10

Hell

Octavian and Squire took turns carving away at Alexandra’s glass prison. It had taken Meaghan and Lazarus weeks to chip through the crystal spire in order to release him, but they hadn’t had weapons forged by a hobgoblin weaponsmith. Both edges of the sword Squire had given Octavian were sharp enough to shear off whole sections of the spire, but the black edge did it smoothly, with only the lightest resistance.

As they worked – Octavian with his sword and Squire with the axe that seemed to have become his preferred weapon – Octavian kept stealing glances at Alex’s frozen features. He had not seen her in the flesh since before his own time in Hell, and yet he had recognized her immediately. When Karl von Reinman had made new vampires to bring into his coven he had required them to abandon their human names and had rechristened them with names that included numbers, thus Nicephorus Dragases had become Peter Octavian. Whatever Alexandra Nueva’s birth name had been, Octavian had never learned it. They had been allies and sometimes even friends, but often they had feuded the way siblings so frequently did. Her rich, deep brown skin might be the furthest thing from his own complexion, but they were family in a way that went far beyond such simplistic definitions, siblings not from birth but rebirth. An entirely different sort of blood relation.

‘She’s a beauty,’ Squire said as they carved away. A huge chunk of crystal calved off and crashed into the thick blanket of ashes to the hobgoblin’s right. ‘I’m gonna go out on a limb and assume she’s single.’

Octavian took his turn, brought the sword down and whittled off a six inch section near her abdomen.

‘Not funny,’ he said.

‘It’s a little funny.’

‘You keep saying that, which suggests to me that you actually believe it. You’re like the girl with the horrible voice who sings the loudest at parties because her mommy always told her she sang like an angel.’

‘Now who thinks he’s funny?’

Squire hacked off another chunk of glass. They had come within a foot of Alex’s chest. Her arms hung at her sides as if she were unconscious when she had been pushed into the malleable, still-cooling crystal spire. Octavian studied her perfect features, her chocolate skin, and the serenity of her expression and he faltered.

‘No, no,’ he said, and he brought the sword down hard, cleaving another shard away, this time close to her face. ‘Don’t fucking do this.’

‘Who are you—’ Squire began.

‘Look at her,’ Octavian said. He let the sword rest at his side, point against the ground, and gestured at Alex. ‘She burns inside, you understand? Alexandra Nueva’s one of the most intense creatures I’ve ever met. She can be a cruel bitch or a savage ally, but she’s fierce. She’d have fought this, but look at her face. Even demons could not imprison her here without her fighting back, but she looks so damn peaceful.’

‘Last I checked, vampires from your world were molecular shapeshifters,’ Squire said. ‘The only way to kill them is to destroy them completely, or convince them they’re dead.’

Exhaling, Octavian nodded. ‘Normally, that’s true. But this is Hell. Even I’m not sure what’s possible here.’

‘Look, it’s much more likely that she was just unconscious when they put her in there,’ Squire said. ‘They do torture people, if you’d forgotten.’

Octavian sneered angrily at him and Squire held up a hand in surrender.

‘I know, I know. I’m not funny,’ the hobgoblin said. ‘All I’m saying is, if she’s dead, she’s no worse off than you thought she was when we got here. We trekked over here looking for Lazarus and we found your sister instead. Let’s just get her cute little ass out of there and we’ll see what’s what.’

Ignoring him, Octavian stared at Alex through the jagged crystal. Can you hear me? But of course she could not. Shadows who shared the same sire could communicate with their minds, read each other’s thoughts, but he hadn’t been a vampire in a very long time.

Squire hefted his axe.

Octavian held up a hand to stop him. ‘We’ve done enough. We’re almost through to her flesh, but there’s a faster way to finish this. The way I got out of here.’

Sheathing his sword, Octavian drew a dagger Squire had given him and began chipping away at the glass around Alex’s face as if it were a block of ice. It took several minutes – during which, Squire winced several times and admonished him to be careful and work more slowly – but at last he cracked a bit of the crystal away from her left cheek. Emotion well up within him, the pain of a sentiment he had not allowed himself to feel since before he’d discovered Nikki had been murdered. Yes, he believed Allison and Kuromaku and the others were still alive somewhere in Hell, but no living creature had known him as long as Alex had. No one could understand the road he had travelled the way she could.

Sister, he thought again. The word had never had so much meaning.

He poked the pad of his left index finger with the point of the dagger, just enough to draw several beads of blood.

‘Alex,’ he said. ‘Time to wake up. If you’re alive in there, I need you to open your eyes.’ He pushed his finger through the hole in the glass and smeared his own blood on her cheek. ‘Come on, now. You’re not alone anymore.’

Nothing happened. He prodded her flesh and found it soft and yielding, scalded by the superheated glass but otherwise unharmed.

Octavian slammed his hand against her crystal prison. ‘Alex, come on! Wake up! I need you!’

He struck the spire again and again, until Squire put a hand on his arm.

‘Pete, step back a second. Let me take a few more whacks at it and we can pull her right out. It might help if—’

Alex opened her eyes. They were bright red, wide with fury or madness or both, and Octavian felt sure that if she could have opened her mouth she would have screamed.

‘Mist,’ he told her. ‘You can get yourself out. Just shift and you can . . .’

Alexandra Nueva did not need his instructions. She disincorporated, transforming herself from flesh to white mist, and poured herself out as if that crystal spire had simple exhaled her. The mist fled the hollow inside the spire and began to coalesce, but the incorporation seemed sluggish, as if her consciousness had trouble remembering what she was supposed to look like, how to sculpt herself anew.

‘Alex, focus!’ Octavian snapped. ‘You’re Alexandra Nueva, blood-daughter to Karl von Reinman, one of the Defiant Ones. You know who you are!’

It took several seconds longer, but the mist took on solidity and at last Alexandra Nueva stood naked before them, head hung as she stared at the thick layer of ashes underfoot.

‘Oh, my,’ Squire said, entranced by her nudity.

Octavian took a step toward her. ‘Alex, it’s me, Peter. Do you know me? Do you remember yourself?’

She snapped her head up, red eyes locked on him, and she began to tremble as her jaws opened wide and her fangs grew long. With a ravenous snarl, she lunged at him. Octavian shouted at her to stop as he brought the dagger up to defend himself. Her claws raked through his jacket and slashed his shoulder even as he buried the blade between her breasts. Alex roared with pain and staggered backward, almost feral in her rage and hunger.

‘Goddamn it, Alex, listen to me!’ Octavian shouted. ‘It’s Peter!’

Her blood-red eyes locked on him again, but this time the madness had receded and a fierce intelligence glittered therein. She glanced down at the dagger jutting from her chest and then she turned to mist again. The blade fell into the ashes with a whisper and then she reformed in front of him, lashed out and grabbed him by the throat . . . lifted him off the ground so that he began to choke.

Fangs bared, she shoved her face toward his so that they were eye to eye.

‘I know exactly who you are,’ she said. ‘You’re the motherfucker who got my girlfriend killed.’

Which was when Squire buried his axe in the back of her head.

She screamed and reeled away, crashing into the shattered face of her crystal prison. With a roar, she ripped the axe from her skull and turned on Squire, ready to cleave him in two with his own weapon even as the wound he’d made knitted itself closed.

‘Alex, stop!’ Octavian shouted at her. ‘I don’t know how you know Meaghan’s dead, but it wasn’t me who killed her. Mulkerrin returned and brought Lord Beelzebub with him. Meaghan sacrificed herself—’

She spun on him, unsure, fingers flexing on the axe. ‘Not what I heard.’

‘From who? Lazarus? How could he know what happened? He’s been here the entire time that you have. When he and Meaghan came to rescue me, we used the Gospel of Shadows to open a portal back to our world but one of the spires impaled him, trapped him even as he finished casting the spell. We were already passing through the portal and it was closing! My thoughts and memories were a mess, just like yours are now. It took a long time for me to put it all back together, to remember all the magic I’d learned. When I did, I should’ve come back for him—’

‘For us!’ Alex cried, but some of the red had left her eyes.

‘I thought you were dead. We all did. Think about it, Alex. If Meaghan had known that you were still alive she never would’ve left you here. She’d have let the portal close with her on this side if it meant she could have stayed with you.’

The vampire hesitated. ‘I . . .’

Then she whipped her head back and forth as if trying to shake loose thoughts and voices that troubled her. The axe remained in her hand but she had forgotten it had been Squire who had tried to kill her with it. She had eyes only for Octavian.

‘I know your story. He told me,’ she said. ‘He told me you were human now, and I can smell that it’s true. Smell your blood.’

‘Pete . . .’ Squire said, his tone full of warning. The hobgoblin reached into his coat and drew a small dagger, but if the axe had done nothing, he could not possibly think this blade would be any more effective.

‘It’s been so very long since I’ve tasted human blood,’ Alex said. Her body bent forward and her arms began to elongate, fingers turning to talons. ‘And it’s only right. It’s what Meaghan would want . . . what she deserves. We came to save you and you got her killed.’

Octavian swore under his breath. Deep inside, his magic waited. He had sublimated it as much as he could, buried it in his heart and his gut and held the reins tightly. But he had come to Hell to rescue his friends and he was not going to let anything stand in his way. If that meant using magic – even if it sent up a flare that would bring every demon in Hell down on their heads – he would fight.

‘What else did he tell you?’ Octavian asked. ‘Did he tell you I’m a magician? A sorcerer? Did he tell you I know a dozen ways to kill a vampire, even a Shadow in full control of her abilities?’

Alex crept toward him, eyeing his hands warily. Octavian felt the tingle in his fingertips and understood why – a silver aura had begun to crackle from his hands and he could feel the power misting from his eyes. No, he thought, tamping it down, tightening his hold on the reins of his own magic.

Squire shifted, moving directly behind her. The ugly little man glared at Alex’s back, yellow eyes narrowed to slits. He held the dagger loosely, and then he reached his left hand into his jacket and withdrew a heavy revolver. Octavian had not seen him pick it up at the armoury and it seemed much too large for him to have hidden in his coat, which made him wonder if the voluminous inner pockets of that coat might be somehow supernatural.

The click of the hammer made Alex freeze.

‘Silver bullets, honey,’ Squire said. ‘It doesn’t have to be like this.’

‘The thing is,’ Octavian went on. ‘You’re not in full control. I don’t want to hurt you, Alex, and I really don’t want to kill you. But if you could shapeshift with a thought the way Shadows are meant to, Squire and I would already be dead.’

‘What are you doing here?’ Alex screamed. ‘I know you didn’t come for me. You thought I was dead. So why the fuck are you here? You finally came back for Lazarus?’

Octavian considered lying. Instead, he shook his head. ‘I have other friends I believe are here. You know some of them. Kuromaku. Taweret. Santiago. There are no Shadows left in our world, no vampires at all. They were all shunted here. At least I—’

‘No. You’re lying.’

‘He’s not,’ Squire said quietly.

‘Meaghan—’ Alex began.

‘She loved you,’ Octavian interrupted.

‘I know she loved me!’ Alex screamed, and tears of blood began to run down her face. ‘You son of a bitch, I know!’

‘She loved me, too,’ Octavian said quietly, the hot wind and flying ash nearly stealing his words away. ‘Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’

Alex stared at him with wide eyes, her eyes fading from vivid red to her own warm and beautiful brown. The axe fell from her hand and she began to crumble, folding her arms across her chest as grief overcame her. Bloody tears dripped from her chin and vanished in the ashes at her feet.

She turned to mist again, but this time she did not reform. The searing wind blew burning cinders across the surface of Hell and took Alex and her grief along with it.

Phoenix’s World
Ardsley-on-Hudson, New York, USA

As she drove north, with Ronni in the passenger seat, Phoenix felt remarkably calm. Her grip on the steering wheel stayed light and her pulse and breathing both remained steady. It couldn’t have been a lack of fear; only a fool or a madwoman could have chosen the path they were taking without being terrified of it. Yet her heart swelled with purpose and she kept her eyes on the road, and when they came to a roadblock in Dobbs Ferry she rolled down the window and waved to the police officer standing in the street, then turned and weaved her way along back roads that would still get them where they were going. She hadn’t grown up here, but knew the area well enough by now.

As they drove, making their way along old roads and through neighbourhoods of ageing Victorians and 1960s Colonials, they could see smoke rising off to the northwest. Not from the hospital, as least as far as Phoenix could gauge their location; the smoke had to be coming from the surrounded woods or homes. Hell hadn’t just come to Earth . . . it was spreading.

‘This is . . .’ Ronni began, followed by a hollow laugh. Phoenix turned along a narrow, curving road lined with dense forest, grateful they couldn’t see the smoke anymore. ‘Holy shit, this is . . .’

Phoenix glanced at her, cold autumn breeze blowing through the window she had forgotten to put back up. Ronni had high cheekbones and full lips and a wide nose that amounted to a kind of perfection, but she also had a long scar on the left side of her throat and several smaller ones at the temple and hairline on the same side. Phoenix had noticed these scars before but paid little attention to them. They had spoken very little during their journey together, mostly about their parents and the houses they had grown up in, and a little bit about the Uprising, the topic that seemed foremost on Ronni’s mind tonight.

‘Are you okay?’ Phoenix asked.

Ronni twisted in her seat, staring. ‘Fuck no! How the hell are you okay?’

‘I’m not okay.’

‘Bullshit, look at you. No wonder you survived the Uprising. I always figured you had to be pretty damn chill to be able to do what you did, but we’re going back to the hospital after . . . I mean, they’re demons! I just don’t know how you can—’

‘I said, “I’m not okay!”’ Phoenix snapped.

Her hands gripped the wheel and she looked at Ronni.

‘I’m as terrified as you are. But my father is at the centre of this. He died this morning but he’s . . . they’re using him, Ronni. I don’t know what that means for his soul, if it’s already at peace or whatever, but I know either way that what they’ve done to his body is an abomination. I’m going to put an end to that, whatever it takes, and yeah, that’s given me a kind of weird serenity. But it doesn’t mean I’m not afraid or that I don’t know how crazy this is or what we’re up against, okay?’

Phoenix exhaled, tried to focus on the road, and realized she’d missed her intended turn. She swore under her breath as she slowed and made a U-turn.

‘Sorry,’ Ronni said, her brown eyes wide and searching. ‘I’m freaking out.’

‘You’re not alone,’ Phoenix said, as she drove a short distance to the dead end circle at the end of Tomko Road, put the car in park, rolled up her window and then killed the engine.

The engine ticked loudly, cooling.

Ronni reached over and covered Phoenix’s hand on the wheel with her own.

‘Neither are you.’

Phoenix nodded slowly, then plucked the keys from the ignition. ‘You don’t have to come, y’know? This isn’t your fight.’

When Ronni didn’t immediately reply, she popped open her door and climbed out. It took a second, but then the passenger door swung open and Ronni emerged, looking at Phoenix over the top of the car.

‘It’s everybody’s fight.’

‘You know what I mean.’

Ronni slammed her door. ‘Yeah, I do.’

‘People are going to be running away, not toward this. They’re going to leave it to the cops and the National Guard and get as far away as possible as fast as they can. It’s what I would have done during the Uprising if I could have, if I didn’t have to look out for my dad and if I wouldn’t have been ripped apart and eaten alive the second I reached the street. It’s what I would do tonight, right now, if this didn’t involve my father.’

‘I don’t believe that,’ Ronni scoffed.

Phoenix slammed her door and clicked the button on the key fob that engaged the locks. The chirping sound made her frown. Locking the doors? Apparently, she thought she might actually be coming back. The odds were ridiculous, but the thought gave her hope. She went to the rear of the car and opened the trunk, hefting out one of the plastic gas cans they had bought and filled up at a Shell station on the way.

‘What about you, Ronni?’ she asked. ‘Why are you here?’

‘I already—’

Phoenix smiled. ‘Nah, come on. Maybe you’ve told me part of it – the surface part – but there’s got to be more. You live in Westchester County but, other than some casual friends, you don’t have anyone here. No way did you have to come all the way across the country to get a nursing job, so that’s not it. Maybe you feel like you’ve got nothing to lose or nothing to live for, but I don’t think that’s it, either.’

Ronni knitted her brow and wetted her lips with her tongue, as if she had something to say but couldn’t find the words.

‘Is it redemption? Something you feel like you have to do penance for or something? Because I know all about penance.’

Ronni rubbed at her arms, but Phoenix didn’t think it was the October evening that had put a chill into her.

‘I told you when I met you today how much you inspired me,’ Ronni said.

‘And that’s sweet, and maybe it’s even true,’ Phoenix replied. ‘But?’

Ronni took one of the gas cans from her and started walking, heading for the path that led from the circle into the woods.

‘Hey!’ Phoenix called to her, not moving. Ronni turned to face her. ‘If I’m about to do the stupidest, most terrifying thing imaginable, if I’m basically walking into Hell, I deserve to know who I’ve got beside me.’

She could see the conflict in Ronni’s eyes, but after a few seconds the woman shook her head with a laugh.

‘I don’t talk about this.’

‘I get that,’ Phoenix replied.

‘But I figure we’re probably going to die, so . . .’ Ronni said, and shrugged.

Phoenix walked over to her and they stood together at the entrance to the woods. The hospital was maybe three hundred yards away, along the path and up a steep hill. If they had any chance of sneaking in without being torn apart by demons, this was it.

‘Okay,’ Ronni said, and she took a shuddering breath. Her eyes brimmed with tears but she fought to keep them from falling. She swallowed hard. ‘My senior year of high school, I was out of control. A party girl. The guy I was seeing – Spence – he had a party one night when his parents were away and he thought it would be funny if we got his little brother drunk. Matt was fourteen, a freshman, and kind of a dweeb. You could see he was going to be handsome once he grew out of his nerdiness, that he was gonna be something one day, but all he wanted was to impress his older brother and I know he thought I was hot.’

Ronni gave a soft laugh. ‘Shit, I was hot.’ Any other time, Phoenix would have told her that she still was, but the pain in her eyes and her voice went too deep to be interrupted. Ronni gazed off into the trees but it was clear that she was really looking into the past.

‘We got him so drunk. Outrageously shitfaced. All the girls loved him and they took care of him and babied him even after he’d puked. But even as drunk as he was, he knew enough to be embarrassed and when me and Spence had found something else to amuse ourselves – screwing in his bedroom upstairs – Matt left the house.’

Ronni lowered her gaze, staring at the pavement beneath her feet. Phoenix had never seen anyone look so hollow, or so alone.

‘I got shitfaced that night, too, even though I was driving. I always told myself as long as I could walk then I could drive, and somehow I always managed to get the car back into the driveway back at my house without wrapping it around a tree. But the thing is, Mattie . . . he was so drunk that he just fell over. Just passed out right where he landed, which happened to be at the end of his driveway.’

Phoenix’s heart lurched.

Ronni began to cry. ‘Backing out . . . headed home . . . I ran him over.’

‘Oh, my God,’ Phoenix said, reaching for her arm.

Ronni pulled away, refusing to be comforted, the heavy plastic gas can swinging in her hand. ‘He was dead by the time the ambulance came. Really, he was dead pretty much the second I ran him over. I knew that, but we all waited for the ambulance like somehow they’d be able to perform a miracle.’

She lifted her teary gaze and stared at Phoenix. ‘Nothing was ever the same after that. Nothing was ever right or good, and every time I looked into the eyes of the people who somehow, after that, still managed to love me, all I could feel was their pity and my own shame. My own guilt. I couldn’t stand seeing that in people’s eyes anymore, and so when I decided to be a nurse – that being a nurse was the only way I could live with myself – I came out here for school. I’ve never gone back.’

Ronni wiped at her eyes and then threw up her hands. ‘So now you know who you’ve got beside you. Another killer. But you killed someone to try to save the damn world, and I did it because I was a drunken little bitch who thought it would be okay to make a fool out of a fourteen-year-old boy.’

Phoenix wiped at her own eyes and found that she was crying, too. There’d been far too much of that today. She reached for Ronni again, but this time when Ronni tried to push her away she would not be pushed. She held her by the shoulders until Ronni had no choice but to look into her eyes.

‘Don’t tell me I don’t have to do this,’ Ronni said, her jaw clenched.

‘Whatever you think of yourself, whatever mistakes you’ve made,’ Phoenix said, ‘you’re here now. Almost anyone else would have run screaming.’

Ronni shuddered but only nodded, all out of words.

Phoenix nodded in return. ‘All right. Let’s go.’

And they turned together and started into the woods. From the top of the hill ahead of them, through the trees, they heard someone begin to scream, a long, horrible keening – the most completely hopeless sound that either of them had ever heard.

But they kept walking.

Nothing would turn them back now.