Sparks (28 page)

She shook her head, dislodging a salamander perching on her head. It dropped back to her lap, huffed, and began to crawl up her arm. Never before did she have such doubt about her work as a soul-devourer. She liked to think that she was different from the salamanders, that she didn't mindlessly eat ghosts out of primitive hunger. That she was human, capable of choosing right from wrong.

But her mother's revelation had cast doubt on that. Her memory shied away from the burning shape in her mother's bedroom. Her father. Anya's mother had never spoken of him before. Anya had always assumed that he was simply a man, perhaps a deadbeat guy with a drinking problem who had no interest in her. Anya had grown emotional calluses over the idea long ago, though some blister deep in her soul still wondered if he ever wanted her, ever wanted to know her.

And now... she knew that he
did
want her. And that he was a monster.

What did that make her?

A newt sat on her knee and chirped adoringly at her. Its tail twitched and it blinked, giving a tiny purr. How could she blame these creatures for doing what came naturally to them? It was like being horrified by watching lions take down a gazelle--there was no good or evil, just instinct. But it offended her human constructs of right and wrong.

Anya petted the salamander with the tip of her finger and wondered, Was she really any different? Would she be able to force herself to kill innocents to avert a larger disaster?

She knew in her heart she would kill to protect the newts. Perhaps that was the only answer she needed for now. She'd sort out the humanity and the guilt later.

Charon had pulled the raft down a narrow tunnel and was tugging it to shore. It seemed as if the water weighed a great deal on him as it streamed down his coat. He dragged the raft up to the graveled shore and stumbled to the ground.

Anya leapt clumsily out of the turtle boat, the salamanders hopping out behind her like springs, squealing.

"Are you all right?"

Charon sat with his arms on his knees and head bowed, dripping
. "Yeah. Just gimme a minute to rest."
He lifted his head and stared up at the ceiling, breathing heavily.

His blond hair hung dripping over his burning blue eyes. Without the stiff punk spikes, he was actually an attractive man. Anya had the urge to brush Charon's sodden locks off his face.

Don't touch,
her instincts warned her.
Poison.

Whether her subconscious meant the water or Charon, Anya obeyed and knit her fingers behind her back. She supervised the remaining newts hopping to shore, taking a head count as they milled around on the bank.

The newts suddenly stopped, turned. A growling sound issued from the darkness beyond, so low and deep that it rattled pea gravel on the shoreline. Before Anya could react, Sparky lunged toward the sound, teeth bared.

"Don't,"
Charon gasped, but it was too late.

A massive black creature roared into view. Three dog-like heads snarled and salivated under lion-like manes. Its body glistened like an oil slick, viscous and glossy. It charged Sparky, lashing a long black tail behind it like a monitor lizard's. Unlike the ghosts, this creature looked pretty damn solid.

Anya hurled herself in front of Sparky, skidding on her hands and knees in the gravel. The three-headed creature reared and Anya covered her head with her hands, waiting to feel teeth against her armor.

"Kerberos."
Charon's voice sliced the air like the crack of a whip.

Anya opened one eye over her elbow. The creature sat on its haunches, all three heads turned toward the direction of Charon's voice. Anya took the opportunity to scramble to her feet and put up her fists.

"Sorry about that. This is Kerberos.
"

"Of course it is." Anya blinked at the pony-sized creature. With its jaws closed, the three heads looked much like Labrador retrievers. Anya noticed that the dog heads were wearing collars: a pink one with a dangling rhinestone tag that said
Princess
; a camouflage collar stenciled with the name
Grumpy
; a black leather collar that had the word
Bashful
lettered on it in silver charms. Princess cocked her head, hound dog ears lifted. Bashful was sniffing at Sparky, and Grumpy shoved his head under Charon's hand. Charon scrubbed Grumpy's ears and chin, baby-talking to him in something that sounded like Latin, but not quite. A twelve-foot length of broken chain rattled behind Grumpy's collar.

Anya retreated to Sparky and the newts, who were still on high alert and milling near the shoreline like trapped lemmings. Sparky snaked around her knees, extended his spade-shaped head to sniff at Bashful's wet nose. He was rewarded with a lick.

"Is he... your familiar?" Anya managed, in a small, scraped voice.

"We're not joined at the hip, like you and Sparky are. Kerberos is stuck guarding the gate to the Underworld, most of the time. And Kerberos is more of a 'them' than a 'he.'"
He paused to examine the broken end of the chain.

"Hence the collars?"

"Yeah. After a few thousand years, they sort of develop their own personalities."
The three-headed dog put its paws on Charon's shoulders. Tail wagging, it slobbered on him with three tongues.

Sparky and the newts looked askance up at Anya. Anya didn't know what to do but shrug.

Charon rubbed the hellhound's sides, but his fingers came away red with blood. When Anya looked more closely, she could see a long gash extending along the dog's ribs. It was hard to see the red against the hellhound's smooth black skin, but she could see it shining a bit darker in places.

Charon's eyes darkened to the color of storms.
"Who did this to you?
"

Kerberos whimpered and laid down in the gravel, heads snaking and hound-dog ears flopping.

Charon turned on his heel and stalked down the riverbank. Kerberos trotted behind him. Anya, Sparky, and the newts followed warily in his wake. She wondered how many other pets Charon might have in this place.

The ferryman stopped a hundred yards distant, at a hole in the earthen wall flanking the sluggish river. The hole was covered by an iron gate speckled with rust and peeling green paint. Plain and unornamented, it was exactly the kind of gate Anya expected to find in a sewer. The gaps in the gate were wide enough to allow water and rats to flow through, but little else. The gate was closed with a chain and an ordinary padlock covered with a scum of duckweed.

Except for the large tear ripping through the hinges on the left side of the gate. The left panel had been ripped away from the wall, exposing a gap big enough for a person to crawl through.

Charon stood before the gate, glowering at the hole. Kerberos slunk behind him, its dragon tail tucked between its legs.

"It's not your fault,"
he muttered, rubbing the nearest pair of black ears. He unhooked the broken chain from Grumpy's collar and wound it around his wrist.

"What happened?" Anya asked.

"I'm guessing that this is Hope's work, roughing up Kerberos and breaking the gate to the Underworld.
"

Anya blinked. "That's the gate to the Underworld?" It was so... ordinary. She'd expected the gate to hell to look like one of the elaborately mosaiced Ishtar gates in the museum. Or that Rodin sculpture that was more than twenty feet tall and depicted scenes from Dante's
Inferno
. This was just... a pathetic little gate.

Charon rubbed the bridge of his nose.
"It's one of 'em, anyway. It's not fancy, but it works."
He kicked at a loosely swinging piece.
"Or it
did."

Charon pulled the piece of bent gate away and stepped through. Kerberos moved to follow him.
"Kerberos,
stay."

The hellhound sat back on its haunches before the gate.

Charon looked through the bars at Anya and the salamanders. His eyes burned very blue in the darkness beyond, like foxfire.
"You coming?
"

"To hell? Yeah, I guess so."

Anya shuddered and ducked through the broken gate.

H
ELL WASN'T REALLY WHAT
A
NYA
had thought it would be.

When she stepped over to the other side, she felt a palpable difference in atmosphere. At first, she tried to get her ears to pop, but couldn't quite get the sense of thick darkness out of her helmet. It felt... gooey, as if the air possessed an extra viscosity as it slithered down her throat and into her lungs. It felt like the mud sticking to her feet, as if the Styx reached far into the tunnel with watery fingers.

"Ugh," she muttered. Her mouth tasted like she was chewing on aluminum foil.

"You get used to it after a while,"
Charon said. She couldn't see him, but his voice sounded close. She didn't want to ask how long "a while" was for him.

The salamanders crawled through the bars behind her, crowding behind her legs. Sparky leaned against her, his gill-fronds twitching. They cast a warm amber light that picked out the rough-hewn edges of a tunnel with a low ceiling, so low that it nearly scraped the top of Anya's helmet when she stood. Charon had his back to her, dark coat melting into the shadows. He gestured with his chin to the tunnel ahead.

"If I were Hope, I'd be looking for a place to hide Pandora's Jar.
"

"Hell is a good place."

Charon turned and gave her a wry smile. Anya forced herself not to take a step back. His eyes gleamed foxfire blue, an inhuman color in the half-dark.
"She's got to find a way to hide it in your physical world. But that thing acts like a beacon on the spiritual planes. She's got to put it someplace where she can easily defend it, where few people--or spirits--would be willing to come after it.
"

"Um..." Anya raised her hand. "Question... I can see why Hope wants to hide Pandora's Jar here... but if this is the classical Underworld... isn't there a Hades who will mind her encroaching on his territory?"

Charon pressed his mouth into a grim slash.
"The Underworld is a big place. And the gods of the Underworld have a lot of shit to deal with--you'd be amazed at the recordkeeping alone. The actuarial department takes up an area the size of Manhattan. Shit slips by them, every once in a while. And Hope is one of those things.
"

"You're telling me hell is a slow-moving bureaucracy?"

"Pretty much. You humans are up to about a hundred and fifty thousand deaths a day. That's a lot of administrative overhead that doesn't leave much time for chasing down megalomaniacs hauling around spirit jars.
"

"Do you get overtime?"

"No."
His mouth curled in a half-smile.
"But the higher-ups are not happy that Hope is trying to move in on their turf. They weren't happy with her doing it in the physical world, and if they knew that she'd moved into the Underworld--even this backwater province of it--they'd be furious.
"

Anya crossed her arms. "So... why can't we let somebody farther up the food chain deal with her?"

"By the time that happens, she may be strong enough to take over.
"

"What?"

"You heard me. Pandora's Jar is not a toy. It can hold thousands of spirits. She can stake out some substantial real estate in the spirit world, more than most avatars."
Charon smiled mirthlessly.
"There's a lot more at stake here than just you, me, the salamanders, and the museum ghosts.
"

"I don't--" Anya began, but her attention was arrested by movement at the end of the tunnel. Something flickered in the dark.

Sparky lowered himself to the ground and hissed, tail lashing. From the corner of her eye, she could see Charon unwinding the chain around his knuckles. He held it loosely in one hand, and its tail rattled to the ground.

Anya stood her ground, chin lifted. The newts, who had been bouncing like popcorn around her, were frozen, watching.

Her resolve faltered when she saw the ghost.

Leslie drifted into view in her bathrobe, her feet barely gliding along the floor of the tunnel. She wore a dazed expression, her hands stuffed into her pockets, bumping into walls as she drifted.

Anya's throat constricted. Leslie's ghost must have been one of the ones still trapped in the bottle Hope wore around her neck.

A newt jogged forward for a bite.

"No," she snarled at it, and it retreated behind her, chastened.

Anya moved forward. Charon grabbed her arm, but she shrugged it off.
"You can't trust a ghost down here... and they can hurt you.
"

"Leslie..." she said.

Leslie blinked at Anya, drifting closer. She tipped her head in confusion.

"Leslie, it's Anya. Do you remember me?"

The ghost sidled up to her, squinted at her face.

Sparky growled a warning.

Anya licked her lips. "Leslie, do you know where you are?"

Suddenly, Leslie's ghosts hands ripped out of her robe pockets. Anya glimpsed the sharp edges of metal in Leslie's fists before the metal flashed and skipped against her copper armor.