Chapter 38 Eden
Eden
“Number four billion, six hundred and two... please proceed to window nine. Number four billion, six hundred and two.”
The mechanical voice drones over a crackling intercom system that sounds like it’s broadcasting from inside a tin can.
I was ready for a fortress—braced for gigantic gates guarded by three-headed dogs, or a laser grid that would slice us into ribbons, or something that actually felt like the gates of Hell.
Instead, Malachi shoved open a rusted service door, and we stepped into a low-ceiling waiting room that smells of burnt coffee, despair, and industrial-grade floor wax.
It’s the DMV.
And it is endless. The bodies—God, the bodies. There are thousands of them.
It’s like someone took the concept of Purgatory and decided to run it with the efficiency of a government agency in the mid-nineties.
There are rows of orange plastic chairs bolted to the floor, stretching out until they vanish into the smoggy distance. And sitting in them is the wash-up of the universe.
To my left, a man in a tailored suit sits rigidly.
From the neck down, he looks like a CEO.
From the neck up, he’s a butchered mess.
His jaw hangs unhinged by a single, wet tendon, dark blood pouring down his silk tie in a thick sludge.
He keeps trying to push the heavy, ruined meat of his face back onto his skull with trembling fingers, desperately trying to keep up appearances, but the flesh just keeps sloughing off the bone.
Two rows down, a woman stares blankly at the ticketing screen.
Her lap is pooled with her own blood. She’s casually, methodically using a rusted box cutter to flay the skin from her left forearm.
I watch, my stomach heaving, as she peels back a thick, dripping ribbon of flesh, exposing the gleaming white bone beneath.
She drops the meat onto the linoleum, waits for the arm to knit itself back together with a crunch of cartilage, and then starts carving all over again.
It smells like an abattoir. It’s a suffocating reek of hot copper, spilled bowels, and rotten meat hiding under expensive cologne and the sweat of people who spent their lives breaking others and are now condemned to tear themselves apart while they wait for their number to be called.
“Keep moving,” Malachi murmurs, his hand a heavy, grounding weight on the small of my back, steering me through the narrow aisle before I can be sick. “Don't look at them, Eden. You aren't one of them. These aren't the mistakes. These are the predators. The ones who liked it.”
I try not to look. I really do. But it’s hard not to stare when an innocent looking teenager walks past you holding his own intestines like a bundle of wet rope, his eyes darting around the fluorescent-lit waiting room like he’s looking for his parents in a grocery store.
Apparently, Malachi doesn't do queues. He moves through the sea of the damned like a shark parting a school of fish, the ridges of his horns cutting an imposing silhouette against the low ceiling. The sinners, confused and probably fresh from their deaths, might not know exactly where they are yet, but their instincts scream at them to get out of his and the Hellhound’s way.
We reach the imposing desk that looks completely out of place next to the plastic chairs. Malachi slams his hand onto it, and the purple-skinned woman sitting behind it sighs a long, suffering breath before slowly lifting her head, blinking up at us with void-black eyes.
“You got an appointment, sweetie?” she drawls. “Processing is backed up by around eighteen months. Take a number.”
“We aren't processing,” Malachi says coolly. “We're here to find a soul. Paperwork’s been filed under the name Virezeal.”
She taps a few keys on a flat, glowing obsidian tablet embedded in the desk, before looking back at him.
“Veraxia Virezeal?” She raises a skeptical eyebrow. “You're Veraxia?”
“No,” Malachi says, jerking his head toward me. “She is.”
Oh, fuck.
She looks at me, her gaze peeling the skin right off me.
Malachi stiffens beside me, more than likely ready to reach across the desk and rip her throat out, but I step forward. I have to do this. I have to channel her. I straighten my spine, forcing my chin up and summon every ounce of haughty disdain I saw her use.
“Yes, I am Veraxia Virezeal,” I say, pitching my voice smooth and low, layering it with a boredom that matches hers.
“And as you can see, we have come straight from an emergency complication in the Mortal Realm.” I gesture vaguely to my shivering, mortal body.
“Hence the poorly put-together shell. Now, are you going to check me in, or do I need to file a complaint about your efficiency?”
My heart hammers against my ribs, punching its way through each bone as her black eyes narrow into slits, looking me up and down.
“Budget cuts,” she mutters finally, rolling her eyes. “Tell me about it. They downgraded my coffee break to six minutes last century. Alright... clearance for Veraxia Virezeal, and her…?”
“Brother,” Malachi rumbles. “Malachi. Also from the Ninth. I’ll be in the system.”
“Mmm-hmm.” She pauses, her eyes sliding to the massive, stone-jawed beast at my hip. “And the Hellhound?”
“Security Hound Three-Oh-One,” he says smoothly. “From the Virezeal estate in the Cinder Spire. He belongs to Vexor and Xylia, but they're visiting the hot springs in the Seventh Division, so he’s in our care.”
The receptionist hums, talons tapping again.
I sigh overly loudly. “I really don't have the patience to stand here while you verify our parents' vacation itinerary,” I interrupt as I lean forward, resting my hands on the cold black stone. “My brother and I are on a tight schedule, and if I have to explain to my bosses that we were delayed because of your slow work ethic, I’ll have to report you to your higher ups.”
The woman stops typing and stares at me for a long second, then, she rolls her eyes so hard I think they might fall out of her head.
“Fine,” she sighs, the sound dripping with the apathy of a thousand years of customer service. “Whatever. It’s above my pay grade.”
The sound of rummaging plastic fills the air as she reaches under the desk and pulls out three thick, woven lanyards. They’re standard-issue, laminated ID badges on scratchy black cords. Two for us—printed with the names Veraxia and Malachi—and one, impossibly, for the hound.
She slides them across the desk along with a stack of parchment.
“Got the paperwork here,” she drones, pointing a finger at the stack. “Matthew Fallon. He’s currently in Sector 4: Pre-Judgment Soul Storage. Down that corridor, second left, through the double doors.”
The urge to say thank you rises in my throat as a reflex, but I strangle it down, snatch up the lanyards and parchment, and turn on my heel.
The moment we’re round the corner, and she’s out of earshot, the facade disintegrates and my knees nearly buckle.
Sector 4. Pre-Judgment. Matthew.
A cold, prickly sweat breaks out across the back of my neck, soaking the collar of the tunic instantly.
I’m going to see him. I’m going to walk into a room and look into the eyes of the man who hurt, broke, and ruined me.
“Easy,” Malachi rumbles in my ear as he stops us near a flickering light fixture to loop the ridiculous lanyard around Chain-Chewer’s neck.
“I can't do this. Malachi, I think I’m going to be sick. Like, actually vomit.” My hands are shaking so hard the lanyards rattle against each other in my grip.
“I can't see him. I can't look at him.” The panic’s rising, a dark tide closing over my head. “What if he turns nasty on me? What if he doesn’t want an apology? What if—”
Malachi steps in front of me, blocking the view of the corridor. He grips my shoulders, his fingers digging into the muscle, grounding me in the here and now.
“Look at me,” he commands, his eyes burning into mine.
“He is dead. He is a soul in processing. He has no power here. You are the mortal Eden fucking Loxley, bound to the demon Malachi Virezeal. You are the one holding the leash.” He leans in, his voice dropping to a lethal whisper.
“If he so much as looks at you the wrong way, I will tear his soul apart before he can blink. Do you understand me?”
I stare up at his wild, golden eyes, and I nod jerkily.
“No,” Malachi growls, his grip tightening as he gives me a demanding shake. “Say it. Tell me who you are.”
“I am...” My voice cracks, pathetically, but I try again, drawing strength from the heat of his hands on me. “I am Eden fucking Loxley.”
“Louder.”
“I am Eden fucking Loxley,” I say with a little more vigour.
“And who holds the leash?” he demands, face inches from mine.
“I do,” I breathe.
“Good.”
He laces our hands together and turns to the massive slabs of reinforced iron that look like they belong on a bank vault. He presses his lanyard against the metal, and with a deep groan, the doors slowly swing inward.
An oppressive wall of noise slams into us.
It’s a cacophony of pure, distilled anguish.
Wails. Screams. The desperate sobbing of thousands of people who have just realized that the stories were real, and they’re on the wrong side of the gate.
The space is crammed with bodies. There are no chairs here, no orderly lines.
The souls are packed into endless, fenced-in pens that stretch out into the darkness.
And watching them are the guards. These aren't the Wardens—these are impossibly tall, looming at least eight feet in the air. Their skin’s a deep, saturated crimson, the color of fresh arterial blood, and they wear no armor to hide it.
My gut roils, and not even just from the smell of ozone and the unwashed bodies and the fear. It’s him. I swear I can feel him. It’s like walking into a room where someone has left gas running—an invisible, suffocating pressure that warns you to run before you strike a match.
“Check the papers,” Malachi orders. “What row’s he in?”