His chest burned, panic and adrenaline setting his chest ablaze, and how could they not see the burning that must have made him into a blazing beacon? Spirits preserve him. Their wings flapped overhead, their rotten-fruit-and-sulfur breath drifting down to him. Too close, but the footbridge was steps away. The wires suspending it would confuse them, and there was a power to this bridge, most likely imbued by the lord who ruled here. Enough power that he would be safe if he crossed. Had to be.
Please, please, Lord Hades, take us in. I'll explain. I'll be good.
The first bat to catch them struck him full in the face, claws out, shrieking. A second smashed into his back directly between his shoulder blades, knocking him to one knee. These monstrous things were bigger than flying foxes, jet black, their talons scraping trenches in his skin wherever they struck. Desperate, Azeban pulled one of his knives, crying out in pain and fury as he slashed blindly at swarming legs and wings, even as he kept an arm around Kaukont to protect him.
"Leave us alone!" he yelled, crawling forward, determined to make that damn bridge. "I told her I won't play! Leave off!"
Heavy claws knocked his hat away, exposing his head to their attacks. He would have gone raccoon, but he had to shield Kaukont.
"Go away!" His knife connected with wings and furred bodies. Hot blood ran down his arm, and he didn't think it was all his, but he couldn't see anything except monstrous bats any longer. How many of these cursed things had she sent?
Three feet from the bridge, they managed a coordinated attack, four of them slamming into his right side and knocking him sideways while the rest swarmed his head, forcing him to bring up an arm to protect his eyes. Other claws and teeth ripped at his coat, and the arm curled to his chest, tearing and screaming. He felt it happening but couldn't move quickly enough to prevent it.
They ripped Kaukont from his grasp. Kau writhed and cawed his defiance, but their claws were too big, their grip too tight. The bats all lifted from Azeban as one and flew off into the night.
"No! Sweet waters, no! Bring him back!" Azeban screamed, though he knew they wouldn't do any such thing. "No.… Oh, Kau, I'm so fucking sorry."
Inches from the bridge, Azeban knelt in the blood-flecked dirt, tears streaming down his face, all his fear collapsing into despair.
You see, Azeban? I can make you come to me, she whispered through the dark.
Wrapping the ruins of his coat around him, Azeban climbed to his feet, choking sobs shivering through him. Out of choices, out of tricks, he made the sideways shift through reality that would take him out of the human realm and into hers.
The sheer violence of the invasion yanked Charon out of a sound sleep and dumped him on his feet. "My lord!" he bellowed as he yanked pants on over his pajamas.
Hades already barreled down the hallway by the time Charon yanked his own door open. In nothing but his black-silk sleep pants, he raced past Charon for the front door. "I felt it! Meet me down there, Char!"
Ti stumbled out of the master bedroom, sleep tousled and wide-eyed with shock. Nike made a run for the front door to go after her beloved death lord.
Charon raised a hand and shouted, "Stay!"
Ti froze and Nike skidded to a stop on the front hallway tiles.
"Good girl," Charon called to her. He patted Ti's shoulder on the way past. "Good human."
"Char, what—"
"I have his back. We'll be as quick as we can." Charon had no more time to spare for human anxieties. Something had invaded his lord's protected lands. Something that should not have been there.
He flashed down to the bridge where he had felt the disturbance, ahead of his lordship, who had no such convenient travel method and needed to race down the stairs. No stray, illicit invaders materialized, but he could smell them. Something had been there. By the time Lord Hades crossed the swaying wooden footbridge, he had slowed to a walk, so he already knew the crisis was over.
"Any indications, Char?"
"Blood on the path. Quite a bit of it." Charon crouched down to get a better scent. "Oh… oh dear."
"What is it?"
"Azeban. Whatever came to do whatever it did attacked Azeban. Much of the blood is his. Of the rest… I can't be certain."
Lord Hades merely glowered at him, silver eyebrows drawn together.
"He's been staying in your park, my lord. I did tell you that." Still the glower. Charon heaved a sigh and stood up. "He seems to have been attacked by something from above."
"Ah." More glowering, though at the blood now. "But they're gone. And Azeban is gone."
"They are, my lord."
His lordship walked around the site of the confrontation, up the path a few yards, then back down. "They attacked him. Viciously. He seems to have been dragging himself to the bridge. Then he stops. Vanishes." Arms crossed over his chest, Lord Hades turned to him. "Could he have been carried off?"
"I suppose it's possible. More probable that he simply escaped through the Ways."
Hades nodded, a muscle jumping in his jaw.
"You would think, my lord, that whoever wanted to see him would be able to send a less distressing invitation by now. A text surely would have sufficed."
"Doubtful that the raccoon has a phone." Hades finally met his eyes. "I can't interfere, Char."
"No, my lord. Understood." Charon moved his hand above the site of the skirmish to encourage the dirt to conceal the blood. "I'm afraid he's finally angered the wrong immortal, and whatever happens is his own fault."
"Hmm." Hades's rumble held worlds of unsaid things. "But nevertheless this bothers you?"
Charon turned away from his magical cleanup and began the walk back with his lordship. "He has his faults, my lord. But he's not malicious, generally."
"We'll keep an eye out for him. If he resurfaces, ask if he needs help."
"Yes, my lord." He already did. I just didn't call him on his nonsense and insist hard enough that he tell me what was wrong.
Azeban in the Domains of the Dead
Chapter Four
Please, please." Kneeling on the volcanic rock of her throne room, Azeban could barely force the words past his tears. "Please don't hurt him. It's not Kau's fault. Please."
Itzpapalotl, the Obsidian Butterfly, had chosen her most fearsome aspect for this audience. Skeletal fingers held Kaukont tight, while the leering skull and flaming eye sockets pinned Azeban where he knelt. Behind the skeleton on its black basalt throne, great wings rose, her terrible clashing butterfly wings made of overlapping obsidian knives.
"I will hurt him, little raccoon, until you do as you promised," she said in a voice far too calm and sweet for her fearsome appearance. "Kaukont will stay with me until your task is complete. Perhaps he will stay with me longer because you defied me."
Tongues of flame licked over her bone jaws on those last two words, her anger creeping through the air in a poisonous mist.
"Beautiful one, lovely empress of death." Azeban hated the groveling, but he didn't see much choice. "The death lords will know. They'll destroy me. Already spirits wander confused. I… I can't. It's a terrible thing to do to so many spirits."
"Is this Azeban the Great who kneels before me? Too quick and too clever to be caught? The death lords will know. Oh, yes. It will be too late when they realize. Too late. You cannot leave it half done, my love—"
Her aspect shifted to the lovely one, the beautiful dark-haired goddess who had allowed Azeban to think he had seduced her. What a fucking fool he had been. Her hand still held Kaukont in a cruel grip as he struggled and cawed weakly.
"They will find what you have done unless you finish. It is your little paws all over the workings, not mine."
Azeban straightened his spine, though he couldn't stop the tears. "I'll… I'll go to them. I'll tell them what I've done. What you've done."
She laughed, her sharp teeth glinting in the moonlight from the opening in the cave high above. "No one will believe you, little one. You've built your reputation on tricks and lies.
They will blame you and only you." Her fingers tightened, and Kau screamed in pain. "And I have your crow. He suffers every moment you delay."
"Please. I can't do this. All the souls—"
"Will not suffer for eternity. This is only the next step." She leaned forward, suddenly huge and regal, and cupped Azeban's chin in her hand. "I chose you for this work because you can. You are unique among immortals, my little jester, your set of skills."
Azeban had no answer for that, trapped in the strange mix of compassion and fury in her dark eyes as she wiped the tears from his face. She sat back and snapped her fingers. A cage of bone appeared in the air beside her throne, and she thrust Kau inside, shutting him in a space barely large enough to contain his body.
"The cage will shrink, Azeban. Every hour you delay, it will become a feather-width smaller, until Kaukont is crushed into pulp and shattered bone, slowly, agonizingly." She smiled, beatific and horribly beautiful. "Do not fail him."
"I don't—" He reached a hand toward Kau, knowing she would keep him out of reach, knowing he couldn't retrieve his friend, his only friend, so easily. His heart was breaking off in bits and pieces, dying slowly with Kau. "The nets. I don't have them."
"They are beside you."
Yeah. Of course they are. He turned at the sudden gold glint in the corner of his eye. The nets lay in a neat pile, no larger than his palm. Why would he think that getting rid of the leftover netting from the first set would get him out of finishing the job? There went his last excuse.
He nodded and pocketed the netting, the buzz and hum of it already setting his teeth on edge.
"You promise you'll give Kaukont back if I do this?"
"I promise I won't destroy him, Azeban. Beyond that, I owe you no promises."
"No, my lady, I guess you don't." Azeban got up from his groveling, trying to keep the air moving in and out of his burning lungs. "Hang on, Kau. I'll be as fast as I can."
Kau let out a tired croak, telling Azeban he had faith, and Azeban gave him a watery smile before he turned the corner in reality to leave Itzpapalotl's dark domain. He knew what she meant when she called him unique. Every trickster had the ability to travel easily between life and death. Only Azeban could travel to everyone's death domain as easily as breathing. Most trickster gods were good at not being seen. They all had their own methods. He excelled at it, especially where no one expected him to be.
He stood for a moment where he'd started, at the swinging footbridge over the happy, murmuring river. If he was going to do this, and really, he had no choice now, he needed a plan and a secure spot from which to move back and forth between the realm of the living and those of the dead, of which there were so fucking many. He was exhausted, and he hadn't even started. When a deep shuddering breath made it in and out of his aching chest without a hitch, then another, he decided he could move without falling over and made his way upriver to a place where no human-made things, neither building nor path, disturbed the wild brush.
In the midst of a blackberry thicket, he found a place to stand and enough thought left to plan. The biggest ones first. He'd hit them in order of current human use. The Abrahamic heavens, of which there were several, the Path of the Moons, the Ancestral gates, and on down the line. Lord Hades's domain would be last. Not that it had the fewest remaining human believers, but Azeban felt terrible about doing this to someone who had just allowed him to shelter on his grounds.
Better get started, then. Lots to do and not much time.
He nudged his foot through the seam between life and death and twisted a shoulder in carefully to be certain he was making the turn in the right place before he stepped through. This first heaven was terribly bright and supported on impossibly perfect clouds. It hurt his eyes even with his shades on. The gleaming gates stood nearby, tended by figures on the inside whose attention was consumed in the sorting of incoming souls.
Azeban wrapped cloud around him, using brightness here rather than shadow for camouflage for obvious reasons. A tiny thundercloud moving across the pristine white would be painfully, absurdly obvious. The anchor netting was already in place here. He had finished that part in his first run-through. Clever stuff, the soul netting. He had to admire it in a stomach-churning sort of way. Golden in his hands, almost infinitely divisible, nearly infinitely stretchable, once placed, the stuff was almost impossible to detect.
He knew where it was, but only because he had put it there. Now Azeban took the square of netting from his pocket and broke off a piece no longer than a finger joint as he eased up to the left-hand anchor. Every strand and bit of him hated doing this—hated it. With just the anchors in place, the souls already found passage more difficult, less straightforward. He was about to deny them altogether.
Carefully, slowly so that his movements didn't disturb his cloud cover, he hooked the tiny net to the bottom of his anchor, wove the pieces together into a whole. Then he stretched the piece of netting, stretched and stretched as he climbed up the outermost hinge of the gate, until he could hook it to the top edge of the anchor. Now came the tricky part.
He dropped back down, took hold of the leading edge of the net piece, and dashed in little zigzag stops and starts between and around the human spirits coming through the gates. The ones he passed in front of stopped abruptly, confused. The ones he passed behind kept going, oblivious to any change. At the other side, he dropped most of his cloud cover and leaped for the top of the right-hand hinge. Those immortals minding the gate would see him, yes, but they would be all too aware of him now anyway, as souls began to turn back from the gate to wander aimlessly. He needed to be fucking fast.
Weave into the top anchor. Drop. Weave into the bottom. The alarm was just going up from inside the gates when he made his sideways turn in reality and escaped.
Eyes squeezed shut, breathing hard, Azeban wasn't certain he could keep doing this. He had just denied those human souls entrance into their next stage of existence. The souls wouldn't be able to find their way with the net there, their own beliefs anchoring them to that single point of egress. Bad enough. What would happen to the souls who hadn't died yet? What was going to happen to the normal course of life and death for those who believed in that death realm? And now he was going to do that again? To another set of souls and another and another?
No good choices. He couldn't condemn Kau to a horrific death either, one where hours of torture would culminate in knowing Azeban had abandoned him. No, no, no. The human souls… Maybe a better god, a braver one, could find a solution. Azeban could only finish what he had begun. He had to do this for Kau now or it would be too late.
He gathered all the spare courage he had, which wasn't much, and shifted planes to the next heaven to repeat the process. Each foray into a new realm of the dead went much like the one before. Azeban shielded himself from sight and moved, his hands becoming blurs as he caught the sense of the netting better, coming to understand its weaving on a bone-deep level, his worst moments coming as he tried to pull the netting over the Path of the Moon and the Path of the Sun in quick succession. The souls gathered there without guardians, but the crowd had been daunting. He'd bumped several confused souls on the way, and only a long-standing relationship with luck saved him from discovery.
Osiris's realm gave him palpitations. Anubis served as one of the guardians of Duat and, sure, a jackal wasn't a dog, but it was close enough to give him fits. Not to mention Anubis was sharper than most portal guardians and twice as smart as an angel. It wasn't impossible, but the timing was hellishly tricky, and he'd had to leave his boots, coat, and hat all behind in the blackberry thicket. Evening had to fall here, and he chafed at the delay lurking up in the cliffs just outside the portal to the First Region of Duat.
Below him, the River of Death wound slow and stately between the cliffs, its progress taking it under the huge stone door of the first portal. While there were giant serpents guarding the portal on either side, Azeban knew he could shield himself from them. They reacted mostly to si
ght and vibration, and they weren't terribly bright. Better to enter here than at the second portal, guarded by even bigger serpents who breathed fire and spit poison, or the third portal farther in that led to the Hall of Osiris. At this time of day, Anubis would be with Osiris as they waited for souls to judge. If Azeban tipped his hand too soon, before Anubis was busy, the jackal-headed god would most likely feel the disturbance and come rushing out. Probably to eat him or to toss him to Apep the dragon, who would eat him.
So he waited, the hollow, sick dread growing in his gut, until he spotted his signal to start moving. The great boat of Ra hove into sight after what seemed an eternity. A thing of immense beauty, Azeban had come here sometimes just to watch its passage. The shining golden barge, pulled on golden towropes by a cadre of minor gods, lit the dark cliff sides as it made its majestic way toward the portal. Lapis, turquoise, emerald, and amethyst decorated its rails and sides, studded the raised platform and throne on which mighty Ra sat ramrod straight. All the glowing and glittering emanated from his light in this twilight place, which was perfect. The shadows under and behind the boat were deep and long-reaching.
Good thing this River of Death was more or less a regular river and not the Styx, which was fucking frigid and somehow unswimmable, or the Vaitarna with its blood and bones and monstrous creatures. Azeban crept down the cliff and slid into the water as the barge floated past. He swam silently with only his eyes and nose above the water, moving quickly into the wake of the sun barge. Everyone on the barge kept their attention forward. They always did, looking toward the next portal.
Carefully, without a splash, Azeban reached up and latched onto the beams under the back curve of the barge with both feet and hands so no limbs trailed in the water. Then he hung, riding the barge in past fearsome guardians who would otherwise have never let him slide by, no matter how invisible he tried to make himself.
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