Gabriel and Lillian battled several more. He wondered if there was an end to the supply of demons that would try to keep them from finding Belinda. It was getting late, and he was sure that she wouldn’t live through the coming moonless night.
Lillian felled the last trebox in the foyer with a stab to the chest.
A strange chattering noise came from the same doorway to the left. Four creatures, half the size of the treboxes rushed into the room. This new kind of demon had thick necks, large heads covered with dark, wiry hair and gaping mouths filled with long pointed teeth. They ran with surprising speed across the floor. One of them grabbed Lillian’s leg and pulled her off of her feet with its muscular arms.
She had no time to react.
Gabriel swung his leg, kicking the demon across the room.
It hit the opposite wall where it lay still.
His heart drummed heavily, but his focus was on finding his wife. Nothing would distract him.
Gabriel reached down and helped Lilllian to her feet while slicing down and cutting a second hairy creature in half.
The remaining two jumped from the floor to the wall and continued to move toward them by running along the wall. It was as if the laws that governed the rest of them, did not apply to these things. They scurried across the wall as if they were spiders.
Reece shot at the one coming from the right. He hit it square in the back of its head and it fell to the floor.
The last one screamed a terrible high-pitched cry and leaped from the wall, lading squarely on Reece’s chest. Its teeth sank into the flesh near his neck.
Gabriel hurried forward and stabbed the thing until it released Reece’s shoulder. Grabbing it by the hair, Gabriel tossed the dead beast across the foyer.
A dark stain spread across the shoulder of Reece’s black jacket. “How bad is it?”
Gabriel pulled back the lapel and saw the red stain on his white shirt.
Lillian cut a piece of fabric from the inside of her long coat and started wrapping it around Reece’s shoulder. “The blood is slowing. How do you feel?”
Reece smiled and touched her cheek. “As if I have been stabbed and bitten. I will be all right, Lilly. Let’s go and find Belinda.”
Gabriel considered telling the other man to wait for them by the door. He looked pale. He’d lost blood and the use of his left arm. However, Reece was a good shot with pistol or throwing knife and they might need him.
The doorway that the demons had come through led to a parlor. Gabriel took a lantern from the wall of the foyer. The room stood empty with no furniture, blackened walls and more red symbols and writing. Continuing, they found several rooms in the same state. Another door opened to a set of stone steps.
Gabriel turned to Reece. “Make sure nothing follows us down?”
He nodded. “Be quick.”
Lillian preceded Gabriel down the narrow steps. It was cold and damp and the smell of filth permeated the air. Gabriel’s chest tightened.
Lillian stepped through the open doorway at the bottom and gasped.
The room, chiseled out of the rock cliff with no windows, only the one door, little air and not one stick of furniture. He walked around the stifling hole.
“This is where they kept her.”
“Yes. I think so.” Lillian crossed to where he touched a section of rock wall.
“How could she survive seven days in such a place?” he asked. He didn’t expect an answer. He wondered if he could have withstood such treatment. His prison experience had not been underground with no windows and barely enough air to draw breath. Yet three days ago he had seen his magnificent wife, not only alive, but fierce. Thor had been correct. She was special. She could survive.
“Let’s go and find her, Gabriel. There’s nothing for us here but regret.” Lillian’s voice cut through his reverie.
He had made a mistake when the demons attacked them on the road. He knew it and he was sure his wife knew it too. He had to make sure he had the opportunity to apologize for his stupidity.
He took the steps two at a time with Lillian just behind him.
At the top, Reece leaned against a wall. Sweat dripped from his pasty skin. The actual wounds he’d sustained were not that serious, yet he was weak and sick.
“You are not well,” Gabriel said.
Reece nodded. “Probably poison. Let’s go.”
They crossed under the steps and followed a hallway. A low rumble started from down the corridor. Low chanting filtered down the hall. The sounds grew louder. The voices as well as the rumbling led them to a huge set of double doors.
“Ready?” Gabriel asked.
His companions both nodded and took positions on either side of the doors while he pushed the doors wide open.
Gabriel’s heart stopped and the air sapped out of his lungs. Hot wind pummeled him back from the threshold and he staggered to keep his feet. Whatever the room used to be, it was now a great hole leading straight to a pitch-black hell. The swirling black and gray storm that rose out of nothing. Looking at it, Gabriel stomach wrenched with nausea.
His mouth hung open as he gaped at the turmoil spiraling from the giant pit. It sounded as if the Earth itself were being ripped in half. The cacophony grated in his ears, and he wished he had time to stuff them with a handkerchief to keep the noise out and better focus on his task.
What remained of the floor only skirted the very outer walls of the room. In each corner a bull-faced priest chanted into the tempest. Each one wore a black robe with a hood covering his great horned head. Their faces turned up as they chanted and stared into the whirling pillar.
Gabriel followed their gazes but saw only the sickening spiral of smoke.
Painted in red, above the fireplace, on the blackened wall, to the far right was the fleur-de-lis wrapped by a serpent.
Rage and pain erupted inside his chest.
Belinda hung by her wrists over the symbol. Her eyes were closed, but agony twisted her wan face. Her dress was in tatters, exposing her trousers beneath and even they’d torn in places. Her hair whipped around with the swirling clouds and she dripped with sweat.
“Lillian, you and Reece should stay here.” Gabriel had to shout above the deafening noise.
Lillian’s fisted hands rested on her hips. She turned toward Belinda and back to Reece who was getting weaker by the minute. “Reece, do not let anything get by you.” She looked at Gabriel. “I will take care of the priests in the far corners.” She pointed to the left side of the room. “You get the close one and you get Belinda out. Hopefully that will be enough to stop the master.”
The storm’s force doubled as she finished her commands.
Gabriel ran against the wind, fighting for balanced on the narrow strip of floor by the near wall. There was only about a foot of ragged flooring on which he could stand. He pulled a dagger from his waist and threw it, hitting the priest at the center of the leather straps crossing his barrel chest.
The beast stopped singing and looked down at the hilt protruding from his chest. Black blood trickled down around the blade. He gripped the hilt and pulled the knife free. Thick blood cascaded from the wound as if he were a bubbling cauldron. Then his horned head came up and focused on Gabriel for a shocked instant before he tumbled forward into the abyss.
The demon’s body caught in the swirling clouds and wind, whipping him around the vortex. Then the creature was gone.
The other three priests stopped their song and started to roar in a guttural language. Heat welled up from the pit.
Gabriel’s stomach lurched and he had to turn away from the spinning. He ran along the walls to just behind where Belinda dangled. The rope holding his wife was tied off on a sconce bracket then thrown over a chandelier. The light hanging from the ceiling was the last vestige of what had once been a ballroom.
He untied the rope and wrapped it around his wrist and hand.
A priest ran toward him with his horns lower
ed.
“This is going to hurt, Bella.” He had no idea if she had heard him or not.
When the bull-faced demon was close enough that he was committed to the strike, Gabriel tossed his sword aside and leaped out over the hole. He gripped the rope as it dug into his flesh.
The horned beast couldn’t stop his forward motions and tumbled down into the pit.
Belinda screamed out in pain as Gabriel clutched onto her waist swinging them out further over the storm and the nothingness beneath. As they swung back toward the wall, he released the rope and crashed them both into the wall.
Pain shot through his shoulder. Sweat blinded him and the heat was enough to redden their skin. He scrambled away from the hole, still clutching his wife.
She looked at him, tears streaming down her face, blood seeping from her bound wrists. “Gabriel?”
He sensed as much as saw that whatever was about the happened in that destroyed ballroom was imminent. The air whooshed away from them. He couldn’t breathe.
Belinda’s eyes widened and she stared up into the swirling tempest.
He picked her up and balanced along the edge of nothing. The ballroom began to erupt. Heat and wind pushed them forward and back. He was not sure if he was getting closer to the exit or not. The dark cloud blurred his view. He clutched Belinda with one hand and gripped the wall with the other trying to use it to pull them forward. Crystal from the chandeliers rained down on their heads. Each chard of glass stung and some cut his skin.
The sound of something screaming out in pain spewed from the black hole. It tortured his ears as he leaped for the open doors. The floor bruised him sharply. From the corner of his eye he spotted movement and turned ready to fight hand to hand if necessary. A mop of red hair on the floor next to him eased his trepidation. .
The doors slammed closed. The scream from within was deafening. Fatum Manor shook violently.
Belinda cried and tried to cover her ears.
“Time to go, I think.” Reece’s voice was weak but still convincing.
Gabriel stood up and helped Belinda to her feet, before grabbing her hands and dragging her down the hall. Plaster, wood and glass crashed around them. As they ran out, the demons were rushing in.
The hunters were ready to fight, but the creatures ran past as if the humans weren’t there.
Their focus had shifted and the invaders of Fatum had become irrelevant to the minions of the master.
Hot wind blew through the house. The front doors flew open and ripped from their hinges. They crashed forward.
Gabriel shouted, “Down.”
All four hunters hit the floor just as the heavy oak doors flew across the foyer nearly cutting them in half. The gaping exit was just ahead of them.
Lillian clutched Reece around the waist, allowing him to lean on her as they ran through the exit into the rubble-filled yard.
Belinda stumbled and fell to the floor. The wind was sucking her back toward the ballroom.
He still held her arm as her feet lifted off the floor. It took every ounce of his strength to hold her. Whatever was tugging at her wanted her back in that ballroom.
“Hold on, Bella!”
Her eyes widened and filled with tears that dried before they reached her cheeks. She grabbed at his shirt.
He clutched her arms and wrapped them around his neck. “Hold on.”
It was more command than request but the strength of her grip tightened.
He pulled himself upright by holding onto the balusters from the stairs. One by one, he pulled them both forward toward the exit. The wind clawed like hands pulling them back. One post broke. Belinda screamed, but he grabbed hold of the next one and kept them moving forward.
He ran out of balusters and there was still twenty feet of space to traverse before they reached the outside. He could never make it. Sliding his arm through the last post, he turned into Belinda’s strained face. “Bella, I need your help. I know you have nothing left, but I cannot do this alone. Do you understand?”
Her eyes focused on him as if he were the only other person who existed. “Together.”
Her feet made contact with the floor by using his neck as leverage.
“Ready?”
She grimaced, and he took it as an affirmative. He released the post. They stumbled back toward the ballroom before surging forward. The horrifying screams from the ballroom filled the corridor and the foyer. Pieces of the house flew passed them.
Step by agonizing step, Gabriel and Belinda got closer to the exit. With only a foot to freedom, the wind increased.
His foot slipped.
They were lost.
He dropped to the floor, intent on crawling out. Still they inched backward.
Thor dove through the door and gripped his arm. The big man pulled them forward.
“Take Belinda.”
“Both of you,” Thor demanded.
Gabriel fought forward with his legs.
Belinda reached out and grabbed Thor’s arm.
They tore through the doorway, leaping as far away from the structure as their legs would take them. All three tumbled to the ground outside Fatum.
The manor itself was crumbling.
He was not sure if Belinda was conscious or not. She lay still on the dirt. He lifted her over his shoulder and ran through one of the holes the gunpowder had made in the stone embankment.
Thor was right behind them screaming for them to move faster.
Chapter 17
Belinda rubbed her bruised, cut, and swollen wrists. The familiar walls of the London office were little comfort. She didn’t like that they were underground. She’d had her fill of being below the surface and the comparison between the Company and the demons disturbed her.
Drake Cullum had just arrived and the questioning began. There was no doubt that Cullum was a general within the Company, and they were all soldiers under his command.
He stared at Lillian. “You say you killed the two priests on the left side of the room?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And, Tullering, you killed the other two?”
“I killed one and caused the other to fall into the pit.” Gabriel stood behind her chair. His hand rested lightly on her shoulder. “I do not know if that would kill the demon.”
The touch was reassuring. She had not realized how much she missed human contact while being the master’s prisoner. When she’d first heard Gabriel’s voice in the ballroom whilst hanging over the gateway, she had assumed that her mind had finally snapped. It was inconceivable that her husband was there. She had even convinced herself that she’d never seen him in the courtyard days before.
Cullum turned to Belinda. “Yet you are telling me that the master came through anyway. I thought he needed the priests. He needed you as a sacrifice. He didn’t have the priests and you are still alive. So explain to me how the master came through.”
Belinda took a deep breath and sighed. Her body ached in more places than she cared to enumerate. She was tired.
Thor had carried her to the carriage. Lillian and Gabriel had climbed up behind her.
The remnants of Fatum Manor cried out as bit by bit, the ground opened up and swallowed the house. Smoke and dust filled the air, as did the screams of hundreds of demons.
Hunters scrambled back away from the extending pit as it swallowed the embankment. The highest point of Fatum crumbled and crashed into nothing. A pile of rubble mounded where the manor house had been. The sound of straining timber was the only evidence that a structure had stood in the place.
Squeals, groans and falling rock continued, but slowed. It was over.
The ground shook so hard the horses bucked to get away.
Thor held them steady.
Lillian gasped.
Gabriel clutched Belinda’s hand.
Fire shot from the ground creating fifty-foot-high pillar. The heat seared the ground within a hundred feet.
; Thor moved them further away.
With a final whoosh, the remnants of Fatum sucked down into the earth leaving behind only a gaping pit, no house, no barricade, no fire, and not a demon was in sight.
Belinda’s stomach churned. This will be our world’s fate if we fail.
They rode in silence all the way back to London. Belinda slept on the trip. She could have slept for a month.
Brice took Reece to Edinburgh to recover. The demon’s bite must have poisoned his blood.
The doctor at the headquarters would do whatever could be done, and it was closer than London.
Rather than explain their condition to Gabriel’s mother and sister, the newlyweds went to Clayton House to rest.
With only enough time for a bath and a few hours of sleep, they’d been summoned to the office by the head of the Company. Neither she nor Gabriel had spoken much in that time. They were tired, and the overwhelming scope of the experience was still setting in.
Part of what she had experienced would be for Gabriel’s ears only. She chose her words carefully when answered Cullum. “I cannot explain how I know that the one they call master came through. He was very close when I was rescued and he did come through. Once my husband cut me free, I lost sight of the demon.” That much was accurate. “He will most likely have been damaged. He told me that he could come through without me, but it would harm him and the recovery would take time. I would guess that is why all the demons were running inside the manor. They would likely find a way to get their master out and safely away to a place where he can recover.”
Cullum’s eyes darkened. He loomed over her with his arms crossed over his chest. “You had a conversation with this master?”
“Yes,” she said.
“I will require a full account of that conversation.”
“Of course.”
Drake Cullum paced back and forth in the dim light of the underground meeting-place. He was angry, though it was difficult to tell. He kept his face and tone completely neutral. But there was something in the stiffness of his back that alarmed Belinda. She did not wish to see what happened when the man lost his temper.
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