by Marie Harte
“All over the kingdom,” one panting sorcerer said to Sava as he passed. “Massive front to invade the land. Was told to tell you or them.” He nodded at Arim and Lexa, who were engaged with ‘Sin Garu.
Sava nodded grimly. So the Dark Lord thought to take everything at once. Keep Arim occupied while his demons crossed the gap into this reality while ‘Sin Garu’s minions crept over the land, decimating as many Light Bringers as he possibly could. With the demons draining Tanselm, he very well might succeed. Already, it looked as if he’d done Arim some major damage. Though on his feet with Lexa by his side, the Guardian of Storm looked ready to keel over. Sava knew that demon blast hurt worse than anything anyone could conceive.
Lexa knew, too, and the anger on her face said she worried more than she liked. She’d experienced similar pain when she’d taken that blast meant for Arim. She’d suffered in a coma for nearly three months after it. That Arim was even standing meant Tanselm wasn’t totally gone…yet.
Knowing time was of the essence and with a thought of what might turn the tide of this war, Sava joined them, only to face off against a nightmare from his past.
“Why Sava. I’ve missed you.” A dark voice poured from ‘Sin Garu’s lips. Sava had to force himself not to flinch. Shit. Of all the demons that had to be possessing ‘Sin Garu, why did it have to be this one?
“Well, hello Ghal. What’s it been? Nine hundred, a thousand years?”
Ghal laughed through ‘Sin Garu’s lips, and Lexa and Arim tightened the distance separating them, strengthening their shield. “Too long, my Shadow. I’ve missed you.”
Sava swallowed his distaste and smiled. “Wish I could say the same. But you know, you bring up a good point. We should visit more.” Pulling a small pouch out of the air from the pocket of Shadow Sava kept by his side, he handed it to Arim. Quickly linking through their shield to pull Arim close, he whispered into his ear, “I think we have a shot at this. You keep ‘Sin Garu occupied. Hold this close and the demons can’t touch you. At least not until they wear down the charm.”
Arim whispered back, “You have to protect Lexa.”
Damn. The Light Bringer’s voice was thin, his breathing raspy. Sava could feel the taint of demon poison spreading through Arim’s body. “Hold tight. I’m going to try to severe the demons’ link to Tanselm. That’ll give you the power you need to end this.”
Arim nodded, his gaze dark and glazed with pain. Yet his aura remained bright, his iron will an impenetrable thing Sava was glad to have at their backs. “Take Lexa away from this. Free her soul.”
Sava started, having forgotten that important fact.
“Dammit, you two. Stop whispering and let me in on whatever you’re doing,” Lexa said with a grunt as she decimated two more demons.
“Yes, share,” Ghal demanded. “My dear girl, how are you doing that to my kind? Your brother is right; you are a treasure. One we want to keep.” He smiled, and the sharp, roving teeth in that mouth freaked Sava the hell out.
“Okay. Playtime’s over.” Sava latched onto Lexa’s hand. “We’ll be right back.”
Leaning close to Lexa, he murmured, “Trust me,” and took them through the between and straight into hell.
Chapter Fifteen
Lexa fought Sava’s surprising strength as they abandoned Arim to fight ‘Sin Garu and those demons alone. Cursing and struggling, she knew a fear she’d felt only once before in her life. Arim was alone. Without her, he’d fall as surely as her Light Bringer family had died. Bloodied at the hands of evil.
When they settled down into a dark room filled with the stench of death, she ripped herself from Sava and readied herself to return but found herself unable.
“Not yet, Lexa. We’re here for a reason.”
“What did you do?” Black fear fed the rage growing like a disease inside her. Lexa fed the powerful emotion, growing stronger as she watched Sava with an unblinking stare. Worry made her stronger, and she couldn’t stop the panic. Seeing Arim lunge between her and that demon blast was pain all over again. She could feel the bite of demon flame from her previous altercation with ‘Sin Garu and now knew her lover felt it. A wound he wouldn’t have felt if he hadn’t been so hell-bent on saving her.
Why the hell had he done that? The stupid, foolish, loving idiot. If he died before she returned to him, she was going to follow him into the Next and berate him for the rest of his life after death.
“Look, Lexa. We’re never going to defeat ‘Sin Garu with all those demons, not when they’re feeding on Tanselm’s energy. We have to stop them in order to save Tanselm.”
What Sava said made sense, but she still socked him in the gut, pleased when he doubled over in pain. “Fine. But you didn’t have to drag me here to do it. Someone needs to save Arim from himself, that overprotective lout.” Nerves jumbled, and the thought that even as they argued he might be dying killed her inside. “Do your thing while I go back.”
“Not yet.” Sava coughed and grabbed her fist. “I left Arim some protection, but we have to make this fast.”
Relief flooded her that Arim would still be there when she returned to kick his Light Bringer ass. “Fine. Let’s hurry though.” Lexa took two steps into darkness and stopped. “Where are we?”
“In Orfel. This is where ‘Sin Garu planted the foundation for the demon bridge. I was going to just destroy it, with your help of course. Then Arim reminded me we can’t, not yet.”
“Why not?” Lexa glanced around. Her vision immediately adjusted to filter the slim bands of light from the clinging Darkness of the place. The Dark Lord in her revelled in the negative energy around her, even as the woman within forced herself not to gag at the reality of decay holding fast to the air she breathed. She saw nothing more than black and grey rock on the floors and ceiling. There were a few visible walls, but for the most part the Darkness of the space bled out into the vague empty/fullness of the between.
She narrowed her gaze. “There.” She pointed, glad she’d come with Sava, a Shadow dweller who could see as well as she could in the Dark. Arim would have been as blind as a bat.
“I know. I’ve been here before.”
“What are you talking about?”
“While you and Arim were getting reacquainted in Seattle, having tons and tons of sex, I was traipsing around the between looking for ‘Sin Garu. I found him here, in Orfel, surrounded by eviscerated bodies. The stench in the next room, if you can call it that, is overpowering. And the sight… Let’s just say this rivals some of the nightmares I’ve had for sheer brutality.”
“Great.” Lexa didn’t want to see what he was talking about, but they had to find and destroy that demon bridge to free Tanselm, so the land might lend Arim some much needed energy. “Let’s go.” She took a few steps before he stopped her again. “Dammit, Sava, we don’t have time for this.”
“Make time.” His implacable tone made her pause. “We can’t destroy the bridge until you use it to get your soul back. Because once you’re in, you’ll definitely need a way out. With so many of the demons up here powering ‘Sin Garu, there will be less in Mount Malinta for you to deal with. Just hurry up.”
Lexa stared at him in astonishment. How could she have forgotten about that part of her that was missing? “My soul.”
“Yes.” Sava swore under his breath and pulled her towards the narrowed corridor. “Arim will have my head if we return without it, not that I could blame him. We need to move. I’ll distract the enemy here while you use the bridge. And Lexa, I don’t have to tell you that time is as much our enemy as the demons.”
He looked worried, and Lexa’s heart raced with trepidation. He was right. This would be her best shot at finding that part of her soul. But what about Arim?
“Lexa, now. Arim wants this and you need this. I told you I left him some protection, but it won’t hold forever. You have to hurry up so we can get back to him.”
Much as she still wanted to crush Sava on the spot for tearing her from Arim, she knew this p
lan would in fact help her Light Bringer. That didn’t mean she had to like it.
She followed Sava through the corridors of this Dark retreat, uncaring about what or who might hear her. At this point, the demons would have to be both blind and deaf not to realise that their sanctuary had been breached. Lexa’s and Sava’s arrival had been extremely loud. “I can handle the Netharat. It’s that demon flame that throws me.” She suppressed a violent shiver, clearly recalling the last time that venomous green blaze had eaten at her flesh and spirit…as it was now doing to Arim.
“Leave the demons to me.” Sava murmured under his breath and clutched a small black satchel in his hands, a satchel she hadn’t seen before. He opened it and removed what looked like a small black rock from a pouch that promptly disappeared. He closed his eyes and swallowed the small stone. For a moment, silence surrounded them.
Sava opened his eyes. Their colour had shifted from a warm brown to a cold, hard black. He nodded at her to walk with him, and they moved swiftly towards a hazy spot that looked like a doorway. It appeared as though the archway led to another room, but Lexa couldn’t see through the sudden density before them. Once they breached what felt like an icy wind, demonic shrieks filled the air and echoed in the cavernous room now lit with an eerie, green glow.
The narrow passage ended a few feet in front of them, where the greenish light was brighter. Lexa glanced at Sava to see what he made of it all. What lurked in his gaze froze her in fear. Lexa’s friend, a man she’d known nearly her entire life, abruptly took on an appearance rivalling that of the altered Dark Lord they’d just left. The Shadow in the Aellein king drained into a monstrosity far worse than Dark wraiths or evil Shadren.
“Use the ladder to get to the bridge,” Sava commanded in a horrifying amalgamation of pitches, echoes and gendered voices. He grabbed her by the arm and dragged her after him.
She instinctively sought to shield herself, burning him with a Dark Lord’s blue flame before she could stop herself. The cold should have taken his hand clean off, snapping it into a solid block of ice to shatter into pieces. The energy in Sava, the many souls pushing at one another for control, turned his pale, perfect skin a sickly green that began to blister and burn with something much worse than blue flame.
Lexa forced herself to focus, to remember that Sava did what he had to in order to help them defeat ‘Sin Garu. He wasn’t setting her up to fail and hadn’t separated her from her lover to kill them both, but to save the future for them all.
That in mind, she swallowed around the lump of fear in her throat—a fear she moulded into a useable anger—and broke from Sava’s grip, flying right into the maw of the demon stronghold.
Though the demons reigned in Mount Malinta on her homeworld of Malern, in order to affect Tanselm the way they had, they would have had to move closer. Orfel, situated in the between, was an ingenious hideaway. A crossroads for those moving from magic to the mundane, or from Light to Dark, Orfel provided the perfect sanctuary for a Dark Lord bent on domination…or a demon world wanting to control life itself.
Standing at the edge of the cavernous room, Lexa absorbed the familiar laughter and cries of delight from the glowing beasts lurching in the hideaway. Bloody bodies covered the floor. Many of the demons continued to feed on human entrails, disregarding her presence. They showed no preference for the Light as they devoured their allies—wraiths, Nocumat and the occasional Djinn as well. Evil and pain saturated the Darkness of the place until Lexa felt so full of bad energy she wanted to vomit.
Darkness was a source of power, but this…this malignance corrupted everything it touched. If the stench of death and rot weren’t enough to sour her stomach and soul, the sight of the demon’s bridge did the trick.
To her right, a writhing, living ladder nearly twelve feet wide rose from the floor several stories, into a glowing greenish-blue ball of energy hanging from the ceiling like a demonic disco ball. Lexa wanted to laugh hysterically at the analogy, but couldn’t see anything that could describe the unnatural sight better. Nearly three times her size, the ball of light flickered as it rotated, illuminating everything not pitch black with a hazardous, sickly green glow.
Demons feasting on flesh, writhing with ecstasy as they raped the living both sexually and spiritually, lay over one another by the hundreds. Small of stature, most demons were no more than three or four feet in height, their wiry bodies always hungry, always thirsting as if to fill up that emptiness that made them so disagreeable. But it was the sight of so many innocents that made Lexa bleed inside. The Netharat she could handle being tormented.
To her shock, Lexa saw several Light Bringers and fallen Djinn, Ethim’s men who had fallen in previous battles, now weaved helplessly into the living ladder as the demons feasted on their eternal suffering. And there, towards that bright ball of light, Remir screamed in agony as the demons continued feeding off him, their long, sharp teeth filled with his energy that would bleed for as long as they let his soul survive. Though demons relished an appeasement to their hungers, they craved despair even more. They would allow Remir to hold onto his life long enough to drive him insane with pain.
Lexa glanced at Sava, wishing all this was just an illusion. She watched in horror as he began chanting in demonic tongues, laughing and sneering in a manner depicting his familiarity with the creatures in this hell.
He shoved her hard, away from him and onto the ladder as he leapt straight up into the air, shooting into the greenish-blue ball of light with so much force that he nearly caused the living steps to fold in on themselves.
Hurrying to disentangle herself from the filth under her, Lexa ignored the sucking sounds and slippery, giving tissue under her hands as she fought to regain her feet.
“We’ve been waiting.” She recognised the demon closest to her and forced herself not to shudder. The creature stared at her as it licked its lips. “Come to fulfil the bargain?”
“No.” She couldn’t help noticing what the creature was eating, and with a furious wave of her hand, ended the life of a fallen Sarqua Djinn. The demon cried out in anger, having been robbed of its meal, but soon turned to another dying soul pleading for Lexa’s help, a broken wraith. As the demon began sucking on the wraith’s bones, Lexa forced herself not to feel what was under her hands and feet as she climbed higher. None of the demons in the ladder seemed to care about her, and she moved as fast as her limbs would carry her.
When she reached Remir, however, she couldn’t stop herself from freeing him. Tears streamed down his ethereal face but he made no sound. The golden tint of his form showed her that he wasn’t beyond saving, not yet. Remembrances of how much he’d once helped her urged her to return the favour.
“I’ll come back to free you once I’ve retrieved what’s mine,” she said in a low voice. “That’s the way to the bridge?”She pointed towards the light where Sava had disappeared.
Remir nodded and motioned her to follow him.
“Remir?”
This way, he mouthed, his ability to speak apparently gone
She didn’t want to go with the Darkling who had collaborated with ‘Sin Garu, but knowing what she did of her brother, she could well believe the Djinn had been ensorcelled. The Remir she remembered had been loyal to a fault, in love with her—a woman who had, at the time, no love to give anyone.
Pity filled her, and she angrily blamed Arim again for allowing her to feel when numbness right now would have been most welcome.
Not having anywhere else to go but up, Lexa followed Remir into the ball of light and found herself flying with him through a different kind of between into Mount Malinta.
Once in the demon world, they stopped on a craggy black rock and looked down into hell.
“I’m so sorry,” Remir spoke in husky voice. “I was powerless to refuse the Dark Lord. And now I pay the price.”
Lexa stared at him, wishing she could have predicted his future and thus saved him from his downfall. “I should have protected you.”
&nb
sp; “You couldn’t have.” Remir’s once dark brown eyes were now a shimmery blue-green and full of regret. “I joined ‘Sin Garu thinking he was you. I could never deny you anything.”
Lexa remembered a time back in Foreia when she’d been trying to mass the Djinn and deal with unruly Storm Lords. She’d seen her own image in a treetop—whom she now knew to be ‘Sin Garu impersonating her. But she hadn’t been sure it was Remir she’d seen with her likeness. She could only imagine the horrors the poor Djinn had suffered, and all because he’d loved her.
“I know where they keep your soul, Dark Mistress. Let me help you retrieve it. Here, in this plane, I’ve the strength to aid you as I couldn’t do in life. Allow me this gift.”
Lexa blinked back angry tears and nodded, not knowing what to say. She followed him, flying in a weightless body no more substantial than air. Here, in the demon plane, energy existed in thought, not physical presence. She could only hope she’d soon escape back through the bridge. The last time she’d left, only hatred for the place and a love for Arim had given her the strength to leave. After the toll her energy had taken, she didn’t think she had the power to do so again under her own steam.
Perhaps with her soul intact…
Remir led her to a section of Mount Malinta guarded by three towering demons. These three were red and tall, shaped like men but with horns protruding from various parts of their bodies. The very differences in their size and colour alerted her that they guarded demonic treasures—souls. Crouched behind slabs of sharp rock, she and Remir watched the demons pacing below in the dark crater surrounding the green bars of sickly light.
“It’s in there, with the other souls they’ve stolen.” The intensity with which Remir stared made her wonder.
“Do they have a piece of you as well?”
“Yes. A large piece,” he said with a scowl before smoothing his expression. “I’ll divert them while you hurry in and take back what’s yours. You’ll have to be quick—”