Not My Apocalypse

by Devin Harnois

  Odin nodded. “I marked your fighting well. You have little skill, but much heart.”

  “Um… thanks, I guess.” I rested my hand against the sword, the better to feel the hum of power.

  “I have heard that you spent time in the realm of Hades by choice,” Odin said.

  I wondered about the sudden change in topic. “Yeah. Persephone wanted some company, so I went to hang out with her.”

  “And you are the son of an underworld deity, though you are also half mortal. Do you have no fear of the dark realms or of the dead?”

  I shook my head. “No, not really.”

  “Then may I ask of you one small favor?”

  “It depends on what the favor is.” I knew better than to just say yes to a god.

  “I want you to take a message to my son Baldur in the realm of Hel. I am not welcome there myself and would not risk the goddess’s anger,” he said.

  “Oh, but you want me to risk her anger?” He couldn’t fucking butter me up to get me to risk my ass for him.

  “Your visit could not anger her as much as mine, and Baldur will not let you come to any harm. I only want you to deliver a letter to him. I have not seen my beloved son since his death many ages ago.”

  For a second I got super fucking jealous. Here was a father who loved his son and missed him. Even if he was a half-assed dad to Stefan, he did at least seem to care about him. When Stefan pissed him off, he gave him a lecture. That was sure the fuck better than the beatings my father gave me. I looked up at Odin. “This isn’t a trick or something, is it?”

  He gave me a look with his one good eye and it was hard to keep my gaze on him. “You have my oath there is no trickery in this. Only a simple letter.” He reached into his vest and pulled out a wax-sealed letter. “Deliver it and let him know what events have passed.”

  “How am I supposed to get down there to deliver the message?” I asked, and as I said it I realized going to Hel was a fantastic way to stay one step ahead of my father. Yes, it made me feel like a coward, but the weak part of me didn’t want to face another beating.

  “I can bring you as far as the gateway, but you will have to travel through the realm on your own.”

  “Travel? This is starting to sound like a lot more than a simple favor.” This was suspiciously starting to sound like some kind of quest.

  “You should not have to go far. Someone will notice you. You have an affinity for the dead, and if you speak with them they will be able to take you to Hel’s hall in a short time.”

  I tried to push back my anger and remind myself that the longer I stayed down there the longer I could stay hidden from my father. He’d find out eventually, the way he’d found out I was in Hades, but that would take at least a few days, unless someone told him where I was. None of my friends would tell, and I highly doubted Odin or the other Norse gods would tell since I was doing Odin a favor. So this might buy me a few hours, even a few days of peace. I gestured to Excalibur. “Can I take this with me or will she think it’s an act of aggression?”

  “So long as you do not draw it, she will not consider it a threat. Hel fears nothing in her realm. My son will be with her in her hall. Give him the letter and he will send you back to Midgard.”

  I nodded and tucked the letter into my pocket. “So I’m doing this alone?”

  As my friends protested, Odin said, “It would be best if you did.”

  “Yeah, I figured that.” Despite Odin’s assurances, I knew this was risky and I didn’t want to put my friends in danger. This was an errand, not the end of the world. “Fine, I’ll do it.” It couldn’t be much worse than Hades, and that hadn’t seemed bad to me. Everyone talked about how terrible it was down there, but it was better than home. The Greek gods were afraid of Hades the way the Norse gods seemed to be afraid of Hel. Well, at least they were very wary of it. I’d gone to Hades and remained unharmed; I could do the same in Hel.

  I talked to Stefan, Emily and Elliot and told them to go check on Colin and let him know what I was doing. They tried to argue me out of it, but I assured them it was fine. I’d treated Hades like it was a fucking vacation. The worlds of the dead didn’t bother me. They reluctantly left me there and before I went back to Odin, I took a moment to peek through Mew-Mew’s eyes. I’d left him back at the cemetery and wanted to make sure he was okay. He was taking one of the Paths. I could tell because of the blurry, surreal quality of what I was seeing. The Paths go between places and worlds, and they’re not quite real. I ducked back out because looking for too long would give me a headache.

  We got Fenrir tied back up, I told him. I’m going to Hel as a favor for Odin.

  I’m safe. See you soon. It was uncharacteristically abrupt for him, but since he was on the Paths, our connection was a little fuzzy. He was safe and knew where I was going, and that’s what mattered.

  Odin took me to the edge of Asgard, into a building that looked like a shed or a storehouse of some kind. Inside was a stairway leading down, and Odin carried a torch to light our way. The stairs went down and down for a long time. “Does this go all the way down to Hel?” I asked him.

  “It goes down to a doorway, and once we are through that doorway we will be right outside the gates of Hel’s realm.” He kept leading the way, darkness thick around us. It was a long way down, but not as long as I feared it might be. Just like he said, at the end of the stairway was a door. It was locked and he produced a key to unlock it. The torch wavered so much when he opened the door I thought it would go out, but the tiny flicker that was left steadied and after a moment it grew back to full strength. He stepped through and I followed him.

  On the other side of the doorway it was chilly and dark, but not as dark as the stairway had been. My eyes adjusted quickly to the gloom and I saw ahead of us a huge gateway. All around us was dark rock like we were in a huge cavern. Fog rolled across the ground and gathered around our feet. It was like the scene of a fucking horror movie in here.

  “Go through the gate. It isn’t locked and this is as far as I can go,” Odin said.

  Okay, so I admit I was a little nervous to walk to that gate alone and push it open. I blame it on watching too much horror. The gate silently slid open a few feet. I glanced back once at Odin who stood there waiting with the torch, then I turned and stepped into Hel, closing the door behind me.

  Chapter 10

  Last year I went to Hell for the first time. After dear ol’ Dad beat me for running away yet again, he decided to take me on a little field trip down to his realm. Like fucking take-your-kid-to-work day. Hell was bright and hot, just like you’d expect. The tortured souls screaming make this really fucked up background noise that I sometimes still think about late at night. Satan dragged me around, showing me these poor people getting tortured, and he kept talking about Hell like it was the best thing ever.

  I remember at one point asking him if he ever missed Heaven and he gave me this look that probably would’ve melted anybody else. I was always too smart for my own good, and I saw right through him talking up Hell. He was trying to convince himself. There’s a lot of bullshit around about Hell and Satan and stuff that people just made up or heard wrong, but the rebellion thing is true. It’s the only thing I actually understand about my father. “Better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven.” He didn’t really say that, but he could have.

  When we were walking around Hell it was the only time we actually talked, like a real conversation instead of a fight. He told me the story of the rebellion and the Fall were real, that he and the other fallen angels defied Jehovah and tried to take over Heaven. He thought he deserved to be worshipped, that he should rule Earth. It was all about power, he was fucking obsessed with it.

  He showed me his real face. Not the demon face he usually wears in Hell or the human disguises he uses on Earth, but the face he was created with. An angel’s face. I hate to say it, but his real face is beautiful, so beautiful that if you ever saw it you’d know he wasn’t human. He looks perfect, except
for his eyes. They’re full of hatred and bitter anger.

  Ever since then I’ve thought about my own anger, and my stomach twists into a little ball at the thought that I’m like my father. No question where I got all the anger and rebelliousness from. But there’s one big difference between us, and it’s the thing that makes me feel better about myself. Satan is so angry and hates Jehovah so much that he’s willing to bring down all of creation with him. Nothing matters but getting his revenge and taking power. I’m not like that. I’ve got a list of issues a fucking mile long, but I’m not going to make everyone and everything suffer for it.

  My dad’s Hell is all fire and screaming and demons laughing. Hel’s realm is quiet, with dim lighting and cool air. Through the fog I could just make out a path, so I followed it. For a while all I heard was the sound of my feet hitting the ground and my breathing. Then I started hearing soft sounds, like the gentle rustle of fabric and faint whispering. I kept looking around me, but all I could see was rocky ground that disappeared into the darkness. The whispering and rustling got louder and when I scanned the area again, I came face-to-face with one of the dead. I gasped and jumped backward.

  “If you fear the dead, you should not have come here,” she said.

  “I’m not afraid of you, you just startled me,” I said. “If you’d been a cute puppy, I would’ve had the same fucking reaction.”

  “Oh, of course.” She gave me a smile that said she didn’t believe me at all.

  “Look, I hang out in cemeteries and I talk to the dead all the time. I spent a month in Hades and it was a fucking vacation.”

  Her smug little smile faded into a curious expression. “Hades?”

  “Yeah. Greek underworld, supposed to be just as scary as this place.” It was possible she didn’t know about it. The gods all knew about each other, at least in a broad sense, but not all the dead did, especially if they’d died long ago.

  “I know the realm you speak of. Are you a Greek hero then?” Her slightly see-through body got more and more solid until she looked like a recently dead corpse. It wasn’t pretty, but it wasn’t awful either.

  I couldn’t help laughing. “No, no. I was just visiting. I’m not Greek. Can’t you tell what I am?” All the other dead I’d met in cemeteries had at least been able to sense what I was, enough that they were wary of me and thought I would hurt them or something. This ghost wasn’t afraid of me at all. Maybe because she was already in the land of the dead instead of on Earth?

  “I know you’re not entirely human, and you’re not dead, but I don’t know what you actually are.”

  I suppose it was best to get it over with and just tell her and get ready to explain myself yet again. “I’m Lucifer’s son.”

  “The adversary of the Christian god?” she asked, looking more curious but not afraid. It was nice for a change, but maybe she just didn’t believe me.

  “Yeah. Destined to bring about the end of the world and rule in the name of my father, blah blah blah,” I said. I was tired of saying this over and over. “But I don’t want to. I’m not going to rule the world, or end the world, or do anything he wants me to do.” I sighed. “Anyway, that’s not what I’m here for. I’m here to see Hel. I have—” I stopped myself before I could admit I was carrying a letter from Odin. He’d said he wasn’t welcome here. “I want to talk to her. I’m not here to cause any trouble or anything. I just want to see her, that’s all. Can you take me to her?”

  The dead woman gave me a skeptical look, but she nodded. “I would have taken you to her, whether you wanted to see her or not. You are trespassing in her realm and must answer for yourself.”

  “Great,” I muttered. Had Odin fucking gotten me into trouble after I’d saved his ass?

  The dead woman whistled and two ghostly horses appeared out of the darkness. I thought it was really fucking cool and it made me smile. “We’re riding ghost horses to see Hel?”

  The dead woman gave me another confused look. I’d confused and surprised her an awful lot in such a short time. “You sound excited.”

  “I am. Riding a ghost horse through Hel? That’s just awesome.” I went up to the horse. Would he be able to hear me the way some horses on Earth did, or would he not understand me, like the sun horse? “Hello. Can you understand me?”

  The ghost horse took a half step back. “Yes, I can.” He sounded surprised. Surprising ghosts and ghost horses was way better than scaring them.

  “Great. You aren’t going to try to throw me off or anything, are you? I just want to go see Hel and talk to her,” I said.

  “I will give you a smooth ride,” the horse assured me. “I am charged with bringing you to Hel’s hall with the speed of the wind so she may speak to you who are trespassing.”

  “Cool. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to walk all the way there.” I didn’t even want to think of how long that would’ve taken. I went up to the horse and realized a problem. “Uh… do you have a saddle or anything? I don’t really know how to ride bareback.” And I didn’t want to repeat the embarrassment of falling off like I had with the sun horse. Especially not if he was running like the wind. That would fucking hurt.

  “I can accommodate you.” The ghost horse tossed his head, and a saddle and bridle appeared. The dead woman mounted her horse smoothly, hand tangling in the mane for a grip.

  “Thanks,” I told the ghost horse. I almost went on the wrong side but remembered you were always supposed to mount a horse from the left. He was a little tall so I had to hop up and sort of climb, but I made it up without embarrassing myself too much. I held the reins tight. The dead woman moved up next to me.

  “Ready?”

  “Yeah.”

  With a shout she urged her horse forward. My horse followed with no such encouragement. He wasn’t kidding when he said he’d get me there with the speed of the wind. Everything around us became a blur and I couldn’t decide if I was terrified or thrilled. I settled on being both at the same time. The blur changed color a few times as we moved over different terrain. The only things I could see were the horse below me and the ghost woman riding her horse just in front of me. The horses slowed, then stopped. We stood in front of a huge hall lit by torches burning with white fire. “The hall of my mistress,” the horse said.

  I slid from his back and stared up at the huge building. It was kinda intimidating. I checked to make sure I still had Odin’s letter in my pocket and thanked the ghost horse for giving me a ride. The dead woman slid off her own horse.

  “I will escort you inside.” The horses stood between me and the rest of the gloomy realm and the dead woman stood in front of me. It was like they expected me to try to run away. I followed the dead woman inside, the huge doors as tall as the gateway to this place had been. Inside, the dead were all over, in varying states of visibility and in varying states of decay. We passed by them, heading straight down the center of the building. Through two more doors almost as big as the entrance was and then the dead woman stopped before another door. “Wait here while I announce you.” She slipped inside.

  Announce me, huh? That made me feel important, like I was a foreign diplomat or something. Then I remembered my mom explaining to me over and over again that my destiny was to rule the world, all the nations and all the people, and wouldn’t it be glorious? No, I didn’t want to rule the world, or to be president, or even to be a diplomat. I didn’t want to be any kind of politician. I frowned as I waited. The ghost woman came out and told me Hel would see me now.

  I entered the receiving room. Hel sat on a throne on an elevated platform with the bad side of her face turned toward me. Her face was rotted, flesh missing, her eye glazed over, her hair in scraggly clumps, her teeth showing in spots through her cheek. It was a very deliberate posture, yet another scare tactic. Showing me her bad side first was supposed to scare me. It didn’t work. I went up close to the throne and gave her a little bow. Respectful, but not too respectful.

  “Greetings, son of Lucifer. What business do you have
in my realm?”

  “I have a letter for Baldur. I just want to give it to him.” I was worried this errand might get me in trouble. I resisted the urge to touch Excalibur for comfort, since she might think that was an act of aggression.

  “You came all the way to my realm and risked its terrors to deliver a letter?” She still kept her rotted side toward me and leered.

  “Uh, it wasn’t that scary. I like ghosts, and the ghost horses were even cooler.”

  She eased back in her throne just a little. “I heard you were a brave one, but I wanted to see for myself. A parent does not always breed true, and the child can be quite different.”

  Oh, how I fucking hoped that was true. “Lucifer is my father but that doesn’t mean I’m like him.”

  “You have the same boldness.”

  “But I’m not an asshole.”

  Her rotted lips curled in a smile and she turned to face me full-on. Really, seeing both sides of her face was worse—the other side of her face was unmarked, young, and even beautiful. She sort of looked like a girl version of Two-Face from Batman. “Who sent you down here, bold little half-blood?”

  I didn’t know if I should lie or not, but since she’d just compared me to my father, I went for honesty just to be contrary. “Odin. He swore an oath to me that the letter was nothing more than a letter and that he simply wanted to communicate with his son.”

  “You imprisoned my brother for a second time and then come to my realm on a mission from Odin?” She looked guarded, but not yet angry, so I hoped that was a good sign. I forgot about Fenrir being her brother. Oops.

  “Sorry about that, but if he had stayed loose he would have eaten Odin, and that leads to the end of the world. I don’t want the world to end. It’s nothing personal.”