To Hell and Back (Eternally Blooded) (4 page)

Part 2

HELL

“Abandon all hope you who enter here”

Dante’s Inferno

CHAPTER SIX

I
t was a moonless night; the cloud cover was too thick for even the brightest stars to shine through. The air was warm but Valerie couldn’t help but shiver in spite of the layers of clothing she was wearing. Linda had warned her to dress in layers, for the circles of Hell did not have the same weather patterns, and Hell was not all fire and brimstone. Valerie found herself wishing that she had paid more attention to Dante in school. Truth be told, most of what she learned, she learned from crib notes.

James was securing a satchel of gold coins to his belt. Valerie silently chuckled at the sight of him. He looked like he belonged in an Indiana Jones movie.

“Are you ready?” James asked in a whisper.

“Ready as I will ever be.” Valerie responded, trying to sound up beat.
She wasn’t sure how anybody could actually be ready for a visit to Hell.

James waved his hand
and a door appeared. Valerie gasped. It was a steel door, with wide hinges and a metal plate riveted in the center. There were words on the plate. She took a step forward to be able to read them better in the dark.

Abandon All Hope You Who Enter Here

“Huh, so it actually says that.” She said. It was one of the few phrases Valerie actually remembered from Dante’s Inferno.

“Of course, Dante tried to stick to the facts, but things do change over time in Hell.”

James reached out and knocked on the door with three solid, sharp blows. The door creaked open. Valerie tried to glimpse what was inside but all she could see was a gray haze. James grabbed her hand in a tight, almost painful grip. His nerves were making her go through the roof.

“Let’s go, the door won’t stay open forever.” James said leading her forward.

As they stepped over the threshold Valerie felt the air change. It was heavy, almost suffocating, and damp. She looked around in awe and fear. Everything was gray. It took her a few minutes to notice shapes in the haze dotting the barren landscape sporadically. She couldn’t quite make out what they were, but they seemed to be almost the same gray as their surroundings.

“This is the vestibule.” James told her, startling her in the eerie silence.

“Are there people here?” Valerie asked.

“Yes come, I will show you.” Still holding her hand James walked her deeper into the gray abyss. As they walked silently further in Valerie noticed the shapes were the people. They were each sitting in a puddle of dingy water, picking at their skin. They were all naked. Sores from the constant picking littered their dirty bodies. None of them spoke, none of them blinked. Valerie let go of James’s hand and crouched down in front of a plump man who was intently focused on his toes. They were bloody, and it must have been painful, but he just kept picking.

“Sir? Sir, doesn’t that hurt?” Valerie tried to get him to stop. He didn’t even look at her, gave no indicator that he even saw her there.

“Mister please stop doing that. It is going to get infected, then you are really going to be in trouble.” Valerie pleaded with him. Still he made no response.

James chuckled, but there was no humor in it. “Valerie he is already in trouble. This is Hell after all. He doesn’t know you are here; he can’t see or hear you. These are the people that were ignorant in life; they paid no attention to others, ignored other people’s needs and now they are here.”

Valerie stood up and stared at him. Tears were welling up in her eyes. “They were ignorant? They came to Hell because they were ignorant?”

“Try not to let it get to you. If this circle troubles you I hate to think how the deeper ones will affect you.”

“I just don’t understand. I thought you had to do something wrong to end up here.”

“Valerie listen, let’s say you walked down the same street every day, and every day the same homeless man was there. Would you give him some spare change if you had a pocketful?”

“Of course I would!”

“These people wouldn’t have, not only would they have not given him change, they wouldn’t have even noticed he was there. Now they are condemned to a realm of complete ignorance.” James spoke to her in a soothing voice.

“I guess I understand, it’s just so pitifully sad.”

James went to her and wrapped her in a warm embrace. Valerie was thankful for his steady and strong arms around her. She needed to feel his love in this desolate place.

“We must get moving.” He whispered, kissing the top of her head. “Are you ready?”

“Yes, let’s go. I don’t want to see this anymore. I just want to get this over with.”

They walked on in silence for a while, Valerie tried hard not to looks at the faces of the condemned. It was all too depressing. She wanted to save them, to wake them up, to do something. It was killing her having to just walk by them and leave them in their puddles.

“James, tell me something happy.” She whispered.

“Something happy? Well that’s an easy one. I love you with all my being and I know that once we get this behind us we will have an infinite number of blissful days ahead of us.”

“What will we do with all that time on our hands?” Valerie asked coyly.

“I am sure we can think of something.” James smirked at her.

Valerie tried to drift off in her imagination with thoughts of love and lovemaking. They walked on.
Valerie couldn’t count how many condemned souls they passed, all sitting in dirty puddles. The scenery didn’t change. It felt like they were in a labyrinth destined to never find the way out. Her daydreams were broken by the sound of water rushing and a whip cracking.

“What is that?” she asked James, feeling frightened again.

“That would be the River Acheron and Charon would be the one cracking whip. Most people do not enter his boat willingly and most don’t have proper payment.”

“We have payment?”

James responded by jiggling the satchel with the coins in it. “Yes we have payment. Even without these I always have payment. Blood from immortals helps strengthen the river. If I didn’t have coins a few pints would do. Personally I don’t care to be weakened from blood loss down here.”

Valerie didn’t get a chance to ask him what he meant. They suddenly found themselves swept up in a crowd of people, naked people, rushing towards the sound of the river. Valerie was shoved violently from behind. She turned her head to see an old man, with flabby wrinkled skin and missing teeth grinning at her.

“Hey there missy, let me borrow some of those clothes would you?” He asked while reaching out to grab her shirt. His hand never made contact. James swept her behind him and grabbed the man by the throat. The man was lifted a few feet off the ground in the immortals vice like grip.

“Don’t touch her; keep your filthy hands to yourself!”

“Sure mister. I didn’t mean no harm. Cross my heart and hope to die.” The man said laughing at James. Valerie knew it was a mistake. She could feel the anger running through James. His muscles quivered beneath his clothes and a low growl escaped his throat. The man was flung violently to the ground before James wrapped an arm around her waist and ushered her forward.

CHAPTER SEVEN

T
he boat landing was little more than rickety wooden docks, strung together with tattered brown rope. They swayed and groaned under the weight of all the damned souls who gathered on them. Valerie envisioned the entire contraption collapsing into the river below.

“James,” she whispered “What is the river made out of? That doesn’t look like water to me.”

“It is dirty water, made foul by the stains of peoples souls and blood mixed together.” James replied in a matter-of-fact tone.

Valerie realized that was the odor she could smell. Blood. Dirty, disgusting, hot blood. Judging by the steam rising from the river she figured it darn near close to boiling. There were hundreds of people, dead people she reminded herself, standing on the docks. She could hear the whip cracking somewhere in front of her. The hoard of people was moving slowly and for that she was thankful.

“Get on the boat!”

Crack!

“This aint no Disney Cruise princess, move along before you find yourself taking a swim in the river!”

Crack!

“Ah! Garfield, I have been waiting for you! Sodomy gets extra lashes and a seat in the bowels of the ship! Move it now!”

Crack! Crack! Crack!

Valerie could hear Charon urging the people forward, but she could not see him yet over the heads of those in front of her. James gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. He could feel her trembling.

“It is alright, Charon isn’t really all that bad. I promise.” He whispered.

Valerie knew she needed to calm down or she would never be able to board the ship. She also wanted to be strong for James. When she was little she used to sing to herself, calm melodies, until she was steady again. It was a habit that had followed her into adulthood.

“It feels like home to me, it feels like home to me…” she sang quietly, trying to lose herself in the lyrics.

James smiled and leaned in towards her. “It feels like I’m all the way back where I belong.” He finished the verse for her. The sound of his voice had an instant calming effect on Valerie. Emotion poured through her and into him.

“Come on, let’s get this over with.” She said, slipping her arm around his waist.

James began plunging forward, nudging people out of their way. When he caught sight of Charon he yelled. “Charon! How’s it going? You got room for two more?”

“James! Wow it’s been awhile! I assume by the candy on your arm that you are finally here for a good reason?”

Valerie looked up and saw the demon James was talking to. She almost started laughing. The whip in his hand may have been imposing but he was far from it. In fact if it wasn’t for the gray skin tone she would have assumed by his perfect features and body that he was an immortal like James. Charon had wavy blonde hair and baby blue eyes. On earth he would have made a great doctor, well television doctor. She could picture him as the new Mc. Steamy.

“Move out of the way wretches!” Charon bellowed, cracking the whip on the people in front of him. “Special guests get first dibs, move now!”

Crack!

Gently sweeping Valerie forward amidst the crowd James chuckled, “Hardly special guests, but yes, I am finally here for a good reason.”

Charon stopped cracking the whip long enough to extend a hand to James and greet him like a proper gentleman. Valerie was starting to think Hell was full of contradictions. When Charon extended his hand to her in turn she hesitated to reach hers out and greet him.

“Come now Valerie, I am not as bad as I seem. Everyone has a job to do in this world, mine just happens to be Hell.”

Valerie gasped as she reached her hand out slowly. “You know my name?”

“Of course, I know the names of all the souls that come through here and all the sins they are guilty of. You my dear, as of yet, are not destined for a one way ticket
into this realm.”

Valerie smiled slowly, realizing two things at once, demons were not all she thought they were and Charon’s skin was not cold and slimy as she thought it would be.

“Well that is certainly a relief!” She breathed feeling a weight lifted off her shoulders she had not even realized was burdening her.

Valerie watched as James pulled a few gold coins out of his satchel and handed them to Charon.

"Thank you ever so kindly, now get your butts moving on to the boat so I can get the rest of my charges on." Charon grumbled with a smile.

The boat was damp and slippery, presumably from the fog that slowly crawled over the river. James held onto Valerie tight to keep her from falling and to keep her from getting lost in the crowd of doomed souls.

As they made their way to the front open deck of the ship Valerie couldn't help but feel pity for those they passed. The expressions on some of the faces were so terribly sad and unbelievably confused that she longed to reach out and touch them. To give them some type of comfort. She didn't know what they had done in their lives to end up here, she didn't know what their future held now that they were resigned to their fate, all she knew was that she had never seen such desperation on any human face and probably never would again.

James gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. He remembered his first few trips here and how hard it was for him to just walk by some of these people and leave them to the demons of hell. James knew that the ferry man had tried to reassure Valerie, but he also knew not all the demons would be like that. It was true that for some it was a job, but for others their job
was a form of entertainment. They derived nothing but pure pleasure from their work.

Charon took his job seriously, and understood what he was doing, but also why he was doing it. Past conversation with him had taught James that he did not have any fun torturing the souls, but did take comfort and pride in his work and the fact that these souls were here for a reason. Without Charon true evil would quite possibly never make it to the circle of hell where it should be punished, it would be left to run amuck.

Valerie and James found a bench to sit on at the front of the boat. The dampness and fog were getting to Valerie and she gave an involuntary shiver. James wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close to keep her warm and give comfort. Kissing the top of her head he could feel his worry for her gnawing at him. He could only pray she would be strong enough to make it through this, not just physically but mentally. There have been stories of mortals making this trip before and while their bodies may have survived their minds had not. Valerie was his blood mate now and no matter what happened he was tied to her completely. James would do what he could to protect her, do what he
had
to do to protect her, and may the gods help anybody who got in his way.

"Remind me again what comes next." Valerie mumbled snuggling into James's chest, enjoying the strength that breathed from every pore in his body.

"Limbo babe. Limbo is not so bad, there are no demons in Limbo, and the souls are civil enough. I can only caution you to not get wrapped up in long conversation. It's best to not get to know anybody too much down here."

Valerie mumbled an inaudible response and closed her eyes. She wanted to take just a few moments to block out her surroundings and pretend it was just her and James. There'd been so much information to absorb in the last few days and so many shocking revelations about immortals, heaven and hell, and demons, but not all of it seemed entirely real. Some of it had not sunken in yet, it was there in her mind floating around, but it still seemed like a dream or a nightmare depending on which way she looked at it.

James continued to stroke her hair as the flow of the river relaxed her.

“James,” Valerie said sitting up suddenly, “How old are you?”

James chuckled, “Does it matter love?”

“Well no, I mean yes, Heck just tell me. I want to know.”

“Okay, I am 22-years-old.” James stated with a smirk on his face.

“22? Ugh, that makes me some kind of pedophile then. I am 26 and have never, never, even looked sideways at someone as young as you before.” Valerie grimaced.

Her response elicited a full rolling laugh from James. “Calm down love, I would be the pedophile as it were. You have been alive 26-years, and I have been on this earth a total of 324, I just stopped aging at 22. Plus until me you hadn’t really looked sideways at anyone, and before you start blushing let me tell you how honored I am to be the one you chose. Your innocence is refreshing.”

Valerie blushed anyway and playfully swatted James’s leg. “324? Uck! You’re so old!”

“Old but nimble my dear.” James growled in his sexy tone that made Valerie shiver with pleasure before brushing his lips against hers. Valerie felt the heat begin to spread inside her as she wound her arms around his neck, deepening the kiss.

“Okay you two lovebirds, break it up!” Charon startled them out of the embrace. “Almost time to disembark, figured you might want to be first off to avoid the rush.”

“Many thanks my friend.” James said pulling Valerie up with him.

“What have I said about calling me friend in front of the natives?” Charon grumbled before walking off to go torment some poor soul.