by Celia Kyle
Keller screeched in pain and grabbed at Reggie with his other arm. He wrapped it around Reggie’s neck and twisted. Keller shifted and transformed in the middle of the motion. His muscles bulged and fur sprouted while he shifted into his hybrid wolf form. It gave him the immense strength of a feral werewolf and he…
He snapped Reggie’s neck. The pain of that loss stabbed me, piercing my heart.
My hellhound’s body hit the ground and burst into flames, his physical form fading from the mortal plane. His absence hurt, but I consoled myself with one truth. Reggie wasn’t dead, he’d merely been sent home. He was in Hell.
Where I might end up soon if I couldn’t stop Keller.
I aimed the reloaded shotgun at him and opened fire. He didn’t try to lift his shield this time. He rushed me, taking a shotgun blast to his shoulder. Blood sprayed from the wound, but now that Keller was shifted, he wouldn’t feel the pain.
Keller slammed through the wall, ripping out a huge swath of sheet rock and electrical wiring as he tackled me. The wind rushed from my lungs as I fell and I was pinned beneath Keller’s massive bulk.
I reached for my wolf, desperate to tap into the feral strength that’d helped me overcome my phantom wound in the past, but… I was too far-gone now to reach that part of myself. My wolf wouldn’t answer and that filled me with more helpless despair than anything else had these past horrible days.
Keller wrapped a claw around my throat. He couldn’t kill me directly, not until he was sure his magic had overtaken my body. All he needed to do was beat me unconscious. Then he’d finish the ritual that would sever my ties to the powers of Hell. It would free my soul to be absorbed by him. Or he could simply pull the athame from my belt and kill me with that.
Pretty much the same result.
And in that moment, I recognized the answer to my problems. Keller wanted to cut my ties to Hell and Uncle Luc. I wanted to sever Keller’s ties to my soul with his magic.
I didn’t have the skill to fine-tune the spells on the athame to do one or the other... but fuck it, I’d do both.
I pulled the athame from my belt and channeled raw hellfire into the blade, charging it with energy. It still held Keller’s spirit magic, but it now had my unholy power as well. Blood red runes lit up across the surface and the dark flames of my hellfire outlined each one, melding the magics. The power would sever me from all ties, leaving me adrift in a place between realms. I wouldn’t go to On High or be dragged to Hell. I wouldn’t even wander the tween as a ghost.
I’d be gone. Lost in purgatory. An eternal emptiness with no escape.
I’d choose that over being Keller’s slave any day.
I tightened my grip and plunged the dagger into my chest.
It pierced my heart and the pain came first, spreading and stretching across my body. Then came the cold, the icy fingers of death stretching for me, enveloping me in a blanket of numbness.
Then… nothing.
Chapter Nineteen
Huh.
I couldn’t figure out what the big deal was about dying. I mean, there was that bit of pain for a second, but then I simply… stopped existing. It was that moment between awake and asleep. I never remembered that moment when I laid my head down at night, the split-second my body shut off and my brain entered dream-land. Then, the next time my mind rebooted, it was to the screeching alarm clock on my bedside table.
Dying was like that. One second ouch and the next nothing. But this time there would be no alarm clock come morning.
Instead, I took my final breath, eyes fluttering closed as the world disappeared. When I opened them again, I found myself sitting on Papa Leth’s lap while he told me a story from his time during the crusades.
Not grown-up me. Little girl me. Pre-purple hair and kick-ass boots me.
“And the lesson I learned,” Papa Leth bounced me on his knee and stroked my hair, “is that men will always die for their beliefs, but even more importantly, they will kill for them. Even a righteous man who views murder as sin will kill if he feels the cause is just and right. That is what makes belief the most dangerous of weapons.”
Little me frowned, brows pulled together and mouth turned down, and tipped my head back to look up at him. I vaguely remembered this story. I knew I’d heard it before. It was the early fourteen hundreds, more than four hundred years after the First Crusade when Papa Leth had gotten on On High’s good side. This moment was also more than six hundred years before I killed myself in the hospital morgue in Orlando. Which didn’t make any sense.
“Is everything well, Caith?” Papa Leth touched my cheek, the warmth and strength in his hand soothing against my skin.
I leaned against his chest. “I think so, Papa.”
Being here in this moment didn’t make any sense, but my thoughts were cloudy and jumbled. Memories of my long life, and sudden death, sank beneath the waves of my turbulent thoughts. After a moment, I couldn’t even remember why I’d been so confused.
Everything was fine, after all. I was with my Papa, the strongest and fiercest of my five fathers. I was safe.
“Let’s go find your momma, then.” Papa Leth nudged me off his lap and I hopped down to stand on my own two feet. He took my small hand in his, the rough calluses from centuries of sword fighting coarse against my smooth skin. “I’m sure she misses you. She’s been looking forward to your visit.”
“Oh,” I said, full of childhood innocence. “Okay, Papa.”
He led me through the village and off the dirt lane that wove toward the woods, but… we never seemed to arrive. I know I kept walking, one little foot in front of the other, but the world slid away beneath my soles. Awareness seeped in, the knowledge that something wasn’t quite right about this memory making itself known.
Papa Leth had never taken me to visit my mother. He couldn’t because my mother lived in Hell and On High had blessed Papa Leth due to his actions during the Crusades. The only time I saw my mother was when she used her dark magics to claw out of the unending abyss of Hell’s circles. Even then, I was an afterthought. She never put effort into crossing dimensions to see me. I was simply a rest stop when she had other business in the tween.
It was Papa Leth who cared for me every day. As my human father, he was the only one able to raise me as part of human society.
While I logically knew my mother couldn’t be waiting for me, and that Papa Leth had never taken me to visit, she was somehow… there. She stood in the middle of the dirt trail, dressed in a long, black silk dress that fell in sensuous waves from her shoulders to the ground.
It was all wrong.
The cut of the dress, the smartphone in her hand…
Her barely giving me a glance was right on the mark. That was the only normal part of this picture.
“Caith,” she gave me a slight smile. “You’re late for your lessons.”
“What lessons?” I frowned. Papa Leth gave me lessons, no one else.
“Tsk, tsk, Caith Belinha.” —I hate my middle name— “Don’t you ever pay attention. Off with you now.” My mother waved a hand to shoo me away.
I turned to leave, but Papa Leth was no longer at my side. His hand wasn’t cradling mine. Instead, he was off in the distance, standing atop a hill. The sun slowly lowered to the horizon, the mix of sunset’s colors outlining him in nothing more than indistinct shadows. He raised a hand and waved at me before turning and walking away. But…
“Papa!” I broke into a run, pumping my little legs and racing as fast as I could. But I was so slow. I remembered being able to run much faster, racing over the ground in long, loping strides. My legs were longer, not these child’s little stubs. And the hilltop seemed to move farther and farther away.
That didn’t stop me from pushing onward. I would get to my Papa. I would throw my little body at him and he’d catch me like he always did.
Except I tripped and fell to the ground with a soft cry. I caught myself on my hands and the dirt scuffed my palms, scraping away my skin. The p
ain stabbed me, the heels of my hands burning with the wounds. I’d never admit to the hurt though. Warriors didn’t cry. Papa Leth taught me that. I rolled and plopped on my butt in the dirt and rubbed my hands together.
I expected droplets of blood, but there was nothing. The skin was clean and unbroken. Not so much as a scrape or speck of dirt.
I frowned. Again. I was doing a lot of frowning.
Why?
Because things were so confusing.
Why?
Because none of this was right.
Why?
“This isn’t real,” I answered my own question aloud that time.
I closed my eyes and focused, searching for the answer to yet another “why” that swirled in my mind. I was between reals—purgatory. A place where I existed only as thought and spirit. A place where my mind shaped my reality.
I stood and focused on the image of myself as an adult. Bigger feet, longer legs. I wasn’t tall—only 5’4”—but I wasn’t short like my childish self. My hair was dark and streaked with strands of purple. My clothes weren’t roughly woven but comfortably worn leather.
By the time I straightened my legs, I was fully grown. I had my woman’s body back, my palms rough and callused from so many hours swinging a sword. Like Papa Leth.
On some level, I knew these weren’t my hands at all. I didn’t have a body, so I couldn’t have hands. But picturing the familiar body gave me something to ground me, tie me to my spiritual identity. If I lost that, I’d lose me. I’d become nothing more than wisps in the wind, a pocket of cool air in the night breeze. That snap of chilled air that sent a shiver down someone’s spine.
I’d be lost for eternity.
I turned in a slow circle and tried to figure out my next step.
In purgatory.
Biblical lore said this was a place where sinners would be “purified.” A place to ‘work through my darkness’ and earn absolution or some shit.
Yeah, that was for suckers. I wasn’t destined for On High. Never had been, never would be. I was supposed to be someplace else, and I needed to find a way to get there.
Which meant purity was out the window and I needed to get to work on getting damned.
I scanned my surroundings and spotted Papa Leth again. Or I supposed, my mind’s recreation of Papa Leth. He didn’t exist here any more than my mother did. They were projections shaped by memories, but part of me knew there was something more. This version of Papa Leth wasn’t my real father, but there was a reason he had appeared. Him and none of the others. I needed his help.
“Papa Leth!” I jogged toward him. For a few steps, my stride shortened, my spirit body molding to my child’s form as my mind filled with memories of my youth. I raced to Papa Leth and leapt for him, his thickly muscled arms catching me with ease. He hugged me tightly and swung me around with a lighthearted laugh before setting me down.
The moment my feet touched the ground, I was an adult once more, the changes fluid and hardly noticeable now. The transition came with the barest of thoughts, as natural as breathing.
Except I guess I wasn’t breathing anymore.
“I need your help, Papa.”
“I know, but if you want my help, you’re going to have to earn it.”
More frowning and I opened my mouth to ask him what he meant, but a flash of movement in my peripheral vision wrenched my attention from my father. It was a whirl of darkness and I ducked out of instinct. My spirit body didn’t lose its sense of self-preservation.
A massive black scythe sliced through the air where my neck had been mere moments ago. The whistle of the blade-whipping overhead was a high-pitched whine in my ears.
I dropped into a roll and popped to my feet several paces away, putting space between me and my attacker. Unholy fuck, he was big. A massive black-furred demon, its head a bull with glowing red eyes faced me. It was a cross between a classic minotaur and a thelac dem that had crawled right out of one of the circles of Hell. It rushed me, swinging that scythe once more. I backed away and ducked. Then I dodged left and then right to avoid his swings.
I didn’t have a weapon, no katanas or daggers strapped to my body, so as soon as I found an opening I went for it. I avoided the demon minotaur’s next swing and jolted forward to grab the shaft of the scythe. I planted my right foot on the creature’s chest and kicked. It stumbled back as I wrenched the weapon from its grasp. In a practiced whirl, I raised the scythe, posed to decapitate my attacker.
But it vanished. The scythe, not the dem. It disappeared from my grip and suddenly the dem had it once more. Leaving me swinging nothing but air.
“Seriously?” Not cool. That was totally cheating.
I needed a weapon to fight this thing and a hefty wooden club was better than nothing. I darted for the tree line and snatched the biggest fallen branch I could find. The ground vibrated with every one of the minotaur’s pounding steps, his approach easily tracked. When he got close enough, I spun, my grip on the branch firm. I’d hit him and—
The length of wood turned to smoke as I swung, and the demon tackled me, slamming us into the forest floor.
I struggled with the minotaur, kicking and punching the beast while I bucked my hips to throw him off. While I fought, Papa Leth approached, his pace casual and gait smooth as if we were playing in the park.
He looked down at me, his lips curled in a small smile. “You seem to be having trouble.”
“You think?” I grunted and shoved the dem, finally getting my soles planted against the minotaur’s chest. One kick had him launched off me. I jumped to my feet, fists raised, but my opponent was gone.
“Behind you,” Papa Leth’s tone was casual.
I tried to dodge, but the demon rammed into me, slamming me against a tree. The wind rushed from my lungs and my ribs screamed in pain, stealing any thoughts of breathing from my mind.
Papa Leth strolled forward and craned his neck to peek at me over the minotaur’s shoulder. “Does that hurt?”
The minotaur pummeled my chest again and again with his massive fists.
“What the fuck do you think?”
“Why?” Papa Leth wasn’t normally so damn obtuse.
“What?” I ducked the dem’s arm and circled the tree. I threw out a kick when the minotaur got close, but he vanished once more. I spun, searching for the motherfucker.
“Why does it hurt?” Papa Leth’s idiot was implied. He spoke as if I was the dumbass, not him.
“Because getting punched in the ribs hurts.” I explained just as slowly. My asshole was implied too, dammit.
“Didn’t you leave your ribs in the tween?”
I frowned at Papa Leth—So. Much. Frowning. —then got slammed from the side. One of the minotaur’s horns ripped into my side, tearing my skin from hip to underarm, and a gout of blood flowed from me.
I staggered back, blood dripping to the dirt, but the moment it touched the earth, it disappeared.
“It’s like you’re channeling The Matrix,” I muttered. “I can’t hurt. I can’t bleed. Ghosts don’t have blood.”
“You’re not quite a ghost,” Papa Leth’s idiot was implied again. “Just a wandering spirit.”
I wanted to glare at him, but when I’d been alive and an adult, Papa Leth had seen glares as challenges. Involving swords.
Ah, good times.
“Right.” I clenched my fists and stared the minotaur down.
I was sometimes slow on the uptake, but I was coming to understand the rules. Just as my body had shifted from child to adult based on my desires, my wounds and pain were nothing more than projections of my thoughts. The dem’s blows only hurt because I thought they would hurt.
It rushed again, the scythe swinging through the air. I blocked it instinctively and the asshole—the minotaur, not Papa Leth—punched me in the face.
And motherfucker, it hurt.
Apparently knowing the pain was only in my mind didn’t make it easy to believe it was in my mind.
Purgatory suck
ed ass.
I traded a few more blows with the beast and each time his hits connected, it hurt as if it were real. Because in my mind, it was real. I tried to tell myself I was in the spirit realm. I was a spirit. Nothing could hurt me.
But after a lifetime of experiencing pain through blood, sweat, and tears, it was hard to turn that instinct off.
Yes, I was a stubborn bitch just as my fathers always said. The stubborn part. Not the bitch part. Only my mother called me a bitch, but she said it with an emotion that I might call love.
I might not have been able to brush off the idea of pain, but I could do something much easier. I could use a belief I’d honed over six hundred years. I could pull on knowledge that had proven true more often than not.
When it came at me again, I reached over my shoulder just as I had a thousand times before. And like a thousand times before, my fingers wrapped around the leather hilt of my sword. I drew it from its sheath and swung in one smooth movement. The honed edge sliced straight through the minotaur’s neck. The beast’s head toppled from its neck and fell to the ground, rolling until it vanished in a puff of smoke.
I stared at the blade in my hand, remembering when I’d forged the metal in the fires of Hell myself. It hadn’t been strapped to my back a moment ago, but I was so used to carrying it into battle that it had been easy to anticipate its presence.
Of course, as soon as I thought about it, the stupid thing vanished. I squeezed my eyes shut and recalled the sight of it in my hand once again, but it didn’t return. I’d managed to fuck up and doubt its existence and that Helldamned doubt made it impossible to summon.
“Everything about you is shaped by belief,” Papa Leth said with that teaching tone again. “But belief isn’t easily shaped. That’s why it takes centuries, sometimes millennia, to master that control.”
“Right.” I nodded. Papa Leth, or my mind’s recreation of Papa Leth, set me back on the right path.
I knew what I needed to learn; now I just had to figure out how to do that whole mastering thing.