Life After Death

Chapter 43

For a split second I felt cold straight to the core - like I had when I was in that cell in the underworld when Lucifer himself showed himself to me - so the feeling was familiar but it didn't disguise the fact that it was cold. That split second felt forever, it lasted longer than any average split second should.

Soon, my feet found the ground and matter came back in full force. I found it hard to breathe, like the air had been sucked from my lungs. I gasped for air and clawed out at nothing, trying to soothe the lack of oxygen in my bloodstream or whatever a dead girl had.

I felt arms around me, centre me. I didn't hear the words of comfort until hands cupped my face. "Meredith, breathe. Calm down." I blinked and dark eyes with traces of gold found mine. "It's okay."

"She hasn't been through a portal before, has she?" Sylvia asked, coming into view.

"No, she hasn't," Roman said, still holding my face in his large hands.

"I remember the first time I went through a portal without a barrier - I thought I was going to die," Sylvia said, laughed. "Hey, does your chest hurt?"

I gulped air and nodded, "I didn't know the dead could hurt..."

"We're still human," Roman said.

"We're just not, well, alive," Sylvia finished for him.

"Help... me..." Danny gasped in the background.

"It's going to be fine," Roman chided.

"It doesn't last long," Sylvia assured me with a warm smile.

"I'm... dying..." Danny breathed.

"Oh will you stop being a pussy, Daniel!" Sylvia snapped at him.

I sat up slowly with the help of Roman and Sylvia.

It was then that I could see where we were. We were at the end of a long, dark hallway with fire-lit torches. I was sitting on hard, cold cement, with Sylvia and Roman crouched in front of me while Danny passed out in front of a large mahogany door with a gold doorknob. I coughed, "What's that?" I gestured to the door.

"The Chamber," Sylvia replied, looking over her shoulder. "I didn't think this through but how are we going to get into it?"

"I might know someone that could open it up for us," I suggested.

Both Sylvia and Roman looked over at me. "Who?"

"We can talk about it after y'all help Danny 'cause I think he was serious when he said he was dying," I said, looking over at Danny.

***

Danny was brushing off dust from his black attire and breathed in deeply. He had slowly recovered - who knew that going through Door 0 would have caused this - and looked around and his eyes landed on the door. They were as big as saucers, intrigued, he moved closer to the door barely touching it and retrieved his hand, letting it dangle at his side. He turned slowly to me. "The Chamber... What now?"

For a while everyone paused as they processed Danny's question, but the pause was long-lived. I feel like we had paused and thought about everything that had happened thus far, what had brought us to this point in our after lives.

I know I was.

Months, maybe a little over a year ago - I'm not sure, once you're dead you don't have any sense of time - I had died and had been so fucking depressed. I wanted to live, more than anything. I hated being invisible to everyone - besides the fact that, even when I was alive I had been invisible, so it wasn't a big change, but still. It was different. I was in a different realm of existence. I thought about meeting Jack Matthews, driving in the yellow school bus, walking Jack to his Elysium, entering the Pizza Palace for the first time, meeting Moira and Meg for the first time, learning the truth, hating everything, going back to the material realm (and hating everything a little more), coming back, learning more about death and life, meeting the dead (how could I forget Topher, the surfer, Val, the soul I had heard crying in the woods that led to my death, Kassima, the psychic and even the demons that had almost killed us and the salt barrier that kept us safe temporarily until Val was murdered, for a second fucking time), Danny's funeral and the suicide note, learning that Meg was a Hunter, meeting Lucifer and almost dying and feeling cold and learning about my soul power (learning The Big Truth), meeting Roman's father escaping the underworld, meeting Sylvia and Danny (again), acquiring my soul power after coming to terms with my death, seeing visions and the End, and now, we come full circle to this moment - finding out the link to Sylvia and Kassima and the End, because I was more than a hundred percent sure that it was all linked. Everything that happened thus far was for a reason. This was it. I was going to find out once and for all.

I needed to find Alexandru.

But I had no idea how I was going to do that.

I thought back to how Alex had helped me in return for a small favour - to hug Roman - I still couldn't believe that he had helped me. After kidnapping me, almost killing me, and leaving me in a bedroom where I was coerced into eating delicious foods. It still didn't add up. Then again, nothing in this life - or afterlife for that matter - did make sense. Everything was jumbled up. Evil lurked in every corner, even the purest places. People aren't people, they're demons or ghost hunters. People don't do things out of the niceness of their non-existent heart they just do it - but we have to remember that there's always an alterior motive. Always.

I knew that Alex would help us but it wasn't as though I could just wander through the home of Satan without being caught and murdered - especially since we were trespassing. But maybe I could use the fact that Lucifer wanted my soul power to my advantage. I doubted that any of his servants knew about Lucifer's thoughts as to kill and steal my power.

I looked down at my grim reaper sweats. I could fit in perfectly with this outfit.

"Whoa, where do you think you're going?" Roman asked, gripping my wrist.

"I'm going to get this door opened," I said, pulling my wrist back. "I'll be fine. Just stay here and make sure you're not seen."

"Like fuck," Roman scoffed. "I am not letting you go -"

"Roman," Sylvia said, touching his forearm. "Let her go. She'll be fine."

Roman looked down. A deafening silence fell over us. Roman was the first to break it with a heavy sigh, "Just come back to me, okay?" The look he gave me... There was something he wasn't telling me - like always. But I didn't want to question him right now. I had someone to find. I reached up on my tiptoes and wrapped my arms around him. I inhaled his scent and placed a kiss on his cheek. "What was that for?"

I smiled, "Just because..." Sylvia and Danny stood behind Roman, looking awkwardly away. "I'll be right back, okay?"

Sylvia nodded.

"Just be careful," Danny said, concern etched on his face.

"Its the underworld," I scoffed. "What's the worst that could happen?"