All the Gates of Hell by Richard Parks

of anything? They're innocent!"
    "I'm Lord of the First Hell which means I judge all the dead, Jin. And anyone on the Wheel of Death and Rebirth cannot be innocent by definition. If you're born, you're guilty. Case closed."
    Before Jin could ask any more, Teacher shook his head, "I've got to go," he said and then he disappeared. Jin just sighed.
    "Typical."
    Jin rubbed her eyes. She was getting a killer headache and, worse, her time in O-Jizou's realms had left her more confused than usual. The place was what Jin thought of as a more traditional underworld, a gathering place for the dead, whereas Medias appeared to be the ordinary living world, but those who left Medias for good didn't die , strictly speaking, they just vanished. To go, perhaps, to places like the River of Souls? Jin didn't know, and wasn't sure it mattered, but she did know that there was a great deal about this cosmos and her role in it that she did not understand at all. Especially the shadow.
    His name is Shiro .
    She preferred using "Shiro" to "Shadow Creature." An actual name sounded more personal, more...well, human. Teacher, after all, said he was a man, or had been, but she didn't have a clue how one could go from human to the sort of shape-shifting thing that Jin had fought in the corridor and at the River of Souls. Neither, for that matter did she have a clue about a place called "The Hell of No Interval." Her function as Guan Yin was to get people out of hell, not put them in, and she'd seen enough to know that Teacher was right about what -- or rather who -- put a person into a hell in the first place. Yet if the Avici hell was the only thing that would hold this 'Shiro' person, what choice did she have?
    Jin started back toward the corridor to Medias but hadn't taken more than a few steps when she found herself wobbling like a newborn calf. She staggered back to the dais and leaned there for a moment then decided it would be better to sit down. The adrenaline rush from her confrontation with Mariko and the explosion of emotion that had caused, and her clash with the shadow -- she was still having trouble thinking of the thing as a person, Shiro -- had worn off; Jin was left exhausted and shaky. She carefully lowered herself to the cold stone floor and sat there, her back against the dais.
    I fell in love along with Mariko, and lost that love as well. It hurt like blazes. What else am I going to have to go through ?
    The answer was obvious: everything the Damned had gone through.
    After a few minutes' rest she started to feel a little better. After a few more minutes she stood up just in time to see a familiar shadow emerge from one of the numerous doors and flow across the stone floor and up between the guardians who, Jin was sure, pretended not to notice. She hurried up to them.
    "Where did he go?"
    WHO?
    "You know very well. Shiro."
    After an uncomfortable silence, the guardian who looked more like a warrior than a monster said, THROUGH THIS DOOR.
    Jin nodded. "Thought so. This is the door to Medias, unless I'm very mistaken."
    IT IS, said the monster.
    Jin glanced toward Heaven, or where she'd once imagined Heaven to be. Old habits died hard. "What's he up to?"
    WE DON'T KNOW HIS BUSINESS.
    "It was rhetorical, you...oh, never mind." Jin hurried through the door, her weariness all but forgotten.
    There was no one in the corridor, but Jin didn't expect otherwise. She had no doubt in her mind that this 'Shiro' person was on his way to Medias. She did not think this was mere coincidence, especially since it was in that same corridor where she had met him in the first place. Neither did she think this a coincidence, any more than his appearance at the River of Souls was. In a sense he was stalking her, and doing it very, very well, finding her in places worlds apart, tracking her movements through multiple hells.
    That was another thing that didn't make sense, now that she thought of it. She'd gotten the impression from the Guan Yin That Was that