Angel's Ink (30 page)

In that grim embrace I finally entertained the thought that Trixie wouldn’t show up in time. I knew that I was taking a significant risk in asking for her help. It wasn’t that Trixie wouldn’t come to my aid or that she would be late—I knew I could depend on her. But the elves tracking her could spot her on her way to my apartment and grab her. Not only would I be dead, but no one would be able to help her escape from the guards of the Summer Court.

Trixie was the one person I trusted above all others to help me. Bronx couldn’t leave his house during the daylight hours. Trixie had to come and she had to be on time.

Yet even as I convinced myself that there was no one else to help me, Robert’s young, smiling face drifted across my mind. Growing up, my older brother had been my closest friend and worst enemy rolled into one. We fought as hard as we played together, and I always knew that he would protect me no matter what. I hadn’t spoken to him in more than ten years and yet I knew that if I had called him, he would come. However, I didn’t want my dead body to be the first thing he saw after a decade of silence. It was better for both him and my younger sister if neither was involved in my dangerous life.

I twisted and tried to shift while hanging from my noose, but there was no give. Darkness started to crowd my eyes and my lungs, feeling as if they were going to explode in my chest, burned for oxygen. I squinted at the clock to see how much time had passed in this agony, but my vision swam and doubled, making it impossible to focus on the distant clock. Time slowed to a crawl. I didn’t want to die. A part of me desperately wanted Trixie to come to the apartment early and save me from myself, but then I was only left with facing my death at the hands of the grim reaper.

As darkness closed in around me, leaving me feeling cold and light headed, I realized that I hadn’t left a note in case something went terribly wrong. What if I died and no one was there to bring me back in time? I hadn’t left a note to explain to everyone that I wasn’t really attempting suicide. I hadn’t left a note to explain the mess I had gotten into and how I was trying to fix it. My family would be left to think that my life had gone horribly wrong and that I was depressed. Trixie would be devastated, as she would believe that I had wanted to kill myself after having had sex with her. I had to fix it. I couldn’t take the chance of destroying those who mattered most to me.

I reached up with my right hand to grab the cord above my head. If I could just hold it and concentrate, I knew a spell that would allow me to burn through the cord. I would have to start the whole thing over again, but I couldn’t take the chance of hurting my family like this. They had to know why if I truly did die. Unfortunately, as I attempted to look up, my vision completely blacked out. The side of my hand grazed the side of the cord as I missed. I tried a second time, but my hand went wide of the cord, missing it completely.

Darkness swirled around me in an ever deepening vortex, sucking me down until I felt nothing. Not the tightness in my chest or the throbbing pain in my head. There was only a floating miasma of confusion and cold. I tried to blink my eyes against the darkness, but it didn’t give forth any shape or sense of depth for several seconds.

And then there was earth beneath my feet. I shook my head, surprised to find that I was no longer hanging from a noose. I knelt on the cold, hard ground, feeling the smooth stones beneath the palms of my hands. My eyes focused on some vague shapes. In the distance I could see a faint blue glow emanating from a dark tunnel, while the earth shifted and swayed, reminding me of water. I was in the underworld, leading to final judgment and the realm beyond.

I had to move fast. I didn’t know how time flowed in the underworld. The minutes until Trixie arrived could pass in the blink of an eye or slink by at a snail’s pace. I couldn’t take any chances that she would revive me before I had accomplished what I needed to. Pushing to my feet, I carefully walked down the gentle rolling slope to the bank of what appeared to be an endlessly wide river. The water flowed, but there were no waves. It was a flat plain, as if it were made out of black glass, and yet I didn’t want to touch it. Without question, I knew I was standing on the bank of the River Styx.

Looking down, relief filled me as I found that I was wearing exactly what I had died in. Taking a glass container out of my pocket, I pulled out the cork stopper and knelt at the bank. Carefully filling the container, I made sure not to touch the water with my fingers. When it was full, I stood and replaced the stopper before putting it back into my pocket.

I had what I had come for, but this was also an opportunity that I wasn’t willing to pass up. The River Styx represented hate, but it also led to the afterlife. It was a link to death, and it would be the only thing that could overcome the power of the angel feather. Yet there were still four more rivers that ran through the underworld—Lethe, Acheron, Cocytus, and Phlegethon. They represented forgetfulness, pain, lamentation, and fire. The water from those rivers could be used to create some of the most powerful potions in existence. Bringing back water from all five rivers would mean holding a fortune in my hands. More so, water from all five rivers would mean getting my hands on the one item that could free Trixie from the Summer Court. If only I knew what it was. It didn’t matter. When I finally discovered it, I knew it would be found among Chang’s treasures.

A dim yellow glow pierced the darkness and was slowly approaching me from across the Styx. Taking a step backward from the bank, I watched as a rickety wooden boat appeared from out of the darkness with an old oil lamp hanging from a bow that sloped upward. It was only when the boat pushed up on the shore with a scrape that I could make out the slender figure of a man standing at the stern with a long wooden pole that he used to direct the boat. Shrouded in a ragged black cloak from head to toe, I could see his bony white hands as they tightly clasped the pole. I was faced with the fearsome ferryman Charon.

Extending his left hand to me, Charon spoke, sending a chill through my frame. ��Obol.”

Without thinking, I felt myself reaching down to my jeans pocket, where I had stuffed the gold coins I had received from the satyrs. As I pulled one out, I finally caught myself before I could lay it in the ferryman’s hand. My thoughts swirled frantically in my head as I fought the compulsion to heed his bidding. I wasn’t trying to cross over to the land of judgment. I just wanted to travel the rivers, I reminded myself.

“I have your obol,” I replied. My voice was shaky and soft, as I didn’t want to disturb the overwhelming silence of the underworld with my presence. “But I have an additional request of you.”

Charon’s skeletal fingers curled into his palm and he pulled back his hand. He seemed to hesitate before pulling back the deep hood of his cloak to reveal a wrinkled old face with a long reddish-brown beard. His blue-gray eyes, partially hidden beneath a pair of wild, bushy eyebrows that wiggled like poisonous caterpillars on his brow, locked on my face. While not quite the fearsome figure I had expected, he still reminded me of the slightly mad homeless man who sometimes slept in the alley beside the tattoo parlor.

“You think you can bargain with Charon?” he asked, his fuzzy brows meeting above his large nose.

“Yes.” I forced a smile on my lips as I met his stare. I held up one gold coin so that it flashed in the dim light from his lantern, causing his eyes to widen. It was tradition that the obol he was offered was typically the least valued coin of the realm. The ferryman didn’t often feel the weight and slickness of a gold coin. “I don’t seek passage to judgment. I want water from all five of the rivers and then to be returned to this shore.”

“No one travels all the rivers of the underworld.”

“No one but you.”

He frowned at me, but continued. “Passage to the land beyond and back requires two coins. Standard fee. Ask the gods.”

I nodded and reached into my pocket, withdrawing a second coin to show him. “I have the fee for passage back and forth, but I need all five rivers.”

“No.”

I tightly clasped the gold coins in my fist as I stared critically at the ferryman. I had suspected that I might have some problems getting him to acquiesce to my demand, but I had been hoping to avoid the only route I had available to me. It was dirty and despicable, but at the same time, I knew that if our roles were reversed, my opponent would not hesitate to do the same.

“How long have you been the ferryman for the dead?” I asked.

“Since the start of time.”

“I imagine that you are looking forward to your own time of rest and peace in the afterlife following a long existence of servitude.”

The frown on Charon’s face deepened as he weighed my words. “I will not rest until the living fill the halls of the dead. Only then will I put aside my pole and rest.”

“Could you not rest if someone came along to take your place?”

“The person has to volunteer to take my spot. None has ever agreed to such a thing.” Charon paused, stroking his beard as he gazed at me. “Will you take my place as ferryman if I take you to all the rivers?”

I waved one hand at him and smiled. “I’m not quite so desperate, but I do have something else to offer.” Reaching inside my shirt, I pulled out the small glass container that hung around my neck. Inside the glass swirled the piece of Simon’s soul that I had torn off. Lifting it over my head, I held it out to Charon by the leather thong. “You may not need a willing replacement if you hold a piece of their soul.”

Charon stood mesmerized by the fragment of soul that twisted in the glass container dangling from my hand. Before him was the promise of relief from his long existence of service to the dead. Of course, if I managed to return to the world above without Simon’s soul, it was unlikely that I would ever be able to barter for my own fragment of soul. On the other hand, it was highly unlikely that Simon would ever willingly agree to a trade in the first place. I was better off using his soul in trade with Charon than attempting to trade for my own.

“You will give me two coins and the soul fragment if I take you to each of the rivers?” Charon asked slowly.

“Take me to each river
and
bring me back to this exact spot,” I replied, lowering my hand back to my side.

“Agreed,” Charon said eagerly, extending his hand to me again.

“I will give you one coin now for the start of the trip, and I will give you the soul fragment and other coin when we are safely back here.”

A low growl slipped from Charon for a second as he glared at me. His extended hand balled into a tight fist and trembled slightly, as he was anxious to have his hold on his replacement. While Charon had no power to end Simon’s life early and drag him down to the ferry, he would at least have the promise of a replacement when Simon died on his own.

“Very well,” he grumbled.

Suppressing a sigh of relief, I handed over one of the gold coins as I climbed into the boat and sat on the single plank that ran from one side of the wooden boat to the other. Behind me, I could hear Charon shuffling with his robes before he pushed off the bank with his pole.

With surprising speed, Charon directed us across the Styx, weaving around sandbars and fingers of land stretched out into the water before we reached a new tributary. Where the Styx was like polished black glass, the next river was crystal clear, making it easy to see the various bodies of the dead that had settled near the bottom of the river.

“This is Lethe,” Charon announced as we settled in the middle of the mouth of the river. “Feel free to take a drink. It’s quite cool and refreshing. I’m told that it’s the best-tasting water in the above or below worlds.”

“I’m sure it is,” I muttered under my breath as I knelt on the bottom of the boat while pulling another glass jar out of my pocket. Once again, I was careful not to touch the water as I filled the container. Lethe would wipe the memory of any who drank from it, a situation I was sure that Charon would be happy to take advantage of.

After I had the water from Lethe, we quickly moved on. Cocytus, with its deep blue waters, looked to be more of a lagoon found off an island in the Caribbean. The river of lamentation shifted and lapped against distant shores, sounding like the weeping of angels. But then, Cocytus was said to be made of the tears of angels gathered from all their centuries of crying for man. I wasn’t sure that I believed the old tale, but I didn’t take any unnecessary chances for fear of being swept away by an overwhelming hopelessness that could deter me from my endeavor to save myself, Trixie, and Bronx.

Phlegethon nearly proved to be the end of me as I jerked back in the boat when we drew close to the river. The tiny wooden boat swayed at my movement, but it didn’t burst into flames as I had initially feared. The river of fire was red and yellow, as if it were made of flowing magma, but still had the same consistency as water. Intense heat radiated off it, causing sweat to bead and slip down the sides of my face. For the first time since entering the underworld, I wasn’t cold and the darkness had been beaten back by the light that shone from the river. I nearly dropped the glass jar into the river, cursing the stinging heat that bit at my fingertips. When it was full, I placed it on the floor of the boat and replaced the cork stopper, waiting to see if the liquid would eat through the glass, but it held. Even the glass remained cool to the touch despite the fact that it looked like I had placed liquid fire in a jar.

Our final stop didn’t appear to be a river at all, but a swamp. Acheron was the river of pain, and it reminded me of something I had read in Dante’s
Inferno
. The boat frequently scraped bottom as we entered the swamp, the river remaining shallow, broken up by spits of land. The shore had moved closer, revealing black trees with twisted bare limbs. I stared out across the land and watched shadows shifting in and out from behind trees as we passed by.

“Are . . . are those people out there?” I asked as we paused in the center of the swamp. I hesitated to lean over the side of the boat with the glass jar, but held it tightly in one hand as I scoured the shoreline.