by Jen Pretty
“You taste like bacon,” he said with a laugh.
“I found a McDonald's!”
He chuckled and picked up his bag. “You two have a good road trip?”
“Yeah, we can talk about it somewhere else though. I have a few things you should know.”
Vincent took my hand, but before I turned around, I saw freaking Alex standing at the luggage carousel.
“What is Alex doing here?” I said loud enough for most of the airport to hear me.
Alex spun around to look at me.
“He has to be here, Lark.”
“That’s crap. He should be hiding under a rock somewhere. We can’t trust him,” I glared at the vampire and then turned my back on him.
“I’m sorry, I feel like he needs to be here,” Vincent said in a low tone. The apology wasn’t entirely sincere. His eyes flashed blue for a moment, and it reminded me that he had a God riding him like I had Durga. Freaking Gods always had weird plans.
“Fine, but I will not trust him to have my back,” I said.
“OK,” Vincent said, kissing my forehead.
“Can we go kick ass now?” Peri asked, her hands on her hips and toe-tapping.
“Keep your panties on,” I said. A dozen of Nara’s guards had flow in with Vincent. They were a wall of muscle, each carrying a duffel bag. Vincent stopped at the rental car desk and picked up three sets of keys, handing them out to the guards.
“Can I ride with you?” He asked before he handed off the last set.
“My car is kind of full.”
“Has Singh been a lion this whole time?” he asked.
“Yes, but I also picked up a hitchhiker.” I thought about it for a moment. “I guess that's not funny. I found Ninel locked up in a shed, drained and beaten.”
“I will ride with the crew,” Peri said, cutting in and stealing the keys out of Vincent's hand. “You two can catch up on the drive to the caves.” Her eyebrows waggled suggestively. Weirdo.
“Problem solved. I want to talk to you about something else that happened,” I said, turning for the doors.
Once we were outside, Vincent took my hand and walked with me to the car parked at the back of the lot. The sun had moved, but it was still mostly in the shade. I got in the driver's seat and started the engine and the air conditioning. Singh was panting. His pink bristly tongue was curled and sticking out of his open mouth. He narrowed his eyes at me.
“You could have opened the door if you had turned back into a person for half a second,” I reminded him.
Vincent slid into the passenger side and turned to look at the vampire and lion in the back seat. “Shit,” he muttered. “I can’t believe that's Ninel.”
“I didn’t recognize him at first. Mahishasura’s gang of fallen vampires took a round or two out of him.”
“My Goddess has already healed me a bit,” he said, his mouth still empty of fangs. I wasn’t sure that Durga had done anything. He didn’t look better.
“You rest, Ninel. When this is over, we can get you more blood and back on your feet.”
Ninel nodded and then tipped his head back like it was too heavy.
“There is something else,” I said when Vincent turned back around.
“What is it?”
“I met a woman at a rest stop. She said a witch sent her to meet me. I’m not sure if it's the same witch as Alex, but how many witches are likely to do that? The woman said to give the king of thunder the lightning.”
“What does that mean?” Vincent asked.
I opened my mouth to reply, But Durga rose suddenly and took over. My vision turned red, and Vincent's eyes changed from normal to purple. I was not going to get used to that.
“Indra, it is good to see you again,” Durga said.
“Goddess, I have been busy, but now I have come to assist you in this final leg of your battle.”
“Very well. Let us get to work then.”
Indra nodded, and Durga receded, leaving me staring into the blue eyes of a God.
“I have made a few minor adjustments to your mate.”
“What kind of adjustments.”
The God who was using Vincent's body smiled. “A king must have an heir,” he said before Vincent’s eyes faded back to normal and we sat staring at each other for a long second.
“Uhm,” I said.
“That was strange.”
“OK, let's go then, shall we?” I asked, dropping the whole topic but starting a little argument with myself in my mind. If he meant I would have my baby, my Elliot, I was going to happy dance, but I didn't want to get my hopes up. Gods were annoyingly vague and tricky bastards. Shiva was proof of that. I couldn’t imagine what else he could mean, but I put the car in reverse and pulled out of the parking space.
I didn’t have space in my mind for anything except the upcoming fight with the monster. He had to die.
Vincent hit a few buttons on the radio and found not only an English station but the one from back home. It was so weird to hear the same DJ’s I always listened to coming through the speakers in this foreign land. It made me even more homesick.
We made a quick stop at a motel, got a key and tucked Ninel into a bed to rest. Then I used my superior driving skills to get us out of the city at breakneck speeds.
We pulled up to the partially filled parking lot at the Ellora Caves and met up with the rest of the guys. They were all lined up like solider.
“Be cool, guys,” I said. Peri repeated something in Marwari, and the men fell out of formation and took on a relaxed stance that worked. I mean, they didn't look like tourists, but they didn't look like an elite paramilitary squad. It was a good effort.
“Ok, we'll take a tour, but we will have to come back at nightfall. Most of the caves are off limits,” I said.
Peri translated, and we were on our way. The first cave, right by the parking area, was a tall pillared building carved out of rock. The voices of all the visitors echoed through the high-ceilinged space. We walked up the steps and past a pair of what looked like walruses carved meticulously. As we got into this first cave, it got darker until we came out to a balcony that looked out over the rest of the caves. There were dozens, maybe hundreds here. Sculptures graced all the walls, some Gods I recognized and others Durga used my mouth to name out loud. The amazing work and the effort made to construct these caves was phenomenal. It wasn’t a structure made of stone; it was a single stone chiselled into a temple. Earth still lay upon the top and as I looked out over the caves at a different site. You could see how the stone was once whole until generations of people worked to change them.
Durga pulled me away from this place. Mahishasura wasn’t in these busy open caves. He was in another system altogether. Back out at the parking lot, there was a walkway from one set of caves to another, but it had eroded with time, and the guards blocked it off. A natural spring created a waterfall from the top of the cliff down to the ravine below, the spray creating a rainbow. It was almost magical. Durga pushed at me, and I turned back to the team. “We will have to drive around to the other side,” I said.
This area was just as busy, and Durga was getting impatient. She would have to wait till nightfall. People and security guards filled the place. If we broke down a gate, someone would notice.
The second set of caves had carvings three stories high — gods made of stone to guard these holy places. We passed a security guard, and I made a note of the simple padlock that hung from the open wooden door of this cave. We passed through the building and into a courtyard of stone. A giant monument stood in the center on a raised platform, guarded by a stone elephant. His trunk had fallen off, but the rest of him remained. Beyond the elephant was a giant temple of stone.
“They carved this from a single rock. It’s Shiva’s temple,” Peri explained.
“How do you know?” I asked, looking up at the three stories tall building.
Peri held up her cell phone with a website open. Oh.
Durga wanted to rush me, but
I had to see it. I had been in Shiva’s temple so many times, could this be the place I had visited?
Dozens of stone elephants stood to watch all around the base of the temple, their intricate faces crumbling, but still recognizable.
I followed a group of people and made my way inside the temple. It was beautiful and ornate, but nothing like Shiva’s simple home. This had vaulted ceilings, decorative carvings, plus it was dark. I walked back out again, feeling disappointed. I wasn’t sure why; it seemed a silly thing to get excited about, but I had been in a strange mood for days.
Vincent slung his arm over my shoulders, and we moved on.
The sheer volume of people visiting the caves was staggering. Every site and every cave was full of people. Peri pulled up more info on her phone and found a video of a guy who was explaining his theory of how they cut the stone. He believed it was aliens that carved the temples and caves in Ellora. He was convincing.
I tuned out the video and kept looking around. We had found a cave that was pretty much unoccupied by tourists, and I felt closer to the evil here. I sat on the sandy floor and took deep breaths. When my senses flooded out, my stomach sank. There had to be hundreds of vampires underground. The entire area lit up. I found Mahishasura too. He didn’t have the witch to hide him, so he was easy to see. His light was brightest among the vampires in the underground caves. I watched for a while, hoping to see how they got in and out, but they didn’t move around much.
I pulled my senses back in and opened my eyes. The team was all laughing and watching Peri’s cell phone over her shoulder. I stood up and dusted off my pants. As I moved closer to the group, I recognized the story on the video they were watching. It was the story of Durga and Mahishasura told with cartoons for children. I had watched the same video and found it disappointing that the real Mahishasura wasn’t an animated caricature when he appeared in front of me. In fact, there was nothing fun about the real buffalo demon. He was big and hairy and ugly.
“You ready to go, Lark?” Vincent asked over the noise of the chuckling soldiers.
They all straightened out and wiped the laughter from their faces, but Peri kept watching and laughing.
“Yeah, let's go. I have to find the entrance to the underground tunnels,” I said. Then I thought about it and looked at all the guys who had been trailing along with us. “Let's divide into teams of three. Your job is to search every tunnel for any suspected entrance and make a note. Look for book scuffs or recently opened locked doors. Anything that looks like it could lead to an underground area.”
The men quickly dispersed. Peri gave me a wave and wandered off with two guys. That left me alone with Vincent, Singh and friggin Alex.
“Can someone explain why this backstabber is here? He is probably reporting back to Mahishasura everything we are doing.”
“How could I possibly do that, Lark? I told you that you had to be in that cage, but I knew you wouldn’t be there long. Otherwise, everything would have happened differently, and things have to play out as they must. I can’t change the future.”
“How do you know? Maybe you should have killed that bastard. I could be sipping Mai Tai’s on a tropical beach right now instead of digging in the sand looking for a stupid buffalo demon.”
My stomach growled, dissolving the seriousness of my whole rant.
“I saw a food vendor in the parking lot,” Alex said, hooking his thumb over his shoulder.
I scowled at him. “At least you are useful for something,” I grumbled and stomped past the vampire, heading for the cave entrance.
Out at the parking lot, I found a man with a small cart and Vincent paid for a bowl of rice and naan for me. He and I sat in the shade of a small tree while I ate. Alex skulked about looking at the carved rocks that lay on the grass. The stones must have been test pieces or something for the ancient men who built the caves. Not all the temples were Hindu, some were Buddhist temples with other gods carved into the rock, and some were Jain origin. They numbered the caves since there was over 100 of them.
A soft breeze blew across the open area, kicking up sand. I shovelled the last of my spicy rice into my mouth and guzzled a bottle of water. Ready to get back at it.
“Lark, wait a minute,” Vincent said as I went to stand up.
“What is it?”
“I wonder if you aren’t being too harsh to Alex,” he said.
“He locked me in a cage under Moscow.”
“Yes, but he has explained that, and he saved you back in Jaisalmer.”
I sighed. Damn it, why did I always have to be the bigger person? “Fine, I will stop being mean to the little vampire. But if he even hints at being a double-crossing liar again, I will slaughter him.”
“I’ll help,” Vincent said. He leaned in and kissed me, and I forgot all about the weaselly little jerk. Vincent's arms came around me, and he pulled me into his lap, his lips never leaving mine. My empty rice bowl fell in the grass, but I couldn’t care about littering at that moment.
“Thank you, Lark,” Alex said, ruining the moment.
I pulled away from Vincent, collecting my garbage and hoping to my feet.
Time to get back to cave diving.
I sent out my senses and tracked the vampires above ground, ignoring the ones below. When I found a cave they weren’t in, we headed that way. Hopefully, we would have this all checked out by nightfall. I wanted to kick vampire ass tonight.
We spent hours traipsing through sandy caves with intricate carvings of various gods but didn’t find any with possible underground entries. We found many holes in the temple floors that could be for rain run-off; it rained occasionally. More likely, they were ventilation shafts for those underground caves we couldn't find our way to. As we exited the last cave, the sun was hanging low in the sky. Vincent’s phone battery was nearly dead from being used as a flashlight for so long.
“Lark!” I heard a voice call. It echoed so I couldn’t tell where it came from. I scanned the horizon and found someone that might have been Peri waving her arms like an air traffic controller.
We booked it up a path that led to another trail along the ridge of the rock to get to where she was.
“Hey, found something?” I asked as we approached.
“Yup,” she smiled and rubbed her hands together.
We followed her to a cave entrance that was nearly invisible in the rock. A group of giant soldiers mulled about outside. Peri disappeared into the small crevice, so I followed behind her. It narrowed even more as we moved in until it was so tight, I had to turn sideways. I took tiny steps to squeeze through and was struggling to turn my foot when a hand grabbed my arm and yanked me through into an open space. Peri steadied me in the cavern. A few other people were standing holding flashlights.
“Lark,” Vincent called from behind me. “I don’t fit, Alex is coming through, don’t kill him.”
“Fine,” I mumbled. Peri laughed and then yanked the skinny vampire through the gap harder than necessary. Making Alex yelp. Peri was definitely my BFF. She gave me a wicked grin like she could read my mind.
Alex straightened his shirt and dusted off his pants.
“So, this is not a great way to get in here if we can only get half the guys in,” I said getting back to business.
“I agree, strategically it’s bad for us unless we can lure most of the fallen out. That shouldn’t be too difficult, but it would be better if we could sneak in here. I’m not too sure how it will work otherwise,” she said.
The tunnel continued on a downward slope. I blocked everything out and sent out my senses — so many vampires. I wouldn’t even be able to get past them to get to Mahishasura if they all came out at once.
“Ok, let's get out of here and discuss this. I don’t want to alert them to our presence yet. We need a plan,” I said. We all shimmied back through the narrow entrance. When I stumbled out the gap in the rock, Vincent was there to catch me.
The serious look on his face confirmed that he had heard us talking.
We headed back towards the vehicles as the caves were closing soon. Our time was up.
“We need to get in there and get the majority of the fallen out so I can get through to Mahishasura. He is the farthest from that opening. All his little guards are surrounding him.”
“Did someone order magic?” A voice behind me called. I spun around, and tears sprung to my eyes.
“Frankie!”
CHAPTER TEN
I flung myself at Frankie, and he caught me in his arms. “I missed you,” I whispered.
He set me on my feet and smiled down at me. “I missed you too.” His smile morphed to a curious look, but just as it registered, Vincent spoke.
“Thanks for coming, Frankie.” Vincent extended a hand to the warlock, and they shook.
“Holy shit,” Peri mumbled from behind me. I spun around to look at her. “Introduce me.” Her voice was a low whisper her eyes on the hot warlock candy. Frankie was wearing his typical jeans and a tight t-shirt under his coven’s leather jacket and the shit-kicking leather boots on his feet.
“Frankie,” I said interrupting whatever he and Vincent were talking about. “I would like you to meet Peri.” I used my most formal voice to make it official that my new BFF met my oldest BFF.
“Nice to meet you,” Frankie’s brown eyes twinkled as he extended a hand to Peri. She set her fingers in his hand like she was a delicate flower. I almost laughed but managed to bite my lip and control it.
“Let’s get out of here, and we can discuss strategy,” Vincent said, ushering us all towards the vehicles. I led the procession of rental cars back to the city. Vincent used the last of his cell phone battery to call and reserve a few more rooms at the motel where we stashed Ninel. It was like no time had passed at all since I had last seen Frankie, but somehow it wasn’t awkward like I expected it to be. Frankie seemed happy.
Every time I checked the rear-view mirror, he smiled at me from the back seat. I was glad he wasn’t mad or upset, but it was kind of strange. We wove back through the city, and I pulled into the McDonald's drive-through. I didn't care if no one else wanted the greasy fast food. I was, once again, hungry. Everyone ordered food. Even Singh stayed human long enough to get his order in. Then we headed to the motel.