by Chuck Wendig
Ernesto sits.
“I can’t imagine what we can discuss,” he says.
Nora leans forward. Her pallor is nearly colorless. She’s been living in the dark. “I remember the beach as a kid,” she tells him.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Did the Long Island beaches, usually, but they aren’t much to look at. One time we took an honest-to-god family vacation with my mom and dad. We went to... Ocean City, I think it was. Or maybe near that? Margate. I think it was Margate. And I remember being on this little playground in the sand: see-saw, jungle gym, swing-set. They had one of those... spinny things. I don’t know if anyone calls it a carousel but we called it a carousel. And my dad wasn’t really happy about being all beachy but we were having fun at the playground while my mom watched, and for that one moment everything was great. It was like we were a real family. Then we got on the spinny thing and he spun me good, faster and faster with those big arms of his—and I flew off. I was in a bathing suit, maybe ten years old at the time, and I hit the sand and got this wicked brush-burn on my shoulders and one arm. Raw, red. Bled a little. And holy hell did my parents fight that night. So much so that he broke the screen door on the house we were renting. He left, went back to the city. We stayed. Great trip turned miserable.” She appears to lean back, draw in the sea air through her nose. “You like the beach?”
“I am from the beach,” he says. “Mallorca is home to some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. The beach is like pulverized crystal. The sea is like...” He hesitates. “No comparison is meaningful, no metaphor there to capture the blue it offers. It is the comparison—the Platonic ideal of itself. But—but—that was not my preference. My preference was the pebble beaches of Sa Calobra. Massive cliffs. Hard rocks. No beach for resting, for families. A place where hard earth met shimmering water. Chaos and order. Erosion and eternity. I had a boat there.” He had a woman there, too. And a small house. And a little grill he would drag out onto the pebbles—
Suddenly, he’s pulled from his reverie.
Suspicion retakes him.
“Why?” he asks, sharply. “Why talk to me of beaches?”
“Because we need a little common ground,” she says. “And everybody loves the beach, Ernie.”
Ernie. Pfah. The manipulative little bitch.
Still. Common ground? The two of them? Interesting. “I always thought were we kindred spirits,” he says. That is not a lie. “Two daggers hoping to slide between the other’s ribs. I underestimated you back there. In New York.”
“To your regret, I assume.”
“Oh, yes. To my regret. I thought you were controllable. A torch flame I could hold in my hand and wave about. But you weren’t that, were you? You were never fire. You were electrical current. A sharp lick of lightning. I could not contain you.”
“No.”
“But! I also underestimated your compassion.”
That stings her. Interesting. He can see it in her face, her wrinkled nose. Twitch of the lips. That word gives her grave distaste.
“Oh?” she asks.
“For your father. I thought you hated him.”
“I did. But family is a powerful thing.”
He nods. “I agree.”
“Cool. More common ground. We’re gonna need it.”
“And why is that?”
“Because you’re going to find me a husband.”
He blinks. Laughs, which hurts his frail body. “I confess that the absurdity of the joke amuses me, but I don’t quite grasp the punchline itself—”
“No joke, no punchline. I am married to Hell. And I want a divorce. The only way I get this whole shit-show annulled is if I find another spouse—and this one has to be from one of the demon families. The benefit extends in the opposite direction: if I marry one of your kind, not only can I come out into the light, but my husband can also go down into the dark. We both become horses with free rein.”
He extends his withered arms. “You could marry me.”
Behind him, gulls squawk and shriek.
“I’d rather marry a moray eel.”
“Yes. Well.” He sighs. “I have questions, of course.”
“Of course.”
“Why our family? You have others from which to choose.”
She hesitates. “At first? Laziness. I didn’t know the others. I knew yours. I needed a name and I had one. There have been other suitors in my short time here. But I’ve learned something real interesting. Your family? Once had power. And now that power is trickling like piss from an incontinent old man. You have something to gain. And I have something to offer. Simple.”
“Why me, then?”
“Same answer. You’re on the outs in a family at the fringe. You’re the farthest-flung star from the center of a very scary galaxy. They hate you. Did you know that? They do. They were very, very eager to leave you down in the dark.”
“And how is that good for you?”
“Because you’ll want to be an ally to them. But they won’t let you. You are weak with them, but you want to be strong. That’s what it all hinges on, Ernie. This will force you to be an ally of mine because being an ally of mine is the only way to get this thing done. And when it’s done, your family will have the first daemon to be able to descend down into the lightless realm. The first one who won’t feel pain upon stepping into the dark. Which is, really, what you wanted all along, wasn’t it?”
He doesn’t answer. He’s almost afraid to. This girl has him pinned to the ground like a mouse in a trap: spine snapped, legs dead. For a moment he feels again like he’s hanging by his heel while monsters haunt the dark beneath him. But then the breezes comes in—warm and cool at the same time, the smell of salt air, carrying with it a broken snippet of someone laughing somewhere.
“You have my help,” he says.
“Good,” she says. “Now let’s talk about what I’m looking for in a hubby.”
24
Nine major hells: New York City. Paris. Mexico City. Beijing. London. Derinkuyu. Jerusalem. Pang Mapha. Tokyo. Of the minor hells, there are endless—one count had it at roughly 1,029, but truly, any subterranean location is a gateway into the Great Below and thus can be counted as one of the minor hells. From Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan to Cheyenne Mountain to beneath Giza. The earth’s crust is riddled with tunnels chewed by time, and water, and by the god-worms themselves. The city of Los Angeles, where the end times began, is no different: another minor hell, this one with great significance.
— from the Histories and Mysteries of the Riven Worlds, by John Atticus Oakes
*
Los Angeles is a city that lays out, asphalt sprawling like a poolside model, skin warming under the bronze sun as water laps nearby. It’s a city that’s mostly above-ground: exposed for what it is, all its sins seemingly dragged out into the light, nothing to hide here but for the make-up caking actors’ faces, the cosmetic surgery redecorating their bodies—all shared lies, lies that are understood, accepted, and expected.
That is itself a lie.
The City of Angels is home to a secret underground. A labyrinth of old sins. Prohibition tunnels once used to run liquor, now used to run drugs. Closed off subway tunnels where madmen and prophets dwell. Old equestrian tunnels the corrupt police use to interrogate criminals (or “criminals”), move money, hide guns, hide bodies, have parties. Old footpaths lined with concrete carved with the names of dead men.
Those are the Shallows of Los Angeles. Beneath that lie the city’s Tangle—a dangerous concatenation of passageways. A maze with pathways that shift thanks to the tectonic movements—rocks shouldering into rocks, closing passages, opening chasms. Oil drips down below. Not much Blue in the walls. A good bit of Red, shot through the rock like powdered magma. Gobbos and Snakefaces and other creatures unique to the area: blackback butterflies, gorge-ants, pox-gulls, and even a few packs of mangy, half-blind coyotes.
Nora doesn’t care about the Tangle. She got here via the Shallows, and that’s where
she’s going to stay. Anything else puts her at risk, and risk is not an option.
Right now she sits at a table in the back of the Lupercal—a bar carved out of rock and concrete beneath downtown Los Angeles. Trendy to those in the know. A safe place—safe being relative—for monsters and freaks, mole men and addicts. The broken dreams that end up in the gutters above seem to wash down here. Over there, under the big, dim bulbs, she spies some actress she’s seen in bit part on TV years ago. Talking to some has-been male model in last year’s lines. A Snakeface haunts the dark, near the fishtank, in full serpent—slithering limbs and tentacles fingers slowly working the air like the fronds of a sea anemone. A pair of gobbos hangs by the big fans—the ones that help bring fresh air in and out of this place—playing checkers with little pucks carved from human bones. Nora wonders if the humans down here know what’s around them. Blue seems hard to get here. No Blue means no way to see what monsters dwell nearby, watching, thirsting, waiting.
Nora doesn’t need Blue anymore, of course.
Burnsy sits down, slides a stemless cocktail glass over to her. Her tongue pushes the swirl of orange peel out of the way and she sips. Bitter. Herbal. Red like blood. The Negroni hits the spot, and she lifts the glass. The bartender, a Half-and-Half woman named Kinsey Sage, her midnight hair in a peacock plume topknot, winks and gives a thumb’s up. The bar at which Sage stands is a long black board—a chalkboard, actually, so patrons can write their orders where they sit—propped up on the backs of several wolf statues, each with sculptures of human children suckling at the lupine teats.
Blue iridescent feathers poke out from her collar and from beneath her sleeves. Kinsey kisses the air. Nora does the same in return.
Burnsy plunks a beer bottle down, noisily sucks some foam off the rim. Slurrrrrrp. He sees he has an audience, so he waggles his shiny tongue.
“Sexy, I know,” he says, then leans back and drinks. He looks over to Hrothk, who sits impassive as a stone pillar. Burnsy snaps fingers in front of him. “Hey, you sure you didn’t want anything?”
“Do they have mineral oil?”
“Do they—what? No. I’m not asking that.”
The golem shrugs, almost imperceptibly.
Burnsy exhales. “So, ehhh. Candlefly.”
“Ernesto Candlefly,” she says.
“I still think he’s a mistake. He’s gonna try to fuck you over.”
“You’re right,” she says.
“Whuh?”
“He’s going to try to betray me at some point because that’s who he is. The scorpion always stings the frog. Except I’m not a frog. I’m another scorpion. And I’m bigger and better at being a scorpion. His opportunities to betray me are nearly zero. He has nothing to hold over me. Nothing to take away from me. Meanwhile, at any point I can take his power away from him. I can send him back to whatever hole they fished him out of, and he’ll get no part of what’s to come.”
“You’re cocky,” Burnsy says.
“I’m just ready. Ready to be done with all this.”
“That your plan? Get married, go live a life?”
She sips at the bitter gin drink. The rim is cold against her lips. “Get married, get the hell out of Hell, then go lie on a beach for the next ten years.”
“Watch out for skin cancer,” Burnsy warns. Then winks with a glistening eyelid. “What about your husband-to-be?”
“He can do what he likes. He can bang goblins, snort Red, die happy, die miserable. Don’t know. Don’t care.” She shrugs. “Whoever he is, his life will be his own. I don’t intend to be in it, nor will he probably intend to keep me—”
“Incoming,” Hrothk says. Then lifts his craggy chin.
Approaching the table is a tall, handsome woman in a white blouse, blue skirt, platinum hair in a long braid that encircles her neck. She sits without being invited. She has the look of a praying mantis about her. A slight lean forward. Hands clasped. Despite the placid smile, Nora gets the impression this chick will try to bite her head off given a half-second’s opportunity.
Nora asks, “What?”
“I’m Adalyn Avery,” she says, offering a hand—a soft, ill-earned gesture. The hand tilts down like a drooping flower, like the bent neck of a sad swan.
“And you just sat down at our table,” Nora says, wrinkling her nose in disgust. “Um, ew. Rude.”
The woman says nothing. As stone-faced as Hrothk.
Hrothk says, “Her eyes. They glitter.”
And they do. Nora missed that. Little flecks in the corneas, like fool’s gold—pyrite—in dark rock. She doesn’t know what that means, and doesn’t feel real awesome about demonstrating her ignorance, so she shuts up. She’s thankful the Trogbody jumps in.
“She’s kept. By the daemon families. A familiar for—” He pauses. “Avery, you said. The Glasstowers, then.”
The woman tilts her head as if to doff an imaginary cap. “Very good.”
“I don’t know if you’re the dog or the pony in this show,” Nora says, “but you’d best get to giving me your spiel. Though I’ll warn you: I’ve heard it. I’ve gotten letters and emails and videos from most of the other families at this point. And gifts! So many gifts. The Hogstooth one was... the most interesting.”
“It was a bottle of moonshine and a jar of pickled pig hooves,” says Burnsy. “Which I drank and I ate since she didn’t want ‘em.” He urps from the beer.
“And yet,” Nora continues, “while I did get a very nice letter from the Glasstower family, I received no gift. Are you here to bring me one?”
“My presence is a gift,” the woman says, utterly straight-faced.
“How fancy. Such radiance. I am a lucky girl.”
“You are. Because this will be the last offer. My employers ask that you cease all contact and dealings with the Candlefly clan. You are to offer your hand in marriage to one of the many Glasstower men—or women, as California is newly progressive—and from there you may live a happy life as a Glasstower girl.”
“I’m not your girl—”
“I’m not finished. Failure to comply with this very reasonable request will be met with grave disdain and a measure of correction that I am not at liberty to discuss here with you today. Please understand the seriousness of this offer and the determination of the Glasstower family to engage you in—”
Nora nudges her drink forward at the rim. The glass topples. The drink spills.
Right in Adalyn Avery’s lap.
Nora offers a low whistle. “Oh, wow. I maybe ruined your nice skirt.”
“I have more,” Adalyn says without breaking her smile.
“Whew.”
“Am I to take it that your spilled drink is your final answer?”
“Is this a game show? Because it is my final answer.”
Adalyn stands. “I’m sorry to hear that. We’ll be in touch.”
And then she briskly walks off. A little less calmly than she entered. Nora takes a special pride in that—the woman is off her balance. Just a little. Just enough.
Of course, what it earns her beyond that pride remains to be seen. Maybe nothing. Maybe nothing good. But Nora couldn’t help it. She doesn’t yet know if she’s really good at playing this game, or really bad at it. She does know, however, that she enjoys playing it, which maybe concerns her more than a little.
“Anybody else get the vibe that the Glasstowers are gonna try to kill you?” Burnsy asks, swirling his beer.
Hrothk nods. “That was my impression.”
“Me three,” Nora says. “Guess I oughta keep my grapes peeled.”
“Guess so,” Burnsy says, then throws back the bottle.
*
They meet again. Same time, two days later. Smuggler’s Cove.
The trip is not quick. Down through the Prohibition tunnels. Out through an access door. Down a ladder into the dark, past a pair of rusted trolleys. Then through a crack in a wall—they walk all the way, a five-hour hike through old access tunnels and shattered stone, crossing o
ver sewers and ducking through subbasements. They get close enough to the surface where Nora feels that pressure building behind her sinuses, like thumbs from inside her skull pushing at the backs of her eyes. She tastes blood. Coppery and greasy-sweet. It reaches an apex until—
Until she reaches the cenote. The “low place”—the Smuggler’s Cove cave where the earth meets the sea, where Above meets Below. She breathes easy.
Then she tells Hrothk and Burnsy to stay back.
Candlefly already waits for her. He fidgets with a pocket watch. Beyond the tide pools, the darkness once again gives way to light. Morning is upon them.
“You could’ve just sent somebody,” she says. “We don’t have to do this here every time.
“I have nobody,” he answers. He looks away when he says it. Mopey. Forlorn. He runs the toe of a once-nice shoe across shallow water. “I have people but I don’t trust them, and you don’t trust them either or you would never have dredged me up from my punishment in the first place. So we do this here. Me and you.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
Then they stand there. Her staring. Him staring away.
“We have till the Equinox,” he says. “Correct?”
“Correct.”
“I have done some research. This ritual may actually work. It’s a wonder we missed it for so long.”
She shrugs. “Maybe you were looking in all the wrong places.”
“Perhaps. You should ask yourself: what’s stopping my family or the other clans from attempting to engineer their own marriage? Consider that if you and your father found the vaunted Death’s Head mushrooms, others may as well.”
“Good luck with that. We did it by accident. And only because of all the other hoops you and your cronies had us inadvertently jumping through.” She steps forward, pulls up the chair, sits. “I confess it’s probably doable. Someone finding Ochre. Opening a gate. Going down into the Expanse and surviving the god-worms long enough to pop a ‘shroom cap and then somehow get a ride back to the surface? Sure. Of course, none of you can do it because you’re all bound to the earth and the sky. You’ll still have to send someone down. Someone who can then hold you hostage just like I am.”