Katrina knew, if she hadn't seen Gabrielle's need for stability, she'd probably be going to pieces herself. Gab was holding up well considering Heaven was her daughter. Katrina couldn't picture what she might do if one of her babies had been snatched away by some lunatic.
“This guy must not be in any hurry to hurt Heaven," Katrina said. "He's had all the time in the world to do it with his
Gnelfs
and he hasn't. He's only toyed with her."
"True," Gab agreed. The thought seemed to soothe her a little, not much but enough to make her sit down and collect herself.
"Danube will be here," Katrina said. "If he was sent to do good like he said, whatever got him here before will get him here again. The old preachers would always say, trust in the Lord."
Gab took her hand, and they bowed their heads in unison, praying that this ordeal would end quickly, praying also for Heaven's safety.
They were still praying a few minutes later when a loud knock jarred the front door. Katrina answered it to find Danube standing before her, a disheveled and drawn-looking Danube who had strips of cloth tied around his hands. Was this the man they'd been hoping could come up with answers?
He rushed into the room when she told him Gabrielle was waiting, and his desperation seemed to match theirs when he was told what had happened.
"Into nothingness?" he asked.
"Totally," Gab said. "I saw it happen, and even with everything else that's gone on, I still can't believe it."
"We've looked everywhere," Katrina said. "'We've tried to find where he might have slipped out, but there's nothing."
Danube sat down, resting his elbows on knees and bending his head forward to his bandaged palms, his fingers entwining in red locks of hair.
"What did he say?"
"At the end?"
"Yes. What exactly did he say, about hell?"
"He said he was going to hell." She hesitated, thinking. "Then he corrected himself. Something about Hades. He said he wasn't going to hell but to Hades, or words to that effect."
"Then that's where he is. It makes sense of a sort.”
“How so?"
"He's been dabbling with an amalgamation of spells drawn from a couple of ancient books. He's evidently devoted a lot of time to finding lost volumes,
The Book of
Raziel
which was cast away by God, and
The Red Book
which legend holds stolen from Satan. He's been crossing things up, summoning demons and building his own personal powers. With each spell he's learned more. He's been experimenting while assaulting Heaven."
"For what purpose?"
'`To build his skills to this point. I do not know what he expects to gain, but I think I know where he is trying to go.”
"Where, dammit?" Gabrielle demanded. "He's got my daughter. What do you think he's doing?"
"In the beyond, there is a place of hatred and suffering. It is a place separated from God, a place that has no loving kindness. It is a place born with the beginning of the world, a place where those angels in rebellion against God formed a kingdom. Hades is in those nether regions, beyond the outer darkness.
"Hell is beyond Hades, in the pits where the torture and the suffering of lost souls takes place. That is where Satan reigns. If he specified that he is going to Hades, then it is not Satan he plans to encounter. Suffering is not his purpose."
"I'm not following you. If he's not after the devil what does he want in hell?"
"He's going to a part of Hades,
Tartarus
. You understand, Satan and his angels rule in hell, and Satan has sway over forces on the Earth. But the old legends also tell of a more powerful demon-god who ruled in Hades and was an overseer. Satan and his lieutenants had one function, but the one called Hades was the ruler over them all. He was viewed one way in Greek myth, but the older legends know him as who he truly is. Simon is evidently going to the emperor of the nether regions,
Samael
, to see what powers he will bestow."
"And Heaven is his sacrifice. She's pure, innocent. That's the kind of sacrifice he would take. Right?"
Danube was silent, solemn for a moment before he nodded. "He mentioned he'd made promises.”
“We have to go after them," Gabrielle said.
"That was the solution I was going to suggest. I will not ask you to come with me."
"I have to go," Gabrielle protested. "She's my daughter. I can't wait here while you chase them into a myth. Take me with you, Danube."
"It will be very dangerous."
"That doesn't matter. Don't argue."
He shook his head. "It would do little good. Show me where he stepped away. I think we can follow him from there."
~*~
He knelt beside Althea's body for a moment, then stepped around the room, his eyes fierce as he studied the area.
"The
Gnelfs
vanished when he did?"
"Just after that," Gabrielle answered.
Danube looked at the floor. "There are no markings, no symbols of a gate. He went through a rift that was opened for the passage of Althea's soul."
"She went to hell?"
"No. I don't think so. But the curtain to the beyond, the veil, was opened to let her through. The opening may be here still."
He reached out for Gab's hand. "We're going to have to step through and go from there. The opening won't take us to Hades. You cannot get there from here. But you can get there from there."
"Are you trying to be funny?"
"Simply trying to use phrases you can understand."
She gave him her hand, biting her lips as they moved past Althea's body. Her willingness to undertake this surprised her. It was so alien, so strange, so frightening. It went against her nature, but she had to do it—for Heaven.
They had survived the last few days together, and they would get through this some way. Heaven would want her to come; she would need to see her mother and not just a stranger.
Drawing a deep breath, Gab stepped when Danube stepped, following his commands. Just as she had seen the sorcerer disappear, she now saw the room vanish.
One moment they were peering at the wall. The next they were adrift in a void of blackness and stars. Were they flying? She thought so for a moment, but then realized that they were passing through some intangible veil. They were not walking exactly, because they were in a world where things were different, where substance had a different feel.
Slowly, the blackness began to fade. This was no light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel experience, however. It merely melted into a dark gray world. Looking up did not reveal a sky, only a great vastness of gray that seemed to stretch forever.
Gab looked down and realized she was standing at last. At least it felt like she was standing, the ground beneath her feet a slick mass of oily gray clay. They were on the shore of what seemed to be a body of water. As her sight adjusted, she saw it stretched to infinity, and she noticed small waves lapping against the clay.
"Where are we?" she asked.
She had never seen anything quite like the water, which was somehow like smoke, somehow like fog, yet also like liquid.
She looked up at Danube, who was squinting, staring out through the mist that rose above the water. "Danube, where are we?" she repeated. "What are you looking for? Is this the way he brought Heaven?”
“It has to be. It has to be what he planned.”
“Then where are they?"
"They've already traversed the gulf."
"This is the gulf?"
"You remember the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, do you not? The gulf that separated hell from heaven and Earth. Or you might recall your mythology. Gabrielle, you are on the banks of the River Styx."
"This is impossible."
He nodded toward the outline that was slowly fading through the fog. "Unreality has no meaning here, and what you perceive is not as tangible as you might hope. But we are here, and Heaven is here, and whatever is manifest here, or however our minds perceive it, that is the reality.”
"I don't understand. This can't be."
"There are rules in the physical world. Our minds are designed to read the tangible things there and to react to them. This is a different realm; our minds cannot comprehend the things we see here. Thus, they are processed for us in terms that we can understand. This water is not water, but our minds cannot perceive it in its true spiritual form, so we perceive it as liquid, the closest thing we can understand to its actual makeup. It's much like a computer being given information in a different computer language. It will interpret the data as well as possible. The same will be true of beings we see. They may not have human form here, but our mind has no frame of reference so we see them as we must, as men or monsters. Remember also, this is not our realm. We are not dead, but we are not immune here either. We can be touched and killed in the same way we would on Earth."
The boat eased through the swirling mists, cruising through the murky liquid, a long, black gondola. The man who stood at the stern, guiding the craft, was clad in tattered robes, with rags wrapped around his face and head like bandages. His hands, too, were covered with tattered cloth, and his eyes were not eyes but glowing red orbs that seemed to float within empty cavernous sockets.
"Meet
Charon
," Danube said grimly.
The glowing eyes of the figure stared at her blankly, burning. She saw no opening for a mouth, but she had not expected him to speak.
"Danube, what can we do? The dead gave him coins in mythology."
“I think he will let us pass," Danube said. He reached into the pocket of his coat and drew out two pieces of silver. The coins were worn almost smooth, their original markings long unreadable.
A quivering, withered hand, swathed in gray tatters rose slowly and, twitching badly, reached out for the money. Danube dropped the silver into the palm, and quickly the being secreted it. Then the hand began to reach toward Gabrielle. She started to pull away, but she realized
Charon
was reaching out to help her aboard.
The craft rocked slightly as she eased her weight onto a seat. She gripped the sides as Danube also climbed aboard. She wanted to wake up, still not believing what was happening. This was myth, fairy tale, and yet she had been drawn into it; Heaven had been drawn into it.
Evil had reached out and dragged them into its realm. She had, in her way, always believed in hell, but it had never, in her mind, seemed quite so literal.
In a few moments the movement began, and Heaven saw the craft's bow begin to slice through the water. As she watched ripples break around the hull, she looked down into the gray liquid and gasped.
Decaying bodies floated there, ruined and fragmented. Severed limbs drifted past, and whole corpses. She recoiled, swallowing the coppery taste at the back of her throat.
"How broad is the gulf?"
"I have never had occasion to cross it before," Danube answered.
"So you don't know where we're going either?”
“Not exactly. I have heard stories and read volumes which had accounts of the beyond."
"Have others been here?"
"Some pages say that the Nazarene walked there in those three days after"—his voice broke, and he choked up for a moment—"after his death," he managed finally. “He moved through the corridors and set free those who were righteous."
"The Harrowing of Hell?"
"Precisely."
Something swept down just over their heads. Gabrielle felt her muscles tense, and she ducked down, rocking the boat with her movements as she raised her hands to shelter her head.
Danube was looking into the distance toward the form of the reptile-like creature. Its leathery wings flapped in the mist, carrying it higher and higher.
Gab spun around to see another, its face hideous, its red and yellow eyes peering down at her as it fluttered onward. Sharp, horned ridges protruded over its brow, and a long tail that tapered to a sharp point trailed behind it.
Clutched in its talons was a ragged body which had been tortured and was now a mass of open wounds and lesions. It hung limply beneath the creature, but slight movements indicated it was yet alive.
"Dante and the artists weren't far wrong, were they?" she asked, trying to control her fear.
"I am sure the things we have heard only scratch the surface."
Danube was looking ahead now, trying to see through the mist. It was impossible to make out anything more than a few inches away, however, even though the boatman had ignited a glowing orange lantern and seemed to know where he was going.
The next assault on Gabrielle's senses came from the side of the boat, screams and the gurgling of throats filled with water. As they passed on through the mist, she looked off to where a cluster of people splashed about, clinging to each other and trying to keep their heads above the murk.
They seemed like passengers left by a sinking ship. She was reminded of the
Titanic
as the water sloshed around them or their attempts to swim failed.