Chapter Eleven

The house is closest and even though I don't want to go inside, I head for the gate anyway.

There are too many dead things in glass that might well be alive in this portion of hell. Julia's house only has the remnants of her magic and mine… what lingers inside my grandmothers' house could be strong enough to hurt us.

"I don't think I want to go in there," Jonas says as we start up the path to the gate.

"I can tie you up?"

He grimaces and then laughs, but it's a sad and worried sound. "That would be even worse, honestly."

But the gate won't budge. And when I try to reach over to unlatch it, my hand hits a solid, if invisible, wall.

"The wards are strong," Julia says. "We won't get in without a heavy-handed spell from the living world to break them. It's safe to say Dylan isn't in there."

I let out a sigh of relief and Jonas mutters a "thank fuck" under his breath.

He doesn't tug for the ravine anymore. As we head back down.

"Not feeling lusty anymore."

"I know it's a trick now…" He doesn't look happy. "Death orgy might be a great name for a metal band, but I don't want to go that way."

"Good." But I keep him chained up anyway.

There are only two more places Dylan could be and I head for the barn. The sty is on the way.

Jonas recoils from it when we get there.

It's a bubbling, steaming mess with corpses floating among the muck, but through Julia, it's a crystal clear pond… and at the center, a small dingy piled high with… "computer equipment?"

I share a confused look with Jonas. Julia remains silent.

A man stumbles out from behind the barn and I know immediately that it's not Dylan. But I don't recognize him either.

"Do you know him?" I ask.

"Yeah." Jonas grimaces. "Brandon Thorne. He and Steven tend to show up together wherever they are."

His limbs are bent and broken, his body lurching as he goes to get the prize that isn't really waiting for him.

"A greedy man and a gluttonous one," Julia says, quietly glancing from the sty to the silo, and then to Jonas. "And a lusty one… Everyone finds their own hell, eventually."

"Should we try to stop him?"

"If Steven was a scumbag, Brandon is worse. Let him go."

"We shouldn't try to save the actual dead. If we took him back with us, his soul would return to his body and without any magic of his own he would come back… but he would not truly be living."

"Are we talking about zombies now?" Jonas asks, looking utterly freaked out.

"Yeah," I say. "Don't worry. Your body's still alive. You'll just be you."

He lets out a shuddering breath and I feel guilty, all over again, for bringing him here.

I watch as Brandon dives into what he thinks is clear water and I grimace as he comes back up from the mud, gasping.

The man screams as corpses in the muck drag him down to join them and Jonas steps closer to me. I don't know if it's for my safety or his own.

Brandon disappears beneath the boiling mud and his screams go with him.

"Have I thanked you for saving me yet?" Jonas asks quietly, "Because, Jesus Fuck, Thank you. "

"You're welcome and I'm sorry. You wouldn't be here in the first place if I hadn't messed up that spell."