“Want the pure soul,” the pishacha said.
“Take me instead,” Sera said. “Whoever your lord is will be happy to have me. I am the avatar of the goddess Lakshmi. I am more powerful than this boy.”
The pishacha cocked its head to one side, considering her proposal. “The girl offers nothing of value to my lord.”
“Who is your lord?” Kyle asked from behind her.
“The true lord of Xibalba.” The pishacha smiled and bared row after row of needle-sharp teeth.
“Ra’al?”
“Yes and no.” A hissing sound that passed for a laugh gurgled past its lips. “Lord Ra’al is part of the whole.”
More sounds came from the pishacha’s mouth, ones that made her stomach clench. She recognized the rhythmic chanting. The rakshasa sounded like it was summoning a portal—and it planned to take Nate with it. The only demon she’d ever seen open a portal had been an ancient churel, but that didn’t mean this one could not. Sera readied her body for attack—she’d sacrifice herself if she had to for her brother’s sake—but just as she was gathering her power to hurl it at the creature, a loud crack rang through the air.
The pishacha howled, stumbling backward with a smoking hole right between its eyes, and released its grip on Nate. Not to lose a second, Sera dashed forward to rip him out of the creature’s reach before turning to face their rescuer.
Her mouth fell open in shock.
“Jem!” she gasped as he re-chambered a smoldering shotgun. “What are you doing here?”
He smirked at her and lounged on the doorjamb. “Killing a demon?”
“Wait, what?”
He patted the holster as they all gaped at him. “Special Ne’feri tulsi rounds. You know . . . holy basil? Designed to stop any demon in its tracks.”
XIBALBA CLAIMS ITS OWN
“You’re Ne’feri?” Sera’s voice was shrill.
Kyle rolled his eyes. Of course he was—he’d pegged Jem for a bit of a control freak. It made sense. In fact, he probably should have guessed.
Jem hesitated. “Well, not on this side of the pond.”
“And you didn’t tell me?” Sera shrieked.
He shrugged. “My dad thought it would be best for me to keep a low profile.”
Darika’s expression was inscrutable as she bent to awaken the rest of the unconscious teenage hosts and usher them back toward their classrooms. Kyle stooped to check on Nate for injuries as Sera stalked toward Jem.
“You okay, little man?” he asked Nate.
“Are you kidding? That was freaking awesome!” Nate’s eyes shone as he turned to stare at the unmoving mass of the pishacha demon. “Is it dead?”
“Looks like it. I don’t know about awesome, though,” Kyle said, ruffling Nate’s curls. “Got pretty hairy there for a minute. You could have been a demon buffet.”
“I know, right?” Nate exclaimed with a delighted grin. “Seriously, did you see that thing? It smelled like an old fart. Do you guys fight rakshasas like that all the time?”
“Slow your roll, dude,” Kyle said, unable to suppress his smile as Sera shot them a glare over her shoulder. “And keep it down, or you’ll get us both into trouble.”
Nate peeked around him. “Guess Jem’s in for it, huh?”
“Your sister’s not a fan of secrets. Come on, let’s get you out of here before you’re reported missing from school.”
He approached Sera with Nate in tow and cleared his throat. Sera still looked frazzled. Kyle nodded to Jem. “Lucky timing,” he said. “And even luckier shot.”
“Thanks, man, but no luck about it.”
Kyle supposed he should be grateful that Jem had shown up when he did, but he didn’t feel anything but unease. Knowing Jem was Ne’feri didn’t mean he was ready to let his guard down. It was going to take a lot more than being in the right place at the right time for Kyle to trust him.
Sera shot him an urgent look, her concerned gaze running over her brother for any other injuries. “Kyle, we need to get Nate out of here. More of those things could come back.”
“What about the pishacha?” he asked.
Nate huffed aloud. “You mean the demon that was there a minute ago?”
They turned to the spot where the demon had been laying. There was nothing there now but a glowing circle with red and black ashy embers marring the floor.
Kyle hissed his frustration through his teeth. “Damn it,” he swore under his breath, stalking toward the sizzling sphere. The smell of sulfur scalded his nostrils. Kyle sighed as Sera joined him.
There was only one option. And Sera wasn’t going to like it.
He swallowed hard, squaring his shoulders. “I’m going in after it.”
To his shock, Sera nodded grimly. “I’m coming with you.”
“No, it’s too dangerous.”
She eyed him, one fingertip rising to brush his previously injured cheek. “That’s exactly why you’re not going alone. Plus, it’s not safe doing it so soon after your last visit. You got this and you threw up, remember? You could be vulnerable.”
She was right, of course. He still felt somewhat nauseated. “That was different. Lamasha got a hold of the deifyre that was on my skin. I’m fine now. I can handle it.”
Sera nodded. “What about Nate?”
“I can take him—” Jem volunteered.
“I’ll see that he gets back,” Darika cut him off as she returned from getting the students back to class.
Kyle could have sworn he saw a shadow of annoyance cross Jem’s face, but it disappeared as quickly as it had come. Kyle met Darika’s stare as she swept past him and stopped her with a touch of his fingers against her wrist. “No more farewell kisses?” he teased in a low voice.
“That didn’t go so well the last time,” she said, her eyes flicking to his bruised face, where she’d kissed him before. “Come back in one piece and we can talk about it.”
He grinned. “Now, that’s worth staying alive for.”
Sera shot him a half-amused look as Darika and Jem left with Nate. “You’re playing with fire.”
“How so?” he asked, all innocence.
“They’re sisters, Kyle,” she said in an exasperated tone. “Goddess sisters with infinite power at their fingertips. And in case you haven’t noticed, Kira is a little unhinged.”
“I can handle Kira.”
“Can you?”
He scowled at her, irritated by her censorious stare and determined to ignore the uneasy feeling her words elicited in the pit of his stomach. “Honestly, how is my love life any of your business? Did I interfere in yours?”
“You kind of did,” she said evenly. “And it does become my business if your actions put innocent people in jeopardy.”
“I’m not putting anyone in jeopardy,” he said incredulously.
“Ever heard the saying ‘hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’? That doesn’t come close to covering the storm heading your way. I have a feeling that Kira won’t be forgiving if she finds out some clueless boy has been leading her on.”
“I’m not leading her on.” He paused, running a hand through his short, tufted curls. Sera was his best friend, and though her unsolicited honesty annoyed him, she was one of the few people he trusted. “Kira scares me a little, and Darika can be hard to read,” he ventured. “But they’re both interesting.”
She sent him a withering look and rolled her eyes.
“What?” he asked.
“Boys,” she scoffed. “It’s such a double standard, isn’t it? A girl gets caught between two guys, and it’s a love triangle. A boy does it, and suddenly, it’s options. Where’s the fairness in that?”
“Um . . .” His mouth opened and closed. She had a point. He could make a quip that at least it wasn’t a quadrangle, but she probably wouldn’t appreciate it.
“You need to make a decision, before someone gets hurt.” She chucked him in the shoulder. “I’d like to avoid a whole different kind of apocalypse on the heels of this one if I can help it.
Demon Lords I can stop, but twin Tridevi goddesses are another matter entirely.”
He gulped. “Don’t worry, I will.”
Sera knelt at the edge of the still smoldering gateway. “Now, what’s the plan with this portal?”
Grateful to no longer be discussing relationship shapes, Kyle drew a deep breath. “We find the pishacha and haul it back.” He met her eyes, then looked at her right hand, the one marked by the rune of Xibalba. “I have Mordas, but you’re going to have to call on your hellfyre down there. You cool with that?”
Her lips tightened, but she nodded. “I’ll have to be.”
Kyle knew that she didn’t like using the dark side of her powers, or the fact that her deifyre didn’t work in Xibalba. The last time they’d been there together, it had been eye-opening for both of them. He didn’t want to think about what this excursion would bring.
“You ready?”
“Oh, crap,” Sera murmured, her face going pale as her gaze hitched on something behind him.
Kyle bristled and turned, wondering what fresh hell they were about to face, but his stomach dropped at the sight that greeted him: Mara had returned, and she wasn’t alone. She’d brought Sophia with her.
At the best of times Sera’s mother terrified him, and right now, her expression was pure wrath. Her lips were pulled so flat that her mouth was just an angry slash in her face. She surveyed the wrecked basement room.
“Where’s Nate?” she demanded.
Sera stiffened like a deer in headlights, so Kyle tried to answer. “Nate . . . um . . . he was here. But he’s not anymore.”
“When?” she snapped.
“About five minutes. Darika took him home.”
“He came here on his own, I sw—” Sera’s words were cut short by her mom’s glower. “Tracked me somehow. I’m sorry, Mom, I tried to send him back, but then the pishacha appeared and nearly took him—” She broke off abruptly as her mother’s scowl went supernova. “He’s safe, don’t worry. Like Kyle said, he’s with Darika.”
“Thank the gods,” she said in a strangled voice, though Kyle could see the strain start to leave her shoulders. “Were you hurt, Sera?”
“I’m fine, Mom.”
To Kyle’s shock, Sophia gentled her gaze before turning to him. “Thank you for looking out for Nate, and for her.”
Taken aback, he stammered his response. “I didn’t do much, but you’re welcome.”
Sophia nodded to Mara, who was standing watch at the entrance. Kyle met the Yoddha’s eyes too, and he felt her sorrow from where she stood. She would have sensed it the instant that Ilani had died. And though death was a heroic end for any celestial warrior, that didn’t mean that those left behind wouldn’t miss them.
“Are you two coming?” Sophia said over her shoulder.
Sera bit her lip, avoiding her mother’s eyes, and Sophia halted mid-step. Kyle watched the wheels in her head turning as she belatedly put two and two together, her eyes falling to the portal glowing faintly beside them. Her lips pressed thin. “Don’t tell me you’re planning to—” She broke off, her ferocious glower returning in full force. “No, I forbid it.”
“We have to go after the rakshasa, Mom,” Sera began. “It’s our only chance.”
“No.”
“This demon was a pishacha,” Sera said. “It was old and powerful. It said things about the new lord of Xibalba, and Ra’al’s time being over. This is the demon we need—the one that can tell us who’s really in charge. What they’re planning.”
“Sera—”
Sera stood to face her mother. “I’m not letting Kyle go in there alone. And I’m the only one who can go with him. We don’t have much time. Either we do this now, or we watch everything and everyone we love die. I can’t let that happen.” Sophia’s glare softened, and Sera pulled her mother into a tight embrace. “We’ll come back, I swear.”
“That’s an impossible promise,” Sophia whispered, her hands shaking at Sera’s back, but Kyle saw the resignation in her expression. She understood that this was the only chance they had.
“Then I promise not to do anything dumb.”
Kyle rolled his eyes and Sophia smiled at him through her tears. “I’ll make sure she doesn’t,” he said. “We’ll be careful, Mrs. Caelum. And if anything goes bad, I’ll portal us out instantly.”
“Take care of her,” Sophia said in a choked voice.
“I always will.”
To his surprise—this day seemed to be full of them—she grabbed him close and hugged him, too. “What’s the matter?” she asked him at his startled chuckle.
“I’m not sure that hell isn’t freezing over right now,” he joked. “Six months ago, you kind of hated me.”
“I didn’t hate you,” she said slowly. “I just questioned your choices.” She gave her daughter a long-suffering look. “But now I’ve come to understand that some of those choices were made by a certain someone else with a very stubborn streak.”
“Told you he wasn’t all bad, Mom.” Sera smirked and looked to Kyle. “You ready for this?”
“Yeah.”
As they approached the portal again, Kyle chanted under his breath, waving his hand above it and re-creating the portal through which the pishacha had vanished. It didn’t take him long—he was becoming more comfortable with his abilities—and soon the portal glowed an unholy color and shimmered to life. Sera squeezed her mother’s fingers one last time and nodded at Kyle.
He reached out his hand to hers and together they stepped into the glowing circle.
The blast of blistering wind was immediate, battering their faces with the force of a tornado. He could feel Sera’s fingers slipping from his, and he tightened his hold. Bits of rock and sand cut into his cheeks, leaving stinging welts in their wake as his body was twisted and flung a thousand different ways. The only thing he could feel was the clammy grip of Sera’s palm.
“Hold on, Sera,” he shouted, but he didn’t know if she could hear him above the diabolic howling of the wind. “Don’t let go.”
But the pull was inescapable. He could feel his fingers losing their grip, could feel hers slackening as a tremendous gust ripped them apart. Her scream came to him like an echo of an echo, and then he was flailing and tumbling into dank, empty space.
Struggling to right himself, Kyle peered through the whirlwind, fighting to see beyond the storm. His eyes teared as grains of sand embedded themselves in the exposed parts of his cornea.
“Sera!” he screamed.
But it was too late. She was gone.
BENEATH THE BOWELS
Sera’s eyelids cracked open to reveal a scorched, orange-hued sky. Her back ached from laying on a hard, unforgiving surface. Sharp rocks cut into her elbows as she levered herself up. The soft sounds of water reached her ears, and for a second, she wondered whether she’d been dreaming, safe in her world between worlds.
A glittering body of water to her right caught her attention, but she suddenly realized that there were no trees, no birds, no sound at all but her heartbeat rushing in her ears. The silence felt alive.
Sera hauled her body upright, taking in her surroundings. She was on a cliff. The land around her was desolate and dusty despite the lake she’d seen. When she looked back at it, her blood curdled. It wasn’t filled with water. No water could look that red or that viscous. She retched, spitting out a mouthful of pink-tinged bile. The hungry earth sucked up the moisture like a sponge, and Sera had the distinct impression that it would consume anything alive. Including her.
She wasn’t safe at all.
She was in Xibalba.
Kyle. He had to be here, too, somewhere. She had no idea which of the Dark Realms’ dimensions she had arrived in. Or whether she was as alone as she seemed to be.
She stood, her bones aching with the effort. Whatever storm they had faced upon entering the portal had left her battered and bruised.
Catching sight of the gaping hole at the bottom of her shirt, she tore off the frayed hem.
She didn’t seem to be hurt in any other way, though she checked herself from top to bottom just in case. In the seventh, she’d once seen souls being devoured by leechlike demons. And she wasn’t entirely sure she wasn’t in Ra’al’s domain. She could be anywhere.
She had to find Kyle. And she had no idea where to start.
“Get off this cliff,” she muttered to herself. “That’s your start.”
Dusting her hands on her jeans, she began the descent from the rocky bluff. After fifteen grueling minutes, she took a break on a ledge. Her breath wheezed from the effort, and her thirst was near unbearable. She had to have made some decent progress, she thought as she shaded her eyes and looked to the rolling landscape below. But the distance to the ground looked exactly the same distance away, and the torn hem of her shirt lay in the dust at her feet. She was right back where she’d started!
She blinked, thirst making her thoughts fuzzy. Had she imagined climbing down?
Eyeballing a ledge about ten feet down, she took a running jump and landed squarely in the middle of it. Her knees screamed from the force of the drop, but she grunted in satisfaction and looked down. The stupid piece of frayed hem was still two feet away. Impossible.
Or maybe it was just Xibalba.
She had one option open to her: hellfyre. But despite what she’d told Kyle, deep down, she was terrified to summon it. Hellfyre was born of Xibalba, after all. However, she’d be stuck here if she didn’t. It was the lesser of the two evils . . . in an inherently evil realm. Sera shuddered. She was damned if she did and damned if she didn’t.
“Screw it,” she said, gasping as she felt the flames envelop her body.
The hellfyre that surrounded her was a deep red, much like the shade of the lake below. The color of blood. She shoved the thought away. Dev had once told her that it was the color of life. Now, it felt like the harbinger of death.
None of that mattered now, though. She had to find Kyle.
And a smelly pishacha demon.
Power suffused her limbs as she leapt from the cliff, her fiery wingspan twice the length of her body. She’d been mistaken—the lake she’d seen was more like an endless ocean. She skimmed the surface of the crimson sea, seeing the churning of bodies trapped beneath its waves to suffer an eternity of torment. Even as she flew above it, she could feel the steam coming off the surface, and every now and again, the same whiff of cooking flesh would reach her nostrils.
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