Chapter Nine
Nine
Luke follows me onto the car and the door slides shut behind us. With another whistle, the train chugs away from the station. We barely made it.
The lighting is dim, as it would be on any other night train. I pass rows of empty seats, their black leather covers worn, some to the point of yellow foam bursting through. The luggage racks above are bare, confirming my assumption that the car is empty.
“Let’s sit here.” Luke nods at a cluster of four seats that share a table. Before I can protest, he takes my duffel from me, slinging it onto the rack above.
“Thanks,” I mumble. I move all the way inside to sit by the window, and he sits across from me. He drops his backpack into the empty seat beside him.
I don’t know what I expected a train to hell to look like, but the fact it’s an average, run-of-the-mill train is ten times worse. As if anyone could step foot on the wrong one and be doomed for eternity.
Uneasiness presses down as we zoom through the tunnel.
I can’t see anything through the windows, though I imagine there’s nothing to see but the same bleak gray walls that framed the mile-long platform we came from.
I’ve always appreciated graffiti as an art, but never so much as a comfort.
Now, I miss everything it represents. Most prominently, life.
“I think this is the quietest you’ve been since we left your apartment,” Luke comments.
“I was quiet in the car,” I counter.
“You hummed.”
“I did not.”
“You did.”
“I didn’t,” I snap, my voice harsher than I mean it to be. His eyebrows shoot up and a flush flies through me. I ease back into my seat. “Sorry, I just— I don’t hum anymore. I haven’t since—”
I cut myself off. Luke studies me with that inscrutable look he has, like he’s mentally evaluating me. “Since?”
He waits for me to elaborate, but I won’t.
Because that breaks my rule of getting too personal.
Besides, why should I spill all when he’s only given me scraps of himself to piece together?
Most of which I’ve scrounged up myself based on half-assed hypotheses and outlandish assumptions.
If he’s going to be a lockbox, I’ll be a vault.
I change the topic. “How close will this train bring us to Beliar’s lair?”
His eyes glitter with amusement. “Lair? He has a house, you know. Most hell beings do. Or at least a townhome or apartment.”
“You think he’s keeping Krystal and the others at his house?”
“It’s not just his house. He oversees a shipping facility in what you know as California. The location is what I think is Death Valley in the overworld.”
“What do you mean, what I know as California?”
Luke sighs, clasping his hands on the table.
“Unlike the overworld, hell doesn’t abide by state titles, though the same rough geographic definition exists.
Instead, it’s divided into departments. What we’d call California is known in the underworld as the Department of Transportation.
Right now, we’re in New York, but in hell, it’s the Department of Marketing and Publicity. ”
“What does hell need a marketing and publicity department for?”
Luke gives me a quizzical look, like it should be obvious. “To market new policies and put out crisis fires, of course. Among other things. You’d be surprised how similar the underworld and overworld are. Though hell is arguably more organized.”
This is absurd, but Luke’s expression is nothing but honest. Still, I can’t shake the feeling that there’s way more than what he’s letting on. “So Beliar lives at the shipping facility in California, aka the DOT? He lives at the same place he works?”
“It’s not uncommon in hell. Most live where they work, or close to it. So they can work more.”
I make a face. “That sounds like…hell.”
His lips quirk with a rare, real smile. “Now you’re getting it.
To answer your original question, if we take this train for the full two-day ride it takes to get to California, we can get off at a station close enough to make the rest of the way on foot.
Though it might be wise to jack a car at some point, in case we need to make a quick escape. ”
I shudder at the idea of running for our lives on greater demon territory. I can’t imagine we’d get very far.
“You know a lot about hell,” I comment, unable to keep the suspicion from my voice. “Is demon hunting a family lineage thing? Some people get coveted chocolate chip cookie recipes passed down from their ancestors and you got the ability to kick supernatural ass and navigate the underworld?”
Luke shrugs. “Seems much more useful than a cookie recipe.”
“Unless you’re on The Great British Bake Off.”
“Why are the British baking off?” He cocks his head inquisitively.
It makes me laugh. Almost. “Because they’re great. It’s in the title. Anyway. Answer the question.”
“So demanding,” he muses with a smirk. “Yes, it is a family thing. Some inherit their mother’s law firm, others their father’s restaurant. Instead, I got stacks of books about hell and everything in it.”
“That’s depressing.”
“What did you inherit?”
His gaze burns into me, a challenge if I’ve ever seen one.
“My childhood home from my dead parents,” I say bluntly. Guilt slips between my ribs like a knife at the memory of locking up the cozy bungalow the day I left six months ago.
I don’t care to see Luke’s reaction, so my gaze drifts to the bleak walls zooming by. I tuck my fists inside the pockets of my denim jacket, wishing I’d brought something warmer. This train is frigid.
The gray shifts as we emerge from the tunnel. For a disorienting moment, I’m sure we got on the wrong train. The outside doesn’t look much different than what we left in New York. But like everything else with the train, there’s something off.
The stars and moon dot the sky, and I can pick out the main constellations: The Big Dipper, Orion’s Belt. But it’s what’s behind them that stands out.
The sky isn’t navy. It’s a deep, dark violet.
“Is it normal for the sky to be—”
The words die in my throat as I turn to Luke, startling at the person next to me.
I whip around to look at the rest of the car.
Nearly every seat houses a person with their head tilted down, so I can’t see their faces.
The small man beside me is fixated on his lap as unintelligible murmuring spills from his lips.
It’d make sense if he was looking at his phone or reading a book, but nothing is there.
“Full train.” Luke’s voice pulls my eyes to meet his. I expect him to mirror my perplexed expression, but he merely lifts a brow.
“Where did all these people come from?” I whisper. Even with my voice as low as possible, I’m sure the man beside me can hear. He doesn’t register it, though.
“They got on with us,” Luke says. “Before us, technically, since we almost didn’t make it.”
“I would have had to climb over him to get to my seat.” I tip my head toward the man. “This car was empty.”
“Was it?” Luke asks, like I’m a student and he would love nothing more than to see me arrive at the conclusion on my own.
He patiently waits as I slot the pieces together. “They were on the platform, weren’t they?” I recall what Esmar said about us cutting in line. “I couldn’t see them. Why?”
“We were in the overworld. Like with the staircase leading down to the lower platform, you have to know what to look for.”
“But you could see them?”
“I’ve had more practice looking.”
“What’s different about now?” I know the answer, but I need to hear him say it.
He obliges. “We’re not in the overworld anymore. Welcome to hell.”
I nod, the motion as mechanical as the air I’m forcing in and out of my lungs. I signed up for this. I asked Luke to take me with him. What did I expect? That he was lying?
Perhaps a sliver of me hoped it was all an elaborate hoax, or one of the many nightmares I’d wake up from slick with sweat but safe, nonetheless.
This is a nightmare, but not the sleeping kind.
“Are you alright?” Luke’s voice is surprisingly gentle, as is the way his hand reaches across the table separating us to rest on top of mine. I didn’t even realize I was gripping the edge with white knuckles. “Breathe, Brie.”
“Believe it or not, I’ve been doing that my whole life. It’s one of my most honed skills,” I joke weakly. But his words and the warmth of his hand do help. I release my assault on the table. His hand retracts and I immediately miss the feeling of it covering mine. “I’m okay.”
He nods. “Now listen.”
A shudder sprints through me as I tune in to the murmurs filling the train, some in languages I can’t understand. The man beside me mumbles in Italian. A woman a few rows behind is saying a string of Hail Marys, looped over and over again.
“They’re praying,” I breathe, wishing Luke’s expression was half as horrified as mine must be.
“Too late, I’m afraid. But often, people turn to it when they don’t know what else to do,” he says grimly. “These are souls on their way to their afterlife. To have a one-way ticket to where we’re going, they must have done something worse than not pray enough.”
“Like what?”
His eyes skate over the rows behind me. “Murder. Rape. Ruthlessness. Nobody knows what or who is right to believe in or not. Even me. So if there really are pearly gates somewhere, I don’t know what it takes to get through them.
But what I do know is if you’re on this train, it’s because you did something that goes beyond not believing. Something unforgivable.”
I’ve done something unforgivable. I bite back the words. Maybe I have time to avoid a seat on this train when my time comes.
If it hasn’t already.
I turn back to the window, too unsettled to keep my eyes anywhere but on the passing silhouettes of trees and whatever body of water we’re skirting the edge of. In the reflection, I can make out the translucent souls filling the train. It makes everyone look even more ghoulish than they already do.
“What happens to them?” I force out. “When we get there, where do they go?”
“We’re already there.”