Ray looked a little uneasy at my answer, and I couldn’t say that I blamed him.
“I’m looking for some friends that might have answers. Do you want to come with me, or do you think you should stay in line and see if you can get answers that way?” I asked.
“You go on, I’ll stay here. That makes the most sense,” he said.
I hesitated to turn and walk away from him, and he noticed.
“I’ll wait up here for you, right by that door, if I finish before you. I’m not going to leave you,” he said as though he was reading my mind.
It felt like the first day of school all over again. I was no longer the Hel who had been on her own for years, alive and dead: the one who had run her own cemetery, and fought off evil vampires. I was a nervous little girl with blonde hair, afraid to leave the safety of the person I knew was always watching out for me.
I gave Ray my most confident smile and nod, and headed down to the basement.
Relief washed over me as I reached the bottom step, and was met with a chorus of friends shouting my name.
Grace, of course, was the first one to practically jump into my arms and kiss me on the lips, which made me laugh out loud. Then, I was being hugged from behind by Boude, while his ruby hair enveloped us all in the scent of blood and exotic spices. The lights danced in the cut emeralds that were his eyes, and I was so grateful to see my sweet friends.
“Stop being greedy,” I heard Andreas say.
I pulled away from Boude and Grace, and moved as they stepped into each other’s arms. I turned to Andreas, who surprised me by pulling me into another tight grip, and petted my head—like I was a cat struggling to get away from my obsessive owner.
Andreas wore a cream colored shirt with a v-neck over halfway down his chest, and a pair of brown corduroy bell-bottoms (his trademark); his golden mane of hair was as lovely as ever, and his pupil-less honey eyes were full of spirit. He and Boude were the most colorful, and beautiful, vampires I had ever seen, and I’d seen quite a few at this point.
Finally, I pushed away from Andreas’s fervent attentions. “Glad you missed me,” I said as I tried to smooth down the fly-aways in my now-even-messier bun.
“You had better have the best fucking story about where you’ve been and why we haven’t been able to find you.” His hand on his hip as he scolded me added extra sassiness to the words.
I was about to say that I did indeed have the “best fucking story,” but I heard a sweeter voice say my name, and knew it belonged to my friend and fellow reaper, Billy.
“Billy!” I exclaimed, and gave him a hug, as well as his girlfriend Margaret.
“We tried to find you, Hel. We looked and looked, and—”
I cut him off. “It’s ok, I knew you were trying—all of you.” My eyes scanned the room; I didn’t want anyone feeling they had let me down. And then my eyes landed on someone I didn’t even realize was in the room… Soren.
Soren is a big guy: we’re talking take-up-a-doorway-with-his-muscles kind of big. I didn’t call him my Viking for nothing. So for me to have missed seeing him in this little basement room, I knew he had wanted it that way; he was hiding from me. A quick look to his left told me why. Standing by his side was a woman. I knew with full certainty that woman was his wife, Eira.
I didn’t know what Soren had told her about me, if anything. I was terrified to do or say the wrong thing, and I was crushed that I couldn’t run and jump into his arms and kiss him.
He saw me looking at him, and the look he gave me was as cold as the the first time he met me—when he had dug me up in the fields, and I’d started sobbing.
I swallowed hard and straightened my shoulders, walking over to him. “Hello, Soren.”
“I am glad you have safely returned. I’ve missed working alongside you in the fields,” Soren replied. There wasn’t a trace of emotion in his words.
I lowered my gaze for a moment to smile, before looking back up at him. “Thank you. I’ve missed the company in the fields as well.”
Eira stood beside Soren. She was shorter than I expected her to be, barely five feet tall. Her light blonde hair hung to her waist, and her eyes were a pale blue that reminded you of crystal glaciers. She looked older than I expected, as well: the lines around her eyes were fairly deep, and the skin on her neck wasn’t as firm as it once was. I remembered that this was at least her second pass through death, and wondered what her last life had been like. It wasn’t my business to know, just plain old curiosity.
Eira glanced at Soren, and I gave him the same look. It was an “Aren’t you going to introduce us?” kind of look. He pretended he didn’t know what it was about.
Eira held her hand out to me. “I’m Eira, Soren’s… wife.” She hesitated as she said the word “wife,” and I immediately wanted to know what was going on between them.
I shook her hand. “Helena, Hel for short. Pleasure to meet you.”
Soren looked uncomfortable.
Andreas cleared his throat. “Hel, we are still waiting for you to tell us where the Hell you’ve been, and what the fuck is going on.”
I turned back to him and nodded. “You’re right. First, I need to run upstairs and get someone.”
Grace hugged Ray almost as tightly as I had. “I have heard sooo much about you!” she gushed.
Ray smiled, and hugged her back like he had known her all of her life. He didn’t bat an eye while meeting my vampire friends, even though he said there weren’t any vampires where we was previously.
I couldn’t get over being reunited with Ray, although I still couldn’t shake the helpless-little-girl feeling I had being around him.
After introductions were made, everyone sat down and got quiet for me to tell the story of what had happened to me. I didn’t want to tell it, especially the part about Hades expecting to have his way with me, but I did. I told the whole story, and afterwards everyone was shocked and silent.
I looked to Ray first. His brow was furrowed so hard it made me rub my own; his fists were clenched in his lap. I’d rarely seen him angry in life, but I knew these were the key signs for him.
I put my hand on his knee. “I’m OK,” I said.
His expression softened as he gazed at me, and he shook his head with a look of defeat.
“So let me get this straight,” Boude said. “Persephone can’t be reached, and Thaddeus is not at liberty to give her whereabouts; Hades is currently ruling, and the doors to all the afterlives have been opened, so we have no idea which souls go where?”
“Basically,” I replied.
“Oh dear,” Boude said, and bit the side of his lip. “You realize what this means, right?”
“Yeah, it means it’s a big mess, and I don’t know how we’re going to sort out any of the souls,” I sighed.
Boude shook his head with a little more force than usual. “No, I mean, the gods of the other realms are going to come here to reclaim the souls that belong to them, and they won’t be happy.”
The realization of that fell over all of us like a blanket of snow—heavy, cold, and silent.
“What can we do?” I asked, not feeling very hopeful.
“This one is out of our hands, I’m afraid. This was Hades’s doing: the work of a god. There isn’t one here among us whocan take on him, or anyone of his nature. The best we can hope for is to find out what his next moves are, so we can try to get out of everyone’s way,” Boude said.
We all seemed to agree.
“Do you think you could find Melinoe again? Ask her if she could keep us in the loop about what’s going on?” Ray asked.
“I’m a little afraid to go back towards the palace, but yes, I’ll see if I can find her,” I said.
I turned to Billy and Soren. “What’s going on in the fields? All the name plates were blank.”
“There’s no one to dig up—the graves are empty,” Billy said with a shrug.
Wide-eyed, I turned to look at Soren.
“People aren’t dying,” he
said cooly.
“That can’t be good,” I said.
“We’re safe, right?” Andreas asked, pointing to himself, then Boude and Grace. “I mean the vampires. We should be safe—we don’t have souls, so we’re not involved in this?”
“Some of these gods could blink us out of existence. We’re no use to them without souls, so they might not bother keeping us around,” Boude lectured.
Andreas looked a little pale, and didn’t have a comeback.
“Where is a safe place for all of us to stay in the meantime? I’m a little scared,” Margaret’s voice was a bit higher than usual, with an edge of panic. Billy put his arm around her and gave her a reassuring squeeze, but she didn’t seem to relax into him.
“That’s a good question,” Ray agreed. “Is there a place we can all stay together? It might not be totally safe, but at least we can try to keep track of one another.”
“The houses in the fields are right in the open, and not big enough for all of us,” Billy answered, and I heard Soren grunt in agreement.
“Our apartments aren’t big enough either,” Grace said, speaking for the three vampires.
I had an idea, but I didn’t like it. “Is anyone living in Rasputin’s old mansion?”
All the eyes in the room fell on me.
Boude smiled. “Brilliant idea! No, no one is there. It might be a little dusty, but otherwise can house us all nicely.”
Great...
I caught a glimpse of Eira tugging on Soren’s arm and whispering something into his ear. Her face didn’t look too happy.
For a moment, I remembered licking and nibbling on that ear the last time we were together. The moment gave me a petty spark of joy. What is wrong with me? I wanted this for him, I argued with myself. Then again, I also believed I was getting Raphael back when he got her back. My moment of jealousy justified, I tried to move on. Apparently the conversation had continued without me.
I heard Grace say, “So it’s agreed we’ll all stay together, go by each other’s homes to pick things up, and onto the mansion in the Quarter, so none of us get seperated?”
Everyone nodded in agreement, except for Soren and Eira. She was not happy with arrangement, I could tell. I wondered if Soren had told her about us, or maybe she just didn’t like vampires. Other than the three in the room with us, I didn’t care for them either.
The line hadn’t budged, even by the time we left. People were starting to get anxious and meander about, so luckily we weren’t noticed when we quietly snuck out the back door of the Assignment Hall.
Margaret’s place was closest, so the rest of us waited outside as she and Billy ran in for her to grab some things. She was more scared than I had seen her before, so she was in and out in a flash.
Next, we went to the fields. Knowing all of that land was bare, above and below, felt strange—it felt sad. How weird was it that I found it sadder that there were no bodies to dig up, no souls to reap, no death in the living world. Shouldn’t that be a happy thing? But the emptiness made me feel useless. Digging was all I knew, on one side of the grave or the other.
Ray walked along beside me, and I longed to show him how to be a reaper. He would have gotten such a kick out of it, and I had really missed digging with him.
Soren held Eira’s hand as they walked through the endless brown dirt. Her eyes stayed focused straight ahead, as his wandered, like mine, through the rows and memories we had tied to this place. She didn’t get it.
Billy held Margaret’s hand, too, but his eyes stayed lowered to the ground, searching each little silver tag for a name. I saw him shake his head a time or two in disbelief. This was all he knew as well.
We came to my door first, and I shook my head. “I got what I needed earlier, and everything else I have I left at the palace.”
Billy walked on down to his place, and Margaret went with him. “Just gonna grab some clothes,” he said in his eastern Kentucky accent. His voice always made me smile, and reminded me of home in the southern Appalachian Mountains.
Eira had a tight grip on Soren’s arm, and he looked downright uncomfortable. It annoyed me seeing him like this. Seeing someone exert power over one of the strongest people I’d ever met: big turnoff.
Her nails dug into his skin as she squeezed harder and looked up at him. Soren grumbled, but spoke up. “Friends, I think Eira and I are going to stay here. She feels—” I watched the nails go into his flesh again before he corrected, “We feel that it’s safer to stay here, than to be in the Vampire Quarter. We understand we are taking our chances by being on our own, and if anything changes, we will come straight to the mansion,” he finished.
During his little speech, I had crossed my arms, and now I couldn’t help but to roll my eyes. It was so obviously not THEIR idea, but hers. If I truly thought that he agreed with her, maybe I wouldn’t have been so annoyed by the choice.
“That’s a stupid decision.” I heard the words only a milli-second before I realized I was the one who’d said them. Oops.
Soren looked at me with eyes that pleaded for me to shut up. Eira looked… pissed.
I wanted to turn and walk off somewhere, but didn’t really have anywhere to go just yet. So I held my ground, and my gaze.
Ray looked down and shuffled his feet a little.
“It really would be much safer, for all of us if we stayed together,” Boude said.
“Dude, we can’t help you or her if you’re all the way in the fields,” Andreas added.
“We are warriors. We will not need your protection.” Eira had the audacity to try to look superior, even while she stood more than a foot shorter than Andreas. Some petite people had presence, some had ego. Guess which one she had.
Soren had to look away from the scene. I watched as his cheeks reddened with embarrassment.
I had a moment to feel sorry for him; I was willing to bet the woman beside him wasn’t quite the wife he remembered.
Billy was back now, and quickly caught on to the situation. He didn’t even give Eira the courtesy of a passing glance. If Billy didn’t like her, that told me everything I needed to know, because he was the most understanding person I had ever met (outside of Ray).
Billy just shook his head at Soren and said, “Be careful, buddy.” The “be careful” held a lot more meaning than just the political stuff that was happening.
Soren said nothing, but gave Billy a weak smile. Eira stared at Billy, waiting for acknowledgement. He didn’t give her an ounce.
I so wanted to know what had happened since I left, and how long she had been back.
We left Soren and Eira in the fields to fend for themselves, and made our way into the Vampire Quarter.
The gothic spires and black brick streets that had seemed so menacing to me for so long, now felt protective and welcoming. Hmm, I never saw that coming. I even caught myself smiling as I walked the streets and glanced in the shop windows.
The red lights in the downtown area were turned off. Guess the vampire escorts were even being cautious at the moment. I’d never seen them closed.
We all waited in Andreas’s elegant red and gold living room while he packed. Naturally, he came out of his bedroom rolling two large tapestried suitcases. Somehow I knew he couldn’t pack light.
Boude and Grace declined stopping at their apartment, since they had some things left at the mansion from when they stayed there previously as servants of Rasputin’s.
We had all been pretty quiet as we traveled, and I couldn’t help but feel like we’d lost one already, without having Soren with us.
I had forgotten how remote the mansion was: not just on the outskirts of the Quarter, but on the fringes of those skirts. As it came into view, I recalled facing Rasputin, and all the angry vampires and zombies—how it felt being carried away with Andreas and imprisoned below the old courthouse in the dungeon. At the time it was terrifying. If only I’d known a short time later I was going to be entombed under the wall, I could have considered the prior incarceration
a mini-vacation. I chuckled softly to myself—my sense of humor had gotten dark since I died.
Inside, I was once again overtaken by the luxury and light of the space: so much white marble with gold accents and brilliant chandeliers. If I hadn’t had a first-hand glimpse of the atrocities committed by Rasputin, it might seem like a fun place to stay.
“Should we stay in the upstairs bedrooms?” I directed the question mainly at Boude and Grace.They agreed.
“We’ll have to split up on the top two floors, but I don’t think anyone wants to stay in his old bedroom,” Grace said.
I had been the one to find Rasputin’s bedroom when we were searching the house for the souls he had stashed away. It was dark and evil, with tapestries of tortured faces hanging on the walls, and bottles of sick and sticky fluids sitting around.
“I might,” Andreas said.
Boude shook his head fervently at Andreas, and Andreas seemed to understand. “Really, that bad?”
“Rasputin’s taste for depravity and debauchery was of a different nature than yours, my friend.” Boude put a hand on his shoulder.
Andreas didn’t mention it again.
“Let’s let Hel, Ray, and Billy and Margaret, have the three bedrooms on the top floor, and the vampires on the floor below. That way if someone comes in, we are the first ones they face,” Grace suggested, having worked it all out in her head.
“Excellent plan, my love,” Boude cooed, and kissed her head.
I wasn’t sure how much security my vampire friends could provide if gods of old came crashing through our door, but I appreciated the thought just the same.
We all headed up the grand staircase to the top two floors. It didn’t feel quite as creepy up here. I assumed that was because Rasputin hadn’t spent nearly as much time in this part of the house.
Ray took the bedroom across from mine, and Margaret and Billy took the one next to his.
Mine was a pretty room, with old, heavy furniture, made of a dark mahogany wood. The bedspread was a mustard yellow that wasn’t overwhelming in contrast to the wood, and the golden light that glowed from the chandelier blended things together nicely.
Digging to Hell (The Gravedigger Series Book 3) Page 3