by Stark, Jenn
Right?
“Illusions,” I muttered to myself. This had happened the last time I was in Hell. I’d gotten sucked into a stage play of my own fever dreams, believing what was in front of my eyes, only to have it ripped away at the last second. But I hadn’t been looking for Sariah, then. I didn’t have time for this. These passages were closed for me, so I needed to try—
With Jarvis’s laughter echoing around the chamber, I turned back to the pile of bones, only the pile wasn’t there anymore. Instead, there was a black pit with something dark and unctuous roiling far beneath it, sending smoke billowing up and over the edges. I’d seen a pit like this once before. Not in Hell, though. It has been in the Magician’s chambers, a pit that had contained the base, primeval magic that Armaeus drew upon to feed his power. Was this where Sariah was? I dashed forward and crashed to my knees, shoving my fist into the open space. I met no resistance. Was this the way out? Was this the way through?
“There are some doorways you cannot go through and expect to emerge unscathed, Miss Wilde.” Now, instead of Jarvis, it was Armaeus speaking to me. Or was he? The sound of his voice reverberated off the stones around me, echoing and turning on itself.
I edged my face deeper into the pit, trying not to gag on the stench of char and oil and death that rose up from it. Hell wasn’t supposed to be an easy place to love, but this seemed like overkill. I glanced back up at the other exits. Surely there had to be more than one way out. Or was this pit yet another illusion, a trap to lure me away from Sariah?
A flash of light appeared in the churning pit beneath me, and a white hand stretched up. A woman’s hand. A face emerged a second later, my own face staring back at me with wide eyes and a terrified grimace of pain stretching her mouth wide.
“Sara!” she gasped, sounding so much like me, so much like Sariah, that I lunged for her. Our fingertips seemed to barely touch, then she was sucked back down into the pit, gone.
Illusion or not, I didn’t hesitate. I dove into the pit and hurtled downward, screwing my eyes shut as I plunged into the murk. The moment my outstretched hands pierced the sludge, everything erupted around me. I had dropped into a pit of oil and set it alight with my own smoldering body. The pain was excruciating, and the fuel in the pit dragged on me, simultaneously burning me alive and drowning me. The heat was so intense that I felt as if my bones were fusing together and I thrashed around wildly, kicking down deeper into the incendiary liquid, trying to force myself down, down—swimming, fighting, forcing myself through. And all the while, Sariah’s voice filled my ears, screaming. Not my own screams either, but ones laden with rage and despair and, at the end, pure terror.
Sariah! I screamed back in my mind, hoping, praying she knew I was near. I struck out to the right and slammed into a wall, but even as I did so, I heard Sariah’s scream leap with recognition—even hope. Bringing all my rage to bear on the wall, I brought my fists against it once, twice. Then I burst through.
As soon as I was on the other side of the wall, the oil congealed behind me and resolidified, a thick sludge of lava rock that somehow managed to keep the oil from filling up this chamber too.
I didn’t have time to catch my breath, though.
A horde of creatures waited for me, the leathery bat-winged beasts that I had most recently encountered on the stage in Pompeii. What the fuck had Armaeus called these things? Hellspawn? Before a few days ago, I had never encountered them. My lexicon of mythological bestiary wasn’t all that extensive, but it seemed like I should’ve at least heard of these things at some point.
As if determined to make up for lost time, they came at me in a rush. I grabbed the nearest one and used it as a mace to smack the others away, and as my eyes got used to the flickering fire around us, I could see still more of them all in a heap at the back of the chamber, scratching, fighting over pieces… Pieces of what? My stomach pitched, and I rushed forward.
I had to get away, had to act. I plunged deeper into the wall of bat birds, shooting fire, the Magician’s chastising words once more filling my mind. Only this time, he had more to say. “There are some doorways you cannot go through and expect to emerge unscathed, Miss Wilde. It is not the province of mortals or immortals. It is not the province of the living at all. It is the home of the dead, and death that profound can leach into your bones and remain, a spreading cancer.”
I didn’t care. I could fight the leach of doom. I could heal myself. It was one of the things I did best. But I couldn’t let Sariah stay here another minute. She was not going to die because of me.
One of the bat things grabbed hold of my shoulder, and I learned another important truth about their anatomy. Lining their pokey beaks were razor-sharp fangs. When this creature’s teeth sank into my flesh, a new surge of rage kindled inside me, setting my insides on fire to match my outsides.
I lurched on, thrashing and flailing, but when I finally burst through the wall of creatures, Sariah was there…she was there!
Or what was left of her was.
“Sara?” she whispered.
I crashed forward, dimly aware that I was still on fire, dripping bat and bird parts. I must look like a monster to her, but Sariah recognized me. She welcomed me. Perhaps she was only hoping I could put her out of her final misery, but I wasn’t willing to do that.
Her skin was blackened over two-thirds of her body, her face smashed beneath a fall of jagged rock. Her arms had been separated from her body, her legs amputated above the knee, shinbones and feet tossed beside her with wicked glee. Blood gushed from a long wound down the only stretch of her body that hadn’t been burned black, and something had taken a huge chunk out of her neck. But her eyes were alive. Wild, crazed, and staring at me from her partially shattered skull. Her mouth remained wrenched open in a permanent grimace, her hair matted to her face.
“Oh my God,” I groaned. “Sariah, what have they done to you?”
“So—there were so many of them,” she managed. “I didn’t expect…that.”
I couldn’t even fully understand how I was processing Sariah’s words. Her mouth had been sheared away on one side, the skin stripped all the way to the bone. Blood bubbled up at her lips every time she took a breath.
“I’ve got you—I’ve got you,” I said, not knowing what else to say. Only I didn’t. She was still in pieces—so many pieces. As my stomach churned, I reached for the nearest limb and pulled it close, then grabbed more, when a new sound erupted from the shadows beyond Sariah.
A wave of darkness rolled up as a horde of creatures spilled out of the caverns and came racing toward us. Their faces were scarred over with thick ridges of tissue, their arms and hands misshapen, wings broken off, the horns jutting out from their foreheads also broken. But their eyes were the worst of it. Wide open, desperate, needy. So needy. The eyes of the condemned left without even the hope of death. The eyes of the forsaken, suddenly given another chance—at what? Redemption? Hope?
Why were they coming after me, though? What had Sariah and I ever done to them?
I knew the answer immediately. We had escaped. We had cheated. We had done what they could not do. And I had almost forgotten how to do it again.
I grabbed the last of Sariah’s limbs and held her close, managing to shove my chin into the tattoo that had been etched into my arm. It was the only thing I could focus on with Sariah’s endless pain cascading through me in waves of horror and fire. Death herself had given me that tattoo when I’d been worried I’d lose my best friend to the life of danger I was exposing her to. Instead, it would be that friend who would be saving me.
Again.
“Nikki,” I breathed, pressing down hard. “Nikki.”
10
Nikki was no longer in Justice Hall.
I crackled back into existence in the middle of a pulsing night club dance floor, only this time, I had far too much fire going on for it to simply whisper out. Screams erupted all around me as I collapsed on top of Sariah, desperately trying to hold her body together. I was a healer as
skilled as Armaeus. But Sariah was all but dead and literally in pieces. I didn’t know how to fix this.
“Sara!” Nikki dashed to my side as I bent over Sariah, then she whirled, her loud voice carrying over the room like a bullhorn. There was none of Nikki’s trademark flash and flamboyance in her commands, just harried Chicago cop at a crime scene.
“Get back! Get back right now,” she snapped. “Somebody go cut the fucking music off. I need this place cleared immediately. Call an ambulance. Nine-one-one. I don’t give a fuck who you call. Just get the fuck back. You! Stand back, or I will rip your face off with my own bare hands, and trust me, this manicure is lethal.”
Okay, there was some of the trademark Nikki in there.
The music cut out immediately, and then there was a flood of movement around us, hustling and hurried. I held all the pieces of Sariah together with my own body, not willing or able to move.
“Sara,” she whispered, though I didn’t know how. My face was pressed against hers, my smooth, tear-streaked cheek fusing into her charred skin. “I knew you would come. Knew it. Do you understand how important that is? Do—you?”
“Shut up, you freak,” I whispered back, choking on a sob. “Shut up and focus on healing.”
She sagged back, rasping an exhausted laugh, but didn’t attempt to speak further. I tried to focus on healing her as well, but it was as if I was shorting out. All I could do was think of her body torn into pieces, charred to black. I gagged on the smell of burned skin and bones, and every attempt I made at healing sent my mind whirling like a fidget spinner tossed down a stairwell. Plinkety, plinkety—
“We’re here, Miss Wilde.” Armaeus’s smooth, authoritative voice filled my mind, and suddenly, the unmistakable presence of both the Magician and the Devil occupied the space beside me. Beside us, though, thankfully, Sariah had finally passed out.
I tried to shift back, but couldn’t peel myself from her body. Her skin had adhered to mine. She roused the moment I tried to pull away, her voice reduced to nothing but an animalistic whimper that froze me in place. Once again, I knew I needed to heal her—knew how to heal her—but I couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything more than simply exist in the same space she existed, connected in a way neither of us would ever have wanted or expected. Armaeus knelt beside me, while the Devil spoke over the still-gathered crowd, his voice at once soothing and hypnotic.
“Ladies and gentlemen, your solidarity at this terrible time is appreciated, but no longer necessary. This club has many dance floors, many other sights for you to see. You don’t need to be here any longer. You can go. Go, and remember only the pulsing lights, the joyful music, the memory of a night that ended as happily as it had begun. Go, and go now. You will be safe.”
Over the Devil’s melodic drone, Armaeus spoke, still in my mind. “We cannot take her from this place until she stabilizes. And we cannot move you either yet.”
I’m fine, I grated out.
“You are not fine,” he corrected me. “But we will address that shortly. First there is the issue of allowing me close enough to help you.”
“Are you kidding? Please,” I practically groaned, speaking aloud. “Please help me. I give you my fullest permission.”
There was the briefest pause. “I cannot get near you, Miss Wilde. I need you to allow me to get close.”
“What?” I couldn’t understand what he was saying, and I couldn’t understand why he didn’t fix this. He was the Magician of the Arcana Council. He was every bit as strong as I was, and he knew what the hell he was doing way more often than I did. What was taking him so long to get his act together? Did he need the Devil to hold his hand? Was that the problem?
“Miss Wilde,” Armaeus said again. Irritation flared through me, and I jerked up my head, ignoring the sudden hiss of pain from Sariah as my skin peeled away from hers.
I gasped. A wall of crimson fire surrounded Sariah and me. Licking over our bodies, scorching the floor. Sending up plumes of smoke. Armaeus knelt directly beside me, yet it was as if he was trapped on the other side of a glass barrier. His hands were up, fingers stretched wide, his entire body vibrating with energy. But it was energy that could not reach me.
“How?” I whispered.
Even through the fire, I could see him grimace. “I confess, I do not know. I have never encountered a block such as the one you are enforcing. I also have never encountered a Council member who entered Hell the way you have and returned the way you did. It should not be possible. The pathways of Hell are created specifically to ensure that they are not used in such a way. I actually thought you would be turned back immediately. What you did…it should not be possible.”
One part of my mind vaguely understood what Armaeus was trying to do with his calm, soothing voice. He was trying to get me to relax, to unclench, to recognize him as a friend. He was thinking that perhaps he could get closer to me, that I would let my barriers drop. But I wasn’t in charge of my barriers right now. I wanted nothing more than to welcome his help. I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t letting him get closer.
“Sara.”
I looked down at the horrifying rasp, my eyes filling with stinging tears. Sariah’s one working eye was open. The other was lost in a mass of blood and burned skin.
“Sariah?” I pleaded. “Are you doing this—keeping Armaeus out? We need to help you, honey. You’ve got to let him in.”
“You can help me.” She fixed me with her eye. “You did help me. I knew you would come, and you came.”
I shook my head, a spurt of crazy laughter welling up. “But I can’t finish the job. I’m stuck to you. I haven’t gotten to the unsticking part yet. It’s kind of an important step.”
Sariah’s lips stretched into a ghastly grin, one that made her wince. “Not—just this,” she said, her body shuddering involuntarily, allowing me to pull a bit farther away. “That’s not what I mean. You came.”
“Sariah, come on, work with me here,” I begged. “Let down your walls.”
“But they’re your walls now, don’t you see? Mine, yours. I take from you—you can take from me too. Everything I have is yours, like—” She coughed, and blood welled at her ruined lips. “Like sisters.”
I clenched my eyes shut, trying to stem the tears. “Sariah…”
She sighed as I blinked the salt away, her one eye drifting closed. “I am going to go away for awhile, I think,” she murmured. “There are things I need…to remember.”
Her voice started to fade, and I stared at her in alarm.
“You’re not going anywhere, Sariah,” I said, my voice shrill. “You’re going to get better, and you’re going to heal and—”
“Just…shut up for a goddamned second.” She sounded so fragile that I did, in fact, shut up. I leaned closer as she sucked in a shaky breath. “I thought I was being smart. That I could draw them out, make them screw up. I thought that…because I could pull from your magic, become who you were…with the magic of the Devil and Armaeus I borrowed as well, I thought that would be enough. It was almost enough. Tell Brody I’m sorry.”
I stared at her, trying to make sense of what she was saying. Confusion washed through me, almost debilitating in its horror. “But why, Sariah? Why there—then? What were you trying to accomplish?”
She sagged on the floor, her breath rasping in her throat. “A win,” she whispered. “They…they need a win. Just one.”
“They who?”
Armaeus’s voice cut across my mind. “Miss Wilde, if you’re going to save her, you need to do it. She’s right. You do not need my help. But the trial is great and will take an enormous amount of strength from you. Strength I’m not sure you still have to spend.”
Sariah seemed to be tuning in to Magician radio, because she suddenly jerked. Her eyes flew wide.
“What? No,” she said, her one working eye rolling wildly, as if she was trying to see all of me. I moved my head away just as quickly. I didn’t want her to see the damage I’d sustained, couldn’t let her s
ee it. “You can’t get hurt, Sara, not really. No. That wasn’t the point of this.”
“I’m trying to save you—”
“Well, don’t. You have to let me die if it means—if it means—”
Panic surged through me, hot and sickening. “What?”
A new figure appeared in front of us, crouching down until he was eye level with me, and I wrenched my gaze away from Sariah—and froze.
“My dear Sara Wilde,” the Devil said, and just like everyone else in the entire goddamn room, I couldn’t resist him. I couldn’t look away. “Show me your truth, Sara,” he murmured, his voice heartbreaking in its tenderness. “Show me.”
“She can’t die, Kreios,” I whispered. “She can’t.”
“For a moment—yes. She can, Sara. You have to soften your hold on her, for the barest second…”
Staring at him, my mind howling against the horror of his request, his demand, I drew in the slightest, shaky breath, and everything shifted.
In that moment, three figures moved around me—three, not two. The Magician, the Devil, and a slender, hard-eyed woman with timeless features, appearing like a young punk until you got a good look at her face. Close-cropped platinum-blonde hair spiked on one side, a sleeve of tattoos snaked down one long slender arm. Death.
All three of them pressed in on Sariah and myself, but it was Death’s touch that reached me first. Her gentle hand on my arm, sending a rush of soothing chill through me. On the other side, Armaeus was speaking so low as to be indistinct, but the words were ancient and drew upon a deep magic I had barely glimpsed in the farthest reaches of his stone-and-glass fortress. Meanwhile, the Devil cradled Sariah’s head beneath me, looking down into her one working eye and whispering something only she could hear.
“Sara,” Death said, drawing my attention. “It was not her time. It was not your time. But you do not enter Hell without paying a terrible price. Surely you knew that.”
As she spoke, she drew me slightly away from Sariah, and the Magician moved in, waves upon waves of healing magic sliding between us, through us, lighting up her poor shattered body and drawing her severed limbs closer to her blighted torso.