She looks around.
“How long did you spend here?”
“Eleven years, the first time.”
“And you were alive the whole time?”
/>
“Yeah. You’re one of the only other living humans to ever see the place. Congratulations.”
She flexes her fist. Her knuckles are red where she must have punched the Hellion before stabbing it. Marcella is tough. I wish she was on our side.
“Get me out of here.”
I take her hand and pull her into a shadow. We come out again in the bowling alley. She collapses on one of the lanes. I let her sit there for a while.
“You’re a torturer after all,” she says. “You sure had me fooled.”
“I wouldn’t have had to leave you there if you weren’t so full of shit.”
She looks at me from the floor.
“You can take me back there any time you want, can’t you?”
“Yes. I can.”
She shakes her head, picks up a piece of one of the pins I shot earlier, toys with it. Tosses it away.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you anything.”
Now I’m getting annoyed.
“Why not?”
She gestures back at the shadow we came through.
“Because now I know what will happen to me.”
“You mean damnation? If you tell me you’re afraid you’ll be damned?”
“I know I will.”
“You faction types must have some good preachers.”
She smiles, but it’s exhausted and unconvincing.
“The best.”
“Then you’re going to want to help me, Marcella.”
“Why?”
“I hate to break it to you, but you’re already going to Hell for the things you’ve done. And when you get there, I’m the one who can get you out.”
That makes her laugh.
“My my. The salvation of my eternal soul rests with Sandman Slim.”