g anxiety—Gaffrey Palls knew it all too well.

  Mustering my strength—and almost as if hearing him groan about the time I was wasting—I decided not to spend too much of it mourning the guy. He had saved me more times than I could count, and we had turned out to be closer than I ever thought imaginable, but I still had a job to do. If I turned into one big, blubbery mess, Palls’ sacrifice would be for nothing. This is what I told myself as I reached out and started moving debris with my bare hands. With the strength that had flowed through me against the Minotaur now gone, I dug and clawed my way through what I felt was a tomb—one I denied with every fiber in me.

  A few minutes in, I found a small tunnel to follow. Still, I had to ground my elbows into my ribs to fit, and the walls were so close around me that my grunts and cries crashed in my own ears, but I continued.

  For Palls.

  For my sister.

  The further I dug, the colder it became. Taking this as a sign I was on the right track, I tugged on a jutting piece of stone a little too fast, and the ceiling started to crumble down around me. I didn’t stay still to get crushed this time, but set my hands onto a slab that folded over and revealed a wave of blue light.

  Two sets of hands reached in and grabbed me.

  Hitting the ground around Cain and D, the tunnel behind me vanished under the crumbling weight.

  My whole body ached, and from the looks of it, Cain and D were in the same condition. Not-Mark didn’t even wait for us to say our hellos or catch a second wind. He pointed behind him and beckoned us to follow.

  “Hurry now. We’ve made it to the Eighth Circle.”

  ****

  The Circle was freezing and dark, making it easily the most morbid place in all of Hell. The Circle itself was a dark cavern with sharp stalactites hanging overhead. There were pits connected by large land bridges, but there was nothing in them. A few bloodstains, some scattered weapons, but there wasn’t a single soul in the entire Eighth Circle.

  “Grey,” D started but then stopped. I knew what he wanted to say.

  “He wasn’t a jackass,” I declared sternly so that he knew this was the extent of conversation I wanted us to have about Gaffrey Palls. And then to our liar, I asked, “What happened to this place?”

  “He let everyone loose,” he replied nervously. “He knocked down the walls here first. He let loose the seducers and the philanderers and the guys who sold ultra-absorbent towels. Then he freed me, and a few dozen others, from the frozen lake. It’s nearby and that’s where the cold comes from. We are close.”

  As much as I hated to admit, once again, the liar was telling the truth. Spanning in front of us was a massive lake, its entire one-hundred-yard surface frozen like perfect glass. Turning around, I could see the door shaped like an eye just beyond the pits we had crossed. In front of us, across the lake, was a single metal door. Nothing elaborate or ornate. Human-sized. Ordinary.

  “Is that it?”

  “That’s where he left when he freed me,” the liar explained.

  Before I could ask what we should do now, Not-Mark started walking across the lake. The surface was slick, so our trek slowed to only a few feet per minute. And it only got stranger when we saw where our guide had been freed.

  Toward the center, we spotted other naked blue people, which in and of itself is weird, but their bodies were completely wedged into the ice. Some were planted face first with their naked asses in the air, others sat with their heads and mouths sticking out of the surface. It didn’t help they all talked.

  “Mandy,” one cried. “Mandy, it’s me. Your dad. Is that you?”

  My body nearly split as it tensed up.

  “Careful, Grey. These are liars,” D warned.

  “Oh yeah.” Exhaling, I kicked that frozen guy in the forehead for good measure.

  “Kick me!” screamed one.

  “Don’t kick me,” begged another.

  “Look at my face,” called someone else. “You have to agree, I have a kickable face.”

  I retreated as the shouts came from all over the lake. “What’s their problem?”

  Not-Mark called back to us. “We are bound here. Locked here. We see lies. Live lies. Now we only seek punishment. Punishment that will never come.”

  We were almost at the exact center of the lake when the first explosions began. Behind us, I could hear something pounding against that eye door we had bypassed, causing large chunks of the cave’s ceiling to come down around us.

  Cain leapt into the air and hovered there. “It’s either the armies or the minotaur. Either way, we aren’t going to make it if they bust down that door.” She wasn’t looking or speaking to me at all.

  D grabbed me by the shoulders to say something, but I cut him off.

  “No!”

  “She’s right.”

  “No!”

  “Grey, you know that I—”

  “Save it.”

  Another loud explosion.

  D looked up at Cain. “I’ll catch up.”

  Cain tossed me a short salute. “Be sure to tell Petty I still consider her the cuter sister.”

  The gray, cracked skin was now into her scalp and had taken up most of her face. Her left eye was completely black. This was her last stand and we both knew it. Calling out her sacred weapon, the ex-angel of death spun it behind her back and took off toward the direction of the banging.

  D looked back at me. “Gre—”

  “Don’t ‘Grey’ me. Don’t.”

  He put his forehead against mine. “I have to tell you something and I just need you to listen. Grey, I—”

  But I pushed him aside and started walking away. “If it’s that important, come tell me in person. When we’ve saved Petty. When this whole shit is done. Tell me to my face.”

  I didn’t turn around. Soon after, I heard the sound of D’s footsteps running against the ice toward mortal danger.

  My voice cracking and my hands shaking, I told our liar to hurry it up and we took off as well.

  A few minutes into our sliding/sprint, the sound of the door imploding echoed through the cavern. We had made it two-thirds of the way across and it was impossible to see how Cain and D were faring, and who they were faring their best against. It was also tough to figure out how much time we had left before that threat would catch up to us.

  Not-Mark lagged behind. When I called to him, he was staring into an empty hole. It didn’t take me long to figure out whose hole this was and what the blue guy had in mind.

  “You’re going back in? But you’re free!”

  “Liars are never free.”

  “But,” I looked around at the other heads shouting nearby. “You’ve never lied. This entire time. You’ve never lied to me. Your name really is Mark, isn’t it?”

  Real-Mark blinked and smiled, but soon even that faltered. “The only time I lied, Amanda Grey, the only time I lied to you. Back on the boat. I told you I was freed because I thought I deserved to be.” He wiped his nose with his arm. “I’m sorry,” he said, cramming his body back into the ice crevice. “You should go now. He is just behind the gate.”

  I could hear voices echoing around. People screaming. The Hel and the Furies’ army were approaching.

  Leaving him behind, I ran.

  Leaving Cain.

  Leaving D.

  Leaving Palls.

  They did this all for me. All for me.

  When I reached the other side of the lake and crossed onto solid ground, just ten feet from the door to my sister, I fell. The pain in me swelled and in my rage, I slammed both of my fists down so hard I felt like I’d broken them both. Crying uncontrollably, I drew myself up to my knees, but still couldn’t pick my head up. Sliding my cheek along the dirt, I could see it. The door. The door was right there. I had lost everything to get here. I had lost my father. I had seen my friends r
un off to die. All for this. All for this moment.

  Get the fuck up, I told myself. And that’s what I did. I pushed with everything I had—with everything I knew—and it felt like I was tearing at time and space itself. I threw myself against the metal door. The misery I felt burned away and I swallowed the sobs as soon as they tried to start again.

  I wiped my face.

  I fixed my jeans and shirt.

  I stood upright.

  Then I kicked open the door to the Ninth and final Circle of Hell.

  CHAPTER 26

  Considering the dead fields, the corpse sea, the arid deserts, and the sprawling cities I had experienced in Hell, the final Circle of Hell was nothing to write home about. The space was only a single chamber.

  The walls were made of jagged black rocks that reached high into the air and the floors were dark and smooth. Sitting in the center of the chamber, I could see the back of an oversized throne made of various bones—human, demon, and animal. The throne was huge, almost for a creature ten or eleven feet tall, and it faced the far wall where there sat the biggest fireplace I had ever seen—roughly the size of a goalie net, maybe bigger. Inside, the flames danced back and forth like they had minds of their own.

  Suddenly, the only door to the chamber slammed shut. I heard the spinning of metal and chains. Whatever was waiting for me in here didn’t want me to leave.

  There was no ceiling above my head, only an endless opening that vanished into a portal of white light. Along the walls, I spotted circular enclaves where Screeches nested. There must have been millions of them. Some were napping. Others were waiting to be sent off to spread strife.

  Other than the snapping fire and the freakish birds softly buzzing to themselves, the whole place was shrouded in silence. I could hear my breathing. My footsteps. This chamber was vast and also empty.

  No Petty.

  No Dark Lord.