I steeled myself and walked forward, my shoes squelching on the gold-flecked marble as I moved. The flames from the pillars weren’t hot as I approached, rather they seemed to suck the heat out of me. Goosebumps sprouted across my flesh as I exhaled a breath of chilly air.
“Sometimes I just wished you would remember. Life would be so much easier,” the voice replied, surprising me because it’d been so quiet for so long, I’d nearly forgotten I’d asked who it was.
“Wait, are you the one who cursed me?” I asked, wondering what the hell was going on. Besides, if she was going to talk to me, I might as well enjoy the conversation since it no longer made my brain feel like it was going to explode inside my skull.
“Yes and no.” Sorrow filled her words in a way that made me want to help her even if she wasn’t giving me cryptic answers. That wasn’t good, especially since I wasn’t sure what she expected me to do. “We are one and the same, and yet very different.”
“That doesn’t make a lot of sense,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm as I passed between the flaming pillars. “But I’m sort of a one demon kind of guy so if you’re not her…”
Heat flowed out from my body with every step and frost covered the marble in front of me so I had to be careful, lest I slipped on the ice. The last thing I needed to do was fall and crack my skull open or impale myself on my spear.
Laughter that tickled my flesh like icy bunny rabbits snaked over my skin before fading into a long silence so pregnant with anticipation, I was forced to break it.
“Look.” I shrugged. “I’m looking for something called the heart stone. Think you can help me with that?”
“Yes.” The word rippled around me like a desert wind, threatening to strip the flesh from my bones. The force of it actually made me take a few steps backward. It seemed insane, but there it was. “I will help you, if you help me.”
“I’m not letting you out,” I said for two reasons. One because I wasn’t fucking letting her out. I mean, okay, I wanted to live, but the chick in my head was bad fucking news, and her more or less answer on who she was freaked me the fuck out.
Hell, even if she was my demon, I wasn’t even close to selfish enough to risk a fucking apocalypse or something just to get the heart stone. No, I’d go down with the ship before I let that happen. The other reason was a little more complicated. It was so she’d know I knew what she wanted. If I was wrong, she’d tell me so and that would be that. If I wasn’t, well, it was best to get this over with quick.
“You say that now.” I could almost feel her smile in the air. “But I am patient. I have waited a long time. Waiting a little longer will be insignificant in the grand scheme of things. I am confident there will be a time when you may not feel so… noble.” A purr rippled through the air. “Many allies are born in a moment of desperation.”
I took another step forward, and the pillars fell away to reveal an immense stone dais with a massive tablet perched upon it. I couldn’t read the writing on it, but from here it made me think of the tablets Moses had gotten from God. Only way, way bigger.
“I doubt it,” I replied, moving closer. They were way too large for me to move even if I had a couple huge guys named Arnold to help me. Hell, even a crane might not be enough.
“Who knows what the future will bring? After all, they say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” The tablet throbbed in a way that suggested I touch it. Only, I didn’t want to touch it because it was bathed in blood red light. Something told me touching forbidden objects tended to end badly. I mean, I know I said this earlier, but Indiana Jones, anyone?
“What about the road to Heaven? Is it paved with barbed wire and land mines?” I asked, approaching even though I knew it was a bad idea. Hot, wet air radiated off of the dais like I was walking into the open maw of a dragon, and I kept instinctively checking myself to make sure all my bits and pieces were there. God, how I wished I could just contact my own cat demon for advice. Why was she so hard to contact down here, anyway? Even before Persephone had done whatever it was she’d done, I should have been able to talk to her.
It didn’t help that this place was weird, and this chick was weird too. Not in a good way either. No, in the Chinese hooker sort of way. The kind that made me think she’d do just about anything to get what she wanted.
Her laugh was a low annoyed rumble that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. “You’d be surprised, Mac. You’d be surprised.”
I was standing in front of the tablet now. Golden, glowing script so packed together I could barely read it filled the entirety of the gray stone. I tried to read it anyway but couldn’t, and not just because I didn’t know the language it was written in. No, I couldn’t because as I focused on each symbol, the world would start to spin, making it impossible to concentrate on it for more than a moment.
“What is this?” I asked, pulling my eyes from the tablet and gazing skyward. I couldn’t see the ceiling. Instead, a low canopy of scarlet smoke filled the space. It was far too dense for me to see through, and I had no desire to touch it even if I could have. It’d probably rot my hand off or something.
“That tablet is sealing me inside here.” She said it so matter-of-factly, I almost didn’t quite catch it. I did though. She was trapped in here and this tablet kept her bound.
“I already told you—”
“I know,” she cut me off. Her tone was filled with amusement. “But I don’t want you to let me out. I just want to help you.” I could have sworn she purred and nuzzled against my brain like a cat, rubbing up against me and marking me like a prison bitch. As she did, I felt a familiar stirring within me. My own cat demon looking up, but it was so far away and distant, I could barely make out more than the sensation of it.
The scary thing wasn’t that though. It was how… pleased, my cat seemed. Even over the vast distance of silence separating us, I could tell she was happy. That terrified me. A lot.
“How are you going to help me?” I asked before waving the question away with my gun. “Scratch that. Why are you going to help me?”
“Because…” she purred again. “I want to help you, and I tend to get what I want. Feel lucky. If I did not wish you to be alive, you’d be dead.”
I didn’t doubt her. I wasn’t quite sure who or what she was, but it felt strong in the godly sort of way. I mean, for all I knew she was one of the Old Ones straight out of HP Lovecraft. I had no way of knowing, but two things were certain. One, I was trapped here, and two, well, you never look a gift horse in the mouth even if Admiral Akbar is screaming “It’s a trap!” at the top of his gills.
“Prove it,” I said, glancing around the room for anything that could tell me who she was. There wasn’t anything discerning, at least, nothing I could discern because I couldn’t read ancient gibberish. Maybe if I could, I’d have known who this was, but I was beginning to think the makers hadn’t wanted me to know. If they had, there’d be statues, monuments. Something identifiable.
There wouldn’t be freaky ninjas and a pathway through Hell to get inside. No, I was here because she wanted me here even though whoever had made this place didn’t. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Something told me the ninjas and obstacles I’d faced had been designed to keep me from reaching her, and it made me wonder if every lucky break I’d had thus far had really just been her helping me subvert the desires of this place. It was a chilling thought, and I didn’t want to dwell on it.
“Then drop your weapons and place your right hand upon the tablet.” There was a pause as I stood there, unmoving. I wasn’t sure if I should do it. If I did, would she come out and tear my spleen out of my body through my nose? I hoped not because I was really fond of my spleen, and would definitely like it to remain where it was, but at the same time, what choice did I have?
I dropped the spear to the ground and holstered my gun. I wasn’t sure if this was going to work, but well, fuck it. It was long past time to stop being a pussy and man the fuck up. I placed
my right palm against the tablet.
I felt nothing but the cold caress of ancient, brittle stone. Then the golden writing began to swirl. The smell of caramel and coffee filled my nose as the scarlet mist overhead began to snap, crackle, and pop. I turned my gaze toward it and found myself staring at a light show unlike anything I’d ever seen. It seemed to swirl into a vortex that came closer and closer.
I tried to pull away, lest I get sucked into the tornado, but found my hand was stuck to the surface of the tablet. A very manly scream tore from my lips. I’d been tricked and now I was going to die. Fuck.
No, I couldn’t die. I had shit to do. People who counted on me. Sure, my life and the lives of those I loved might only be an eye-blink to whatever the fuck lived here, but they meant something to me.
I gritted my teeth, grabbed my right wrist with my left hand, and pulled with everything in me. My hand felt like it was going to tear free of my body. I hoped it didn’t because I was sort of attached to it, but at the same time, I could live without it for at least a little while. Besides, if this thing came to kill me, I’d be dead either way.
Smokey arms wrapped around my wrist and jerked me free of the tablet with ease before dissipating into the ether. I spun toward the source of them and had half a second to feel thankful about it.
I found myself staring at the calico cat that normally lived inside my skull. She looked at me with curious eyes before sitting down on the marble floor and dragging her pink tongue across her fur. The sound of it made my eye twitch.
“Hello?” I asked the cat and immediately felt like the world’s biggest dumbass. Here I was talking to a cat that had appeared out of nowhere. Granted, she looked like the demon I knew, but how could that be possible?
The cat lifted its head, cocked it to the side, and watched me for a long moment. “I thought we were past the ‘hello’ part of this conversation.” The cat resumed licking. It almost made me want to kick her.
It took me a minute to realize the cat had spoken to me, and not just because its words seemed incredibly strange coming out of its mouth. As I let the thought settle into my brain that the cat had in fact spoken to me, I realized I was insane. I’d gone crazy while wandering in the jungle. This whole thing was made up. Yeah, that seemed more reasonable. This was Hell after all.
“What, don’t recognize me?” The cat quirked a smile at me, baring a ridiculous number of sharp teeth at me. It was always way too easy to forget cats were predators because they seemed like hugs with claws, but every inch of this cat was a predator, and not just a normal one, a super-predator. She was the saber-toothed tiger who took down the tyrannosaurs for fun. Fuck.
“Why don’t you tell me what the fuck is going on?” I asked, squatting down next to the cat and reaching out with my right hand. I scratched her under the chin. I’m not even sure why I did it. Probably because she was a cat, and that’s what you did to them.
The calico rolled her head around my fingers, positioning herself beneath my hand so I scratched exactly where she wanted. It was weird because she felt just like a normal cat even though I knew she wasn’t. Not even close. Power and fear radiated off of her in waves, but for some reason, it didn’t bother me. Worse, it felt like she’d help me. Only I didn’t know why. Now I just needed to know who she was and why she seemed so similar to the one in my head.
“I cannot tell you how glad I am that you have found me here,” she said after a moment, and a note of pleasure had filled her voice. “But you being here will let my enemies know you have found me.” Her voice took on a sultry, heavy tone. One I’d have associated with Jessica Rabbit or a particularly high end stripper. “Still, I have waited a terribly long time to meet you in this way.”
“Great,” I said, shaking my head and standing. I didn’t have time for this. I needed to get the heart stone and get out of here before something really bad happened. “Why is that?”
“There is so much for you to know and not enough time to tell you.” Her paw flicked out and rested on my right hand. As it did, the darkness contained by Persephone’s spell evaporated into the ether. My blackened skin complete with glowing scarlet tattoos came flaring to life, filling the room with light. The shadow of a presence inside my head was suddenly up close and personal, and as I watched my own cat demon in my head look at me, I realized the cat before me was staring into my eyes.
No, that wasn’t true. She was staring through me, at the demon within. Then, in that moment, I felt them converge, fitting together like pieces of a puzzle.
I knew in that instant what had happened. The part within me had been only a fraction of her vastness, and now it was rejoining the host. A surge of energy exploded through me. Healing me back to perfect shape and making me feel like I could go toe to toe with the Incredible Hulk.
“You,” I whispered, and she nodded slyly as all the knowledge of all the experiences we’d shared filled the eyes of the cat staring at me.
“Me,” she replied, pulling her paw from me and padding past me, tail raised high. As I turned to watch her, she leapt upon the dais and sat down upon it.
“What’s going on? Why can’t I talk to you here?” I asked her, strangely relieved that it was my demon while simultaneously terrified. I mean, she was my demon. And she was so bad they’d locked her away inside Hell and thrown away the fucking key. That had to be pretty fucking bad. “Not here, here, but in general here.”
“Hell keeps me bound tight. I cannot break the veil while you are here. Once you leave my temple, you will no longer hear my voice until you return to earth.” She shook her head. “It was unwise to come here, but what has been done is done.”
“Sam said I could get something to help me get out of here,” I said, wondering if she could see my thoughts while we couldn’t talk. “He called it the heart stone.”
“Yes…” she purred and got to her feet. “Come.” She leapt down on the other side of the dais.
I circled it to find her standing there next to a simple red metal band that had definitely seen better days. She batted at it. “This is what you seek, but my power has waned too much to open the Gates of Hell.” She hissed the words. “You will have to energize it.”
I picked it up. It felt warm in my hands, and before I realized what I was doing, I’d slipped it on my finger. It fit perfectly. That probably should have bothered me, but I was way too happy to be getting out of here. Sure, we had to power up the ring, but we were in Hell. I was really sure we could figure out a way to do that. The place was made of energy.
“So how about you get me out of here then?” I glanced at her and shrugged. “Then we can go back to curb stomping demons topside.”
“With pleasure,” she purred. The force of her speech hit me full on, and as I stumbled backward a couple steps, the scenery faded away until the only thing I could see was the last fading glimpse of her Cheshire cat smile. “Just remember one thing. Do not trust the one you call ‘Sam.’ He is not being entirely honest with you.”
21
The scenery snapped back into place, and I found myself standing in the fortune teller’s shop. The old gypsy’s eyes widened in shock, and I got the distinct impression she hadn’t been expecting me to return because her jaw dropped nearly to the floor.
“How?” she asked, and the word caught me by surprise. She’d been the one to send me to the jungle, and apparently, she hadn’t expected me to come back. Some fortune teller she was.
“I’m notoriously hard to kill,” I said, pulling my Glock free and pointing it at her skull. The urge to shoot her for sending me to die was nearly overwhelming. “If you twitch, you die.”
“Oh no,” she said, swallowing. “No, no, no, no…”
“Dying’s not so bad. I hear you just respawn anyway,” I replied, torn between ending her and asking her what she knew about where I’d been. I was sort of leaning toward just shooting her and hightailing it out of here. The last thing I wanted was to go back to the twilight zone. Besides, I was parched and ne
eded a shower. Corpses had a funny way of delaying you in unexpected ways though, so I paused to consider her. She was beyond terrified I was back. Why?
“I’m not worried about dying,” she squeaked, eyes snapping to my right hand. “I’m worried about that!”
She swallowed hard. Too hard for me not to notice, and even though I shouldn’t have, I let my eyes slide from her to my hand. My entire palm was blacker than the hair on Satan’s ass, and covered in the familiar symbols I’d had ever since I’d woken up in the dumpster. I made a fist and power flared within me. It was good to be back.
“What worries you?” I asked, tearing my eyes from my hand and glaring at the gypsy. She seemed unconcerned by my gun, her gaze still fixed upon my hand. I wasn’t sure what her deal was, but surely my coming back couldn’t be that bad, could it?
“That you’re the one.” She swallowed again. Harder if you can believe it. “The one foretold.”
“Foretold?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. I didn’t exactly believe in fate or any of that nonsense. Besides, being the chosen one tended to be a lot of work and didn’t pay well.
“I’ve sent many to that place and none have returned.” The gypsy shook her head. “You should not have returned.”
“Funny, I get that a lot.” I pulled the trigger. The bullet smacked into her forehead, but instead of ending her life in a spray of blood and bone, it ricocheted off her face like I’d shot a statue. The only trace at all that I’d shot her was a small scuff mark. That definitely wasn’t good. When I shot people, I expected them to die, not for the bullets to bounce off like they were fucking Superman.
“What’d you do that for?” She glared at me and rubbed her forehead. No wonder she wasn’t scared of the gun.
“Why do you think I did it?” I replied, holstering the gun because what good would it do?
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