And in 2010, the Door to Hell was permanently closed, and the flames were extinguished… by the Turkmenistan government.
No legend is not without its grains of truth. This one, in fact, was once a doorway to hell, but whatever came through it had escaped centuries ago, and the last escapee had closed the doorway behind them—whenever that was. Now the flames are nothing more than a remnant of its eerie history. And while the gate was officially closed in 2010, it was not without some behind-the-scenes influence of one particularly eerie god, Vincent Blackwell.
Regardless of all that, that wasn’t where Mea was going. Her destination was about three hundred miles north-by-northwest of the crater. Although, as she flew high above and over it, the memories of it crept into her head, and chills ran up her spine and shivered over her shoulders.
The night was clear but dark, and Mea was able to blend in with the rest of the gorgeous stars that were shining from above. While she felt alone, right now she had them (the stars) to keep her company. For the moment, that was enough. Far away and above civilization and life, she gazed down through shallow clouds dangling above the lifeless desert. It’s still more alive than the deserts in hell, she thought. And soaring above the Gobi Desert, just north of the Chinese border and inside Mongolia, Mea was following a feeling she had.
She found it. Far below her, a circle of cracked sand, different and darker than the desert surrounding it, caught her eye. The purple-blackish aura glowed; its pulsing light shining through the cracks and provided further evidence. Another gateway. And as she glided over the subtle winds and circled around, she saw the cracked dirt and crevices light up in more pulsing lights, this time bright-orange ones. The lights continued flashing in slow, steady pulses, and her suspicions were all but confirmed.
But she was still high, and the desert was far below her. Gliding over her angelic wings and through the thin fog of an overhanging cloud, from the ground, she looked no different than any other star in the sky. But after a final up-and-down double-thrust, Mea pulled her wings tightly against her back and was blasting towards the earth, towards her target—her bullseye, and just like the stars in the sky, she looked identical to a shooting star crashing towards earth.
Shooting downwards, face first and like a suicidal astronaut, the plummet and gravity was making Mea heat up something fierce. She was going to need to slow her decent. She did. Using her wings like a parachute, they shot out wide and white above her and yanked her into a floating pause. Then after another thrust, she was back to plummeting, but she seemed unconcerned, and the look in her eyes was hard-boiled.
Smashing feet-first into the flashing patch of cracked desert, Mea came crashing through the cracked dirt and sent the frail ceiling of sand and dirt crumbling down around her. Now using her wings like an umbrella, they draped over her head like a giant white canopy while the clumps of dirt bounced her snowy wings.
The crumbling desert sounded like a rockslide as it fell and as the crumbled ceiling of dirt broke apart around her while other clumps deflected off her wings. When it finally stopped, Mea wings flared out and shook off the dirt, and they were suddenly as clean as they day she got them.
Mea took in her surrounding, finding herself standing within a sinkhole that was the size of a stadium. The walls were as tall as buildings and surrounded her. In front of her was the main attraction, a pool of scorching lava that was the size of a baseball diamond. Bubbling slowly, the heat rising from pit distorted the air above it and warped her vision, blurring everything above the lava pit. The scalding yellow-orange syrup inside it was bubbled and slowly boiling over and on itself. It didn’t matter. Mea didn’t need 20/20 vision to know that she was in the right place or to see that she had company.
Boy, I wish I would have had one of Fenrir’s scouts, she thought. Then maybe I would’ve seen this coming. “Dammit,” she huffed then shook her head.
Just behind the pit of lava was a horde of banshees, and more were arriving with each passing second. Handfuls of banshees were climbing out of the ungodly hot lava, like it was nothing more than a swimming pool. Mea watched as the lava dripped off the banshees’ pale skin and off their tattered black dresses. She watched them as they shook their heads back and forth, shaking out even more lava. With each whip of their hair, they flicked off more flaming droplets of lava sizzled as they splashed against the brown dirt and rocks that surrounded them. Then, as casual as can be, the newly emerged banshees walked over and joined the already large army of banshees that was standing by. With a smile, they fell into formation with the rest of the banshees.
Mea watched them curiously then shook her head. Her wings folded against her back, transmuted into her white satin cloak, then disappeared into her shoulder blades. Looking down at the dual blades strapped to her thigh, she lingered for a moment. I was hoping that I wouldn’t need to use these. She sighed, unsheathed them, and gave spun them around her—wickedly and expertly. Looking over the army of banshees, she tried to get a rough estimate of them. How many were there? She wasn’t sure but decided on a number that seemed reasonable… a lot, there were a lot of them.
I can do this, she told herself. I once killed three-hundred outcasts—by myself, and that was before I even knew what I was doing. This should be easy, right? Nearly three-hundred dead outcasts… and three humans, that’s my body-count, Mea reflected. That’s a lot of blood on my hands, she realized, the thought making her sick. No, I’m not a killer, she tried to convince herself, lying to herself, and I won’t become one. And her blades hung a little lower and limper. “I don’t want to do this,” she told them, the banshees. “I know that you think that you have to do this… that I’m your enemy, but I’m not. I don’t have to be, and you don’t have to do this. Whatever Lilith—Lilly—promised you, it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to do this. We can… we can figure something else out.” That was almost the same thing she said to Lilly… before she had to chop off her arm, and before Lilly left her poisoned and pinned to a wall. And Mea waited for an answer.
The pale-skinned, skinny banshees looked at the ground, wiggled their toes around, and grinned innocently enough at them. Then they raised their heads and same Mea a sad, sorrowful half-smile—all of them did, with the same exact smile. For just as second, they reminded Mea of the way Anna used to look at her, before all this.
The banshees looked down at their wiggling their toes again and giggled. Looking up again, they started to look around and then at each other. All of them started rubbing their chins—like they were really thinking over Mea’s offer. Then they all started to look sad—very sad, and their faces puckered up like they were about to cry.
“What is it?” asked Mea. “What’s wrong? What is it that you want?”
“Vengeance,” they all echoed. Barefooted, they all dashed forward. Their faces became hollow, ghostly versions of what they were. Their thin, pale hands reached out in front of them and lengthened. Their fingers stretched out and became long pale knives.
Looping around the lava pit, they were quite quick—bobbing around on their tiny feet in choppy steps, but Mea still had a little time to get ready for them, to prepare her defenses. As for the banshees that she just realized were behind her… not so much.
Backstabbers always go first, she told herself and spun around, her swords wind milling around with her. But before she could even finishing turning, they were on already on her. Some of the banshees were leapt onto the cavern walls and shooting off the walls and at Mea—already catapulting towards her. Others were cat-like and were bouncing around on all fours, bobbing around to Mea’s side before attacking. The closest ones were already swiping at her with their pale, bladed fingers.
As one banshee slashed through Mea’s armored shoulder and sent her spinning around, she turned into the skid and went with it, spinning around wildly while her other blade sliced through a different banshee. Spinning further, Mea’s wings shot out of her back and sliced through the first attacker. Another banshee came chargin
g at her, already swinging at her, and Mea leaned back to dodge it while taking a quick swipe of her own, her sword taking off her attacker’s arm at the elbow. Mea followed up with quick stab and an upward cut from her other sword, and the banshee was split from torso to shoulder.
It was strange. After it tumbling through the air, when it hit the dirt, banshee’s severed arm dissolved into a puff of while smoke while the rest of her attacker, the banshee she just split out, shattered like glass.
The banshees kept coming. And in a flurry of side-steps and slashes, Mea was able to hold her own. She spun around again, and used her wings like two oversized buzz saws, she sliced through a gang of five, splitting them and sending them shattering. Then whipping her giant, white wings in front of her (like a shield), the wall of angel feathers flashed open and exploded like a claymore—blasting out a flurry of crystal shards any-and-everywhere around her. The crystal shards did the rest and burst through attacking banshees’ chests—shattering them instantly, and then the shards did the same thing to the banshees behind them. Mea was momentarily surprised that she wasn’t currently being attacked and realized that she had thinned out the crowd a little.
She was already breathing heavy and bleeding. Mea glanced down at her wounded shoulder—it was slashed, a deep slash. The left side of her ribs were spotted with red stab wounds—small ones, but there were a lot of them. She looked back over at the lava pit and saw more banshees emerging from it. And around the lava pit, even more banshees—the army of banshees she saw in the beginning—had just rounded the lava pit and were charging her, hard.
From Mea’s point of view, the charging banshee horde looked more like a ghastly mob of football players. And they were all charging her. She huffed. More of them, really? Shaking her head she took a deep breath. Her wings swept in front of her, and then grunting, her wings fanned open and unleashed another barrage of crystal shards. And those did the same thing the first ones had done and shot through the banshee horde—shattering a large chunk of them before the crystal shards burst into flashes of light.
Mea received some strange, unexpected help. Out of nowhere, out of the lava pit, a giant paw shot out of it then came crashing down, crushing another bundle of banshees. The giant paw lifted up again then came slapping down again and crushing a few more banshees. Then, like a cat slapping a ball, the giant paw came sweeping across the pit; its claws sliced through some banshees and batted some other away—flinging them into the dry, cracked walls of the sunken pit.
Mea was more than a little puzzled from the giant paw, but she still didn’t have time to think about it. The remaining banshees were still rushing her. Mea slowly crept backwards, until her back was almost against the wall. Then she was ready and made easy work of her attackers, the ones that still had some fight left in them.
Now she was breathing even heavier, bleeding some more, and had a few more scratched on her armor. She scanned over the crowd again. A lot less than last time, twenty-maybe-thirty of them left. She noticed something else, they weren’t attacking. Though their claws were still out, the banshees were hesitating. The giant paw, the one that shot out of the lava and helped her, was gone as well—sinking back into the lava pit of hell from which it came.
I’ll deal with that later, Mea told herself, but what am I going to do with these, these… women? Banshees were women once. Spurned and scorned throughout history and from unspeakable and sickening atrocities, they’d become angry, spiteful, and lusted for vengeance. Still, if anyone deserved vengeance, these women did; and Mea knew that. But not like this, she hoped. Still sizing them up and measuring them with her blades, she tried to catch her breath while thinking. Kill them, her gut told her, before they kill you. Instead Mea said, “Your word. Give me your word that you will not kill anyone, anymore—promise me that you are done killing… and you can go free.”
And two banshees screeched and charged her. Mea shook her head, ducked, sliced through the first one. Then spinning around the second one, a hard front kick sent the other ambitious banshee flailing through the air, right back the way she came. Now Mea was breathing even heavier than just a moment ago, and talking remained difficult. She shrugged at the banshees. “Really?” Frustrated, Mea huffed and started squirming around, and the whole thing was started to feel stupid. Just surrender, she thought, surrender or just give me your word. It’s not that hard. “Your word… Give me your word that you’re done killing… and you can go free. That’s it. It’s that easy… or you can stay and die.”
The remaining banshees looked around and at each other for answers. Uncertain at first, they all began shrugging and then nodded at one another. Their sharpened fingers shrank and returned to normal, and they started to look almost human again. They stepped in front of Mea, twenty-three in all, and nodded apologetically.
They spoke together—together in a strange, repeating, almost-echoing fashion. They said, “Yes-yes. No killing-yes, no killing-killing. Our word, yes-our word-you have our word-our word.”
While Mea questioned her decision to let them go, she didn’t want to kill them. I’m not a killer. And she had little reason to think that they were lying to her, even if it meant their lives. As far as Mea could tell, the gods and any of the other supernatural beings were fairly good at keeping their word and their promises—at least a lot better than humans were. Then Mea remembered something, Vincent’s gone; he might be dead. “What happened at the stone tower? Where’s Vincent Blackwell, the Dark One.”
Again the banshees answered in their echoing fashion. “Lilly-Lilly came. She came—she took over-took over. She fed us-fed us. She fed us.”
Mea looked over the banshees again. She studied tattered black dresses that they were wearing, and Mea was beginning to understand. The banshees fed on the monsters in the stone tower, and now… Now they were more flesh than ghosts, but they also more monster than human. Mea asked, “What happened to Vincent, Vincent Blackwell?”
One-by-one, each of the banshees looked at each other before finally turning back to Mea and answering her together while speaking in their strange, staggered fashion. “Him-him, the Dark One-Dark One? She killed him-she fed on him-drained him. She drained him. But he is not dead-not dead—he is not dead. Not alive—no, not alive either. Not dead—dead. Different-not alive, but different-he’s different.” The looked around at each other—looks of uncertainty—then looked back at Mea. “Lilly-Lilly, she doesn’t know-doesn’t know. Doesn’t know that he’s alive—alive—that he’s alive. The Dark One—the Dark One, she doesn’t know-maybe she doesn’t know—know that he’s alive-alive.”
Mea nodded. There’s still hope, she thought and smiled subtly. She wasn’t sure what they meant, not exactly, but that was another issue that would have to wait. “And Lilly? Where’s she?”
Once again the banshees looked at each other then followed their same routine. “Lilly-Lilith? The Queen of Sorrows-Sorrows? She only has one arm-the one arm. You took it-her arm. And now she only has the one arm-the one arm. So she—she went out, to find a new one—a new one-an arm—find a new arm. She needs an arm—a new arm.”
Mea dipped her head and couldn’t help but to smile. While the banshees’ answer was funny enough, Mea couldn’t help but to take some joy in Lilly’s pain. She deserved it. “Alright,” Mea said, “go on. Get out here. And don’t forget what you promised. No killing, right?”
“We-we won’t forget-forget. We remember-member. We will remember. No killing-no more killing—we won’t kill—not anyone—won’t kill anyone—don’t want to kill—no one—anyone.”
“Alright, go on.” Mea jabbed her head to side, gesturing for banshees to leave. Momentarily suspicious, the banshees looked at each other then turned to Mea and nodded respectfully. Then quick as a kitten, they scampered over to wall, scurried up it, and then leap out of the pit and into the desert. Although they were now out of sight, Mea could still hear them, hear the faint thumping of their bare feet on the dry desert dirt as they scampered away.
/> Mea sighed and caught her breath. Examining herself, her slash in her armored-shoulder was already healing and was half-as-deep and half-as-wide as it was just moments ago. The few cuts that she had—the hole in her forearm, the slash across her thigh, the scattered holes in her rips, the three slashes across her left-hip—were already feeling better and half-healed. Mea could see the redness of her wounds and trickling blood from them already returning to her, soaking into and disappearing into her armor. Examining her swords, there were a few nicks and notches in the blades. Sulking for a moment, the image of her swords reminded her of her time in the Valley of Forgotten Gods—and when she saw the statue of her dead body. Shaking off the thought and sliding the edges of her blades across each other—to keep them sharp and smooth out the notches, she gave them another look and smile. They looked almost-new once again, and so did she.
Finally able to sheathe her swords again, she did so. Then sighing and looking down at the pit of lava—the gateway to hell, she said, “Five down and two to go.” And as she spoke, the air grew cold, and her hot, heavy breaths were followed puffs of steam.
“Two to go?” asked a soft and sensual voice from within the lava. “Two doors to close, to those that know.”
And as the lava stirred, the source of the voice appeared. The giant cat’s paw slapped out of the lava pit, again. Only this time, another one appeared. The beast’s claws slid out of the ends of it paws, and Mea could see that it—whatever it was—was pulling itself out of the lava. Dripping with fiery liquid, again as if it were water, the giant beast was climbing out of hell. Mea hoped that she wouldn’t have to kill it.
The Awakening of the Gods (Forgotten Ones) Page 16