Dead!

Chapter 51

Chapter 51

"Maya!" I shouted, but she didn't seem to hear me. She looked around cluelessly, clutching onto her Fall Out Boy bag and screaming at the top of her lungs. One of the demons looked over at me, and muttered something in a foreign language - Latin, presumably. The other demons were holding swords of various types, and at least one looked more than ready to stab Maya.

"Please don't do this!" Maya screamed. "I'm not a Goth! I'm an emo! It's totally different!"

The demons didn't seem to understand her, and the overly eager one lunged towards her. Maya jumped out of the way, so the sword only brushed her leg. "We have to do something," I said to the boys. I stepped backwards, almost stumbling over a corpse, reminding me what Maya's fate would be if we didn't act quickly.

"Try to distract them," Jack suggested.

"Hey! We're over here! Come and get us!" I shouted, but the demons paid me no attention. "What do we do now?" I asked Raj, Henri, and Jack.

"I know," Henri said. "Parles-tu français?"

"Oui, un peu," one of the demons responded.

"Wait, what?" I said. "They speak French?"

"I guess so. I'll ask them how they know French," Henri said. "Tu sais le français comment?"

"Nous avons envahi beaucoup des cathédrales gothiques en France," the demon said. He (or at least it seemed to be a he, judging by the demon's voice) then said something to the other demons, and they all stood still. Maya was safe for now.

"Henri, can you just translate everything the demons say for us?" I asked. At that moment, I kind of wished that I had taken French in school instead of Spanish, but I was awful at languages, so it didn't matter.

"I can do that," Henri said. "He said that they invaded a lot of gothic cathedrals in France. What should I ask now?"

"Tell them not to do anything to Maya," Raj said.

"Okay," Henri said. He turned to the demon and said, "Ne fais pas mal à Maya, s'il te plaît." The demon responded angrily, and the two of them conversed in French for a while, with Henri occasionally talking to us to clarify what was going on. As far as I could tell, the demons really did not want to let go of their latest capture. The other "Goths" had already had their souls destroyed, and Maya was next. Henri attempted to explain that Maya wasn't a Goth at all, but the demons refused to listen.

Henri was certainly buying Maya time, but it looked like it wouldn't be enough. After about fifteen minutes of bickering, Maya decided that she had enough and began to run. The demons immediately turned around and chased after her. "Come on, let's go chase those demons," Raj said as he picked a stick off the ground. His improvised weapon would probably be useless against the demons' swords, but it was better than nothing.

The four of us ran after the demons, but we weren't quite fast enough to catch them before one tackled Maya and took out a dagger. Maya tried to fight him off, but it looked hopeless. Maya Jackson would be gone forever.

All of a sudden, Maya took something out of her bag. It was a copy of Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge. She hit the demon as hard as she could on the head with it, and it fell back onto the hard ground. She got up and did the same thing to several other demons. By this point, we had finally caught up to her. It was the five of us against the six remaining demons.

Raj was certainly the most aggressive out of us when it came to battling the demons. He immediately rushed towards one of the demons and attempted to hit him with his stick. Raj and the demon battled for a while, but it was clear that the demon had the advantage. Meanwhile, Jack, Henri, and I went after two of the weaker demons, and easily took them out. Maya was battling another demon with her CD, and eventually, there was only one demon left.

The demon was still fighting Raj, and it appeared that the demon was winning. Just as we got there, the demon managed to scrape the side of Raj's face with his sword. Raj backed away slightly, while the rest of us ran towards the demon, and after a few minutes, we managed to knock him out. "We need to get out of here," I said quietly.

"Allons-y!" Henri and Jack exclaimed in unison, and all of us laughed half-heartedly.

Navigating was a bit easier on the way back, but that didn't stop Jack from getting a little lost a couple of times. Maya told us stories about the horrors that she had seen in Hell, and Jack, Henri, and Raj all told her how much they had missed her. While I couldn't exactly say that I had missed Maya, it was nice to have her craziness back.

"Ow!" Raj said. "This stupid cut is still bleeding."

"Is there any way we can walk faster?" I asked. "This heat is awful."

"I'm going as fast as I can!" Jack exclaimed. Maya started singing "Fast In My Car," which led all of us to speculate what exactly that had to do with the situation at hand. In any case, we made it back to the bookstore and found the door back into Heaven.

The air-conditioned Celestial Bureaucracy office felt amazing after Hell. Maya smiled slightly when she saw someone in the waiting room wearing a Black Parade T-shirt. "Band merch," she said. "It's like a public mating call."

We exited the building as quickly as possible and got onto the train. Maya, Jack, Raj, and Henri all started talking about something or another, but I just wanted to relax. We did it, I thought. We thought it was impossible, but we did it. I felt better than either, and it was all because of Maya Jackson, of all people. 

A/N: Hey everyone! Thanks for getting Dead! to over 1.3K reads, 275 votes, and 400 comments! This will probably be the last update for the next few weeks, since I am going on vacation to the UK in a few days and will likely not have time to update again before I leave. Dead! will probably have another fifteen chapters or so, and it will be complete in late July/early August. After that, I will start Patrick Stump and the Flying Car Brigade. Again, thank you so much! You guys are the best readers I could ask for :)