Chapter Thirty-One
Thirty-One
I spend two days in hell.
I chat with all the souls that will talk. I keep track of any movement in the corridor. Once, I try sticking my hand between the bars to see if a demon will show up—turns out, no, only if you touch them, which Bill or Bob or whatever his name is does two more times.
I can’t see much outside the cell, as darkness overtakes anything beyond a few feet.
I can hear other prisoners, though, and sometimes footsteps.
The only smells are, believe it or not, fire and brimstone, and I can’t decipher any temperature change from one side of the cell to the next.
It took me less than an hour to gather all this information, and the remainder of the time I’ve been. So. Bored.
It’s torture.
Who needs eternal torment when ennui does the job?
When I hear the shift of gravel for the first time in almost thirty-six hours, I’m so relieved I almost cry. As two figures emerge from the dark, I stand and shake out my arms. It’s showtime.
A demon opens the cell door and pushes in a prisoner, and I freeze.
Ill-fitting suit. Receding hairline. Smug expression.
“Infamous Pete?” I say out loud without meaning to.
His head shoots up, and I see the moment he recognizes me. His eyes narrow, and a sneer paints his lips.
“You,” he growls.
I stumble back, trying to put as many souls between me and Pete as possible. Heather’s not being any help, but Bob or Bill has grabbed on to the bone bars again, and his thrashing is enough distraction to cool Pete’s ire. Or at least delay it.
I raise my eyebrows. “I see the destruction of your soul didn’t take.”
Pete grinds his teeth, his hands forming fists.
“Last thing I remember, this little bitch cons me,” he says to the other souls in the cell, who honestly aren’t paying attention, “and then all the sudden I’m waking up in some sort of tower in the middle of this cesspool.
They say I’m not supposed to be there. I think, great, they’ll take me to the Ferrymen or at least neutral territory.
And instead they drag me across a lake of fire and up a billion steps to throw me in a cell with you. ” He points a shaking finger at me.
I gesture to myself. “Me?”
“You stole my watch,” he growls. “And the finger bone I brought in for emergencies.” He strides toward me.
I put my hands up. “You can check my pockets. I don’t have either.”
He hesitates. The thing about guys like this is they’re mostly all talk. And old-fashioned enough to think hitting a woman who isn’t their wife is bad form. So I guess I’m going to have to start this off myself.
I sucker punch him.
His head knocks back, and there’s a crunch, which I think might have been my finger bones.
“You little—”
I don’t let him finish. I drive my knee into his gut. He doubles over, wheezing, so I bring my elbow down on the back of his head.
It doesn’t knock him out, but it sure pisses him off.
He lunges, grabbing me by the arm, and here, I think I may have miscalculated. I undoubtedly have more fighting skills than Pete, but Pete cannot fathom a world where he’s beaten by a woman. And that belief might carry him through this fight.
I try to break free, but he holds on tighter, pulling me close and grabbing my other arm.
“What now, little girl?” he growls in my face. His breath is putrid.
And the sensation is so at odds with what I know about the Afterlife, that I think maybe things are different here.
Maybe I’m imagining him into having bad breath, or maybe he just does because he does.
But it doesn’t matter if I have to believe something into existence or if it’s just True.
Because I know what I am. And what I am is better than this guy.
I’m going to kick his ass.
Knee to the groin. Twist and pull free. Stomp to the foot.
He swings wildly, but I dodge. Seeing my opening, I launch a sharp kick to the knee. His legs buckle.
Now.
I pivot, step in, and fling the monkey’s paw knot out of my sleeve and straight up into his chin with all the force I can muster. His teeth clack together and his head snaps back, eyes rolling. For a second, his body teeters, and then he falls to the ground in a heap.
One of the souls cheers. I give Heather a wink.
I’m breathing hard, and my heart is still hammering when a demon opens the cell and drags me out.
I’m taken to a small room and pushed into a chair made of bones. Really, I admire their commitment to a theme.
I try to take in my surroundings, but there is a glaringly bright light shining in my face. This is all so…normal. I imagined torment in Tartarus to be more Sisyphean tasks and less Sicilian interrogation.
“Elysia Fields,” a voice says. I squint into the light but see no one.
“My friends call me Elle. You can call me—”
“Elysia Fields,” the voice repeats.
“Sure, that works.”
“Daughter of Melinda Fields and Cory Korzeniowski,” the voice continues. “Both missing. Half sister to Dante Korzeniowski, deceased.” There’s a pause. “Now deceased yourself. Tell me, how did that happen?”
“You see, when a soul and a body decide to unconsciously uncouple—”
“You were brought in by one of your old associates, were you not?”
I groan. “Yeah. You think you know a person.”
“Tell me about your magic.”
I blink into the light, surprised. I open my mouth, but I don’t have an answer for this. At least, not a good one.
“I…don’t have magic. Not really.”
“You’ve been to the Afterlife, have you not?”
“A few times, yeah.”
“Has magic been siphoned from you or otherwise neutralized upon your return?”
I grit my teeth. “Not that I know of.”
“So why can’t you perform magic?”
I swear there’s a smile in the interrogator’s voice.
I know this trick. Negging your mark to undermine their confidence so they’ll try to seek your approval.
It’s a pretty effective tactic, because it’s one of those tricks that doesn’t lose its efficacy once noticed.
I know the game, I know I’ll lose, but I still want to play, to prove myself.
“If I don’t have an answer you like, are you going to turn me into one of those souls I saw on the way in? Or maybe like those little glowing orbs?”
“It doesn’t matter what you do or don’t tell us. You’ll end up ethereal anyway.”
“Ethereal, huh? So what’s supposed to motivate me to tell you what you want to know?” I ask, but I don’t really care about the answer. They’ve already given away more than they realize. Amateurs.
“Torture,” the voice answers.
I let out a derisive laugh. “Pain is completely ineffective. Torture consistently leads to inaccurate and incomplete information.”
This is what the syndicates have never understood. Truth cannot be forced, it can only be given. They’d get more out of me by taking me out to a fancy restaurant.
“Who says we want information?” the voice asks.
I snort. “You were the one asking questions. Why go through all this trouble if you’re just going to turn me into one of your—what was it?—ethereal souls and store me in the basement of that big old tower in the lake of fire.”
“In the basement? No, you’ll be on display at the very top. The Titans like to be reminded of their triumphs.”
People love to correct you when you’re wrong.
“I think we’re done here,” I say. “If you’re not going to ask me questions I can answer, either torture me into giving false information or put me back where I came from.”
The voice doesn’t answer. And then the torture begins.
Pain is probably the wrong word for it. It was more like a lessening. Like they’re taking something from me. After, I feel not all there. Not like when I’m in the Afterlife on Miracle Max. More like my soul is buffering.
As far as torture goes, it’s a solid three out of ten. Tops. I don’t know, I just expected more from literal hell.
I’m escorted back to a cell not by a demon but by a human.
I’m having to force myself to take notice, to catalog the details, to do the things that usually come so naturally to me.
A man in his mid-forties. Fifties? Does he have wrinkles?
Is his hair thinning? He’s vaguely see-through, so he’s alive.
I blink and forget what I’m doing. Right, the man. Um. He’s got a map, so he’s new?
His clothes, his clothes…
There’s something about his clothes.
His clothes! They’re solid. They exist here.
Nondescript uniform. Practical shoes. Uhhh…weapons? No weapons. Keys? No keys either.
Was it the keys I was supposed to take?
He brings me to a smaller, much dingier cell.
Private but no view. The door is already open.
I blink a few times and take a deep breath, gathering my bearings, and try to remember the plan.
But whatever they did to me makes me too slow, and I’m in the cell before I can act. The door shuts behind me.
Instinct kicks in. I lunge through the bars, grab the guard by the arm, and pull him into the splintered bones. They apparently work on the living just as well as the Dead, because his body goes rigid just before he starts to convulse. I shove a mist mask over his mouth.
This was the one thing they didn’t find while searching me.
It had been packed into a hollowed-out portion of the sole of my left shoe.
Because I’d been searched on the way in, no one thought to check me again once I was in the cell.
So by the time I was brought to the interrogation room, I already had the mask tucked up my sleeve.
Most masks have to be hooked up to something to transfer mist, but this one has a small tank built in filled with Force Ghost. You know the one? The botched Kykeon mist that sends your soul into limbo, halfway between the Afterlife and the Beforedeath?
I’m breathing heavily as, just as I planned, the guard’s body fades, leaving behind a crumpled pile of clothes. The map lies next to it.
Just out of reach.
This could have gone better.
I have a map but can’t get to it, a plan but can’t enact it. I’m locked in a cell with no limen stone and no clue of the others’ plan—if they even have one—and I’ve cut off my only escape.
At least my mind is starting to come back. I’m retroactively panicked by just how out of it I was. Yes, things could have gone better, but they also could have gone so much worse. It’s just now everything’s at a standstill while I try to figure out the next step.
No matter what, I have to get out of the cell first.
Fighting got me out last time, but there’s no one to fight here. I could touch the bars, get zapped, and lure a demon, but I don’t know where they keep their keys. Maybe I could get a scythe away from one and use it to threaten my way out.
I’ve decided to risk it when I hear footsteps headed my way. Best-case scenario: They’re bringing in another prisoner. Okay-case scenario: It’s a demon. Worst-case scenario:…Really, things are pretty bad already.
I’m poised to act first, think later, when a figure steps out of the shadows, and it’s the last person I expect.
A scrape of a key against the lock, and the door swings open.
A see-through Ezra grins in the darkness. “Miss me?”