After waiting a moment to confirm it wasn’t playing dead—the boiled guts leaking onto the floor ultimately confirmed that it was safe—I gestured forward.
“You can go ahead, now.”
Argos looked up at me. “I’d rather not.” His sharp snout curled in disgust. “There’s black goo all over the floor.”
“Isn’t life something?” I strode forward without picking him up. My boots stickily sloshed through the dragon’s smoldering entrails as I made my way toward the cave’s exit. I glanced back at the other side of the wall of dying fire, but Ruby was nowhere to be found.
Just what I needed.
Half-panicked, I ran outside into the chilly cold.
I needn’t have worried. Ruby was perfectly alive, her oxford shirt streaked in ash, shotgun aimed at Alfred’s head. The fat cat was half-hidden between a crevice in two rocks.
“He didn’t sell us out,” I said, listening as Argos stumbled out of the cave, dry heaving from wading through the dragon’s steaming blood.
“See, listen to the sensible one,” Alfred said, his reedy voice an octave higher than usual.
“He didn’t tell us about the dragon, either,” Ruby said.
“That’s true,” I said, nodding. With a shrug, I started walking away. “Do what you want with him.”
“Hey, the cave was your plan,” Alfred said. “I was just following it, you goddamn prick.”
“You didn’t voice any tactical concerns,” Ruby said.
“Okay, okay, I might have been hedging my bets, you know? You guys come out alive, we head topside. The vamps come out alive, we head topside. The dragon cooks you all, I head back and find another pyramid or something.” He mewed. “It’s not lying if it’s an omission.”
“That argument seems tenuous,” Argos said.
“You passed the test and slayed the dragon,” Alfred said, eyes frantic, “you’re heroes.”
“Glad you trust our skills after the fact,” Ruby said. “Kalos?”
“Do it.”
“Wait.” Claws scratched loudly against the ice as Alfred wormed his way out of the crevice. “You still need a ticket out of here.”
“We’ll manage,” Ruby said.
“What about a shortcut?”
“This was the shortcut.”
“No, the real shortcut,” Alfred said, his voice whiny. “You dipshits didn’t think I’d give away all my secrets from the jump, right?”
“I’m not the dipshit sitting on the wrong end of a gun,” Ruby replied, racking her shotgun.
But something about Blaise’s taunts gave me pause. The world had changed. How long had we been down here? Less than a day, perhaps only hours, but that was a matter of weeks or months in the world above due to the time-dilation effect.
That was a lot of time for the world to go to shit.
Leaving none to waste if we wanted to reverse the process.
In the past, my thirst for vengeance might have made me blind to straightforward solutions. But after killing a ten-ton dragon without firing a single shot, maybe I’d finally seen the light.
So I yelled back, “You carry the cat this time.”
“Like hell I will,” Ruby said.
But I didn’t hear a shotgun blast as I strode out into the snow.
35
“Come on, help me up.” Alfred flailed his one white paw at the hole, a scowl creasing his chubby face. “I delivered for you guys.”
I glanced at Ruby, shadows playing across her face from the strange light diffusing across the gray sky. Below, through the shrinking hole, desert winds whipped red sand upward. The Sphinx looked less than amused to be caught in the maelstrom.
But the Weald wasn’t much better. Its funereal silence from before had been replaced by tribal, rhythmic poundings. The legions were preparing for war. I’m sure the centurions had already felt our disturbance ripple through the realm’s fabric.
With a begrudging shrug, Ruby swiped down and lifted the cat up by its neck. Alfred mewed indignantly, but he got his wish. Ruby tossed him into the ashen bone chips as the hole closed up, the path to Agonia winking out of existence. She stood sharply, shotgun ready, her eyes scanning the wispy forest.
“Where’s the hellhound?” I said.
“Dead.”
Stood to reason, but it still didn’t grant me much comfort. After all, Cerberus had about fifteen feet and ten thousand pounds on the rest of us. If the centurions could dispatch him without ceding the Weald, what hope did we have?
I looked at my hands, hopeful that some wellspring of essence would suddenly pour forth to reassure me. But the grayness remained uniformly blank and sterile, my human powers incapable of spellcraft. Instead, I played with the empty .45’s grip to distract myself from the feeling of powerlessness.
“What’re they doing?” I said, my nerves getting the best of me.
“Patching the gate,” Ruby said.
“That’s happened before?”
“No.”
I’d have asked how she knew, but it seemed like a silly question. Kind of like asking me, once upon a time, how I made my eyes glow and my skin heat up. It wasn’t something that she consciously did. Her intuitions were woven into her very soul. I stood, listening to the war drums, anticipation growing.
Both the cat and dog leaned on opposite legs.
“I don’t suppose you have any more bright ideas.” I nodded at Alfred.
“Hey, buddy, you think I vacation here?”
Good point. Besides, it was pushing my luck to rely on an untrustworthy alley cat who had somehow ascended to the role of Sphinx. I glanced at Argos, but the dog was trying his best to stop shaking. At least it wasn’t from Isabella’s curses. Cowardice was only temporary.
I heard Ruby say, “Shit,” and I looked over to find her walking in circles. She was testing various paths, pitting her intuition against the hive mind. At every turn she was stymied, no matter how drunken and random her steps. Losing her cool, she slammed the butt of the shotgun into the burnt bone meal. The lifeless crunch made me shiver.
Or maybe it was seeing her angry.
“It’s hopeless.” She knelt down in the ash, resting her arm on the shotgun’s stock.
“We’re still alive.”
“No one escapes a second time.” Her slate-gray eyes were blank as she echoed Galleron’s words.
“Don’t you think it’s odd?”
“No.”
“You didn’t hear what I was going to say.”
“It won’t help.”
“Your old friend collapses the tunnel before we’re even inside this realm, right?”
“Point being?” Ruby shot me a venomous side glance, like I was wasting her time. Far as I was concerned, hemmed in by the welcoming committee, all we had left was time.
“Galleron can find you outside, but lets you walk right through to the gate?” I swiped my hand through the air. “Sounds like bullshit.”
“I’m good at what I do.”
“I took a piece of his soul,” I said. “He’s better.” I waited until that registered and then I said, “He let us through.”
I gauged the reaction on her face, piecing together fragments of information. The way she spoke his name. The familiarity with which they’d conversed, even after a century apart. I didn’t need to know how far their shared history went to understand that Galleron had been the one to help her escape before. It was written on his face, clear as anything. I’d just been too demonically blind to notice.
Good thing I’d involuntarily turned over a new leaf, then.
Ruby stood abruptly, shotgun readied. “They’re here.”
“Who?”
“The daystriders.”
Shit. It figured that they would find their way out of Agonia. But here? There could only be one reason to
venture into the Weald: to finish their job.
Despite this wrinkle, a calm returned to Ruby. Seeing Galleron and her old stomping grounds had pushed her over the edge for the past couple hours. But the moon-burned vamps, for whatever reason, pushed her back into the right direction.
Funny how things work.
I watched her reach into her pocket and extract a small leather pouch. She shook out two golden-rimmed shells into her palm. With her free hand, she removed the loaded rounds from the shotgun. They clattered to the ground.
“Those good for killing vampires?” The pounding drum and rhythmic chanting escalated into a fevered crescendo, indicating the moment of reckoning was approaching.
“You,” she said, pointing the gun at Argos. “Find out as much as you can.”
He shrunk against my leg. “Kind of difficult to do down here.”
“That’s why you’re going home.”
Before anyone could protest, she fired at his foot. He yelped in surprise before his body disintegrated into a cloud of yellow dust.
“You killed the dog,” I said incredulously, looking as the last remaining gold wisps disappeared. I glanced up, only to find the shotgun leveled at me.
“And you’re going with him.”
“Woah, wait a second.” I held up my hands, heart galloping as I contemplated my own death.
She said, “You’re not gonna die, dumbass. These are teleportation shells.” Ruby walked closer and jabbed the barrel straight into my chest. “A free return ticket to Earth. No strings attached.”
“That would’ve been helpful before.” I grimaced as Alfred scratched his way up my pants leg and nobly put himself in between me and the gun.
“I’ll take a bullet for you,” he said, with faux dignity.
“I’m sure you will,” Ruby said. She cold-cocked him with the shotgun, sending him flying into the bone meal turf.
I shivered as the forest came alive, erupting with the sound of impending war. Ruby’s gray eyes met mine, and I knew what I had to do.
In a quick motion, I tripped her, sending her face first to the ground. My hands yanked the shotgun away as she fell. I pumped it once, ejecting the spent shell.
“You’re more useful than me, now,” I said, blood flooding into my ears as I realized what I was doing. “I’ll find you if I make it.”
Then a golden spread of buckshot exploded downward, dissolving Ruby Callaway into nothingness. I stood there holding the gun, watching the particles disappear into the gray sky.
When I looked up, the sky was no longer gray.
Instead, it was lit by a hundred flaming arrows.
All coming my way.
36
I tried to piece a plan together as I ran, but nothing clever came to mind. If Ruby could see how everything fit together and had still failed to see a way out of the Weald, what chance did I have? Weaving between the trees, I managed to escape the first onslaught of arrows. Unfortunately, I’d chosen to run forward, straight at my attackers. I plunged onto the forest pathway, shotgun drawn. Over a hundred faces stared back at me from beneath bronze helmets. The two legions formed a kind of pincer, blocking either side of the dirt road. A few of them shifted position, so that the forest behind and in front of me was also blocked.
I turned slowly, aiming the empty shotgun at the lifeless men. Many of them were bruised and battered from their clash with Cerberus. As the adrenaline slowed, I could feel my own ribs tighten in pain, from the injuries sustained in the meat packing plant. I noticed empty patches in the back of the formation, where replacements would be needed.
There were still more than enough of them to contain me and the Sphinx, however. Who, it turned out, could run exceptionally fast with his life in imminent danger.
The soldiers’ blank eyes registered no fear, each warrior assuming an identical posture: shield out, arm on the hilt of their not-yet-drawn blades.
My fingernails dug into the shotgun’s stock, desperately holding on like I was positioned on the edge of the cliff. A man cut through the legion. I brought the gun up, aiming down the sights as Galleron approached. None of the centurions made a move to defend their leader, which I found to be mildly insulting. Did they think I wouldn’t pull the trigger?
The anger dissipated when I recalled that they all possessed a heightened intuition. An ability to see the many strands of life, and how they connected. It stood to reason that they knew the gun was empty. Not that it mattered to the brainwashed. I’d seen them stand their ground as Cereberus tore their ranks asunder.
How frightening could a mortal and an oily cat be, then?
Galleron emerged into the center of the circle, the legion quickly closing behind him. He carried no weapon on his person, was not even wearing his armor. A quiet power coursed through his unassuming body. His hair was streaked with shocks of gray. Whether it was ground bone meal or the product of time was impossible to tell. Unlike his men, his eyes were not blank. They watched me with a quiet intensity, changing colors from blue to saffron at their edges. A strange expression seized control of his face, and he beckoned me closer. I followed, curious about what would come next.
With his lips pressed to my ear, he uttered a single word that chilled my blood. “Sorry.”
Then, quick as a flash, Galleron smashed me across the face with his elbow, dropping me to the dirt. His legion swarmed forward, two men hauling me up by the ankles.
Without explanation, the march began again.
And I found myself hoping that Blaise would set me free.
37
The cell’s interior was cold and medieval, which was not unexpected given the Weald’s general ambiance. Stale, barely circulated air swirled in the cramped space. The scent of soil permeated everything. That, and the lack of windows, told me that we were underground.
A single flickering torch spitting pine tar fumes into the tight confines lit the dismal surroundings. I gripped the iron bars, receiving a nasty, pulsating shock.
“They’re enchanted,” Alfred said, his reedy voice soft and bitter.
I stared at my palm, watching as a red burn snaked across the web of skin, raw and uninviting.
With no benches or seating within the cell, I joined the Sphinx along the stone wall, sliding down with resignation. Neither of us spoke for a long time, or what passed for it in a space like this. It’s funny how quickly the mind becomes disassociated with reality in the absence of the moon or sun. Clockwork distracts us from the absurdity of our own existence.
Not so, down in the quiet, awaiting execution—or whatever fate Galleron had in store for us above ground. All the little gremlins and questions from my life bubbled to the surface in a noxious stew. And there were a lot of them, after years.
The ceiling shook, dirt pouring down into the center of the stone floor.
“What do you figure that is?”
“The cavalry,” Alfred said. “Coming to save us all.”
I regretted pulling him through the rift to tag along. With nothing else to do in the darkness, I closed my eyes and thought about recent events. Tried to make any connections that, in my delirious demonic state, I’d been unable to form. Bits of information whirled in a confusing storm within my skull, but nothing seemed to coalesce into anything solid. Instead, my thoughts turned to what was happening above.
The world has changed.
Blaise’s taunting words echoed in my ears, tormenting me as I tried to unravel their meaning. Had Marrack managed to find the fifth object in the Journal? How much time had passed above ground? I suddenly became aware of the burner phone digging into my hip. How many calls had I missed from Dylan Redmond and the Order of the Marksmen?
I gritted my teeth, trying to push away grim thoughts of Nadia’s fate. It didn’t matter. There was nothing I could do in my current human state. All that I could hope for was that Ruby had gotten b
ack in time to put a wrench in Marrack’s plans.
Although, without her shotgun, she was almost as useless as me.
“What did you mean that Marrack was unreachable?”
“Guess he had more important things to do,” Alfred said with a disdainful hiss.
“Who’d you talk to instead?”
“Your other girlfriend.”
Isabella.
I wanted to ask how he knew so damn much about me. But I guess that came with the dealmaking territory. Maybe I had my own program on Agonian TV.
I jumped up as a hinge creaked. Expecting a door to open, I focused on the wall nearest the torch. But no secret passageway materialized within the stonework. Instead, ghostly beams of light trickled down from a ceiling hatch.
A shadow dropped through the air, silent as a wraith. Illuminated by the slashes of light and the torch, I saw that it was Galleron.
Sheathed in armor and face half-obscured by the Roman helmet, it was hard to tell him apart from his soldiers. Only the eyes identified him as different.
“There is little time.” He unsheathed his bronze sword, and without further comment, reared back. I expected a shower of sparks, but instead, the blade sliced through the magic wrought-iron bars as if they were made of flesh. The lower section tumbled outward.
I stared at the sudden gap, wondering if this was some sort of gift horse staring me in the mouth. Alfred had no such reservations, slinking through the open space.
Still behind bars, I stared at the centurions’ leader. Finally he said, “It is time, human.”
Feeling antagonistic, I said, “Time for what?”
“Time to go home.” He brought Ruby’s shotgun and my .45 out of the quiver on his back.
“Just like that.” I didn’t move. “You tried to bury us alive in that tunnel.”
His muscles tensed. “I was trying to avoid this.”
“Well, shit, I’m convinced.”
“Had I not altered your path, my legions would have ripped you asunder.”
“So you pretended to almost kill us.”
“Believe what you wish, mortal.” Galleron turned his head to listen to the strains of battle coming from above. “There will not be a third time.”
Moon Burn (The Half-Demon Rogue Trilogy Book 3) Page 16