He looked up at me, offered a sad smile.
Startled, I narrowed my eyes at him.
Shrugging, he held up the cigar. “I worked a spell so I can see you like this. Also, I saw you put this in your shirt back at the motel. Figured you’d want it about now.”
Blythe spotted that cigar and stood up to stare at me, her small hands clenching into fists. She shook her head hard, blonde curls flying. “No!” she yelled.
That shout was so loud the still-half-tranced witches and wizards jumped and turned toward her. Several of them looked up toward me, but I could tell they had no idea who Blythe was talking to. One of them rubbed his eyes and stared as if he was seeing my cord. So at least one of the wizards had some gift of second sight.
Phro appeared below me next to the lilin and she looked solid. And scared to death.
I scanned the crowd and spotted the two bouncers at Castor’s feet. Elsa stood beside him, breathing hard, a heavy-looking tree limb in her hand. She couldn’t see me, but Castor could, and something in my expression must have clued him in because horror bleached his face white as he launched into a run for the stage.
“Dooby!” I yelled. “Make a circle!”
He scowled up at me. “You and your damned circles! I told you before I’m not some newbie—”
“Goddess! Shut up then and light the cigar. Give it to Blythe so you guys can summon the elemental. Fast!”
“I don’t have a lighter!” he yelled back.
“Blythe’s bag!” I pointed.
One of the warlocks, who seemed to be coming out of his daze faster than the others, handed Dooby a lighter. Dooby lit up, closed his eyes, his lips moving as he chanted something I couldn’t hear.
The lilin’s eyes grew huge as she must have realized what was going on. “No, stop!” She struggled harder, flopping onto the stage, but my cord had wrapped her so well she just kind of rolled around. The golden hairpiece fell off her head, but tangled in her hair. She kept struggling and grunting, then looked up at me. “I can’t go back.”
I floated down, hovering over her face. “You can and you will. My spirit guide said I needed something to barter and you just might be it. Whoever has my warrior wants you back.”
Utter terror turned her face into a mask as she stopped struggling and froze.
Blythe took Dooby’s lit cigar and ran over to stand by me. “We don’t have the vampire and there’s not enough blood on the arrow for it to work. We still need the blood of an ancient!”
I looked at the lilin, looked back at Blythe—even I shivered over the ferocity of her expression as she clued in and pulled a knife from her bag.
Castor and Elsa had been detained by the crowd, but they were getting close. Castor sent frantic looks toward us. He’d stop me, I knew it. “You have to hurry and do this now, Blythe.”
She stuck the huge cigar in her mouth, found a spot of free skin on the lilin’s leg and spilled her blood. It was nothing more than a small cut. Blythe had told me it didn’t take much ancient blood to make this work.
The lilin, screaming out of fury more than pain, tried to wiggle away, but Blythe ignored her and let the blood drip.
Dooby stepped up, long arms out, his black ponytail swaying as the wind picked up around him. He chanted under his breath and just like that, an ear-splitting boom sounded that rattled the ground so hard the stage shook. Then it cracked right down the middle. The wood split into two completely separate sections, one part creaking and leaning ominously. Some of the witches and wizards screamed and a couple jumped into the crowd.
Black smoke billowed from the crack. My ears popped when it suddenly felt like the line between dimensions followed the stage, the split so abrupt everything around us shimmered and wavered, as if even the trees didn’t know to which side they belonged. Even in my metaphysical state, the heat that shot into the air made my lungs feel scorched.
Fire rose from the crack, followed by a massive arm that looked like it had been formed from cracked coal. Long fingers, each one the length of a ruler, wrapped the edges of the stage as the elemental ascended.
Blythe dropped the cigar and held out her arms, light streaming from her fingers as she struggled to bind the elemental. He pulled his torso from the hole, leaving his lower body in the pit. Waves of fire rolled along the surface of the stage as they caught and blazed.
People started screaming and Blythe cried out, struggling to hang on to the massive being burning open the dimensional rift. We hadn’t had time to get Sophie to fix her…and I couldn’t help but worry all this fire might attract the kapre. I hoped the fact that it was the elemental’s fire and not Blythe’s made a difference.
Blythe looked up at me, tears streaming down her face, making clean tracks as smoke filled the air around us. “We didn’t plan it like this!” she yelled. Her tears came so fast her eyes turned to huge, sparkling blue pools on her pale face. “It’s not safe.” Her voice broke. “We don’t have the protection of Nikolos’s home. We don’t know what will happen if we move your body. We don’t know enough!”
I knew all this. She knew I did. “Nikolos is dying, Blythe. I have to go.”
She cried out as the elemental struggled against her binding, her body leaning forward. The creature hissed and spewed, fury pouring off him in waves of heat that had the witches’ hair sticking to their faces. One warlock frowned, clued in to what was going on and came up to stand beside Blythe. He held up his hands. Power streaked from him to blend with hers.
Sophie, one hand on her throat, came to stand behind them and put one hand on the little witch’s shoulder. Light came from under her hand to flow into Blythe. The elemental hissed loudly and I turned to look at him. Here, in the dimension I was in, the binding streams looked like blue electrical lines that had wrapped the elemental’s neck and snapped taut. The creature went still. Very still.
I heard Castor yelling as he fought to get on the stage, but the crowd was screaming and running from the fire, blocking his way. Elsa somehow body-surfed then rolled onto the stage, to jump to her feet. She stopped and stared up in my direction, but I knew she couldn’t see me.
“Blythe, look at me,” I said, hoping she could hear me over the noise.
She did.
I wished I could wipe away the tears still making tracks in the black soot clinging to her skin. “I’ll be okay. Tell Elsa and my brother that I’m sorry I did it like this, but I saw Nikolos earlier and knew we were out of time. You guys take my body back to Nikolos’s. And you stay out of forests until we figure out this kapre thing, okay?” I pointed to the witches and wizards who still gathered on part of the stage. “Have your friends kick the lilin into the hole.”
“Don’t take long. Please.” She started calling out names. The others hurried over once they understood what we were trying to do. They kicked the lilin. Bare feet slammed into the underworld creature with enough force to make her bounce. One more collective kick and she rolled into the pit. Her terrified screams made me wince before I looked at Phro. She nodded and we both dove in after her.
The portal behind me closed with another kind of sonic boom, the heat nearly unbearable before it was suddenly sucked away. Weight entered my body as I thudded into something solid.
It made an “oomph” noise.
“Shit, Beri,” Phro said on a growl. “Get off me.” Hands pushed me, but I didn’t go far. Something hit my foot and I realized it was the struggling lilin, who was no longer wrapped. Nothing but black surrounded us. There wasn’t a hint of light and when I touched the surface I lay against with my fingers, it felt warm and giving…like flesh. Phro still tried to push me away from her.
“I can feel you, Phro. You’re solid.” My quiet statement made her stop struggling.
“I can feel you too.” The trepidation in her voice made her tone waver. “Shouldn’t you be in spirit form?”
“Oh goddess.” I fought off the scalding panic that tightened my lungs as I tried to sit up, but the walls around us were so cl
ose I could only hunch over. “I think we’re in a tunnel. Can you feel my cord? Do I still have it?”
“How should I know? All I feel are warm and slippery walls that make me want to vomit. I don’t want that to be the first thing I do back in my physical body!”
The fear that swamped me made me dizzy. “I think we were wrong. I’m not astral traveling, I’m in my body. Did we just condemn ourselves to this world permanently?”
“You did, you stupid, stupid woman,” the lilin muttered. “No one is ever allowed to leave the underworld.”
“You did.”
“Centuries of sneaking and planning, you dumb goddess bitch. Centuries. And I only got a few months.” She screeched and sank fingernails into my leg. Luckily, my pants stopped her nails from being too painful. There was a tug on my chest like she was trying to feed.
I kicked out, not even sure where I’d hit her, but the loud thud and cry of pain let me know I’d smacked something good.
“Guess we’re lucky we have you to use in bargain then.” Phro made a frustrated noise that sounded like a growl and a choke tangled together. She tried to wiggle away from me.
“Phro, can you find my cord?” I frantically felt around the incredibly disgusting walls around us, but it wasn’t there. “We are so fucked. How are we going to find our way back out? That was the whole point of my cord, you said.”
“Since when do I know everything?” She sounded completely freaked out, which didn’t help.
My panic rose, clawing up my chest, sending the taste of metal into the back of my throat.
Phro’s sigh was loud. “Beri, chill. Let’s figure out how to get out of this tunnel and we’ll go from there, okay?”
What else could we do? I had taken this chance so I could free Nikolos and bring him home. I still had to do that. A rumble moved through the surface below us and raised every hair on my body. The fear that gripped me at the strange growling noise obliterated thoughts of everything else, paralyzing me. “Phro,” I whispered. “Are we inside something that’s alive?”
“No, of course not.” Her voice hitched at the end.
“You don’t sound so sure.”
“I only have stories to go on with this place. I’m not even sure we ended up in the right dimension.”
“You did,” the lilin said. Her voice was surprisingly girly—which was pretty creepy coming out of the darkness. “We’re at the top of the labyrinth. When that portal closed behind you, it shut off your way out of here. Forever.”
“You got out of here,” I pointed out again. I squinted, tried to look in either direction, and I could see nothing. Nothing.
“I double-crossed my jailer to do it. She was the one who was supposed to leave and she was right behind me when you ruined everything. Do you know what happens to people who trick their way out of here?”
I did. She was in for some sort of horrid eternal punishment. And I couldn’t care less. “Let’s try crawling that way.”
Phro snorted. “You do realize I can’t see, so I don’t know which way is that way.” She sniffed loudly. “I’d forgotten what it’s like to smell. I already hate it here.”
I sniffed, grimacing at the faint skunk-like odor, but it wasn’t too strong. Of course, her senses had been cut off for centuries so everything was bound to be amplified.
“The air tastes weird. Oh, I can taste.” Phro squirmed and this time her elbow slammed into my left breast.
“Agh! Dammit, Phro, be still until I can move away from you.”
“The air smells horrid, it tastes like something died, and my back is up against a wall that feels like the inside of an intestine. So going to hurl here.”
I grimaced and wiggled away from her. “Aim away from my voice. Aim for the lilin’s.”
Scrambling noises sounded from behind me. I reached back but couldn’t stretch far. Trying to turn around in this close area took more effort than I expected and it came with much cursing from Phro, who couldn’t seem to function well at all yet. She mumbled something about jelly legs as she tried to wiggle around me. I nearly cried in relief when I reached up into my open sleeve and felt the reassuring solid handle of my knife. Nikolos’s wasn’t with me though. Mine, the athame that Blythe had created, hummed against my palm, the red stone feeling warm on my skin. Seems the witch had been right about it being tied to me.
I slid out my knife, reached with my other hand and felt for the throat of the glorified succubus before resting my blade against her pulse. “I understand you’re some kind of powerful creature who can enthrall others, but you are stuck in a dark, stinky labyrinth with a goddess and the daughter of another. We aren’t without our own power and succubus or not, I’m pretty sure I can slit your worthless demon throat and kill you. So no funny stuff. We have to crawl to get out of here and I’m not doing that while tugging your heavy carcass along. So you can crawl in front of me and know that my knife will be ready and pointed at your ass.”
“You can’t kill me by stabbing me in the ass,” she muttered.
“No, but I can stab you hard enough to get your attention and be on your throat before you can take your next step.”
Chapter Thirteen
“It’s like crawling in the bowels of the underworld,” Phro muttered from behind me.
“I wish you’d stop saying that. I’m grossed out enough.” With every inch forward on my hands and knees, I felt the warm, slick surface of the labyrinth around us. I wouldn’t have given it the same description, but it wasn’t pleasant. And neither was the very real terror that seemed to build with every step. My fear felt alive as it kept my heart pounding fast and sent acid up my throat.
We moved single file on our hands and knees in the dark for what felt like hours before the lilin’s sudden scream, followed by a loud splash, made me stop.
“She was right in front of me,” I said, aiming the words over my shoulder. I patted the area ahead of me where she’d been and felt my hand go through the surface. “I guess the tunnel ends here. Can you hold my feet? I’m going to stick my head in there.”
Phro wrapped her hands around my ankles and I moved my palms along the flesh-like floor underneath me until it ended. I gripped the edge as hard as I could and stretched to hold my breath and push my face through to the other side.
The lilin had fallen into a shallow pool of water. Though it was murky, there was enough light to see she’d crawled up on a rocky bank. I lifted my head and was back in the dark with Phro. “I think it’s a cavern. There are stalagmites, a stream and a pool right underneath us. I can’t tell where the light is coming from, but it’s reflecting off the wet surface of the rock and off the water. Didn’t you say water in this realm is bad?”
“Not all water. If we stay away from the rivers, we’ll be okay. This could be regular water. Just don’t get any in your mouth.”
“Right. Okay, here goes. I’m going to scoot around and drop in feet first. It’s not far.”
The landing did jolt my ankles some and my hiking boots were instantly soaked. There was a scent of musky decay here, but I was so happy to have a bit of light and to not be crawling on that creepy surface I didn’t care. I looked up as Phro’s legs came into view. She dangled from what looked like the rocky ceiling of the cave. Whatever we’d been touching in there wasn’t on this side.
Phro dropped down beside me, but my gaze had moved on to the shafts in the rock ceiling. Inside, some kind of stone I wasn’t at all familiar with reflected light. It wasn’t a lot, but we could see where we were going in here. Thick rock formations rose from the shallow stream and out of the walls.
The lilin had already gone ahead and because there was only one direction she could have disappeared, we followed, sticking to the drier sides as much as possible. Each step became more and more precarious because of the slippery, wet limestone. At least, I assumed it was limestone. It could be something not of my world, for all I knew. I glanced up at the light shafts. In my dimension, I’d been in a cave house once where the
owners had coated light shafts in reflective materials. The light in this place was natural and while everything down here was a grim, dreary gray, those shafts were surprisingly bright with colors of blue and green.
“I can hear her up ahead,” Phro said. “We have to catch her. We’ll need her as a bargaining chip.”
“Why would anyone want her?”
“Great party tricks? She can make people sing, who in turn make the audience go into a frenzy. It’s got to be boring down here and even these gods will like to party.” She slipped off the rocks and grunted when her feet went into the water. “I can’t believe I’m actually missing my spirit body right now.”
At one point, the cave narrowed and the only way we could continue was to wade through waist-high water. I peered into the darkness ahead and thought seriously about going back. But the elemental wasn’t there. Even thinking about how we were going to get back caused fear to rise up so sharp and fast I had to close my eyes and take a few deep, calming breaths. I’d figure it out. Once I had Nikolos.
“Keep your eye on the prize, Beri,” I murmured.
“I shouldn’t be here.” Phro wrapped her arms around her waist and stared into the dark tunnel. “There are a few gods and other creatures down here who have it out for me.”
“Have I said I appreciate you coming?” I shivered. “Thought this place was going to be hot, but I’m freezing.”
“There will be places of heat. The elementals live in a river of fire here.”
The thought of unbound elementals in plural made me shudder. “We’ll just be avoiding that stretch of hell dimension, ’kay?”
A faint smile pulled up one corner of her mouth. She had no makeup, her hair was a lank, wet mass of tangles down her back, and whatever muck we’d been crawling through had left streaks on her clothes. Yet she still looked like she could step onto the cover of a magazine. Must be all those supernatural genes.
Blood of an Ancient: A Beri O'Dell Book, Book 2 Page 18