by Ivy Sinclair
“We can never allow Eva to set foot back into this realm. You know that.”
I nodded. Eva had once been a being of justice and light, but that was corrupted and turned against her after her Protector was murdered, and their shared life force was poisoned. She had gone mad, and that madness had increased tenfold after her judgment day when she was sentenced to the ether where her spirit would never find peace.
“I will never accept her,” I said. “No matter what. No more spells or tricks. I will do whatever I need to do to keep her out.”
“I know you would try,” Benjamin said softly. Then his face hardened again. “But it is my responsibility to do whatever is necessary to ensure that never happens. Not yours.”
I didn’t grasp the true meaning of his words until it was too late. But Riley was already there in front of me, and I felt his body jerk as Benjamin’s knife drove hard into his body.
“NO!” I screamed. But even as I felt Riley’s body fall back against me, I saw Benjamin’s body pitch backward into the darkness. A hard thud and a sharp snap erupted into the air followed by a small shriek.
Riley’s hand was on my back and pushed me further into the caves. “We need to cross the boundary,” he said. I could hear the pain in his voice. “He won’t follow us beyond the boundary.”
I felt him stumble and caught his arm to drag him with me even as he pushed me forward again. Moments later, I felt the shift in the air. It was as if the air had turned into a kind of jelly. Every movement forward required ten times more effort than it had just a few steps ago.
“PAIGE!”
I felt the rippled vibrations of the sound of Benjamin’s voice behind me, and then suddenly it was as if I was free again. Riley’s hand was on my back, so I knew that he was right behind me and had crossed over as well. We stopped, and he leaned against the hard stone of the cave wall. His breath came in hard gulps. I played my flashlight beam up to his chest. His shirt front was stained with blood, but he gave me a wan smile and a thumbs up signal.
We both turned, and I saw a beam of light directed toward us. I couldn’t see the archangel beyond the beam, but I felt his presence nonetheless.
“You forgot to remove your protection spell, didn’t you, jackass?” Riley called out at the beam of light. “Thanks for that, by the way, but I think you still need to work on it.” He pointed at the blood on his shirt with a frown.
I wanted to laugh, but the joke of it all really wasn’t that funny. Then I looked down at my hand. The relic was still in my fist. I felt the anger starting to build in my chest as I considered what had just happened. I held it up so that I knew Benjamin could see it.
“You were never planning to give it to me, were you?” I said. “You didn’t know where it was. You were telling me the truth that you didn’t know that I was the vessel. Once you realized your mistake, you knew that you had to find the relic before I did so that you could hide it again from me. You needed my help to do it, so you lied to me.”
His answer was nothing but silence. Then the beam of light clicked off. I felt the feelings of hurt and betrayal running through my whole body. I wasn’t sure whether to cry or scream.
“We need to go,” Riley said as he pushed away from the wall. “We’re sitting ducks here.”
“You’re hurt,” I said. “But I don’t want to risk trying to heal you here so close to the gate.”
“I’m okay,” Riley said. He couldn’t keep the wince off his face though as he took his first step. “See? It’s nothing but a flesh wound.” He drew his knife and winked at me. We both knew it was more than a flesh wound, but the only place we could go was forward. We had an archangel at our back that wanted to kill me, and demons in front of us that would kill us without a second thought. Talk about a rock and a hard place.
“The odds seem stacked against us,” I said. I slid the relic gently into the front pocket of my jeans, and then I pulled the small gun at my waist out of its holster. It wasn’t much, but it made me feel better. “I don’t think I have enough ammo for a horde of demons.”
“They’re better odds than some situations I’ve been in,” Riley said.
“Really?” I was looking forward to the point in time where we’d be able to sit down and talk like two normal people in a relationship, and I’d finally get to hear Riley’s full life story.
Riley chuckled and shook his head. “I’ve been in some pretty bad messes. This might take the cake though.”
“We’re never bored,” I said.
Riley looked back at the darkness behind us. I wondered if he could see something I couldn’t see. Benjamin might not still be there, but I didn’t think that he would go far.
“I know the whole point of coming back to the island was to get that relic. I’m sorry that we have to take this little side adventure. Are you sure you are still up for this before we go find ourselves a goddess to pick a fight with?”
I realized I had never considered any other alternative. The course of our actions was taking us into larger, uncharted territory. “I think we’re the only ones who can.”
“Yes,” Riley said. He reached out and twirled a piece of my hair through his fingers. “Once this is all over, I’m never letting the people I care about out of my sight again.”
I smiled at him. “Once this is all over, I’m going to need a new job and place to live. I hope you’re hiring.”
Riley’s face grew serious. “Your place is with me. Don’t ever doubt that.”
My heart fluttered at his words. I didn’t know how he did it. We were in the middle of a crazy mess, and somehow he had managed to make me feel like everything was going to turn out all right.
“I’m in if you are,” I said softly.
He leaned forward and kissed my forehead. We stood like that for a long moment. I never wanted it to end, but I knew it had to eventually.
Riley leaned back and glared at the darkness behind us.
“You hear that? We’re going to go do what you and your prick brothers should have been trying to do all along. Oh, that’s right. You can’t. Let the mere mortals save the world from a demon invasion then.”
“Stop. He’s not worth it, Riley,” I said. I had shut off every emotion I had about Benjamin. I would deal with it later. I reluctantly pulled away from him. We nodded to each other, and then I followed him as he started down the tunnel. Two steps later, I smelled the pungent odor of sulfur.
“We’ve got company,” Riley said. I saw his knife flash in the flashlight’s beam, and then I heard the squeal of what sounded like a million bats fill the air. I felt a rush of heat and then my body flew backward. My heart leapt into my chest even as I struggled under the crushing weight of the thing that was suddenly on top of me.
“Paige!”
I tried to answer, but then I felt the strong grip of hands around my throat. I swung the hand with the gun up to connect broadside with the general area of where the head should be of the thing on top of me. I heard a grunt but nothing else that indicated my action had any other impact because its grip only increased. I started to choke as I felt the pathway to my lungs closing. I could hear the sounds of a struggle close by, and I knew that Riley was overwhelmed.
“The relic.” His voice traveled to my ears, and I dropped the gun and twisted my body as hard as I could so that I could access my pocket. I yanked the relic back out. Immediately, I felt a surge of power drive into my body, and I gasped even as the thing’s grip loosened on my throat. I pulled in a deep breath of air, and I shoved against its body as hard as I could. As soon as I felt the weight release on my body, I pushed backward on my heels to back pedal away from it.
My flashlight, which had flown out of my other hand when I hit the ground, illuminating a view ahead of me that rocked me to my core. From a few feet away extending as far as I could see down the tunnel was a wall of demons. Demons that looked like humans, and demons that looked like creatures out of my worst nightmares. Then I saw the one writhing at my feet, and I bro
ught the back of my hand to my mouth to calm the retching sensation building in the back of my throat.
At first glance, it looked like a gigantic centipede, but it had the arms and hands of a human. Small tendrils of putrid smoke wafted from its body as I watched multiple pairs of feet across its belly jerking in the air. I stepped backward again as the ooze started to build on the ground around it. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought that it was melting in front of my eyes.
I didn’t want to look at it, but I didn’t want to look at the waiting crowd of demons either.
“I don’t think they are supposed to attack unless they think that we are going to try to go forward.” Riley’s hoarse voice against my ear pulled me out of my shock. “I saw something like it on the road on the way here earlier. That’s why Samuel and I were coming in the back way.”
I was relieved that he was okay. Everything had happened so fast that I didn’t even have time to think. “What are we supposed to do?”
“I think you know what we have to do,” Riley said. “I’ve got your back.”
For the first time, I realized what happened next was falling squarely on my shoulders. It was surreal and scary, but at the same time, it felt oddly comforting. I was in control of my destiny now. No one else was setting the course for me, and I was okay with that. I was more than okay with that. And in the process of finding myself, I had also found Riley. I was more than okay with that too.
I held the relic up, and I saw the demons at the front of the pack shift backward slightly even though I hadn’t even moved toward them.
“Are you feeling any different?” I asked him in a low voice. I was more than a little concerned about the relic’s effects on us now without the shield Benjamin had kept around it.
“I think we’re okay for at least a little while,” Riley said. “That isn’t normal metal that the watch casing is made out of. It’s Plythen steel. That’s no doubt why every bad event attributed to it takes some time to unfold.” Riley was always full of fun facts like that.
“Okay then. You’re sure about this?”
“I didn’t have anything else on my agenda for this afternoon. Closing a Hell Gate sounds interesting enough.”
I smiled, which I knew had been his intention. Taking a deep breath, but keeping the relic in front of me, I knelt down and picked up my gun. I wasn’t sure if I’d need it, but having it made me feel better. I grimaced at the long trail of ooze that accompanied it as I pulled it off the ground. The demon that had been at my feet had dissolved completely.
“That’s one I haven’t seen before,” Riley commented.
“I’m just full of tricks today,” I said. I put the gun back in its holster, but I couldn’t help but wonder if the demon ooze remains would cement it in place. I forced myself to stop thinking about that. I was doing nothing but procrastinating against the inevitable.
I stood there because I realized that my feet didn’t seem to want to move. I felt my arm holding the relic start to shake. Then I felt Riley’s hard body press against my back and his fingers wrapped around my wrist steadying my arm.
“I’m here with you every step of the way. I’ve got you,” he said.
I felt a ripple of warmth down my spine as his words caressed my ear. It focused my mind on what I needed to do. I needed to walk forward. And then I felt my foot move as I stepped forward.
I forgot about the black ooze at my feet.
I forgot about the fact that Benjamin had betrayed me.
I forgot about the demons who blocked my path.
Riley was with me, and we would take care of this business once and for all.
As my mind focused on that, the relic in my hand began to glow. It knew where I wanted to go, and I just had to follow it. So I did.
CHAPTER NINE – RILEY
I had to give my girl props. Once she set her mind on something, she didn’t hesitate. I liked to think that I had something to do with it. If she had told me that she’d rather go back and take on the dickhead archangel instead, I wouldn’t have blamed her. What was going on now was the scariest damn thing to happen to me since my short trip to Hell five years ago.
It was quickly apparent that not all of the demons could back away from us as we approached them. The tunnel was relatively spacious, which made sense considering there was a Hell Gate down here somewhere, but it was crammed full of demons of every variety. I had seen a fair number of them in my day, but my eyes continued to find ones in the mishmash that I had only read about it.
As a joke about a year ago, Klein started making his own demon trading cards. When business was slow, we played demon poker with our own personalized set of cards. If I didn’t have that background, I don’t know that I would have recognized at least a third of the contorted, twisted shapes surrounding me. I’d have to give Klein a kick-back of some kind for that free education.
Those were the random, nonsense thoughts crossing my mind as I followed Paige into the tunnel of madness. The demons that couldn’t back up were pressing themselves against the sides of the walls to allow us to pass. Still, in the confined space the sounds and smells were things that I hoped I would never have to hear or smell again once this was over.
I was also trying to ignore the dull pain that pulsed through my chest every few seconds. I didn’t want to worry Paige, but I was losing blood at a rather alarming rate. I didn’t want her to lose focus of the task at hand, and I had no idea the amount of energy she’d need to pull on and focus to close the gate. I could only assume that it would be more than she had attempted to this point, and I didn’t want her to risk losing any of that strength because she had healed me. I didn’t think Benjamin’s knife had hit any major organs or arteries given the fact that I was still upright, but I knew that adrenaline was an effective mask against my pain. Fortunately for me, the current situation had me on my toes.
“How are you holding up, babe?” I asked her. I felt the heat of anger and tension all around us. These demons would tear us apart if they could, and if the mythology was correct, many of them would happily eat the flesh off our bones as well. I wasn’t sure how familiar Paige was with the demons around us, but I hoped that was a bit of knowledge that she didn’t know. She had enough on her plate.
“I’m fine,” she said. Her voice sounded different. “I think it’s right up ahead.”
I kept my knife up, and I had my other hand on her hip. I wasn’t planning on letting go of either one. “How do you know?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I just do.”
I had to admit that the sooner we figured out how to use the relic and get rid of it the better in my mind. There was no way to know how it would affect either one of us. I had deflected Paige’s question earlier because I didn’t want to let her know how worried I was about it. Anything that would cause every demon we were running across to turn from it should be something that caused extreme alarm. Demons were rarely afraid of anything, but they did have an acutely strong sense of survival. It was general practice that if a demon was running away from something, you ran away too.
But we had a job to do. It was a job that it seemed we were uniquely positioned to do, and I couldn’t shake that sensation again that we were just following a carefully crafted script written by someone else.
The demons were thicker in number the further we went in the tunnel, and I tried to ignore the fact that several times one of them got too close to Paige and the relic. Their bodies immediately began to twitch and melt just like the one that struggled with Paige earlier. I had bandied with the angels earlier about not believing that there was a difference between light and dark magic. I was starting to change my opinion. I wasn’t a fan of demons, and I’d as soon have a world without them. But even I had to admit that whatever the relic was doing to them seemed like a horrible way to die.
It was the ones that hung down from the ceiling that made my stomach churn the worst. Because I was taller than the average guy, there was only so far that they could scrunch
their bodies upward to avoid contact. So I felt the brush of tentacles and fingertips whisper across the top of my head as I passed underneath them, but none of them attempted to grab purchase.
Because I was so focused on the woman in front of me and the relic in her hand, I didn’t immediately grasp the fact that all of the demons had fallen away to reveal a large cavern in front of us. But then Paige gasped, and my eyes were drawn ahead of her.
We exited the tunnel on a small ledge that was about ten feet off the floor of the naturally created room. The demons ahead of us backed right off the ledge and fell to the floor below which was crawling with what looked like hundreds more of their fellow demon companions. The buzz in the room diminished to a whisper as all of those eyes were drawn upward to me and Paige.
Past the sea of bodies, I finally laid eyes on the object of our mission. I wasn’t sure what I expected. The gate appeared to be several meters across and slightly taller than I was. The surface shimmered between a deep black and hue of red and orange that reminded me of flames. I knew from personal experience that the idea that hell was a place of fire and brimstone was all the Hollywood version of the place, but the concept of eternal damnation was entirely accurate. It wasn’t a place I ever wanted to visit again.
I felt a twitch in my mind then I recognized, and I felt stupid for not thinking of it before now.
“Any ideas of how to get down there without attempting a body jump across a platoon of demons?” Paige asked. “I have this feeling that if I let my guard down at all, they’ll swarm us.”
“I’ve got an idea,” I said. I moved to stand beside her, and I closed my eyes. What I was about to do was even bigger than what I had done in the church, and I hadn’t been wounded then. I felt Paige’s fingers intertwine in mine. Then I let my mind crawl deep into the dirt and stone beneath the demons’ feet.