by Duncan, Lex
I stepped back. This guy looked like he had rabies or something. “We were just leaving.”
“So soon?” The man tilted his head how Rosie did when she was under the influence of her demon. Like a confused puppy. A murderously confused puppy. “You've made it all the way up here! Might as well join the fun!”
“I hate fun,” I said, figuring his definition of the word and mine were two totally different things.
He stared at me, unblinking. “No one hates fun!”
“Well, I do.”
The man sobered a bit, a too wide grin still stuck on his face as he turned to Max. “What about you, my boy. Do you hate fun, too?”
“What are you doing up here?” Max let go of my hand and crossed his arms. “Why is there a summoning seal on the door?”
“You know what it is!” The man said, his exposed eye gleaming with mischief. “Very good, my boy. Very good. You simply must stay. Stay, stay! Won't be as much fun without you!”
Max frowned. If I looked closely enough, I could see his hands shaking. “You never answered my question.”
“That's because I don't need to.” The man readjusted his hat and moved aside, stooping over in an ungraceful bow. “Please, stay. See for yourself. Your little girlfriend can come too, I suppose.”
“I'm not his girlfriend,” I blurted out. Because the demonic seal on the door wasn't the most important thing here. I really needed to get my priorities in order.
The man fixed me with a pointed look. “Friend, then.”
There. That was better. We still weren’t staying. “Thanks for clarifying,” I said. “We're gonna―”
“―Stay,” Max said. “We'll stay.”
“What?” By some divine miracle, I managed not to jam my elbow between his ribs.
“We're staying,” he repeated.
On my list of Things Not to Do When Confronted by a Weirdo with an Eye-Patch, following him was right at the top. Max had clearly lost it. It was the only explanation for him wanting to stay.
“Excellent!” The man crowed. He clasped Max on the shoulder and ushered him out the door. “Take a seat anywhere you'd like, my boy. The show will be starting soon!”
By the way things were going, this “show” was going to be a three-ring circus from hell. Great.
Instead of letting the man touch me, I followed in Max's footsteps and found myself caught in the crosshairs of dozens of curious gazes. The ninth floor wasn't a floor at all. It was the roof. And assembled upon it was a crowd. People in leather and studs and fishnets, staring at me, their blank faces lit by the candles they held.
I felt like I'd just stumbled into a cult initiation.
Joining Max at the front of the crowd, I leaned over and whispered in his ear. “I swear to God, the minute the Kool-Aid shows up, I'm out of here.”
“We need to know what this guy's planning,” Max whispered back. He tilted his head toward the empty space in the middle of the roof. “See over there? Another seal.”
I peered into the darkness and saw it. The faint red outline of the summoning seal painted on the ground. “Max, this is crazy. We need to go before―”
“One for the not-girlfriend,” Top Hat/Eye-Patch Man came waltzing over with a box full of black candles. He held one out to me, then moved onto Max. “And for you, my boy.”
“Got a light?” Max asked, playing the part of wanting to be here very well.
The man grinned. A sliver of moon shined brightly above. “Of course, my boy, of course!” He snapped his grimy fingers and the wicks on our candles were set ablaze, startling me so much that I almost dropped mine in my lap.
“How did you do that?” I gasped.
“Magic, my girl!” He winked, then took his place in the middle of the seal. Clearing his throat, he spoke with the giddy excitement of a kid in a candy store. “Merry meet, my friends, and welcome to The Inferno!”
The crowd was quiet.
The man continued. “My name is Gershom, owner of this fine establishment and your guide into a realm beyond earthly comprehension.”
I didn't like this. I didn't like this one bit. This was the part in the movie where the villain revealed his plans and everyone else was forced to endure them until the hero swooped in to save the day. Too bad I didn't see any heroes around.
“Some call it Hell,” Gershom leaned on his cane. “Others, Gehenna.”
I glanced over at Max to see if he was as freaked out as I was. If his grimace was any indication, he was. We should have gone to the damn movies.
Gershom stepped to the edge of the seal, but no further. A wicked expression transformed his face into something less Mad Hatter and more Cheshire Cat. “But those people are wrong.”
The wind gusted, pulling on our candle flames. Goosebumps spread down the lengths of my arms despite my coat.
“It is not Hell, it is not Hades, it is not Gehenna...” Gershom trailed away. He zeroed in on me and Max smiled rotten all over again. “No, it is Dis. The demon realm.”
Dis? Outside of English class, nothing I’d ever read or heard about demons referenced this Dis. Dante—Alighieri, not Arturo—wrote about it, but it was supposed to be fiction.
“Dis?” I mouthed to Max.
He shook his head.
Gershom opened his arms up wide. Like he was welcoming an old friend. “Tonight, you will learn what true power is!”
The flames on our candles surged to frightening heights. For some ungodly reason, it seemed that Gershom was able to control fire.
This was wrong.
So, so wrong.
“Screw this,” I said. I wasn’t dying because Max wanted to be an idiot. I stood up to leave, and when I did, Gershom sneered.
“Our first volunteer!” He announced to the crowd. “Excellent. Come here, my girl.”
“What are you doing?” Max whispered.
“I'm not volunteering for anything.” I dropped my candle and crushed the flame with my shoe. “I'm leaving.”
Just as soon as it went out, the flame roared back to life underneath my foot, nearly catching my leg on fire. I yelped and kicked it away.
“Leaving is not an option.” Gershom held out his hand. “Come now, my girl. This won't hurt a bit.”
That's what doctors said, too. Right before they jammed a giant needle in your arm.
I wasn't taking any more chances with this guy or this messed up club. What he was doing was really unsafe. Borderline evil. And since Max was set on going through with this whole stupid thing, I took it upon myself to call for backup.
Well, text for backup.
I slipped my hand in my coat pocket and felt around for my phone. When I found it, I took it out and scrolled to Dante's number in my contacts list.
“What are you doing?” Gershom asked. He cut the theatrics, realizing that his hellish focus group meeting was about to come to an end. “Put that away!”
A strained note of panic soured his voice. Uh-oh. Better keep this short. SOS, I typed. Infer―
“I said, put it away!”
I typed the rest of the message as fast as I could and pressed send. I think. God, I hoped I pressed send. I couldn't exactly check because my phone was wrenched from my hand at the exact moment I may or may not have pressed that button.
“You stupid girl!” Gershom screamed. My phone dangled uselessly mid-air, its screen flickering on and off in increasingly rapid succession.
He could snap his fingers to make fire and he had telekinetic powers. Nothing could ever be simple, could it?
The cruel Fates then decided to answer my rhetorical question by having Gershom flick his wrist, thus sending my phone careening off the roof.
“No!” I watched as it fell nine stories to the ground. It took me three months to save up for that thing. Three months of minimum wage and crappy tips, all for that phone. It was the only nice thing I owned and now it was pile of rubble on the street.
Gershom threw his cane aside, bristling like an angry cat. “I told you
to put that blasted thing away and you didn't listen! And now you've ruined the fun for everyone else!”
“The fun?” I had more fun breaking my arm in third grade. “This isn't fun for anyone!”
I looked to the crowd for validation and got blank stares and even blanker faces in return. The realization that something really, really bad was about to happen hit me like a bullet in the back. We were gathered here like cattle for reasons I really didn't want to think about and no one seemed to care but me. Even Max had that complacent look in his eye.
“What did you do to them?” I demanded, hoping I sounded more confident than I felt. Whether they knew it or not, every single person on this roof was counting on me. They were counting on me because Gershom stole their ability to count on themselves. I didn't know why whatever he did wasn't affecting me, but I didn't care. It didn't matter. It didn't matter because I was going to be the hero this time.
And I was going to save these people.
“I didn't do anything.” Gershom folded back into Mad Hatter mode, picking with nervous fingers at his coat. “They just know how to behave at a party, unlike you.”
That wasn't the answer I was looking for. “What did you do to them?”
“Stand there like a good girl and I'll show you.” He pointed to a woman in a purple corset in the back of the crowd. “You. Come here.”
She did. I gaped at the lack of hesitation in her movements, the dead look in her eyes. There was nothing there, just a horrifying mindlessness I remembered all too well. The same thing that happened to me at the church was happening here.
“Wait!” I grabbed the woman's arm as she passed. I didn't want to find out what Gershom had planned for her. “Stop! You don't want to―”
The woman's elbow connected with my nose, cutting me off mid-sentence and sending a blinding flash of pain between my eyes. I staggered back, reeling from the power of her blow. Blood dripped from my nostrils to my feet.
Gershom clapped his hands together. “Ooh, this one has fire! I like that. Come here, my dear. Yes, that's it.”
Through a bleary haze of nosebleed induced tears, I saw him take the woman by the hand. Bring it to his lips for a kiss. Ew. “Leave―leave her alone.”
“Hush, girl,” Gershom snapped. He slipped something into the hand he'd kissed, whispered into the woman's ear, then stepped back to address the crowd. “Tell me, friends, would you finally like to have some fun?”
The crowd nodded.
He grinned another too wide grin. “Excellent!” He took the woman by her shoulders and pushed her to the edge of the seal. No further. “Go on, my dear, show them what you can do!”
The woman didn't argue. Didn't fight. She simply obeyed. She lifted her hand―the hand Gershom had kissed―and drew a blade across her throat. The knife winked in the moonlight as it carved a wide, red slit against her skin. From that slit sprang forth a geyser of blood that spattered the ground and the faces of the people unfortunate enough to be sitting in front. Max included.
I tried to scream. Tried to move. Tried to make my brain function at a level beyond breathtaking terror. But I couldn't. I'd been frozen. Again.
“There's a good girl!” Gershom cradled the dying woman in his arms. He stroked her hair like he would a daughter's. “You did well. You may rest now. That's it. Rest, rest. You'll be home soon.”
My knees trembled. My nose bled. My breaths came in shallow gasps. I stared at the woman Gershom had murdered, the woman he now arranged in the seal like the Vitruvian Man―limbs spread wide, throat gleaming with her bitter, bitter end. Then I forced myself to look away. To the crowd. To Max, who was not Max but a living corpse made so by Gershom's demonic power. Back to everyone else. The people I was supposed to be protecting.
Back to the woman. Murdered. Right in front of me.
I hated demons.
I hated Gershom.
And I really hated losing.
I decided then, as Gershom crouched at his victim's side, that I wasn't going to lose anymore. That no one else was going to die. That I was going to stand up, take a deep breath, and run.
Straight into the seal.
Straight into Gershom.
Eleven
I've always been an angry person, but Gershom provoked something primal in me. Something pure and instinctual, something furious and reckless. Something that drove me to charge at him unarmed and untrained, something that didn't give a damn about the consequences.
He needed to pay for killing that woman.
So, I did what any sane person with a conscience would do. I tackled him. Hard.
We hit the ground and rolled a few feet toward the edge of the roof. I tried punching him, biting him, kicking him, but the demon that possessed him was powerful. Much more so than a severely anemic teenager with fighting skills she learned from comic books and old arcade games. It wasn't long before he gained the upper hand.
“How dare you!” Gershom seized me by the shoulders and slammed me down so hard that the wind rushed from my lungs. His hands curled around my neck, squeezing. “How dare you!”
I should have relaxed. To conserve what little oxygen I had left. But when shoved toward the precipice of death, I realized I had two choices: Fight and die knowing I'd at least tried to help these people, or relax and die, give in to the velvet shadows that lapped at the periphery of my vision.
As I stared up at Gershom's blurring face, at his demon-black eyes, I remembered Rosie. She'd been shoved on this precipice, too. And she still lived. If she could do it, so could I.
I made my choice. I fought.
Gasping for precious air, I flailed my arms and kicked my legs, hoping I'd somehow make a connection. Gershom's grip tightened. My movements grew weaker. My lungs screamed for relief. The shadows thickened.
No. No, no, no. I couldn't die. What would Rosie do without me? What would happen to Max and everyone else? If I died, they would surely follow. No. No, no, no...
“That's it,” Gershom said, smiling faintly. His voice sounded far, far away. “That's it. Give in. Let the darkness take you.”
I couldn't see him anymore. I couldn't see anything. The darkness he spoke of, the darkness I'd tried to fight...It was everywhere. And it was calling to me.
I don’t remember what happened in those shrouded moments. All I remember was the pressure from Gershom's hands falling away. An explosion of noise. Screaming. A deep voice telling me that everything was going to be okay. The smell of woodsmoke and spice. Movement.
And then...
Nothing.
***
When I came to, I was still on the roof of The Inferno. The crowd was gone and only a small group remained. Gershom, Dante, Aralia, and me. I breathed a sigh. He got my text.
Gershom sat away from everyone else, his hands cuffed behind his back, a sullen expression on his face. He'd lost his hat and his blazer was stained red from where a bullet had entered. “You won't be able to save him,” he said, rolling his thin shoulders. “The demon is already in him and we all know those silly exorcisms don't work.”
Save him? Save who―...Oh. Oh, no.
“Max?” My voice scraped in my throat. Shaking, I stood up and took a few wobbly steps toward where Aralia and Dante were huddled. Turns out, getting strangled to near death made you a bit clumsy. I grabbed onto Dante's arm to steady myself. “What happened? Is Max okay?”
He took off his coat and draped it over my shoulders, then rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. “Aralia, please get Beatrice back.”
Aralia didn’t move. “Dante, you can't.”
“I don't have a choice,” he replied. He spared a glance in my direction. “Go sit down, Beatrice. You've done enough.”
I shook my head, feeling tears well up at the corners of my eyes. Max was on his knees, his hands behind his back like Gershom's, face obscured by shadow. He was still, he was silent, he was lifeless. “Dante, please. What happened?”
He lifted his gaze to the night sky, took a breath, then re
ached into his back pocket and pulled out a knife. With a soft click, the blade appeared, curved and deadly.
Seeing it was a swift punch to the gut. A knife. Sickening images of what Gershom had done flashed before my eyes. “What are you doing?”
“Aralia,” Dante said again.
This time, she followed orders. She took me by the arm and pulled me back. “It's all right, Beatrice. He's doing what needs to be done.”
“No!” Tears rolled freely down my cheeks, hot and furious. I clawed at Aralia's fingers. “You can't!”
“Beatrice,” Aralia stepped in front of me, blocking my view. “I know you've been through quite the ordeal, but you need to calm down.”
“I can't,” I sobbed, feeling my knees buckle. Max was possessed and Dante was going to kill him like Gershom killed that woman. “Dante is going to―”
Aralia took my hands in hers and squeezed them tight. She was...smiling? “Save him, Beatrice. Dante is going to save him. Not kill him.”
I blinked. “Wh—what?”
She let go of my hands and stepped aside so that I could see for myself.
As per her reassurance, Dante wasn't cutting Max's throat. He was cutting himself. He drew the tip of his knife across his right palm until blood seeped to the surface of the wound in a thin, scarlet line. Then he put the knife away. Approached Max like how you'd approach a trapped animal. Slowly and very, very carefully.
“What's he doing?” I whispered, drying my tears with the sleeve of Dante’s coat.
“What's he doing?” Gershom echoed, except much more loudly.
Aralia and I turned to look at him and said exactly at the same time: “Shut up.”
He glared at us.
Dante crouched to Max's level. His fingers closed against his wounded palm while his free hand inched toward Max's head.
As the distance between them grew shorter and shorter, Max began to twitch. A noise like bottled thunder built in his throat. Dante proceeded unperturbed, reaching, reaching, reaching, and then grabbing with blinding quickness, forcing Max's head back by his hair.