Echoes in Eternity (The Pella Series Book 1) (63 page)

My weakened focus is broken when
I hear the excited, deep booming voice again!

“You almost have her! Don’t let a drop of your fire
touch her! She must be without blemish. Just push the fang deeper through her chest, and into the stone. Her blood must spill and wash the Horns of Consecration, to sanctify and consecrate the stone. The gate will open soon!”

“She’s already stabbed
and cut! Do they not count for blemish?” asks the sizzling voice of Phlegethon.

“No, they don’t! They are ritualistic, almost sacrificial!” the deep voice replies
in elation.

A distant voice, yet familiar as my own name first drowns then clears all other sounds and my mental fog. The strength he lends me is enough to help me focus but not enough to move my arm to finalize my own death.

“Elissa! Please!” Alex’s voice is like cold spring water in a hot summer. “Please baby! Come back to me!”

“I… can’t! I’m dying…”
I manage to whisper.

“You promised!” he accuses.

“I will come back… Trust… me,” I stutter.

“How can I trust you? You wanted to die for the last twenty four hours! You fought with me,
Courcillion and Nieto to let you go! How can I trust you once your soul is severed?
Tell me how
?” he berates me.

“You don’t…” I pause waiting for the next heartbeat. Phlegethon has
entombed me halfway, still moving to cut all contact with Nieto.

“Come back! I’ll agree
to all our forged ties to be severed and to be reduced to become just one of your guards! You can go back to Duke Courcillion if you so desire! Just come back…” his voice cracks. “I beg you, Ellie. Come home.”

I hear another hitching breath.

“Elissa, please,” Another gentle male voice beseeches. “Shout at us, be mad at us, punish us, but don’t leave.” I hear a deep, annoyed male growl. Alex.

“I need…”

“What?” I hear two male voices in unison, hopeful.

“What do you need
, Ellie?” Alex asks, taking control.

“The last plunge through my heart…”

“What?” shouts both of them into my mind. Their angry, shocked, appalled, distraught emotions flood me in a torrent.

“
I beg of you, Alex! If you don’t, Phlegethon will sacrifice…” I say pausing to take another shallow breath, “me… I’m almost entombed in his fire.”

I hear the most agonizing
anguished cry I have ever heard anyone make in my living memory. It’s the cry of immeasurable loss, helplessness, torment and growing sense of revenge. It’s the cry of a man who just heard the death of his only love.

“Alex… listen,” I say, feebly trying to coax him out of his agony.
“I have unfinished work… here.” Even my mental voice comes in staccato. My heartbeats are as sporadic down to four beats a minute. Time stretches.

“And Maximillian… I remember you…
a little,” I murmur to the Duke. His hopeful imperceptible sigh is concealed, but I feel it. Alex’s sorrow over my declaration is evident, yet he slowly takes full control over his mind and remains silent, mastering his emotions as his mental state becomes taciturn. “But, I remember… I remember Alex as well. Not… the right time to discuss… or sort this. I only want
you
to stop my heart… Alex.” I hear Phlegethon’s nearly triumphant hiss.

“Almost victory,
Massssteer!” he sizzles.

Alex and Duke both hear
his hissing voice through our connection. Alex responds in a methodical, purposeful, resigned and determined voice.

“I will plunge the final push. Then, we will work on resurrecting you. The first dream you will see
…” he says concealing his hurt with a herculean effort, “the first dream you will see will be of the Duke of the last time you saw him. We will lose the voice of your mind until we can pull you back.” There’s a small pause to gather some determination, or courage?

“Just. Come. Back…” his words staccato, his voice cracks. “Will you remember what I said?” he asks
gently.

“My first dream will be of Maximillian. Of our last meeting.”
This time I hear his pained gasp.

“But, I want you to be the last dream…” I pause for a shallow intake of breath that will soon be cut out by Phlegethon, “the last memory of the very last breath of my body and my soul. Alex,” I whisper. The victorious voice of Azaziel echoes around as Phlegethon completely entombs me before Nieto can reach me.

“Now!” shouts Azaziel to his minion.

I could swear I heard all three of us say “I love you!” as
I feel Alex’s hands reach through our bond, first firmly grasping and then plunging the fang all the way through my heart and into the stone slab of the Horns of Consecration. With it, my last breath is expelled from my body and the last beating of my heart is thrummed. My body and soul are severed from one another. Momentarily I visualize a lifeless body, then my soul is pulled in and my life essence is still preserved within a single life giving bone in my body. I am dead for a time or forever if I can’t be resurrected.

All sound, sights, scents, and feeling
s depart from me. I feel completely light. A sense of peace washes over me. The pain ceases immediately. I don’t breathe. I don’t
need
to breathe. My life force is concentrated at the base of my spine where the mare nudged me. The cessation of my human senses is replaced with something much more powerful. I’m unable to move, but I feel a rush of sensory overload. I know that my blood is slowly oozing from my back, slowly spreading and covering the stone slab beneath my body, soaking it. Its cold surface is now warmed by freshly spilled blood. What happens next provides the shock neither my body nor my soul expects. The stone slab cracks loudly, shaking the ground beneath, then breaks into two, crumbling. The fiery shell Phlegethon encased me within dries and cracks like the dried tubes of lava. Its sizzling voice turns gravely and finally ceases. The force splitting the stone and extinguishing Hades’ fiery monster propels me into the air. For a moment, my honed senses show everything around me as if all is suspended in time. The fighting around me ceases instantly to get a glimpse of the spectacle my death creates. What I see is first awe then fury and rage. Yet they are unable to do anything, because I am no longer living or unblemished. My body feels light. I have sprouted ethereal wings with a crimson base where my blood had spread onto the stone slab.

My course is charted.
I’m sucked into the tunnel where Nieto can’t go. It seems the wings I borrowed know where they want to take me. I’m just along for the ride, seeing my reflection floating over a dark river. Someone looks up from a barge with passengers on board, but they go about their trip, unconcerned of seeing another dead soul flying instead of seeking passage from the barge master.

“Hades, snatcher of all things, shall
lay his hand upon you!” shriek the Furies in unison behind me.

“You will be robbed of your soul and life and be truly sent to the house of Hades. Then we will take and cast you into dusky Tartarus in its awful hopeless darkness… Neither your true mother nor your devoted father shall free you or bring you up again to the light! You will wander in the depths of Hades and not even
Alexander shall find you! When he is desperately wandering to find you, we shall set a trap for him to pick his flesh and rip his soul to shreds!”

The voices of the Furies ring melodically like the sirens’ call; but not promising good things to come, just
bombarding me with bad omens. They want me to stop and reply and I really want to. But Nieto warned me against it and my wings carry me as if on remote control. My flight takes me out of the very large tunnel where my only companions have been the voices of the furies. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. But I know that I’m reaching the end of the tunnel because I can sense the upcoming descent into a dimly lit pit, its light is like the last rays of the evening sun under a heavy cloud cover; clammy and suffocating. As soon as my wings carry me out of the tunnel wrapped inside the faint blue aura, a violent wind sucks me out jostling me to and fro like a rag doll. If I was alive, I’d be in excruciating pain possibly with every bone on my body broken. Somehow my body is like a feather floating in the breeze without harm; just cleaning the ruffles.

I
make a colossal effort to look at what’s below me. But it’s no easy feat since I’m being tossed and tumbled as my bearing is lost. Instead of trying to make sense of my circumstance, I finally leave it to my instincts. My wings don’t flap; rather they know how to utilize the storms swelling around me, beating me like hundreds of whips all at the same time, I surge and surge and surge reaching above the storm. Then suddenly my wings spread and lift, gliding me, and then I’m shot like a projectile toothpick with a mission.

“Who dares to try to enter Dité?” cries a discorded chorus of thundering voices.
Dité? According to Dante Alighieri, it’s the sixth through ninth circles of Hades. How far do I need to go? I want to say who I am and what I’m doing here, but no voice leaves my lips. My borrowed wings dutifully carry me. The demanding voices rise and echo.

“You are not living, yet you are not dead! What are you? Who are you?”

“She is dead!” shouts another voice.

The gate I didn’t know existed opens to permit me through it.

“This soul does not belong here! This is the realm for
Fallen Angels
!”

“Yet, there is one among you who is not
Fallen
. A prisoner,” I speak words I didn’t know I wanted to say.

“I am Iracata. I sense
that you do
not
belong here. Why are you here little soul?” he booms. His voice is befitting his name. He speaks with coiled wrath, ready to lash out.

“I opened the gate on my own. Passage is rightfully mine,” I try to sound brave.

Several voices laugh. “This is Hades. The scent of death is fresh on you. Your blood didn’t even dry on the ground where it spilled yet! What would you know of the
Fallen Angels
realm? The rules and laws you have been abiding by do not apply here. We do what we want!”

“
I disagree. Even Hades has rules, and laws. This is a place which produced no escapee since the shop opened. Surely, if there were no rules, someone would have managed to break out of it…” I say, sounding nonchalant. I know what I say isn’t quite true, because the
Fallen Angels
also roam the Earth. “But, if you don’t want me to whisper anything to the
Morning Star
…” I utter the words that are not my own.

“Name
dropping will not work here little girl! We report to Azaziel and he reports to Apollyon. And Apollyon has not stopped by here for over two hundred years. He’s a loooong way away from here,” mocks Iracata’s voice. He plucks me from the air without difficulty and is utterly annoyed. Yet, the second his hands come in contact with me, he drops me immediately. I land on the first solid surface since the last beat of my heart. Our contact creates a heat spreading to his arms, making him vociferate in agonizing pain.

“Fire of Hades doesn’t burn me! What? What kind of fire is this?” his voice is pained, akin to a scream.

“I am speaking to you!” he demands, holding his giant foot to crush me with it. Utilizing caution, he lowers his immense foot over me. The instant his foot contacts the tips of my wings, it’s seared and our instantaneous connection starts an internal combustion.

“You are a…” he starts
saying with knowing, awed, reverential eyes. But he doesn’t get to finish his words as the fire consumes his body shriveling it into a pile of ashes.

“What is she?”
other voices gasp. I can see the angel behind the voice. Fallen or not. He’s immensely beautiful. It’s no wonder why the human women fell in love with them.

“Morning Star’s spy…” a voice whispers
in response to his question.

“Shouldn’t she be captured and chained?”

“And get us burnt or worse punished by Apollyon? It will take a century for Iracata to regenerate!”

“Are you passing through?”
crackles another voice.

“Yes. I want to see the lone prisoner.”

“He is in solitary confinement! He might be just a tad bit delirious. Even angels need company every few hundred years.”

“How long has he been in
solitary?” I ask managing to sound with authority.

“Since he was imprisoned!” grins
a demon with exuberance.

“You can’t enter there. No one can. Not even the Morning Star!”
shouts the handsome face.

“Why?”

“The keys belong to Elysium, little spy. Nothing forged in Hades can open it!”

‘
Maybe we can change that,
’ I think to myself.

My wings carry me towards my destination where my father is imprisoned. If my heart was beating, it would be drumming top speed, but it’s
silent like me. My soul stirs within me with worried anticipation. What will I find beyond the scorching fire where my father is imprisoned?