by Julie Kenner
“Deacon?”
“It was working slower on him than it did on you—I guess because he’s a demon and all—but he told me to go. To help you. And so I did, and on the way all these demons were coming in—like five—and Johnson saw one grab me, and that was when he told me what he’d done. The invitation, I mean. And then he went into the apartment, and I know he figured that the demon would kill me, you know?”
“But you nailed its ass.”
“Yes, I did,” she said, with a proud lift of her chin. “That one and the other four, too.”
“What?”
She lifted a shoulder. “They all came to help it, but I got them. I had my blade and I had two more knives in my belt that I’d taken from the kitchen, and I was wearing your sword, too, ’cause I was practicing with it.” She shrugged. “That meant I had to kill one by hand, but that was okay because—”
“Wow,” I said.
She grinned, and any shadow of the pain from killing Johnson faded. “You’re impressed. You’re, like, really impressed.”
I couldn’t deny it. “Come on.” I was still a little wobbly, but I was moving, and at the moment I couldn’t ask for much better than that.
On the stairs, I saw the corpse of one of the demons she’d killed—not with her blade, though. This one had his neck broken. Apparently my little sister really had graduated to über-chick rank.
“Let’s make sure he stays dead, shall we?” I asked, and before the words were even out of my mouth, Rose pulled her blade and shoved it smack into the demon’s heart.
“Better?”
“Hell, yes,” I said, referring to both the kill and my little sister’s confidence. A whole new persona to go with her new body. I had a partner again, a woman who’d survived and thrived. And even though a part of me mourned the loss of the little sister I’d worked so hard to take care of, another part of me rejoiced at having a sister who was confident and whole and didn’t need to be coddled.
I’d told my mom I’d look after her, and I think that maybe—just maybe—despite all the weirdness, my mom would be pleased with the way Rose turned out. Somehow, someway, despite all my fumblings, I really had managed to save my baby sister.
I stepped over another demon carcass and peered around the corner. Nothing.
“I think we may be safe.”
“Why would they stop coming in?” Rose asked.
I didn’t have an answer to that. “Maybe they realized what a badass you are.”
She rolled her eyes. “Or maybe there’s someplace else they want to be.”
“Or there’s some reason to avoid here,” I said, as the ground started to shake beneath my feet. “Run.” And with Rose at my heels, we raced through the stone corridor, through the kitchen, and into the pub’s public area, the floor behind us bursting up as the demon below raced after us, ripping up the wooden floor as he traveled.
Deacon lay sprawled on the ground near the bar, and my chest constricted with fear. An owned blade was the only thing that could truly kill a demon and prevent its essence from coming back in another form, but a mortal wound could kill the body, and I was terrified that if Deacon had died, this was the end of the man I needed. That I loved.
“Is he?”
“I don’t know,” I said, racing forward. “You said it worked slower on him?”
“I don’t know how much,” she said, then looked behind her at the rising, rippling floorboards. “It’s getting closer. Lily, Lily, it’s getting closer!”
“Grab him,” I said, grabbing him under one arm while Rose got the other. We hauled him toward the front door, and while we did, I held my free hand out for Rose. “Cut.”
She didn’t hesitate, just sliced at the pad of my thumb. Blood oozed out, and I shoved my hand toward his mouth as we dragged his body toward the door. So far, he hadn’t moved, but I refused to give up hope. “Get the door,” I shouted, as a giant tentacle lashed up through the ground.
Penemue, I thought. Either that or he and Kokbiel looked an awful lot alike. Then again, what did I know?
While Rose held the door open, I yanked Deacon through and into the street.
The street, I saw, where at least half a dozen demons were clustered, their weapons drawn, their faces dark with anticipation.
Fuck.
And then, Deacon stirred.
I exhaled, so relieved I wanted to cry. Unfortunately, I really didn’t have the time. This definitely qualified as one bright spot in an otherwise completely fucked-up situation. “Drink more,” I said, keeping my wound to his mouth. He sucked, the sensation curling through me like a hot wire, and as I knelt beside him, I held on to his shoulder for strength.
“Here’s the situation. I’ve got the dagger, but we’ve got six demons on the street behind us. Penemue’s about to burst through that door any minute. And we’re an hour away from the convergence. We need to get out of here and get to the bridge. Can you fight?”
“Fight now; recover later,” he said, climbing to his feet. And, I noticed, he didn’t look nearly as shaky as I had. I might have special healing powers, but a bit of demon constitution was apparently a good thing, too.
“That way,” I said, nodding toward the six, who had now grown to eight. “We get past them, we get a car, and we get the hell out of here.”
I might be our general, but that was as specific as I had the time or the inclination to be. And it turned out my little speech was just the right length, too, because right as I finished it—right as we were racing forward, weapons drawn, ready to hack away at the growing mob—Penemue emerged.
No, strike that. He didn’t emerge. He exploded. He ripped his way out of the bowels of the earth, sending asphalt and glass and all sorts of debris raining down on us.
The size of a semitruck, Penemue filled the street, his bulbous, tentacled body spreading out like a disease over the earth. Maggots crawled over his rotted flesh, and the stench that rose from him was enough to make me puke. Four squidlike tentacles curled around him, ready to lash out, just waiting for a victim to make a false move. The soulless eyes, black and beady, focused on me, and vomit yellow slime dripped from an orifice that might or might not be a nose.
He was horrible and huge and desperately dangerous.
He was evil.
And he wanted me.
“Playtime is over,” he said, his voice filling the street, probably filling the whole damn town. “You will give back what is mine or suffer.”
Since I really didn’t see an upside to cooperating with the beast, I didn’t stop what I was doing. Which happened to be whaling on a pasty-faced demon brandishing a mace. Nasty business, a mace, but the sword Deacon tossed me courtesy of the demon he’d just beheaded was nasty, too, and I thrust up and twisted, capturing the flail and ripping the medieval weapon right out of his hands. I didn’t waste time recovering the mace; I just let go, grabbed my own blade, and lunged forward, catching the demon hard and fast in the gut.
His eyes widened, as if he was really astounded I’d done that, then he fell forward and started melting away.
One down, an entire mob of apocalyptic demons to go.
At least it was a start.
“Lily! Behind you!”
I turned to find a demon racing toward me, his knife outstretched. I started to dive left, but the demon’s voice—“SHE IS MINE”—rushed over both of us, and my attacking demon dropped his knife, bowed, and turned tail to race in the other direction.
I thought that running thing was a damn fine idea, and decided to try it myself, but didn’t have nearly the same success as my now-absent attacker. Because instead of running forward, I was being sucked backward.
“Lily!” Deacon yelled as I was dragged through the air as if I were being sucked into a black hole. “Vortex!”
I grabbed the first thing I passed—a lamppost—and clutched my fingers tight around it. In front of me, Deacon lunged in my direction, only to be brought back into the fight by two demons intent on not letting h
im get to me. Rose had similar problems, but at least she was holding her own. I hoped she could keep it up. At the moment, there wasn’t a damn thing I could do but hold on.
I tightened my grip and looked over my shoulder, then immediately wished I hadn’t. Because what I saw was damn scary.
What I saw was like a huge black hole. A portal to somewhere far, far away.
“You possess what you do not own,” Penemue said. “Return what is mine, and I will spare you.”
I was really not buying that. And even if I did, I wasn’t about to hand over the damn thing.
I expected him to rush forward and rip it from my neck, and when he didn’t, it took a moment for me to realize why—he hadn’t yet fully emerged into this dimension. He was stuck in one place. Which, normally, would make me happy. But considering he seemed more than capable of making me come to him, I have to say the situation was hardly ideal.
“It is mine,” he boomed. “I created it. I imbued it with the power you would exploit. You know this,” he said. “And the Oris Clef knows it as well.”
For the first time I realized that the necklace was not simply stretched straight out toward the vortex like I was. Instead, it was twisting. Slowly. Subtly. But soon it would twist tight enough to choke me. Tight enough, possibly, to cut through the flesh in my neck.
And since the chain was demon-forged, I had to assume it could slice through bone, muscle, and tendons, too.
“It will be mine again,” Penemue said. “One way or the other.”
I called out for Deacon again, only to realize that the horde had increased at least twofold, and more demons were on their way. He and Rose were back-to-back and fighting for all they were worth. They were holding their own, but they couldn’t be any help to me.
I was trapped. And if I didn’t figure out what to do soon, Penemue would be the new king of the world.
Really not my idea of a sympathetic monarch.
The tug on my body increased, and I realized that the vortex was becoming more powerful. A trash can beside me tumbled and rolled, then leaped into the air and flew backward, and I twisted my head to watch, the muscles in my arms straining as I held tight to my lamppost. It rocketed toward the maw and never even slowed. Just got sucked in like something out of a fifties sci-fi flick featuring the black hole that ate Cincinnati.
Nothing past where the trash can had been, though, seemed to be affected, and I had to assume that Penemue had set the point of no return for the vortex at my lamppost. Everything past the lamppost was going about its business. Everything inside—like me and the Oris Clef—were feeling one hell of a brutal tug.
I strained to hold on, but it was getting harder and harder. The pull was unbelievably fierce, my entire body stretched out so much I was pretty sure that at the end, I’d be two inches taller.
“You cannot win, little girl.” The voice, like sandpaper soaked in brine, grated on me, giving me chills.
“The hell I can’t,” I said. “I let go, and me and this necklace are slamming straight into your vortex. I don’t know where it goes, but I’m guessing you won’t be able to get us back in time to use the Oris Clef at the convergence.”
“Such naïve innocence,” he said. “Do you even now not understand? Do you not see why the elements of the Oris Clef appeared on your skin? Why you were able to track them down? Because it is bound to this dimension, Lily. It is bound here, as you are not.”
Honestly, I didn’t completely understand what he was talking about, but I definitely understood that whatever it was, it was bad for me.
“You will be drawn in, but the necklace will not. It will be plucked off your pretty neck and fall here, to the ground, at my feet.”
That wasn’t good. And what was worse was the fact that the world was starting to get very fuzzy, and I wasn’t entirely sure why. Because my head wasn’t working right anymore. Because the necklace had managed to twist itself around, and although I was an über-chick, I still need to breathe.
And that was becoming really, really hard.
And so was holding on to the damn post . . .
I blinked, my body jerking and my hands tightening. Through the sheer force of will, I was going to stay conscious, but I didn’t have long. And I couldn’t even cry out for Deacon—not that he could break away from his own personal war zone—but even if he could, my voice didn’t seem to be working.
I was fast approaching the end, and I didn’t like the way it looked. Didn’t like it at all, and in less than an hour, the demons would cross over, and this would all be really and truly over.
No.
There had to be help somewhere. But I couldn’t think where. Morwain was gone, and for the first time I truly appreciated how handy a minion could be. But while there might be other demons out there supporting me, none had bothered to tell me, and I didn’t know them and couldn’t call them if I did, and as my head spun and the world shifted from clear to gray to red, I did something I hadn’t done in ages and ages.
I prayed.
I prayed for help. For strength. For God to me to show me the way to battle this demon because without help, it was all over. For me and for everybody else.
And when I was finished praying I opened my eyes and the world was still red and my fingers were still straining and I had no answers, and that tiny flower of faith that had been growing inside me started to shrivel up and die, the petals falling off and drifting away just like my crazy, oxygen-starved thoughts, and—
Gabriel.
Suddenly he was there. Not the angel, but the thought of him. Because he could save me. I had no doubt about that. And I knew he was near—knew he could come. I’d seen him all around me. In the face of that man at the church. In Madame Parrish. Inside the pages of the book. He’d been watching my every step, and he had to know that I hadn’t failed. I’d found the key.
Now I just needed help getting to the bridge in time to use it.
I couldn’t scream to call for him, though, and so I prayed some more, hoping that once again my prayers would be heard.
“Do you finally understand?”
I opened my eyes and saw him standing just behind the lamppost, unaffected by the vortex.
“Do you understand?” he repeated.
I understand you have to help me, I screamed inside my head. If he gets the Oris Clef . . .
“You will come with me? Willingly? You will come to the bridge?”
Fear curled in my gut. I don’t have to, I said, then rushed on as I saw destruction rise in his countenance. We found the third key. We can shut the gate. I don’t have to burn. I don’t have to be queen. It’s over—or it will be if you help me. Please, Gabriel, on all that is holy. Help me.
He took a single step toward me, his furrowed brow making the warrior tats on his face writhe and jump. “The third key. You speak the truth?”
Right there, I said, indicating the belt loop of my jeans through which I’d shoved the thing.
Storm clouds gathered in his eyes, as if he feared that I was trying to bullshit him.
Dammit, if he gets me, it’s all over for you anyway, third key or not! Do you think you could find me in time? Pull me out of a portal to God knows where in time to stop hell from rushing toward us?
“ENOUGH,” boomed Penemue. “This puny celestial creature is no match for me.”
And to prove it, he yanked, and yanked hard. So hard I feared my arms would be pulled off.
“Lily!” Rose yelled, but I couldn’t look up, couldn’t answer. All I could do was try to hold on, and even that was no use, because as my fingers were starting to slip, the damn lamppost was being yanked from the ground.
I was hurtling toward the void, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
“No.” Gabriel’s voice echoed through Boston, and faster than I could comprehend, he whipped past me, his form no longer human, but celestial, a huge, dragonlike creature daubed with silver, both terrifying and beautiful. I caught only a glimpse as he burst pa
st, but I heard the collision as he intercepted Penemue.
For that matter, I’m pretty sure Beijing heard the collision.
The world around us shook, the air itself shimmering like heat rising off concrete.
It was enough to shake me free, and I landed on the asphalt with a jolt, the pressure around my neck decreasing, and I tried desperately to claw at the ground and stop my still-backward progression to the maw.
In front of me, Rose tried to run to help, but she didn’t make it. A demon attacked from behind, and she had to whip around and counter his blows. Soon, she was engulfed in a swarm, and though I called and called, I got no response.
I didn’t see Deacon at all.
I tried to hold on and twist around, but I couldn’t. I could only turn my head and see, somewhat, the battle raging behind me. A battle that was tearing down buildings, ripping up concrete, and shaking the earth to its core.
And then I felt the snap and knew that Gabriel had pulled Penemue free from his dimension. The demon was fully in this world, which, frankly, I considered one hell of a mistake as that gave him an extra few inches of reach, and one of those nasty tentacles did just that—reached I mean. Right out to lash around my ankle and pull me, flailing, through the sky toward him.
I yanked my knife from my sheath and hacked at the thick flesh, but it was no use. We were coming closer and closer to the portal. Soon, it would be all over.
“Lily!” Gabriel’s voice echoed down the street, and my mind tried to comprehend the size of him, the power of him.
He held up a glowing sword, as if pointing the tip to heaven. “I have faith, Lily. In the future,” he said, his words so eerily familiar. “And in the choice you must make.”
And with that, he brought down his sword onto the tentacle and sliced it off, causing me to crash to the ground. At the same time, he burst forward with supernatural speed, to crash into Penemue and send them both hurtling backward into the maw.