for themselves,
right?”
Damon laughed without much humor. “Oh, no, they can’t. Most of
them are bound here.”
He said bound oddly. Elena ventured, “Too busy to go on
vacation?”
“Too busy, too powerful to get through the wards protecting Earth
from them, too worried about what their enemies will do while they’re
gone, too physically decrepit, too notorious, too dead.”
“Dead?” The horror of the tunnel and the corpse-smelling fog
seemed ready to envelope Elena.
Damon flashed one of his evil smiles. “Forgot that your boyfriend
is de mortius? Not to mention your honorable master? Most people,
when they die, go to another level than this—much higher or much
lower. This is the place for the bad ones, but it’s the upper level. Farther
down—well, nobody wants to go there.”
“Like Hell?” Elena breathed. “We’re in Hell?”
“More like Limbo, at least where we are. Then there’s the Other
Side.” He nodded toward the horizon where the lowering sun still sat.
“The other city, which may have been where you went on your
‘vacation’ to the afterlife. Here they just call it ‘The Other Side.’ But I
can tell you two rumors I heard from my informants. There, they call it
the Celestial Court. And there, the sky is crystal blue and the sun is
always rising.”
“The Celestial Court…” Elena forgot that she was speaking aloud.