by Ann Gimpel
Ketha hauled a hand back but stopped shy of slapping him. She skinned her lips back from her teeth. “I understand you love me and want to protect me, but you do not get to make decisions for me. I will welcome you if you choose to come with us, but we have to leave now. Every second we delay, that thing out there”—she waved an arm in the direction of the windows—“gathers momentum.”
Juan bolted across the room to where Viktor stood. He recognized the closed-off expression on his friend’s face. “Amigo.” He planted himself dead center in front of Viktor, displacing Ketha.
“You too?” Viktor shifted furious eyes to Juan.
“Afraid so. I’ll man one Zodiac. You take the other. We’ll split everyone between the two boats. Either things will work out and we’ll come back. Or not. What if that darkness spawns another Cataclysm, and we did nothing to stop it?”
“Who are we protecting?” Viktor’s words were lined with bitterness.
Juan leaned close. “Ourselves. While we’re ashore, we’ll take care of those Vamps too.”
Viktor shifted his gaze to Ketha. “Would you really have hit me?”
She shook her head sadly. “No. But I’d have figured out the contraption to launch the rafts with or without your help.”
Something altered in Viktor’s expression. Juan thought he saw the outline of a raven flutter in the air. “Is everyone game?” Viktor didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t have to since the side conversations had died away to nothing once Ketha began screaming.
The first yes came from Aura, but it was followed by a chorus of assents.
“One of you lower the gangway,” Viktor said in a clipped voice. “Juan and I will float the rafts. Get the iron blade and both rifles and as much ammo as you can lay your hands on. Layer up. Be sure to wear your life vests. Bottom of the gangway in ten minutes.”
Viktor bolted out of the bridge with Juan hard on his heels. “What changed your mind?” Juan asked as they ran.
“Ketha. And my raven. Both convinced me we didn’t have a choice.”
They reached the Zodiac launch deck and worked together to turn the first raft over, centering it in the crane’s webbing.
“But you wish it were otherwise,” Juan said.
“Of course I do.” Viktor swung to face him. “I have a wife. I want to keep her safe. Is that so hard to understand? Your boat’s ready to lower.”
Juan gripped Viktor’s forearm. “We’ll get through this.”
“I wish I had your confidence.”
Juan squeezed harder. “Something Ketha said before we took on the Cataclysm was we had to believe we’d prevail. Goddammit, Vik. Alter your attitude. This isn’t about you losing a power struggle. It’s about all of us making it through so we can fight another day.”
“You’re right.” Viktor set his jaw in a tight line. “I’ll pull my head out of my ass. Now get out of here.”
Juan leapt nimbly into the Zodiac and grasped the webbing to stabilize the raft as Viktor lowered it onto the water. Waves slapped Arkady’s hull, and Juan readied himself to fire the engine. It would be a rough ride across the harbor to the beach hiding within the unnatural blackness.
Chapter Eleven: Hell’s Gateway
Aura gripped the rope running along the top of the Zodiac’s pontoons as the small craft careened toward shore. Wind howled; hail and sleet felt like shrapnel when they connected with her body. The raft hit the waves head-on, slapping each one with a sound like a gunshot. They had one rifle and the iron saber with them. As soon as they left Arkady’s shadow, water splashed over the pontoons, threatening to fill the raft.
Juan sat in the stern, guiding them by some sixth sense because he sure couldn’t see much. For one heart-stopping moment, she hoped to hell he wasn’t in the grip of fell forces pushing them out to sea with all the finesse of a wayward Siren. She switched to her psychic view; relief burned hot when she saw the old whaling community bearing down on them.
Have faith in him, she lectured herself.
“And his cat,” her bondmate added dryly.
“Sorry,” she told her cat. “I’m not thinking straight.”
“Better correct that. We’ll be in the thick of things soon.”
“We’ll land in a minute or two,” Juan said, his words almost swallowed by the shrieking wind. “Has anyone figured out what we’re facing? My cat says it’s a demon horde but didn’t provide any further details.”
Aura clamped her jaws together so hard, her teeth ached. She’d been so busy worrying about Juan—and being scared to her bones—she hadn’t focused on what their enemy was. Hopefully, the others in the raft hadn’t been quite so remiss.
“Your bondmate is right about it being demons,” Rowana said.
“A lot of them,” Karin added.
“So that’s what feels so foul,” Recco muttered.
“Beneath it all, I sense Vamps,” Juan said. “Is it possible the demons freed the batch beneath the barracks?”
“Anything is possible, but it doesn’t seem likely. No love lost between Vamps and demons,” Aura muttered. She pulled the tattered edges of her sanity together. Never mind it wasn’t fair they had to fight again so soon after facing the Cataclysm and the demon in the church. Never mind they didn’t have an organized plan this time. How could they? They couldn’t sense their enemy from where Arkady rocked on her anchor chain.
Excuses.
Bullshit excuses.
Anger bubbled from her guts, and Aura grabbed it with both hands. She needed its energy, had to move beyond the fear miring her in crippling inertia. Besides Karin and Rowana, Tessa, Moira, and Zoe were in her raft, along with Recco and Juan. Everyone else was with Viktor.
Sand scraped the bottom of the raft, and Juan leapt over the pontoon, hanging onto the anchor rope. “Get out,” he ordered tersely. “Watch the waves. Time them. It’s too cold to risk your boots filling up with water.” He tied off the craft, piling rocks over the knotted rope end.
Soon they stood huddled in a tight circle on a rocky beach. The drone of the second Zodiac’s engine grew louder, but the surrounding gloom reduced her vision to a few feet.
“We need a plan,” Aura shouted to make herself heard. “Does anyone have one?”
“The unmaking spell to break the demons’ hold?” Zoe suggested. “It was the only one I could think of that would make a clean break betwixt the underworld and here.”
Aura did some quick calculations. “It will take all twelve of us women, but it’s a damned good idea.”
“How about if you and I go Vampire hunting?” Recco directed his words at Juan and shouldered the iron blade.
“Wait until Viktor’s boat lands,” Juan said. “If the women are all required for the spell Zoe mentioned to work, then the four of us men will take on the Vampires. There’s the other Zodiac.” He ran into the surf, water sloshing around his knee-high boots, and caught the rope Viktor tossed him.
Aura shifted from foot to foot, waiting for the other raft to disgorge its occupants. It was bitterly cold. She had layers of clothing on, topped by waterproof outer garments, but the wind bit right through all of it. She directed a ribbon of magic to her feet, in hopes of them not turning into useless blocks of frozen flesh.
The air felt thick, heavy, filled with death and rot. She kept her mind shuttered so she wouldn’t fall prey to the same anxiety that had filled her when she’d been certain Juan was headed the wrong way. Whatever evil surrounded South Georgia Island sapped the spirit. If she opened herself at all, the urge to run as fast and far as she could from the rock-studded stretch of shore was overwhelming.
It didn’t matter one whit nowhere safe existed.
The occupants of the second Zodiac trudged ashore. Aura trotted to Ketha on feet she couldn’t feel. “Unmaking spell?”
“As good as any other.” Ketha sounded rattled. “We need to begin now. Before this thing closes in even more and paralyzes us.”
Viktor wrapped his arms around Ketha. “Be careful.”
His words were a combination of threat and entreaty. “The men and I are going after the Vamps.”
“You be careful too,” Ketha said. “I love you.”
A ghost of a smile flitted across his face, red and raw from the cold. “Love you too, darling.” Turning, he took off through the gloom with Juan, Recco, Daide, and the weapons.
Aura considered running after them to request one of the rifles, but the gun part didn’t matter. Not really. What they faced wasn’t amenable to something as prosaic as bullets, whether they included silver powder or not. She wasted a few seconds wishing she’d hugged Juan and told him to guard himself, but his cat was more than competent. If anyone could pull Juan through this, it was his bondmate.
“Good call,” her cat spoke up.
“Gather close.” Ketha gestured to all of them, and they formed a tight circle. “This will take less magic if we can cut some of the distance between us and the church.”
“How do you know it’s the epicenter?” Tessa asked.
“I don’t,” Ketha snapped, even surlier than usual. “But it’s as good a guess as any. It’s where we drove the demon to ground.”
“So we’ll angle toward the church until it takes so much magic to move forward, it turns into a crapshoot,” Aura said and shook her head. “My words didn’t come out right. We move forward until we hit a balance point where it takes equivalent amounts of magic to project the destruction spell versus plowing through evil.”
“I understood well enough.” Karin touched her arm. “Be sure to save some power to ward yourselves,” the older woman exhorted. “Whatever’s out there saps the will, and soon enough it will understand we’re intent on its destruction.”
“I’m certain it already does and is gearing up to throw more shit our way. Form three lines of four,” Ketha said, followed by, “Let’s go.”
Aura brought up the rear in the last line with Karin, Moira, and Tessa. She alternated her psychic view with her earth eyes. The problem with her third eye was it saw all manner of impossible things flying—or lumbering—toward them. Gryphons. Furies. Man-sized bats and even a dragon. Despite the freezing temperatures, the stench of rot filled her nostrils with every breath she took. How the fuck could she be smelling roadkill. Dead things left to putrefy beneath a tropical sun. Human bodies with flesh rotting off the bones and glazed, empty eye sockets—
“Enough!” Her cat screeched from the sidelines.
“No kidding,” she muttered and funneled more power into her wards. It helped sort illusion from reality, but not by much.
Karin made a gagging noise from next to her. “Jesus, but that’s rank,” she complained.
“Those things flying at us—” Tessa shouted.
“Aren’t real,” Karin spoke firmly, using her best no-nonsense doctor voice.
“How do you know?” Moira’s eyes had become bottomless, dark pools, and she trained them on Karin. “If we opened Hell’s gates, those things definitely could have escaped.”
The rows in front of them ground to a halt, and Aura nearly pitched up against Rowana’s back. “Why are we stopping?”
Rowana turned. “We must have hit the balance point you described earlier.” Her voice was thin, strained.
Aura risked a view through her third eye. They’d passed the gift shop and post office, so the church wasn’t much farther. The women formed two circles with eight in the outer ring and four inside.
Aura was part of the inner ring, and she held out her mitt-covered fingers to Ketha and Rowana. Karin stood with them as well. Aura understood this deployment. They were the oldest, the most powerful magically, and they’d carry the brunt of the spell. The task of the outer circle was to make certain nothing interrupted their casting. She sent a quick prayer to the goddess to watch over Juan and the men, and then she cleared her mind of everything but the task in front of them.
Ketha began to chant in her clear, pure soprano. Karin picked up the incantation, followed by Rowana. When they fell silent for the space of three heartbeats, Aura wove the strands that would cause evil to implode. Wings brushed her face. The foul odor intensified. It hit her so hard, bile splashed the back of her throat, but she swallowed it back and kept right on reciting her part. She could vomit later—if there was a later.
She needed her third eye for this casting. Had to see if what she was doing was working, or if she had to alter some of the elements. Ketha wielded earth, her strongest suit. Rowana channeled water, and Karin air. Aura threaded those three elements plus fire into an ever-changing panoply meant to confound the wickedness escaped from Hell. If they could get some traction, their next move would be to blow up the gateway. Once the demon spawn were trapped, much of their power would dissipate.
She hoped.
But that part was a long way off. Not in real time, but in magical reckoning.
Breath rattled in her lungs, and liquid sluiced down her face. She thought it was tears from the cold until some dripped into her mouth, and she understood she was bleeding. Christ! Had one of the Furies or Gryphons or things she had no name for cut her face? She was so cold, it could have happened without accompanying pain to alert her.
Her spell faltered, and she gave herself a sharp mental slap. Cuts, bruises, even broken bones, were nothing. If they failed, they’d all die here. The hell-spawned horde knew they were engaged in an all-out, to-the-death war, and they were fighting back.
Wind intensified, howling around them. The temperature, already impossibly cold, dropped another twenty degrees. Her teeth chattered, and an insidious lethargy—by-product of the intense cold—weakened her.
A trickle of heat, counterpart to the chill, began deep in her belly. Her cat was doing its damnedest to help, and she loved her bondmate beyond measure. It wasn’t giving up; neither would she. Shock waves rolled through her. Until the idea about giving up intruded, she’d had no inkling how close she was to wrapping her arms around herself and sinking into a heap on the frozen dirt beneath her feet.
She took stock of their spell. Karin stumbled with fatigue where she stood, and Aura threaded an arm around her. “Steady,” she said. “Not much more, and we’ll have it.”
“Thanks. I was fading.” The old wolf Shifter was panting, and white showed around her bloodshot copper eyes.
A quick glance at Ketha and Rowana told her they were at least holding their own. “What we’re doing isn’t working fast enough,” she shouted. “I’m done titrating my power. Give this everything you’ve got.”
“But how will we kill those abominations after we close the gateway?” Rowana asked.
“If this works, everything will implode together.”
Aura was done talking. The others would either lend whatever they had in reserve. Or not. She fanned fire into a blazing inferno and fed it with air. Karin added still more air to the mix.
“Wait on earth and water,” Aura cautioned Ketha and Rowana. “Let this part of the spell close the gateway. Once it’s accomplished, you can drown or smother whatever’s left on this side.”
“We need to move closer,” Tessa yelled from the outer circle.
“Do it,” Moira shouted. “We’ll guard the perimeter.”
Aura pulled her casting back, holding it in abeyance but ready to deploy if anything wicked attacked outright. The group surged forward until they stood directly in front of the white clapboard church. The bell clanged violently, banging against the sides of its housing atop the structure.
Aura loosed her spell again, screaming the words. Her throat was raw from the wind and the cold and forcing words through it. Something she couldn’t see fastened what felt like talons around her throat. An unseen hand stinking of death clamped over her mouth.
She grappled with whatever had decided she commanded the means of their unmaking. Heat streaked down her face, and she tasted more blood. Shrieks rose around her. Maybe from outraged Shifters. Maybe from demons fighting for their lives. Aura couldn’t tell which.
Power bubbled in her belly
, and she let it flow through her fingers. Fire shot from her fingertips, shredding her mitts, but unholy grunts suggested her magic had found its target. The choking sensation lessened, and the talons fell away.
“Now!” Ketha shrieked. “Outer circle too. Funnel fire and air right at the church.”
Aura tried to peer through her third eye, but blackness spread everywhere. No ley lines. Nothing but unremitting darkness. Her earth eyes showed the same vista. Christ! Had her attacker blinded her?
“Which way for my magic?” she shouted. “I can’t see.”
Someone gripped her shoulders and turned her in a quarter circle. “Dead ahead,” Karin said. To her credit, the doctor didn’t start probing about why she couldn’t see.
Aura focused fire and air and let them fly. Pressure built in the ether surrounding her, pushing until she couldn’t get a full breath into her lungs. She reached for her cat and its magic but couldn’t find either.
“Yes! Goddammit, now!” Ketha shrieked before Aura could fully process what her cat’s absence meant.
An explosion pounded through her, battering her with shock waves. A second and third followed on its heels, accompanied by a dead, burnt smell. Compared with the stench of rot, it felt clean, and Aura dared to hope maybe this deserted whaling station wouldn’t turn into their tomb.
“What’s happening?” she shouted, not knowing whether to keep magic flowing or not.
“The church. Its walls are pulsating as if it’s going to blow apart any moment,” Karin said.
“Do we need to get down?”
“I don’t think so. I might be wrong, but I believe our power is doing battle with evil within its walls. We don’t like to acknowledge it,” the wolf Shifter went on, “but churches harbor power too. Power that stands against evil. I believe it’s helping us.”
“So moving closer was smart?”
“It appears so. What’s wrong with your eyes?” The healer part of Karin finally bounded into the breach.
“I have no idea.”