Kylie giggled.
Her friend scowled. “You guys suck.”
Drum flexed his arm, wincing only slightly. “And you, Wynn, dear, are a love. Thank you.” He got to his feet, Ash hovering close, ready to catch him if he so much as swayed. He surprised her by standing with steadiness, his face pale but wearing a mask of resolve. “I’m sorry I ruined our chance at surprising them down below. It’s been too long since the nocturnis went down. By now, they’ll know we’re coming.”
Knox snorted and wiped the blood from the blades of his unusual weapon with a scrap of cloth. “They knew we were coming before we stepped through that crevice. There was no chance at surprise, and so no need for an apology. We were lucky the foes they set upon us were not more difficult to manage. They might as well have guarded this entrance with hhissih and Chihuahuas.”
“Chihuahuas?” Wynn repeated, frowning at her mate.
The large male shuddered. “Yappy beasts. Creatures of Darkness if I ever saw one.”
Dag snickered.
Ash, however, thought about that, her brow furrowing. “Knox is right. Even with summoners standing by to replenish the fallen, there should have been tougher defenses guarding this cavern. If the enemy wishes to keep us up here and away from the hellmouth below, why did they not have a more formidable challenge in place to stop us?”
The group quieted, catching on to the significance of her words. “You think they deliberately made it easy for us?” Kylie asked. “That they want us to get below and take a real shot at them?”
“I think that they want to get us below, and that when we do, they believe we will not have the chance to take a shot at them.”
“An ambush?” Dag mulled over the possibilities. “They have set a trap and expect to catch us in it. This would not be uncharacteristic of the treacherous filth.”
“Have we a new plan, then?” Drum asked, arching an eyebrow. “Or are we looking to get ourselves killed, because I need to be letting you know I’ve not arranged my shifts at the Bones to be covered beyond the weekend.”
“Of course not,” Knox said, swinging his double-bladed staff as casually as flicking a twig at a hedgerow. “Just because the enemy knows we are coming does not mean they are ready to face us.”
Drum glanced down at his arm. “Really? Looked pretty ready to me.”
“You still breathe, do you not, Warden?”
Ash saw the debate end in the rage that sparked in Drum’s eyes an instant later, the same instant that a long, high-pitched scream rent the air around them.
Maeve.
The Order had just reminded them all why they were here and why it mattered not a bit if they stumbled straight into an ambush. Some traps were just worth springing.
Chapter Twenty-six
Drum didn’t remember sprinting toward the open stairwell, but awareness rushed back when a good three hundred pounds of Guardian tackled him a few feet short of it and crushed him against the cavern’s stone floor.
“Stop and think, Warden,” Dag growled into his ear. “We know the enemy means to trap us, but we need not make it easy for them. Take a moment and breathe. You do your sister no good if you get yourself killed before we can rescue her.”
As soon as he could remember his own name instead of just the instant of impact, Drum nodded and sucked in air. Sweet, sweet oxygen. How quickly a body started to miss it.
“I get it,” he gasped. “Sorry.”
“Do not apologize.” The Guardian climbed to his feet and held out a beefy hand. “Think. It will get you further.”
Drum nodded and brushed the worst patches of dirt from the front of his trousers. He cast a surreptitious glance at Ash. She stood with her axe handle braced on the floor, her fingers curving over the top of the haft. She didn’t look at him, probably because she was embarrassed by his stupidity. God knew Drum was.
He cleared his throat. “So, um, I think I asked this before, but what’s the plan, then? We send Kylie bowling again?”
Wynn shook her head. “No trick works as well the second time you play it. The fact is, we know where they are, and they know where we are. Our best bet is just to close the distance in the fastest, cleanest way we can manage, and then let the chips fall where they may.”
“The Church says gambling is a sin,” Drum muttered. “Of course, so is Demon worship, so…”
“So, let’s start with a roll of the dice.” The witch flashed him a grin, then turned to her mate. “Fast is where you guys come in. The stairs make us into sitting ducks if we go down that way. How do the Guardians feel about playing parachutes?”
Knox bared his teeth in an answering smile. “Perfect.”
At a nod from him, the Guardians shifted to stand behind their Wardens. Drum felt Ash wrap her arms around his waist then kick off from the ground like a diver from a springboard. Up they rose into the air above the stairwell opening, then they dove into the lower cavern in what felt to him unnervingly like a death spiral. He gritted his teeth to keep from screaming.
Someone else did it for him.
The stranger, though, didn’t scream in fear, but in rage. It echoed around the brightly lit cave, bouncing off the hard stone ceiling and pinging off the walls like a squash ball. Oddly, someone wasn’t happy to see them.
Ash landed and immediately stepped away from him to give herself room to maneuver. He assumed the other pairs did something similar, but he was too busy looking around him to check. A man didn’t get to see the inside of hell every day, after all. At least, not if he was lucky.
Torches illuminated the egg-shaped chamber, attached to the walls in heavy, iron sconces. At first his gaze skipped over them, but something about the flickering flames made him look again. The fire wasn’t natural. It might have the right color, dance and sway in the right manner, but it burned too brightly and produced no smoke. If it had, the room would have been filled with it and so would the chamber above. The nocturnis had to be using magic, but from what Wynn and Kylie had taught him, maintaining that many lights with magical energy could sap the strength of a practitioner in mere minutes, yet none of the robed figures in the chamber looked the least bit fatigued. This did not bode well.
The cave appeared smaller than the upper chamber, but despite the brighter illumination, thick shadows seemed to lurk at either end of the oblong space. Nerves and recent events had him peering intently into the darkness, trying to discern whether any sets of glowing-ember eyes gazed back. Not at the moment, anyway.
Drum tried to orient himself to the cavern entrance and the landscape above them, but all he could tell was that the length of the chamber stretched on a roughly east-west axis with the darkest corner pointing somewhere in the vicinity of Fionn mac Cumhaill’s field. He reflected briefly that the big, bad-tempered bull would have made a bloody brilliant distraction at the moment if he’d been present. Too bad this lot hadn’t decided to hold their Convention of Evil outside in the fresh air. Might have done them some good.
The cave held seven of the cultists, and when Drum counted off the final digit inside his head, an icy tingle darted down his spine. Try to tell him the number wasn’t significant. Go ahead. He dared you.
They stood around a flat-topped boulder, behind which a slice of air seemed to shimmer in the light of the torches that outlined it. The shape was clearly meant to suggest an arched doorway, and it didn’t take a genius to guess where it led. This was the hellmouth the Order intended to open.
On top of the boulder, less than five feet from the doorway, his sister reclined, bound hand and foot like a lamb for slaughter. She wore a familiar pair of men’s-style flannel pajamas, though they looked dirty, torn, and badly rumpled. Her feet were bare and equally smudged with dirt, though Drum clenched his fists when he spotted some dark smudges on the soles that looked like blood, both dried and fresh. It took all of his control not to charge into the crowd of evil fuckers and snatch his sister away before they could so much as blink.
Well, all his control, pl
us a mental reminder that it likely wouldn’t go quite that way. The cultists would fall on him like a pack of wild hyenas and tear him and his sister to pieces before the Guardians could even twitch. That did nothing to temper the urge, but it did keep his feet on the ground. Barely.
“Ah, our guests have arrived,” purred a silky-smooth voice coming from the hooded figure at the far side of the makeshift altar stone. He sounded like a politician, all kind words and unkind intentions. “So glad you could join us, my friends. I have missed you these last few months, and I so feared you wouldn’t be able to make our little gathering tonight.”
The figure reached up a pale, thin hand and pushed the robe back to reveal the face of a handsome human man somewhere in his fifties. To Drum, he looked vaguely familiar, but nearby he heard Kylie and Wynn cursing in at least three languages. He didn’t understand most of it, but two words definitely caught his attention.
“The Hierophant.”
He heard Ash moving behind him, then her voice drifted forward in a low snarl. “Not anymore. The skin he wears might belong to the one who led the Order to free him, but nothing remains of human essence inside of it now. That is the Corruptor. Nazgahchuhl in human’s clothing.”
The figure’s eyes flicked over them, and that was when Drum first noticed. He should never have mistaken this thing for human. It had eyes like a snake, no white visible, flat and iridescent, with a vertical slit for a pupil. Dark copper, the color reminded him of old, dried blood, and they stared with the cold, unblinking regard of a reptile.
What Drum wouldn’t give to lay a little Rikki-tikki-tavi action on his ass.
Then something odd happened. The Demon swept its gaze to Ash, and what looked like a second eyelid blinked rapidly across its pupil. A forked tongue darted from between its lips, and it hissed, sounding almost nervous. “What is this thing that pretends to stand with the doomed warriors against us?”
The Guardian stepped forward, her axe held in two hands, one gripping the middle of the shaft, the other just below the double-bladed head. “I am a Guardian, foul beast, and the only doom you foresee is your own.”
“Kill them!” the demon screeched, raising a hand with a black, glinting knife above the altar, and everything in the universe happened at once.
The figures in hoods sprang forward. Two immediately raised their hands to the roof of the cavern and set the earth to shaking. The rock groaned in protest before a crack sounded, like thunder directly overhead, and dust and debris hit the floor of the upper chamber, sending stray rocks bouncing down the stairs. The cultists must have used magic to seal off the exit from the upper chamber. They were all trapped in the same space, six murderous, black-magic-wielding cultists, three Guardians, three Wardens (one of whom only had one arm to work with), one battered human woman, and one of the most powerful Demons ever created, who currently looked like the star of a men’s hair-coloring commercial.
Now they were suckin’ diesel.
Drum held up a hand to deflect a blast of magic one of the remaining nocturnis sent his way. The bastard probably expected him to back off, or at least dig his heels in at his current position and start exchanging spell for spell in a useless waste of magic and energy. But Drum had other ideas. Instead of the obvious choices, he put his shoulders down and rushed the enemy like a Gaelic footballer looking to make the tackle.
The sorcerer was ready for him, raising his hands to hold a shield before him, but Drum was ready for him to be ready. So to speak. Instead of hitting the man or his shield, Drum swerved aside at the last minute and threw himself in between the altar and the Demon. He knew in his gut the act might spell his death, but it might also save his sister, and that was the only thing that mattered.
He felt the knife pierce his shoulder through the back and the Demon brought it down with a scream. Drum gave a pretty good cry of his own, because fuck, that hurt, but he continued his momentum, hoping to knock the monster to the floor. All did not go as planned.
The Demon stayed put, absorbing the force of the hit and deflecting it to send Drum hurtling into the stone wall behind him. Only decent reflexes and the few games of caid under his belt allowed him to change his orientation and spread the blow over the surface area of his entire back. If he hadn’t, he almost certainly would have broken a number of bones. As it was, he just had the opportunity to wonder if that could really have hurt any worse. He honestly wasn’t sure.
Luckily, he had prevented the knife from striking at his sister again by the genius move of keeping it buried in his shoulder, and it bit deeper when he hit the wall. The enemy never expected that kind of long-term strategic thinking. Ha!
And also, ow.
“Ow” turned into an embarrassingly high-pitched scream when he reached back and yanked the blade free. It probably wasn’t the brightest thing he could have done, first because he could very well have done more damage to himself taking the knife out than the Demon had done to him sticking it in. Still, the idea of walking around a battlefield with a weapon sticking out of his back like a handle or an invitation just didn’t sit right.
The second reason he should have left the bloody thing alone was because the pain nearly made him pass out, and it did make him vomit. He just leaned over to the side, opened his mouth, and gawked.
As he waited for the pain-induced stars to stop floating before his eyes, Drum could hear the sounds of battle raging anew all around him. Steel clanged against steel and rock, energy sizzled, and voices shouted to be heard above the din. The sound that mattered to him the most, however, was that of a Demon howling its rage as its prey escaped.
He blinked his eyes clear just in time to see Ash snatch Maeve up in her raptorlike talons, lifting her from the altar and swooping over the heads of the nocturnis to deposit her well away from the fighting. Relief almost brought him to his knees. If it had, he never would have gotten up.
Nazgahchuhl turned on him, eyes glittering with the heat of rage, and raised a hand. A bolt of lightning as black as peat sparked through the air toward him, casting shadow around it the way actual lightning illuminated the surrounding area. Drum sprang to the side, avoiding the hit, but catching the flak from a spray of rock that burst from the wall of the cave and spread out like shrapnel from a pipe bomb. He felt shards slice through his skin and lifted a hand to wipe the sweat from his eyes. His fingers came away red. Blood.
The Demon focused on him, forked tongue flicking out to scent the air. He knew he was hurt, knew he bled from a whole bunch of places at this point, and the monster with the human face was beginning to look at him in the same way a ten-foot boa constrictor looked at a juicy rabbit. Flattered, he was not.
Unfortunately, what he was, was cornered.
Nazgahchuhl gave a serpentine smile and began to stalk forward, obviously taking its time. Since Drum had nowhere to go the only reason for such behavior was to provoke fear. It wanted him to be terrified, for reasons Drum couldn’t quite grasp. He’d read somewhere that when a prey animal died in fear, the adrenaline pumping through its blood gave the meat a bitter flavor. Humans preferred to avoid it, but evil snake-Demons might well consider it a delicacy. No accounting for taste, was there? Though he’d much prefer not to be on the menu.
He racked his brain for a way to escape. He didn’t need to take the Corruptor in a fight, he just needed to survive long enough for the Guardians to break through the surrounding nocturnis and ride to his rescue. Or fly to his rescue. He didn’t plan to quibble over details.
Everyone had warned him not to bother using magic against one of the Seven. It would be useless, they assured him, and likely only focus the Evil One’s attention in his direction. Given his present circumstances, it looked like Drum no longer had anything to lose.
Still, he wasn’t stupid, and his goal was not to piss off something that already planned to rip out his heart and bathe in his blood, so he refrained from attacking the monster directly. Instead, he cupped his free hand in front of him, calling up a ball of pure, wh
ite-gold light, and threw it straight up into the air between them with a little twist Kylie had showed him—a time delay. A single second ticked by, not enough time to hit the Demon with something more powerful, and not enough time for his opponent to guess his intention, but just enough for Drum to turn his back and close his eyes.
The sphere of light bobbed in the air for a moment, then detonated like a pyrotechnic device, doing nothing but making a loud noise and exploding in a burst of bright light. Blinding light. Drum had protected himself from the blast, but the Demon failed to react in time, and it shrieked with disoriented hatred.
Not waiting around for a more up-close-and-personal reaction from the fiend, he sprinted away from the altar area and toward his sister. On the way, the glare from his trick cast a revealing light on the end of the cave that had previously been shrouded in darkness. The end closest to Billy Evers’s property. The end that appeared to lead to a narrow passageway cut through the surrounding rock and soil.
No wonder the nocturnis had left this area in shadow. They had sealed off the main entrance and exit to these caverns, but another possible escape path lurked here at the far end of the cave. And now the good guys knew about it.
Instantly, Drum made his move. Pouring on a burst of speed, he raced to Maeve’s side and yanked his sister unceremoniously to her feet. “Come on!” he urged in a low, insistent tone. “Through here. Go! The tunnel has to lead somewhere, or the fuckers wouldn’t have tried to hide it. Get out if you can. If you run into something unexpected, turn around and get your arse back here double-quick. Understand?”
“Ye-yes,” Maeve stuttered, shivering from what was likely shock. It was warm down here next to the hellmouth, after all.
Drum didn’t hesitate. He shoved his sister into the darkness and sped back into the center of the cavern, hoping no one had noticed his detour.
Still clutching the dagger, he cast his gaze around the room and felt a new surge of adrenaline. One nocturni lay dead on the floor a few feet away from his head, and another crouched behind a couple of small boulders. He seemed cornered by Kylie’s relentless blasts of magic, which somehow managed to make it out through her second, smaller firewall while nothing the sorcerer threw at her could penetrate the shield.
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