All the Gates of Hell (32 page)

Shiro
.

TOOK YOU LONG ENOUGH.

Jin blinked. There was no one else there. A quick glance with the Third Eye proved that, but Jin could not escape an extreme sense of
presence
. A familiar one in fact.

"Guan Shi Yin. Look, we've both been on this page a dozen times or more. Either tell me what I need to do or get out of my head."

NOT POSSIBLE ON EITHER COUNT, JIN, BUT AFTER ALL YOU'VE BEEN THROUGH, I THINK I CAN AT LEAST TELL YOU WHY ON THE FIRST ONE. SO. WOULD YOU LIKE THAT?

"What about the second one?" Jin asked.

Jin could almost picture the Guan Yin That Was smiling. IT'S LIKE TEACHER SAID: EITHER YOU ALREADY KNOW THAT OR YOU'RE AN IDIOT. AND YOU ARE NOT AN IDIOT.

"Hard to prove by the mess I've made of things so far," Jin said, rubbing her eyes, "but I'd be glad for a bone, a scrap, any hint at all."

DON'T BE SO DRAMATIC. WHATEVER HAPPENS NEXT, I'M PROUD OF YOU, JIN. I JUST WANTED YOU TO KNOW. BEING BORN AGAIN AS YOU WAS WORTH THE RISK.

Jin actually blushed, but quickly recovered her composure. "That's nice, but what's your point?"

JUST THAT LOVE, IN KARMIC TERMS, IS TOUGHER THAN FEAR, ANGER, AND OBSESSION ALL ROLLED TOGETHER, AS YOU'RE JUST STARTING TO DISCOVER. THE FACT IS THAT I COULDN'T DEFEAT LOVE, JIN. NOT AS Guan SHI YIN OR THE MORTAL GIRL THAT MARRIED SHIRO IN THE FIRST PLACE. BUT YOU CAN.

Jin tried to let that last bit sink in. "But... why me? And why won't you tell me what to do, blast it?"

BECAUSE, BLAST IT, IF I TELL YOU WHAT TO DO, YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO DO IT. LOOK, I KNOW THAT'S A PARADOX, BUT FORGET IT FOR THE MOMENT. THINK OF SHIRO. YOU KNOW HE REFUSES TO MOVE ON. WHY?

Jin frowned. "Why? He's in love with me!"

GRANTED. BUT WHY NOT MOVE ON? HE'LL ACHIEVE ENLIGHTENMENT, AND THE TIME WILL COME WHEN ALL THE WANDERING ONES HAVE RETURNED AND THERE IS NO MORE NEED FOR Guan Yin, OR HELLS, OR ANYTHING. HE'LL BE WITH US FOREVER.

"Together in spiritual harmony or whatever is not the same thing at all as being alone with the one you love, and you know it."

SURE I DO. SO WHY DON'T YOU?

Jin felt as if a door had closed, and the sense of presence was gone. Not that Guan Yin was really gone. Jin knew better. But for now Jin was as alone in her own head as it was possible to be at the moment.

She didn't think she'd learned anything particularly useful, but the conversation did get her thinking about Shiro, and progress toward transcendence. Jin thought again about the Golden Cord, and the precise moment it had appeared, linking her to Shiro. Jin frowned as she considered an entirely new possibility. Maybe she wouldn't have to convince him to move on. Maybe all she had to do was be in the right place and time when the link formed again, when, despite himself, Shiro was vulnerable.

When his spiritual ass belongs to
Guan Yin.

Jin wasn't certain that what she had in mind was possible, but she was certain enough that it was worth a try. All she had to do was be present and in place when the link formed, as it eventually would. She had two choices there: she could either follow Shiro the way he had been following her, which seemed nearly impossible on the face of it. Or...

Or I can make the link happen
.

Jin sighed. The devil was always in the details. Jin yawned and swung her legs over the edge of the couch. She put weight on the injured foot before she remembered and grimaced in anticipation, but it wasn't so bad as she'd feared. Jin laced on her sneakers and tried the foot again. It was tender still and Jin knew she wouldn't be running any marathons any time soon, but the foot was serviceable enough, so long as she put most of her weight on her uninjured left foot and didn't mind limping a bit.

It did occur to Jin that this might be Shiro again, but even if it was and especially in her current condition, there was no way she could catch him before he'd managed to shake off whatever transient state of mind or emotion was making him vulnerable. Jin followed the thread out of the front door. It was late afternoon, but there was still an hour or two of daylight. She paused to lock up and then continued to follow the thread in as brisk a walk as her condition allowed. This time when she reached Pepper Street the thread pulled her to the right, toward the courthouse.

This one's in Medias, whoever it is
.

There were patrol cars in evidence, something you didn't see so much on the far side of Pepper Street. The courthouse itself was Greek Revival, modeled on some of the more posh antebellum mansions in Natchez. Jin walked past the portico and went through the metal detectors at the main entrance. An armed guard checked her bag and then sent her through. She paused for a moment by a directory. She'd been there once or twice for jury duty so everything was at least vaguely familiar, but it wasn't a place she thought about much. She was near a bank of two creaking elevators and the central stairwell. Upstairs were the actual courtrooms and the DMV was down the hall. The golden cord pulled down. Jin blinked. What was downstairs in the basement? She checked the directory.

Prisoner holding cells
.

Jin glanced at the creaking elevators and took the stairs. Her foot was still a bit tender and she moved slowly. There was a guard station at the bottom. A bored-looking young man with thinning hair glanced up at her. "May I help you, Miss?"

Jin hesitated, glanced around, then checked the cord. She was definitely not there for the guard; the cord looped past him and through a door of iron bars to the holding cells beyond. "Oh, sorry," she said finally, "I must have taken a wrong turn. Is the DMV on the ground floor?"

"At the end of the hall."

Jin thanked the guard and went back up the stairs, slowly. She had never come across a situation where she couldn't reach the person that was ready to move on from their current hell. There was one case where said person had given her the slip -- Shiro -- but that wasn't the same thing.

Jin knew she'd have had to call on Lung Nu and Shan Cai sooner or later for her strategy against Shiro, but she'd hoped to put off calling on them in any capacity for a while longer. Jin glanced around; there was a fairly steady stream of people going about their business, including the occasional uniformed bailiff or police officer, but followed the hallway until she found an alcove to one side of a portrait of the governor. She looked around quickly to make certain there was no one in sight at that moment, then summoned Frank and Ling. Just after she did so she realized in horror that she hadn't specified their appearance, but they appeared in their standard human attire.

"Have you forgiven us?" Frank said.

"Have you learned your lesson?" Jin asked.

Ling frowned. "I don't think so. Your pardon, Immanent One, but your spiritual perspective may be... uncertain, in your present form, but ours is not. Ending Shiro's shadow existence and putting him back into the Cycle of Birth and Death is the right thing to do."

"No argument from me," Jin said, "but we disagree on how to accomplish this. Maybe if I'd been a few seconds later the point would be moot, but once I did know, I had to stop it."

Now Frank looked puzzled. "Why?"

"Because then I would have been a party to his murder, because that's what it looked like to me." Jin noted several people approaching along the corridor and lowered her voice. "My 'spiritual perspective' may be wonky, but that doesn't mean I can ignore it. Besides, if Guan Yin thought that was the answer don't you think she'd have told you to kill him long ago?" She didn't, did she?"

"Our Mistress has a kind heart -- " Frank began.

"Bullshit. If Guan Shi Yin thought destroying Shiro was the right thing to do to help him, she'd have turned him into fishbait herself and whistled while she did it. Do you doubt this?"

Frank and Ling exchanged glances again and this time Jin was a little amused to see that they actually looked a bit guilty. "Well, no," Ling was forced to admit.

"So trust her judgment, then, if you don't trust mine. The easy, simple way isn't always the right one."

"Then what is the right one?" Ling asked, and Jin shrugged.

"I have the beginnings of a notion, but I'll tell you about it later. Right now I need to get into the prisoner holding area down in the basement, preferably without being seen. I went down earlier but couldn't get past the stairwell. Is there another way?"

"More than likely," Frank said. "Let me scout a bit."

Frank vanished, and then a doorway of light opened and closed.

Jin sighed. "He's invisible now, isn't he?"

"Of course," said Ling.

"I always suspected you two could do that. I haven't been alone as much as I thought, have I?"

"This is true for all beings," Ling said piously, though she looked like she was trying not to smile.

"I'll take that as a 'yes,'" Jin said. She glanced at her watch. "Frank needs to hurry. The courthouse closes in thirty minutes."

Frank was back in five. They saw the flash of light and then Frank reappeared. Fortunately the number of people walking by was diminishing and no one saw him. "There's only one guard, which I assume you saw. There are security cameras at each end of the holding area. Could you tell if the cord was pulling you left or right from the stairwell?"

Jin shook her head. "There wasn't time, and I couldn't see far enough to get a fix on anyone."

"There are only three prisoners currently in the holding area -- two on the right side, one at the far left. I overheard the guard on the phone calling for the Sheriff's department to transfer them back to the county jail. The court is apparently finished with them for today. We have perhaps fifteen minutes before that happens."

"Can you get me in there?"

"We can persuade the light to ignore you for a time," Ling said.

"If by that you mean 'make me invisible too,' fine. Take me to just beyond the inside door. I'll take over from there."

"As you wish."

Jin thought she would feel a change when she turned invisible: a tremor, a tickle, something, but when she held up her hand the process was already complete. She waved what she thought was her hand across her face, saw nothing. Her reaction was pretty much the same child-like excitement she'd known when she saw Ling switch from true dragon to her human form for the first time, but she managed to keep it to herself this time.

This is so farkin' cool
!

Jin felt herself blush and was glad Frank and Ling couldn't see her. Still, what was wrong with a little delight? It's not as if the role of Guan Yin in a human suit gave her much else besides a ton of aggravation; Jin was a bit relieved that she could still feel joy over what, compared to some of the other things she'd experienced lately, had to be the metaphysical equivalent of a card trick.

A doorway of light opened. Jin hesitated, then she felt a hand on each arm as Frank and Ling guided her through. Again Jin felt that moment of total dislocation and once more she risked a glance with her Third Eye into the void. It only lasted a moment, but that was quite long enough. In another moment they reappeared in a dim hallway.

You'd think, as much as that sight unnerves me, I'd stop looking
. Maybe she wanted the reminder of the reality beyond all the appearance. Or maybe she wanted to wonder if the void was what was actually real after all.

Jin banished the distracting thought and concentrated on her surroundings. Her first impression of the dimness beyond the cold iron door didn't change. She glanced up and saw that the overhead florescent light was barely flickering. Behind her by the much brighter guard's station she could see the stairway leading up to the ground floor, and the guard at his desk idly flipping through a newspaper. Jin turned away from the door and looked down the hallway.

The cells were laid out as Frank described. Jin saw two men sitting in the rightmost cell, speaking in low voices. She didn't feel anything at first. Jin glanced toward her wrist and saw the golden cord right where it was supposed to be. Her passage through the doorway seemed to have confused it for the moment, but Jin waited patiently and, after a short time, it began to pull on her wrist again.

Good boy
, Jin thought, as the cord led her past the first cell. So it wasn't either of those two. Jin kept walking. If Frank was correct, there were only three prisoners in the holding area, and no one else besides the guard up front. Her goal had to be the final prisoner. She went to the last cell.

A large black man with flecks of gray in his hair sat on the bunk. Jin stopped. She had not seen the man in some time, but she knew him beyond any doubt.

Lucius Taylor.

Jin shook her head. No. This wasn't right. It was a mistake. This particular hell wasn't through with him yet, and when it
was
he was going to one that made this one look like Paradise. All the things that Jin believed, but hadn't realized she believed, came rushing over her as she stared into the stony face of Lucius Taylor.

The cord tugged at her.

Jin shook her head.
No. You can't make me
.

The cord tugged, stronger this time. More insistent.

It's too much. Can't you see it's too much? Stop it
.

The cord paid her no heed. It tugged again.

"I said stop!"

Before she even realized what she was about to do, Jin grabbed onto the cord with her free hand and tugged. She had to keep staring into the void opened by her Third Eye to keep a grip on it, but she did not let go, even when she felt that the darkness beyond the hell was staring back into her. There was an instant of unbearable pain.

The cord broke.

Jin just stared dully at the severed end of the cord that was slowly fading into nothing. Lucius looked around, startled.

"What the hell was that?" the guard was at the barred door, "Who's there? Dammit, Lucius, I know that wasn't you!"

Lucius didn't answer the guard, who fumbling with a security code pad by the door. Jin just kept staring as the remnants of the golden cord faded to nothing. She almost didn't see the shadow that moved in the corner and then faded into the greater darkness.