by Tanya Huff
“You think you could get it to stop sharpening its claws on the back of my seat?”
“If she opens the way…”
“It, not she. It’s a piece of darkness given physical form, it’s not a person.”
Ducking back into the right lane to pass a Mazda Miata toddling along at a mere twenty kilometers over the limit, Dean shook his head. “Diana seems some certain there’s a person involved.”
“Diana also believes that The Cure is the best band in the world.”
“They’re decent,” Dean acknowledged.
Trying not to feel old, Claire stroked a comforting hand down Austin’s back, but whether she was comforting him or herself, she couldn’t say. “It won’t be that easy to reopen the site. There were three Keepers involved in closing it, as well as you and Jacques, and it’s not that easy to find a hotel keeper from Newfoundland and the ghost of a French Canadian sailor in downtown Kingston on a Wednesday afternoon during the Christmas holidays.”
“On a Saturday night in mid-January?”
“Not impossible.”
“Demons have their own connection to darkness,” Austin reminded her. “She won’t need to reproduce all the factors.”
“It,” Claire reminded him. “And I know. But all the convolutions should slow it down.”
“Should?” Dean wondered.
“Will. Why are you slowing down?”
“Exit ramp.”
“Right.”
“And there’s a police cruiser on the shoulder up ahead.”
“Let me worry about that.” Reaching into the possibilities, Claire reset the radar gun to the Disney Channel. “You just drive.”
There was no trap on or around the furnace room door.
Standing at the top of the stairs leading down to the bedrock floor, Byleth wet her lips and stepped forward. One step. Two.
No Cousin. So far, no Keepers.
“Oh, sure, ignore me all you want, but I’m not going away.” The slight echo in the room made her sound more petulant than defiant. Definitely the echo…
On the bottom step, she paused, suddenly worried she was about to do the wrong thing.
“Wait a minute.” The smack, palm to head, was a little harder than it needed to be. “I’m supposed to be doing the wrong thing.” Stepping off onto the floor, she walked quickly to where the memory was the strongest and, before yet another mood swing could come along, dropped to her knees, placing her hands flat against the stone. The connection was there, but what should have been a rush of power revitalizing every dark molecule of her being was no more than a mere trickle of low-end possibilities it took forehead-furrowing concentration to feel.
WE’RE SORRY, THE NUMBER YOU HAVE DIALED IS NOT IN SERVICE. PLEASE INSCRIBE A PENTAGRAM AND TRY AGAIN.
“Oh, for…” Both palms slapped down hard. “I don’t need a freaking pentagram, I’m a piece of you!” All the hair on the back of her neck lifted as her anger lent the connection new strength. They were listening down there, no doubt about it; probably arguing about who was going to take the call. “This isn’t evil, guys, this is irritating. Do you want to be released into the world or not? I’ve got better things to do than sit around waiting for you to get your head out of your ass.”
HEY! THERE’S NO NEED TO BE INSULTING.
Byleth sat back on her heels. “Got your attention, so apparently there is.”
YOU’VE BEEN CORRUPTED BY THE WORLD.
WE HARDLY RECOGNIZED YOU.
Hell sighed. THEY GROW UP SO FAST.
“Look there’s a Keeper coming…”
WE FEEL ONLY YOU.
BECAUSE THERE’S NO ACTUAL HOLE, IDIOT.
OW.
Didn’t miss that, Byleth remembered. “The point you’re not listening to is that we don’t have much time so like pull it together into one voice, would you, and tell me how to reopen this thing.”
In the long pause that followed she had the strangest feeling Hell was about to ask if she was sure, if she really wanted to wrap the world in a shroud of darkness and pain. All the world, including the Porters and that axworthy guy in the music store and Leslie/Deter and his car. Which was ridiculous because Hell as a general rule could care less about the opinions of and/or motivations of those who offered it a chance to release chaos.
She bit her lip almost hard enough to draw blood.
Was she sure?
ALL RIGHT, HERE’S WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO.…
Too late anyway.
“It doesn’t look like it’s open.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Diana told him, handing over the last of her Christmas money. “The guy who runs this place is a Cousin.”
“Ah, yes, family, where they always have to take you in. ‘A happy family is but an earlier heaven.’ John Bowring.”
“And this particular family is trying to prevent an earlier Hell.” Backpack on her lap, she slid out the door and straightened. “Keep the change.”
“’There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse.’ Washington Irving.”
Smiling tightly, Diana slammed the cab door. “Get a life,” she advised as he drove off, then she turned and raced up the porch stairs, ignoring Samuel’s muffled protests as he banged against the small of her back. Once inside, she dumped him out on the counter and watched incredulously as he raced to the end, flung himself to the floor, charged across the lobby and halfway up the stairs, spun around, returned at an even higher speed, launched himself back onto the counter, across to the desk, to the windowsill, and back to the counter again.
“What was that all about?” Diana demanded, hoping no one had heard.
“I figured out the legs,” Samuel told her proudly. Turning around, he caught sight of his tail out of the corner of one eye and pounced.
“This is so not the time,” she sighed as he spun about like a furry, orange, and not terribly coordinated dreidel. “The demon is in the building. Can’t you feel the dark possibilities opening?”
Head spinning, Byleth struggled unsuccessfully to make sense of the information Hell had just passed through their tenuous link. “Let me guess,” she muttered peevishly, wishing she could rub both throbbing temples, “those instructions were translated from the Japanese by someone whose first language was Urdu.”
CLOSE.
“They don’t make any sense!”
THEY DON’T? After a moment Hell cleared its throat in a vaguely embarrassed sort of way. UM, THAT’S BECAUSE THEY’RE ACTUALLY THE INSTRUCTIONS FOR HOOKING UP THE CABLES BETWEEN A DVD PLAYER AND A DIGITAL TELEVISION.
“Would they make sense if I had a DVD player and a digital television?” she snapped.
NOT REALLY, NO. HANG ON, WE’LL TRY AGAIN.
“That Cousin who’s supposed to be here…”
“Augustus Smythe.”
Samuel’s fur felt as though someone had been standing on a nylon carpet stroking him the wrong way and he had to keep fighting the urge to run up the walls. “He’s not here.”
“You can’t smell him?”
“Oh, I can smell him. But he’s not here.”
“He’s probably bleeding in the basement,” Diana decided, wincing as the cat dropped to the floor with an emphatic double thud. “The blood of the lineage is the fastest way to open a dark hole.”
“At least we know she hasn’t got it open yet.”
“Actually, we don’t know that for sure because my brilliant sister never bothered to remove the dampening field around the furnace room.” Leading the way to the basement door, Diana zipped her jacket back up, wondering why it was so cold. “Okay, full stealth mode until we see how far things have got. We don’t want to spook her into destroying herself.”
“Or the world.”
“Yeah, that too.”
Having hit every possible red light since they got off the highway, Claire was considerably less than happy as she reached into the possibilities to change the light at Division and Queen. “It’s almost as though somethi
ng was trying to prevent us from reaching the guesthouse in time.”
“Gee, I wonder what that could be,” Austin said dryly. “Or maybe we just should’ve left the highway at Sir John A. MacDonald Boulevard like I suggested, thereby missing the downtown traffic.”
“Nothing personal,” Dean told him, accelerating through the intersection and not even slowing as Claire changed the light at Princess Street, “but it’s some hard to take driving suggestions from a cat.”
“Why?”
“You don’t drive.”
NOW GO RIGHT.
“My right or your right?”
YOUR RIGHT.
“There?”
OH, BABY…
“Oh, stop it,” she muttered, unamused. She’d been pouring all the darkness she had left in her into the stupidly convoluted pattern that sealed the hole, and although she’d thinned it to a thread, it was nearly gone. There might not be enough, even though she could now feel Hell trying to force its way to her from the other side.
“They’ll be sorry.” It was meant to be a snarl. It sounded more like a whine. “They’ll all be sorry.”
“Who’ll be sorry?” Samuel asked, whiskers tickling the edge of Diana’s ear.
“Standard teenage riff when attempting to destroy the world,” she explained, crouched down and peering around the edge of the furnace room door. “So what happens if you two touch? Do you blow up? Like matter and antimatter?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t know?”
His tail lashed. “Hey, I just got here four days ago. You’re the one maintaining metaphysical balances in the world, not me.”
“Well, since this is my first angel/demon crossover, you’d better wait here. We’re trying to save her, not lose you both.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Convince her that there’s another way.” She straightened, pushed the turquoise door completely open, and stepped over the threshold.
There was no reaction. Not from the demon. Not from Hell.
Must be really concentrating.
One step. Two.
Maybe I should just try and knock her off the site.
Three steps. Four.
Then I sit on her until she listens to me.
Five steps. Six.
Just wish I knew what to say.
Seven.
The black-haired girl kneeling in the center of the bedrock floor, palms pressed against the stone, looked up, onyx eyes locking on Diana’s.
Say something, you idiot. Claire can’t be far behind you.
“Whassup?”
Byleth stared at the girl on the stairs in disbelief. “Oh, like that is so over. Take one more step, Keeper, and I punch right through to Hell.” Which was total bluff; she’d gone as far as she could, it was up to the other side now.
WORK TOGETHER, GUYS! TOGETH…STOP THAT!
Clearly, she’d have to stall.
“Send me back now, Keeper, and this is the path I’ll take. You’ll be opening the hole for me.”
“Diana.”
“What?”
“My name is Diana, after a great-aunt my mother was sucking up to. I think she was angling for this totally ugly soup tureen. Got a 1915 chamber pot instead. Frankly, I didn’t see much difference. Old ugly is still ugly.” Two quick steps and Diana was standing on the floor, thankful for the thick-soled winter boots that partially blocked the emanations from Hell.
WHAT PART OF TOGETHER DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND?
“Hardly your real name,” Byleth snorted. “You wouldn’t give me that kind of power over you.”
“Why not?”
“Duh. Because I’m what I am and you’re what you…” The onyx eyes blinked. “You did. Are you terminally stupid?”
“No. I hate being called Keeper, like I’m an earring or something. And you are?”
“Busy.”
“Yeah, and rude. Do you have a name or what?”
“Byleth.” She hadn’t intended to tell but there was power in trust as well. “Not that it matters,” she snorted, fully aware that the Keeper had been able to read the thought from her face, “only Demon Princes actually have names, I just borrowed this one.”
Diana shrugged. “Seems solidly yours now.”
“No way!”
“Way. You must’ve noticed how the form you’re in has changed you. If all you were was darkness, you’d have had this hole open by now and I’d be talking to you with my head up my ass.”
“I’m not sure you aren’t,” Byleth snarled.
“Nice. The point is, you’re not just wearing flesh, because of the way you created yourself, you’re wearing a fully functional human body, and it’s corrupted you the same way it corrupted…” She resisted the urge to glance over her shoulder toward the basement and Samuel. “Well, you know who.”
“You’re the bitch who changed the angel and exposed me!”
“Yeah, yeah, sticks and stones. Now, shut up for a minute and listen; we don’t have much time!”
Byleth’s lip curled. “Because all Hell is about to break loose.”
“Because my sister is right behind me.”
“Ooo, another Keeper! I’m so scared.”
“You should be. It’s her seal you can’t get through, and she could deal with you in a heartbeat.”
“It doesn’t look like it’s open.”
“That doesn’t matter.” Although the sidewalk and the steps had been shoveled, the driveway and parking lot beyond it had not. Dean pulled up as close to the curb as the snowbanks allowed. “I kept a key.”
“Dean, boy, well done.” The cat beamed at him as Claire shoved open her door. “It’s nice to know that even the most over-ethical has a tiny streak of larceny.”
“Mr. Smythe asked me to keep it.”
Sighing, Austin jumped down to the top of the snowbank. “So much for that bonding moment.”
“Byleth, you’ve become a person, and while you’re not Miss Congeniality, you’re not significantly different from at least half the kids I go to school with.”
“And that’s a good thing?”
“Actually, no, it’s just a thing and that’s what I’m trying to tell you, take away the darkness and there’s a person with the same potentials as anyone else, and that person deserves a life. I want to help.”
“Yeah, right. You’re a Keeper, you’re supposed to stop me.”
Hands on her hips, Diana exhaled emphatically. “Look, if I was supposed to stop you, I’ve have done it by now. Stopped you, sealed the site, and gone for mocha latte. I’m not here as a Keeper. I wasn’t even Summoned, I paid my own way with, I might add, money that could have been better spent on a new snowboard.”
“I should’ve known you were a boarder.” Her eyes narrowed on either side of the strand of hair. “I so don’t see the attraction in careening down a hill in a stupid hat.”
“I so don’t see the attraction in black clothes and bad poetry, so we’re even. Come on! You specialize in lies, you must know that I’m telling the truth. Have I touched a possibility since I got here? If you can’t sense that, Hell can.” Diana gestured toward the floor, keeping the movement as neutral as possible. This would not be the time or place to accidentally trace a sign of power in the air.
Door. Running footsteps. Another door.
Samuel was up on the shelf over the washing machine before the first set of boots appeared on the basement stairs. It was a pure cat reaction and by the time he realized he should have warned Diana, it was too late.
He recognized Claire immediately; not only did she emanate Keeper almost as loudly as Diana did, but there was a distinct physical similarity between the sisters. Beyond that, they shared the intensity that came from knowing they could, singly or collectively, explain British humor. Not to mention save the world. Unfortunately, Claire seemed as intently determined to send him back to the light as she was to send poor, confused Byleth back to the dark, and that made her someone he had to avo
id.
Dean, who followed Claire down the stairs only because she held both handrails, refusing to let him by, seemed like the kind of guy who could be depended on to open the door seven or eight times an hour and pass down a sausage or two to keep a cat from starving.
Close on Dean’s heels, Austin stopped suddenly and turned, mouth slightly open. His one-eyed gaze swept over Samuel’s shelf like a pale green searchlight and kept going as though he’d noticed nothing.
Samuel wasn’t fooled. He knows exactly where I am. What do I do now?
There was nothing he could do except tuck in his paws and wait, hoping the possibilities would give him a chance to redeem himself.
“All right, so you’re here because you want to help me stay me. Big whoop. I’m here for the same thing.” Under the red sweater, Byleth squared her shoulders, wishing she could stand and stare this Keeper down but unable to lift her hands from the rock until the link was completed. “When I release Hell, I’ll gain the kind of notoriety that’ll keep me real no matter how things turn out.”
Diana sighed. She recognized bravado when she saw it. It was, after all, something she saw every day at school and occasionally in the mirror. Squatting, so that their eyes were level, she looked deep in the black depths and asked quietly, “Are you sure you want to do that?”
Was she sure? Confused, Byleth wondered how Diana’s question could sound so much like the question she’d thought she heard back before Hell decided to cooperate. Maybe…
Maybe it wasn’t too late.
Then the possibilities opened.
Claire entered the furnace room at a run, not having slowed in any significant way since she’d left the truck. She saw the demon kneeling in the center of the floor, hands pressed against the stone and knew what was happening. When the darkness in the demon reached through the pattern sealing the old hole and touched the ultimate darkness on the other side, all Hell would break loose. Which was an expression Claire had grown heartily tired of.