The Devil's Banshee

by Donna Hosie

  Alas, the Saxon scum had gotten wise to our intentions many years earlier and no longer sent anyone along to our parties. So Elinor had taken it upon herself to organize entertainment. With the express thanks of my father, who wanted Odd included, she had also invited my cousin to assist.

  Elinor felt pity for him, but she seemed to change her mind once it became obvious that Cousin Odd was more interested in eating the invitations than sending them out.

  “This is starting to feel like a chore, not a delight, Alfarin,” she said to me. “I have read many books on the customs and traditions of the Vikings, but words on a page, especially from a secondary source, do not always mean the truth. For a start, yer cousin Odd seems to think that it is customary to expel gas into a balloon from his nether regions. If they start popping, yer guests will start collapsing from the smell. It is not at all pleasant, and I do not wish to be associated with such antics.”

  Elinor was clawing at her neck while she spoke. A sure sign she was getting distressed.

  “How many books do you think we have read from the library, Elinor?” I asked. “We have known each other two hundred years now and have been reading together nearly as long. Do you think there are many left that we haven’t opened?”

  Elinor smiled. Talking about books was my way of distracting her. She loved to read, and the thought of books would take her mind off toxic balloons and Cousin Odd.

  “There are so many books in Hell’s library, Alfarin,” said Elinor. “I cannot imagine ever arriving at a point in this existence where we had read them all. And there are still many in the deepest parts of the library that we have yet to even see. Books about the history of Hell and Up There, and even about the Highers.”

  “Knowledge is a powerful gift, Elinor.”

  She leaned her head against my shoulder. There were moments when I wanted our friendship to last forever. Then there were moments when I wanted our friendship to change into something even closer. Elinor smelled of apples and mint.

  I loved apples and mint.

  I loved Elinor Powell.

  “If knowledge is a powerful gift, then I know exactly what to get a clever, strong Viking for his birthday,” she replied.

  A week later I unwrapped my deathday gift from Elinor: The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri.

  Cousin Odd ate the pages before I had the chance to read it.

  11. Looking Without Seeing

  “Virgil, how can you be blind?” I cry. “We have not traveled much distance, I know, but the terrain has not been easy and you have shown us the way thus far!”

  “A person can be guided by more than just sight, Viking,” replies Virgil. “A human has five senses, and the Highers decreed that those classified as devils keep those senses in the Afterlife. To compensate for the loss of one, my aging body has a heightened sense of hearing, smell, taste and touch. These are all I require to guide you.”

  More hands are now coming up through the gaps in the stone as we continue crossing. I notice that fingers are missing from some of them. We cannot hear the screaming torment of the Unspeakables contained within the ditches, but there is now a heavy pressure bearing down on us that is more than just the heat. I believe it is the aura of unspoken screams, of the Unspeakables’ pain, and it is colossal.

  “But you can be healed of your blindness, Virgil,” I say. “Whilst the dead cannot be cured of old age, all who arrive at the HalfWay House are mended in practically every other way. Body parts can be renewed and restored.”

  I do not wish to say how I know this, or what I know of Elinor’s death. It is not my story to share.

  “What makes you think I want to see all of this?” replies Virgil, waving a hand. “There has always been a guide here, in the same way there has always been a Dreamcatcher for The Devil. Guides for the Nine Circles are chosen from a group of the righteous and indignant dead who feel strongly that those who led unsavory lives deserved a terrible Afterlife and should be truly punished there. The Grim Reapers take a guide’s eyes, and darkness is the only friend the guide ever has. For that, most of us are grateful.”

  The lightness in my chest is replaced by a sickening sense of doom. For one glorious moment I believed that we would not have to travel on foot through the Nine Circles. But it is not to be. We are looking without seeing. Team DEVIL will have to keep our wits about us even more now.

  Virgil and I have crossed the first ditch and my friends, still connected to me by our fraying rope, join us at the entrance to the second bridge. Our presence has been noticed by the Unspeakables in this next ditch, and already I can see their groping hands, snatching at the air through the gaps in the bridge’s floor.

  “Alfarin,” says Elinor. “I overheard your conversation with Virgil.”

  “It was just a thought, Elinor,” I reply. “Nothing has changed.”

  “But look at these cursed souls,” she says. I do not want her to look in the next pit, but Elinor cannot take her ruby-red eyes off the sword-wielding demon on the other side as he beats them back. “There are so many of them. What if Beatrice Morrigan is here? Virgil is blind. He may know of Beatrice Morrigan, but we do not know what she looks like, and neither will he.”

  “I don’t believe it,” says Mitchell. He wipes away the sweat from his brow, and a lumpy red streak replaces it. His hands are bleeding, probably from being cut by the ice in the Ninth Circle. “Elinor is right. We don’t know what she looks like. Did anyone think to get a picture of The Devil’s wife?”

  “By anyone, you mean me or El, don’t you?” snaps Medusa.

  “Well, now that you mention it—yes,” replies Mitchell. “You two were the ones who came up with this plan, and you were the ones who had the best chance of figuring out what the Banshee looks like. And before you start yelling and hitting me, I’m good with this journey. I’m here by choice. But you’ve sent us off to find someone in a place filled with evil scum who can’t speak, and we have no idea what this person looks like. We could be standing on The Devil’s wife and we wouldn’t know it.”

  “Oh, so during my time in the Oval Office, while I was trying to save Elinor with The Devil himself barring my way, I was also supposed to be poking around his creepy, crappy desk, trying to find a picture of his wife?” Medusa hollers.

  “Well, you could have tried to—”

  “For your information, Mitchell, I’m pretty observant, even under duress. And I’ll have you know that the only thing I saw in there, from what I was able to see in there with all the perverse mind tricks he was playing on me, was a door knocker cast into the shape of a beautiful woman. But it was a cast. Way too generic to help us, even if it was a likeness of the Banshee!”

  Medusa keeps yelling at Mitchell. Elinor turns to me and takes my hand.

  “Ye were right, Alfarin. I should go back to the Oval Office,” says Elinor quietly. “We were fools to believe we could do this. We will never find the Banshee in here.”

  “There is doubt in your mind, too, Viking,” says Virgil. “I do not need to see it to know this is true.”

  Our paths are determined by our choices. In life, and in death. Elinor used to say that it was fate that we met. Two souls from very different times, destined to meet. And I believe her. If our travels through time have taught us one thing, it is that the past, present and future are linked. Sometimes those ways are revealed to us over the course of time, and other times they remain inexplicable.

  I cannot go back to Hell to watch Elinor return to The Devil. I will not go back. There is something larger at play here. I need to see this to the very end.

  My sudden resolve makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention. Alfarin, son of Hlif, son of Dobin, was meant for greatness. So, too, were Elinor Powell, Mitchell Johnson and Medusa Pallister. But we cannot realize our potential if we fall apart at the seams now.

  “Stop!” I bellow. “All of you. We cannot have these moments of self-doubt at every turn. Have we not faced adversaries before and found ourselves
more than equal to the challenge? Medusa, when we went back in time to your homestead to find that which was being used as The Devil’s Dreamcatcher, did you wilt and give up because we did not know what it looked like? No, you did not.

  “Mitchell, when faced with your own death and with the power to stop it in your hands, did you forsake those whom you care about? No—you made a choice for the greater good. We do that now. Team DEVIL has found itself slipping into the abyss many times before today, and we have always triumphed. We must not lose hope.”

  “Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate,” says Medusa.

  “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,” I reply. “Have we already reached that juncture, my friends? Or could it be that those words are meant for lesser devils than we?”

  Mitchell has his head tilted back. He’s gazing at the cavernous ceiling with his fists clenched to his forehead. Medusa has taken a stance that is the opposite of her best friend’s. She is bent double with her hands on her knees. Virgil is chuckling too loudly for my liking. Why did Lord Septimus send us on this journey with a blind man? Am I to be his eyes as well as everyone else’s?

  I turn and start to cross the next bridge. I am a Viking and I have my pride. I will not beg them to follow me. This was my quest, and I will see it through to the end, wherever that may take me.

  “Wait, Alfarin,” calls Mitchell.

  A sharp tug on my waist halts my procession. We are still joined together. I fumble with the rope. Medusa has tied a good knot, but what I cannot undo with my bare hands, my blade can. I will let Team DEVIL return with the Viciseometer. They can use it to protect themselves and Mitchell’s little brother. I will go on—and I will return when I have found the Banshee.

  I am immediately at peace with this decision, but I will not allow them to see the hurt and disappointment in my soul.

  Three swipes and the frayed rope falls to the ground. Almost immediately, bent and bloodied fingers, some stripped to the bone, grab for it. Just as I am reaching for the Viciseometer to give it to Mitchell, a large, booming voice echoes around the cavern. It isn’t screaming, but it reminds me of the cry the bowman would make when shouting out a warning to the oarsmen on a longship.

  Then a sharp pain digs into my shoulders. At first I fear I am being whipped by one of the gargoyle demons, but the stabbing is continuous. Without time to ready myself, I am lifted from the bridge. Elinor is on her knees, trying to pull back the rope. She is being dragged into the ditch by Unspeakables who have taken hold of the frayed end I discarded in my ill-thought-out haste. Mitchell and Medusa are crying out, not at what is happening to them, but with horror at what is happening to me. In seconds, I am at least twenty feet in the air, flying through the heat and toxicity of the Eighth Circle of Hell.

  It is difficult to see what has me contained within its clawed grip. My eyes are already streaming as the acrid air blows against my face. I can make out two large front legs covered in golden fur, like the paws of a lion, yet the hair above the paws is gray and curly.

  Then the smiling face of an old man peers down at me, and I cannot help but cry out in fear. The face softens, as if it is trying to reassure me.

  It fails. I am in the claws of a hideous chimera. This one appears to be part lion, part man, part reptile.

  I have my axe, and the warrior within is crying out at me to stick it deep into the chest of the beast. Yet the learned devil within fights back. If I kill the beast at this height, I will plummet into the cursed depths below. The writhing figures below look like bloodied worms, squirming over one another as fiery whips crack to keep them at bay.

  My friends and Virgil are mere outlines on the ground now, although I can hear their voices crying out in fear for themselves and me. What torment have I condemned my beloved Elinor to? Can Mitchell and Medusa hold on to her until I find a way of getting back down to them?

  The monster rears and flicks its long tail underneath my dangling legs. The tail has a large, stinging barb on its tip. The chimera hovers above a narrow ledge and then releases me from its grip. I drop down and land in a crouch. My axe is ready to decapitate the beast, but its agility is greater than mine, and it springs back to hover in the air. Its black reptilian wings beat slowly, sending a heavy yet invisible toxic cloud toward me.

  “I will be back,” growls the old man’s face, and the winged beast dives toward the ground.

  The next sound I hear chills the marrow in my bones. It is Elinor, and she is screaming.

  Tólf

  Alfarin and Elinor

  Elinor and I had a favorite game. We would delve into the dusty, labyrinthine library, find a new book, take turns in reading it, and then we would test each other on what we had learned.

  I now adored Elinor Powell with every fiber of my being, but when it came to competing, I had to be king. While the rules of being a gentleman in these modern times were a constant source of confusion to me, I did try my best. I would happily hold a door open for a lady (although my own strength was often my greatest enemy and I frequently found myself barred from establishments after damaging the woodwork); I would gladly assist a lady if she required help putting on a cloak (although my large fingers had a habit of poking holes through flimsy fabric); and I would eagerly taste a lady’s food if she was unsure of its quality (although for a Viking, a “taste” often ended up constituting a normal devil’s entire meal).

  I will say it again: I did my best to be civil and courtly at all times.

  But woe betide the devil who tried to stop my princely self from winning a game—or ten. Even Elinor would have to capitulate to what my friend Mitchell would later call my “pure awesomeness.”

  Because I did not lose. Ever.

  Elinor had chosen a more modern tome for us to read. It was titled Jane Eyre, and the author was a woman called Charlotte Brontë. It had been published nearly one hundred and fifty years earlier, so it was more recent than many of the books Elinor and I had read. Elinor had said she wanted a more modern read because she was distressed with getting dust in her beautiful long red hair from the shelves farther back. I thought she simply wanted to read a woman’s novel because I had—metaphorically—slapped her rump in the last three competitions between us.

  I would never slap Elinor’s real rump. She would not like that.

  A book about a woman called Jane . . . I did not hide my disappointment. No doubt it would involve chaste glances across moonlit meadows, and corsets that were cinched so tight that they would cause the female protagonist to gasp on every page.

  And needlework. Oh, prayers and apologies to the goddess Frigga, but how I hated reading about needlework.

  Yet my pride was on the line. I would not let Elinor beat me simply because it was a woman’s tome. I decided to embrace Miss Eyre with the same enthusiasm I had shown for Beowulf. My mood also improved greatly when Elinor explained that this was a new literary genre for us: Gothic fiction.

  As far as I could fathom, Gothic meant darkness . . . and fear . . . and hopefully some blood, too.

  I settled down to read. . . .

  “Alfarin, what is wrong with ye?” cried Elinor. The next afternoon she had found me alone, huddled in a corner with nothing but my axe to provide cold comfort to my destroyed soul.

  “Helen died,” I sniffed.

  “Helen who?” asked Elinor, dropping to the ground beside me. “I have been working in devil resources all day. I cannot recall someone called Helen joining Hell today, although it is possible there was—”

  “Not here!” I cry, stifling another sob. “In here.”

  “In where?”

  “Jane, Helen . . .”

  “Alfarin, have ye been eating more of yer great-aunt Dagmar’s turnip soup? Ye know that disagrees with ye.”

  I was sitting on the book. It was only a slim tome. It barely registered under my left buttock. I pulled it out and showed Elinor.

  She patted my arm.

  “Ye are not even halfway through it, Alfarin,” she sa
id, repressing a smile. “Perhaps we should change our competition to something else?”

  “No,” I replied. “I am waiting for the Gothic horror you promised me.”

  “Okay,” replied Elinor. “But just to warn you, Jane leaves Mr. Rochester and he goes blind in a fire.”

  “What?!”

  The next day we started reading A Christmas Carol.

  And I won the game of Twenty Questions that followed.

  12. Geryon

  I am as helpless as an abandoned baby. I cannot get down to my friends in the bowels of the Eighth Circle. If only I had not forsaken them and removed myself from the physical bond that kept us joined. Without my weapon, they have nothing with which to defend themselves from that winged beast.

  Scenarios start running through my mind. I am dead—I cannot die again. I could jump from this ledge and take my chances in the condemned pits below, although I would likely shatter every bone in my body doing so. It is clear that the Circles of Hell have no casualty unit to heal and mend like the more civilized area of Hell. Pain and suffering are the desired results here.

  Then I see a movement, a streak of blinding golden light. It is to my right, following along a path that has been cleaved through the rock. It moved too quickly to see what it was, but when I blink, the image becomes more defined on my closed eyelids.

  It is the outline of a person.

  Elinor screams again, and the sound tears at my heart. I again look past the narrow ledge to see what is happening to my friends below. My panic is rising. I am powerless and weak. The stench of death is getting closer and closer. Suddenly, the face of the old man looms into my line of sight. The normal head is attached to a body that is dragon-like: scaly and crimson red. Elinor is clenched between its long claws, which glint like slivers of gold. I think about throwing my axe at the beast’s neck, but then Elinor would be the one to plummet into the abyss. The monster flies above me and drops Elinor. My axe clatters to the ground as I catch her in my arms.