Chapter Twenty-Nine
Twenty-Nine
Poppy and I stare up at the towering skyscraper before us.
Glass and steel loom against a sky slowly fluctuating between dawn and dusk. Dead commuters drift through the revolving doors at the base, bracing themselves against the wind whipping down Boylston, as the hum of psychically constructed traffic drones behind us.
“There’s a portal to hell in the Pru Center?” I ask.
Poppy hums. “Of course. And apparently in its counterpart in the Afterlife too.”
I make a badum-tss noise.
Look at us, bantering as though we’re not in the middle of a fight. That’s professionalism right there.
The ride on the T to Back Bay was awkward but much shorter than it would have been in the Beforedeath. Humans have difficulty imagining time passing, so all the newly Dead in the car with us thought we’d reached the stop sooner than is actually possible.
Time is of the essence, of course. But now that I’m here, this is all feeling a little too fast.
“Ready?” Poppy asks.
I gulp and nod. “Freddy,” I say, the word no more than a whisper.
She takes a deep breath, then grabs me roughly, binding my arms behind me with rope. From this point onward, Poppy is a Phantoms contractor who is bringing a Dead heaven hopper to her bosses. And like any good lie, we have to believe it before we can expect anyone else to.
She drags me through the Pru Center’s revolving doors, her nails biting into my left bicep.
I stagger as she pulls me past shops and mall directories and one of those coin-operated kiddie carousels.
The animals come to life and run away. Dead stare as we pass, mostly because Poppy is a bit see-through, but also because I trip and land face-first on the tile floor.
Unable to show any mercy, Poppy hauls me not too gently to my feet.
I let myself get irritated to really sell it.
After our fight, she’s probably enjoying this a bit too much. I go from irritation to resentment.
She keeps up the act even in the elevator.
I’ve never once seen security cameras in the Afterlife—I don’t even think that’s possible—but it’s hard to go in and out of character.
Hard to believe the lie, if you let yourself get distracted.
Just like the subway ride, the elevator reaches its destination sooner than it should.
Poppy drags me along a windowless corridor, handling me more roughly than she needs to.
I sink even further into the lie as we near a metal door at the end of the hallway. Maybe she’s not faking. Maybe she really is taking me to be confined to hell.
By the time we reach the door, I’m well and truly frightened.
I brace myself as Poppy twists the handle and pushes me through.
On the other side is an office—one of those Mad Men–type deals with the couches and dark furniture and half-empty glasses of whiskey.
The only thing that doesn’t fit the mid-century aesthetic is the gaping void on the far wall.
It’s such a dark and total black, it looks like a hole cut into reality itself.
And I guess that’s what it is. The portal to Tartarus.
In front of the gateway sits a woman behind an angular wooden desk. Blue-black skin, high cheekbones, penetrating gaze. I recognize her—she was on the video call when Waring was offering me the job back at the museum.
She wears her coiled hair unbound, streaks of silver gleaming as she tilts her head to get a better look at me. The edges of her full lips quirk in a smile, and as she steps around the desk into the light, I see the translucent sheen I’m used to seeing when a living person is in the Afterlife.
Poppy shoves me to my knees in front of her.
“We finally meet face-to-face,” the woman says, kneeling like she’s talking to a child. Her voice is melodic, honeyed, and deeper than I expected. “Hello, Elle. I’m Nyx.”
Nyx. Head of the Nightshades, which has members installed in every major government. For all intents and purposes, she rules the world.
I swallow. “I would shake your hand, but…”
She gives me a patronizing smile. “It’s a shame you didn’t take our job offer. But I guess you’ll be reunited with your brother anyway.”
Another acknowledgment that Dante’s in Tartarus. I resist the urge to look at Poppy and tell her I told you so.
Nyx stands and walks back to her desk.
“We have no ill will toward you. But we can’t have someone who knows as much as you just wandering around the Afterlife. You understand.” She turns to someone behind her. “Search her.”
A figure steps forward out of the shadows, and I tense.
A demon. Its horns are small and curve forward. It stares with blank eyes as it approaches. I have that same panicked feeling I get when being hunted by a hellhound.
It pats me down, movements slow and deliberate, until it pulls a handful of fake obols and a pair of lockpicks from my pocket.
“Whoops,” I say. “How did those get there?”
It’s fine. They were pig cadavers.
But then it rips the seams of my hood, and the limen stone tumbles to the floor.
That I did not expect.
Nyx taps her long fingernails against the arms of her office chair and gives me a disappointed look.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Poppy kneel and pick up the stone.
It’s not slick or subtle, but she can get away with it, because they don’t realize what it is.
They probably think it’s a weapon or some smaller charm.
“Melinoe said you used to work with her,” Nyx says to her.
Poppy swallows, fidgeting with the stone. “Someone from our old crew texted me when she died. I knew where she’d end up, and Melinoe offered me a lot to bring in her soul.”
She’s good at this, not overselling it, not pretending to be someone she’s not.
But I wonder what’s going on under the surface.
If she’s frantically trying to come up with a new plan, like I am.
Or maybe not. Being stuck in hell is my problem to solve, not hers.
Just like the run-in with Thea was her problem, not mine.
She has to trust I’ll figure things out on my own, and I have to… well, figure things out on my own.
“Thank you, Ms. Champagne,” Nyx says. “I’ll make sure you’re duly compensated.”
The demon drags me toward the void. Okay, I guess we’re doing this.
“Wait,” Poppy says, and a twinge of panic has entered her voice. It’s the first crack I’ve seen in her facade since we got here. “I was told…I would get to accompany her to Tartarus.”
“Don’t worry,” Nyx says. “We won’t let her escape. We can send proof to Melinoe if she requires it.”
“It’s just that…” Poppy starts. She takes a deep breath, and when she speaks again, her voice is darker. “She’s responsible for the death of a friend.”
Ouch, okay. Definitely a good strategy, but way to hit me while I’m down.
“I understand. But trust me.” Something changes in Nyx’s voice. “You don’t want to make the trip if you don’t have to. You should go and leave her to us.”
The Nightshades’ magic of persuasion fills the room like a heady perfume.
And even though Nyx isn’t directing it at me, I get a bit of the blowback.
It slides into my lungs, coils around my thoughts.
Poppy should leave. She doesn’t need to be here.
Going to Tartarus is dangerous and making the trip is just not worth it. Not for me.
I shake my head and come back to myself.
If Poppy wasn’t already planning to leave me to my fate, she definitely is now.
Screw not letting my panic show. I try to pull away from the demon, but its grip is too strong. I give one last frantic look at Poppy, and then I’m yanked into the darkness.
Everything is silent.
And still.
No light, no time, no air.
A single moment stretched into an eternity.
This void is all that’s ever existed.
All that ever will exist.
I don’t exist.
Then air rushes into my lungs. Or at least whatever serves as air in the Afterlife.
Sight returns to me. Tremors rack my body and bile burns the back of my throat as I take in my new surroundings.
A barren wasteland of scorched earth. Dark clouds roil through the deep crimson sky, occasionally illuminated by flashes of light.
The eerie silence that has settled over us is broken by a distant wail, a rattle of chains.
“So this is hell,” I say, licking my lips. “It’s like Fenway after the Sox lose.”
There’s something like a laugh beside me, and I turn.
Where there was a demon a moment ago, now stands a hellhound in what I assume is its natural form: a hooded figure draped in tattered robes, a glowing scythe in its bony hand.
It’s like it went to Spirit Halloween and asked for a Grim Reaper costume, was unimpressed with their selection, killed everyone in the store, and then made its own cloak out of their hides.
“Hell has better parking,” it says in a deep voice.
I let out a shocked laugh, then blink. And blink again. “What?”
Hellhounds don’t talk. They don’t make jokes. Or acknowledge the Beforedeath. They hunt, they reap, they terrify. That’s it. But I can feel this one watching me from the shadows of its hood, like it’s waiting for something.
And then suddenly it clicks.
The demon who dragged me through the portal? Gone. In its place? A hellhound.
Holy shit.
“Demons are hellhounds,” I whisper. “Hellhounds are demons.”
The hellhound—the demon—beside me nods.
But it doesn’t make sense. I mean, sure, they both instill the same feeling of fear. But demons are basically all-powerful. Why would they moonlight as Afterlife security guards?
“Sorry, I…Why—how—what?”
I sense the demon smirk. “All demons are beholden to a Titan. They use our abilities as they see fit.”
“No, but that means—”
I choke on the implications, my mind spinning. Hellhounds are demons. Demons used to be people. So hellhounds used to be people. Demons work for Titans. Hellhounds are in the Beforedeath. And since hellhounds can change their form at will…
“—demons can shape-shift,” I spit out.
I don’t know why that’s the thing I land on, but my brain is trying to sort through an impossible load of information right now.
“Enough stalling,” the demon says. “It won’t change your fate.”
Before I can respond, it drags me closer to the pit, and all questions about demons and hellhounds and syndicates flee my mind.
I’m struck with vertigo. The chasm is unfathomably deep.
All I can see of the bottom is a distant orange glow.
This all seemed like such a good idea a few hours ago, but now I find it hard to keep standing.
This is Tartarus.
“Let’s go,” the hellhound—the demon says.
My legs shake as it leads me to a rocky stairway descending into the darkness.
The only thing that pushes me forward is the grip on my arm and my ability to shove anything horrific that’s ever happened to me into a tiny box in the corner of my mind, where I can steadfastly ignore it and let it build into trauma that will unexpectedly reveal itself at an inopportune time in the future.
At first, the stairs cling to sheer stone on one side and open to the abyss on the other, but slowly, cells start to appear carved into the rock.
Barriers of crooked, splintered bones separate damned souls from the passage.
They don’t look like any Dead I’ve encountered in the Afterlife.
Something about them seems thin, like dying flames, retreating, sputtering as they consume themselves.
I don’t know how long we descend in the dark, but eventually, there’s a hole in the rock, and I’m dragged down a long, jagged corridor until we stop in front of a cell.
I hear the scraping of a key, and the door whines open. Then I’m thrust forward into the darkness, and the gate clangs shut behind me.
And just like that, I’m trapped in hell.