Beside her, Felix grumbled and nodded.
“They wouldn’t have done that if you weren’t here. If you woulda just let them lead us to our salvation then we’d all be fine, you crazy bitch!”
The tingles again. She controlled them.
The father with his two kids stood a little taller. “Yeah, he’s right! My kids could’ve been shot and killed. Would you like that on your conscience, lady?”
“I didn’t pull the trigger!” Sahara said, her voice losing its composure. Calm, she told herself, you have to remain calm. A Realm Protector is always calm.
“You might as well have,” the father said.
The rest of the crowd nodded in agreement. Then a couple people said, “Yeah!”
“Kill the witch!” another person said.
“Yeah, kill her!”
“You know what?” Sahara said, smiling. “Go ahead, be my guest. You walk through that portal, you punch your ticket to Hell and see for yourself. I won’t stop you.” After a moment of intense silence, she said, “Any takers?”
When no one piped up, when the crowd did nothing but fidget and look to each other uneasily, Sahara laughed.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Can’t do anything unless someone leads you. You’re like sheep!”
“I will,” the large man who had had the hunting rifle said. “I’ll go through. Move out of the way, wench.”
Sahara arched an eyebrow. “Wench, seriously? What year is it?”
She moved out of the way and let the large man go through. The rest of the crowd followed him.
Sheep.
They stood at the opening of the cave where the air was icy cold. Sahara’s skin prickled with goosebumps. It was hard to breathe.
Almost no light reached the mouth of the tunnel despite the fire in the sky. For a moment, fear seized her chest, locked her legs in place. She knew what lay beyond that darkness. She knew it all too well.
“This it?” the man said. “This is salvation?”
No one answered in return.
Someone from behind, the man with his two kids, turned on a large flashlight and shined it into the darkness. “Where did all the people ahead of us go?” he asked. “There was a line of like a hundred of them.” He tilted his head back and forth with the sweeping beam of light. It didn’t seem to penetrate the blackness at all. Instead, it was swallowed by it. “Where did they go?” he repeated, an edge in his voice.
Many of them looked to Sahara for an answer, but she just shook her head. She was through talking, through trying to save these people. Let them learn on their own.
“To Hell,” Felix said casually, arms still crossed.
“Yeah, right, old man.”
“M-Maybe they’re not kidding,” the big man said.
The father snorted, set the flashlight down. “Well, why don’t you go ask the people?” he said. “Oh wait, you can’t because these freaks killed them all.”
“They were shooting at us, daddy,” the little boy said. “My ears hurt.”
“I know, I know,” his father said absentmindedly. “Stay here.” He walked over to one of the corpses and kicked at it with a boot. “See that? Dead. Now, I don’t know about you guys,” he said to the crowd, “but I’d rather take my chances then stick around with the Witch and the Wizard here.”
“They shot at us,” the large man said.
“So what? They were trying to save their asses. Like we all are. You blame them?”
The big guy looked down at the ground, too afraid to meet the father’s eyes.
“Now I got kids that need to be safe. So you going or what?” the father said.
The big guy shook his head.
“Ah, geez. Fine, you big scaredy-cat.” He walked back over to where his two kids stood and grabbed each roughly by the arm. The young boy hesitated, then wound up being dragged into the darkness.
“Wait,” Sahara said. “No, don’t go.”
“Listen, lady, unless you’re gonna slice me up like you were gonna slice up those other people, you aren’t going to stop me.”
“You’ll die. Your kids will die,” she said.
Both of the children’s eye flew wide open. The boy started sniveling.
The father chuckled.
“Daddy, I don’t like the dark,” the girl said.
“I know, pumpkin.” He clicked off the light then turned it on again. “That’s why we have this, don’t worry, it’ll be all right.”
Sahara’s feet broke free of whatever harsh feelings were grounding her. Mortals may be dumb, but there was no need for young ones to die senselessly. Her arm tingled again and this time she didn’t think to stop it. If she had to cut down the father, tie him up to a tree, she would if it meant saving the children. But something grabbed her, stopped her forward momentum.
It was Felix, and there was a deep sadness in his eyes. “Let them go,” he whispered.
A brick dropped in the pit of Sahara’s stomach. “What? No? They’ll die,” she said.
“A lesson must be taught. A sacrifice must be made for that lesson.”
Sahara blinked slowly. She couldn’t believe the words. How long had it been since one of Felix’s famous lessons. Too long, and good because last time a lesson was brought out, she had to eat the heart of a crow. But she knew better than to oppose him, so she stopped on the spot. Soon, the tingling in her arm vanished.
The man and his two kids stepped farther into the darkness. They too almost seemed swallowed up by it. She could make out the wrinkles in the man’s pants, and a strap of the bag slung over his shoulder, the blonde hair of the children, the girl’s pink ribbon.
Then they walked on.
And then they were gone.
She didn’t know what she expected — a scream, a wave of blood, perhaps. She got nothing instead.
The next noise came from the large man. “Yo,” he said. “Everything all right?”
No answer.
Everything was not all right, Sahara wanted to say. There was no telling what had happened to them. Maybe they were torn apart by Demons or Jackals, sent as slaves to the Black Pits, or maybe captured as food for the Dark One himself. But maybe, they were safe for the moment. Maybe all the evil and darkness that was in Hell had finally spilled out onto Earth, leaving the cold, icy wasteland to be inhabited by nothing.
“I think it worked,” a woman said — the same woman who had the first aid kit. “I think they’re safe.”
The big guy’s face seemed to ease up. He might’ve even smiled. Then, without a word, he plunged into the darkness after the father and his two kids.
This time, there was a sound. It was a sound Sahara knew too well and when it ripped through the air, assaulting her eardrums, she tensed up as rigid as the mountains looming above her.
It was the unmistakable sound of a Demon, of teeth slicing into flesh and crunching bones.
The crowd shifted together. First Aid Woman backed away until she tripped over something and landed hard on her backside. No one rushed to help her up. They were too busy staring with their mouths hung on the ground.
Sahara’s blade came out. No one noticed that either.
They were waiting.
She was waiting.
The scream came next, sinking Sahara’s heart deeper into her stomach. She raised the blade, squatted into a battle-ready position. The hilt, though attached to her body, was slick with sweat and would’ve threatened to slide out under normal circumstances.
Another scream, this one high-pitched. She thought of the children, but knew no child would’ve had the strength to bring forth something so horrid from their lungs. Then footsteps, laboring, shuffling footsteps.
She couldn’t breathe. The sword shook. All the eyes were directed toward the mouth of the cave, toward the opening of another dimension. Out of all the eyes, she felt Felix’s digging into her back like the claws of a great beast.
A black shadow stretched from the darkness, creeping toward the gathered crowd. S
ahara brought the hilt of her blade up to her chest. Somewhere, a Panther cried, stood rigid on its haunches, ready to spring forward and kill whatever disease threatened it.
But what came out wasn’t a Demon, or a Jackal, or even the Dark One himself. No, it was the large man, the one who’d gone in after the father and his two children. Black liquid ran down the sides of his face. His clothes, now nothing but tatters, blew in the slight breeze. He tried to open his mouth to talk, but all that escaped was bright scarlet. He took a few more shuffling steps and stopped. With the blood in the sky shining down upon him, Sahara could see what he clutched in his arms.
At first, she didn’t believe it.
He held them close to his chest, where three bright claw marks had gouged into his flesh, like a man gathering firewood for a great bonfire. Except these weren’t sticks. Sticks were not the color of old paper.
These were bone.
Someone behind her gasped; another person screamed. Sahara wanted nothing more than to wheel around and yell, “Shut up!” but ultimately, she couldn’t. She was too transfixed on what was in front of her.
Bones?
Why bones?
Whose bones?
She knew even if she didn’t want to admit it to herself.
The man opened his mouth again, a fresh streamlet of blood trickled down his beard, then culminated to a heavy droplet before landing on the mountain’s dusty surface. A faint sound came out from between his clenched teeth. His eyes watered, dripped.
Sahara lowered her weapon. Soon her feet were unstuck from the ground. She rushed over to him, getting there just in time before he tottered over. He fell into her arms, still clutching the bones which smelled of death and rot.
He looked up to her, this heavy man who weighed nothing more than a textbook to Sahara’s Realm Protector strength, and muttered a word she could hardly make out.
“What?” she said.
The crowd buzzed behind her.
“D-Death,” the large man said. His eyes went blank, the pupils runny, and then he breathed no more.
Sahara eased him to the ground. Blood poured from a wound in his back. A wound from some great beast that she hoped would stay beyond the portal. His arms were rigid, but she pried them loose, letting the bones fall to his side.
One of his clutched hands opened then. And it had confirmed whose bones were clutched in his arms. In that palm was a pretty ribbon, the same one that belonged to the young girl whose father had dragged her through the portal.
Sahara felt a lump growing in her throat, tears threatening to spill from her eyes. She grabbed the man’s fist and closed it tight again. Then she looked up to Felix, words like hot bile on the tip of her tongue.
“It’s all your fault,” she said.
And Felix ignored her, walked right past her into the shadows.
“Our ticket has been punched, Sahara. Are you coming?”
She turned to look over the crowd who all gaped at her with wide eyes and open mouths, their arms wrapped around one another as if the power of human love could ward off such monstrosities and beasts like the ones that were coming to claim the Mortal Realm as their own, like the ones who’d just killed a father and his two small children and this large man at her feet.
She shook her head, and stood up, wiping the man’s blood on the thighs of her jeans. “Go home,” she said. “Go be with your loved ones while you still can.”
And with that, she followed the Wizard into darkness.
CHAPTER 16
Harold’s body still pumped pure adrenaline, but he heard no Wolves and that troubled him more than he cared to admit.
The wooden door came down with a deep thrum that vibrated all the way up to his sternum. It cut the cold off with the same sharpness as he had cut the Knight’s chest plate. Inside was warm and smelled of firewood. The sharp scent of smoke wrinkled his phantom nostrils, stung at his mismatched eyes.
The black woman walked in front of him with Frank under one arm and the man who’d been in the Knight’s armor under the other. Her arms rippled with stringy muscle. Her legs were about as thick as small tree trunks, and if Harold could’ve seen in the bright light of the torches earlier like he saw now, he would’ve probably never messed with this woman.
She turned her head over her right shoulder, flashing Harold a dark eye and a bright smile. “Keep up, Electus,” she said.
He let out a forced chuckle. Truth was, he was tired as all Hell and Boris weighed more than his small stature gave off. The warmth in the air acted like blankets. He wanted nothing more than to find a nice bed to crawl into — preferably with Sahara at his side — and doze off into nothingness. But he knew that would be too much to ask.
What wasn’t lit by the torchlights in the long corridor seemed to stretch endlessly up. He was in a skyscraper in the simplest sense, one with broken upper levels. They walked on for another thirty or so paces before Aqua went through a revolving glass door which had been painted black to match the rest of the walls of the hallway.
Harold followed.
And he had revolved himself into a wide open space that might’ve once been an office area. Offices in Hell? Not likely, Harry, he thought.
But instead of cubicles and computers and swiveling chairs, he only saw one long table. The table was almost as long as the room itself, which was about the length of a football field, it seemed. At the far end, Harold saw someone sitting, but they were too far to read from where Harold stood.
Aqua set Frank down. “He’s yours, and he’ll be all right,” she said. “This one,” she motioned to the shriveled man in her other arm, “needs some medical attention.”
“Sorry about that,” Harold said.
“No. No, we are sorry.” She walked forward and placed a warm hand on Harold’s forearm. “We should’ve known. You look so much like the pictures.”
Harold furrowed his brow. “Pictures?”
“Later, Electus. Later. For now, you need to rest as does your wrinkled friend.”
“Who you callin’ wrinkled?” Frank said, his voice sounding hazy.
Aqua smiled. “Wrinkled but tough,” she said. With that, she walked off toward the lone person sitting at the table.
“What the Hell happened?” Frank asked. He smiled despite the edge in his voice.
Harold shrugged. “Misunderstanding, I guess.”
“Well my head begs to differ.” Then his eyes focused on Harold’s arms. “He dead?”
Harold looked down at Boris. “Don’t think so.”
“Damn it,” Frank said, rubbing at his head.
As if right on cue, Boris opened his eyes.
“Am I dead?” the little thing asked.
“No,” Harold said. “We worked it out.”
Boris’ eyes flew open. “My God, where are we?”
“Wondering the same myself,” Frank said.
“We’re inside the building. The one you brought us to,” Harold answered.
Boris sprang up out of Harold’s arms, landing with a weighty thump on the thinly carpeted floor. He turned his back toward them and faced the long table where Aqua had just finished talking to the lone person at the other end.
“Master, is that you?” Boris shrieked. And his little legs worked into a blur as he ran to the table. He hurdled over one chair, landed on the surface, shaking whatever was there with a jingle and a clank.
“Boris, I’ve told you so many times! Stay off the table!” the voice said from the other side, but it was far away, barely audible. Harold wasn’t sure if it was a male or a female.
“Master! So good to be home,” Boris shouted, still running on the table.
Frank looked to Harold with an arched eyebrow, and Harold just shook his head, extending a hand down to help the old man up.
“Things just keep getting weirder and weirder,” he said. “Where’s my crossbow?” Frank looked around for a second, head swiveling slowly like a man who’d just woken up from deep sleep or who’d just been knocked out
cold, then his eyes lit up. He turned toward the endless black that should’ve been a ceiling, jaw dropping open. Where an end would’ve been which would have signified the second floor, there wasn’t, and it had made Harold queasy thinking about it. Frank started to say something, but Harold just shook his head.
“I know,” he said. “Toto, we aren’t in Kansas anymore.”
Frank looked to the dancing Boris and said, “Gee, what was your first hint?”
Boris, now off of the table and dangling around the neck of whatever he ran to, laughed with glee. Almost childlike and very alien coming from a hairy creature that could shoot fire from its hands. That queasy feeling was coming back in Harold’s stomach again. He needed a good meal, and maybe sleep.
When Aqua came back, swinging her hips like a model walking down the catwalk, her arms full of a steaming tray, Harold smiled a little. He sensed Frank smiled, too. It may not be a comfortable featherbed and a wool blanket, but it was food, and he reckoned that was better than nothing.
“Come on, guys!” Boris said with that same childlike glee.
Frank shook his head, looking to Harold. All he could do in return was nod, trying to keep that cool and calm composure he thought a Realm Protector ought to have despite the screaming in his stomach.
But Frank was no dummy. He could read almost anyone like a book though Harold doubted the man read many books.
“Don’t get your hopes up kid,” Frank said. “It may smell nice, but I doubt they have five-star dining in Hell. Don’t forget where we are.”
“Not even that hungry,” Harold said, hoping his eyes and forced smile didn’t give him away.
Frank snorted. “And this bullshit is all a dream…right?” he said.
The two men walked toward the table, almost side by side, Harold leading just a half a step, and not by coincidence.
Boris was now off of the person’s neck and that person happened to be a female with all the stature of a Pro Bowl NFL linebacker. Harold had to blink hard a few times to make sure the lack of sleep and food weren’t playing tricks on his brain.
She stood about six and a half feet tall, shoulders as wide as the front grille of a Mack truck and eyes as bright as a pair of high beams. She was intimidating to say the least, but something else about her spoke leadership and calm. Maybe she wouldn’t eat them both, bones and all; those eyes said, maybe everything was going to be okay and the fate of the Realms and Mortals and all that garbage weighing on Harold’s conscience would work out for the greater good.
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