The Deadliest Bite

by Jennifer Rardin

  He did look pale. I held my hands in front of my face. No sign yet that our extended absence from the world had affected me physically. Maybe I was building up some kind of resistance from previous “vacations.” But the fact was that we didn’t belong here and our bodies knew it. If they failed before our mission was accomplished, we could well be stuck in Brude’s horror show for eternity. I yanked on Daisy’s ear and got a low, rumbling growl to let me know he was paying attention.

  “Take us back to the castle.”

  Daisy began to lope, like a horse who’s been working all day and suddenly catches a whiff of his trough full of oats. Surreal, the feeling of riding on a giant creature’s shoulders. I told myself it was just like galloping through the fields on the back of my grandpa’s old gelding. Except supersized. With a fairy-tale element that I’d thought was rarer than platinum until I’d hit high school and found a brownie hiding under my desk because he didn’t want his wife to discover he’d been out drinking all night. Which was when I realized how much humans silently agreed not to see or discuss so that they could live happy, comfortable lives. And when I knew that I could no longer be one of them.

  So I acknowledged how weird it was to feel the wind of the Thin blow the hair back from my face as I rode toward the absent king’s torture chamber, while the king himself, or at least the most important part of him, remained imprisoned inside my own skull.

  Beyond walking the length and width of his cell, Brude had been quiet since his last outburst. Too quiet. Which let me know that he knew the score. Maybe he could smell his castle, coming closer with every giant step of his spirit-crusher, the scent of despair coming to him through my own nostrils. I knew the stillness within my brain wouldn’t last forever. He’d know when we reached his base. He’d try like hell to escape. And it was entirely possible that nothing I could do would hold him back.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Saturday, June 16, 11:45 p.m.

  I’ll give blemuths this much, when they want to cover ground, they can move. We crossed fields, forded creeks, waded through dark forests that should’ve taken days to negotiate. I wasn’t happy about the hanging bridge that creaked and swung like something from a neglected playground, or the raft that kept threatening to capsize every time the ferryman stuck his pole into the grimy green water below it. But at least he accepted our story that we were new recruits, just come from the world to lead Brude’s armies to victory.

  All around us I felt the soft wisps of passing spirits, most of them moving too quickly to be caught in the net of the Thin. They made the air feel hotly humid, as if the exhaust of their flight influenced the climate of the place Brude wanted to fashion into New Hell. Had that been the reason he’d chosen it? For the heat? Or because every once in a while some poor schmo did get caught, and then we found them dangling in the tops of the trees or slumped against a boulder, exhausted from the fall?

  Then the blemuth would set them on their feet and motion for them to follow. Like a fluteless Pied Piper, all he had to do was crook his gore-caked talon and they stepped in line behind him. By the time we reached the gray stone castle that Brude had built on a plain of salted ground we had a parade of fifteen spirits trailing us.

  I glanced over at Vayl. “This has got to be the most obvious jailbreak attempt in the history of mankind. Ever.”

  He grinned at me again, possibly breaking his record for most fang revealed in a single day. And reminding me, once again, that parts of him were pure predator. “We know it is a jailbreak. For all they know, the blemuth has captured a great many humans for the kitchen fire. Let us see how long we can make that illusion last, shall we?”

  He sprang to his feet and pinched the blemuth’s neck. “Do you want the stinger out of your foot?” The blemuth moaned in agreement. “Then take us inside and pretend we are your prisoners. Straight to the dungeon with you.”

  Which was when I felt Brude stir inside my head, his movements coinciding with the first pangs of a headache. “He knows we’re here,” I whispered.

  Vayl brushed his hand over mine and the pain in my head receded. “Can you handle him?”

  “I think so. But if it gets bad, you may need to… do something.”

  “All right.” We stared at each other. Neither of us quite knew what that would be. We were just hoping we’d be able to figure it out if the situation came to that.

  Vayl leaned forward so he could see Raoul and Aaron. “Soon,” he told them. “Will you be ready?”

  Raoul nodded and dragged Aaron to his feet. I heard him tell Junior, “There’s nowhere to run that won’t get you into worse trouble here, understand? These spirits can sense weakness, and as soon as they do, they attack. So you need to at least pretend to be tough.”

  “When I’ve never been more scared in all my life?” Aaron asked.

  “Do you want to see your own intestines today?” Raoul said.

  “No.”

  “Then find a way.”

  Aaron swallowed hard and pressed his hand against his stomach, like he was promising his entire digestive system he would do everything in his power to ensure it remained intact. He kept it there the entire trip through the castle, while the spirits of Brude’s army howled at the blemuth, demanding news of the patrol, information about us, and above all else a taste of our delectable flesh. A couple of reminder pinches to the ear forced him to ignore them all and even smash a few of the more persistent ones against the mold-covered walls.

  Those walls were lit, as I’d remembered from my first visit to Brude’s castle, with stacks of burning skulls set in wall brackets. It didn’t seem like they should give us that clear a view as we wound our way to the lower levels. But we had no problem picking out members of the king’s personal guard lounging against the walls, throwing dice, playing find-the-wench’s-giggly-spots, or tearing out each other’s hearts over a minor disagreement regarding the bloodline of the hound lapping up the fluids dripping from their everwidening wounds.

  I heard Aaron whisper, “I think I’m going to be sick,” and Raoul reply, “Are you ready to die so soon?” before the blemuth reached the bottom of the winding stairs.

  The halls had been built wide enough to hold a Sherman tank, tall enough to make a herd of elephants feel comfortably cozy. The blemuth still had to squeeze to get through to the dungeon, but he didn’t seem to mind. In fact, I suspected that twinkle in his flat yellow eyes was pure glee as he viewed the havoc Brude’s forces had wrought among the realms of the Thin and, occasionally, Brude’s own people.

  In hell, spirits are forced back into physical form. This in itself is torture for a soul that has, at least for a while, experienced pure freedom. It also aids in further tortures as the various demons and devices of hell become inspired with increasingly malicious ideas. Brude had followed his master’s lead to a degree. But rather than pushing his prisoners’ spirits completely back into the flesh form, he’d gone in the opposite direction. So the straps of the rack on which one of Queen Marie’s Dogs was currently being broken were made from the skin of another human’s wrists and legs. This both held him firm, and burned him through, because it wasn’t his flesh. Clever. Diabolical. Inside my mind Brude laughed and, true to pattern, the headache began.

  Unfortunately it wasn’t blinding, so I clearly saw the spirits hanging like psychopathic artwork on the bloodstained walls, dangling from manacles made of human flesh. Elsewhere they writhed on beds of nails carved from human bone and half-drowned in repeated dousings of human excrement. Having already been to hell, I thought I was hardened to the worst that evil could shove in front of my eyes. But my stomach clenched when I saw the cage.

  I knew it was important by the way it hung suspended in midair by heavy chains anchored to the ceiling and the floor. But that was where my mind stuttered, begging me not to process what it was made of. The sharp pain behind my right eye, accompanied by Aaron’s gasped, “No! Raoul, tell me I’m not seeing that!” confirmed the worst. The four-foot-by-five-foot re
ctangle was made of human skin, stitched together by dried intestines, stretched over a large collection of leg and arm bones.

  “Jesus.” It was the closest I’d gotten to a prayer in a while.

  “They had to confine him,” Vayl said, his voice so sad and low I only caught it because I was used to listening for it. “His spirit was too important to leave to chance.” He nodded to the prisoners moaning their misery all around us.

  “So.” I nodded at the cage. “It’s a trap?”

  “I am sure that if we breach that cage, all of Brude’s home guard will be alerted to our presence. In fact, he and his allies are counting on just that.”

  “But it’s my dad!” Aaron cried. “We can’t just leave him there!”

  As if to underscore his point, an unearthly wail came pouring out of the cage, its anguish so acute I felt my heart break a little to hear it. Still…

  I said, “Aaron, we can’t risk it. So far we’ve been able to fight Brude’s forces. But I guarantee whatever trap he’s laid has been heavily tipped in his favor. I’m not saying we’re giving up for good. Just for now. Until we can figure out—”

  “I have an idea,” said Raoul.

  At the exact same moment Vayl and Aaron asked, “What is it?”

  Inside my head Brude yelled in protest. I fought to keep my hands from clamping at my temples. No sense in worrying the men just yet. It was only pain, right?

  Raoul said, “The doors. The ones that allow us to move from plane to plane—they follow Jaz closely, almost like Jack and Astral.”

  I looked around. “That’s true, but I don’t see one here.”

  He nodded. “I think you can call them. In fact, I suspect you do subconsciously. It’s part of who you are as an Eldhayr. Part of what you call your Sensitivity. You’ve never been able to control it because you didn’t know you could. But now you have to. Call us one that would fit a plane hangar.”

  “Sure, no problem, Raoul, like I’m gonna be able to make an interplanar doorway that burns around its rim appear just like that!” I snapped my fingers. And a door appeared. In the air. Right next to the hanging cage. “Holy shit!”

  Vayl frowned at me. “Your language has deteriorated remarkably quickly in the past few weeks.”

  “I’m willing to give her a break on this one,” Raoul said. He turned to me. “Can you make it bigger? And then—”

  But I was way ahead of him. Drawing lines in the air. Stretching the parameters of the door in my head. Feeling it widen and lengthen, and watching it cooperate in this particular reality as if it were no more than one of Astral’s holographic images. Finally it seemed more than big enough to hold its cargo.

  But it wasn’t easy. I might have snapped my fingers, but the moment the door appeared I felt like the fire lighting its frame was burning me up inside. No fever had ever worked on me the way this heat did. Sweat dripped down my face as the pain in my head built to new heights. I felt sure that if we didn’t wind this up soon, the heat would melt my eyeballs from the inside out.

  “Everybody off the blemuth,” I muttered. Raoul and Aaron began to scramble down while Vayl held my wrist, staying with me as I delivered Daisy’s final instructions. The blemuth grunted that he understood.

  “What about the thorn?” he asked plaintively.

  “Just as soon as you deliver,” I promised.

  He nodded his understanding as Vayl and I descended. My palms were so wet with sweat that I slipped and nearly fell, but Vayl caught me before I could hit the floor.

  “You are burning up,” he whispered.

  “It’s the door.”

  “Your nose is bleeding as well.”

  “Brude,” I muttered.

  “You cannot contain it all,” he said as we made our way to the filthy stones beneath the blemuth’s paws.

  “What else am I supposed to do?”

  “Perhaps you should light a small fire of your own?”

  “No.” One of the talents that had risen in me after I donated blood to a dying Were named Trayton was the ability to start fires. First they’d just appeared as an extension of my extreme emotions. Then I’d figured out how to control them just in time to save precious lives, including my own. But I’d learned that the flames I shot out from my Spirit Eye also burned a part of me. And I couldn’t trudge through life hoping bits of my soul would grow back before I watched my niece walk down the aisle. So I held back, keeping the burn in check even when I was at my most furious. Then Vayl said, “Perhaps this is why you were given the power in the first place. Not to destroy those who would harm you. But to protect yourself from the fires that are sent against you.”

  Inside my head a chorus of girls went, Aha! Everyone needs a shield. Brude had his tattoos. Vayl could once call up armor made entirely of ice. I’d fought reavers who were so thoroughly protected that hitting them felt like pounding your fists into a brick wall. So why shouldn’t I get some sort of defense? Especially when I kept having to fight hellspawn?

  “Okay,” I told him. “I’ll try.” But for the moment I had to concentrate on the rope that I still held in my hand, the one tied to the “thorn” in Daisy’s paw. I made sure it couldn’t get looped around anything. I checked that Raoul and Aaron had found places to perch among the links of the skin-cell’s chain. “It’s going to be a bumpy ride,” I warned them. “You may not be able to hold on by pure strength.” Aaron unbuckled his belt and used it to strap himself around the link he’d chosen. Raoul had already done the same with his sword belt.

  When Vayl and I had tied ourselves in to our satisfaction we nodded to each other. “Okay!” I yelled to the blemuth. “Upsy Daisy!” Then I snorted, because I’d always wanted to say that, and damned if this wasn’t the perfect time!

  The blemuth grabbed the ceiling-bound chain of Aaron Sr.’s cell between its teeth and yanked. Debris began to fall. The torturing crew finally looked up from their grisly business and realized the blemuth wasn’t in it for the fun, like they’d assumed. They screamed as more of the ceiling fell, crushing them and a few of their victims alike.

  When a slab of rock the size of my Corvette landed right next to me I said to Vayl, “Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea.”

  “It was better than any of the alternatives. How are you feeling?”

  “Why?”

  “You are bleeding from both nostrils.” He touched the back of his hand to my forehead. “If we were in the world, I would take you straight to an emergency room. Brude is attacking you from the inside. He knows this is his last chance to escape before we take him to hell. And that door—” He nodded up to the portal, whose flames had turned a startling shade of magenta. “Its power is immense. I can feel it pulling at you. Trying to suck you dry. Where is your fire, Jasmine? Where is the heat of your resistance?”

  I felt the blood drip from my nose down to my chin. The pounding in my head had gone so far past migraine I was seeing pink. The domytr had begun raking at the walls of my mind with his fingernails, pounding them with his fists and feet, leaving rivulets of blood and bruises in his wake. And the portal, I could sense it, just like Vayl had said. Eager for my power. Lapping at the energy that had called it despite the fact that it could stand on its own.

  Suddenly I was so tired. I wanted to fall to my knees, bury my head in my hands, and cry until somebody came to save me. And Vayl would try. But he couldn’t fight invisible demons. All he could do was stand beside me, hold me up, and hope I was strong enough to battle through to the end.

  I reached inside for the rage that never seemed to stop burning, even during my happiest moments. It leaped to my hand like a longlost pet. And I welcomed it. Knew it was the reason I was strong and, after everything, still vibrantly alive.

  I pulled it around me like a Kevlar cloak. And then I pushed it outward like the shell of an exploding bomb, driving Brude into a howling retreat as he beat at the flames that singed his hair, his skin, and his beard. The flames of the portal billowed and shot straight upward, burning the
pieces of debris as Daisy shook them out of the ceiling. They tried to reach for me as well, but my fire was bigger, hotter, and it burned them back to where they belonged.

  And then I felt myself lifted into the air. Daisy had broken our anchor from the ground. The ceiling anchor had come free as well. Just in time, too, because Brude’s guards had come howling into the chamber, waving their weapons over their heads as if we should be intimidated by their noise and motion alone.

  “Now, Daisy!” Vayl yelled. “Into the gateway with us!”

  The blemuth swung us into the portal, and as we flew through, I yanked on the rope, pulling my sword free of the monster’s foot, gaining myself a roar of thanks as we hurtled out of the Thin.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Sunday, June 17, 12:15 a.m.

  No other motion feels quite as exhilarating as flying, whether you’re parachuting from a Cessna Caravan at thirteen thousand feet or hang gliding off the cliffs at Mission Beach. However, in those cases you know that you have at least a decent chance of landing softly enough to maintain the integrity of your skeletal structure. Not so much when a blemuth has tossed you high into the cosmos and you’re not even sure your landing site is solid. So, while part of me grooved on defying gravity to the point that I felt like I was thumbing my nose at Mother Nature, the rest was trying desperately to figure out what I was hurtling toward.

  I ruled out hot lava, just because our landing site wasn’t particularly glowing. I couldn’t hear surf, so we probably wouldn’t be swimming for it. Which left sharp, spiky rocks that could impale us in the most ghastly, gut-wrenching ways. Or some guy’s roof, in which case only a couple of us would have to worry about taking a furnace chimney up the ass while the rest of us could enjoy more typical crash-related injuries. Or—

  “Trees!” Raoul called out. “Get ready for a beating!”

  Oh. Goody.

  They were pines. So besides the abuse we took from smashing through at least half a dozen treetops whose branches tried their hardest to whip us off our perches, we also sustained slashes, cuts, and bruises that would take days to heal. But we didn’t die. I decided that was a plus.