Charles punched the mysterious man off him and gasped for air. “What the Hell?” he said, after finally catching his breath.
Kate stood on the bed aiming her father’s Peacemaker at Charles. Her hands shook so badly, she could have dropped the pistol. “I’m so sorry, Charlie. But I won’t let them have you.”
His last living memory ended there. He never heard the shot, only an odd noise between a low hum and a high-pitched whistle. Nor did he feel the heat of a bullet pierce through his flesh. There was no physical pain at all, only the free feeling of flying through blackness.
There was much more pain in the aftermath due to his bewilderment of why Kate had decided to take his life in the first place. It made no sense.
He may have disappointed her, but it was nothing she would kill him over. None of their disputes where that bad. For the most part, they were always on good terms. They were always able to talk about things.
He loved her enough to trust that she had to have some justifiable reason for killing him. He wanted to believe it was for some greater good. Judging by her final words to him, it seemed that way. Someone was after him. He didn’t know who or why, but she must’ve felt that killing him was the only way to save him. It didn’t seem very logical to him, but she had to have her reasons.
If he could ever find out the whole story, he would. Had his life ever flashed before his eyes like Mr. Beckwourth used to say it would when people died, then he could have gained some kind of clue as to why Kate cut him down.
But his death was as mysterious as it was abrupt. He never saw a bright light or tunnel. He traveled between the stars in one instant, from the saloon where he died to one of Charon’s filthy boxcars where he began his afterlife.
Cross lay beside Ignatius pretending to sleep, waiting for any opportunity to make his escape. He was praying to the Great Goddess to help him find a way out when salty air began to swirl about the boxcar and splashing noises smacked the walls outside. An idea of their current location occurred to him, and if he was right about where they were, now would be his last opportunity to act before the red giant dropped him into the pit of Hell where he belonged.
He cracked an eye open and discovered all the souls were peacefully sleeping much more comfortably than they should have been, including Ignatius, whose deep slumber would make for an easier getaway. The giant was turned on his side like an over-grown baby. The Peacemaker sank into his massive holster like a toy.
Slowly, Cross reached for his Colt. His eyes volleyed back and forth from the giant and onto the revolver as he eased closer and closer. His fingertip touched the holster, and then two fingertips grazed the handle of the gun.
“You think it’s going to be that easy?” said Ignatius, without turning over.
“I’m getting nauseous,” Cross lied. “I think it’s that sea illness. We’ve been rocking back and forth for hours cooped up in this tin can. I need some air.”
Ignatius flipped over to face Cross, who feigned a heave. “It’s coming up.” He clasped a hand over his mouth.
“Don’t get it on me.” Ignatius yanked Cross to his feet by the chain. The pain sliced through his shoulder sharply ending in a tingle. He wiggled his fingers to make sure he could still use them.
Ignatius dragged Cross to the door and slid it open. Wind plunged in carrying water droplets, and they were met with the vast black sea, Oceanus, just as Cross had suspected. Waves splashed at his knees and at Ignatius’s bulky ankles. The locomotive sailed across the stormy sea like a ship, chugging up and down the waves.
“The wind is blowing your direction,” said Cross. “If you don’t want to wear my stinking vomit on your face, I suggest you turn your head. But you don’t have to listen to me. It’s your choice.”
Ignatius squinted his apple-sized eye. Cross gagged and gulped as if on the verge of spewing last night’s barbot all over the giant. Ignatius pivoted sideways. Cross reached for one of the giant’s tiny wings and snapped it off. The giant roared in pain.
Cross thrust all his weight into the giant and shoved as hard as he could out of the boxcar. They both plunged into the rough sea. Charon sailed over the crest of a wave that could have swallowed the Carson’s mansion.
“Are you crazy?” said Ignatius, treading the dark water in a panic. “You know what evil lurks in these waters?”
Cross gouged the giant’s apple eye with his entire hand and swam around to Ignatius’s back. He wrapped the chain around the giant’s neck and pulled it taught.
Ignatius thrashed the waves. His remaining itty bitty wing batted Cross in the face. Waves crashed down on their heads. The giant gulped for air and gagged on water.
Cross braced his knees on the giant’s shoulders and tightened the chain until it was at its tightest. The flailing stopped, and the giant body went limp. Ignatius sank and pulled Cross into the depths like an anchor.
He searched desperately through Ignatius’s pockets for the keys to the shackles. The front and rear pants pockets were empty, as were the outside jacket pockets. He found the key ring on the inside jacket pocket, but there were six keys on the ring and he was sinking fast.
The first three keys failed to unlock the shackles. As he tried the fourth key, decayed fish bombarded him, swimming frantically. Their protruding bones scraped him as they collided into his chest and arms. It was as if they were blind or were fleeing danger.
He swung the keys at the fish. He smacked a few out of his way, but dropped the key ring. It sank. He grabbed for it and accidentally wrapped his fingers around a sallow fish. Its bones sliced his palm.
He ignored the pain and reached for the key ring again. He stretched the length of the chain. The keys disappeared into the abyss with the dead fish, who left behind chunks of chum swirling around.
Ignatius pulled him down further into the hum of the ocean, and it seemed the giant would get his revenge on Cross, even in second death.
A faint blue glow pulsed on and off through the murky waters. Cross removed the Peacemaker from Ignatius’s holster and aimed to shoot the chain that linked them. He pulled the trigger. The bullet merely nicked the chain and caused no damage.
He shot again. Nothing. He fired five more rounds in rapid succession. The water slowed the bullets down each time.
The blue glow brightened. Cross pulled and yanked, trying to squeeze his wrist through the iron bracelet. He twisted Ignatius’s arm in an attempt to rip it out of its socket, but it was like trying to uproot a tree. A pain ripped through his lungs. His chest ached for a breath.
The blue light bloomed. It was close enough now that he could partially see the sea beast, Grum, approaching steadily closer. The blue beacon hung from an antenna on its head and partially lit its ugly face that had scales peeling off it and bones protruding out of its gills.
Grum’s cold eyes peered at Cross, and the giant fish gaped its mouth. The threshold could fit the Carson’s mansion through it. Water sucked into the opening and dragged Cross along for the ride.
He swam away as hard as he could, but he couldn’t pull the weight of the giant, who was falling into Grum’s mouth. If only Ignatius had turned to Nothing, he could escape.
The giant must not have burned after all. Maybe he had only passed out. Cross shook the giant in an attempt to wake him, but it was too late.
Grum’s teeth hung above his head and jutted up below. They were the size and shape of church steeples. Cross waited for the teeth to come within inches of closing, and at the last second, he kicked off of Ignatius’s chest. The giant fell behind Grum’s teeth, which chomped down on the chain. It snapped.
Cross swam furiously back to the surface of the water and gulped in frigid, soulless air. Waves crashed on his head and there was no land in sight. There was only one way back to land that would prevent him from succumbing to the cold or becoming chum for the monsters that lurked in Oceanus. It could possibly get him to Skull Hill before Diamond Tooth, depending on how far she had already traveled. He assumed she had alre
ady beaten the name of the skull out of the Raven. That is, if the Raven had talked.
Somehow, he knew she hadn’t. She wasn’t a talker like him.
He gathered the half chain dangling at his wrist, inhaled deeply, and swam back underwater. Grum’s blue glow was swimming away, but the beast must’ve sensed his return. The giant fish whipped around as Cross had hoped. The dead eyes of the sea beast drew closer with increasing speed, seemingly determined to make a meal out of Cross.
He swam upward, and just as he planned, Grum chased, swimming at such a speed that the water pushed upward instead of sucking back into the beast’s mouth. Cross positioned himself at Grum’s lips and planted his feet.
Grum broke the surface of the water and launched into the air. Cross dove for the blue beacon and wrapped the chain around the antennas.
Grum plunged back into the water with Cross on its spine, tugging on the antenna, using them as reins. Grum bucked and swam deeper into the ocean. Down, down, down into the black depths.
Cross had anticipated that too. Most wild beasts reacted the same way when something tried to ride them, and there wasn’t a beast in the living world or the underworld than he couldn’t tame. He stroked Grum’s antenna and the sea monster quit fighting.
FINALLY, OUT IN THE WARM LIGHT OF THE UNDERWORLD, standing at the edge of Fon-Ewe Forest, the Raven got a closer look at Diamond Tooth’s band of demons. The six young men and women appeared more creatural than Diamond Tooth, and much more demonic with their pointy ears and wrinkled faces. They all seemed to be in the middle of a transition, as if they hadn’t quite grown into themselves fully.
Each had his or her own distinct horns sticking out of his or her skulls. The smallest female demon had puny horns poking out her forehead. Without those horns, she could have been mistaken for a human, just like Diamond Tooth. The two of them strikingly resembled each other in an odd way.
One male and one female had thick ram-like horns curling around their ears. And that was the extent of their beastly characteristic features. They could have passed for humans as well. But another two of the demons appeared wooden, as if they were half tree; their skin was bark-like and their horns were brown like a cone-shaped branch with a hint of leafy moss at the tip.
The ugliest of all the demons was so emaciated it could have been a member of the Loa tribe. It had the most horns of all the demons. They protruded out all over its naked skeletal frame. Prickly thorns pointed out from its lips, and horns replaced its teeth and fingernails.
The demons themselves weren’t necessarily an odd sight for the Raven. She’d seen more bizarre creatures, but she studied them longer than usual because somehow each of their facial features was familiar to her, as though she had met them before somewhere else besides Camp Erutrot. Their eyes, jaw bone structure, and nose all resembled familiar faces, but she couldn’t peg who they were exactly.
That kind of verging recall had been happening to her frequently enough in the past few weeks that she made desperate efforts to pay close attention and attempt to remember whatever information that was trying burrow its way out of the depths of her subconscious.
The Loa returned the heard of scorpions and dispersed each object to its rightful owner. The bagh nakhs of course went to Diamond Tooth. One demon took a cane—the cane that the Amenthesians had given to the Raven. She had never tested it out and didn’t know its ability. A female demon grabbed a lantern that the Raven had never seen before. The daintiest of the three female demons took the pink parasol.
Cross had shoved that exact umbrella in the Raven’s face enough times, she remembered it distinctly. Apparently, the demons were aware of the blanket’s ability. That was the only way they could have gotten it or the amphora that the fourth demon tucked under her arm. It was the same amphora the squals had given to the Raven as bounty for turning Cross in to them.
The Raven couldn’t figure out if the skeletal demon was male or female. It holstered the hammer in his spiky hip. She knew the hammer’s power. It had knocked her feathers off near the Asphodel Meadows when she tested it out. She had never used it again because she preferred the precision of her rope dart. The hammer was more suitable for demolishing something large. Unfortunately, it couldn’t have been in worse possible hands.
Ropey returned to the Raven’s waist, and she shoved her battered top hat on her head. Her burlap sack, stuffed with the blanket, was hooked onto Diamond Tooth’s scorpion. With all the objects evenly dispersed—or unevenly from the Raven’s outnumbered perspective, the clan of eight each saddled their own respective scorpion and headed out of Guinee.
They journeyed into Lokantarika, a town within Naraka. The village could have fit in with the sparkling cities of paradise once, but the wars smeared its grimy hands over everything in it. Holes littered the Stupa of Nirvana, and at the other end of the long road, the wooden pagoda bled smoke.
Explosions boomed in the outskirts of the village. Flashes in the distance lit up the dark clouds. A whistle scraped through the sky from the east. Globs of lava splashed onto the pagoda. Brimstone plopped in front of her and the demons, drowning the road.
The Raven and the demons hopped off their scorpions. The ground crunched under their feet as though they had stepped on crispy leaves. When the Raven glanced down, she spotted souls the size of insects, scrambling away, trying to avoid getting smashed.
All the demons except Diamond Tooth purposely stomped the tiny spirits, making a game out of it and laughing. The Raven tip-toed over the souls but couldn’t avoid crushing some by accident. She cringed at each splat under her boots.
“Raec, take care of the scorpions,” said Diamond Tooth.
Raec, one of the two ram-horned demons, rounded up the scorpions. The rest of them sought shelter in the abandoned stupa. Diamond Tooth lay down on the only cot available. It drooped, on its last leg.
Outside, crowds of spirits fled the ragged buildings. They clumped together like several locomotives made of hundreds of legs, arms, and heads. They merged with one another, and burst out of each other’s chests, causing their own dismemberment and beheadings. Headless bodies raced away, leaving their heads behind calling for their masters to return.
Diamond Tooth’s disgusting demons kicked the heads around as a game and used the leftover limbs that littered the road as cruel whacking sticks to smack the heads over the buildings. The demons sought a vile joy in who could send a head the farthest. The heads pleaded and screamed as they sailed away over the roofs. The heads that didn’t clear the stupa, rolled back down the rounded heap of a building, and were subject to more bashing.
Unable to watch the sick game any longer, the Raven returned to the stupa and sat in a chair, contemplating her next move. She suspected that Diamond Tooth and her demons were planning to burn her once they found out the name of the skull. It’s what the Raven would have done in their boots, and she was in no position to do anything about it. Even with her rope dart, she couldn’t defeat them all. They each had objects and had owned them long enough to have played around with them and figured out how to use them lethally. That’s perhaps why Diamond Tooth felt comfortable enough to sleep in the same room as the Raven.
Running away and forgetting about the last Toran wasn’t an option. Reaching it was worth the risk. She just hated not being in control and lacking a plan.
Raec returned from rounding up the scorpions, and the marching cadence of souls who were running scared, fleeing the town had subsided until the only things that occupied Lokantarika was the Raven, the seven demons and silence.
A furry animal wandered into their hideout. It was a Baku, a child’s pet that ate nightmares and harsh dreams.
Diamond Tooth slumbered away, but the other six demons reached for the creature with hungry eyes. It scurried away from them. They lunged after it. The dreameater darted for the Raven and hopped into her lap as if it knew she would protect it. She embraced the cuddly Baku, and it trembled in her arms.
The demons stalked with glo
wing eyes. The Raven stared the demons down, welcoming any challenge, but they wouldn’t attack her. They needed her cooperation. She was the only one who knew the name of the skull that the Toran was buried under.
They scoffed at her and backed away. She caressed the Baku and stroked it until it stopped shaking. It nudged its head under her palm, purring, and sniffed her enthusiastically with its snout. It gave her the kind of respect she had witnessed between Cross and Gimlet. It was very unfortunate what happened to those two.
A four beat drum-like pattern played outside, interrupting her from her brief sorrow. It sounded like four bullet rounds and judging by its muffled tone, it originated from inside a building at the other end of the road. The demons, too busy playing their twisted games with the heads, didn’t hear the noise. They couldn’t have heard it at that distance anyway. They could see in the dark, but only she could hear at that distance.
Those shots weren’t from just any gun though. Every gun had its own tune, and that melody was familiar. She knew it distinctly because she had heard it up close and personal right before her walk through Yomi. Ever since Cross’s Peacemaker had emptied her canteen, the sound remained imprinted in her mind, just like every other sound she had ever heard.
She recalled seeing Ignatius with the Peacemaker back at Camp Erutrot, but the giant would have never been able to get his arm-sized finger through the trigger guard. It wouldn’t surprise her if the shots came from Cross. That bastard was a survivor.
But anyone could steal objects. It may not have been him at all. She hoped it was Cross. For both their sakes, it had better be him. A tingle sensation danced in her stomach at the thought of seeing him again.
She carried the Baku in between the demons. They all watched her step over the rubble and exit the stupa through the massive hole in the wall. Once outside and safe, she released the Baku. It scurried away, and she waited till it was out of danger. She headed in the direction where the gunshots originated, toward the pagoda at the other end of the road, still exhaling smoke like a pipe.
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