Bitten in Two

by Jennifer Rardin

  Pissed at myself that I hadn’t been able to respond faster, mad at Bergman for his sudden, unexplained bid for superhero status, infuriated with Yousef for helping him and Kyphas for just being herself, I joined the trio edging toward the gateway with the finesse of a tornado. In other words—I fell on them.

  It had the effect of a wide receiver jumping onto the top of a pileup. Astral hopped on top of me, which resulted in some grunting, but no observable progress.

  I took hold of Kyphas’s arms and jerked. Astral sank her teeth into the demon’s hand and pulled. Her wrist began to bleed where Bergman’s hand would not slip. But even with the added grease and everyone playing tug-of-war, we couldn’t break their grips. Because Bergman and Kyphas were no longer in charge. Something from inside that doorway had grabbed them both.

  “Sterling! Do something!” I yelled as Vayl looked around for something we could brace ourselves against.

  Sterling was emptying his pockets. “No, that won’t work,” he said and threw a pouch onto a growing pile on the ground. “That’ll just burn holes in them,” he murmured, and a velvet bag joined the bunch.

  “Come on, you good-for-nothing warlock!” I yelled, nearly gagging on my own puke as I swallowed a wave of hell-stench that made my eyes roll back in my head. “Pull a rabbit out of your ass already!”

  Bergman was only three feet from the door when I heard Sterling say, “A blessed shield be on you!”

  The spell literally blew Vayl off Bergman, slamming him into the ground, leaving him dazed and steaming.

  “Vayl!” I screamed as a second explosion of shield-shaped air ripped me off Kyphas. I rolled down a narrow aisle until my thighs hit a vat. “Fuck!” The only advantage of being slammed into a concrete bowl was that it had temporarily taken my mind off the potential loss of the Rocenz, and my life. Oh, and my headache.

  I gripped the side of the vat and struggled to my feet, staring as Bergman lunged backward, trying to free himself from the demon’s hold. When he got one hand off her wrist, I realized Sterling’s spell had worked for him too. Now it was just between him and Kyphas again.

  “Bergman!” I yelled. “We have to have that hammer!”

  Even though my knees tried to buckle under me with every step, I began walking toward them, moving my eyes between Vayl, Cole, and Bergman. My sverhamin looked as sick as I felt, and his clothes were so badly singed they’d be going straight to the dumpster. But he was already rising. Cole—God, I could hardly stand to see his face, drawn taut in a snarl that, along with the finger-length horns, made him look more beast than human. His red eyes flickered on mine but he didn’t recognize me.

  Kyphas could see him too. But she seemed determined to ignore the devastation she’d brought on him. Instead of giving him a smile, a nod of encouragement, she stared into hell’s fishing hole. When she finally turned back toward Bergman the door had begun to swallow her. She’d managed to wedge her heel into its base, but even her superior strength couldn’t hold it back for long.

  She looked up at him, both hands tight on the Rocenz now. “Save me,” she whispered.

  He sat on stones so caked with dried droppings, animal hair, and fat that the smell would never come out of his jeans, holding the other end of the only tool that could save my life.

  I dropped behind him, wrapped my arms and legs around him like we were about to take the bumpiest sled ride of our lives, and held on tight, his blood soaking into my clothes as I said, “Save yourself, Kyphas.” I jerked my head toward Cole. “And start by admitting there’s one soul here that means more to you than your own life.”

  Her eyes went back to Cole, whose groans were becoming harder to tell apart from his growls. I couldn’t read the expression on her perfectly formed face. I prayed it leaned toward pity. But before she could confirm or deny my hopes, she lost her grip on our world. Her legs slipped through the door. Water splashed. She jerked to one side.

  Her knuckles went white as she clutched the Rocenz and screamed. “Cole!”

  He screamed too. As if he could feel her pain.

  Her torso was through. Bergman and I jolted forward like we’d come to the end of our roller-coaster ride and it was nearly time to debark. But I had a feeling we were just strapping in.

  Shadows towered over us. Sterling dumped all his pockets, hoping to find the one spell that would separate the Rocenz from its operator. Vayl, holding his sword high like he meant to decapitate her, staggered forward.

  “Give him up, Kyphas!” Vayl commanded. And again, dropping the sword slightly as if he was willing to make a deal, “Let Cole go. He might even love you for it.”

  One of her hands released. Reached into her chest and came out, fouled with blood and black stringy gore. But she also held the rock she’d chiseled.

  Bergman reached for it. As soon as he touched it, Kyphas was yanked into the air. Bergman and I must’ve peered into hell at the same time, because we both screamed. Later he described his monster like something off the Sci-Fi channel, skinless and oozing, its hands so perfectly formed into blades that they sliced into Kyphas’s muscles like meat hooks. My version wasn’t so clear. It was as if the muck of the tannery vat had transferred itself into that ocean, and what rose from it to drag Kyphas under could only be seen in bits. Algae-green tentacles that wrapped around her thighs, their slime eating into her skin like cure-resistant bacteria. A tuft of blond hair that fell like silk over huge hungry eyes gleaming with wicked humor.

  The worst part? Bergman, still holding the rock, also flew upward, bringing me along for the ride. We slammed back down again so hard that I lost my grip and he began to slip through the gateway.

  I lunged for his legs, yelling, “Vayl! Something huge is pulling us in!”

  I caught Bergman’s calves just as his belt disappeared through the gateway.

  Screaming. So many voices I couldn’t separate them anymore. Some in my mind. Some in hell. At least two in the world I was trying desperately to keep my best friend inside.

  Bergman wedged his ankles under my armpits. “Ow! Son of a—”

  My own voice was drowned by the sound of Sterling chanting, but the spell that raised the hair on the back of my neck wasn’t helping me or Bergman. We kept inching forward. I risked a look, which was when I saw Vayl, outlined in a red glow, jump through the planar door.

  “Holy shit! Sterling, what did you do?”

  “Don’t talk to me,” he ordered. “I have to concentrate on him or he’s going to get stuck there.”

  Speaking of which… I got a better grip on Bergman’s calves and twisted, trying to roll him out of the gate. We just went sideways. And then we rolled the other way. Great moves if we ever wanted to transform ourselves into burritos. Kinda pointless for escaping a hell hatch.

  “Don’t let go!” I cried. I wasn’t sure whether I was talking about the rock—or me—or hope. But the fear building in me gave me strength to pull even harder, especially when Bergman began to shake. And then it turned into a full-body shudder. He was dying, his soul unable to cope with the pain, the horror of lying poised over a pit whose contents—for him—I could only imagine. He began to pray. I heard him say something about his parents. Was I supposed to contact them? Or leave that job to the Agency? I couldn’t understand his directions. And it pissed me off that he thought he needed to give them.

  “Astral!” Vayl bellowed. “To me!” The cat, who’d spent the whole conflict singing “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” by the Animals, ran across our backs and leaped into the abyss.

  “My cat!” moaned Bergman.

  “She’s helping!” I yelled.

  “She’s going to get decimated! We all are!”

  “Are you seriously giving up when we’ve almost won?” I shouted. “You do realize if you let them get you that the Great Taker is going to find out every one of your secrets.” I felt his legs tighten. Aha! He’d heard! “He’ll probably even put you to work inventing some savage torture device that you’ll then have to try out fir
st on yourself. Is that really how you want to spend eternity?”

  I felt his muscles bunch, and waited. Held my breath.

  Vayl and Astral jumped back through the door. His sword dripped with blood and pus. Astral said, “Hello?”

  Vayl said, “Now, Jasmine! Pull!”

  A huge yank, Bergman backing himself out of the doorway though I could see how it tore at his shirt and gouged his skin. No doubt all his stitches would have to be redone. But it didn’t stop me. I put everything I had into tugging him free. Not just muscle but bone and blood and every drop of love I’d ever felt for him. My feet scrabbled against the cobblestones until I felt them grabbed by two different sets of hands.

  Don’t let go. Just don’t let go, I told myself. As the thought ran through my mind I felt my hands, slick with sweat and blood, slip from around Bergman’s waist. Just before I lost my grip, I grabbed hold of the back of his belt and locked my fingers around it, wormed them under it until you couldn’t have separated me from it without cutting my hands off.

  Vayl and Sterling gave one hard yank. I screamed, tears jerking from my eyes as my ankles twanged.

  As an explosion rocked the other side.

  And Yousef began to read from his little book of gateways.

  I sat up, feeling like I’d been bludgeoned by a pair of construction cranes, and not caring. At. All. Because Bergman was safe. Free of hell with Cole’s namestone in one hand. And the Rocenz in the other. While Kyphas’s severed hands still gripped the handle.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  We stood around Vayl’s bed. He’d taken down his sleeping tent so it should’ve looked normal. Pristine white coverlet that reminded me of how my skin had looked thirty minutes into my after-battle shower. Pillows in the same color. Lamps on glass-topped tables beside the bed, both lit to reveal that which wasn’t right at all. Cole, tossing and turning, his eyes glowing like reflectors as he looked around the room aimlessly, like nothing interested him enough to capture his attention for more than a few seconds at a time.

  Sterling stood at the head of the bed. He’d set us in specifically appointed spots. Vayl and Bergman at each of Cole’s feet. Me at the side that hadn’t been bumped up against the wall. Even Astral had her place, sitting regally on Cole’s belly, riding the waves of his restlessness.

  Sterling held his wand in his right hand. Cole’s namestone, rubbed clean to reveal its shining puce exterior, lay in his left palm. His words lilted off his tongue like a hymn as he said, “The demon completed three letters of the carving before she stopped. I can strip them off the stone, but they’ve been brought to a sort of life, you understand? I can’t completely undo them.”

  “So what is it that you have arranged here?” asked Vayl, gesturing to the stone, to all of us, to the unlit candles he’d set in the windowsills and to robokitty, surfing Cole’s unrest like an old pro.

  “It’s a reclamation,” said Sterling. “Kyphas bound a part of Cole into each letter and tried to transform it into pure evil. When I pull the letters off, I’m going to put each one into you. Because you’re his closest friends. You know him. You love him. So you have to concentrate every thought on all your memories of him. And as your bit of him is cleansed by those, it will return to him. Make him whole again.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “So we’re like, what, water filters?”

  Sterling smirked. “You could say that.”

  We all heard the hesitation in his voice, but Bergman was the only one who could bring himself to ask, “Will he be the same? After?”

  Sterling turned his wand between his fingers. He sighed. “Of course not. We’re all changed, every day, by our experiences. Usually in ways so minute that years will pass before anyone notices. Sometimes it’s a little more radical.” His voice, lyrically gentle, assured us Cole could survive what was to come even as he said, “Imagine nearly becoming a demon. Vayl, you’ve probably been closer than any of us. Can you predict what Cole will be like after this?”

  From the way Vayl’s lips thinned I could tell he didn’t like the question. Because he didn’t want to go to the place in his head that would give him the memories he’d need to provide an honest answer. I also knew, even before his turning, he’d never been the type to back away.

  He looked at each of us in turn. And then he said, “The nightmares will be the worst part. Those, and the urge to come back to this place. To rip away the lid that is growing over Sterling’s net and find out what it could have been like to let the hellion in him join with Kyphas forever. But as long as he has us to remind him of who he is, as long as we need him, he will hold fast.”

  We stared at our friend, skirting the edge of what Granny May used to call Satan’s Playground, suffering unimaginable torments because the games they played there made everybody scream—and because right now he wanted to be on the team.

  “Touch him,” said Sterling. “Make sure you have contact with his skin.”

  I took his hand. Vayl and Bergman each wrapped their fingers around an ankle. Every candle in the room flared. Vayl didn’t seem surprised, but Miles and I traded Wowsa eye blinks.

  The warlock held the stone out over the center of Cole’s body, almost directly on top of Astral’s head if they’d been sitting perfectly still. He nodded to me.

  “Okay, kittybot,” I whispered. “Access everything you just downloaded on Cole Bemont.”

  She jacked her jaws open and out came the Enkyklios spotlight, signaling the playback of a brand-new holofile, one the three of us had made together while Sterling had prepared the reclamation. The movie began with the first time I’d ever met Cole, in the ladies’ room at a party thrown by terrorists. Though only a few months had passed, we’d both changed. I looked thinner then, worn down, and so grim that it seemed like I’d forgotten how to smile. Cole looked… younger.

  Astral’s job was to play every file we’d entered into the Enkyklios that had to do with Cole, what we knew about his family and his work. Sterling said it would help him to see who he’d been when he was fully human. I wasn’t so sure. He’d gotten the crap kicked out of him a few times while I’d known him. Maybe he’d see this transition as a way to protect himself from that ever happening again.

  Raoul, I whispered. Where are you? We could really use—

  Sterling began to speak, arcane words I recognized only by the buzz at the base of my brain and the goose bumps rising on my skin. As the rhythm of his spell filled the room, I knew without a doubt that if he really wanted to become a Bard, nothing would stop him. Already his magic felt like music, making us sway slightly from one foot to the other as we held tightly to our friend.

  Cole began to convulse. It hurt to watch him, arching his back so high I heard his bones pop in protest a couple of times. When he lay flat again his legs began to tremble, but Vayl and Bergman held on, watching with me as the letters Kyphas had rammed into her heartstone transformed into a black, tarry substance that dripped into Sterling’s hand.

  I’m not drinking that. Don’t even ask. But Sterling had other plans. He took Cole’s essence to the candles. Little by little he let the liquid from the stone drip into each flickering flame, until he’d walked the whole course of the room. By the time he was done the place had filled with grayish blue smoke.

  Why haven’t the detectors gone off? Granny May was back at her tapestry, looking curiously at the sky.

  Seriously? I’m inhaling Cole-juice and all you can think about are fire-safety rules?

  What’s he smell like? asked my Inner Bimbo with an avid look on her face.

  How can I take anything you say seriously when your lipstick is always smeared? I replied.

  I’d like to know too, said Teen Me.

  What, you’re all in this together now?

  Granny May shrugged. He’s the one who could’ve been. So… we’re interested. Plus, we know who he ends up with, romantically speaking. Which gives us even more of a stake. So to speak.

  We do? Who?

  She waved h
er finger in front of her face and gave me that tch, tch noise that makes me want to throw pillows. Quit changing the subject. We want answers.

  I sighed. He’s like… those french fries you can only get at the county fair. You know the ones I mean? Lick-your-lips salty with some sort of addictive secret flavoring that you know isn’t good for you but you don’t care because it’s so amazing.

  They all nodded. Yup. That was Cole.

  “Concentrate!” Sterling said, so sharply that I jumped and nearly lost my grip of Cole’s hand. I started to watch Astral’s projections but our warlock said, “Think of private conversations with Cole. Think of him at his most honest. His most human.”

  Almost at the same moment Vayl, Bergman, and I began to laugh. Sterling raised his eyebrows. “Really?”

  “He’s pretty funny,” said Miles.

  “Good. Keep that in mind.” Sterling stepped away from the bed. I should’ve guessed what was about to come when he wrapped his arm around the bars that covered the windows. Three quick movements of his wand drew a sparkling white image in the smoke that faded as soon as it appeared. But it seemed to work as a catalyst, raising a wind inside the room that swirled the smoke in a circle, shoving more of it down our throats.

  My curls began to dance in the air. Vayl’s shirt flapped against his broad chest. Bergman sneezed. Cole went perfectly still as we remembered. His you-should-hug-me-now grin. The way his eyes lit when a woman, any woman, entered the room. And the love that spilled out like concession-stand popcorn when he talked about his family, old girlfriends, the beach, bubblegum…

  And then we could see it happening. The smoke clearing as our breath wafted out, looking winter-day frosty. The cleansed air swirling into Cole, relaxing him more and more with each breath. The edges of his eyes fading to pink and then to white before closing. He began to snore.

  Sterling left the window. “Astral can stop now,” he said.

  I gave the cat her order and she closed the Enkyklios down, stepping off Cole’s stomach only to curl up beside him. “Good idea,” I told her. “Keep watch and let me know as soon as he wakes.”