Arianna Rose: The Gates of Hell (Part 5) (16 page)

After thanking Arianna profusely, Madame Dafeenah hurried out of her tent
, out into the dizzying array of lights, smells and sounds that comprised the carnival.  She’d solidified her integrity as a seer.  Briathos, Leo and Sorath had been right.  Now, her loyalty would be put to the test, as would the maximum potential of her capabilities.  Arianna hoped Madame Dafeenah’s skill would be enough to give her and her people an edge, and that together they would defeat Darius before the final gate was opened. 

Chapter 12

Arianna, Desmond and Madame Dafeenah left the seer’s tent as soon as she returned from informing her bosses and lifelong friends of her abrupt departure.  After securing the flap that served as an entry and exit point and hanging a sign that read
closed
, Madame Dafeenah endured the jeers and profanities of those who waited in line to see her.

“Please, your money will be refunded,” Madame Dafeenah tried to reason with the disgruntled crowd.  “I have a personal emergency.”

But despite her attempt at calming them, the crowd persisted with oaths of never returning and more vulgar language. 

“Nice group of people you got coming to see you,” Arianna said and tried to lighten the mood.  “
Quality folks,” she added and pursed her lips.  She looked over Madame Dafeenah’s head at Desmond and he shook his head, as if to tell her now was not the time.

“The people who come to see me have heavy hearts.  They seek hope and comfort.  The
y seek peace.  I am depriving them of that.  They have every right to be upset,” Madame Dafeenah said quietly.

“So stay,” Arianna huffed.  It was a knee-jerk reaction, one she wasn’t particularly proud of, but it had been an honest one.  “Stay and help them until the end of days comes a few weeks from now when Darius opens the last portal to Gehenna.”

“No, no that’s not what I meant, Sola.  My intent was not to disrespect you,” Madame Dafeenah said quickly.  Her tan cheeks blushed deeply, her embarrassment evident.

“She knows you
weren’t being disrespectful or regretting your decision to help us, isn’t that right, Arianna?” Desmond prodded.

“Eh, of course,” Arianna said absently
as she took in the scenery all around her. 

Unexpectedly, however,
Madame Dafeenah slowed her pace. Arianna turned to look at her.  Her shimmering silver irises had disappeared again, replaced with solid white. 

“Arianna,” Madame Dafeenah’s voice spoke with eerie calm. 
“Do not stop walking and pretend we are all talking about something light and uninteresting.”

Arianna hesitated a moment
, confused by the odd request.

“Please, just do it.  Smile a small smile and nod as if I have just said something you agree with.”

Arianna did as she was told, the urgency in Madame Dafeenah’s tone compelling her. 

Smiling thinly and glancing ahead, Arianna asked, “Okay, why am I doing this exactly?”

When her gaze returned to the seer, she saw that her eyes had returned to normal.  “If you trust me at all and you want to live, you’re going to have to do exactly as I say or we will all die this night.”

Her words were ominous, her
tone grave.  “Why?  What are you?” she couldn’t help but ask.

“There’s no time to explain.  You will see him.  He will be a tall man dressed in black with skin deeper and darker than mine.  As soon as you see him, you must kill him.  He must not be given time to react,” Madame Dafeenah warned.

“What? Here? Surrounded by all these people?” Desmond said exactly what she thought. 

Madame Dafeenah shot him a
stern look.  “The tall man has the power to suppress.  We’re walking into a trap.  Crowd or no crowd, he must die.”

Arianna’s
attention strayed from her interaction with Desmond and Madame Dafeenah and the wave of people advancing to the icy fear that slammed against her chest suddenly.  Something wasn’t right.  She sensed another. 

Her blood froze, a dark aura manifesting like frost
and covering every inch of her skin.  She felt another preternatural being, as Madame Dafeenah had predicted, an evil one, the tall man, she was sure.  But the unending tide of carnival-goers made finding him difficult.

As
mobs of people meandered in every direction, Arianna’s eyes swept the area, reaching, stretching her senses as far as they could.  The promise of violence quivered in the atmosphere, brewing just below the surface of the concrete like water in a pot seconds before it boiled. 

Abruptly
, the presence of other supernatural beings jumped out at her, their foul and dark existence rising like the stench of trash.  And then she saw him.  A man with skin the color of nutmeg and black eyes as dark and hard as volcanic glass towered on the fringes of the pathway.  Arianna’s heart began to slam against her ribs as she fought her most basic of instincts and pretended not to be aware of him.  She felt as if a train were heading right for her.  Time felt as if it stood still.

“Do it, Sola,” Madame Dafeenah urged in a whisper.  “Do it now.”

And at the seer’s insistence, Arianna raised her hands and felt the heat of her energy build at her core then coil down her arms until her fingertips prickled with power. A jet of fire rushed from each hand, launching toward the tall, dark-skinned man before her with laser-point precision.  Heat and fire blasted against his chest.  He stumbled backward, but didn’t fall.  Arianna didn’t hesitate.  She unleashed a veritable torrent of fire on him, watching as flames engulfed him immediately and his eyes glazed with pain, all of it happening instantaneously, as if she and the tall man were the only two beings on the planet. But time had passed.  And she and the other supernatural beings around her were not the only people present at the carnival.  That point was punctuated when the night erupted with sound.  The first shrill shriek of an onlooker heralded the explosion of chaos all around her. 

Screams and cries for help ripped from those witnessing the tall man burning.  He staggered for several seconds swaying and wobbling until he fell to his knees, which generated a fresh wave of shouting.  But from his knees, he managed to raise both arms
out in front of him and aim them at her.  Arianna felt a pull at her powers, the sensation a webbing of agony that snared every nerve ending in her body.  A small groan escaped her, the feel of her powers draining excruciating.  Sweat stippled her brow and an image of the future flashed in her mind’s eye.  Humanity would fall without her.  She knew she must summon every drop of strength.  She raged against the sting and lifted arms that felt like lead, pointing them toward the kneeling man.  Fire raced from her fingers and plowed into his head. 

As soon as the flames struck him, the tug on her powers subsided, the pain lifted along with it.  The fire consumed him completely, burning so hot and so fast, he was reduced to ashes within seconds.

Frantic bystanders collided with one another as they fled the scene.  They darted in different directions, hollering and calling out all the way.  Only Arianna, Madame Dafeenah and Desmond remained where they stood. 

“We’ve got company,” Desmond said in a low growl.

“More?” Arianna whispered, her eyes roving as they studied her surroundings.  Instantly, glowing eyes stood out against the inky night sky.  Poised and ready to ambush, sinuous shapes slipped and stole like wraiths, their murderous gazes dancing with madness.  Then one by one, they stopped circling and attacked. 

Desmond sifted, jumping through time and space before deftly alighting in front of two monstrous creatures.  Then, wielding his daggers, he sliced both in a wide arc.  Rank, black liquid oozed where their throats were slit, but Arianna did not have time to celebrate. 
An object smashed against her back and felt like a sledgehammer, driving her to her knees and choking the air from her lungs. 

Collapsed to all fours,
stunned but not injured, anger sizzled from her veins.  She’d been struck unexpectedly.  Her head whipped from side to side and she spotted a metal trashcan.  And beside it were the two culprits responsible for hurling it through the air at her. 

Green skin the color of moss was mottled with pulsating boils that leaked stinking pus. 

“Nasty bastards,” Arianna hissed as she levitated the two and slammed them into each other.  The dull sound of their skulls colliding and bones crumpling on impact was a sickening sound, but a triumph, nevertheless. 

Only one demon remained.  Desmond, shielding Madame Dafeenah from a possible attack, looked to
Arianna then to the remaining fiend.  She waved him off, signaling that she felt confident she could handle the cloaked form close by. 

Flipping her wrists and focusing her energy at the
shadowy figure, Arianna froze him where he stood.  Slowly, she walked toward him, an aching familiarity about him drawing her near.  A biting sense of doom settled deep in her bones as she approached.  The cloaked man struggled against her will.  She felt the faint push as she slipped the hood from his head. 

She nearly gasped when she saw that puckered, charred skin
in a patchwork of pinks, browns, grays and reds framed sunken, slate-colored eyes.

“Kane,” she spat.  His
atrocious face was indelibly etched in her memory, in her nightmares. But that was all he’d been, until now.  Now, impossibly, he was standing before her. 

He laughed; the sound baleful and hideous, befitting what he was.  He was a monster
, a boogeyman in the flesh.  He had killed Lily, Luke and her mother.  And she had killed him.  The fact that he was in front of her made bile rise and burn up the back of her throat. 

“Isn’t this nice,” he said.  “We meet again.  It’s a reunion of sorts.”

Arianna’s lip snarled over her teeth, her expression as feral as she felt.  But she refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing her savage side, yet.  “Yes, it is,” she said in a measured tone.  “But who is hunting evil this time, Kane?”

Kane sneered, rearing his head like a baying animal as he howled.  “I am still hunting you, always hunting you,” he blathered.

“Yes, but it appears the sides we fight on have flipped, at least in your mind they’ve flipped.  I was never what you thought I was.”

Kane narrowed his eyes as what she said slowly settled in. 

“You are the dark one and I am the light,” she drove home her point.  “You somehow managed to escape hell to try to kill me, and you will fail again.”

“Darius will win.  The world will be his!” Kane shouted,
hate spewing from his ashen eyes like venom and carving his words as well. 

Wrath bubbled and frothed like molten lava, heating her body and straining against her skin. 

“Even if he does, you won’t be around to see it,” Arianna replied with calm she did not feel just before she grabbed him by the front of his coat and unleashed a blazing inferno.  Kane wailed in agony, his mangled face contorting torturously.  Ruined flesh was consumed by fire as the husk that housed his vile soul was engulfed in flames hot enough to burn all that was organic about him, but cool enough to leave his cloak intact, and not a ribbon of smoke in its wake. 

For a moment after his body was reduced to ash, she watched as a brown curl of winding vapor twitched and waited to be carried off to the next realm.  Its wait ended when a black
veil wavered in the air beside it, laden with iniquity.  She watched as it opened then sucked the ghostly thread inside, Kane’s soul unleashing a horrid screech before departing to begin its eternal suffering. 

She immediately turned from what she’d just seen and looked at Desmond and Madame Dafeenah.  Both stood, frozen and with their mouths agape.

“In all my years, I’ve never seen that happen,” Madame Dafeenah muttered. 

“Come on! There’s no time to stand around and chat.  We have to get out of here
now
!” Arianna cried. 

After stepping over Kane’s dark cloak, piled in a heap on the paved path, she gripped Desmond’s hand tightly in one hand and Madame Dafeenah’s in the other
, and then felt the carnival, the world around her, slip away like grains of sand in the wind. 

Chapter 13

Darius had been peering out the floor-to-ceiling window of his hotel room, gazing at lush grasses and fully bloomed trees absurdly nestled among skyscrapers and traffic-filled streets, when a profound sensation struck him.  Kane and Abdiel had been killed.  He’d felt their souls cross to the other side.  Cast to Gehenna for good and with no possibility for release, both spirits would endure unspeakable torment. 

But Darius cared little for either Kane or Abdiel’s soul
s.  In fact, their fates did not matter to him at all.  What did matter was that they’d failed. 

Balling both hands into ti
ght fists, Darius felt his temper storm as he glared down at the park once again.  Humans, picnicked and sunbathed, played Frisbee or strolled along the many paths woven throughout the concrete-locked oasis.  Hopeless fools happily ignorant of their destiny, they were mere sheep awaiting slaughter, and he the wolf waiting patiently to massacre them.  He dreamed of sifting there among them and venting a fraction of the frustration that had welled within him.