bedeviled & beyond 05 - bedeviled & besmirched

by Sam Cheever

  It was the longest speech I’d ever heard Slayer make.

  The single, lone howl of a distant wolf cut through the silence and the werewolves lifted from their haunches, their massive heads swiveling and snouts scenting the air. The single howl was soon answered by another and then another, until the night sky sang with the plaintive notes.

  From another direction came a deep-throated growl. It sounded too close for comfort.

  Crisanne was marshaling her troops.

  I looked around at the faces of my little army, feeling responsible for having brought them all there. “We may not have the element of surprise, but we do have Doctor Lee.” I smiled at my Venutian friend. “She’ll be able to read Crisanne’s thoughts for us. Hopefully we can stay one step ahead of her.” Heads nodded again.

  “So what’s the plan?” Captain Lee asked.

  I looked up at him and noted the impatient line of his massive jaw. Despite Slayer’s warning words, the Venutians were anxious to engage the battle. “The werewolves will surround the house and clean up anything that comes out of the woods.” I looked at Bob and Ralph. “If you get overwhelmed send a runner to howl at the house and the Venutians will come down and help.”

  Bob gave a single yip and the pack moved out, taking up positions around the tree house.

  I looked at the angels. Before I could speak up Aubrey said, “I’m with you at all times.” I thought about arguing but then remembered my promise to him and nodded. I glanced toward Myra. “I need you three to take on anything magical that hits us inside. The Venutians, Slayer, Darma, Aubrey and I are gonna pin that bitch down. If you’ll take care of the nasty shit she throws at us, we can concentrate on not letting her get the best of us.”

  Myra nodded. “Done.” She looked at Flick and Merriam and they all disappeared with a pop.

  I turned to Doctor Lee. “You stay as close to me as you can so you can keep me informed.” She nodded. “Captain Lee?”

  He lifted his chin, grinning. I couldn’t help it, I laughed. “You’re incorrigible. I need you inside, but if you hear the wolves calling for help I want you to drop back down here and help. Promise me?”

  Captain Lee glanced at his soul mate and, for a moment hesitated.

  She shook her head. “I’ll be fine, dear one. I’m surrounded by angels from heaven.”

  Finally he nodded. “I will do as you ask, Astra.”

  I touched his massive forearm. “Thank you.”

  Finally, I looked at Slayer and he nodded. “The plan is simple, but it has a shot at being effective.”

  I caught Darma’s eye. She looked grim but she nodded. “Whatever you need me to do, Astra.”

  Tears filled my eyes and I nodded, willing them away. “Good. Then let’s go get this bitch.”

  ~SC~

  Aubrey went in first, to make sure we didn’t land in the middle of a trap. We waited silently on the ground below, listening to the countryside roil with unrest as Crisanne worked her ugly magic on it. The first fight had broken out at the back of the property by the time Aubrey returned. I tried to ignore the snarling and snapping of wolves as he told us what he’d found.

  “The place seems empty but it’s not. There’s something there, a presence or ward of some kind. But, whatever it is, it didn’t stop me from entering or leaving so I think we’re okay.”

  I nodded and grabbed Dr. Lee’s arm, then lifted my hand to Aubrey’s forearm so he could shift us into the house. The Venutian soldiers started climbing the tree from the outside, in case something waited in its dense foliage high above the ground.

  A deep-throated roar sounded from the trees nearby and, as we began to leave the sphere of sound and movement, an enormous, black shape burst from the tall grass at the edge of the property.

  I prayed the wolves would be able to handle the massive bear.

  We landed in a dark, silent room. I glanced at Dr. Lee and she shook her head. She couldn’t hear Crisanne in the house. Either she was blocking her thoughts somehow or she wasn’t there.

  Slayer and Darma popped in behind us.

  I jerked my chin toward a nearby door and Aubrey preceded me through it. It was a small, simple personal hygiene room. Nowhere to hide and nothing sinister. We retraced our steps and moved to the second of three doors on the main floor. To one side a set of open wood stairs climbed upward, toward what appeared to be a loft area.

  The second door proved just as uneventful as the first. It held a large bed and a single chair. Nothing else. The room was cold, filled with fresh air from a single open window on the long outside wall. From the window came sounds of fighting far below us. A pounding started somewhere in the house and I jumped, my sword coming up before I realized it was Captain Lee pounding on the front door.

  Slayer went to let him in.

  I checked the closet and under the bed and saw nothing, so Aubrey and I went back out to the main room. Both of us looked at the stairs.

  Something about them didn’t feel right.

  The air shimmered around us and the angels appeared in the room.

  Myra looked cranky, as usual, but also a little worried. “We’ve been all over the area. Other than the Earth bound creatures outside, there doesn’t appear to be anything to fight.” She settled her gaze on me. “I don’t like it, Astra.”

  I shrugged. Maybe we had overreacted. Maybe halfling Crisanne wasn’t spoiling for a big fight after all. Maybe she’d run away scared when she saw us arrive.

  And maybe I was Robin Hood.

  I jerked my head toward the stairs. “What’s up there?”

  Merriam stepped up. “It appears to be an escape hatch. As far as I could tell it goes nowhere.”

  I headed for the stairs. I’d confirm what Merriam found at the top of the stairs and then we’d call it a day. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed that our search for Crisanne had failed. I still had to get rid of her, for Dialle’s sake.

  The stairs creaked when I stepped onto them. As I climbed into the shadows of the landing above, I couldn’t shake the feeling of dread that had washed through me as soon as my foot touched the first step. I didn’t know how to catalog the feeling, since I no longer had magic to “read” with, I had to chalk it up to an over active imagination.

  Aubrey was right behind me, so close I could feel his breath on the back of my head. I was pretty sure he was moving closer with every step. Apparently I wasn’t the only one getting the heebie jeebies from the stairway to nowhere.

  Behind me, I was aware of Slayer and Darma climbing the stairs too, and, when I glanced down, I saw the Venutians gathered together in the main room, watching.

  Doctor Lee looked uncomfortable.

  I reached the top step and stopped. The silence throbbed around us, the shadows so dense in the loft area that I couldn’t see anything.

  Aubrey lifted a hand and white light speared through the long, narrow area, illuminating only a few pieces of furniture and an ancient mirror on the wall.

  My gaze skimmed the area and I wished I had my sensing power back again. Something felt off about the space but my human eyes saw nothing.

  Darma and Slayer moved past and Slayer walked carefully to the end of the loft, peering over the rail at the back. Darma stopped in front of the mirror.

  As I slid my gaze back to the door before me, something flickered on the edge of my vision and I jerked my head around. For just a blip in time, I thought I saw a pair of red eyes peering at me through the mirror.

  But it blinked away so rapidly I dismissed it, figuring it was just the reflection of Aubrey’s angel glow.

  “Would you like me to open the door, Astra?”

  Aubrey spoke quietly, probably to keep from embarrassing me in front of the others who waited on the stairs and below.

  I shook my head and took a deep breath. I could do this.

  I grasped the handle. The handle moved almost imperceptively under my hand.

  “Astra!” I turned to Doctor Lee and she had stepped
forward, her hand lifting to stop me. “Don’t...I hear something.”

  “What do you hear?”

  “Whispers...nothing more.” She shivered. “Don’t open the door.”

  I looked at Aubrey.

  Darma screamed and scrambled backward as something huge and black flew out of the mirror. Before my horrified gaze, she fell over the railing, a massive, black hell hound riding her chest to the ground.

  “Darma!”

  The door burst inward and a swarm of buzzing creatures pummeled me, slicing my skin with tiny, razor-sharp wings as they surged past. Aubrey grabbed my arm and started to shift me out of there. Before he could engage the shift, a familiar face emerged from the swirling, charcoal gray gloom beyond the door, and a small hand yanked me out of Aubrey’s grip and into the Shadows.

  The last thing I heard as the door slammed shut was Aubrey calling my name, and my sister’s horrified screams as she fought the devil’s pets for her life.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Back to the Shadows

  The shadows move, the shadows roil, and ever do they heat,

  Our heroine can’t catch her breath, or get her heart to beat.

  The grip on my arm was intense. A heated body pressed along my side and another heart beat steadily close to mine. The sound throbbed through the dense thickness of the Shadows, multiplying as it hit the wall of gray and coming back to us muffled and weak.

  I turned to Brina and opened my mouth to ask what the hell she was doing, but she shook her head, silencing me.

  I looked around, straining my vision, but saw nothing. The soft, moist heat of the Shadows clawed at my lungs. The thick wall of gray pressed against my heart, slowing its beat. My skin tingled with the awareness of danger nearby, the reaction pure human fear. I found it difficult to move my feet.

  Brina pulled me slowly through the roiling nothingness, her fingers on my arm painful. Even through the taut expectation that boiled, naturally, among the Shadows, I could feel her tension.

  A dark shape hurled toward us and Brina jerked my arm, sending me sprawling over the cold, hard ground. She sent a jolt of black power into the thing and a single cry thumped along the waves of mist. She stood over me for a beat and then reached a hand, twitching her fingers. I grabbed the hand and let her pull me to my feet.

  We moved again. My head swiveled as we walked but trying to see anything in the boiling charcoal gray was giving me a headache and was fruitless. When Brina jerked on my wrist to stop me I halted immediately, forced to trust her instincts.

  She turned to me, lowering her head to speak quietly. Her soft breath feathered across my face, the sweet scent reminding me of our little sidebar in Mx. Diamon’s guest bed. Even without my Settling, the memory made my thighs tighten with need. “We’re okay for the moment.”

  “What the Hell’s going on, Brina? Why did you pull me into the Shadows? And what’s happening back there...at Crisanne’s house?”

  “Hell on Earth is happening back there. Crisanne had evil woven into the fabric of that house. Once the door opened it was all released. I pulled you here because Crisanne was coming for you. I got to you first. I brought you to the Shadows because it was the only place I could think of where we could hide until I figured out how to get you your powers back.”

  I stood there for a beat, trying to assimilate everything she’d just told me. Something I’d been turning over in my mind was gaining focus as I listened to Brina speak. Finally, I said, “I have an idea about my powers, but we’ll have to face off with Crisanne for it to work.”

  Brina shook her head. “There’s no way we’re letting her find us until we locate the king.”

  My eyes widened. Dialle! I’d forgotten he was there. “Yes, we need to find Dialle.” But then I realized how much danger he’d be in if he were involved. I grabbed her arm. “Does he know Crisanne is prowling the Shadows?”

  Brina frowned. “I do not know. But the sooner we find the royal soldiers the better.”

  I couldn’t agree more. So we started off again.

  We’d been walking for what felt like hours. I don’t know how long we’d actually been in the Shadows, because time, like reality, was distorted there. In reaction to the distortion, my heart beat had actually slowed to the point where I was having trouble breathing and I kept stumbling over my own feet.

  I’d felt as if I couldn’t see anything there before, when I still had my powers. Without my ability to see auras I realized how blind I really was. The few times we’d passed too close to danger, Brina had had to yank me to a stop and warn me to stay silent.

  Staying quiet is not an easy task when you’re blowing air like a space buffalo running from a Martian bow hunter.

  But I’d been seeing a small brightness in the distance for several moments, and as we kept walking it was growing larger and closer. When I finally recognized it as a light in the window of a house, I moved faster, hoping we’d find some answers there.

  A large, black shape loomed up suddenly on my left and I stopped with a sharp intake of breath. When the shape didn’t move I realized it was a structure. If I squinted I could just barely make out half-rotted, gray wood with the occasional spot of faded paint on it. I sniffed and recognized the rotting taint of a place I’d been recently. I looked at Brina. “The old house on Crisanne’s property.

  “Yes.”

  My gaze lifted to the light in the distance. “That would be Crisanne’s tree house.”

  It wasn’t a question but she answered it anyway. “Yes.”

  We’d come full circle.

  And we’d reached the exact place where we needed to be.

  Each and every place in the real world had a counterpart in the Shadows. But, while they were juxtaposed in form and function, geographic location was not ordered in the Shadows as it was in the real world. So that, the only way to be sure of getting from the real world version of a place to the Shadow version, and vice versa, unless you’re a dark worlder who’s tuned into the place on an unfathomable level, was to enter one from the other.

  Since Brina pulled me out of the real world tree house into the Shadows, I would probably never have found the Shadows tree house without her help. And to get back home, well, I’d need to find the portal from inside the house. Or hitch a ride with a dark worlder.

  I glanced at Brina. “Someday you’ll have to tell me how you dark-world types manage to navigate this horrible place so well.”

  She shrugged, giving me a soft smile in return. “It is our place. Designed for those who live among the shadows in life. Our blood sings here. Of course we mold its form to our own purposes.”

  Alrighty then. I guessed I wasn’t ever going to know how to get around in the Shadows.

  I could live with that.

  I started toward the light, almost forgetting my anchor in my enthusiasm. I suddenly knew Dialle would be in that house. Because the Pukas would be in that house. And Crisanne would be in that house. As an added bonus, the Shadows tree house was my way back to the real world. And if I was very lucky, that was where I’d get my power back.

  At the base of the tree, Brina grabbed my wrist and bent her knees. Before I knew what she had planned, she jumped, pulling me high into the air with her. I’d been expecting to be space shifted into the house and yelped in surprise as I went airborne through the mist.

  Brina shushed me as we landed softly on the wooden walkway in front of an unpainted, wooden door.

  “Sorry,” I whispered harshly, “I wasn’t expecting that.”

  “It isn’t wise to spaceshift in the Shadows, the magic runs amok here. You never know where you’ll end up.”

  Didn’t I know it.

  She stood in front of the wood door and looked at me. “Are you ready?”

  I pulled my sword from its sheath on my back and nodded. “Open it.”

  The door knob turned with a creak and Brina shoved it inward. I watched her carefully but couldn’t see her pulling her power forward, though I know she must ha
ve. We were entering a viper pit so deep and so dangerous even the vipers would be leery of entering.

  Her pretty, black eyes widened and her lush lips dropped open.

  I peered around her, expecting the place to be empty as it had been on the other side.

  But I couldn’t have been more wrong.

  The room looked like it would have been furnished the same as it had been on the other side. Except that the furniture was all in slivers and pieces, with puffs of stuffing floating across the floor like dust bunnies. The windows were all broken out, allowing thick wisps of dense mist to swirl inside, and infuse the room with heat and lung-clogging moisture.

  Two men sat on the floor across from the door, their faces battered and bloody. They were small, wiry-muscled creatures with fine features and dense, orange hair with dark gray stripes.

  The Pukas.

  At least one of them was still alive. Though his eyes were dull and he hunched against the wall like an empty husk. The two men leaned against each other and their hands were clasped.

  I pushed against Brina’s back and she stepped inside. I stepped in too, and my gaze swept the room, looking for Dialle.

  A thick mound of armor and scaly, red skin caught my attention and I hurried over to kneel beside Gerch. Slipping my sword back into its sheath, I ran my hands over him. Horror tightened my throat. A tear slipped from my eyes and landed on Gerch’s dented armor. He wasn’t moving, didn’t appear to be breathing, and his body trailed green blood in thick rivulets all round where he lay. I glanced at Brina. “Get him out of here, back to the court healers.”

  She shook her head. “I cannot. I promised the king I would watch over you at all times.”

  And another piece of the puzzle dropped into place. Dialle had given Brina to me. Apparently he’d known he couldn’t trust Milc.