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Welcome to this occult spin on Hades and Persephone.
For everyone who knows that Halloween is a state of mind not a time of year.
With another breath his soul faded like ash into the night, carried back to his holding place, the place my bride had locked him away.
The night I made them, the night I broke them, the night I solidified what would soon be mine. Eons I’d waited, centuries I’d searched, longing, hunting, roaming the ends of the earth and back.
I’m leaving out a pretty big player. The Devil. That’s right friends, the devil had a way of hiding himself; you see. From minds, even. The stories about the devil only ever contain one grain of truth. Do you think he’d let the full story be out there? Not in folklore, legend, or ancient text, you won’t find the actual devil. No, he’s a quiet and mysterious sort of fellow. Not one I’d want to anger or even speak of for too long.
You will think the choice was yours. You’ll believe you chose the path yourself, but it was the devil all along. His plans are more twisted and deceitful than your human souls can comprehend. For the devil himself is one with death. They walk hand in hand.
Did they think I’d play fair? I am the devil, after all.
Most people will tell you growing up means you stop believing in Halloween things — I’m telling you the reverse. You start to grow up when you understand that the stuff that scares you is part of the air you breathe. Peter Straub, “Magic Terror: 7 Tales”
Why had I roamed and slaughtered and fought for hundreds of years if not for death? If not for her?
This was the cruel universe taking revenge and forcing me to sit back and watch, in slow, agonizing detail, my belladonna die. And there was nothing I could do. There was nothing Wolfgang’s bleeding heart could do. Ghost’s tough-guy facade was powerless against death just the same. We were all fucked. We’d be tattered beyond repair in the wake of losing the woman we all loved.
Raven or Crow, whichever you want to call him, they respond to both. Ghost by Kat Blackthorne
We held our secret meetings in the murder’s treehouse. The felines, snakes, and rats complained because they preferred the ground. The ground was for worms and toads, not noble familiars. Our conversations were safer in the trees.
Cat jumped up on the ledge next to me, meeting every creature’s skeptical stare. “The Halloween Boys and Blythe belong here as much as any of you vermin. Do they bring misfortune? Yes. Does it make life interesting? Also yes. And you gossips know it. You weren’t complaining when they saved all your precious companions’ lazy asses from legions and ghouls and forest filth. So,” she licked a paw and cleaned her whiskers, “respectfully, fuck off.”
Cat was brash and unorthodox, but she always had my back, and I believed her fonder of her archdemon companion than she let on. Cat was always the first to come to his defense or that of any of his friends.
With a meow, she changed the subject. “Let’s play a game, shall we?” Everyone stopped their murmurs. Familiars loved games. “Halloween is upon us yet again. All manner of beings will be arriving for Hallows Fest in a matter of days. We can only hide in so many jack-o’-lanterns before the smell of pumpkin gets dull again. All for what? Overhearing the vampires share stories of their sexual exploits? I’m nodding off already.” “When Halloween is over, winter is here. Life is boring again. Though the Christmas trees are fun to knock over,” a tabby cat in the corner added. Every animal nodded their
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The others left, leaving Cat and me alone. “I can take a turn in the graveyard and give you a respite,” I offered. “Just show me what my duties entail. Currently, I can’t bear what a disgrace I am.” Cat tilted her head. “You are very kind for a bird. No, I actually quite enjoy tormenting the spirits. I just like to pretend that I don’t.” “Why?” “Being contrary is in my nature.”
Cat looked over her furry shoulder as her black tail swished. “I know about Blythe. I know where she went and some of why, I think. Though there are other pieces to this puzzle we can uncover, secrets to be found out. We can find them and help her bozo boyfriends.” Emotion swelled in my throat. “A wondrous thing to do for her and the Halloween Boys, Cat. Thank you.” “Tell anyone, and I’ll pluck out your feathers and tell everyone to call you Chicken instead of Raven.”
“Where is the devil?” The demon let out a low sort of hiss that reminded me of a teakettle. I huffed, “Well, you tell him to come find me.” “No one,” it replied low and way too soft, “makes demands of the ruler of hell.” “I do,” I argued. “Tell him.”
“This is not a task you can complete alone, kind and noble alpha. You will have to do the thing you despise most if you wish to aid your loved ones.” “And what’s that?” “Ask for help, and not from the likes of the pit of darkness. You are surrounded by light, pup, if you’d only pull your head out of your ass long enough to see it.” She gave a wrinkled and wry smirk as I ran my hands through my hair. “Calliach, if she dies… I don’t, I can’t—” “Hush, young one. Let us elder wolves have a look at her. We will each be laying hands on your mate, every day, and assessing her condition. We will find
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“This is not an affliction of the body but of the soul. I—I…” Ames tensed his jaw and looked up through his dark lashes. “Say it. Whatever it is, don’t hold back.” The elder wolf gave me a wary glance as I crossed my arms and nodded. We needed to know everything she had to tell. “I do not pretend to know what it means as I stay in the light. Though the hold on Blythe is that of a darkness worse than I’ve ever encountered or heard in wolven teachings. This is not from the pit. It is the pit. It is—” She swallowed and jerked her hand away from my mate, looking pale and frightened. Kneeling by my
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bitter balm to ease my worry, a stark realization of how, for once, the Halloween Boys were powerless. We’d been overcome, defeated, left entirely helpless and vulnerable. And our captor? Blythe. Always Blythe.
“Your eyes,” I stammered out. “They’re so…” The devil hummed low in his throat. “So what? Terrifying, horrible, evil—” “All of those things, and like blood in an amber bottle. The shade is so dreadful and beautiful.”
In a silent wall of darkness, I jumped, feeling his larger-than-life presence. He slowly walked into view and down the stairs, with his hands in his pockets like he was going on a leisurely stroll.
“We find them. We find each and every one of them, and I will drain and drink every ounce of their blood for what they’ve done.”
“For someone who hates talking, you sure do always have a lot to say to me.” “It’s a part of my affinity and my affliction toward you.” “I’m going home.” “You are home.”
“Keep in mind, hell is not yours until you claim it. Every demon, legion, ghoul, and foul thing that haunted you in your realm? Their numbers are tenfold here. And I cannot protect you until you are queen. They’ll play tricks on you, fuck with your mind. But as the queen of the underworld, you would rule over them. They would do your bidding. But until then… watch your step.”
“Ah, you’ve solved the easiest part of the mystery. Congratulations, Blythe. Now, will you finally start piecing the rest together so we can get on with it?” He was a foot away from me now on his slow prowl, and my heart was racing as I gazed up at his fierce, garnet stare. “Get on with what?” “You being mine and ruling hell with me. It is your rightful place, Mortala. Or are we still pretending to be Blythe?”
I was the same except it wasn’t me… or it was… but I had black and twisted horns protruding from the top of my head. Her. I’d seen her on Halloween after the Baphomet’s attack. She’d sat on a throne then, and she’d looked so sure, so like me but so not me at the same time…
I offered him a hand gloved in black leather, and he accepted. “Judas,” I answered. His crystal blue eyes narrowed. “Unfortunate name. Judas betrayed Jesus and his disciples. The great deceiver, some say. An incarnation of the devil himself.” A misunderstanding, but I’ll save that story for another day.
“Sometimes,” I said, standing and approaching the altar, “the world needs an evil to look to just as much as it needs a light. Villains and devils are mirrors in a sense.” I struck a match, and the flame twirled and danced for its master. “Everyone wants to be the hero, James. But few are brave enough to be a demon in a world that idolizes the angels.”
“Can you help me and my friends, my home? I’ll trade you anything.” “You are simultaneously smarter and more foolish than you appear, aren’t you?” I extended my hand. “We have a bargain.”
Do devils love each other? Do they walk arm in arm in hell saying, “Ah, you are my friend, how I love you,” things like that to each other?...it was a matter of a concept of evil, wasn’t it? Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat
His black shirt fell to the ground, revealing his broad and muscular frame, that temping V above his low-slung pants. My mouth watered, but more than that, for some reason, my eyes teared up and my heart swelled with some sort of love. Love? Love. “No,” I repeated.
And in that moment, awareness hit me. Of how every artist I’d ever heard of, from the beginning of time, had tried to replicate his beauty. Every poet had tried to warn. Priests had told humans to beware, and it all made sense why God himself was jealous of the Hades before me.
“Tell me what you feel. Do it. Now.” The answer seemed obvious, but I couldn’t say no. Not because he’d just told me that I couldn’t, but because the word would no longer form on my lips. I was incapable of no. It didn’t exist. It couldn’t be uttered. And suddenly, that display of his power confirmed everything. I was at his mercy. No didn’t exist in this bed, in this exchange. But did I want it to?
“What are you feeling?” I whispered, repeating his question to me. His jaw tensed again, and his pace inside me slowed slightly, like he was searching for the words. The devil searching for the right thing to say? “You. Only ever you, my bride.”
The devil he may have been, but he must not have realized that girl had died. I had horns now. I was death. I’d find a way to start acting like it, and I would make him burn if he got in my way.
“You said once that Stevie Nicks was one of the greatest lyricists of all time, didn’t you?” The devil refilled my wine, and I picked at long furls of grass, trying and failing to ignore him. I racked my brain, wondering how he’d known that. “I said that to Ames the first time I met him.” “Yes, quite right. Do you still believe it true?” “Yes, why?” “Leather and Lace” by Stevie Nicks and Don Henley played around us as if there were stereos in the trees. Another display of my picnic date’s power. I narrowed my gaze and bit into a purple grape. “Is this really hell?” “Indeed, it is.” “Doesn’t
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“I’m annoyed by how attracted I am to you.” The corner of his mouth quirked. “Likewise.”
Judas was arguably the most formidable being in all the world, yet his strength was not a booming, loud thing, I was learning. His power was as quiet as he preferred to be. A hidden and reserved nature that contradicted any perception of who you’d think he was upon hearing his mythological title.
“Is this how you spend your days? Walking around this little copycat of a town. Isn’t the devil supposed to, like, be doing grand and terrifying things?” “Is that what I’m supposed to be doing? Huh,” he teased. “How do you know I’m not already?” Air hooked in my lungs and flushed my cheeks as he clutched me by the small of my back and danced with me, slow and close now. The atmosphere evolved into a milky shade of blue while fireflies flickered around us. “My job is to look after this place and all its levels. I ensure balance. You’ll find that, on this side of the veil, balance is more
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“I enjoy baking. And photography.” My eyes were caught on his lips and the way they parted when he noticed my regard. “That wasn’t so hard to share, now, was it?” “It’s half a lie,” he whispered lowly. “I lie a lot.” “Oh?” “My free and untethered thoughts are constantly and unabashedly of you.”
“Remember this tree? I do,” he growled in my ear, his breath warm and full of promise. “We walked this path to Hallows before it even existed. You and I loved each other before we ever knew it.” The hole where my heart should have been constricted. “Under similar circumstances. A romp in the woods, a scream in the night, and a scene of horrors awaiting us.” “Sounds like your dream date.”
“Fucking why? What does it matter?” He pushed into my throat harder, blurring my thoughts, compressing the little air he allowed me. “You fucking matter, Onyx. You dense piece of shit.
“No witches yet, it seems.” “Two covens now. Wonder what that means. Is it like a battle of the bands? Should we get wristbands? Do they have merch for sale?”
something caught the corner of my eye. A slight shimmer. Something not quite natural. When I looked, it was gone. But if being undead for hundreds of years had taught me anything, it was that if you thought you saw something out of the corner of your eye, you fucking did.
“She’s not dead.” A rough voice swished through the willow vines and stumbled onto the tree roots, bracing himself on the tree as if walking on land was foreign to him. “Well, not in the way yer thinkin’. And I sure could tell you where she is. For a price, that is. For a story.” The pirate captain smirked, stroking the bells in his beard. Captain Vex Beard, The Story Keeper, was here.
“I do hope the candy corn stand is back this year.” Candy corn stand in hell. Sure, nothing surprised me now.
One I smelled immediately. Plum and jasmine and drama. Onyx Hart.
And that itchy little spot in my middle where my heart probably was filled with anger. Or maybe it was just fleas.
