by Raquel Lyon
“Look,” I said. “I know about as much as you do about what’s going on here, and I don’t appreciate being offered up as bait, but I’ll forgive you if you happen to know a shortcut back to the cabin that’s off the radar of those freaks of nature.” I stood up and flexed my neck.
“Nature had nothing to do with them. They were made by evil.”
“Yeah, and speaking of evils,” I offered my hands out to her, “we still have one to catch, and we’d better get going before it catches us first.” She stared at my beckoning fingers. “Char. If we’re gonna work together, you’re going to have to start trusting me. I did just save your life. How about we try being friends?”
It wasn’t that I was expecting or wanting our partnership to be as it was. But I wasn’t that much of a worm that I would leave her alone in this place with a hangman’s noose threatening to lasso her, and some form of civility amongst the animosity would be preferable to being at odds twenty-four-seven.
She looked up through her lashes. Her eyes were filled with something other than trust, but she took my hands and allowed me to pull her to her feet.
“Good. Now I need to get these cuffs off, and I think we’re in need of that beer. So what do you say we head on back and kick around a few ideas?” I walked over to the opening and tentatively stuck my head through it to check the coast was clear. Surprisingly, it appeared that it was, and I turned to let Charlotte know. She was nowhere to be seen.
For crying out loud.
I looked back to the opening, sorely tempted to leave her to find her own way back to the cabin. She wasn’t helping herself, and it would serve her right if I didn’t play along with her game. But then I glanced over to a small pathway leading away from the doorway and my conscience got the better of me. Women. They were all the same underneath. Always thinking they knew best, and then getting themselves into a buttload of trouble. I ducked under a branch and headed off to find her.
The path wound through dried up, sun-scorched undergrowth, and despite the sun being low in the sky, warm rays beat through my jacket. Sweat beaded on my upper lip as I cursed Charlotte for rushing into things before I’d had the chance to process all the developments and evaluate the situation. She was heading into the unknown, and I cringed as the ground crunched under my boots, probably alerting every demon in the vicinity to our presence.
I began to wonder whether she’d already been whisked away by some big bad when I saw her up ahead, a black patch amongst the hues of ochre. A sense of relief I hadn’t expected took me aback for a second as I caught up to her.
“Where do you think you’re going?” I asked when I got close enough to keep from shouting.
She must have heard me coming before I spoke, as she didn’t jump or turn at the sound of my voice. “I knew you’d follow me,” she said.
“Am I that easy to read? I’ll have to work on that.”
“You’re not as hard-faced as you like to make out.”
“Yeah, that’s me. Big softy inside. Follow you where?”
“Did that bang to the head make you forget?” she said, remaining focused on the way ahead. “I’m looking for my friends.”
“They’re not your friends, Char. Did you forget your basic demon 101? Every demon not affiliated to the Third is a potential enemy.”
“I didn’t forget. I just don’t believe it. I helped them. They owe me.”
“Helped them how?”
“They got into a spot of bother on the other side of the boundary. One was already dead. I helped the others to get away.”
I moved a low-lying branch in danger of snagging her hair to the side, but received no acknowledgement of my courtesy. “I thought you said you hadn’t made a kill yet.”
“I didn’t say that at all. Why do men never listen? What I actually said was that none of the dearly departed on the wall were of my doing.”
She had me there. “Okay, and then what?”
“And then nothing. After the problem was taken care of, they thanked me and brought their dead mate through that door back there.” She still hadn’t looked at me.
“So you didn’t actually talk much at all.”
“I asked them why they’d crossed over and were being attacked.”
“And?”
“They said something about a water source, but they could have been lying.”
“Doesn’t seem like much to go on, to me.”
“It was the way they looked at me… like they knew who I was.”
“Shouldn’t think so. They probably wondered what the fuck a human was doing hanging out in vamp territory. I’m sure it was nothing. Why don’t you do us both a favour and turn around?”
“No. I’ll not rest until I find out what they know.”
Enough was enough. I didn’t have time for wild goose chases. “Then colour me not interested, and good luck.” I turned on my heel, and almost immediately a hand grabbed my shoulder.
“You promised to go wherever I wanted.”
“If you freed me,” I said.
“I did.”
I shook my wrists in Charlotte’s face. “Does this look free to you?”
“It’s not my fault I lost the key.”
“And it’s not what I call keeping to your side of the agreement, so I won’t be keeping to mine.”
I took a step forward before she moved to block my way. I would have laughed at her presumption that I’d cave in to her request, if I hadn’t been distracted by a figure over her shoulder.
Could I not catch a break?
“Get ready,” I mumbled under my breath.
“What did you say?”
“Shh. I said get ready.” I cocked my chin in the direction of the figure, who appeared to be hobbling as he advanced and hopefully might not pose too much of a headache if the need to take him down arose. “Looks like we’ve drawn a crowd, and it might be time for round two.”
My confidence was quickly dashed when two more shapes appeared on either side of us, and from the look on Charlotte’s face, there was another one behind me. We were surrounded, and the demons were closing in.
“Friends of yours?” I muttered.
Her gaze flicked from side to side, and she gave a shallow nod. “Maybe. They all look the same.”
“What’s your plan?”
She chewed the inside of her cheek, and I was nonplussed as to why she was hesitating when every second brought the demons a step closer. “Char?”
Another second passed before she drew my knife with one hand and threw her other around my throat. She pressed the knife into my side as she pulled me back to her chest. “Gentlemen, I brought you a gift.”
Her actions halted all but one of the demons. He stepped close enough for me to count the weeping blisters covering his bulbous, puce face and bald head, and I couldn’t be sure if the stench availing my nostrils hailed from them or was a product of the yellow coating on his tongue. Either way, my stomach was in danger of painting his orange shirt in multiple shades of puke. He studied me from every angle as I held my breath.
“You returned when we specifically stated that it would be foolish for you to do so, to bring us a gift?” he said. “Who is he?”
The knife pressed a little harder into my side. “You don’t know?”
“Would I be asking if I did?”
“What if I told you his name was Connor?”
“My answer would not change.”
“Are you sure?” Charlotte’s grip on me loosened under her confusion, and I shook free. “I was certain he would mean something to you,” she said, stowing her knife back into her belt.
“The only part with any meaning here is your intrusion, human. The leniency previously shown will not be repeated. You should have left this realm when I advised.”
I glanced at Charlotte, unsurprised that she’d neglected to tell me that part, and with a hunch that her second meeting wouldn’t end as amicably as her first. “No problem, mate. We’ll do that now,” I said. “I apolog
ise for my woman. She’s a bit dim”—I tapped a finger to my temple—“doesn’t take instructions well. You know what females are like. I’ll be sure to keep her on a tighter leash in future. Come on, Char.” I grabbed her arm to steer her away from trouble.
“Not so fast,” the demon said, snagging her other arm. “The boss wasn’t happy you were allowed to go free the last time. The mistake will not be repeated.”
I narrowed my eyes at him as he pulled Charlotte one way and I pulled the other. Nothing about this dude exuded friendship.
“Get off me!” she cried, frustrated. “Both of you. This is all a big misunderstanding. I’m sure we can work it out.”
“No discussion,” the demon said, unwilling to relinquish his hold on her. “You’re coming with us.” He faced up to me, forcing me to lean away from his putrid odour. “You, too,” he snarled.
“Don’t I get a warning first, like she did?”
His mouth curved with a sneer. “No. You get to be dinner,” he said as I sensed the presence of the other three demons behind me and flicked a glance over my shoulder to confirm my suspicion. “When the boss is done with you two, we’ll all eat well tonight.”
They ate people? No wonder they’d looked strangely at Charlotte; they’d probably been sizing her up to see how many joints of meat they could get out of her.
Not wishing to dwell on that thought, I signalled to Charlotte with my eyes, hoping there was a tiny part of her that remembered how we used to work together and that she’d take the hint. Then, with one quick motion, I shot my elbow up behind me into a pustule-covered chin.
Charlotte didn’t disappoint. Maybe the prospect of becoming dinner had finally brought her to her senses. She stomped on her captor’s foot, then flung around to knee him in the groin. She whipped out her knife as I swung around and hooked the chain of my cuffs around one demon’s thick neck, and squeezed.
After less of a struggle than I’d anticipated, he crumpled to my feet, but I’d no time to crow as I was immediately grabbed from behind by another one. I wrestled him to the ground and grasped a handful of dirt to scrub into his eyes, then I scrabbled to standing and searched out Charlotte.
A slash across the main man’s arm, oozing an amber-coloured liquid I presumed to be his blood, told me she’d managed to get at least one good shot in, but he and the last remaining demon had her cornered against a tree.
Leaving my two incapacitated, I ran to help. But before I reached her, a cloud of green gas spewed from one demon’s mouth and obscured her from sight. I pulled up sharply, but was too late to avoid the gas seeping into my orifices, and the effects were instant.
For once in my life, I actually thought I might die. My limbs stiffened like lead, and it felt as though someone had inflated a balloon behind my eyeballs and was seeing how far they could pump it before it burst.
Charlotte’s cries of anguish mingled with my own as a hand grabbed my ankle. My back thudded hard onto the forest floor, and then scraped along it.
Chapter Seventeen
The nausea didn’t subside until long after Charlotte and I were abandoned on a cold, hard floor somewhere. I fought to keep my bile down as the effects lessened. Charlotte had lost that battle some time ago, and I’d listened to her retching way beyond the point where she had nothing left to bring up.
In my numb and confused state, it had been a challenge to stay lucid and keep track of the directions we’d travelled in, and by the halfway point, I’d totally lost track of where we were. All I knew of our location was that it was underground and a hell of a lot cooler than the place of our capture. A brief thought that we’d been put into cold storage to keep our flesh fresh went through my head, but I blinked it away.
I focused my eyes on a small candle—the only light in our stone prison—and eased to a sitting position, then looked down at Charlotte’s curled form. She’d grown silent and was clutching her stomach. I leaned over to pick a strand of damp hair from her cheek.
“Char?” I whispered.
Her eyes blinked open.
“Just take long, deep breaths. You need to get your strength back.”
I got to my feet and forced my shaky legs over to the door. There was no handle, but its wooden panels housed a small hole. I squinted through it to check for guards. Failing to see any, I heaved my shoulder against the woodwork a couple of times. My wolf strength would have busted it right open, but without it, I might as well have been chucking a tennis ball down a bowling lane and expecting a strike. There was no getting out until somebody wanted us out. Stability slowly returned to my legs as I walked back to Charlotte and sat down next to her.
“That ended well, don’t you think?”
She threw me a contemptuous look as she sat up. “If you call about to become demon chow ending well,” she said, feeling around her belt.
If she was looking for my knife or any of her own, she was going to be disappointed. I’d already checked. She’d been cleaned out.
“That hasn’t happened yet. I guess they slow cook things around here.”
“You’re not funny.”
“I’m not laughing. I told you this was a stupid idea. How are you feeling now?” I asked.
She scowled. “How do you think?”
“Hey, I’m not the enemy here, remember. If anything, you are.”
“Oh? And how do you figure that one?”
“Well, it wasn’t me who turned on my partner and landed us in this predicament, was it?”
“So… I made a mistake. Don’t tell me you’ve never followed a bad lead.”
“There are bad leads, and then there’s downright stupidity. I never had you pegged for the latter, though Travers did say you were getting sloppy.”
“Sloppy?”
“His word, not mine.”
“How dare he? What else did he say?”
“Not much. Only that you’d become obsessive.”
“So, I’m both obsessive and sloppy? It’s a wonder the Assembly wants me working for them at all, if that’s their opinion of me.”
“You have to admit he has a point. You made your mind up about me pretty sharpish. Would it have killed you to have a drink and discuss things before you cracked my skull?”
“I didn’t crack your skull. You’re fine, aren’t you? And there’s nothing to discuss. Something’s been irritating me about you from the moment we met. I don’t know what it is yet, but I’ll find out.”
“You’re being paranoid. Trust me.”
“Trust you? Why? Because you say so?”
“No. Because I’m the good guy.”
“And I’m supposed to believe that because the Assembly chose you to help me, am I? That’s one of the things that’s been bugging me. I know they have the IDs of the missing people, and with their resources, they’re bound to have worked out the victims’ connection to you. Yet they sent you here without telling me it. Why?”
“Because they don’t know. They couldn’t possibly know. As powerful as the Assembly is, there’s something bigger that ensured that no one knew.”
“More powerful than the Assembly? Who is it… God?”
“No. The other guy.”
“Huh! I must have hit you harder than I thought. You’re not making any sense.”
“You know about the thirteen dimensions, right?”
“Of course.”
“So you know the Thirteenth is Hell.”
“In theory, yes.”
“There’s no theory about it. Hell is real. So is the Devil. Believe me, I’ve met the bastard personally, and he made sure that no one knew I existed for a while. It’s a long story—one in which you play a part.”
“Me? What are you talking about?”
Her frown deepened as I took her hand. The feel of it hadn’t changed: the same velvety texture to its back and roughness across the knuckles. Maybe Char was right. Maybe I was too soft at times, but if I was going to die here today, I would do it with a clear conscience. I pushed up the sleeve of he
r jacket, pausing for a second at finding a small neckerchief tied around her arm before sliding it to the side.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
I traced my finger along the raised line left by my badly timed claw. “You might not remember how this got here, but I do,” I said. “I put it there.”
“You? No. You couldn’t possibly have.” She pulled away from me and stiffened. Her lips moved once or twice before she spoke again. “You’re lying. Why would you do that?” she said, fixing me with one of her stares. “I want to know. Why?”
“Char—” The explanation was on the tip of my tongue when the door crashed open, and the moment was lost.
A red hand gripped my shoulder, and I was hauled to standing.
“Get moving, dinner. The boss is ready for you now.”
Two demons with a dress sense that went out of date in the seventies hauled us through a long, dark tunnel towards I knew not what. Charlotte flicked sideways glances at me as we stumbled over random rocks at our feet and tried to avoid being garrotted by the tangle of roots protruding through the earth over our heads. I was pretty sure she was on my wavelength. As far as I could tell, the demons had no physical weapons. Sure, they might be able to spew noxious crap from their mouths, but forewarned, we’d have a shot at taking them. Only then what? With no idea how far underground we were and zero knowledge of a way out, what was our chance of escaping before being cornered and gassed again?
Any budding strategy to flee was immediately forgotten as a door ahead opened and we were clumsily pushed into a room where the demon who’d captured us stood waiting. I tripped and landed on my knees on a cold flagged floor, dotted with circles of sunlight streaming through holes in the high ceiling. Char quickly followed suit.
I offered her a weak smile to ease the panic on her face and noticed a cool breeze quivering through her hair. Hoping that meant the exit was near, I searched furtively for the source and my gaze landed on a door flanked by two stone urns. It opened to reveal an unexpected human-looking boy who couldn’t have said goodbye to his teens, wearing a purple wing-collared suit. The demons retreated, heads bowed as the boy came to stand before us, positioning himself directly in a shaft of light.