Forbidden Parabatai | ✓

(5) Uncanny Presence

“Chantelle? Who ae you talking to?” The Younghunters breathed, too astonished to speak. But right away, Chantelle reached out for Ares. She could find the bond again—it was still there.

She reached out for him, about to embrace him, but her fingers were touching nothing but air. She tried again, each time his silhouette flashed for a moment, and it was just air. She reached further, her finger went through him, as easy as it were to cut across air, as if Ares was never there.

Chantelle found her voice. “Ares, are you… a ghost?” She gulped. Chantelle only saw a few ghosts in her life, but if vampires and werewolves were real, so were ghosts.

“No, I’m not. Just that my body is still over on the other side, and my soul is here.” Ares spoke, and his voice was still the same.

“What do you mean by ‘the other side’? Death?”

“You’re quite correct. It was Death who trapped me. But I am referring to Death’s realm, Channy.”

Chantelle gulped some more. “Death’s realm. You mean hell.”

“Urm, sorry to interrupt Channy, but you’re talking to air.” Andre said. None of them could see Ares like Chantelle could. Chantelle remembered her first lesson.

She spun towards them. “Ares is here with us, as I speak. But you have to know he’s there, only then you can see and hear him.”

“Channy, are you okay—“

“Believe me! Please…”

Finally, Andre saw a change. He focussed hard, and the image came to light. “By the angel, Ares…”

“The first time ‘by the angel’ is said so many times, I bet.” Alive or—how do I describe the current situation--, Ares still had his sarcastic humor, which was a Herondale trait.

“I don’t see anything…” Laressa whined, curious on what she was missing out on. But at the thought ‘missing out on’, it meant she believed he was there, and she finally saw Ares.

“Ares! You’re so pale…” Even after they broke up, Laressa cupped his face gently, before letting him go. She heard the talk about hell, but only the parts when Chantelle talked. “You’re in Hell now? So you’re dead right?”

“No, that’s the problem. I’m not dead, so by right I shouldn’t be in Hell—Death’s realm—so my body is forcefully there, but my soul remains in this dimension.” He pointed to the old grandfather’s clock that creeped Laressa out a lot when she was little. “Every midnight, my soul will return to this dimension.”

“Hell, is that place scary?” Questioned Andre, whose brother could see Ares not long after Laressa could.

Ares buried his face in his hands, not before Chantelle could see the fear in his eyes at the thought. She never seen Ares so frightened before, except the day she climbed onto a roof of a four-storey building and fell, and lost consciousness. The wind was knocked right out of her chest, and Ares thought she would die. “I never thought I’d say this, but it is. It’s a nightmare come alive, for all those who committed serious sins to seek punishment.” He took a moment to calm down, for the memory was too painful. “Hot ash and lava wherever you go. Those who tell lies—serious ones--, like lies to commit crimes, the people get their tongues cut out, and they turn to the Tongueless. Those who murder serve Death themselves, for they are bound to Death. You hear people screaming and food for Death are those that have sins, and the cries of children. It’s horrible—this is only the start of it.”

Chantelle gulped. She knew that if Ares said it was horrible, what he really means is that that place is worse than dying—no pun intended. “How does Death look like?”