for so long. He could reassure me I was the weight of a flea all he liked, but I was covered in weapons from head to toe, and that couldn’t be comfortable pressed against his shoulders.
Tascius strode ahead on Azazel’s orders, lighting the way, while Michael brought up the rear with Haru.
Azazel walked at Belial’s side, close enough to touch me.
“I didn’t think to ask the why of this place, but why would someone create the Between?” I asked him. “What’s the point of keeping the memories of the gods in some nightmare dimension?”
He glanced up at me, his violet eyes shining with the lightning-like light inside him. “Although it’s possible to use it as a path, that was never the intention behind it. It’s a reliquary of sorts, a little like the memory-rift in the Fields of Asphodel, only infinitely more powerful and dangerous.”
I shivered at the thought of the memory-rift and what it had shown me. And that had only been a small taste of what the End Days had been like. “Who created it, though?”
Azazel shrugged one shoulder, reaching up to touch the feather under the silver skull pin. “Nobody knows. I’m not entirely sure it was created by someone, rather than that it just is. But this place is… it is endless.” His eyes were shadowed as he looked up the mountainous ridge we climbed. “And it preferred to gather strong emotions or places of worship. What you’ll see in there are memories of the old times. Times from before humanity wrote their first accounts of the gods. Times of chaos and insanity, when they walked the earth openly in all their power.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. My human brain had barely been able to comprehend the existence of the Horsemen, or Wormwood, or the plagues. Death and rising again had opened my mind quite a bit, but if Azazel thought these gods of the old times were terrible… well, I still had a lot of mind-opening to do.
Fear trickled down my spine, but I pushed it away. I wasn’t going to let empty memories drive me away from this path. “How will it know we want to go to Irkalla?”
“Intention.” Azazel’s shadows touched my leg as he walked alongside us. “It might not have been made for it, but it’s still a side effect of the magic there. If you keep one place in mind while traversing it, the Between will begin to pull on that intent, bringing up memories as well as bringing you closer to the place it’s revealing.”
“And that means we’ll see memories of Irkalla the further we go into it.” How horrible would those memories be?
“They can’t hurt you,” Azazel reminded me gently. “As long as you don’t get caught up in them. If you see anything, close your eyes and look away. It’ll vanish soon enough.”
“How bad could it be?” I asked with false bravado, but Azazel didn’t answer.
Not a good sign.
Eventually the ridge opened on the base of a steep ravine, high in the mountains. I slid off Belial’s shoulders; it was full of mist, the path barely visible, but even I could see a lion of his size wouldn’t make it through.
He became a human again and we gathered in front of the mist. It reached out and brushed outwards, almost like fingers trying to touch us.
“Pluto’s Gate is through here.” Azazel’s eyes were veiled. “Stay to the path, Michael first.”
Michael stepped in without a backward glance, his sunlight dampened by the mist, but he was clear enough to follow.
I did glance back. The sensation of malice was faint, but perhaps I’d been imagining things. After all, I was about to walk into a place even Azazel didn’t want to go. Anyone would be subconsciously stressed out by the implications of that.
There was nothing there, of course, but I couldn’t shake my misgivings.
I ended up behind Azazel and in front of Belial, the pair of them keeping me on the path. On occasion I ducked under a rock outcropping or tripped on slick stones and moss underfoot, but the walls were so narrow it was easy to catch my fall.
After the dryness of the desert, the mist and moss were a strange sight. I inhaled deeply, taking in the smell of actual green growing things, but there was another strange smell on the wind, something almost spicy.
Azazel turned in time to catch me rubbing my nose. “You smell the residual magic. We’re close.”