BURN IN HADES (47 page)

She released her grip on his shirt. “That’s what I thought it meant at first too.” She slipped off one of her boots and pulled out a roll of vellum. She held it in front of him. “Take this. After you pass through the Toran, you’ll have to inform the Mal’aKim of this gate.”

“What the hell is a Mal’aKim?”

“Angels.” She took a breath. “My true name is…Muriel.”

The roll of her tongue along the ‘r’ sound and the hard ending of ‘el’ flowed from her lips like a melody. He opened his mouth to speak his true name but his voice failed to come through.

“It’s all right,” she said. “It’s probably best that I don’t know yours.”

“Charles,” he said. “Charles Hill. Friends called me Charlie.” She was the first soul he had told his true name to in more than five hundred years. Releasing the name from his lips left him feeling vulnerable, yet more open to receive the world. He gained new strength in his resolve. He stood straighter and lighter on his feet.

The Raven handed him the vellum. It was one of his wanted posters that the squals had made. “I’ve written an evocation spell on the back,” she said. “It’ll summon an old friend of mine.”

“Since when do you know about things outside the underworld?”

“Since I drank from the calabash,” she said. “It took a while, but all my memories came flooding back. You returned this precious gift to me, and now you have to go and tell the Mal’aKim about what’s happened here. Tell them about the Nothing and how it’s spreading.”

Hundreds of thoughts passed through his head, and a funny feeling bubbled inside his stomach. Earlier he had come to terms with his fate of second death. Now he had only a minor interest in leaving the underworld and a stronger desire to stay with Cottontail and the Raven. They were the closest thing he had to a family in a very long time. He wasn’t ready to give that up.

“There’s nothing really out there for me,” he said. “Everyone I knew and cared about is dead and gone by now.”

She bent down and pulled the obsidian blade out of the ground and sheathed it into the holster across his back. For a moment she peered into his eyes, longingly as if sending him away wore heavy on her heart.

“Come with me,” he said. “Don’t stay here. You, me and Cottontail can go together.”

“There’s only one ticket. And from what I remember about the astrolabe, only one soul can use it at a time.”

“No, I mean we should give the astrolabe to Cottontail first. She can find a way to send it back to us. You’ll go next. Warn your Angel friends. And then I’ll go.”

“The other spirits won’t stop coming for your head.”

“Let ‘em come. I’m not running anymore.”

The Raven took the astrolabe from his hand and draped it around his neck. The plates and arms on the astrolabe spun wildly as if the mere act of him wearing it activated it. A pillar of green light shot out the Toran and punctured a hole in the flaming sky; the sky rippled and swelled like a lake that a boulder had fallen into.

“Sinuhe was right.” The Raven raised her voice over the rising wind. “The Toran is for you. It’s your destiny.”

“How do you know about that?” he yelled over the roaring underworld.

“Long story.”

“I don’t care about any stupid destiny! I’m not leaving Cottontail. Or you.”

“I’ll take good care of Cottontail. For once, it’s okay to be your self-centered, egocentric, and greedy self. You have this amazing opportunity. Don’t you want to finally be free of this place?”

Of course he did. More than anything. But Cottontail deserved to leave more than any soul he had ever met.

“With the things I’ve done in my life,” he said, “your Angel friends are just gonna send me back here anyway. I’d be of no use to them after I tell them what I know.”

“Exactly,” she said. “The Nothing said after my second fall, that a true friend would leave and that I should watch for that friend’s return.”

“But you’re still standing,” said Cross. “You haven’t fallen. Stop listening to the Nothing. It lies.”

“Not about this.” She wrenched his shirt and planted her lips on his.

The kiss caught him by such a surprise that he allowed it to go on without his input for a while before he kissed her back. Their union overpowered the gusting wind. Not even the Inferno exploding for a third time affected them. The ground shook, but they did not fall. Lightning struck around them but did not move them. Neither of them was afraid of the underworlds wrath. They defied its vengeance and discovered paradise in the midst of its rage.

The Raven embraced him and whispered into his ear: “We have work to do.” She shoved him away from her and kicked him hard in the stomach.

He fell backwards into the green pit, flailing. He tumbled for much longer than he should have. The green light swallowed him, engulfed him with a great
whoosh
, and caressed him. It molded him and shaped him.

Without any pain, his body stretched and became stringy until he snapped in two. His spirit and soul separated. He was in two places at once and the two entities that were him shattered. Orbs swirled all around him. The orbs were him, and as the orbs, he was larger than every underworld put together, larger than Earth or any planet, larger than the cosmos itself. All the pieces of him banged back together like enormous billiard balls, but with a silent crack.

Lights streamed past him. He had the sense that he was flying. He didn’t feel any wind brush his skin. Did he even have skin? He couldn’t see himself. What he could see was flickering stars as he soared through the cosmos.

It all struck him as familiar. He had made this journey before. Somehow he had forgotten about it, which was odd because he was the one soul that remembered everything. Between the moment Kate had shot him and when he arrived on the Charon, he had left earth and flew through the Heavens just as he was doing now.

A blue orb grew bigger as he drew closer to it. White blobs drifted along the orb’s surface. They were clouds. They floated over the blue and brown areas, which were oceans and continents. The orb resembled the globe of the world that Mr. Carson owned in his study except more colorful and wondrous.

This must be how God sees the Earth. It was the most beautiful sight. He wished Cottontail could have seen it.

Earth enveloped him. He zoomed through the clouds, heading straight towards a world he hadn’t seen in more than five hundred years.

Son of a bitch. Here we go again.

As soon as he set foot on solid ground, he would follow the Raven’s instructions and warn the damn Angels about the Nothing. Then, if necessary, he would resurrect the dead to free the Raven and Cottontail.

Rest in peace, my ass.

About the Author

I spin in my office chair, ride shopping carts down the aisle, and tell lies for a living. In that order. I'm an author of fantasy novels, living in Baltimore, MD who believes magic should always be magical because it's, well, magic.

On the Internets I go by "
mlmjr
" (my initials).

mlmjr.com

about.me/mlmjr

[email protected]

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