Sparks

by Laura Bickle

  Don’t touch, her instincts warned her. Poison.

  Whether her subconscious meant the water or Charon, Anya obeyed and knit her fingers behind her back. She supervised the remaining newts hopping to shore, taking a head count as they milled around on the bank.

  The newts suddenly stopped, turned. A growling sound issued from the darkness beyond, so low and deep that it rattled pea gravel on the shoreline. Before Anya could react, Sparky lunged toward the sound, teeth bared.

  “Don’t,” Charon gasped, but it was too late.

  A massive black creature roared into view. Three dog-like heads snarled and salivated under lion-like manes. Its body glistened like an oil slick, viscous and glossy. It charged Sparky, lashing a long black tail behind it like a monitor lizard’s. Unlike the ghosts, this creature looked pretty damn solid.

  Anya hurled herself in front of Sparky, skidding on her hands and knees in the gravel. The three-headed creature reared and Anya covered her head with her hands, waiting to feel teeth against her armor.

  “Kerberos.” Charon’s voice sliced the air like the crack of a whip.

  Anya opened one eye over her elbow. The creature sat on its haunches, all three heads turned toward the direction of Charon’s voice. Anya took the opportunity to scramble to her feet and put up her fists.

  “Sorry about that. This is Kerberos.”

  “Of course it is.” Anya blinked at the pony-sized creature. With its jaws closed, the three heads looked much like Labrador retrievers. Anya noticed that the dog heads were wearing collars: a pink one with a dangling rhinestone tag that said Princess; a camouflage collar stenciled with the name Grumpy; a black leather collar that had the word Bashful lettered on it in silver charms. Princess cocked her head, hound dog ears lifted. Bashful was sniffing at Sparky, and Grumpy shoved his head under Charon’s hand. Charon scrubbed Grumpy’s ears and chin, baby-talking to him in something that sounded like Latin, but not quite. A twelve-foot length of broken chain rattled behind Grumpy’s collar.

  Anya retreated to Sparky and the newts, who were still on high alert and milling near the shoreline like trapped lemmings. Sparky snaked around her knees, extended his spade-shaped head to sniff at Bashful’s wet nose. He was rewarded with a lick.

  “Is he… your familiar?” Anya managed, in a small, scraped voice.

  “We’re not joined at the hip, like you and Sparky are. Kerberos is stuck guarding the gate to the Underworld, most of the time. And Kerberos is more of a ‘them’ than a ‘he.’” He paused to examine the broken end of the chain.

  “Hence the collars?”

  “Yeah. After a few thousand years, they sort of develop their own personalities.” The three-headed dog put its paws on Charon’s shoulders. Tail wagging, it slobbered on him with three tongues.

  Sparky and the newts looked askance up at Anya. Anya didn’t know what to do but shrug.

  Charon rubbed the hellhound’s sides, but his fingers came away red with blood. When Anya looked more closely, she could see a long gash extending along the dog’s ribs. It was hard to see the red against the hellhound’s smooth black skin, but she could see it shining a bit darker in places.

  Charon’s eyes darkened to the color of storms. “Who did this to you?”

  Kerberos whimpered and laid down in the gravel, heads snaking and hound-dog ears flopping.

  Charon turned on his heel and stalked down the riverbank. Kerberos trotted behind him. Anya, Sparky, and the newts followed warily in his wake. She wondered how many other pets Charon might have in this place.

  The ferryman stopped a hundred yards distant, at a hole in the earthen wall flanking the sluggish river. The hole was covered by an iron gate speckled with rust and peeling green paint. Plain and unornamented, it was exactly the kind of gate Anya expected to find in a sewer. The gaps in the gate were wide enough to allow water and rats to flow through, but little else. The gate was closed with a chain and an ordinary padlock covered with a scum of duckweed.

  Except for the large tear ripping through the hinges on the left side of the gate. The left panel had been ripped away from the wall, exposing a gap big enough for a person to crawl through.

  Charon stood before the gate, glowering at the hole. Kerberos slunk behind him, its dragon tail tucked between its legs.

  “It’s not your fault,” he muttered, rubbing the nearest pair of black ears. He unhooked the broken chain from Grumpy’s collar and wound it around his wrist.

  “What happened?” Anya asked.

  “I’m guessing that this is Hope’s work, roughing up Kerberos and breaking the gate to the Underworld.”

  Anya blinked. “That’s the gate to the Underworld?” It was so… ordinary. She’d expected the gate to hell to look like one of the elaborately mosaiced Ishtar gates in the museum. Or that Rodin sculpture that was more than twenty feet tall and depicted scenes from Dante’s Inferno. This was just… a pathetic little gate.

  Charon rubbed the bridge of his nose. “It’s one of ’em, anyway. It’s not fancy, but it works.” He kicked at a loosely swinging piece. “Or it did.”

  Charon pulled the piece of bent gate away and stepped through. Kerberos moved to follow him. “Kerberos, stay.”

  The hellhound sat back on its haunches before the gate.

  Charon looked through the bars at Anya and the salamanders. His eyes burned very blue in the darkness beyond, like foxfire. “You coming?”

  “To hell? Yeah, I guess so.”

  Anya shuddered and ducked through the broken gate.

  HELL WASN’T REALLY WHAT ANYA had thought it would be.

  When she stepped over to the other side, she felt a palpable difference in atmosphere. At first, she tried to get her ears to pop, but couldn’t quite get the sense of thick darkness out of her helmet. It felt… gooey, as if the air possessed an extra viscosity as it slithered down her throat and into her lungs. It felt like the mud sticking to her feet, as if the Styx reached far into the tunnel with watery fingers.

  “Ugh,” she muttered. Her mouth tasted like she was chewing on aluminum foil.

  “You get used to it after a while,” Charon said. She couldn’t see him, but his voice sounded close. She didn’t want to ask how long “a while” was for him.

  The salamanders crawled through the bars behind her, crowding behind her legs. Sparky leaned against her, his gill-fronds twitching. They cast a warm amber light that picked out the rough-hewn edges of a tunnel with a low ceiling, so low that it nearly scraped the top of Anya’s helmet when she stood. Charon had his back to her, dark coat melting into the shadows. He gestured with his chin to the tunnel ahead.

  “If I were Hope, I’d be looking for a place to hide Pandora’s Jar.”

  “Hell is a good place.”

  Charon turned and gave her a wry smile. Anya forced herself not to take a step back. His eyes gleamed foxfire blue, an inhuman color in the half-dark. “She’s got to find a way to hide it in your physical world. But that thing acts like a beacon on the spiritual planes. She’s got to put it someplace where she can easily defend it, where few people—or spirits—would be willing to come after it.”

  “Um…” Anya raised her hand. “Question… I can see why Hope wants to hide Pandora’s Jar here… but if this is the classical Underworld… isn’t there a Hades who will mind her encroaching on his territory?”

  Charon pressed his mouth into a grim slash. “The Underworld is a big place. And the gods of the Underworld have a lot of shit to deal with—you’d be amazed at the recordkeeping alone. The actuarial department takes up an area the size of Manhattan. Shit slips by them, every once in a while. And Hope is one of those things.”

  “You’re telling me hell is a slow-moving bureaucracy?”

  “Pretty much. You humans are up to about a hundred and fifty thousand deaths a day. That’s a lot of administrative overhead that doesn’t leave much time for chasing down megalomaniacs hauling around spirit jars.”

  “Do you get overtime?”

  �
��No.” His mouth curled in a half-smile. “But the higher-ups are not happy that Hope is trying to move in on their turf. They weren’t happy with her doing it in the physical world, and if they knew that she’d moved into the Underworld—even this backwater province of it—they’d be furious.”

  Anya crossed her arms. “So… why can’t we let somebody farther up the food chain deal with her?”

  “By the time that happens, she may be strong enough to take over.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Pandora’s Jar is not a toy. It can hold thousands of spirits. She can stake out some substantial real estate in the spirit world, more than most avatars.” Charon smiled mirthlessly. “There’s a lot more at stake here than just you, me, the salamanders, and the museum ghosts.”

  “I don’t—” Anya began, but her attention was arrested by movement at the end of the tunnel. Something flickered in the dark.

  Sparky lowered himself to the ground and hissed, tail lashing. From the corner of her eye, she could see Charon unwinding the chain around his knuckles. He held it loosely in one hand, and its tail rattled to the ground.

  Anya stood her ground, chin lifted. The newts, who had been bouncing like popcorn around her, were frozen, watching.

  Her resolve faltered when she saw the ghost.

  Leslie drifted into view in her bathrobe, her feet barely gliding along the floor of the tunnel. She wore a dazed expression, her hands stuffed into her pockets, bumping into walls as she drifted.

  Anya’s throat constricted. Leslie’s ghost must have been one of the ones still trapped in the bottle Hope wore around her neck.

  A newt jogged forward for a bite.

  “No,” she snarled at it, and it retreated behind her, chastened.

  Anya moved forward. Charon grabbed her arm, but she shrugged it off. “You can’t trust a ghost down here… and they can hurt you.”

  “Leslie…” she said.

  Leslie blinked at Anya, drifting closer. She tipped her head in confusion.

  “Leslie, it’s Anya. Do you remember me?”

  The ghost sidled up to her, squinted at her face.

  Sparky growled a warning.

  Anya licked her lips. “Leslie, do you know where you are?”

  Suddenly, Leslie’s ghosts hands ripped out of her robe pockets. Anya glimpsed the sharp edges of metal in Leslie’s fists before the metal flashed and skipped against her copper armor.

  Anya stumbled back, still startled by the knowledge that ghosts could actually hurt her on this plane. This was their world, their rules. Leslie was armed with knives. Though her expression was still clouded, her hands flashed with purpose.

  Hope’s purpose. The bitch knew they were here.

  The salamanders surged up behind Anya like an orange tide. She screamed at them to stop, but they swarmed over her like locusts.

  “You all right?” Charon asked, picking Anya up off the floor.

  “Yeah.” She fingered the scars in her armor. “She—”

  “She’s under Hope’s control. There’s nothing to be done for it.”

  The ghost flailed with the sparks of metal in her hand. Sparky plowed into her, knocking her off her ghostly feet. The newts had begun to tear into her, snarling. She slashed at them in broad arcs, making little contact.

  Anya looked away. “There has to be another way!” she insisted. Tears stung Anya’s eyes. Leslie had been an innocent.

  “The only way to break the spell is to break the vessel.”

  Beyond the feeding frenzy, she could hear sighs and scrapes emanating from farther down the tunnel. Her hair stood on end. One look at Charon’s face told her that Leslie wasn’t alone, that the other ghosts under Hope’s spell were coming for them.

  The salamanders, caught in gustatorial delirium, looked up, gill-fronds twitching. They could smell them, smell the ghosts coming and the thrill of the fight. Even Sparky turned to the darkness, tail switching in anticipation.

  Anya muffled a sob, stood beside Sparky. Charon was right: There was no other choice. Once committed to this path, she had to give herself fully to it.

  She opened her hands as the first wave of ghosts rumbled down the bend of the tunnel, feeling the dark void in her chest open and blossom. It growled hungrily, just as fevered as the salamanders gnawing on ectoplasm behind her.

  “Come on,” she challenged them.

  The tunnel was narrow enough to require the oncoming ghosts to march shoulder to shoulder, three abreast. The first row was familiar: She recognized the samurai ghost from the museum and one of his compatriots. And Bernie. The ghost of the bespectacled artifacts dealer in his slippers was incongruous beside the helmeted warriors, but for the sword he held in his grip. Anya recognized it as the missing sword that had hung over his mantel. Amber light from the salamanders glittered on their blades and armor as the ghostly warriors bore down on their targets.

  The salamanders struck first. The newts ran just below the reach of their swords, hissing and clambering up their ankles and the backs of their legs. The samurai struggled to reach their backs, snarling, as the salamanders burrowed underneath their armor laces. Sparky tried to keep their attention distracted to the front, snapping at their distracted parries and thrusts.

  A newt was hurled back by the edge of a sword, landing at Anya’s feet. It mewed piteously, grievously wounded. Anya reached to scoop the creature up as its amber aura flickered. Seeking comfort, it dragged itself up her arm and curled up in the lip of her armor around her neck. She could feel its thready breathing and warm ectoplasm leaking down her collarbone.

  Rage boiled in her throat, and she lashed out at the ghosts. She cast her hand out, palm open, and tried to devour the nearest ghost.

  On the physical plane, this power was often subtle. Most onlookers, as well as Anya herself, rarely saw more than a flicker of pale energy dying out as she swallowed it. But here she could see the full, terrible ramifications of what had seemed, before, like a simple act.

  The samurai’s ghost half turned toward her, katana lifted. As if he were constructed of little more than cigarette smoke, he began to fray at the edges, pulling apart like a dandelion blown by a child. When she inhaled, she felt the cold smoke sliding down her throat and pooling in the bottom of her lungs. He tasted like dust. The ghost howled as he was shredded and devoured.

  Beside her, Charon swung Kerberos’s leash over his head. It made contact with a samurai’s throat with a sickening rattle. Charon drew the samurai close, ripped a newt out of the samurai’s fist, while Sparky clung to the samurai’s sword arm. The ferryman viciously kicked the samurai, striking his armor with a clang that sent him stumbling backward and released the tension from the chain. Charon slugged him, hard enough to knock the helmet from his head and send it ringing to the floor. Sparky lunged up to tear the ghost’s throat out. As the samurai fell, he began to fade, like an overexposed photograph, dissipating into the darkness.

  Bernie confronted Anya, sword clutched awkwardly in a two-fisted grip. He swung at Anya, and she deflected the blow with the elbow of her armor.

  “I’m sorry, Bernie,” Anya muttered. She grasped his wrist, and her breath rattled in her throat. She felt the ectoplasm that made up Bernie’s ghostly form begin to soften in her grip, like candle wax melting in the summertime.

  Bernie howled. The sword rattled to the ground. Anya held on. Held on as her fingers and breath chewed through his skin. He tasted like carbon and burned things as he dissolved in her throat.

  A second line of the ghost army was already pushing behind the first. Anya glimpsed the embroidered skirts of the Bohemian girls from the museum, fingers clawing the air near her face.

  Anya reached for them, reached out for them with her hands and the black emptiness in her chest. She felt them dissipate, soft as moths fluttering down her throat. They screamed, hundreds of years of history silenced in one breath.

  One breath.

  And another.

  She reached for the ghosts, the n
ewts flowing like orange fire before her. She could hear the lash of Charon’s chain on the left, Sparky’s growl on her right. She reached out for the ghosts beyond.

  Some, she knew. Some, she didn’t. She recognized Katie’s magnificent Egyptian; he tasted like myrrh when she breathed him in, shattering like sand when she touched him. Sparky was mauling a man in a letter carrier’s uniform. Pieces of mail shook free of his mailbag like white birds from a magician’s hat before dissolving into black. The crazy old man from the museum clambered to Anya, swinging his staff. Anya balled her fists, ducked. Though his eyes were clouded, she sensed some spark of independent volition in him. Or craziness.

  “Ishtar,” he hissed. “Beware Erishkigal’s poison.”

  Anya’s brow wrinkled. The old man was still living in his myths. He struck at her again with his staff. Anya batted it aside. When she swallowed him, she tasted something bitter, like fresh earth and onion roots.

  She kept pressing forward, devouring ghosts. But she couldn’t help but feel the air thickening, that she breathed more shallowly. Her lungs ached as she moved through the spirits, pulling them apart like taffy. In the physical world, she’d devour maybe two ghosts in a month—these were more ghosts than she’d taken in a lifetime. And she could feel her body beginning to resist, to ache under the strain.

  “Anya!”

  Charon’s voice snapped like a whip over her, and she turned. But she was an instant too late. Something struck her armor, slamming her to the floor like a tin can. She tasted blood in her mouth.

  “What the fuck—” she groaned, clutching her shoulder. She rolled over to see Charon’s boot beside her head.

  His body jerked as he stood above her, and she could hear him muttering, “… two, three…”

  She looked beyond to see the museum security guards. They were armed with guns, as they had been in life. Charon was counting the shots as they advanced, shots that were tearing into his coat. The bullets were shockingly real on this plane, chewing into Charon.

  Anya gasped, clawing the air before her to dissolve the ghosts.