“That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said since you’ve been here.”
I climb onto the wide concrete railing and tightrope-walk down to where Medea is waiting.
“You’ve got the home-field advantage here, but I bet you can’t throw hoodoo like that back on earth.”
“We’re not on earth, and whatever power you have in this place, I will always have more. Now jump.”
“I’m going to look you up when I get back to L.A.”
“You’re not the first person to say something like that.”
“Yeah, but I’m the first one who means it.”
She gestures impatiently toward the river.
“Go.”
I glance down at the bloody waves and turn back to her.
“I don’t have time for one last smoke, do I?”
“Jump or I’ll throw you.”
I put my arms out and take a breath.
“As a great man once said, ‘I should never have switched from scotch to martinis.’ ”
I lean back and let myself go over the edge, tumbling through the air and slamming into the red river.
I hit flat on my back. It feels just as good as falling fifty feet into blood sounds. I hold my breath and try not to breathe in anything.
I sink and keep sinking, like the gravity in the river isn’t the same as the gravity outside. I’m pulled down into soft mud at the bottom. At least I hope it’s mud. Another gladiator once swore to me that he’d sailed to Pandemonium on a river of shit. I hope there wasn’t any backwash down here.
I’m instantly engulfed in the muck. My lungs want to crawl up my throat and hitch a ride back to Hollywood. The angel in my head chants a serenity prayer. If I could punch my own brain, I would. The angel stops long enough to remind me that everything has a bottom, even Hell.
I’m being squeezed down through sediment that gets harder every inch I go. The sucking soon turns into pushing, like a hydraulic press is pounding me down into the riverbed. This must be what pasta feels like coming out of a spaghetti extruder.
Then I’m fucking falling again. But only a few feet this time. I slide through a tight fleshy opening in the roof and down a steep incline, like a garbage chute. Nice touch.
I slip down another level and slam into the ground. At least I’m not moving anymore. I lie on the floor and breathe. My heart is pounding. I know I’m surrounded by souls, but they’re not paying any attention to me. They’re used to hard-luck cases sliding down the poop shoot.
The angel is awestruck by where we are and pissed about being stuck inside me. It never really believed I’d take us this far. The absolute end of the line.
Welcome to Tartarus.
I FELL THROUGH what felt like a mile of blood, but when I get to my feet, there isn’t a drop on me and my clothes are dry.
It’s cold here and dim, like light that can’t decide what it wants to be. Dark. Light. Or some strange wavelength that’s simultaneously the opposite of each.
The walls and floors are dull gray metal. There are gleaming conveyor chains overhead. Souls hang from hooks by their ankles. They’re being taken away, but I can’t see where from here. If we were on earth, I’d swear that I’m in a busy industrial meat locker.
The place is packed shoiv>s packeulder to shoulder with double-dead Hellions, human souls, and Lurker spirits. I can even see Kissi scattered around in the mob. It’s like a strange exodus, frozen just before it got started.
Aside from the overhead conveyor and the distant hiss and bang of machines, the place is almost silent, like the tens of thousands of dead around me and the thousands in the adjoining lockers have sunk so low in their misery that they can’t even acknowledge each other.
I didn’t think seeing Tartarus would get under my skin the way it is. I always imagined it would be Hell cranked up to eleven. Torture, chaos, and cruelty on a planetary scale. Mountains of flensed flesh. Mad bone seas. But this is worse. Tartarus is a dim, crushing despair. Heaven might not have been where you were headed, but now even Hell is a long-gone distant memory. Dante got it wrong when he put the “Abandon All Hope” sign at the entrance to Hell. This is where all hope dies, even for monsters.
I’ve only been here for a few minutes and the place is starting to bring me down like the permanent residents. I think about Candy, but it’s already hard to remember her face. I can make out the ghost of her body, but not her voice or how she felt. When I try to remember our room at the hotel, it feels as dismal and dead as this place. What am I doing getting close to her? Even assuming I get out of here, do I want to drag her into this life? Look what happened to Alice. Look where I am now. I’ve been here ten minutes and I already miss Hell.
Candy is a big girl and can make her own choices, but what if she chooses wrong? Will I be doing this again in a year when someone murders her and steals her soul?
The angel in my head isn’t handling any of this well. Tough shit. I didn’t exactly enjoy the ride when it took over while I was sick with zombie hoodoo. I suffered through its choirboy routine so now it can limp along while I figure a way out of here.
What looks like mist in the distance shifts and parts. It’s steam coming off an enormous old-fashioned open- face furnace beneath a gigantic boiler with transit pipes on top. Like a scene out of Metropolis, blank-faced but efficient workers take souls off the conveyor chains and toss them into the fire. The ones who aren’t frying the
