Diabolical (26 page)

As we descend into darkness, I can already feel the temperature rising, the air heavier with soot. I wish Nigel would put out that cigarette.

I think we should be shimmying through crevices. Crawling on our hands and knees. Doubling back because of dead ends. Then I bang my shin against a rock.

I center myself. Then I begin to glow softly.

“Is he an angel or a firefly?” Nigel says. “Who can tell?”

Still, it’s too easy. Lucifer has paved this path for us. Sent demons to clear our way with shovels and spells. He’s looking forward to our arrival.

We hike for what seems like days. It may be minutes, or years. Our supply of water and honey-nut granola bars is dwindling.

At least we have water. It was Nigel’s idea to wash out the milk bottles in the kitchenette, refill them, and secure them with belts that double as shoulder straps.

“What are we looking for?” Nigel asks. “How can we tell if we’re getting closer?”

Lightning illuminates the cavern. Skeletal remains litter the ground, hang from rock walls. Lost explorers, human sacrifices, or both.

“We’re getting closer,” I reply.

The damned in hell crave blood every bit as much the undead on earth.

“Has anyone done this before?” Nigel wants to know. “Brought someone back?”

Thinking, I narrow my eyes. In the past century, there was only aviator Amelia Earhart, back in 1937. It’s one thing to journey to hell. It’s another to somehow locate the soul you’re seeking and escape in one piece. “Not lately.”

Up far ahead, I see fire along both sides of the path. Lightning flashes again. The stream we’re following starts to boil.

WE FOLLOW THE BOILING STREAM
, our path lit by pools of fiery rock. I didn’t expect to see lava this high up. Or maybe we’ve descended more than I realize.

“Do you know your mother?” I ask when the mud rain stops.

“Not personally,” Nigel replies. “I tried to contact her by letter a couple of times. Her agent or personal assistant or whoever probably screens her mail.”

“She’s famous?” That hadn’t occurred to me. “Like rock-star famous or car-dealer-who-advertises-on-TV famous?”

“Like red carpet, two-time Oscar winner, five husbands, miscellaneous provocative tattoos, a fake British accent, and seven kids adopted from various countries (and raised by seven nannies) that double as fashion accessories.” He pauses. “I didn’t get either of my parents’ looks.”

Lucifer is all too capable of seducing a mortal, but it doesn’t sound like Nigel’s mother was an unwitting dupe. I’m guessing she gained her celebrity status, money, and lifestyle in part by birthing Nigel and handing him over to Willa’s family.

It’s not the kid’s fault. You can’t pick your parents.

A demon scampers by. It’s apelike in its gait. It’s single-minded in its quest to reach the mortal world, to contaminate it. It’s about three feet tall with a lolling forked tongue, a tail, and hooked horns that bridge from its half-desiccated nose.

“We should stop that thing,” I say.

Nigel scoops up a mostly round stone and beams it at the demon. He hits it squarely on the back of the head. It drops, defeated.

“Good arm,” I say.

Gas — sulfur dioxide — stings ours eyes and burns our nostrils. Our water supply is exhausted. We’re thirsty. “Save your voice,” I say. “Save your strength.”

Nigel talks anyway. He tells me about how his dream was to try out for his high-school baseball team. He finally got Willa’s parents to agree — or so he thought — over the holidays.

Given his parentage, it’s no wonder he’s so erratic. But Nigel keeps going. He’s determined to make this journey for reasons probably even he doesn’t understand.

Over the next ridge, we come upon the skyline of Lucifer’s vast kingdom, the City of Punishment. It resembles a shadowy version of the classic film depiction of Oz’s Emerald City. Subtract the glittering green. Ixnay the yellow brick road. Heavy on the flying monkeys. Or, rather, flying monsters.

“HUAN,” I BEGIN
in a casual voice, “do you know where I might find my friend, the guardian angel Joshua?”

He fiddles with the microphone on his stand. “Now, Miranda, ascended souls are encouraged to make peace with the lives they’ve left behind, not —”

“Not associate with guardians,” I say. “But you don’t understand —”

“Don’t I?” He scratches his chin. “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but Joshua is currently the subject of a disciplinary meeting.”

“Can you get a message to him?” I plead.

“Miranda,” he says. “I know you mean well. But it’s your messages — and what Joshua did with them — that’s gotten him into trouble in the first place. It’s time to accept the limits of death. Here in the Penultimate, down on earth, you’re only making things worse.”

As I shuffle toward my residential tower, a female voice calls, “Miranda!”

It’s the guardian Idelle, coming up beside me on the promenade. “Have you caught sight of Zachary on your monitor-com?” she asks. “Rumor has it that he fell.”

It’s too terrible to imagine. If my angel has fallen, I’ve lost him forever.

FLOWING WATER COMES
from somewhere. Goes somewhere.

Our theory? Downstream is the way to hell. Upstream is the way out.

I take point. Evie and Bridget back me to either side, each holding a mop. Willa, carrying Vesper’s rolled sheet, behind us. Quince at the rear with the flashlight, matches, and hair spray.

After a dozen steps, I catch the scent of blood. “Quince?”

“I smell it, too.”

Evie keeps her nose to herself.

“I’ll be back.” Nobody objects to my military tone. It’s nothing to leap on top of the closest supply shelf. Nothing to leap to the next. The one after that.

So long as I don’t land on my bad leg. Or use any other muscles.

“Be careful,” Evie calls. “We’ll grab candles.”

Good idea. I’m not sure how much power is left in the flashlight battery.

Beneath me are bottles of herbs. Dried flowers. Crustacean powder.

I find Mr. Bilovski’s and Vesper’s raw, leaking remains on the floor between the twelfth and thirteenth shelves. Their heads have been chewed off. Their noses and cheeks gnawed to meat. Only one of Vesper’s gooey arms remains.

I pivot. I pour on Wolf speed. Ignore the pain. A moment later, I land beside Bridget. “Mr. Bilovski’s dead,” I say. They don’t need to hear the rest.

Evie points. “The stream is that way.”

We pause to stuff our pockets with river rocks. We can always throw them.

THE CITY OF PUNISHMENT
suffers from sprawl. Upon reaching the border, we’re greeted by bellows and shrieks of the damned.

“They’re descended souls,” I say. “They can’t hurt us. They’ve been expelled from the mortal plane. Ditto when it comes to the essences.”

Nigel coughs. “Which are?”

“Formerly undead beings — mostly vamps — whose souls had withered away completely before they were destroyed. The essence is the will, the personality, the whatever-it-was that persisted to animate them after their mortal deaths.”

Eventually, the relatively smooth rock path turns into a road paved with screaming faces. Eyes blinking, crying; mouths gaping, jabbering nonsense and threats. It’s as if the heads have been partially embedded, faceup, in the lava stone.

Nigel hesitates. We both do.

We have no choice but to take another step. Then another. Moving on, crushing cartilage that will heal only to be crushed again.

“If they can’t hurt us,” Nigel begins again, grimacing, “why can we hurt them?”

“Because that’s what hell is all about,” I reply. “Them hurting.”

It’s the vicious genius of Lucifer’s kingdom. Though no longer corporeal, the damned can feel. Like their ascended brethren up in the Penultimate, these souls have a pseudophysical presence. To each side of the road, more of the damned — filthy, bare skinned, on chafed knees and shredded palms — strain to grasp our ankles.

Beyond them, cannibals tear off flesh by the mouthful. Torture wheels shatter limbs and joints, crush shoulders and hips. Screws twist into skulls.

As whirligigs spin, the condemned wail and spew vomit.

Metal claws rip away breasts. Rake tissue from within bodily orifices.

What they wouldn’t give for nothingness, an abyss.

I can’t help scanning for Danny Bianchi’s face, Mitch’s, Vesper’s. It’s no use. Hell is vast. They could be anywhere. I won’t fail Lucy, too. I pick up my pace. “Hurry.”

Nigel, who’s been chain-smoking, replies, “I’m barely keeping up
now.
”

Faintly at first, music rises. It wafts through the foul air.

After a moment, I recognize “Only You (And You Alone)” by the Platters. It’s one of the love songs I crooned to Miranda on our one date, as we swayed cheek to cheek on the dance floor at Chicago’s Edison Hotel. When Elvis’s “Love Me Tender” follows, it’s clear the adversary is trying to poison the memory.

“Can anything hurt us here?” Nigel asks.

“Demons. Fallen angels. True and evil immortals.”

I recall Kieren’s pointing out that my pregame pep talks need work, but there’s nothing I can say to lighten what awaits.

Our destination is the heart of Punishment, the headquarters of Lucifer himself.

WHEN I RETURN TO MY SUITE,
Harrison is swinging on my hammock and playing with Mr. Nesbit. “I never did care for these things back on earth, but he’s a lovely fellow. Good company. Perhaps I should adopt a pet. How about a parrot, a red one with blue and yellow wings? Like with pirates — the kind who floss.”