EIGHT

Checkpoint Charlie

Oliver remembered the trip to the mojave. It had been one of those last-minute excursions. His parents had friends who lived in Palm Springs, and their kids—a couple of spoiled California teenagers, Brentwood bohos with shaggy hair and expensive toys—had asked if he wanted to see Death Valley with them. There had been talk of looking for an abandoned ghost town, and Oliver had jumped at the chance to go, since anything was better than sitting around while the adults got drunk on Pimm’s Cup and talked about tennis tournaments.

At first he had worried he’d made a mistake. The dirt roads through the canyons were flooded from a rainstorm, and what was supposed to have been a two-hour trip became an eight-hour odyssey and a bit of a nightmare. But thankfully, his hosts had turned out to be good-humored and up for the adventure, instead of sulking and annoyed, and they’d had fun driving through the vast empty desert landscape that looked a bit like pictures he’d seen of the surface of the moon, lonely and vacant and odd.

“Was it like this the first time you were here?” Oliver asked Mimi as he peered out the dusty window.

“No. It’s always different. I think it looks like this because you’re with me. It uses things from your mind that you can process.”

Oliver fiddled with the radio tuner on the dashboard, but the only music was Wagner.

“Figures,” Mimi said. “Helda’s a fan. You might as well rest a bit. We won’t get there for a while.”

“How long have we been down here?”

“Time isn’t the same,” Mimi explained. “Not like it is up there. In the underworld, there isn’t a past or a future; there’s only now. We get there when we get there. It’s a test of endur-ance. We could drive in circles forever as a punishment.”

“Good lord.”

“Wrong guy.” Mimi smirked. “But you’re not dead, and I’m not human, so I think Helda’s just playing with us.”

“Who’s this Helda you keep talking about?”

“She sort of runs the place. Named it after herself.”

“Right.”

Oliver took a series of naps, but since time was no longer a factor, it was difficult to tell how he was supposed to feel.

Was he hungry? He’d had an enormous breakfast, but the transition from the glom had taken a lot out of him. Did they serve lunch in Hell? Should he have packed a snack? Why was he suddenly thinking about food? He felt tired and mixed up; it felt a little like jet lag, which he was still fighting. He hoped Mimi knew where she was going.

He had agreed to come with her. After graduation, when Mimi heard he had deferred his Harvard acceptance, she had offered him the position as her Conduit, and he had accepted.

His parents had tried to talk him out of it, had wanted him to keep his position at the Repository, where he would be safe.

But the clerks were only interested in storing and archiving, preparing for the eventual dissolution of the Coven. It was dis-heartening. He wasn’t sure what would happen if the vampires went underground, and his parents didn’t seem to know either. Joining Mimi seemed the more adventuresome task, and he wanted to be of service. He didn’t want to spend hours doing inventory.

It was also becoming clear to Oliver that Mimi could not handle the Regency alone, and she would need Kingsley’s firm hand alongside hers to guide the flailing Coven. Oliver took his duty as a vampire’s Conduit seriously. He would not let the Coven fail, and he was determined to fulfill his duty to the Blue Bloods by ensuring that Mimi had what she needed to keep the Coven safe and whole, no matter what kind of sacrifice it would entail on his part.

Besides, he considered Mimi a friend. They had come to an understanding, and Oliver was surprised at how well they got along. He’d realized that underneath the princess act was an old and practical creature, and he respected her. When she’d invited him to come down to the underworld with her, he’d jumped at the chance, out of duty, curiosity, and a desire to make sure she was safe. She might be the fearsome Angel of Death, but even Mimi had a heart that could be broken, and Oliver didn’t want her to be alone if she failed in rescuing Kingsley. She would need a friend. What did he have to lose?

He’d already lost Schuyler.

Still, they drove for what seemed like hours. For miles and miles there was nothing on the radio but the “Ride of the Valkyries,” which definitely got old after the nth go-round.

Oliver could sense Mimi’s growing frustration, and it was with relief that at last they reached a primitive-looking checkpoint—just a wooden sawhorse against the road—and beyond it a small gas station.

Two men—Oliver thought they looked like men, but on closer look they were not men at all—spoke to Mimi in a language he could not understand. They were almost nine feet tall, and their large bulky bodies were covered in matted brown fur, while their facial features were gnarled and twisted, with bulbous noses and beady yellow eyes. They wore painful-looking collars made of silver barbed wire.

Mimi made some strange noises that sounded like grunts.

After a moment the men moved away to confer with their supervisor.

“What are they?” Oliver whispered.

“Trolls. They work here… for the demons.”

“Ugly things.” Oliver shuddered. “Those collars.”

“The only thing keeping them from attacking us,” Mimi said in a matter-of-fact tone.

The collars were wound tightly around the trolls’ necks, and drew blood every time they moved. Oliver could not help but feel repulsion and pity for the creatures.

He looked around. “So this Helda you’re meeting—she’s a demon?”

“No.” Mimi shook her head. “She’s more like their…

grandmother.”

Oliver blanched, and Mimi continued to explain. “She’s one of the goddesses. The old ones, before we came along, like the witch we visited in North Hampton.”

“There’s so much I don’t know about the world,” Oliver murmured.

The trolls returned and motioned to a gas station beyond the checkpoint. Mimi parked the car. “Wait here,” she said.

“With them?” Oliver balked. He wished he’d thought to put the roof up, but now it was too late. The trolls sniffed him, one leaning forward so closely, Oliver could feel its hot breath on his cheek. “Human,” it said to the other, in perfect English.

“Living.” His friend nodded with a sly smile.

“He’s mine, beastia! Touch him and you’ll know the taste of Azrael’s steel,” Mimi snapped. The trolls backed away, but Oliver wasn’t sure if he felt safer. They were still looking at him as if he were dinner.

“They’re only teasing you. They don’t eat meat,” she assured him. Mimi neglected to add “only souls,” but Oliver didn’t have to know that, and he looked terrified enough already. “Stop being such a wuss. Trolls, leave him alone.”

Mimi walked toward the small office located in the back of the gas station. She didn’t want to tell Oliver, but the endless driving had bothered her. She’d worried that it was a sign that Helda would not allow her past the lower levels, and she would have to reach the seventh if she was going to find Kingsley. Another troll, a fierce female with a bronze mane, guarded the door to Helda’s office. The she-troll was wearing a heavy iron sash loaded with bullets, and carrying what looked like an AK-47. She gave Mimi a pat-down to check for weapons. “What’s this?” she asked, her hand on Mimi’s back.

Amazing that the troll had found the needle Mimi kept pinned to her bra. “It’s my sword.”

“You’ll have to leave it here. You can have it back when you finish with Helda.”

Mimi complied and handed over her needle, pulling it out from underneath her shirt. “Can I go in now?”

The troll nodded and kicked the door open.

Helda did not look pleased to see her. The Queen of the Dead was an older woman dressed in severe black, her hair in a tight gray bun. Her face was wrinkled and drawn, and she had the thin, puckered lips of a lifelong smoker, as well as the hard beady eyes of a gambler who had spent her last dollar on a losing horse. She looked nothing like her niece in North Hampton. There was something cruel and ancient about her, as if she had seen the world at its worst and had merely shrugged. She sat behind a desk that was messy with ledgers, receipts, crumpled notes, and torn envelopes. It looked like the desk of a harried accountant, which, when Mimi thought about it, was what Helda was, since the Kingdom of the Dead was a little like a bureaucracy that collected souls instead of taxes. “You’re back,” she said flatly.

“Thanks to your niece,” Mimi said.

“Which one?”

“Erda.”

“How disappointing. Erda was always the smarter one.

Freya, she would do it just to spite me.” Helda regarded Mimi coolly. Mimi thought Helda was not unlike one of those rich women who ran the charity committees and took pleasure in excluding social climbers from the group. “So. What do you seek from my domain, Azrael?”

“You know what I want. The same thing I wanted last time. I’ve come to retrieve a soul from beyond the subvertio.”

“Back for Araquiel, are you? Shame. He’s been an asset down here; a great help keeping the demons in line. There’s no way I can dissuade you from your quest?”

Mimi shook her head. Did Helda expect her to believe that crap? Kingsley was suffering down here. Who knew what kind of tortures and agonies he’d endured. She didn’t know what kind of game Helda was playing, but she decided to keep her mouth shut so the old bird would let her pass.

“You are prepared this time. You have your barter?”

Helda asked.

“I do,” Mimi said, motioning to the window.

Helda observed Oliver trying to lean as far away from the trolls as possible without looking like he was avoiding them. “I see,” she sighed. “A human’s a poor substitute for the soul you’re taking from me. But very well. If you are able to convince Araquiel to return with you, you may have him.”