The Love of the Dead (24 page)

Hell welcomed her.

Suddenly the walls around her were gone. She stood, stretching out of habit. A line of skulls floated in the air at each side of the path before her. Flames tore the flesh from the heads every second, only for it to regenerate and burn over and over again. She didn’t even notice the smell. The whole place smelled so awful she couldn’t make out individual smells, like she could make no sense of the noises. Screams ruled, gibbering, insane ranting in unknown languages. People grunting in agony while they performed acts on each other that, from a distance, might have been seen as love, but closer was nothing more than torture. Women hammered flaming nails into men’s asses, men chewed and ate women’s breasts while the women writhed in pain or an ecstasy of pain. An orgy of death unfolded below her, to either side of the path. Flames spewed down and dripped smoldering lava on her dress. Her dead flesh charred under the heat, though she knew no pain.

This was hell?

It was a fucking joke.

Sawyer sat upon a throne made of headless corpses, held together with bones driven through the still living flesh. His weight bowed backs and broke arms. He was heavy now, a thing of stone and feathers.

He was lord here. This was his home. He looked so pleased with himself, but Beth just laughed at him.

Rage flicked across his face.

She stopped before him. “King of Hell?”

“I am at home.”

“You need a new housekeeper,” she said. “Looks like someone took a shit in your living room.”

“You think you come to beat me, Elizabeth?”

“You can’t do anything to me I haven’t done myself. I deserved to die. But not by your hand. That must smart.”

But he was smiling, and she was worried.

“I didn’t just want you dead, Elizabeth, you sweet, beautiful fool. Your power. That’s what I wanted. You’re the capstone in my tower. And you came calling. I wanted you dead, but more, I wanted your soul. And here it is, dressed up like a virgin but covered in shit and dead men’s come, soiled and worn and oh so fucking beautiful.”

He reached out and grabbed her hair with his sharp claws and pulled her down on her knees before him.

It wasn’t done. Hell wasn’t funny anymore.

He squeezed, and his nails drove through her skull and into her brain. Then she understood.

She screamed and bucked under his grip, but this was his house, his rules, and suddenly Beth knew she didn’t understand a Goddamned thing but pain, and pain she knew better than she liked.

Chapter Seventy

A deep sigh issued from Coleridge’s chest. His framed heaved once as he tried to push himself up. He landed back down with a thump as his hands slid in the slick blood coating the floor. He reassessed his capability.

Turning his head to one side he puked hard enough to hurt his guts, but he didn’t mind so much. It didn’t hurt anywhere near as much as his missing foot. The foot rested on over to the side. He was at the perfect angle to see down into his own flesh. It fascinated him, looking at the clean bone, seeing shapes within the bone itself. Like he’d seen on Freeman’s butcher’s table enough times. He didn’t usually see the living’s bones like that.

For a moment he panicked. What if he wasn’t living? Beth said the dead bore their wounds as spirits. What if he was doomed to hobble through the afterlife on crutches?

“Fuck that,” he said. If he could think such morbid thoughts he couldn’t be dead.

Plus, there was the pain. It hurt like all of fucking hell was having a party in his leg. It hurt right the way up through his thigh, into his balls and his guts. His head was pounding and he was struggling to get enough breath to move. His arms couldn’t even hold his weight.

He was in a sorry state.

Then he remembered Beth, Sawyer, the sword, the bottle, the blood.

“Oh, no. No. No.”

From somewhere deep within he found the strength to pull himself across the floor to Beth’s side.

Her neck was a ragged mess. Pieces of glass were still stuck in the wound, too slick for him to get a grip on. He tried, anyway, cutting his fingers and adding to the blood, though he didn’t notice. He gave up and tried to hold the wound together with his slashed fingers, but blood still seeped out. If there was blood seeping, she must still be alive.

He refused to give up on her. With one hand he tried to stem the bleeding, with the other he felt for a pulse. He couldn’t find it. Didn’t mean it wasn’t there, though. Didn’t mean that.

He pulled himself atop her, probably crushing her and breaking a few ribs, then he managed to push himself up high enough so that he could straddle her, take his weight on his knees.

His fists pumped up and down as he tried to massage her heart back to life. He cried while he did it. Sobbed, his massive chest heaving and snot dripping down onto Beth’s face. She didn’t move, didn’t stir.

He checked for a pulse, for breath, pumped hard enough to hear her ribs crack. He knew it was useless. He knew she was dead before he’d even begun.

But what else could he do? He’d let her die. He hadn’t been able to do a fucking thing. She’d died, and he’d just laid on the floor, passed out like a fucking pansy just because he’d had his foot cut off.

“Come on!” he roared into her face, spittle flecking her cheeks, hitting her wide, staring eyes. But she didn’t move, just bucked under his fist. It felt obscene, in a way, him pumping up and down on her, her jaw opening in a parody of ecstasy, but no moans escaped. It was just a dead thing being played with, like a puppet.

“Fucking bastard cunt fuck fuck fuck!”

He brought his fist down toward her face, suddenly furious, and turned it aside at the last second, breaking his middle knuckle on the hard floor.

Miles watched from beside the hole down into the earth. Looked at Coleridge, then to the hole, then back again. Torn.

Coleridge’s eyes rolled. He gave a great sigh and fell across Beth’s body.

Chapter Seventy-One

Sawyer laughed as he drove fingers like talons deep into Beth’s skull.

The pain was terrible. There was no blood, but she could feel the damage he was doing. His fingers sought out the core of her, her self, her memories and her feelings, her hurts and successes, the loves she had, her regrets, her shame and her fear. He tore at the things that made her Beth, the things that remained after death, her immortal soul.

Most of all he tore at that one thing that set her apart, a kernel deep inside her that was always and forever connected to the afterlife.

He would pull it from her and devour it like the beating hearts of his victims. She would serve in hell for all time, beyond time, for an eternity as nothing but a mindless slave, and he would be more powerful than anyone could ever imagine.

The pain was unbearable, but the terror was worse. She screamed and scratched at his skin, but he was made more of stone than flesh. She left no mark and his laughter bore into her like needles.

She was a fool. She thought she’d deserved this. Maybe she did but, God, was this the price?

Then the pain lessened. The sharp digging within her ceased, but the laughter continued. No humor in that laugh, it was just a hole to his rotten lungs, fetid air escaping from a creature born of death.

But the pain was gone and maybe she had a chance.

His eyes were fixed beyond her, dark mirth twinkling.

She turned and saw as he saw.

“Oh. No.”

Peter stood on the pathway above the bodies of the damned. He shook with terror, his dead face pale. But he’d never been a coward.

“Peter, no! Go back!”

“No, no. You’re all welcome down here,” said Sawyer, grinning through black teeth. He grabbed Beth by the hair and yanked her head back, hard. She yelped. Peter started forward.

“No! Run!”

“No,” he said. “Let her go.”

Sawyer shook Beth’s head back and forth.

“Beth says she wants to stay. Oh, Peter, she’s so wet for me.”

“Let her go.”

“Fuck off, Nancy,” Sawyer spat.

“No, fuck you,” said Peter, and drew the black sword from behind his back. He strode forward, his hand shaking, even though he was just a shade in this place of death. He didn’t need to shake, but the spirit remembered the body long after death.

Beth shook, too. She felt her neck bones grating together as her head was pulled back, even though she had no neck anymore than she could feel physical pain.

But this was the tower. Rules were different here. This was his realm, a realm of the dead, but where flesh still ruled. The people fucking and rolling below like worms were real enough to feel pain and hatred and to inflict terrible wounds. The place healed dead flesh so it could be severed again.

She didn’t understand the rules. Peter shook, she shook.

Sawyer just laughed all the harder.

Peter roared and charged at the beast. He slashed down at Sawyer’s neck with all his might, but when the sword hit it wasn’t a sword any longer. It was just a feather.

Chapter Seventy-Two

Tears streamed down Miles’ face, and each drop glittered in the strange light that surrounded him. His expression was too old for such a young face. No eight year old boy should know such sorrow.

But he knew it well. He knew what was to come.

He’d been dead a long time. He’d seen the other side. He’d seen lifetimes played out, deaths untold, enough pain and sorrow to break the soul of the living.

A long time dead, though, and stronger for it.

He knelt by the hole and watched as Coleridge’s eyes rolled up into his head, only the whites showing. The big man had heart and he made Miles happy. The boy sensed in Coleridge a simple soul. One much like his own. He wouldn’t let him die if he could do anything about it.

He knew his role. It wasn’t to give, but to take. He couldn’t break the rules. But maybe in this one thing he could
slide
them.

Coleridge slumped across Beth’s body, blood still flowing freely from his wound. Miles looked down into the pit again.

He could hear his mother’s screams rising from the well. His father’s terrified cries joined hers.

Coleridge was dying. Time was short.

But the dead were unbound by time. His mother thought she knew this, but she hadn’t experienced it. She couldn’t. She hadn’t seen the other side.

Miles had.

He stepped away from the hole, closed his mind to the agony coming from behind him.

He reached the stove. Concentrated and turned the knob. Flames flicked high.

He took out a heavy metal skillet. It was no more difficult for him to carry than a plate or a sofa or a car. It wasn’t his physical strength that moved the skillet over the flame.

When he judged it hot enough, he lifted it from the flame and pulled Coleridge’s leg between his arm and his chest. Held it firm, in a grip like iron. The big man was liable to wake and fight.

Coleridge would never get his foot back, but he wouldn’t die.

Miles held the skillet against the stump of Coleridge’s leg. His flesh seared and stank. Miles could smell it well enough. Smells, sounds, sights, so much touched him, made his soul sing with wonder and horror.

Coleridge woke and fought and screamed, but then he passed out again.

The skillet cooled.

Miles hefted it. A thoughtful look passed his face. He nodded, listening to a voice only he could hear.

“OK,” he said. Took one step over the hole and in the next step he stood before the man who’d stolen Death’s throne.

Chapter Seventy-Three

Sawyer’s fist lashed out, and Peter flew backward, rolling and coming to rest at the edge of the chasm. The dead strained to reach him, but the throne was too high.

Beth threw herself at Sawyer, knowing it was pointless. Still bound by the rules of the living, she fought nail, fist, foot against stone. Her knuckles cracked and her nails tore. Her foot broke and she felt the pain, and even though she knew it wasn’t real it took the fight from her. She couldn’t hurt him.

He laughed at her while she struggled against him. Then, bored, he took her bottom lip between his talons and pulled her face toward his.

“Give yourself to me. I’ll let him go.”

The pain was immense. She couldn’t concentrate. She fought to hold onto herself. He twisted her lip so hard the only thing she could do was turn her head away, try to turn out of his grip, but he pulled, and she could only go where he wanted. He drew her head down to his lap. He was naked and every part of him was like stone.

Repulsed, she spat at him.

Her spit seeped through his flesh, like he was thirsty. He thrust himself at her, and she bit down, breaking a tooth. It hurt him though. It must have, because he roared and tore her bottom lip from her face.

He put his palm in her face and pushed her down to the floor.

No blood, she saw, kneeling and looking down. No blood.

It’s not real.

You’re dead, Beth. Remember? You’re dead. He can’t hurt you. There is no pain.

“There is no pain,” said a new voice. Someone else here.

“There is no death,” Miles said. Beth saw him and thought for a second she might cry, dead or not.

But he wasn’t her eight year old son. Not anymore.

Miles looked the same as ever, an eight year old boy. But something was inside him. Something other. He was beautiful, his voice soft yet strong. It was a confident voice like a young man’s might have been, the young man’s voice he might have grown into, if she hadn’t killed him.

He shone so brightly she had to close her eye against the light, and still she could see him.

“There is no other God,” he said, standing a foot in front of Sawyer, “But He who lives in me.”

Sawyer slashed Miles’ face but his talons passed through, hitting nothing but still air.

Miles ignored Sawyer’s roar and held up a hand for silence.

In his other hand Beth saw that he held a skillet. Her skillet, from the kitchen.

Did he intend to fight him with it? Beth realized she wasn’t the mother here. Peter, crouching and spitting teeth that didn’t really exist, he wasn’t the father anymore. Miles was somehow set above them.