Catch Me (The Demon Underground Series)

by Parker Blue

  “That’s all?” Andrew asked.

  “Yes,” Val said. “If you can’t hear him, come back immediately. If you can hear him, we’ll do some additional testing.” Quickly, she added, “Come back when he tells you to.”

  The fact that he needed to be told that said way too much about Andrew’s level of maturity.

  Once the portal was large enough for Andrew, the fire demon stepped boldly through it, his hands sparking as if he were readying his fire to ward off any danger.

  “Fang asked me to translate for him since Val needs concentration to keep Lola pushing Shade,” Ivy said with a grin. “Fang can hear Andrew—he says it’s daylight over there, but misty. He’s having problems making out landmarks.”

  “Can he see the portal on that side to come back?” Austin asked. He didn’t know if they acted the same in other dimensions, and since they’d never tried this before, neither did anyone else.

  “Good question.” She paused for a moment. “Yes, he can, but it’s blue on that side instead of green.”

  Okay, good. “Tell him to move slowly away from the portal so we can get a range, see how far Fang’s ability to hear extends. If he can no longer hear Fang, have him move back closer to the portal.” Realizing that Andrew might need more instruction, he added, “Have him go slowly and count his paces so we know how far Fang’s ability extends.”

  “Good idea,” Ivy said. She grinned. “He’s arguing, but Fang is putting him in his place.” Then she counted slowly. “One . . . two . . . three . . .” She got up to twelve, then abruptly cut off.

  Fang leapt to his feet and growled at the portal. Or was it Andrew he was growling at? “What happened?” Austin asked.

  “Andrew stopped counting, but Fang can still hear him. He stopped for some reason.” She gave Austin a rueful grin. “He seems to be distracted by something. No, wait.” She gave Austin a stricken look. “Fang said he felt a burst of pain, then Andrew’s mental voice cut off. My gemstone felt the pain, too.”

  “Does Fang or the stone know what happened?”

  “No, Andrew isn’t answering.” Ivy glanced at him. “I think he’s in trouble.”

  Austin nodded decisively. “I’ll go through, see what the problem is.”

  “No, you can’t,” Val said. “Andrew said it’s sunny over there, remember? You’ll fry.”

  “Then who can?” he asked impatiently. He wouldn’t ask it of Ivy, and Fang needed to be here, to relay information back to the others. “Can you call Micah, ask him to send someone else?”

  “No,” Val said. “Lola has a good hold on Shade, so I’ll do it.”

  Alarm bells rang in his head. “No, wait,” Austin told her, but it was too late. Val had already stepped through the portal . . . and it snuffed out behind her.

  Fang barked furiously, and Austin whirled on Shade. “Open it,” he commanded.

  “I can’t,” Shade said in surprise. “When she went through, it cut Lola off, so I had to close it. I can’t open it again without Micah’s permission.”

  “Then get it,” Austin bit out.

  The doors to the theater burst open, and two of his followers ran to him. “You have to get out of here—a group of rogues tracked you down. We’ll try to hold them off, but they called in reinforcements.”

  “I can’t,” Austin said. He couldn’t abandon Val in another dimension.

  “You have to,” Jeremy insisted. “It’s not safe.” He glanced at Ivy and Shade. “Especially for them.”

  He was right. Shade was his only hope to get Val, Alejandro, and Vincent back, and he didn’t want anything to happen to the gemstone whisperer.

  What the hell was he supposed to do now?

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Val

  I REALIZED MY stupidity the moment I stepped through the portal. Hearing Fang’s and Austin’s voices cut off in mid-word was one clue, but the biggest was the sudden severance of Lola’s hold on Shade. I whirled, but the portal was gone. No blue cloud or cloud of any color anywhere. Just featureless gray mist—chill and damp.

  Crap. What had I been thinking?

  Obviously, I hadn’t been thinking, as Fang would tell me if he were here. Or, rather, I had been thinking about entirely the wrong things. I was so worried about Andrew being injured, and how I was responsible for him as the Demon Underground’s Paladin, and how Micah would never forgive me if something happened to him, that I hadn’t thought about anything else.

  It had simply never occurred to me that Lola might not work across dimensions. In retrospect, that, too, was stupid, but knowing that the sunlight—weak though it was—was dangerous to Austin, and that I didn’t want to endanger anyone else, I somehow felt I had to be the one to save Andrew.

  Hero complex, much?

  Dumb. But, speaking of Andrew, where was he? I thought about calling out but froze, just listening. Shade had deliberately chosen a dimension free of demons, but that didn’t necessarily mean it was free of danger. This wasn’t the same pocket dimension where we’d exiled the two mage demons, was it?

  For a moment, I stood still, not even breathing, trying to hear, to learn everything I could about this world. Nothing. No animal or insect sounds, no sounds of water or wind. The audio of this world was as devoid of meaning as the visual one. Hopefully, that also meant devoid of danger, but not of Andrew.

  What had happened to him? He had gone approximately twelve paces before his counting had stopped, but in what direction? Though Lola obviously couldn’t reach across dimensions, would she work here?

  I felt inside of myself, trying to assess Lola’s strength. Weird—deep in my gut where the spells I’d invoked had resided, it was empty, as if the spells had been stripped away the instant I’d gone through the portal. So Lola was back at full strength now, not having to share any of her capacity with the spells. I sent her out in all directions, searching, and sure enough, she found one male in front of me, slightly off to my left, not far at all. The faint footprints in the sand supported that.

  “Andrew?” I called cautiously. He was close enough, and this misty, foggy dimension was quiet enough that he should be able to hear me.

  No answer.

  But I didn’t want to go haring off after him without knowing how to get back to this spot. The people I’d left on the other side were no dummies. They’d figure out right away that all they had to do was call Micah so Shade could get permission to reopen the portal. They were also smart enough to open it at the same location, so I needed to be able to find it again. But after whirling around in this fog, I was a bit disoriented. Where, exactly, had the portal opened?

  I couldn’t be sure, but one thing I knew—it was within a couple of feet of where I stood now. Unfortunately, all I could see was a couple of feet in front of me. I looked at my surroundings to see if there were any landmarks. The ground was sandy, with scattered gray rocks and a few boulders. I kicked at a couple of the smaller rocks, wondering if I could build a cairn, and realized they were embedded deep in the ground, sticking up like mini icebergs with only a small percentage of the rock actually above the surface. I didn’t see any loose ones. So, a cairn was out.

  However, I did have my backpack. I didn’t really want to leave the whole thing behind but rummaged around inside until I found my flashlight. I turned it on and placed it on the ground as a beacon, pointing in the direction I wanted to go. Its beam wouldn’t reach all that far in the dense mist, but with any luck, I’d be able to follow Fang’s voice back to the portal once it opened again. This was just to mark the approximate place it would open. Besides, Andrew had to be close.

  I headed in Andrew’s direction, following in what I hoped were his faint footprints, scuffing my feet in the sand as I went. It was slower going, but at least this way I’d leave a trail we could easily follow back to the flashlight. I’d gone abo
ut ten dragging steps when I saw him lying on the ground, blood on his head.

  I approached cautiously, stake in hand, but when I saw the small rock at his foot and the big boulder at his head with a small splash of blood on it, it was obvious he’d tripped and fallen over one of those iceberg rocks and hit his head—nothing more sinister than that.

  Lola already knew he was alive, and I knelt to feel his pulse. It was strong and steady, and his head had already stopped bleeding. With any luck, the head wound wouldn’t be life-threatening.

  I debated what to do. I didn’t want to drag Andrew’s dead weight back to the portal location, so I’d wait until he regained consciousness or the portal opened again—and hopefully have help getting him out of here. Besides, I didn’t know what would happen if I misjudged the portal location, and it opened right on top of me. I put my stake away and sat down next to him, my back against the boulder that had knocked him out.

  It was eerie, sitting in the mist, isolated from our own world, unable to see or explore this one, hearing only my own thoughts. It was kind of weird, just sitting still with no Fang to talk to, no one to fight, and nothing I had to do right this minute to save someone else.

  I ought to be worried, chomping at the bit to return to my own place, but I had to admit, I kind of enjoyed the enforced peace and quiet for a change.

  With nothing left to do but wait and think, my mind wouldn’t stop moving, reviewing the events of the past few days, fretting about Austin’s standoffishness, worrying whether we’d ever find Alejandro and Vincent . . . and wondering if this job was really worth all the pain.

  Without bidding, the images I’d tried to bury flashed into my memory. Those girls . . . the blood . . . the carnage . . .

  I rubbed the heels of my palms over my eyes, trying to will the mental pictures away, but they wouldn’t go. I couldn’t unsee those horrific scenes now, much as I wanted to. And my own imagination supplied still shots of what it probably looked like after the vampires took care of their torturers. After I’d held them still so they could be slaughtered. That horror was on me—a black mark on my soul.

  I’d have to carry that the rest of my life. Could I continue doing this job, knowing that I’d see many more such scenes, enter more black marks on my soul? Could I—?

  Andrew stirred and moaned, thankfully pulling me out of my reverie.

  “Quiet,” I admonished him. “You knocked yourself out.” I knew head injuries could be problematic, but it had been less than twenty minutes between the time he’d fallen and I’d found him. Regaining consciousness so soon had to be a good thing, right?

  “Val?” he said, blinking up at me in confusion, then looked around. “What are you doing here?”

  “Helping you.” Apparently, he hadn’t lost his memory either.

  “I can’t hear Fang anymore. Did I go beyond his range?”

  I squirmed but had to admit my mistake. “No, the portal closed when I came through after you.”

  “What?” He sat up abruptly then moaned. Holding his head, he squinted at me, obviously in pain. “You closed the portal?”

  “Not on purpose. But Lola lost her hold on Shade . . .”

  He used words I’m sure his mother wouldn’t have approved of.

  “Don’t worry—they’ll come after us.”

  “How long have I been out?”

  “No more than twenty minutes,” I assured him.

  He scowled. “Shade should have reopened the portal by now.”

  Yeah, I kind of thought so, too. “Well, he can’t unless Lola is forcing him, or he gets Micah’s permission.”

  “That’s dumb. Why would he wait for permission?”

  “He kind of has to,” I admitted. “I forced him to agree to it with the crystal amulet, before it was destroyed.”

  “Well, that was just plain stupid.”

  I thought about defending my actions, but I couldn’t argue with the consequences. “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” I said lamely. “And if Micah’s on stage, they’ll wait until he gets off to bring him to the phone.”

  “So we wait?” Andrew asked.

  It might not be a good idea to move Andrew just yet, and Fang had been able to hear him from here, so why not stay here where it was at least a little comfortable? “You have a better idea?”

  “You have any aspirin?” he challenged back.

  “I might in my backpack, but I don’t have any water.” And even if there was water here—there had to be, with all this mist—I sure as heck wouldn’t feel safe drinking it.

  “I don’t need it,” he assured me.

  I messed around in my backpack and came up with a bottle of aspirin. He took three, swallowing them down dry. “Thanks.” He scooted around to sit next to me and lean against the boulder.

  “Sorry I’m such a screw-up,” he muttered.

  I glanced at him in surprise. “This wasn’t your fault.”

  “Yes, it was. If I hadn’t tripped and knocked myself out, you wouldn’t have needed to come rescue me.”

  “Much as I’d like to give you credit, I’ll take this one on myself.”

  “I just wanted to do something good for the Underground for a change, you know? After all, I tried to blow up Micah’s club.”

  I sighed. “Everyone knows you were under the blood demon’s influence then.”

  “And before that, I tried to burn down the vampires’ mansion.”

  “You were mourning your sister’s death,” I reminded him. “And mistakenly blamed the vampires. The mage demon took advantage of your grief and anger to control you and try to destroy the vamps. Not your fault.”

  “That’s nice of you to say,” he muttered. “But if I hadn’t been so angry in the first place, none of that would’ve happened.”

  My, my, was Andrew growing up? “Can’t argue with you there,” I admitted.

  “I just wanted to be helpful for a change, more like you.”

  “Like me?” I repeated in surprise.

  “Yeah. We’re about the same age, but no one treats you like a stupid kid. Everyone respects you.”

  “It’s only because I’m Paladin.”

  “Yeah, well, they wouldn’t have chosen you as Paladin if you didn’t deserve it.”

  Deserve it? I didn’t even want it. I’d only taken the job because if I hadn’t, they would have made Shade into a Memory Eater—a Lethe. The Demon Underground required either a Paladin or a Lethe to enforce justice. Paladins did their job with a sword, while Lethes stripped memories and abilities from the offender’s mind. To do so, the Lethe had to become the demon equivalent of the boogieman—a crazed half-vampire, half-demon hybrid. After seeing what being Lethe had done to Elspeth before I’d exorcised the demon within her, I wouldn’t wish that horror on anyone.

  Not knowing how to respond to Andrew’s comment, I made a noncommittal noise.

  “You’re also the Keeper of the Encyclopedia Magicka, and you’re in good with the Movement and the SCU. You save the world on a daily basis, and everyone trusts you, respects you.”

  Was that jealousy I heard? “Is that really how you see me?” I asked in disbelief.

  “It’s how everyone sees you,” Andrew said, sounding sulky. “Val Shapiro, slayer of bad guys, champion of the underdog, and friend to freaks everywhere—a true legend. Me, I’m just a legend in my own mind.”

  “My life isn’t all glory and sunshine, you know.”

  “Well, it’s better than mine.” He leaned his head back against the rock. “How long do you think it’s gonna take to reopen that portal?”

  “I don’t know.” I’d assumed it would be open by now. “This could be one of those dimensions where time passes differently—a minute in our world might equate to an hour here.” Or much more, but I didn’t even
want to voice that possibility.

  “Great,” Andrew muttered. “The aspirin is starting to kick in. I think I’m gonna be quiet for a while and let it do its thing. Let me know when the portal opens again.”

  “Okay.”

  As Andrew lapsed into silence, I took stock of my life over the past six months. Yes, I had the power and “prestige” he’d mentioned, but with it came a great deal of responsibility—more than I’d ever wanted or asked for. It hadn’t happened all at once but had come on gradually, like a bad cold. Somehow, it seemed as if one day I was living at home, working for my parents, and slaying the occasional vampire, and the next, I was out on my own, independent, and everyone’s go-to person for hunting and killing bad guys.

  I had to admit I liked being valued and respected, but the constant violence and stress was beginning to wear on me. The charnel house scene at the farmhouse had left me heartsick—one of the reasons I was now questioning my life choices. Was this what the rest of my life would be like? And, if it was, would I crack under the pressure?

  Fifty or sixty years of fighting, bloodshed, and danger—was it worth it?

  Maybe not, but if I didn’t do it, who would? I tried to imagine what Fang would say about now. Probably something about how I wasn’t a special little snowflake, and someone else could do the job as well.

  No, that Fang was imaginary. The real Fang had more confidence in me than I had in myself and would probably tell me to suck it up and do my job. The thing was, I was becoming weary of the whole life. Maybe I should just quit.

  The thought was blissful for one wonderful moment but didn’t last. Since I had the ability to help rid the world of evil, I knew I had to use it. What I really needed was a vacation. I entertained myself with planning the perfect trip. I’d buy a car, take Fang, and head off through the Southwest, visiting all those cities I’d always longed to see.