by Ann Gimpel
She made a face, twisting her mouth into a moue. Would that demons were quite so cooperative. This batch—twelve of them—were better organized than the three who’d boarded their ship and the six who’d hounded them near Kirkcaldy. So far, this batch had taken their time and hadn’t made any foolish mistakes. She’d kept a close eye out for chinks in their coordinated offense, but had yet to find any.
So far, neither side had made significant gains. Or any gains at all. It was almost as if the demons were engaged in some kind of holding pattern waiting for the stars—or in their case pitchforks—to align properly. A shudder rippled down her spine, followed by another.
Had she stumbled onto something?
Were the demons playing them? Holding down the fort until something cataclysmic occurred?
“Not much I can do about it if they are.” Yara didn’t realize she’d spoken aloud until she heard herself.
“What?” Tairin shouted from right next to her. The storm with its hooting, howling wind made communication a challenge.
Yara met Tairin’s gaze and shook her head. It was too soon to share her worry the demons had a non-obvious agenda that would somehow come around and catch them unaware.
Elliott sidled close enough to position his mouth near her ear. “I don’t like this.”
Breath whistled through her teeth as she sucked air. She wasn’t the only one who’d noticed something odd afoot, which didn’t bode well. “Neither do I. Which part bothers you?”
Elliott frowned. “They’re not trying very hard. Your ward is good, but not bombproof, especially at the ends.”
“I was coming around to the same conclusion,” she admitted, “but I don’t know what to do about it. We can’t very well just vanish back into the cave and turn these bastards loose on the Scots.”
She felt a rumble—low and menacing—in the pit of her stomach before it escalated into gnashing, discordant notes. No time to cull through Rhiannon’s treasure trove of memories and spells. Nor was there time to retrieve the grimoire.
“Crap! The jaws of the trap just snapped shut.” Elliott raced to Tairin’s side and wrapped a protective arm around her shoulders while whispering frantically into her ear.
Yara battled helplessness. What should she do? She had no idea what the demons were up to. How could you counteract something that remained a mystery?
She poured power into the ward surrounding her people.
It didn’t make any difference.
The dissonant notes escalated until she slammed her hands over her ears; it didn’t blunt the noise. A wave of magic hit her from the side, knocking her to her knees. In the split moment when she wasn’t riding herd on her ward, the whole lot of them were swept into a black, airless void.
Her lungs burned, but fury blazed brighter. Why had she believed demons would play fair? They were the original con men, shysters, tricksters. Demons made Loki look like a choirboy. How could she have forgotten? Or had they done something? Woven a web to dull her suspicions?
Doesn’t matter. I bet we’re headed straight for Hell. Those fuckers wanted to even the odds.
She shook her head hard enough her teeth rattled against each other. This was not a time to ask rhetorical questions. Once they stopped falling through blackness, she’d do a better job of taking care of the shifters and Romani caught up in this trap with her.
Guilt bit deep, but it felt like a selfish indulgence. She’d had only herself to consider for years, but that had changed and she had to do a better job. If she fucked up and her stupidity hurt her, it was one thing. If her lack of insight or judgment or paying attention to her instincts snared others in the same net, it was a whole other universe of culpability.
Her mother had passed some kind of torch. At least so far, Yara hadn’t done very well as its mistress.
The Celts never watched out for humans.
Maybe so, but I’m not them.
She made the mistake of trying to breathe, and her lungs seized painfully. She clawed at her throat, desperate for air. Her vision hazed, and she fell faster. With the last of her consciousness, she cushioned magic around herself. When she tried to extend it to the others plummeting through blackness right along with her, the lack of air stymied her efforts.
Had whoever snared her grabbed Stewart too?
She gasped like a landed fish, but this time, her reflexive efforts to breathe were rewarded. Hot air that stank like a charnel pit, but air nonetheless. If she could breathe, she could work magic, so she sent out feelers to determine who’d been caught in a trap she felt certain was meant for her. The ground raced up to meet her. If she hadn’t had the foresight to soften her landing, she’d have hit hard.
Shifters and Rom fell, landing on all sides of her, some more elegantly than others, but no one appeared injured.
“What the fuck?” A shifter she didn’t recognize scanned the place they’d ended up.
“What the fuck, indeed.” Elliott skinned his lips back from his teeth. “This has to be Hell.”
Everyone scrambled upright, amid curses, groans, and growls.
Yara bounded to her feet and stared out at cracked red earth, fumaroles, and a sky streaked putrid yellow-green. It was bright, and she squinched her eyes to slits. Where could she take a stand and protect her people? She spun in a circle and spied wickedly sharp red cliffs not far behind them. They could put the cliffs to their back. It would mean they’d only have three sides to watch, not four.
A quick nose count confirmed fifteen had been spirited to Hell along with her. More shifters than Rom, which boded well from a magical perspective.
“Quick.” Yara didn’t bother with telepathy. “Ward yourselves and head for those cliffs.”
Once she had everyone headed that direction, Yara draped her own ward around their retreating backs and followed them. So far, a greeting party hadn’t materialized, but that luck wouldn’t last. Someone wanted them right where they were. If she could find out why, it might be the key to escape—and survival.
She sucked in a deep breath, and the overheated air of Hell scorched her lungs. They couldn’t remain here—not long, anyway. They’d weaken in the oppressive heat, and die from lack of water. This barren world might host a subterranean spring or two, but she’d bet her ass they were both guarded and well-hidden.
One step at a time.
Establish a defensive perimeter by the cliff and erect the best wards we can.
She ran hard and joined her small group.
“Good choice,” Jamal said.
Yara rolled her eyes. “Thanks. Not like we had a million options. Where’s Aron?” She held her breath. Had the young Rom gotten trapped in the airless void between worlds?
“I sent him to get something for me right before we were taken,” Ilona replied. “I had a feeling something hideous was almost upon us, so I told him to find me a dry cloak in the cave. He’ll be furious—and worried about Jamal and me—but at least he’s safe for the moment.”
“Strong work.” Yara wondered what else the gypsy-seer-turned-shifter knew, but didn’t quiz her. “Have any of you been here before?”
A wave of head shakes met her question. “I don’t figure getting out of this place, which I presume is Hell, will be as easy as getting in, but that’s a way down the road. First, we have to survive.”
“The demons want something,” Elliott said.
“It’s not us dead,” Tairin countered. “They could have just left us in that void and we’d all have suffocated.”
“We need to figure out why we’re here,” Jamal said. “Once we know that, we might be able to strike a deal.”
“Might be as simple as offering up some of that gold they were after on the ship,” Tairin said. “We all have some.”
The purulent stench of demon rose in a harsh haze. Her gorge constricted in protest at the cross between rotting vegetation, meat so putrid it was sloughing off the bones, and long unwashed bodies.
“Forget cutting deals for now,” Yara
shouted. “Form a line two deep with the stronger magic wielders in the back. I’ll ward us all, but you each need to reinforce my spell by weaving yours in with it.”
She paid out a casting worthy of Arachne as she wound layers of protection about the fifteen people who were here because of her. She wasn’t certain why she kept coming back to that, but she never doubted her culpability. This had something to do with Rhiannon, and she’d become her mother’s stand in.
Goddammit, Mother! Did you know this would happen? What in Danu’s name did you do to piss off demonkind?
Maybe it’s not her. Maybe it’s all of us and the godforsaken gold on that ship.
She emptied her head and prepared to fight. If the demons were in a chatty mood, she’d ask why she and her companions had been shanghaied.
The ground pitched and heaved, reminiscent of the boat and their North Sea crossing. Holes formed, jagged portals in the scorched earth, and the reek of sulfur from the fumaroles joined all the other noxious odors. One of the excavations grew larger and stone-colored liquid jetted from it, spraying the ground with clods of burning mud.
Demons, some with red scales, some with black, swarmed out of the openings. She counted twelve. Was it the same dozen who’d faced off against them on Ben Nevis? She stared, but couldn’t tell. They all looked similar with their horned heads, clawed feet and hands, and sharp, pointy teeth. Forked tails swished behind some but not all of them.
The heat ratcheted up a few notches, and she shucked her woolen cloak, letting it fall to the ground at her feet. She split her power. Some kept the ward whole, but the rest blasted outward. May as well come into this strong. Maybe if they didn’t just roll over and give up, the demons might decide they were too big a problem, and—
“And what?” she muttered. “Offer us an escort back to Earth? All they have to do is walk away. The heat and lack of water will do us in soon enough.”
Yara squared her shoulders. That was not going to happen. She’d find a way back to Earth for them, no matter what it cost her.
Black lightning forked from upraised demon claws. It battered her ward and upped the temperature still further. Stinging sweat ran into her eyes and dampened her hair. Sparks flew where their magic collided with the demons’ attack. Colors, each more unpleasant than the last, rolled across the sky, and the ground continued to heave in worrisome waves.
She glanced at it. Had the demons upset some seismic balance when they’d blasted through the fragile crust separating them from a river of red-hot lava? More importantly, she’d always drawn her power from her connection to the earth beneath her feet. What would happen if she asked this particular stretch of packed, parched dirt to come to her aid?
An idea bloomed, and she sent an exploratory tendril of power into the dirt. Maybe she could communicate with it, heal some of its fissures. In return, perhaps it would decide she was a better bet than its demon masters. Almost anyone would be. She focused her third eye. What she saw was far from encouraging. While the layers that butted up against the cliff where they’d taken a stand had substance to them, the rest of the cracked mesa’s crust was shockingly thin. It was amazing they’d made it across without someone breaking through and falling to their death in a river of molten lava.
They’d have to be damned careful if they ever fashioned an opportunity to leave.
She tried various greetings. Anything to open a line of communication, but the earth remained stubbornly silent. Nothing like the dirt back on Earth. It jumped on chances to talk with her. She’d always suspected it was lonely, hungry for any kind of contact.
Yara had no idea if the insubstantial crust was even sentient. Long exposure to demons might have killed off its essence, but she tried anyway.
“My heart hurts for what’s happened to you. I’m here because I offer succor, support. If you can hear me, I will have need of you soon. When I ask for your help, crumple to dust beneath where the demons stand. It’s simple enough.” She paused before adding. “They haven’t been good to you. You owe them nothing.”
The demons had escalated their attack, adding a hypnotic tone sequence in between the lightning strikes. It was seductive, and when she tuned in to it, honeyed words about dropping the barrier and joining forces with demonkind ebbed and flowed. Surely everyone would see through the demons’ chicanery.
She went back to orchestrating the dance that pitted their magic against the demons’ onslaught when movement toward one end of her line caught her eye. Before she could deploy magic to stop them, two shifters and a Romani dropped their warding and ran toward the demons, hands outstretched as if they were racing toward loved ones.
Lightning found them before they’d covered half the distance, and they fell where they stood, clutching their chests and screaming in agony. Black flames engulfed them.
Yara choked back horror. “Do not listen to them! Not now. Not ever.” She raised her voice, projecting it with magic. Next, she straightened her spine and yelled at the demons, “What do you want with us? Why are we here? If it’s only me you want, let my companions leave.”
The demon who’d positioned himself near the center of their formation stomped closer, avoiding two bubbling fumaroles. They splashed hot mud on his scaled feet, but he didn’t react.
“You are here because Satan wishes it.”
“All of us, or just me?” she persisted.
Jamal edged to her side. “Don’t even think about cutting a deal where you offer yourself up like a sacrificial goat to free the rest of us. We’re in this together.”
“Mostly you.” The demon grinned, displaying broken, rotting teeth. “The others are an unexpected bonus. Gets boring down here. Boring as hell.” He tossed back his head and laughed uproariously at his own joke.
Yara rolled her eyes. Great. A comedian. “Why me?” she persisted. His answer pretty much ruled out the gold as being their rationale, but she figured she’d get as much information as she could. The other demons continued to bombard their ward with power that cracked and boomed every time it hit. The heat and the stench escalated. She had to breathe, but every time she did, nausea spilled through her.
“You’re a Celt.”
Yara stared at him. “That’s all? What’d they ever do to you?”
He shook his scaled head, spittle flying from his gaping jaws. “They’ve been trying to seal us in here permanently forever.” He stalked closer. The earth beneath one of his taloned feet caved in, and he jumped sideways.
Yara inhaled raggedly. Had the earth heard her? Was it about to swallow this arrogant bastard whole? She willed it to happen, but the surface stabilized.
The demon moved closer still until the rotten meat smell of him made her lightheaded. “War feeds us. There’s another brewing on the heels of the one a few years back. Hitler is far better for us than Kaiser Wilhelm. More brutal. Fewer scruples.”
Yara considered shooting back that Hitler had no scruples and that demons should have tapped the Dutch government if they were hunting for coldhearted associates, but she kept her mouth shut.
“That explains why I’m here,” Yara retorted. “Let the rest of my friends go.”
“Save your breath,” Jamal said. “We’re not leaving you behind to save ourselves. It’s not how battles are fought.”
Smoke from the three who’d been immolated in demon fire mocked his words. “I appreciate the—”
“Save your breath,” Ilona cut in sounding fierce. “I’ve seen variations of today in my glass, and I believe we’ll find a way out.”
Yara considered digging for more information, but seers titrated what they told you. If Ilona wanted her to know more, she’d have offered it up.
The demon had been eyeing her. “Are you requesting a deal or not?” He leered at her. “It’s been a while since Satan’s welcomed a new bride.”
Yara choked on her own saliva. Out of all the possibilities she’d envisioned, this one wasn’t anywhere on the list.
“No deals.” Jamal spat the w
ords, sounding outraged.
The demon shrugged. “Have it your way. More sport for us, although the heat will do you in soon enough.” He dropped back into line with the other demons. Several laughed and pointed at her. Yara wanted to punch their arrogant lights out, but killing demons on their home turf wasn’t possible.
Forked lightning crackled against their shielding. She fought back, herding power in its wake. Maybe Ilona was wrong and there wasn’t a way out of here, but she’d go down fighting.
Power slammed into her. Familiar magic that magnified hers tenfold.
Stewart!
Stewart was here. How had he managed to breach Hell’s boundaries? She tamped down elation racing from her head to her feet. No reason to let the demons know their odds had just taken a nosedive. A big one.
She and Stewart were made to fight side by side. They were so strong, she couldn’t imagine them losing anything they took on, but it wouldn’t do to get cocky. He could die here right along with the rest of them. So could she. Her excitement faded. If he got himself killed because of her, she’d never forgive herself. Why the hell hadn’t he stayed put?
Yara shook herself. The odd energy in this wasted land was getting to her, twisting her thoughts into pretzels. Taking care to be subtle, she scanned the horizon. Dust swirled in vortices that obscured her view. Stewart was out there, and he was moving closer.
She latched onto that thought and redoubled her strikes, aiming right for the demon who’d made the crack about her being Satan’s bride.
Fucker.
Bastard.
Anger was a welcome respite from the worry that had carved deep channels into her. She reached for it with both hands. She and Stewart were linked in ways she didn’t understand. Eagerness to be reunited with him—and his proximity—fueled her efforts.
The demon who’d mocked her yelped when a bolt of power caught him square between the legs. He closed a clawed hand over his dangling genitals just before the earth beneath his feet caved in.