“Look out!” Dru grabbed one of Rane’s legs, and Salem grabbed the other, desperately trying to hold her in place. But since the woman was made of solid iron, there wasn’t much they could do.
“Damn boneheads,” Rane swore under her breath. She tried to twist loose from the webs, but more snagged her as the undead creatures kept firing. She lost her grip on the iron club, and it went clanging away down the tunnel.
Rane clung to the edge of the window frame with both hands. “D! Little help, here!”
“Just hang on!” Dru let go of Rane’s leg and reached into Greyson’s jacket pocket for her spectrolite blade. At first, she was too panicked to focus her magical energy into the crystal. But she forced herself to blot out the chaos around her and think only about energizing the blade. After a moment, she was rewarded with a glimmer of rainbow-colored light.
Even that small delay was too much. Rane momentarily lost her grip and went flying out the window.
“No!” Salem yelled. Dru screamed in fear.
Legs kicking in the air, Rane caught the trailing edge of the open window. Her heels bounced off the tunnel floor, sending up twin bursts of fiery sparks. Then the undead webs snagged her legs, too, stretching her out to her full length along the outside of the car.
Dru clambered into the front seat and leaned out into the buffeting wind. She slashed at the webs. The glowing spectrolite cast rippling streaks of rainbow light across Rane’s metal face and arms.
But she could only reach as far as Rane’s shoulders and back. Dru couldn’t get to her legs. Frustrated, she tried to figure out how she could climb up onto the roof to cut the rest of the webs.
Rane hung onto the rear edge of the window frame by her fingertips. Her biceps bulged. Her lips drew back from her teeth as she grimaced, fighting to hold onto the side of the car.
More webs shot out from the tight pack of motorcycles, snagging Rane’s feet.
The sheet metal surrounding the window started to bend, dimpling beneath Rane’s metal fingertips. Black paint flaked and flew off, sucked away by the high-speed wind.
“I can’t reach!” Dru fought down her rising panic. “I can’t reach the webs! You have to—”
“D.” Rane’s breathy voice was oddly quiet and urgent. Its intensity cut through the howling wind. “D. Look at me.”
Dru paused just long enough to meet her ferocious gaze.
Hellbringer’s sheet metal squealed as it bent. “Save the world. Okay?”
As Dru opened her mouth to reply, the sheet metal gave away, ripping loose.
And Rane was gone.
Dru caught only a shocked glimpse of her tumbling iron body ricocheting through the tunnel in the red glow of the taillights, smashing the gang of motorcycles apart like a human cannonball.
Dru had known Rane long enough to know how much punishment her metal body could absorb. But this was far beyond anything she’d seen Rane take. Too much for anyone to survive.
Horrified, Dru stared into the empty darkness where Rane had vanished. Unwilling to comprehend what she had just seen.
Now free of the webs, Hellbringer charged ahead, engine howling, leaving the undead far behind them.
For Dru, the world went silent.
Hair flying, Dru hung out the window, shouting into the cold blackness behind them. “Rane!” She reached into the empty air, grasping at the wind as the tunnel swallowed her friend’s broken body.
She was only dimly aware of a strong hand gripping the back of her dress, trying to keep her from falling out of the car.
Greyson pulled her, sobbing, back inside Hellbringer. In from the wind. Into the momentary reprieve that Rane had bought them with her life.
Dru pounded her fists against Greyson’s shoulder. “Stop the car!” she yelled. “Stop the car!”
Greyson and Salem were saying words to her, urgent words that she couldn’t understand. Nothing made any sense to her anymore. Her ears felt as if they were filled with a ringing pressure that would split her apart. It raged inside her, uncontrollable, inexpressible. Making it impossible to think, to comprehend anything.
Rane was gone. It was as if part of her had been ripped away, and the traumatized pieces that remained were left shattered and senseless, too wounded to survive.
Silvery moonlight bathed her as Hellbringer flew out the tunnel entrance. Greyson yanked the emergency brake and spun the wheel. The rear end of the car whipped around tightly, tires warbling across the gravel, until they faced back the way they had come. The sudden silence when they stopped only amplified the roaring in her ears.
Through pouring tears, Dru stared out the windshield, where the headlight beams cut through the cloud of dust raised by their passage. The open mouth of the tunnel entrance gaped at them in a wordless scream, the two radiation signs above it glaring down like Titus’s crazed eyes.
Any moment, the black scourge would fill up the rest of the tunnel and come shooting out at them, disgorging certain death and destruction to millions of innocent lives.
Part of Dru wanted it to happen. As long as it swept her away in the flood, too, ending this unbearable pain. Because she knew she would spend the rest of her life seeing the final look in Rane’s eyes.
Was it fear? Bravery? Both?
She would never know for sure. Because Rane was gone.
“D. Look at me.”
She was lying somewhere in that tunnel, among the shattered undead. As the tidal wave of scourge filled up the bunker. And here, outside, Dru didn’t feel she deserved to survive.
“Save the world. Okay?”
Dru stared into the darkness, trying in vain to blink away the stream of burning tears. The crushing pressure in her chest made it feel impossible to breathe. She couldn’t inhale. She felt as if she would pass out.
Greyson pressed the green vivianite crystal into her cold hands, and she realized he was saying her name. Saying something about the portal. The netherworld. The scourge.
She stared down at the blocky green crystal in her hands. The seconds were ticking away. She had to act. She had to do this.
Right now.
With leaden arms, she opened the door and climbed out. Her chunky boot kicked the tool bag and spilled out the lump of brain-shaped calcite she had found earlier. With a thump, it landed on the dirty gravel and lay there gleaming in the moonlight like a misshapen skull.
She bent and picked it up as Greyson and Salem got out of the car. Calcite, raw from the cave wall like this, helped cure a hangover. She remembered her plan to cure the sorcerers drugged with Titus’s spiked drink.
Sorcerers like Salem.
He sagged against the car, ashen-faced and stunned, eyes bloodshot and brimming with grief.
A glint of gold shone in the moonlight through the gaps in his slashed shirt. His protective amulet. She couldn’t afford to let its shielding powers interfere with what she was about to do to him.
“Take off the amulet.” Her voice cracked. “This is going to hurt.” Then she shoved the green vivianite crystal back into Greyson’s hands, as she held on tight to the white calcite.
Salem stared at her in shocked silence, uncomprehending.
Dru reached around the back of his neck and ripped the amulet off by its leather cord, then tossed it aside. In her other hand, she charged up the calcite until it glowed like a light bulb.
Then she thrust it against the center of Salem’s chest.
He gasped and staggered back against the car, writhing in pain, but she kept the crystal planted against his sternum. Faint pin-scratching sounds filled the air as wormlike threads of darkness left Salem’s body, drawn into the glowing calcite. They swirled and dispersed, turning the crystal dingy and speckled.
In moments, the glow faded from the calcite and it began to smoke like a snuffed candle. Dru cast it away into the darkness. “You’re cured.” She pointed at the tunnel entrance. Unable to keep the pleading tone out of her voice, she said, “Get her out of there.”
Salem slowly r
aised his hands in front of his face. Magical sparks crackled between his long fingers, throwing his sharp features into relief. His eyes lit with a mad fury, and he charged toward the tunnel entrance, bellowing Rane’s name at the top of his lungs.
35
EVERYTHING ENDS
Dru chased after Salem as he bolted toward the tunnel entrance, the tails of his black trench coat flapping behind him like the wings of some vast primordial creature.
He skidded to a stop outside the thick, saw-toothed edges of the open blast doors. Throwing his arms open wide, he raised his hands, long fingers outstretched. The air rippled around his fingertips.
Dru stopped short, breathing hard, as the cold air around them quickly warmed from the intensity of the spell. An unsettling pressure squeezed against her eardrums.
Debris flew out of the tunnel, pulled by Salem’s magic. Broken bones from the undead, chunks of rock from the walls, twisted motorcycle parts. They all came hurtling out of the darkness into the moonlight, tumbling end over end until they sailed off into the dry grass.
An arcane glow surrounded Salem. The air itself began to shimmer with unseen energy so that every mote of dust lit from within, like starlight.
Dru backed away from the unearthly glow. Unidentifiable chunks of wreckage shot out of the tunnel, streaking by too fast to see. They blew rapid-fire holes in the gravel road around her feet, kicking up sprays of dirt like stray bullets. The noise was deafening.
Greyson stepped in front of Dru and pulled her to him, sheltering her with his broad back. Over the noise of the impacts, he yelled, “Get back in the car!”
“No!” Dru shook her head, not sure whether he could hear her. “I have to open the portal!”
He pushed the blocky green vivianite crystal into her hands. “Then do it. Right now. Before the flood catches up to us.”
“No!” Her insides tightened with fear. “Not as long as there’s any chance of getting Rane back!”
He stared down at her with his glowing red eyes, looking deep into her as if trying to determine whether she knew how much she was risking with every moment of delay.
She knew. She was risking everything. Risking everyone.
A voice inside her insisted that the fate of the world was far more important than any one of them. In fact, she was pretty sure that Salem had said that to her once. But even he wasn’t going to give up on Rane.
It tortured Dru, knowing that opening the portal right now was supposed to be the right answer. But if she did, and there was any chance Rane was still alive, then she would guarantee that Rane was lost forever. And Dru couldn’t doom her friend. It wasn’t who she was.
Not if there was the slimmest chance of saving her.
After a moment, the look in Greyson’s eyes changed from warning to admiration. He nodded slightly and pulled her close again. “I’ve got you,” he shouted. Something bounced off his back, and he grunted. But he didn’t budge.
Despite the danger, Dru couldn’t resist peeking past his shoulder into the depths of the tunnel, straining for a glimpse of Rane in the darkness.
Or the scourge. It was in there, somewhere, flooding through the underground complex. Rushing up at them. How much time did they have?
Minutes? Seconds?
All of the wreckage that littered the final miles of the tunnel came flying out at them. Salem’s magic pulled out countless bones flapping with webs, spinning motorcycle tires, twisted lengths of metal, jagged chunks of rock. They all catapulted out, streaking past them to clatter across the mountainside like an avalanche.
Staggering under the strain of his spell, Salem dropped to one knee. His arms shook, but they didn’t lower. His long fingers spread even wider, and brilliant sparks danced around them, leaving jagged afterimages in Dru’s vision. The motes of dust streaking past Salem burst into flame and burned out like scattered cinders. The air itself smelled charred by magic.
High-speed debris struck Greyson’s back and bounced off his leather jacket, shoving him. But it didn’t knock him off his feet. He held Dru tighter, protecting her.
Dru knew that Salem needed help, needed to increase his power even further. But there was nothing she could do. Even if she had some sort of crystal she could use to boost his spell, the added impact would probably kill him. Maybe all of them.
His arms trembled with the effort. He was on the edge of collapse.
Just as Dru feared the worst, a human figure came hurtling out of the tunnel into the moonlight. A spray of blonde hair, a shimmering gold minidress wrapped in dirty webs. Rane flew out headfirst, on her back, her arms dangling at her sides like a magician’s levitating assistant.
A magician’s assistant who weighed as much as a professional body-builder. Who was traveling at perhaps a hundred miles an hour. Straight at them.
Salem’s eyes opened wide a split second before Rane collided with him with a resounding whump, slamming him to the ground like a sacked quarterback. Together, they slid a half-dozen car lengths down the gravel road before grinding to a halt.
Dru’s heart leaped with hope. She prayed that Rane was still alive.
The ground shook with the wet rumbling of the sea of scourge. It pounded up the tunnel toward them, sloshing off tunnel walls and cracking through fissures in the mountain rock.
Putrid air blasted out of the tunnel, kicking up curls of dust from the ground. The air was tainted with the stink of death and mold. Underground decay. Primordial filth.
Whether Rane was alive or dead—or dying in Salem’s arms at this moment—Dru couldn’t be there with her. She had to stop the scourge. And she had to do it now.
Hot tears welling in her eyes, Dru stepped around Greyson and faced the roaring wind. She squinted into the darkness, trying to spot the oncoming scourge as it hurtled up from the depths of the earth. The tunnel was an endless pit of shadow.
Though she couldn’t see the scourge, she could sense its foul presence in the goose bumps that crawled up from the base of her spine. She felt like a caged animal sensing an oncoming earthquake, unable to escape.
Every instinct inside her screamed at her to run. To gather up Greyson and Salem and Rane’s body and just flee. But if she gave in to that instinct, they were all doomed. The entire world would suffer and die.
Unless she stopped it.
She gripped the heavy green vivianite in one hand, willing her magical energy to flow into its crystalline structure, down into the very molecules that had formed it eons ago.
She pushed aside the fear, worry, the grief, and thought only of the crystal. Making it burn bright enough to rip a hole in the universe.
Part of her was sure she would fail. As much as she tried to ignore it, she knew that it was right. This was so much bigger than the portal in the desert. So much more intense than anything she’d done before. It could so quickly go wrong.
But she couldn’t give in to those thoughts. She blotted out the rest of the world. The tunnel, the wind, the onrushing wave of scourge. She breathed out and focused only on merging her energy with the green crystal in her hand.
A pale green spark lit within it.
She nurtured that spark with her own energy, growing it until it burned fierce and bright. Until it burned hot in her hand.
She held out her other hand, and Greyson’s fingers folded around hers. His grip was warm and strong. At his touch, a bolt of magical energy shot through his arm and flowed into her.
As she merged her energy with his, she realized how much more powerful she had become on her own—and how his touch elevated her magic far beyond anything she had known.
Although they stood stock-still, she felt as if she were running full tilt downhill, off-balance, trying to keep from falling headlong into the darkness.
Eerie light glowed around the perimeter of the tunnel as the netherworld portal wavered into existence. From somewhere beyond Dru’s range of hearing, a terrifying, hellish howl came screeching through her bones.
The air in front of her ri
ppled. Hot energy crackled across her skin, clinging to the sparkling sequins in her dress until they prickled her like scorching hot pinpoints. Unearthly light surrounded her.
In the brilliant glow, she could see the oncoming wall of black scourge filling the tunnel, rushing at her like a runaway train.
A hundred yards away. Sixty yards. Forty.
Its oily mass reflected the light of Dru’s magic. She could just make out a human figure within the roiling wave, arms reaching for her, mouth open wide in a wordless shout of rage.
Titus. Or more precisely, the inhuman creature he had become.
She remembered the haunted look he had given her all those years ago, shyly peeking out from under his dark hood. The longing in his eyes when he walked into her shop and gave her the crystalline rose. The cold look of inhuman fury that twisted his features on the shore of the underground lake.
She finally understood that no matter how much she had wanted to save him, she never had a chance. Because deep down, he had never wanted to be saved. Despite his insistence that he had never lied to her, he had still hidden the truth from her until it was too late.
Whoever Titus had once been, whatever potential he once had to do good, was all gone now. Everything inside him had long ago been consumed by his madness and his thirst for power. The Titus she thought she knew was dead long before she set foot inside this mountain.
Titus came hurtling toward her, a shadowy figure riding a wave of black oil. His fingers clawed at her.
He had taken Rane from her. Tried to take away Greyson. And now he was trying to bring about the end of the world.
She wouldn’t let that happen.
She channeled her despair and fury into the vivianite until it burned so brightly green that all sense of color lost meaning. It became a supernova in her hand.
A strong arm wrapped across her back, bracing her. Greyson. His strength was a primal force that filled her with a resolve that couldn’t be broken. Not by Titus, not by the scourge, not by anything. Together, they stood their ground.
A Kiss Before Doomsday Page 29