A wall of fog had descended in its place, engulfing the back end of the graveyard and pressing toward us with every step we took. Let’s just say the idea of heading back through that fog to find a winding staircase so I could run away lacked a certain appeal.
“That is scale of sacrifice,” Vitaly said, pointing at the two scales. “See how they are not balanced? They must be balanced for gate to open.” He shrugged. “Even I cannot open that gate without the appropriate sacrifice.”
“You ready, Marvin?” Wendy asked, concern etching her words as she sloughed off her backpack and pulled Marvin out of it. With more care than I’d ever seen her use with the doll, she positioned him so he sat on the ground with his back against her backpack.
“Yeah. It’s been wild,” Marvin said, a note of glee in his voice. “I’ll try not to bang you around too much.”
“I’d appreciate it. Last time you chipped all my nails,” she said, peering at the manicured orange nails on her left hand.
“No promises,” Marvin said as Wendy stood and walked toward the gate.
“So how does one balance the scales?” I asked as Wendy sat down in the empty scale. It didn’t move even a single inch.
“Sacrifice,” Wendy said, pulling a straight razor from god knows where and slashing it across her throat in one hyper-quick moment.
“What the fuck?” I cried as Jenna sucked in a sharp breath.
Blood spurted out of the girl’s ruined throat, covering her once nice dress in blood, and as the straight razor slipped from her grip and clattered to the ground beside the scale, I couldn’t help but wonder if that was why she’d chosen to wear crimson.
I’d brushed off her wearing the short, blood-red one piece because she was weird, but there was no arguing with the fact that the color hid the blood well. It seemed a bit too premeditated for my liking, but then again, maybe Vitaly’s whole “when you meet God you want to look nice” thing had rubbed off on her.
Even still, I was having a hard time watching her bleed out like a stuck pig on the scale, and to think, she’d willingly done it. That was just bat shit insane. What the hell had Vassago done to get her to do that?
“You brought her here to die?” Jenna asked, fear and anger stitching her voice as Wendy’s head fell limply against her chest, and she collapsed bodily onto the scale.
“Yes,” Marvin said, and as I turned to look at him, somewhat surprised the doll had talked when Wendy was clearly dying. Only the doll wasn’t standing there. An Asian guy about seventeen with spiked hair stood next to Wendy’s backpack. He was dressed in a letterman jacket for the same high school that had been emblazoned on Wendy’s cheerleading outfit. The same one the doll had been wearing. How was that possible?
“Who the fuck are you?” Jenna exclaimed, pointing her Baby Eagle at “Marvin.”
“Relax,” Vitaly said, waving on big hand. “This is how it works.”
“Yeah,” Marvin said, scooping up Wendy’s backpack and making his way toward the gate. As he did, the scale on which Wendy’s body lay began to lower, slowly at first, but as more blood poured from her throat, it started going faster and faster.
The toad’s lips curled into an obscene grin as the scale hit the dirt, and I swear to God, it turned to regard Wendy with a smile. The pleasure on its face made me feel sick to my stomach. It was pleased with her death in a way I could never understand. It was like it relished her sacrifice. Sure, I killed, and sometimes I’d even enjoyed it, but I never made anyone kill themselves just for shits and giggles. It was wrong in a way I couldn’t explain.
“Your sacrifice is acceptable,” the toad grumbled in a voice like rolling thunder. It released the twin scales, and as they hit the scorched earth with a dull thud, the toad twisted, tearing its emerald legs from its pedestal and approached the spider-laden lock on the vicious gate.
Its glistening, pink tongue shot out, exploding from its mouth like a bullet. It hit the keyhole dead on. The statue twisted its head, and as it did, its slimy tongue turned in the lock. The golden lock opened with a click that hit me like a punch in the stomach and resounded through the air like the crack of a whip. The leafless trees shuddered around us, casting shadows across the gravestones that stretched like reaching, gaping monsters.
“You may pass through,” the toad said, retracting its tongue and allowing the lock to fall from the gate. It hit the dead earth with a thud and lay there like a corpse as the gate creaked open, inch by torturous inch. The sound was like nails on a chalkboard, and I was forced to look away. Even still, the sound grated on my brain.
“Well, it worked,” Marvin said solemnly fingering the straight razor his sister had used to slit her own throat. “Looks like we get a bonus.” Then he rolled up his sleeves and sliced open his dead sister’s stomach.
Chapter 11
“Oh, come on, don’t look at me like that,” Marvin said, running one bloody hand through his hair so it left streaks of glistening red clinging to his spikes. “It’s a thing we do.” He pointed the Wendy doll he’d torn from his sister’s stomach at us. “Come on, sis, tell ‘em.”
“It’s a thing we do,” Wendy said, looking at each of us with dull, wooden eyes. It was weird because even though I’d seen Marvin do the same thing, and been told he was inhabited by Wendy’s brother, I’d never really put it together. Now, looking at Wendy trapped within the body of a wooden ventriloquist doll, something in me felt cold and empty. I couldn’t imagine living like that under any circumstance, and yet they did, in their own weird way. It was almost enough to make me feel sorry for them. Almost.
“See,” Marvin replied, gesturing at us with the doll triumphantly before shoving her violently into the backpack and slinging it over his shoulders. “So who’s hungry? I could definitely go for some tacos and beer.”
I won’t say that my stomach lurched at the thought of food while looking at the bleeding corpse of Wendy upon the scale, but it was a near thing. Still, the idea of a drink or seven sounded pretty good. Unfortunately, I wasn’t sure that was going to be on the table until after we’d gotten out of Hell.
“I didn’t sign up for this shit,” Jenna said, glaring daggers at Vitaly who looked pale, even for him. “This was supposed to be a simple in and out job.”
“I am in agreement.” The big man rubbed his bald head with one hand. “Let us finish quickly.”
“Come on guys, don’t be like that. We’re a team, remember? T-E-A-M,” Marvin said, spelling out the word while marching toward the gate. “Now, let’s get this show on the road. Tacos are waiting, and I haven’t eaten since football season ended.”
“Well, next time don’t break your neck trying to jump your motorcycle over a ravine like a dumbass,” Wendy said with a shrug. “Do you think it was fun waking up in the trunk of your car and having to break into a morgue and dig you out of your own cold, dead body?”
“You loved it,” Marvin said, reaching back and zipping the backpack closed.
“That’s it. I’m going to shoot him,” Jenna snapped, pulling her gun and sighting it on him. “That’ll bring Wendy back, right?”
“I think I liked your sister better,” I said, moving between him and Jenna so she wouldn’t shoot him. I had no idea what’d happen if she did, but from the look on her face, it was totally going to happen. While I didn’t like Marvin very much, I had no desire to see him lying on the ground dead. At least, you know, while Wendy was inside the backpack.
“If you shoot me, my sister will take my place. That’s true,” Marvin said, spinning to face us just shy of the gate. “But that would also render her sacrifice moot. Her body would vanish from the scale and the gate would close.” He hopped backward past the gate. “And here I am on the other side of the gate.”
“Is this where you suggest I just wound him?” Jenna asked, flashing me a sly grin as Vitaly walked past the both of us and disappeared through the gate after the teen.
“Not really, no,” I said, slightly irked that I hadn’t thought of
that. “I’m just glad there was a way through the gate that didn’t involve someone actually dying.” I shrugged as the toad statue watched me like he knew we were fucking with him but couldn’t do anything about it. Stupid toad.
“The Mac Brennan I know wouldn’t give a flying fuck about having to sacrifice someone to get through that gate. Hell, he’d have brought some poor slob along for the sole purpose of marching him onto that scale and putting a bullet in his head, and he’d have done it while whistling.” She glanced at me, and if I wasn’t trying to ignore the truth of what she said, the force of her look would have made me look for somewhere to hide. “You’ve changed, Mac. I’m not sure if I like it.”
“If that’s true,” I said, shoving down the idea that she was probably right about who I was because I definitely wasn’t that person anymore and deflected by raising my demonic arm. “I blame it on this.”
“Maybe,” she said as we passed through the gate. “But those things tend to turn you into more of a douche, not less of one.”
A smile I couldn’t help crossed my lips. Jenna clearly knew me from my old days, and unless I was way off, was implying I was somehow less of a douche now. Man, I must have been a real piece of work in my former life. It sort of made me glad I couldn’t remember.
As soon as we crossed the threshold, we found ourselves standing knee deep in bones. It sort of reminded me of that scene in Lion King where they visit the hyenas and there’s just nothing but carcasses everywhere. The only thing was, some of these skeletons were huge enough to make me hope I didn’t run into whatever had killed them. I glanced over my shoulder, but instead of seeing the gate, all I saw was that same dense fog that had followed us through the graveyard. I wasn’t sure how we were getting back, but I’d read more than enough Stephen King novels to not want to venture into it.
“Maybe? What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked as Marvin and Vitaly approached a large doorway jutting up from the landscape. A shiver went through me as I realized the doorway was crafted entirely from skulls. Their empty eye sockets stared out at us from across the skeletal wasteland, and as we moved, they seemed to watch us in the exact same way the statues had in the graveyard. Not cool. Not cool at all.
“It means maybe,” Jenna reaffirmed unhelpfully.
“Get ready,” Vitaly called, pulling out his glowing plastic key and touching it to the center of the door. The silver glow crawled across the door’s surface, and as it did, the bone piles surrounding us exploded, pelting us with fragments. A shinbone cracked me across the forehead as I grabbed hold of Jenna and pulled her down beneath me, intent on shielding her with my body.
“Tueri!” I cried ignoring the blood dripping into my right eye from the cut on my forehead.
As a shield of liquid flame danced over the both of us, a bone smashed into the back of my trench coat causing breath to explode from my lungs. To be honest, I hadn’t known I could shield two people with my magic, but evidently, I could. It was a good thing too because the idea of us both being skewered by flying femurs was definitely not on my day planner.
“Come on,” Marvin called as the bone storm raged around us.
“Are you out of your goddamned mind?” Jenna cried from beneath me, and from the way her gun poked into my ribs, I wasn’t sure if she meant me or Marvin. Marvin definitely got my vote.
The door Vitaly had struck crumbled to dust, revealing a sucking purple void beyond. Marvin glanced at it for a second, but before he could do anything, a giant purple hand mottled with thick blue veins burst from the void and grabbed him around the torso. It jerked him roughly through the void, and as his body hit the surface, it exploded in a flash of purple fire.
“That is our ride,” Vitaly cried before leaping through the void himself. It sort of reminded me of when a mosquito hits a bug zapper. I have to say, jumping into a bug zapper filled with what had to be a sixty-foot-tall monster wasn’t at the top of my bucket list, but staying here certainly wasn’t an option either.
“I think we need to follow them,” I said, getting to my feet as bones continued to bounce off my magical shield. Each one made my vision darken around the edges, and if this kept up, I wasn’t going to have much left in me.
“I don’t need your help, Mac,” Jenna said, glaring at me as I wrapped my arms around her. I wasn’t quite sure how close I needed to be to her to get my shield to cover her, but I wasn’t taking any chances.
“If you want to walk to that door by yourself, have at it,” I growled, pulling her along with me as a skull struck me in the back of the head hard enough to make me wobble forward. I couldn’t even imagine how it’d have felt without my magic protecting me. Actually, I probably wouldn’t have felt it at all because I’d just be dead. It was a sobering thought.
“Fine,” she snapped. “But don’t think this means I forgive you for getting a girlfriend behind my back.”
“Oka—” the rest of my words were cut off as the mound of bones directly between us and the doorway burst outward like a dynamite blast. The shockwave threw us from our feet, and we smashed into another pile of bones. My vision went hazy as the magical shield around me flickered and died.
“Are you ready?” asked a voice that boomed across the wasteland like a wrestling promoter about to announce the main event. “Because Sepulture is rrrrready to rrrrrumble!”
A skeletal dragon took a step forward out of the slowly dissipating cloud of bones, and as it did, the bone-storm stopped. It stretched its forty-foot tall form in a way that reminded me of a cat as skulls fell from the air and clattered to the ground around us like a macabre xylophone.
“Is that a fucking bone dragon?” Jenna asked, her eyes wide with shock. Her hands shook so hard as she pointed her gun at the creature, I wasn’t sure she’d even be able to hit it.
“I think you’re going to need a bigger gun,” I said, getting to my feet and grabbing a femur from something that had once been huge. It seemed like such an inadequate weapon, I nearly dropped it in disgust, but then again, Luke had used bones to defeat the rancor. I just needed to wait until it stepped under a heavy gate.
The dragon snorted a gout of blue flame and bent its monstrous head toward us. “You smell like you’ll make a fine edition to my garden.”
“Pass,” I said, holding up my fist and calling upon my magic. My tattoos lit up, casting crimson shadows across the ground between us as I got ready to fling Hellfire at the monster.
“Fail,” the dragon replied, opening its toothy maw and inhaling. My vision went spotty as something inside me snapped and broke. My magic came rushing out of me, slipping through my blackened fingers like sand and heading toward the creature’s waiting mouth.
The beast slurped up my power like it was eating spaghetti, and as it did, I stumbled and fell to my knees. I managed to catch myself with my hands before I crashed face first into the ground, but it was a near thing. My stomach lurched into my throat as nausea overtook me. Everything inside my belly came rushing out in a torrent that left me dry heaving on the dirt wracked by shivers.
The dragon took another step toward us, and as everything faded to inky blackness, I tried to raise my right arm to defend myself. There was just one problem with that. My tattoos and black skin were gone. My arm was completely normal.
Chapter 12
Something warm and gooey splashed across my face. As my eyes fluttered open, I found myself staring into the enormous Nurse Ratchet bosom of the nun looming over me. She grinned at me, revealing a mouth full of sharpened teeth and the ragged edges of her tongue before pursing her lips and allowing a gob of saliva to fall and splatter on my cheek.
“Mm ungh, nur,” she said, sucking on her thumb before reaching out and shoving it into my ear. She cackled ominously as I tried to throttle her, but it was no use, the leather straps holding me down on the cold metal table were too tight and too strong for my struggles to do any good.
“Mac, are you awake?” Jenna called from a few feet away, and as I tried to turn and loo
k in the direction of her voice, I found I could barely move my head. Something was keeping my head pointed toward the ceiling so all I could make out were the gray stone slabs overhead.
“I guess you could call my current state awake, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to wake up any second and find myself in my bed,” I said, staring up at orange flames dancing across the ceiling and casting flickering shadows about the room and tried not to panic. I wasn’t sure where we were, but one thing was certain. Wherever it was, we were trapped here, and that did not bode well.
The nun moved away so I could just barely see her out of the corner of my eyes if I strained enough. She plopped down in a pink beach chair in the corner before propping her bare feet up on my knees and pulling out a book with a cover I couldn’t discern. Well, it was just as well, knowing what she read wouldn’t help me in the slightest.
I had no idea how I’d gotten here following the rise of the bone dragon, nor where I was. Part of me wondered if I was still in Hell. If I was, would that be a positive or negative situation? I shook the thought away, it didn’t matter. What mattered was getting out. Fortunately, I had magic for that.
“Resero,” I whispered, calling upon my power, and as the word left my mouth, dynamite exploded inside my brain. My vision swam as I struggled to suck in a breath that hit my lungs like battery acid.
“Mac, are you okay?” Jenna called, and I could barely hear her because it felt like someone had jammed a twelve-inch hunting knife into each of my temples. Warm, sticky fluid began to drip down my face. Was I bleeding or was the nun dropping loogies on me again?
“Shng nug, hthy,” the nun clucked, glancing at me from over the top of her book. Then she licked her finger and turned the page. Well, unless she had magic spitting powers that meant blood was dripping down my face. That always boded well.
“Something’s wrong. I can’t use my magic,” I whispered. The words tore out of me like shrapnel and broken glass.
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