She tried to move, but at the first step, her knee hit a cold wall.
Greer raised her hands from her sides, and again, found that she couldn’t extend them. She backtracked carefully, her feet hitting a fourth wall.
She was trapped.
Her heart beat faster and faster. She’d never been very claustrophobic, but well, she hadn’t been trapped in such close quarters before.
Greer had spent twenty-two years at school. She had two doctorates and studied under the most renown masters alive in her time. She was not going to let fear take over. Just because she was dead didn’t mean that Alexius Helsing wouldn’t give her a failing grade for not using her deductive skills.
Except that’s exactly what being dead meant. No more Alexius. No more Levi. No more Mikar. She’d never again see any of the men who’d taken her under their wing, raised her, loved her, and shaped her into the semi-stable witch she was. They were immortal vampires, and powerful enough not to get themselves killed. Even if they did end up dying some time, in a thousand years, they wouldn’t end up here in this box.
She needed out.
The fact that she wasn’t claustrophobic was a great thing. If she had been, she would have concluded that she was in some form of purgatory; hells were custom made for the souls condemned to suffer. Her one irrational fear was snakes—live ones. She was fine dealing with carcasses for spells and potions. As she could feel no slithering rope of doom curving around her, she had to conclude this place wasn’t hell.
So, where could she be? To get out of here, it was essential to know what she was up against.
Greer pushed against the wall as hard as she could. It didn’t budge at all.
More carefully this time, Greer ran her hands along the surface caging her in. It was smooth and cold. She tapped against the surface, listening to the resonance. Definitely metal of some sort. She couldn’t use fire magic, unless she wanted to burn herself to death.
Wait…how did that work again? She was dead. What were the stakes if everything went horribly wrong now?
Her instincts warned her she didn’t want to find out.
There was no source of water she could sense. As for air…her eyes drifted upward. It was still dark, but less so. Instead of seeing nothing at all, she could distinguish a graying patch overhead. There was some air above—or at least something a little like it. A source of wind. She could feel it, almost taste it.
What she couldn’t do was manipulate it.
Greer carefully lifted her arms and found no obstruction. She was inside a cylinder open on top.
She bent her knees and jumped as high as she could, hands still over her head, flailing on every side to feel any potential exit.
No such luck.
She jumped again, palms extended. On every side, there was just more metal.
What now?
Earth magic was her weakest affinity, but she reached out nonetheless.
Nothing. Not even a small hum, the barest hint. Greer suddenly felt sick and faint, realizing just what that meant. There was no earth at all anywhere near her.
She was in deep space.
3
AT ANY PRICE
Most humans were completely and absolutely wrong about the afterlife.
Some believed there was nothing, others thought souls were bond for heaven or hell, and then there was the myth of reincarnation, of course.
From what Eirikr knew, all of that was accurate.
“Nothing” was another word for the Asphodel Meadows, or its equivalent in the other eternal realms—the place where the gods shoved the unremarkable souls that didn’t deserve any attention, good or bad. The majority of mortals ended up there. Reincarnation was a choice some were offered. Another chance to shoot for a better fate beyond the veil. But after death, souls were often weary, mistrusting, traumatized. They tended to settle for a great bit of nothing rather than bear the suffering of life again.
There were more billionaires than people who earned a place in heaven, Valhalla, Elysium, or whatever idealistic realm they believed in. Those places were homes to the gods, and the gods seldom cared for mortal souls.
As for the hells—whichever they may be—there was certainly more room there. Tartarus was reserved for the worthiest—those who’d made a mark on the world. Lucifer’s hell was the largest, built off-world, in order to accommodate as many souls as possible without perturbing him. Most sinful souls ended up on the lower circles of his hell; Greed or Sloth.
Eirikr never travelled off-world. During his life, before his imprisonment, he’d lived in times when no one, mortal or otherwise, failed to believe in one form of afterlife or the other, but he hadn’t concerned himself with what would come after his demise. His mind had been set on the living—protecting the innocent, hunting the rest.
Most of his knowledge came from extending his spirit as far as it would go to keep himself sane during his imprisonment. His mind had carefully listened to anything and everything around him, from the sound of the wind to the cries of the ravens. Within years, he could hear faint echoes of the words spoken on the hill or in the village, then progressively, as far as the wolvswoods. It was centuries before he realized that he heard more than spoken words; he’d taken to mind reading.
The inhabitants of Night Hill received guests from all corners of the world, and some, from much farther than that. Gods and monsters, demons and saints. Eirikr’s knowledge grew with each visit as he scaled the more interesting minds, desperate for some sort of entertainment, for something to catch his interest, anchoring him to the world. It worked, for a time. Then he faded all the same.
Eirikr leaned back against the dying oak, watching his handiwork. He stood in front of what had once been a handsome keep, now in ruins. And on fire.
The dry grass soaked in gasoline had taken the flame quite nicely. Carried by the wind, it was likely to burn a fair bit of the highlands. If someone had looked from an airplane, they could have seen that the flame formed a symbol: a mile-long pentagram, adorned by a mark at each tip. A cross to show different paths. Three moons; the mother, maiden, and crone. The arrow of the warrior. An eye for knowledge, and last, a spiral for rebirth.
Eirikr was no witch, though magic had walked hand in hand with him, coating his spirit since the day he’d woken cursed by Ariadne. He knew just how dangerous the forces he called to could be.
He simply didn’t care.
His incantation was meant to bring before him whomever had the most intimate knowledge in all the symbols he’d drawn; all of them together. Knowledge was power, and whoever came to his summon would have a lot of it.
Eirikr expected a god. Anyone called would be stuck inside his pentagram until he released them, which provided some safety, but making an enemy of a god was never a good idea. If all went well, it would be someone stuck in another world, incapable of crossing to Earth without a summons. And if not…well, he’d cross that bridge when it came to it.
He never used to be so impulsive but planning his entire life hadn’t brought him anything but grief. He’d learned the hard way that the moment one pawn stepped out of line, he could lose everything. Now he did what needed to be done without calculating the risks. He didn’t have the luxury of caution.
The ice witch might have frozen Greer’s body, but there was only a limited amount of time a soul could wander before being claimed by one of the realms. Snatching her back while she was on her way was his best course of action. Although, he’d storm the halls of Hades if that was what it took.