Alma Katsu - The Descent

Adair had probably known all along that I’d wanted him. He would’ve only needed to kiss me and I wouldn’t have been able to resist him. Should I find him now and have one last pleasure with him before heading to the underworld? I was struggling to extinguish this spark of desire when there was a knock at the door, jolting my eyes open. Adair stood in the doorway as though he’d been summoned by my thoughts. Only he didn’t look aroused. He didn’t even look happy. He was glum and fretful, full of misgivings. In one hand, he carried a mug.

“Is it time already?” I asked weakly. “You found the spell so soon?”

“I already had an idea where to look. It was only a matter of putting the ingredients together,” he said as he entered the room. He put the mug on the table next to the bed, then ran his hands over the mattress, smoothing the sheets. “You will lie here, on this bed, while your soul is in the underworld. Come, sit.” I did as I was instructed and perched on the edge of the bed.

Adair reached into his pocket and pulled out something that he pressed in my hand. “I’ve been thinking about your return, about how I will know to bring you out of suspension. We need some kind of signal. I want you to hold this. Carry it with you at all times, wherever you go. And when you are ready to come back, just let it go. I will see it fall from your hand, here, and I will know to bring you back.” He closed my fingers around the object, looking earnestly into my face. “Will you do that for me?”

“Of course,” I said. When I opened my hand, however, I couldn’t believe what I saw: it was the vial that he’d worn around his neck when I first met him, the vial that had contained the elixir of life. The one I’d stolen from him and used to make Jonathan immortal—to make him my immortal consort, with disastrous results.

“This is impossible,” I gasped as I held it up in the light so I could get a good look at it. It was the same filigreed cylinder of silver and brass, its stopper and chain intact. “It can’t possibly be . . . Luke told me, on his deathbed, that he’d found it among my things. He said he’d crushed it under his heel and threw it out the window.”

“I found it on the beach here when I was out walking one day,” Adair said, not astonished in the least. As though he knew all his possessions would come back to him, given enough time. Like the books of secrets I’d returned to him. Like me.

I turned the vial around in a complete circle. It wasn’t crushed. It wasn’t damaged in the least. “I don’t understand . . .”

Adair closed my fingers around it again. “Understanding is not necessary for this spell to work. Faith is.” He handed me the cup. “Drink this.”

Like his previous elixirs, it smelled of grass and mud, things of the earth not meant to be ingested in such a raw form. I wrinkled my nose at it. “Another potion? Why must it always be a potion?”

“I suppose you’d rather have it be a dram of whiskey,” he observed.

“Or even a piece of cake,” I said, and sniffed.

He tapped the mug. “Drink up.”

If I had reservations, now was the time to bring them up. If I didn’t wish to go, I could’ve handed the cup back to Adair. I could’ve asked him to assuage my fear of pain or of being lost forever and wandering like a ghost between the planes of existence. I could’ve encouraged him to climb onto the bed with me and blank out all my misgivings.

But I did none of those things. The abyss was waiting for me, yawning before me like a great black chasm, and I knew if I hesitated now, I might not go through with it. I took a deep breath and swallowed the potion as quickly as I could, so as not to taste it. Despite my efforts, I caught the tail end of it, and to my surprise it didn’t taste of weeds and dirt but of the finest vanilla cake frosted with buttercream. I wiped the last drop from my chin with the back of my hand as I handed the cup to him.

As he took the cup from me, I couldn’t resist . . . I gazed deeply into his eyes as I leaned against him, and kissed him. For one moment, we were locked together and made one, and it was as though I could feel every emotion he was experiencing at that instant: surprise, elation, gratitude, longing, regret—so much regret—and happiness. I felt happiness, too, and it surged between us for one long minute, even after our mouths had parted. That kiss was all it took for me to know that I loved him, despite all that had happened between us, despite any doubts I might still have had. I loved him and there was nothing I could do to change that; I’d been stupid to try to deny it.

Adair felt it, too, in that kiss. He knew that something fundamental had changed between us and he hesitated, waiting for a sign from me. I could’ve stopped it right then, I think. I could’ve told Adair that I’d changed my mind and that would be that. We’d start to explore what could be between us—but it would be tainted from the very beginning. Adair had said as much himself: not knowing what happened to Jonathan would prey on my mind. Adair understood when I said nothing, did nothing, and without another word, he helped me lie back on the bed, and spread a blanket over me as though I was only about to take an afternoon nap.

I held on to the edge of the mattress to steady myself. “Something’s happening already,” I told him. “It feels like the bed is falling, as though the house is collapsing underneath me.” I tried to smile reassuringly as I spoke, but there are few feelings as frightening as suddenly losing all sense of balance.

“Will you be okay?” he asked, closing my hand tightly around the vial.

“I’m a little scared,” I admitted.

“I’ll be right here. I won’t leave your side. Don’t forget: the vial. Release it and I will bring you back in a heartbeat.” He ran a fingertip over my forehead, brushing a lock of hair aside in a tender moment of concern, my last image of him as I felt myself falling for real, halfway inside another world, with the world I knew galloping away from me. Adair disappeared from my view and I saw nothing but blackness, walls of blackness falling away from me. I held on to consciousness a moment longer, enough to realize that it didn’t feel like the transformation at all. There was no pain, only the feeling of being pulled along at an incredible speed through utter darkness—where was the light everyone talked about seeing as they were dying? And then, just as suddenly, there was nothing. No reassuring presence at my side, no vial in my hand, no lingering taste of vanilla on my lips. No blackness or the rush of wind on my face as I fell. Nothing at all.

When I regained consciousness, I saw that I was in the fortress. I was surprised; I’d expected to be transported to another world, one that was familiar and biblical in nature, like that of Dante’s Inferno or Milton’s Paradise Lost. I don’t know why I’d made this assumption, though it seemed to prove that old saying that wayward souls will turn back to God on their deathbeds. Given my nightmares and the role that the fortress had played in them of late, I probably shouldn’t have been surprised to find myself there, and at least I was on the upper floor and hadn’t woken in the hated cellar.

As a matter of fact, I shouldn’t say that I “woke up,” as though I’d been asleep, but instead was suddenly aware of my surroundings, as often happens in dreams. Everything looked just as it had in Adair’s house. I was in a wide hall with a long red runner under my feet, and the familiar wooden doors to the bedrooms faced me on either side. The same iron sconces hung on the wall, the same rough-hewn Italianate chairs sat at intervals the length of the corridor. It was so clearly Adair’s home that, for a minute, I wondered if the elixir hadn’t worked and I had only sleepwalked from my room. But when I looked at my surroundings more closely, I noticed that the hall ran longer than the ones in Adair’s house; as a matter of fact, this one seemed to telescope out like a fun house in both directions. If I took a step toward either end, it seemed to snake out farther still.

The hall was as quiet as a library. I walked up to one door and put my ear close, listening for sounds on the other side, before trying the handle. I strained, but I heard nothing. Had I any reason to choose this door over the one next to it or the one down the hall? I considered this predicament for a minute, but reasoned that I had been set down in the fortress at this precise spot for a reason, and that was to go into the room in front of me. I gripped the cold metal doorknob, gave it a turn, and stepped inside.

It was obvious that I’d stepped into another dimension. The room I entered wouldn’t have existed in Adair’s fortress. It seemed like the lobby of a grand hotel with groupings of chairs, rattan with pale green silk cushions, flanked by potted palms. The ceiling was high, the room itself very wide. Tall shuttered windows held back harsh white sunlight, throwing sliced shadows onto the floor. Huge ceiling fans circled overhead, pushing around hot, humid air. Streams of people walked by in all directions wearing clothing from an earlier era. The women wore dresses with long, full skirts and wide sleeves, and tall hats perched on elaborately done hair; the men wore tight-waisted morning coats and long trousers, despite the heat. The crowd consisted mostly of Westerners, but there were a number of Arabs, too, in spotless white tunics as a kind of livery. It was a hotel, obviously one that catered to Western travelers, and by the looks of the people and the surroundings, not to mention the heat, it appeared to be somewhere in North Africa or the Levant. As I stumbled along, trying to make sense of the location, I realized that I recognized this place. I’d been here before.