Page 35 of Hellbound

“Yeah,” Tori said with a note of awe in her voice. “I thought of you before I hit my substate, and there you were, like a little angry storm cloud. And here you are, so … pale.”

Meanwhile, Tori was very luminous, her edges a little blurred, and her facial features nowhere near as crisp as they were on Earth; her eyes especially, which were now pools of molten gold with faint shadows where her pupils ought to be. But everything was in its proper place. Face, limbs, curls, and the vague outline of clothing.

Marian’s phantom heart thumped in her chest. “Why are you gold?”

She’d heard of travelers manifesting in all sorts of colors. Red and purple seemed common. Gold, less so.

“No clue. It’s one of the bazillion things I didn’t have on my Hell bingo card.”

Marian huffed and walked on, a clod of parched gray dirt crumbling underfoot. “What did you expect? Lakes of fire?”

Tori snorted. “I hoped it didn’t exist at all, but I’m good with how not on-fire it is. Pastor Corey said everyone would be naked and crying, but there’s no one here but you, and you’re wearing pants. Shows what he knows.”

Questions popped into Marian’s head so quickly and spilled out before she could stamp out her curiosity. “You’re a Christian?”

“Baptist. Past tense.”

Marian imagined the vision of Hell she was raised on looked a lot like Tori’s. Fire, brimstone, darkness, and pain—eternal damnation doled out for her choices. Like who she took to bed.

There is a loving god who made you in his image. But step out of line, and he’ll let you burn.

Marian took a step down the road. “How often do you come here, anyway?”

Tori tilted her head back, her pained expression clear even through her muddled golden visage. “Often enough to know not to stay in one place for long.” She pointed at the Tower looming in the distance. “I’m guessing what you’re after is in there, too?”

“Yup.”

Tori jogged ahead in a streak of weak amber light and waved Marian along. “Then let’s get a move on.”

“You ever wonder where everyone is?” Tori asked as they ascended the wide steps to the Tower. “I had a list of people I expected to find, but you’re officially the only other person I’ve seen—and we planned it that way.”

Marian grimaced at the question. She and Greg worked together, mostly in silence, only speaking when absolutely necessary. She preferred it. Tori didn’t appear to share her preference. Marian shrugged. “I used to.”

Then I got tired of asking questions that have no answers.

She’d scoured the internet, sent countless emails. Demons were no help, and the only people willing to talk to her wanted money she didn’t have in exchange for information that would change nothing.

Marian had wasted a lot of time wondering where the damned were. There were blogs espousing so many certainties about what happened to divers and travelers alike. They all promised horrific outcomes, yes, but when it came to the fate of the damned, Marian only found baseless conjecture. If she had to guess, then she’d say that the Remnant was what happened to them.

Tori hesitated in front of the giant slab of stone Marian had climbed over. The traveler skirted it, taking care not to fall into the chest-high cluster of pointed shards sticking up out of the steps. It appeared that a spire had broken and crashed into the steps at some point, but the steps didn’t crumble on contact—they warped into new, dramatic shapes.

As mutable as Hell was, some features remained the same. These steps were one of them, and there were enough clues in the rubble of the exterior that Marian had pieced together a picture for herself of what might have happened to the stone beneath their feet. She just couldn’t begin to explain why.

“Are you Christian?” Tori asked after a while.

“No.”

“Jewish?”

Words floated up from pages of a world religions textbook she’d studied in college. Sheol. Gehenna.

They hadn’t done a damn thing for her during her short career as a journalist, but now they were neat little nuggets of context.

“The Jewish concept of Hell is more nuanced.”

Tori perked. “So you’re Jewish?”

Marian’s patience snapped like a rubber band. “Why the fuck does it matter?”