Hunting in Hell Read online

  "We had…" Laufeyson stopped, his face suddenly contorting with hidden pain. "We had a child."

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Given a choice, he never would have revealed it to her like this.

  He had anticipated it, all of it - her surprise, her hurt, her anger. He had expected that she would attack him, arms outstretched, desperate to punish him for insulting old wounds. That was the only way he managed to catch her, to pin her down before her anger made her unstoppable. He had no doubt that she would have willingly broken her own arm for the chance to claw his face out.

  "Just listen to me!" he cried, his air coming in gasps. "I can explain everything. Don't you want to know about her?"

  De la Roca went limp, and he could hear the ragged whisper of her breathing. "Her?"

  "Yes. We had a daughter."

  There was a moment of reflection, and then he heard, "Speak now, before I change my mind."

  He could feel the yearning of a shared past that had been forgotten. He didn't know, though, where to begin untangling the story, and his start was clumsy. "I was … a high ranking member of the Consortium. And you … you were …" he struggled for a moment, "you were everything. You were my light and my breath. When we discovered that our union had produced a child - you could not imagine the fear I felt." His eyes sought the floor, and he willed them back to her face.

  "An Unauthorized Child … how can I explain it? There are a thousand angels in the Consortium - no more, no less. It is the number that Golden, and therefore the Pentarch, requires - the perfect number that allows him to maximize the power and control of his kevra."

  He could feel the muscles in his forearms straining as his hands clenched into fists. He willed them open, but they refused to obey. "Don't you understand? There is only one way to keep the number so constant - the Pentarch breeds us to replace those lost due to war or defection. They can't afford to let us mate on our own, for love - not only would that raise our number above the thousand, but it steals loyalty away from the Pentarch. It would force us to choose between their future for us, and a future for ourselves."

  His eyes were stinging. There was a time, once, when he had cried endlessly - had those tears not been enough?

  "They killed our daughter, De la Roca. They would have killed you, too."

  "And why not you? Are you blameless?"

  Her words twisted in his gut, sharper than even she knew.

  Shame tore through him, until the contact of their bodies was too much. He released her and pushed himself backwards, creating a physical space that mirrored their emotional divide.

  "On the night you would have been executed, I was sent to verify the final arrangements."

  "Oh?" she asked, her lip curling up in a sneer.

  "I was to be your executioner."

  He could see the shock in her eyes, and it hurt him even more than her hatred.

  "I went to your cell with a prisoner named Cleopia and I-" his breath caught. He continued, ignoring the way her eyebrows had perked up at the name, "I switched you."

  "You what?"

  "I made a pact with Muninn."

  Her mouth fell open, and he knew she was remembering the phoenix, the giant tail of images that showed every step of her life in a massive fan. Muninn had known everything, known it all because her memories were his.

  But De la Roca couldn't remember, of course, how Muninn had received them. She'd never suffer as Laufeyson did, the memory burned forever into his brain. It haunted him every night - Muninn sucking out her soul and life - the chill of his blood as he watched her scream in pain - the demon's groan as he feasted on her memories - the retching noise as he spit up what was left of her essence into the new body.

  When it was over, Muninn sighed, and a shiver ran up Laufeyson's spine. He sighed the same way when the nicotine of a dearly-needed cigarette blazed through his body. It was a sigh of addiction, consumption, and satiation.

  Laufeyson swallowed, staring past her, and began to describe the decapitation. He could almost feel the weight of the pommel in his hand, the metal damp from his own sweat. "That was the last execution I ever performed. I hacked the head off with such violence that they thought I had gone mad." Breathing deeply, he un-balled his fists.

  "And the child? What happened to her?"

  "Golden had already killed her."

  The news was met with a long silence, neither one willing to break it. Finally, De la Roca asked in a whisper, "And me?"

  Laufeyson sighed. "Your mind - what was left of it - was in Cleopia's body. You were hooded and bound at the ankles and the wrists. They thought you were her, and they gave you her punishment - banishment from Hell and reassignment as a minor mercenary on Earth."

  "Reassignment." The word was weightless, almost flippant.

  His heart welled with grief, remorse; briefly, he almost wished he could go back to the day that he found her. Instead of hinting that he knew of her quest, would it not have been better to disappear, fade into the background through the power of his kevra, and leave his identity and her past a mystery to her, forever?

  Her face darkened, and many moments passed where she did not speak. He wondered if she was trying to understand, if she was struggling with the knowledge that she was in another's body.

  He had not expected her answer.

  "I don't care."

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Her child was dead.

  Somehow, she had thought that once she discovered the truth of the past, the memories would come flooding back - that her whole self was buried there, waiting only to have the dust blown off of it.

  She didn't know whether to believe Laufeyson or not - memories of their brief kiss, how right it felt - fought against her hatred, his obvious betrayal.

  He is a man of lies, she thought, and she wondered if she was any different. What part of me is true, after all? And yet, to her knowledge, she had betrayed no-one, except for herself.

  And the child? She had heard her daughter's cries in her dreams. Even now, her hope mocked the finality of death. Laufeyson's a liar. The child could still be alive.

  No. You have always known that the cries of that child were no more than the howls of a ghost.

  The snaky whisper took her by surprise - how long had it been since she heard that voice? Days? Weeks? As painful as the words were, she accepted their truth, and her despair and heartbreak bubbled up through her chest, leaving only a tingling in her gut.

  "I don't care." She could hear her own voice, as cold and as barren as the winds that blew within her heart. "It doesn't matter."

  Why should I believe you?

  "It's true," he answered, as if he had nothing else to offer.

  "Then you should have just let me die." The roar of blood-lust was beginning in her ears, drowning out his words.

  "De la Roca." His hands opened in supplication. "I have spent centuries as the head of the Movement. While you hunted demons, I hunted you. I had almost given up when I finally found you." He paused, his jaw working. "We have to bring them down, all of it."

  She snorted. "What?"

  "The Consortium, the Pentarch. I knew when they killed a child, our child, an innocent, that they were a poor substitute for an absent God. We have to overthrow them."

  The tingling in her gut had spread to her limbs, to her face and hands, and the roar in her ears was growing louder, more insistent. Before I stepped through that waypoint, I had never even heard of the Pentarch. And now, he is asking me to help him take down an empire? He is mad.

  What if he isn't? The thought pressed back against her hatred, tiny fingers of doubt prying open the doors in her mind. She squinted, cat-like. "How did you find me?"

  He returned her squint before answering. "I felt the gun change masters."

  That doesn't make any sense … unless … is it an akra of some sort?

  He smiled at her thinly, and she got the impression that he could already see the wild path of her galloping mind.

  "De la Roca,"
he said, "how exactly do you think you came by Bluot? Do you think the Consortium would have set you loose on Earth with such a powerful weapon in your hands?"

  Her eyes opened wide. In her years as a mercenary, she had often wondered about the life she couldn't remember - yet what about the life that she could? So much of it was just taken for granted - Bluot, the Angel, Alsvior … if she had taken more time to ponder these things, what could have been avoided?

  And then, her mind connected the information in an electric snap, and the storm of questions was instantly silenced. "You did it. Another lie."

  His face was flushing again, hard, and for the first time, she saw him give into his anger. "It was to protect you! I slipped it onto your body, before you awoke in your new form. It was once mine." He sighed, his jaw working, and she wondered if she would ever have been able to give up Bluot so easily. Even now, it called her, although she didn't know if she was imagining that or not.

  "I can still feel it. When it changed hands, I knew it, and I thought you had died. Still, I followed the disturbance to its source, and there I found the threads of the Mademoiselle."

  "Then why did you ask?" she growled. "When you saw me here, in this cell? Why did you ask if I had it, if you already knew?"

  "I felt it, but it was so warped, so faint. I hoped I was wrong."

  She nodded, not really comprehending. There had been so much revealed to her here, too much, and she couldn't figure out how to wrap her mind around it. She longed to be back in the time before this, fighting the lamprey, her entire existence a thoughtless mist of blood-lust.

  "Where is the gun?"

  "It was taken by the Oracle." She wondered if she had to explain, but he nodded, as if he understood.

  "We are lost, then. You are supposed to be our greatest weapon, and you are here, captured. Bluot was your only chance of escaping, and it, too, is gone." He hung his head. "I think the only one able to save us still - any of us - is God himself. And we don’t even know where he went."

  Neither one of them noticed that Golden's dog had disappeared.

  #

  Golden gestured at Anann. He was seated by a small pile of evergreen branches, and the room was filled with the pungent scent of pine sap.

  She pursed her lips and blew out, the same as she had done to relight the pyre, and a small fire blossomed in the center of the pile.

  "Drys, I call," intoned Golden, speaking into the fire. Anann had explained to him the basics of the procedure and of what to expect. "What do you see?"

  The branches fluttered slightly, their needles curling and browning amidst a series of crackles and snaps.

  Golden waited patiently for the Drys to answer. She had cautioned him that if they spoke, it would not be for long, and they would not repeat themselves. It was the irony of the Drys; they led almost immortal lives, yet they had no patience and waited for none.

  "Ssssshe comesssss." The sentence was a whispered chorus, each consonant's edges broken by the stuttering of many voices failing to speak in unison.

  "Who?"

  "The mademoissssselle."

  The branches crumbled into ash, and the fire went out.

  Golden sighed. Clearly, the usefulness of the Drys was limited by the brevity of their messages, and he doubted he'd be using this method again any time soon. He made a fist.

  "What do you think, Anann? Would she really dare to come here?"

  She tilted her head to the side. "The Drys have never lied to me."

  "That doesn’t mean they cannot. Perhaps they do not favor me as they favor you." He growled. "I don't understand. Why would she come here? She must know that we seek her."

  Anann smiled. The gesture emanated a warmth so tangible, Golden could almost feel it upon his skin.

  She is sunshine, he thought. She smiles with the honesty of a child.

  Children can be very devious.

  The answering thought concerned him; it was clearly his, and yet it seemed foreign.

  Anann sighed peacefully. "Do you remember her scent?"

  "What kind of -"

  "If you remember her scent, send it to Garmyr. If she is close, then he should be able to find her soon enough - faster than any other tracker I know of - and you can see the scene with your own eyes."

  Her logic was impressive - as well as her knowledge of his relationship with the jackal. He didn't remember revealing that to her, though, and he wondered who her source was. Without responding overtly, he concentrated on the impressions he wanted to send, the spicy scents of desert flowers, dusty books, and sand. Before long, he received a whimper of obedience. The jackal was on the hunt.

  "It should not be long," said Anann, her lips curling into another girlish smile. "You know that dog flies when the scent is upon him."

  "Well done," he said, hiding his surprise. Anann beamed again, but the gesture no longer warmed him as it had before. He sighed, his eyes closing as his face sought the sky. "I suppose then, that we shall prepare her a welcome."

  TWENTY-NINE

  De la Roca didn't know how long she had spent hammering at the bars of her prison. She had met each of Laufeyson's attempts to converse with an angry silence, never once pausing in her efforts, until her determination finally gave out. She sat, exhausted, thoughts of her pending execution winding through her fatigue.

  I am ready for this death.

  And that was the truth of it. She was done with running, with being bound to the Angel, to the Mademoiselle, to Laufeyson. She was tired of being a pawn.

  Most of all though, she was tired of the ghosts.

  A borrowed name. A borrowed body. A borrowed life.

  And then, she heard an echo.

  The Angel …

  The thought sent the gears in her head spinning, injecting fresh air into the haze of her melancholia. As if it sensed her arousal, the Thyrsus stone blinked once in her gut, its untappable power a further affront against her situation.

  "Angel," she growled. "You are the Angel."

  His face paled, a wordless affirmation.

  There never was an Angel, just a charlatan.

  You knew it already, whispered a voice that wasn't hers.

  Laufeyson stared at his fingers. His jaw went slack, and when he spoke, his voice was quiet, prayer-like.

  It was not the explanation she expected.

  "Our daughter was beautiful, you know. She had your lips and eyes."

  De la Roca resisted touching a finger to her mouth, the hand stopping in midair.

  "No, your lips. The ones you had before you took Cleopia's form."

  His words hung in the air like a fog, blurring her senses and eating away at her anger.

  "She had perfect hands … clever hands." He looked up at her, and his eyes pierced her exotic heart.

  "I … I can't remember." Her throat squeezed off the flow of her words.

  What life is this, a life without a past or memories?

  "You loved her, whether you remember her or not." His eyes dropped down again before continuing. "The night they took her … you were an animal. You told them you'd kill yourself and every single one of them if they harmed her."

  "And?" She knew what would come next, but she wanted to hear it.

  He swallowed and stared at the wall behind her head. "Golden snapped her neck in front of your eyes."

  Her mind reeled. He dropped to his knees.

  "I couldn't do anything. His kevra was at work and I was frozen there, watching. He … he let you go."

  "What?"

  "From his kevra. He had the entire crowd in his control, but he released you."

  Like a spider spinning a net, she was weaving together the threads of the conversation, yet there were gaping holes she couldn't fill.

  "Just me?"

  Laufeyson closed his eyes and swallowed.

  "I could hear you, keening like an animal. You were … magnificent. Golden was rambling, about honor and loyalty and obedience, and then you tore the wings off of your back and threw
them at him from the dais." He grunted. "You said-"

  "There is no honor in Hell." The words had broken free of their own volition, and their sudden arrival from the void in her mind surprised her.

  Laufeyson glanced up, startled. "Yes - but how did you"-

  She shook her head. "I don't know."

  "Can you-"

  "No. That's all there is." She felt the stone pulse in her stomach, and then the wave of emotion subsided, as if the kevra stone was somehow eating her pain. "I shouldn't even be listening to you. It's your fault, all of it."

  "Yes."

  His admission gagged her momentarily, and she changed the subject. "We know who I am. But who are you?"

  He shrugged. "I have already told you this. I was an angel - and not only that, next-in-line for the Pentarch."

  "An angel?" She almost laughed. "Where are your wings?"

  His lips pressed into a firm line.

  "I had just awakened you, after Muninn put you into Cleopia's body. You opened your eyes and looked at me, and I realized that you had no idea who I was. There was no way to verify if it was even you. Had I really known what it meant, for you to forget me - I wonder if I would have done it again. I murdered two women that day."

  His eyes came up again to meet hers, and she was startled by the changes in his face. Black circles blossomed under his eyes, giving them a sunken look. A sprawling map of lines had appeared on his forehead, at the corners of his eyes - even trailing down his cheeks - channels for the rivulets of tears that dripped onto his shoulders.

  "And then I beheaded her, and it was like I was beheading you. I watched her shining hair fall to the ground, sticky and wet with her blood…your blood…I don't even know-" His voice had increased in volume, until it was a roar. "They put me in a cell. This cell! Of course it was this cell!

  "They didn't know what to do with me, I just kept howling. And when my cries had finally ceased, they came back to check on me, and my wings were lying by my feet.

  "Of course, I was ruled unfit to serve. You were gone, almost untraceable, and I was a joke, soon forgotten. Eventually, they let me out.