Chapter 58
She wasn’t sure what she’d expected to see: the great mechanical workings of the chimes, the doors to Sterling Library, Golgarot upon his throne. Instead, she was standing in clear gray daylight at the end of a football field.
Alex had been to the Yale Bowl only once, during fall of her freshman year, before Darlington had disappeared, before their lives had spun off course.
Mercy had wanted to go to the Game—Yale vs.
Harvard, a Thanksgiving tradition. So they’d all gone—Mercy, Lauren, and Alex, and a whole slew of students from JE.
They’d ridden in buses out to the field, flasks and thermoses in hand, and passed beneath a grand columned gate.
The old stadium had been dug into the earth, its entrances crowned with steepled porticos like mausoleums. Alex stood in the muddy parking lot and tailgated.
She ate three hot dogs and marveled at the ancient alumni in their long fur coats and boater hats, at the moms and dads with their kids in Bulldog onesies.
She hadn’t understood the rules, but she cheered along with Lauren and Mercy, and the marching band played “Bohemian Rhapsody.” They were playing again now.
She knew the tune. She even knew the words though no one was singing.
Come on along, come on along, let me take you by the hand, up to the man who’s the leader of the band.
At the far end of the field, where the opposing team would enter, she saw two tall black columns, a plinth spread between them emblazoned with gold script. She could not read demon, but she recognized the phrase that Dawes had once translated for her: None go free.
This was the gate and she understood that if Golgarot managed to drag her through it, all of this would be over. He would have her blood. He would have his victory.
When she looked back at the field, Golgarot stood at the fifty-yard line.
He wore an old-fashioned football uniform: canvas pants that ended below the knee, socks and cleats, a thick jersey that bore the letter Y, more royal blue than the navy Alex was used to seeing around campus.
He was young, handsome, his skin ruddy and his blond hair shining beneath the winter sun.
He looked like a Norman Rockwell illustration of a football hero.
He recoiled when he saw her. Had he not expected her to make it?
But then he smiled.
“Soldier,” he said, big white teeth gleaming. “Your hour has come.”
Before Alex could get her bearings, someone slammed into her.
She tried to keep her footing, but another body crashed against her.
She hit the ground hard, the breath rushing out of her lungs.
Feet stampeded over her. She curled in on herself, trying to protect her head and neck.
She was in the middle of some kind of scrum.
There was no air, no daylight, just bodies and shouts.
Her side throbbed where she’d once broken her ribs.
I’m going to die on the ground, here in the mud. I’m never even going to get to fight.
A whistle blew and the bodies parted. Someone was standing over her.
“Can you get up, son?”
Alex wanted to say no. She wanted to call out to Darlington. She was tired and bruised and she wanted this all to be over. But she was here. She had survived the climb. She was not going to die lying down.
“Yeah,” she said.
The man above her offered her his hand and she took it, rising to her feet, the pain in her side hard and sharp, like a hook lodged beneath her rib cage. It was Elliot Sandow in a referee’s uniform. She’d last seen him dead behind a desk at the university president’s house.
He blew on his whistle and shouted, “Resume play!”
“No!” Alex cried, flinching backward, preparing to be struck again. But no blow came.
She opened her eyes. Sandow and the stadium were gone.
She was standing near a muddy picnic area, surrounded by a grove of eucalyptus trees.
Two orange butterflies fluttered up into the leaves, making crooked spirals.
Alex could see school buses parked in the lot, and she knew what she would see if she turned: the concrete slab of a public bathroom, men’s on one side, women’s on the other.
She didn’t want to turn.
“You motherfucker,” she muttered. Of course Golgarot had brought her here, to the worst moment, to the break that had never healed. Maybe some part of her had known it would have to end here. “You’re really predictable, you know that, right?”
Golgarot stood behind her. His football uniform was gone and now he was in a white suit like Reiter’s. He was smiling, but up close she could see he looked weary, a little bruised himself.
She remembered. “You had to make the climb too.”
Golgarot’s eyes skittered left and right, as if he didn’t want to answer, but then he shrugged. “None go free.”
Words written above the scholar’s door in the Gauntlet. The only law that seemed to carry weight among demons. What had he seen when he’d made the ascent? What memories had he been forced to endure? “Rough, huh?”
“It doesn’t matter,” said the demon, though his haunted eyes told a different story. “This is our fight now. You will honor the bargain made by the first pilgrims.”
“I didn’t make that deal.”
“And yet you will fulfill it.”
“Make me.”
He smiled and she saw teeth bloom in his mouth, row after jagged row, as if preparing to consume her. “It will be my great pleasure, Galaxy Stern. You are no hero and I am not some beast to be bested, though it may please you to think of me so.”
“Why do you think I care?”
“Your priest believes you are righteous.”
“He does,” she acknowledged. “But between you and me? That’s not something I worry about. You want to eat us. Even if you have every right to eat us, even if we deserve to be eaten, I’m not going to let you do it.”
Golgarot’s lip curled. “You are unfit to serve even as slave. Nonetheless, you will wear the yoke.”
God, she was tired of being threatened.
“Okay,” she said. “Speech made. You brought me here to frighten me, so frighten me. Give me the final puzzle.”
“It’s easy,” the demon said, and he was smiling again, all signs of fatigue or fear gone. “You just have to save her.”
Behind her, Alex heard the clang of a bathroom stall door. She knew what came next. She heard her own screams.
It’s not real, she told herself. That time is over. You’re here now. You survived it.
But it was real. The monster in the mirror. The wet concrete floor. The horror of him pushing inside her. She hadn’t known how to hurt him then, how to fight. She could do it now. She could save herself.
Alex ran to the metal door of the bathroom, seized the handle. It wouldn’t open. She pulled with all her weight, bracing her heel against the wall. It wouldn’t budge.
She pounded on the door and her hands came away covered in bloody butterflies. She knew this was what Golgarot wanted, but she couldn’t stop. She had real power now. This was her chance to change it all.
“Leave her alone!” she yelled.
She scrabbled at the seams of the door, trying to find a way to pry it open, seeking purchase. There were butterflies crawling over her arms now. She was on the floor, on her hands and knees. He was shoving her jeans down. No. That’s not me anymore.
It’s always you.
She screamed, clawing at the door, then hurling herself against it. There were butterflies everywhere, a dark cloud of black bodies and orange wings. She ignored them, slamming herself against the door again and again.
“Let me in, you fucking coward! Fight me!”
She was stronger now, harder. That Gray wouldn’t stand a chance if she could just get through the door. She could swallow his soul. She could banish him with death words. She could make him helpless the way he’d made her helpless.
Alex bounced off the metal, stumbled backward, hit the ground. She tried to get up, but she couldn’t see through the swarm of butterflies. She batted them away as they crowded over her, covering her hair, her clothes, filling her mouth, their feathery wings choking her.
Darlington. No. That was what Golgarot wanted, to claim them both.
She wouldn’t do it. She wouldn’t give him up to hell too.
There would be no rescue, no knight to save her.
She had already died here once, and a hundred times after.
When Meagan had turned against her. When her mother had failed to see and believe.
With every doctor and shrink and counselor who had promised to understand.
With every Xanax and bong hit that had never granted oblivion.
She’d been dying her whole life. Why bother fighting it now?
No. That faint voice. The last scrap of a soul. No, hermanita. Don’t let them off the hook so easy.
If she could have spoken, she would have told Theo she was sorry. But she was choking on the crawling bodies of butterflies and she could not make them stop, could not make any of it stop.
Someone grabbed at her arms and that was fine. She was done fighting.
They were lifting her, brushing the butterflies away from her skin, her cheeks, her eyes, carefully pulling them from her mouth.
She opened her eyes and through her tears she saw the Bridegroom, and beside him Hellie, pale and blue, vomit on her tank top but somehow beautiful still.
Estrea was next to her, plucking wings from Alex’s hair, crooning softly, Kerida.
There were others too—the little boy who haunted JE’s courtyard, Turner’s father in his flannel shirt, Girard’s angry wife.
You fight for us too, said the Bridegroom. For the dead and those they loved.
Desmazalada. Estrea clucked. My unlucky one. Then she spat over her shoulder three times. En jinin jinan ke se kemen sus guesos. Alex remembered that saying. May his bones burn in hell.
You can’t save her, Hellie said softly. The real Hellie. The girl she’d loved and who had loved her in return. How beautiful she was, even in death, how unlike the monsters who had pretended to be her. You can’t save her.
And maybe that was the trick of it, the answer to the riddle. There was no way to go back, to make things right. Alex could never save the girl on that bathroom floor. She could not stop all the tragedies that followed. She had one life and it was an ugly one, but it wasn’t over yet.
A cloud of monarchs descended from the trees. For the first time, she wasn’t afraid. They didn’t belong to the nightmare of this place now. They whirled around her, a cape of glittering orange as the dead set her gently back on the football field.
Golgarot scowled.
She remembered what Hector had said, Good Ol’ Hec, a frightened boy. You have to beat the devil at his own game.
Alex threw out her hand and tugged, reaching for the heavy edges of Golgarot’s soul. “Your turn.”