I caress her cheek, which is more see-through than usual. “Please wake up, babe.”
A panicked shout makes me look up. “Dante!” Kessley is waving the Bell of Izme at me. I must have dropped it. “I can’t make it work!”
“Go,” D’Maeo urges. “I’ll take care of Vicky.”
I’d rather stay here and let someone else handle that monstrous man, but I know it doesn’t work that way. Apparently, I’m the one who needs to handle the Bell of Izme, and I need to do it before Beelzebub manages to enter our world. The portal is already opening further. He has pushed his other hand through. Taylar and Jeep have retreated, and Maël’s mumbling is slowing down. Soon she’ll be out of energy.
I take the bell from Kessley and call out to Taylar. “Use all the holy water you have and push him back through with your shield.” My hand starts shaking the bell before I consciously tell it to. The darkness of the portal instantly wraps around Beelzebub’s arms and drops down onto his head. It doesn’t seem to bother him. He keeps grinning like the maniac that he is, but his eyes are now locked onto me.
“You cannot escape me, chosen one,” he roars. “No one can.”
“We’ll see about that,” Taylar yells, and he empties another bottle of holy water onto the monster. Drops hit his face, and the skin hisses. The white-haired ghost raises his shield and dives forward. He hits Beelzebub in the waist hard, but the monster doesn’t move an inch.
Charlie throws large grease balls at him, but they simply melt when they hit. Maël starts to sway on her feet, and Jeep rushes to her side to support her. If the holy water doesn’t drive him back, we’ll need to come up with a new strategy.
Taylar steps back, preparing to slam into the monster again, but Kessley stops him with a simple, “Wait! I’ll handle it.”
She changes into a minotaur as big as Beelzebub himself. She lowers her head, and when Taylar throws the last of the holy water into the portal, Kessley charges at full speed.
Beelzebub grits his sharp teeth with a grinding noise. His arm trembles with the effort of pushing further through to our world. Then the minotaur collides with him. The horns connect with the chest, and Beelzebub stumbles back. Kessley’s momentum carries her forward, her head disappears into the portal.
“No!” I scream when I see Beelzebub’s unfrozen hand reaching for Kessley’s back.
But my sixth ghost is no fool. She throws herself onto her belly with her hands outstretched to give the man-monster a final push. Taylar drops his shield and grabs Kessley’s hooves. While Beelzebub falls backwards, the minotaur comes to a halt.
I slow down the shaking of the Bell of Izme to give Taylar the time to pull Kess back.
“No, keep shaking as fast as you can,” Gisella says. “I’ll help Taylar.”
I increase the speed again, and the blackness inside the portal becomes thicker. The gap starts to close. Taylar and Gisella free Kess while Charlie hits the monster with grease. Beelzebub throws himself forward again to grab her or to get through, or maybe both. Gisella lets go and jumps toward the opening in the darkness. Within a second, only a blur and the shimmer of her blades are visible. Beelzebub growls in frustration as he takes hit after hit. He tries to block the attack, but the werecat-witch is too fast. The monster has a hard time staying upright. Although I can’t make out Gisella’s hands or feet, or any part of her body at all, I can see where she hits him. He doubles up a bit each time she hits him in the stomach; his shoulder moves back, and a trickle of blood flows from his arm. Meanwhile, the gap in the portal gets smaller and smaller as the Bell of Izme works its magic. Soon, only a small part of Beelzebub is visible. He stretches out his arm to keep the dark void from closing, but Gisella keeps kicking it back.
Finally, the blur that is the werecat stops moving. Her blades turn back into hands as the blackness melts back into one piece. My hand slows its shaking on its own, and silence falls upon the tunnel.
“He’s gone,” Taylar says. “At least, for now.”
I nod at him, Gisella, Charlie and Kessley, who has turned back into a blonde girl in a tight dress. “Well done.”
Then I hurry over to Maël, who’s lying on the cold ground with her head in Jeep’s lap. She’s not moving.
I squat down next to them. “Is she going to be okay?”
The tattooed ghost nods. “Yes, all she needs is some rest.”
“Good.” I turn and walk out of the secret tunnel with a pounding heart. My worst fears are confirmed when I see D’Maeo holding Vicky’s hand while she lays motionless and almost invisible on the ground. I slide down onto my knees and grab her other hand. “Babe?”
“She’s not responding.”
CHAPTER 31
The fear in D’Maeo’s voice is like a kick in the stomach. “What can we do?”
“Take her home and let Mona have a look.”
“Okay.” I slide one hand under her neck and one under her knees and lift her. Then I turn toward the porthole and step through carefully, making sure I don’t hit Vicky’s head against the side.
Mona is already waiting for us. One look at Vicky’s fading form makes her eyebrows go up. “Put her on a bed, quickly.”
I hurry across the hallway and into Vicky’s room, where I lay her down gently. Mona practically shoves me aside, but I don’t mind. I’ve seen my girl in a terrible state several times before, but this looks bad. I can barely tell the difference between the air and her body. Another minute and she’ll disappear. It’s like what happened to Taylar because of his unfinished business, except much worse.
I kick the wall so hard it leaves a small hole. “I told her to stay away from him. Why didn’t she listen?”
Yellow sparks light up the room. I lean against the wall and watch them wrap around each other until they’ve formed a large, pulsing cloud. My restless feet start moving again, but while I pace up and down the room, I only pay attention to Vicky and the light that hovers above her. I only realize the others have joined us when Charlie places a hand on my shoulder, forcing me to come to a halt.
“She’ll be fine; she’s in good hands.”
It sounds reassuring, but the words don’t have the desired effect.
Charlie rolls back the desk chair and pushes me onto it. “Sit down and take a deep breath.”
I do as he says. My breath is shaky, and I only notice the trembling of my legs now.
When I look up again, Mona moves her hands down slowly. The cloud of light obeys and eases into Vicky, who becomes less transparent instantly.
I breathe out slowly. Relief washes over me, even though her eyes are still closed. Mona drops her hands and sighs. “We’ll let the healing sparks do their work for now.” She walks over to me and smiles, but I can’t find a trace of hope on her face. “I’ll go get Mrs. Delaney. She’ll be able to find out if there is a disturbance in Vicky’s molecules.”
I swallow the sourness rising to my throat. “Disturbance?”
The fairy godmother fidgets with the hem of her shirt. “Listen, honey, I’m not sure what that monster did to her. He changed something inside her when she tried to influence his emotions. I saw it happening through the porthole. But I couldn’t help, I was the only one left in the house. I couldn’t risk all of us getting stuck in the silver mine. And you were all there to help her. She wasn’t exposed for very long, and she’s fighting it, but I don’t think she’s strong enough to win this on her own.”
I wrap my fingers around the edges of the seat so tightly it hurts. “But your sparks can heal her, right?”
Mona looks away. “I’m not sure. I’ve given her all the help I can give. I’m bringing in Mrs. Delaney, just in case.”
“Okay.” I nod and bite my lip when she vanishes with a soft whoosh.
Charlie is still standing next to me. “She’ll be fine,” he repeats. “Mona and Mrs. Delaney are powerful, and if they can’t help her, Quinn will.”
I smile at him. “You’re right. We shou
ld keep the faith. We’re a great team.”
“Great?” Kessley repeats incredulously. “Brilliant, you mean! We fended off Satan’s right hand!”
Jeep rubs the goosebumps on his arm. “For the time being, sure.”
D’Maeo shakes his head. “No, Kess is right. Although Vicky is down, we have accomplished a lot.”
I frown. “Really? We were only able to drive him back because the portal wasn’t fully open. If it hadn’t been for the Bell of Izme, which we’ll need to give back soon, in case you forgot, we wouldn’t have won.”
D’Maeo straightens his shoulders. “We don’t know that, and we do have the bell.” He starts pacing, but much calmer than I did a moment ago. “What you need to realize, is that Lucifer is getting desperate.” He raises a hand when I snort. “No, hear me out. First, he tried to get you to join him. Not because he likes you so much, but because he knows you are strong and that you are a great threat to him. When you refused, he sent two Horsemen to kill you. They failed, which must have enraged him as much as it worried him.” He stops pacing and looks up. “We expected him to send his right hand, Beelzebub, only if it ever came to a huge battle. As a last resort. But he sent his greatest warrior now, even though he has a back-up plan to get the souls he needs to open the circles of Hell. He’s desperate, Dante. He wants you, or rather all of us, out of the way before we sabotage his plans any further.”
Jeep nods thoughtfully. “Sound plausible.”
It does, and we talked about him getting desperate before, but somehow, that doesn’t really comfort me.
I rub my arms, that tingle unpleasantly at the thought of a desperate Satan. “Somehow I doubt this is good news for us. A desperate person will do anything to get what he wants; he’ll even do things he normally wouldn’t. In my mind, that makes him all the more dangerous.” The itch spreading through me drives me crazy now, but scratching doesn’t help. Instead, I try to shake it off.
D’Maeo starts pacing again. “In a way, you are right. But Lucifer has been struggling to get what he wants for decades. He has done things he normally wouldn’t already. And now he has shown us his highest card: Beelzebub. And we drove him away.”
His look of satisfaction chases the itch away. “True,” I agree, dropping my arms. “But we haven’t beaten him.”
“Not yet, but we will.”
I look past him at the still figure lying on the bed and sigh. “I hope you’re right.”
Charlie touches my arm. “What do you want to do now?”
I throw up my hands. “Find a way to defeat Beelzebub, of course.”
“Yes, but how? It’s not as if he comes with a manual, you know.”
“Maybe there’s something about him in the books we took from Shelton Banks’ library,” Gisella suggests.
I nod, walk over to the bed to give Vicky a kiss and to whisper ‘keep fighting’ into her ear, and leave the room. With an empty feeling inside, but all the exhaustion vanished, I walk down the stairs and into the kitchen. It’s not until the others are all sitting in their usual spots around the table that I realize we don’t have the books. Mona put them away.
“We should find a better place to hide the books,” I say. “A place where all of us can get to them. In case we get separated or…” I’m afraid to finish that sentence, so I don’t. “Which reminds me, did anyone put away the Bell of Izme? And where is Maël? And is the porthole properly closed?”
“Don’t worry, we took care of the bell and the porthole, and Maël is resting in her room,” Charlie answers.
“Good.”
A tense silence follows in which we’re all absorbed by our thoughts, judging by the pensive expressions all around.
After several minutes, I hear movement upstairs. I rise from my chair, but D’Maeo holds up his hand. “There’s nothing you can do, Dante. Let them work in peace.”
Reluctantly, I drop back onto my seat. It seems to take forever, but eventually Mona appears, surrounded by sparks.
I jump to my feet again. “How is she? Did she wake up?”
Mona gives me the calm smile that normally comforts me but gets on my nerves now. “Mrs. Delaney needs some time. Try not to worry too much, she was looking much better already.” She walks over to D’Maeo and sits down on his lap.
“Can you get Shelton Banks’ books for us?” I ask her.
The fairy godmother keeps smiling. I feel like punching her until her lips curl down, but I know she means well, and I’m not actually angry at her, just at the whole situation.
Mona reaches into the air and pulls the books out one by one, placing them on the table.
I rise to my feet, pick up the two books that are still written in gibberish and take them to the annex. Gisella follows without a word with Kessley on her heels. The blonde ghost blushes when I raise my eyebrow at her. “I thought maybe you could use some help, since Vicky normally…” Her gaze drifts down, and she bites her lip.
Warmth floods through me. “That’s really sweet of you, Kess. I don’t think Gisella needs any help, but it can’t hurt for us to stay close, in case something goes wrong.”
She nods eagerly, and I feel a bit better now that I can focus on Gisella’s moves. Without trouble, she lifts the protection from the first book. I let her hand it to Kessley when she’s done, and she flips through it eagerly and looks up with a wide smile. “It worked. I can read everything.”
“Great, take it to the others, please,” I instruct her.
Gisella places the second book on the floor in front of her and repeats her moves. The shadows crawl into the pages, and once again, a shroud is lifted when she raises her hand slowly. But when the werecat-witch lifts her hands higher, the shroud doesn’t obey. It drops back into the book, and no matter how frantically Gisella moves her hands, nothing happens anymore.
Kessley walks back into the annex and watches Gisella’s attempts for a while.
Finally, the werecat steps back and shakes her hands.
“Maybe there’s an extra layer of protection on this book,” Kess suggests.
I hold back a sigh. “There must be. But how do we lift it?”
“Try a spell?”
I shake my head. “I’d rather not do spells on anything we took from Shelton Banks anymore. If he protected this book the same way he did those crows, I would only make it worse. I think what we need is more evil power.”
Gisella cracks her neck. “Don’t worry, I’ve got more inside me.”
Kessley bites her nails. “If you use more, wouldn’t that be dangerous? What if your dark powers take over?”
“They won’t,” she answers, but I can hear the hesitation in her voice.
I turn on my heels and make for the kitchen. “Wait here a moment, don’t do anything yet.”
As soon as Mona looks up, I beckon her. “Can I borrow you for a minute?”
She tries to hide her worries while she walks up to me. “Sure, what do you need?”
I explain the problem to her, and she frowns. “Using more dark powers doesn’t sound like a very good idea to me.”
I throw up my hands in despair. “I know, but what other choice do we have?”
“Okay, you’re right. Maël has some dark powers inside her. Maybe she can help. Then we can at least spread the risk; not burden one person with all the evil we need.”
“Yes, but we decided not to use that power. We don’t want the Devil and his accomplices to know what she can do.”
Mona smiles at me. “There’s no need to worry about that as long as we’re in here. Evil cannot find us here, remember?”
That brightens my mood. “I hadn’t thought of that. I guess it’s okay to ask Maël for help then.”
The African queen appears beside me so suddenly I jump back. “Did I hear my name?”
She’s standing up straight and proud again, as if nothing happened. I search her face for traces of pain or fatigue. “Yes, we were talking about you, but if you n
eed more rest─”
“I am fine,” she interrupts.
“In that case, maybe you can help Gisella lift the protection from the book.” I gesture at the werecat watching us from the annex and repeat Mona’s explanation.
“I will see what I can do.”
Gisella explains what happened and asks Maël if it is possible to put some of the evil from the remnants of the black tree inside her into her time bending powers.
“I can try,” Maël answers.
She takes her place on the other side of the book and pulls out her staff.
“Please be careful,” I warn them. “Stop immediately if you feel like the dark is taking over.”
“Of course,” they say in unison.
I glance at Mona standing beside me. “If anything goes wrong, can you heal them?”
A frown appears between her eyes. “I’m not sure.”
I bite my lip. Maybe this is a bad idea. Is that book really worth the risk of losing two of our friends to the dark side? Sure, Kasinda’s dragon egg should keep Gisella on our side, but dark forces can be tricky. And Maël has just recovered from a tough battle.
“Wait!”
All heads turn to me.
“It’s too dangerous. We’ll think of another way to read this book, and if we can’t, we can always try this, but we’ll need to find a way to protect you both before we do.”
“We’ll be fine!” Gisella’s voice rises as she continues. “I don’t need your protection, Dante, even though I know you mean well. I can handle this.”
For a moment, I believe her, but then I see a flicker of red in her irises.
CHAPTER 32
Mona sees it too. She raises her arm and sends a small cloud of sparks her way. Gisella wards them off with a flick of her wrist that calls more shadows to her, forming a wall the sparks can’t get through. “Don’t do that.” Each word comes out as a low threat.
There’s movement behind me, and I quickly step aside as Charlie rushes past me. He veers around the wall of shadows that tries to block his way and takes Gisella’s hand. “Gis, listen to me. This isn’t you. You are brave and kind, you know. You would never use your powers against our friends.”
The Seventh Crow Page 20