by Jenn Stark
“Souls come here because they feel they must.” Michael led us into a beautiful Japanese-styled courtyard. A series of linked koi ponds curved through the space in gradually larger pools, and a low bridge rose up and down among them, like the back of a dragon. He stepped onto the bridge, and the first koi pond shifted below us. I froze.
“I’ve sort of had enough of windows in this place.”
But Michael didn’t budge, and his voice was mournful. “They come because they must,” he murmured again.
The scene in the koi pond rose up around us all, plunging us into its center. Instinctively, I clutched Armaeus’s hand, but I couldn’t see him, couldn’t hear anything but the cries of the damned all around me. This was the Hell of Dante’s imagining, I knew in a flash. This was the image that had so horrified thousands of years of true believers, regardless of what god they followed.
All around me was misery and pain. Naked, screaming bodies writhed in agony, some covered in blood, some with their skin flayed off. Demons that bore absolutely no resemblance to the Syx scrabbled between and among the fallen, thrusting one set into pools of fire, and another into pits of burning tar, still more into muddy bogs already littered with bodies.
“My God,” I breathed, aware of the irony but unable to stop myself. “That can’t be true.”
“It is a domain of the most powerful illusions that can alter the mortal mind,” the Hierophant said. “It delivers what is demanded of it, without fail.”
The scene cleared, and I sagged forward, dropping Armaeus’s hand to steady myself on the bridge. “No one would demand that.”
“And that’s where you’re wrong,” Michael said. “That place you saw is what most souls crave more than life itself. More than death. More than peace or solace. They crave to be punished for the wrongs they perceive they have done, above and beyond the wrongs they actually have committed. They crave the assurance of knowing that such a place of eternal torment exists, that something exists to judge them, because they have not given themselves over to the idea that on the other side of life…” He spread his hands. “There is yet more life.”
I looked at Michael too quickly, before realizing he’d turned to me. His regard was nowhere near Armaeus’s, though. I didn’t feel like a bug but a treasured…friend. A friend, not a child, not a pet, not a bauble to be put on a pedestal. The weight of Michael’s eerie, white-blue regard was that it was simply filled with joy that I was here, sharing this space with him, this time. It was overwhelming and awful and impossible and healing all at once, and I couldn’t stop the tears from spilling from my eyes.
“I’m sorry—I’m sorry.” I reached up to dash my hands against my face, but Michael did not retreat, and when I glanced at him again, there was neither amusement nor pity in his gaze. There was simply understanding, and it was all I could do to beat down another wave of tears.
“We are joined, you and I,” he said softly. “As I am joined with every created thing, be they psychically gifted as you are, or the most mundane of mortals, the weakest of animals, the tallest of trees and meanest of stones. I am the rock upon which all stands, the air that all might take would they simply allow themselves to breathe. The touch that all crave in the loneliest corners of their extraordinary hearts. Do you see the truth of this?”
I struggled to comprehend the Hierophant’s words, but they flowed over me like water over rocks, and I couldn’t break free from his eyes, from the power of his presence. I nodded, though, at last realizing he’d asked me a question, and blinked back my tears. “I do,” I managed in a broken voice.
He smiled and nodded toward me, a shared confidence once again between friends. “And this is why I’ve come here, Sara Wilde. For the grace of allowing that friendship you have bestowed upon me, which is what I’ve craved with my own heart and soul from the moment I entered this place.” His expression was beyond beatific. It was the light of a thousand sunrises and the hope that chased behind them, and I found myself smiling back, the enormity of what he was saying completely lost on me other than that it was there. That there was something happening here I could not understand.
He broke eye contact with me, and I gasped, sagging to the side, then realized that Armaeus had been standing next to me this whole time. I looked up at him, and for the moment almost didn’t mind the whole mad-scientist-studying-his-butterfly vibe he was sending. “Is he always like that?”
Armaeus snorted, and Michael laughed, the beauty of it almost making me pass out. “He is. You are the first mortal to withstand him, though you’re obviously a rarity among mortals. Nevertheless,” he said to Michael, his voice holding an odd note of melancholy, “she did better than I expected she would. I believe it is time.”
“Yes,” Michael nodded. “It’s time.”
Chapter Eighteen
“Time?” I perked up at this. “Time for what? Time-for-leaving time? Because if that’s what you mean, sign me up.”
Michael and Armaeus regarded each other for a long moment, then Michael nodded.
“Leaving.” He sighed. “It’s been so long since I have existed anywhere but here. The earth will be a different place. Mortals, however, do not seem to have changed.”
“Yeah, don’t get your hopes up too much about our evolution.” Something about this seemed strange to me, however. The Hierophant was coming out of Hell for what appeared to be the first time ever. But it was the Magician who seemed uneasy, out of sorts. I eyed him curiously, but Michael cut across my thoughts.
“Armaeus has told me many things about the Council and the challenges we face. But I need to know from you, how are the people faring?”
I shrugged. “Depends on what you mean by people,” I said as Michael lifted a hand and the scenes in the pools evaporated, leaving nothing but the brightly colored, happily cavorting fish. “SANCTUS is down but not out. They’ll keep believing all magic is bad magic for a long time, I suspect. The straight-up Connecteds are holding their own, staying on the fringes, though that’s changing every day. The dark practitioners are another story.” I scowled, thinking of the Vegas sect, who’d clearly thrown in with Gamon.
“But the dark practitioners are Connecteds as well.”
“Sure, but only in the same way that serial killers seem like the boy next door. They’re vying for power and strength through whatever means possible, in the end. Regular Connecteds want to get stronger, sure, but they have limits to what they’ll do for that power. Not so much the dark practitioners.”
Michael considered this. “And then we have the Council.” He nodded to Armaeus. “A force that seeks balance in the main, but that also desires the increase overall of magic in the world. And there is Llyr, the ancient dragon, who also seeks magic in the world, but who wishes to rule it, not to balance it. The lines are not evenly drawn.”
Armaeus remained impassive, but a muscle worked in his jaw, and he said nothing.
“Ah, well, yes.” I said into the heavy silence. “There’s a bit of a gray area there.” “This is what I do not understand, this gray.” Michael folded his arms over his chest, the gesture so autocratic I had to smile. The Hierophant would not exactly blend well in Vegas, I suspected. Not for a while anyway. “You believe there is a space where someone can be both wrong and right at once?” he asked.
“Not at once, no.” I shook my head. “But sometimes people do the right things for the wrong reasons, and sometimes they do the wrong things for the right reasons. And it’s hard to hold someone up as a criminal or a despot or a killer when you can understand how they got to that place.”
“I disagree. There is either right or wrong.” Michael gestured to the trees. “Surrounding us is an entire dimension created solely because mortals have lost their sense between the two. Your gray reality is ultimately unsustainable. Eventually, payment must be made. Would it not make greater sense to render that payment in the world of the living, versus the dead?”
“Well, that’s a great idea, sure.” I began to see why h
e’d spent so much time in Hell. “But it’s not that easy.”
“It is that easy. Who is your enemy?”
“Right now, it’s getting close to being you,” I snapped. “But in general, nobody’s my enemy.”
“No.” He rejected that out of hand. “You are engaged in a war. Wars have sides. You are against this organization SANCTUS because they are against psychics, and you are psychic. They are your enemy.”
“Okay, fine.” I wasn’t big on philosophical throw downs, and we were so close to leaving, I could taste it. I could humor Mr. Hard Line if it meant us getting out of here faster. “I’m against SANCTUS.”
“You would kill the leaders of SANCTUS.”
I grimaced, and Michael persisted. “They would kill you, correct?”
“Yeah, probably.” Something heavy shifted in me. I glanced to Armaeus, but the Magician remained quiet beside us. “What’s your point?”
“And these dark practitioners,” Michael continued. “You would kill them, yes? You oppose them in this war.”
“I oppose their actions,” I said. “There are some who…” I trailed off. The Las Vegas dark mages had tried to bury me in cement to keep me in Hell, at the direction of Gamon. They hadn’t tried to kill me at the Stratosphere, though. They got some points for that. “They go too far in their pursuit of power. Too far is a subjective judgment, though I would argue it remains a basic human judgment. The dark practitioners at the far end of crazy use the organs and limbs of other psychics in their spells, and subject those they don’t outright sacrifice to human trafficking. Those people, yeah, I’m against. If I happen to kill them in the course of saving the people they were oppressing, then I do.”
Michael nodded. “So the war is not merely SANCTUS against all psychics, but the Connected community against itself in this small segment. You lead those Connecteds who do not engage in the practice of exploiting their own. The ‘straight-up’ Connecteds, I believe you called them.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. It sounded too—big, somehow. Too much. I didn’t lead anything. I was simply part of the fight. But Michael was nodding, and his grasp on the situation was close enough, as uncomfortable as it made me. Then his brow furrowed. “You came to Hell to…help the dark practioners, though.”
A strange sliver of shame wormed through me. He was correct, and yet… “Yeah, well. I told you, it’s a series of gray decisions.” I blew out a breath. “I helped a syndicate owner, Annika Soo, recover an item that a far worse person stole from her family. And in exchange for information about this place from a small sect of dark practitioners in Las Vegas, I agreed to recover this.”
I pulled out the compass and tossed the box to Armaeus. He caught it easily, his brows lifting. “This is third century BC,” he murmured before he opened the case. “Where did you find it?”
“Near the River Styx, or something that seemed very Styx-like anyway. Is it authentic? It guided me safely through a series of traps, but those traps led me to a worse one.” I grimaced. “I’ve experienced way too many bad turns down here, I can tell you that.”
Something in my words seemed to affect Armaeus. His answering smile was stark. Weary. “It will bear analysis,” he said. He glanced to the Hierophant. “I’ll be but a few moments.”
Without another word to me, he strode off, a solitary and grim figure all of a sudden, hunched over a trinket.
Michael watched him go. “He grieves,” he murmured, his own voice aching with sadness. “You saw as much.”
The unexpected statement squeezed my heart, and my voice was harsher than I intended as I responded. “What exactly are your superpowers, just so we’re straight?”
That surprised him, and he regarded me with interest. “Superpowers?”
“First off, we’re going to get you cable and an Internet hookup as soon as you get back. And you should plan on routine visits with the Fool until you’ve gotten caught up on the last century.” Michael lifted his brows, and I pushed on. “You’re the Hierophant, that’s the card of orthodoxy and structure, traditional and established patterns. Stretched more broadly, it’s the card of religious or spiritual force but also of blessing. I get how your very nature shows us divinity on earth, but how does that translate to the mortal realm? Besides making people cry, what can you do?”
He thought about that, gazing at the leafy bower that stretched over us. In the warm dappled sunlight, his albino features were already becoming familiar to me, his eyes less pale, his superfair skin and white hair seeming almost elven instead of ghostly. Was this his doing or mine? Either way, it made him easier to bear.
Then he spoke again, and his voice carried that peculiar resonance it had before. So yeah, he had work to do on that whole “otherworldly” issue. “I can read a person’s path to this point, and know its future if he takes the next step,” he said. “Like a map of very limited scope, but a detailed history of how his journey had gotten him here. Does that make sense?”
“Not at all.”
“Take you, for example—”
“No, thanks,” I said, raising my hand. “We just met. Let’s take Armaeus.”
“Very well.” I tried not to let my excitement show as Michael considered the question. I should have known better than to think I was going to enjoy what I heard. This was Hell, after all. Land of eternal regret.
“Armaeus came into his powers unwillingly, leaving behind a woman of singular grace that he was to marry,” Michael said. “His decision to leave her scarred every decision thereafter.”
“What do you mean, scarred?”
“He became ruthless in his adherence to the strictures of the position. He did not love, he did not engage. His powerful adherence to the values of balance and study contributed to his sense of isolation, and he withdrew over the centuries into the man he is today. He has come to terms with his loss, but not fully.”
Unreasonable disappointment winged through me. “He still misses her.”
“No.” Michael’s smile was gentle. “He misses who he was when he was with her. He—”
“Miss Wilde.” I jumped, certain that Armaeus could see the guilt on my face for prying into his personal business. Michael’s face remained untroubled.
But Armaeus didn’t seem upset. “A moment, please.” He held up the compass and gestured for me to join him.
“You don’t lie, do you?” I asked Michael before I left him. “The Devil doesn’t because it amuses him not to, but you simply…don’t.”
Michael smiled. “I have not met the incarnation of the Devil who currently sits on the Council. I shall enjoy that. But I do not lie. I do not have to.”
My lips twisted. The Devil had said much the same thing. “The truth is often far worse, he contends. He has a point.”
“It is the same with reversals of the Tarot.” Michael gestured to the small pouch hanging at my neck. “There are already enough nuances in the truth, there is no need to twist it further.”
I blew out a breath. “Fair enough.” I’d used reversals when I’d first started reading, and I still did if I was doing a typical carnival read versus using the cards for my work. The reversals could offer hints as to timing, a lesser effect of the upright card, or some sort of block or outside agency influencing the results—all fascinating stuff, unless you were running for your life. In that case, upright interpretations were challenging enough.
I walked over to where Armaeus was standing, unsurprised to see that he’d paused on another bridge over another series of ponds. He stared into the water. “You’ve suffered in this place,” he said quietly.
That surprised me. “Suffered? That’s maybe overstating it. I’ve…” I hesitated as I went over the past few days—weeks. Months, even, when I thought I’d lived out a life that never existed. “Okay. Sure. I’ve suffered.”
“You’ve aged.”
I snorted. “Well, you have—” And then I caught myself. Because of course Armaeus hadn’t. He hadn’t been that man who’d held me n
ight after night under the starlit sky. He hadn’t woken next to me in the morning nor walked with me in the sun. He’d done none of those things, never mind that each of those days was as bright and crystal hard in my memory as if they’d truly happened. As if our love had existed, had stretched into the weeks and months and possibly years, our skin weathering and our hair thinning, our eyes growing clearer with each passing season.
He was watching me too closely, and I shrugged. “Um, so…you’re not actually sick, right?”
“Sick?” His confusion was clear. “What do you mean?”
“Sick like ill, under the weather, like I don’t know, dying?” His expression was all the answer I needed. “So that wasn’t real.” I nodded, too relieved to censor my words. “Too bad the rest wasn’t either.”
As soon as I spoke, I winced. Classy, I wasn’t. But it’d been a hard few days.
Armaeus stiffened, and his gaze snapped hard to mine. “You speak of Mirabel. How do you know of her?”
I hadn’t been speaking of Mirabel, necessarily. I could have gone another lifetime without speaking about her, but okay. I could be the mature one of the two of us. I could handle this. “I—saw her, I guess you would say. There was a corridor of windows set into stone, and one showed a fire, a village.” I shrugged. “You were there, so I went after you. I didn’t know it was the past.”
Not remotely true, but it had enough elements of the truth that it sounded good, at least to my ears. Armaeus said something in French, but I didn’t press for a translation. The sorrow in his voice was enough.
“She—” He began, then he swallowed, and no further words would come. I put a hand on his arm. The zing of connection was there, but it seemed twisted and dirty now, corrupted.
“I don’t need to know, Armaeus. Your sacrifice doesn’t require an explanation. Especially not to me.” Words seemed to pile up inside me, too fast, too full, spilling out before I could rationally consider their impact. “It’s not my place to see your past. It’s not who I am. Or who you are, now, all these centuries later. Or who we are.”