Execution Read online

  Jesus Christ.

  But for some reason, despite its intensity, the pain feels different to me somehow—disconnected. I pull my knees up to my chest and roll my back against the floor. Slowly, those muscles ease. I’m as sore now as I’ve ever been. I feel the tightness of my hamstrings just from raising my knees. My abdomen is on fire. There is a strange pain coming from my nipples as well. I remember they’d been bleeding from the long run we’d made.

  And my arms are similarly useless from the climb.

  Who’d have believed I could run so far? My body, apparently, is still in disbelief.

  “My father did not lie,” Aiden answers him.

  Metaphorical alarm bells go off in my head, because when Aiden talks about his father, he’s not talking about me.

  He’s talking about Xyn.

  Q had explained to me the delicate balance of confusion and untruths which causes Aiden to be good. Xyn had preached that the quickest end to a man’s damnation is to give up and give in to the evil. To resist, in Aiden’s view, is to suffer. To acquiesce to the forces of damnation is to achieve peace.

  While Aiden was alive, such a belief served to make him evil as he sought to hurry humanity toward death and inaction. Now, however, as a wight, the brainwashing has the opposite effect. Aiden wants people to suffer, so he wants them to fight, to resist Hell. It’s like one of those double negative puzzles from the old world. Aiden doesn’t, doesn’t want people to be well.

  If Durgan can unravel any single thread from that delicate web of lies the Archdevil used to turn my living son into a weapon of evil, my wight son might just become a weapon of evil. How’s that for fucking ironic.

  I assume Xyn would have slowly peeled away the illusions as Aiden continued his journey toward being a wight. Hell, considering Aiden was at least halfway there when I rescued him, the process had no doubt already begun. I’d have hated to watch that set of adolescent angst.

  And this is a hell of a time for Aiden to go evil. I mean, honestly, any time would be soul crushing, but right now, right fucking now, our very lives depend on Aiden being able to convince the Tree Lord that he’s a good wight.

  The worry, the adrenalin, the fear—they loosen my muscles a little.

  Carefully, I sit up.

  Aiden’s pacing bootsteps are dull thuds against the wood. There’s a fight still going on in some distant tree, but the shouts barely carry.

  “The infidels are not stupid,” Durgan says. “If it were the case that dying relieved suffering, they would be killing people.”

  Is that true? Would we?

  “They are stupid.” Aiden spits the words. “They know nothing.”

  That’s right, son, don’t fucking trust your elders. We don’t know shit.

  I can’t see Durgan from where I’m sitting, but I do see Cid. She’s not looking at me, but she’s extremely alert.

  She knows how much danger we’re in.

  But what can we do? Can I help Aiden out? Almost anything I say will be a transparent lie.

  “They are not fools,” Durgan says. “One of them killed Xyn.”

  “Xyn predicted his own death,” Aiden proclaims. “He said he would be reborn.”

  Xyn would say that shit. A man goes to Hell, hoping for a decent damnation, and the Archdevil he gets is a storefront apocalyptic prophet.

  Durgan’s laugh is low, hollow, and mocking. “He was to be reborn as your half-brother, coming out of your Mother. Tell me, is Myla able to give birth now?”

  I await Aiden’s answer, but one doesn’t come.

  Fuck.

  I think I might be able to stand. I try to loosen my screaming muscles by stretching out my legs and sitting forward, reaching for my toes. Those toes, hidden under Jessica’s well-made boots, are woefully far away.

  Durgan speaks again. “And they know of the other levels of Hell.”

  “They do not!” Aiden says. “They cannot. No one has ever come back from Sheol.”

  “But they have,” Durgan retorts. “The Infidel himself has returned from Sheol. And the Archdevil Tu El came from there. He has brought word from beyond the Erebus. Each death humans face brings them more pain. Each succeeding Hell is worse than the last. There may indeed be a point beyond our horizon of knowledge, of deaths beyond deaths, where a soul might be so tortured as to lose its identity, but that is the only way that one can say a person’s torture stops.”

  With my sore arm propped up against the side of the wooden wall, I come to my tender feet. I’m lightheaded, and the room spins, but I’m standing.

  “Xyn is Satan,” Aiden says. “He told us so.”

  “You were flesh, then, not stone!” Durgan’s voice rises. “He told you what you needed to hear. Were you then as you are now, he would certainly have told you this.”

  “My father does not lie!” Aiden’s high-pitched voice betrays his insecurity.

  Durgan is winning. That Sword of Damocles, it spins on its breaking thread, hovering just over us.

  I try walking. My calves are so sore that they won’t let me take a normal step. I have to keep my feet flat as I hobble toward the bars.

  Cid’s jaw is set. She points at me.

  I hear joyful shouts of distant treemen, celebrating some victory or another.

  “Did Xyn not say he would be reborn?” Durgan continues. “He certainly lied. He lied to fleshlings every day. Xyn learned of Hell from Tu El. Xyn was not a god. He told humans that to cow them. But Xyn died. And you know Archdevil souls do not travel to Sheol. He has been expunged. He has faced oblivion.”

  I need to save my son from this assault before he breaks. I take in a deep breath and prepare to lie. The lie comes easily to my mind because the infidels have taught me how this works, because at some time—perhaps in my struggle to reach Soulfall and save my son, or perhaps in the time we spent in the haven—a part of me had come to fear that my own beliefs were lies. That maybe there is no God. That there might never be, can never be, some final redemption. That there can never be some final battle at the end of days that will save me from my forever night. It will only get darker, and darker and darker.

  Tears form in my eyes as I prepare to deceive my only son.

  “Aiden,” I begin, “did Xyn ever say where he would be reborn?”

  I meet Durgan’s black gaze as I hobble along the wall, getting as close to the pair as my cell will allow and gripping the cold iron bars for support. Bells tinkle lightly for a second in the distance.

  “He did not,” Aiden’s high voice responds.

  “And devils do not go to Sheol,” I say, “but the seed of Xyn was in your mother’s belly?”

  Durgan’s black eyes widen.

  That’s right, motherfucker, I know how to play this game. I was bred on it. They preached to me this reborn savior bullshit since I was a babe. I practically sucked it out of my mother’s tit. I have no problem vomiting it back up.

  “Cris’ aim in this conversation is clear,” Durgan counters.

  “Is there something you’re afraid I’m going to say, nonbeliever?” I strike back.

  He raises his chin.

  “Aiden, is that right?” I ask. “Was Myla pregnant when she died?”

  “She was,” Aiden spits. “When you killed her. When you ruined everything—”

  “Bullshit!” I shout back. “I’m just a man, I cannot kill a god . . . unless he wanted me to.”

  Durgan’s lips curl into a sneer.

  Aiden doesn’t answer.

  I press on. “Archdevils don’t go to Sheol, but what about half-devils? What about the soul in Myla’s belly?”

  “I don’t know,” Aiden says.

  “If Xyn is the Devil, then he wouldn’t just come in corporeal form to one Hell, Aiden. He’d come to them all. And he wouldn’t have let his soon-to-be-mother die, or die himself, for no reason.”

  Honestly, it shocks me that this shit is even believable. I mean, really? Christ went through the charade of a crucifixion just to have a conve
nient excuse to pardon some sins and go meet his daddy? Xyn got himself impregnated in my ex-girlfriend and then suffered an abortion-a-la-Cris in order to go to Sheol? Fuck, if he was Satan, he could just walk there. But these sorts of things are believable to a tainted mind.

  “You think he used you?” Aiden asks me.

  I choose my next words very carefully. “Son, I don’t know. I don’t know much of anything. I just know that I’m not a very good infidel. You’ve seen how much better Q and Cid are than me. Do you think I could have killed Xyn? On my own?”

  Of course I could. I planned my battlefield. I tricked him into bathing in his only weakness, and I got a little lucky. But if there’s one thing I can count on Aiden doing, it’s doubting my abilities.

  He gets that from his mother.

  “No,” Aiden says. “I don’t think you could. Durgan even said that Xyn had killed infidels before.”

  If my son buys this, will he be able to love me? Will he blame me for killing his mother and father if it was all predestined from the beginning?

  Perhaps not. But there were Christians who blamed the Jews for deicide while simultaneously maintaining Christ’s death was a suicidal sacrifice, so you never know.

  Fuck Damocles, you can call me Judas.

  “Were you lying?” I ask Durgan. “Was Xyn not powerful enough to face infidels?”

  The marble man knows better than to lie now. “Xyn did slay infidels. But one of them had intuited a way to pass Xyn’s immunities. Cris came armed with the knowledge that Xyn could be harmed with lightrock.”

  I’m struck by why infidels must be so damn annoying to demons. We are, in essence, a giant forum to share and keep knowledge. And we breed like fucking rabbits. Kill one of us, and Cid trains two more. One misstep, and the whole lot of us knows how to kill you.

  “So I just happen,” I say, “after years of searching, to find Xyn right after he impregnates Myla. And then, magically, I learn of his weakness and slay everyone at just the right time to send his soul to Sheol?”

  Hey, that sounded pretty good. If I hadn’t just made up the whole Xyn needs to go to Sheol shit a second ago, I might even have believed it myself.

  “If Xyn wanted to go to Sheol,” Durgan says, “he could have gone there without dying.”

  I snort. “Who are you to question the way Xyn does things? Like I said, I don’t know. Aiden, maybe Durgan’s right. Maybe I did kill Xyn all on my own. Maybe I did banish his soul to oblivion. But that baby, your half-brother, that might be Xyn. He might be in Sheol now, readying to return. But I didn’t know your father, son. Not like you knew him.”

  “The infidel lies to you,” Durgan’s voice is calm again. “He knows that if you learn the truth, you’ll turn against him. Are you really going to side with this monster who killed your father? Who killed your mother? This human who wants to change Hell into a paradise? To see all men happy? To see babies laughing and evil men punished?”

  I look over to Cid. She had pointed at me. She didn’t want a stalemate, she wanted a win.

  “Neither I nor Durgan know the truth,” I say, “at least not for certain. I was Xyn’s enemy, and Durgan was just his henchman. But you, you were something different. You were his son, and Myla was his lover. Only you two knew the truth. You are the ones he’d really confide in. You loved him, didn’t you? In your heart. Was he a liar? Search within yourself. Your heart knows the truth.”

  “You—” Durgan begins.

  “Quiet!” Aiden shouts, cutting him off. “I need to think.”

  “It’s—” Durgan tries again.

  “Shut up!” Aiden’s high voice is full of pain.

  I hear some shuffling. Maybe my son’s kneeling down. Maybe he’s closing his eyes. Maybe he’s looking deep into his soul. For a moment, I hear him whispering, but I cannot make out the words.

  Aiden is praying. He’s praying to the Devil for guidance. That’s on you, Myla. That shit ain’t on me.

  “Durgan,” Aiden shouts. “You’re a liar! You should have known. You served with my father, you heard what he said, but you’ve closed your eyes to the truth. I know the truth, Durgan. I can feel it.”

  I grin as Durgan turns to me, his black eyes narrowed in anger and his sneer is plastered on his marble face.

  That’s right, motherfucker. Try arguing with that shit. I limp slowly back to the outward-facing bars and look out to the vine-covered canopy.

  “You can feel things are true in your heart,” Durgan is saying, “but still be mistaken.”

  But the attempt is laughable. Xyn brainwashed my son. Durgan could talk himself hoarse, he could level untold amounts of logic and reason at the problem and it wouldn’t do shit. Aiden has his feelings, his intuition, his heart.

  I grin as I imagine Durgan banging his head into the brick wall that is my son’s faith.

  Sparrow chirps serenade me for half an hour before I realize what they mean.

  The devils are gone.

  The attack has stopped.

  The sword is falling.

  My body is a fucking wreck.

  I might not even be able to walk all the way to the Tree Lord when he calls for us. My back is locking up again, so I roll on it as I did before to get some relief. Then I set about stretching my muscles. It doesn’t do much, but it might be enough to keep them from turning into rocks.

  Hopefully when I explain to the Tree Lord what the hell happened, he’ll understand. Their fucked up laws are their own. I never consented to follow them. It’s not like I actually . . .

  . . . did anything . . .

  . . . wrong.

  Wait.

  Do I deserve this?

  The memory of Myla shouting at me, reaching out for me, begging for mercy, hits me—flooding into my mind with a tidal wave of self-hate.

  And those men I’d murdered.

  It’s not like I’ve done much better since then, either. I teamed up with a necromancer, failed to save my son, and then kept him alive as a wight with my lies.

  Holy fuck. Am I the bad guy?

  I’m sorry, Myla.

  Maybe I drove her to evil. Maybe she was okay on her own. Maybe it was my weaknesses which turned her into what she became.

  If they kill me, I won’t have a shot at redemption.

  But redemption is a Christian idea. It involves my sins being absolved. It’s not something that really exists. Sin isn’t real, or so the infidels teach. Only the evil acts themselves are. Nothing can undo them. There’s no taint in my soul that can be expunged. I’m just . . . I’m just me.

  But Cid had talked about redemption. She believed in it, or some form of it. A kind I’ve never really thought about before. What can make a bad man good? What can I do to transcend the absolutely horrific mess I’ve made of this?

  I close my eyes and let the nightmares take me.

  The sounds of heavy boots on the solid wooden steps wake me. They’re coming for us. Our guards are looking expectantly toward the stairs. I see the face of the treeman I know best, the one that escorted me here. Josh is his name. Is it his shift again already? How long was I out?

  He turns to me.

  I expect a smug expression, but his face is wrought with worry. His mouth has curled downward, his lips twitching slightly. His eyebrows are lowered. His eyes are filled with—is it sorrow? Guilt? I can’t tell.

  I get the feeling we’re not being taken to the Tree Lord. Something worse is happening. Our justice, will it be interrupted? Will we be dragged to the fall without having a chance to defend ourselves and then be tossed down into the mists we spent so long crawling out of?

  Two wicker-helmed guards, each armed with AK-47s and sporting white cloaks, walk in from the stairwell and take up positions flanking the entrance. A helmetless bearded man with a mane of bright red hair enters, a green cape spread out across his broad shoulders. He’s tall enough to need to duck under the overhang.

  “General Fabian,” Josh says, saluting.

  “I’ve come to take sto
ck of the prisoners.” Fabian’s voice is somehow both deep and nasal at the same time.

  Josh motions to our cages. “The infidels are yours, General.”

  “You may leave,” Fabian says.

  Oh fuck.

  Josh shakes his head. “You know our orders are—”

  Fabian brushes by him, looking across the cells. I seek to meet his eyes, but Fabian isn’t interested in me.

  “Jake, Simon, get the guards out,” he orders.

  Josh doesn’t put up a fight. He gives me one look, and I’m sure now that it’s a guilty one, before marching up the stairs. His friend is close on his heels.

  Fabian doesn’t bother with the wights, or me or Q or Neb. He stops, his back angled to me, looking into Cid’s cage, his red hair spilling in almost effeminate curls over his ridiculously broad cape-covered back.

  Cid was dumb enough to count me as a friend, and look what I’ve dragged her into. I remember how tender she was when she’d been sleeping with me. It was her love that brought me back from the edge of the stilling.

  Fabian turns his head to speak with his returning guards, and I see his face in profile. His jaw juts comically forward, the effect exaggerated by his bushy beard. His hook nose looks ludicrous in profile. I want to break that nose.

  “Come here,” Fabian’s nasal voice intones, and then he turns back to Cid. “Strip, or my men will shoot you down.”

  I feel the ghost fingers of Melvin crawling down my skin, and my insides tighten as I remember what Igraine had made him do to me.

  The pair of Fabian’s guards raise their assault rifles.

  I hobble over to the bars and grip them with my shaking hands.

  Q speaks up. “Don’t you think you ought to make sure the Tree Lord says we’re guilty before you start raping people?”

  Fabian kicks his dyitzu skin boots off. He doesn’t even acknowledge Q except to unzip his old world jeans and pull out his semi-erect dick.

  “Don’t do it, Cid.” My voice shakes as I speak.

  Cid doesn’t have to obey them. She’s wearing infidel armor. The bullets would bounce off her. But then they’d know. They could go get the stone tipped arrows they use on the Icanitzu, or they could shoot her in the head.