BURN IN HADES (46 page)

“You don’t have to do this,” he said. “You can just leave the underworld. You have the astrolabe. You don’t have to burn me. You wouldn’t. We’re friends. You’re an angel.”

“Fallen Angel,” she said. “Now lay down.”

Ropey dropped Cross, and he obeyed reluctantly. He laid face down on the rickety contraption. His legs and forehead rested on the edges of the table-like frame while his neck hovered over the triangular tips of the obsidian blade. One false move and he would drop. The blade could separate his head from his spirit in one neat slice.

“Well, now,” said the Raven. “This looks familiar.”

Chapter 24 - Veritatis Splendor

The Raven’s footsteps shuffled all around him
. He could only see her boots when they passed the corner of his sight as he lay face down, dangling inches above the razor-sharp blade.

“You know what you are, Raven? Just a dirty, rotten, filthy cunt like your mother Lilith!”

“Lilith wasn’t my mother.”

“You don’t even know who your mother is. But I do. She’s a whore. Any one of a thousand devils could be your father.”

“Watch how you speak of Magna Mater,” she said.

“There’s no way the Great Goddess could have ever birthed you. Even if it were possible, that’s probably why you’re here in the underworld. It’s the perfect cage for a wretched ebony bird like you.”

“I’m glad you mentioned that. See, it’s like you said. I’m an Angel. And what kind of Angel would I be if I let a scumbag like you go back out there into the world of the living? We’re here because we got ourselves here. None of us deserve to leave. Every spirit here deserves all the punishment that this place dishes out.”

“You say that like you’re not leaving.”

“I’m not.”

There wasn’t a hint of guile in her tone. He could tell she was dead serious. “Then why’d you make me dig it up?” he asked.

She grabbed her sack off the ground, ignoring him.

“Why’d you make me dig up the Toran if you’re not even going to walk through it? What sense does that make?”

She dropped beside him and brandished the hammer in his view. “So I can destroy it. First, I’m going to drop this astrolabe into the Inferno. And when I get back I expect you will have finally shut your big, stupid mouth.” She walked away out of his sight.

“Get back here! You can’t leave me like this.” The spears shook. He stilled himself and eyed the blade below. “The Toran is my destiny.”

A barbot squawked, and wings flapped. A gust blew dust into his face. The Raven was gone.

The more he struggled to stay upright, the more he lost his balance. His neck strained from hoisting himself up. All his weight was placed on his legs and neck and he was already fatigued from the digging. His muscles pleaded for rest, and the slightest move could bring him down on top of the blade.

Everyone lied to him because they all wanted the Toran for their own selfish reasons. He deserved to be a Nothing for trusting the wrong souls. He was already nothing anyway. He meant nothing to anyone. He destroyed all of his good relationships. He always ended up in the exact same situations. It wasn’t everyone else who was the problem, like he had thought.
He
was the problem.

Both in his life and his death, he had lied, cheated, stolen, and vanquished souls without a conscience, unapologetically. They were all deeds he thought he had to do for his own survival, but they got him nowhere and rewarded him with nothing but a blade at his neck every time. He was selfish. He cared about no one else but himself. Not even the poor draggles. They never did anything wrong to anybody. All they wanted to do was help him, and he set them up to burn so that he could get his stupid revenge.

Poor Gimlet had suffered the same fate because of him. He should have never tamed her. He should have accepted Mr. Garrett’s offer the very first time. Maybe then he would’ve still been alive, and none of the awful things that followed may never have happened. He was a bad soul and no doubt deserved more torment than he ever received. He deserved to burn.

His body shook and jerked, rejecting the tension of holding himself up. But more than that, he was tired of the mental battle. Kate was right. Surviving was just too exhausting.

“I’m sorry,” he called out to the Great Goddess. ”Hear me? I’m sorry for everything. You may have forgotten about me, Magna Mater, but don’t forget about them. Bless all the souls I ever hurt. If you’re going to have mercy on any soul, it should be them. I forgive Kate. I forgive Mr. Garrett. I forgive the men who killed Mama. I forgive them all. I just wanna go. I’m tired. Just let me go.”

Nothings crawled towards him in the form of serpents made entirely of faces. They waited around him patiently, silently. They were the only ones who would have him. He had shepherded the girl just like they had asked, and now it was finally time for him to give in to his fate. He had prolonged it long enough. He took a breath, relaxed his muscles, and dropped.

There was no pain, just a taste of bile as a bubble of grit rose up in his throat. The grains scraped his tongue as he belched chunky black blood. Second Death tasted worse than first death.

He felt as if he had been stuffed into a hole the size of a needle point. The light of the underworld shined at the mouth of this perfectly round hole above him, but as he kept sinking deeper, the light shrank, smaller and smaller until it was the size of a pebble and disappeared. And still he continued to tumble. Down, down, down into nothingness, not fast or slow, but at a consistent and smooth pace. Nothing seemed to be pushing or pulling him. Even if something was, he couldn’t feel it.

His spirit was numb all over. He felt nothing, neither hot nor cold, completely senseless, as if he never existed in the first place. He had an urge to wave his arms or kick his legs, but couldn’t move them or even see if he even had limbs anymore. His voice had gone from his throat. Not even a whisper would escape him when he tried to call out for help. Would he even hear himself if he could speak?

For all he knew, he could have been deaf. No wind passed by his ears. There was no sound at all. Nothing.

A vague drop in the pit of his nonexistent stomach was the only sign that he was going further and further downward, plummeting into the depths of the great unknown. There was a sense that his fall would never end. This pit was bottomless. He would never be at rest. The thought of spending all eternity in this state of existence terrified him. He was alone unlike he had ever been before and would always be alone.

The light returned above him as if it had always been there. It had never left him at all. He hadn’t moved an inch. The underworld was simply closed to him and now it had reopened. He fought desperately to go into it but had no way of moving himself upwards.

The underworld was teasing him. He gave up seeking the light, in order to not give the underworld the satisfaction of torturing him with the allure of returning to his afterlife.

He never thought he would ever love seeing the flaming skies again, but there it was in all its beauty trembling above him. Solid ground beneath him, thousands of heads surrounded him and an angel held his head in her lap. He reached for his neck. It was still attached to his spirit, and there was no wound on his throat that he could feel. It was as if he had never burned.

“What the hell happened?” he asked her. “I thought I was—”

“You were,” she said. “I let you burn.” She held up an empty calabash. “This was the last of the bushel. Thought I’d hold on to it. And it looks like it was meant for you all along.”

“What do you mean?”

“You gave me one of these thinking it was poison, but it’s just regular old fruit. Except when it comes in contact with the Nothing. Then things get a little strange. I wasn’t entirely sure about why I survived the Nothing in Yomi until I gave the calabash to Cottontail in the temple. She came back too. If you had waited—”

“Came back?” he said.

“From Nothing. Like you just did.”

He sat up. “She’s alive?”

“Still dead, but a lot less burned. She’s waiting back at the temple. Your bullet wound is gone too.”

Cross touched his forehead. The once soft spot was hard now. “So, you came back for me? I knew you weren’t bad, Raven.”

“But I am a better actor.”

“This was all an act? You didn’t mean that stuff earlier about us deserving to be here?”

“Oh, I meant that part.” She sipped from her flask.

The liquid smelled sweet, almost like calabash juice.

“But we’re all screwed up,” she continued. “Nobody’s perfect and never will be. If I can’t allow others the possibility to redeem themselves, then I don’t deserve redemption myself. Everyone deserves a second chance.”

“Why’d you let me burn though?” he asked. “If you knew how the calabash worked, you could have just told me.”

“Well, you know me. I’m not much of a talker,” she smiled. “But some things can’t be explained. You have to experience them. I needed to show you exactly what happened to me, but in a controlled way. And I didn’t want to burn you myself.”

“I’ve heard of long cons before,” said Cross, “but this is ridiculous. I’m getting tired of you putting my neck on the line.”

“You don’t have to worry about that anymore. But, you know what all this means? Second death, just like first death, isn’t so permanent after all. If we can get more calabashes from Bolon-Hunahpu we might be able to defeat the Nothing. Now I understand what must be done.” She stood him up.

“What are you gonna do?” he asked.

“It’s what you’re gonna do.” She slapped the jingling astrolabe into his palm and waved her hand dismissively. “You’re gonna leave.”

He glanced into the pit at the Toran and then back at the Raven. “I’m not leaving.”

“What do you mean, you’re not leaving? You came all this way. You have to.”

“I’m not going anywhere without Cottontail. I’m not leaving her or anyone else behind again.” He stepped away from her and headed in the direction of the temple. Her hand grabbed his arm.

“I don’t know what you saw or heard when we were in Yomi,” she said, “but the Nothing showed me things. It spoke to me. It told me that you had to go. It had to be you. You would bring about the Resurrection of the Dead.”

“Load of bosh,” he said. “Why are you even listening to that thing?”

“Because it told me something else.” She fell silent and turned her wings to him.

“Forget the Nothing,” he said. “Forget it all. You want to know what it told me? It told me to shepherd the girl. That I had to save you. But if Clem Balfour hadn’t shown up in that boat, I was going to burn you. Which I’m now very sorry for by the way.”

“Well, I tried to burn you first.” She faced him again. “And I apologize for my part.”

“Thanks,” said Cross. Her apology meant more to him that he thought it would. A sudden ease flowed through him a like cool breeze in the hottest realm of the underworld. “But don’t you see?” he said. “I didn’t listen to the Nothing, and we’re fine. You don’t have to follow its orders.”

“That’s the thing,” said the Raven. “I think you did exactly what it wanted you to do. If Clem Balfour hadn’t shown up, you would have burned me. But you didn’t. You shepherded me to Vingólf.”

“But it said that if I Shepherded the girl then I would burn and become a Nothing myself,” said Cross.

“And five minutes ago, that’s exactly what happened.”

“I still don’t get it,” said Cross. “A while ago you were talking about destroying the damn thing. Now you want to work for it? What the hell did the Nothing say to you?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I’m do it’s bidding now so I can destroy it later. We’re all just trying to survive. You know all about that. I’m just not sure if either of us ever had a choice.”

“There’s always a choice. Every decision I make is my own.” He slapped his chest.

She shook her head as if frustrated. “I don’t know why it’s so hard to believe. You’re always going on about how the Great Goddess is guiding you.”

“That’s just me talking,” he said. “I don’t know what the Hell she’s doing. I hope she’s paying attention. Sometimes it feels like she is, but I can never know for sure. But having faith doesn’t automatically mean you give up your own free will or your ability to think for yourself. My old friend Sinuhe used to say, ‘Experience will show you, a Master can only point the way’.”

The Raven stared him directly in the eye. “So, you don’t believe in destiny?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “I believe we’re all on a particular path at any given moment. And that destination changes with every choice we make.”

“Well, you tell me where this leads.” She gripped his shirt with one hand. “The Nothing told me personally that an adversary would become a true friend. And then I would have my final fall.”

“So we’re friends now?” Cross smiled. “I just wanna make sure because I never know with you. You’re hot. You’re cold. It can get a little confusing.”

She stared at him cold, blank and icy, just like when they had first met.

He grew serious to match her demeanor. “Well, my friend, I ain’t got no plans to take you down again,” he assured her. “You didn’t go through all the trouble of bringing me back from Nothing just to be afraid that I was going to burn you. And it’s not like Ropey would allow anyone else to get close enough to you. You just burned the toughest demon I ever knew. I don’t see any soul taking you out anytime soon.”