Not without a willing soul.
I could run, but I wouldn’t make it far. And that would still leave the Tor poised to wreak havoc. As the first drops of Liliana’s blood hit the third bowl, I did one more quick study of the Kyron. Her inability to maintain a solid front made her seem vulnerable despite the energy that came off her in waves.
One clean shot, Jaz. That’s all you’re getting and then you’re done for. I took a last heartbreaking look at the life I could’ve had and let it go.
I began to cave myself inward, as if my soul was a collapsible laundry cart. Turn and fold, turn and fold, until the only portion left of me could’ve been punted, like a paper football, over goalposts formed by four fingers of a sixth grader’s hand. It was the only fortress I knew how to build, and my sanity huddled at its center where, if I survived, maybe the blood and the horror of what I was planning could only leave a faint stain.
“Aaahh! Aaaahh! AAAAAAHHH!!!” It was Assan, too freaked to scream with words, holding a wooden statue of a closed fist with the middle finger raised. I couldn’t connect that F-you statue to Amanda’s frilly room, which was how I knew it must’ve been her brother’s, maybe from his med school days when he still felt confident enough to flip off the world. It looked as if Assan had gotten the message.
Strings of box tape and bubble wrap streamed from his fingers like thick cobwebs, jigging to the rhythm of his shaking hands. His eyes had gone buggy, and he kept glancing from the Tor to Bozcowski to Aidyn, as if at any moment one of them would tear him limb from limb. And maybe they would if the angry mob the Deganites were becoming didn’t lynch him first. They converged on him, pushing, shoving, yelling spit-laced curses. Aidyn, still mesmerized by the slow trickle of Liliana’s blood, looked around, confused. So did Vayl’s ex.
I rushed to the nearest torch and tore it off the wall, breaking the tip off its wooden handle so that its jagged end threw splinters onto the murky floor. A small sliver of wood floating in an oily puddle gave me an idea. I touched the torch to it and it flamed nearly waist high, grabbing gases from the air that burned green and stank worse than a rotting skunk in the middle of a swamp.
With only seconds to spare before somebody figured out their sacrifice had grown a spine, I sprinted from puddle to puddle, lighting them up like road flares behind me. When I was done, a fence of noxious flame trapped Liliana and the Tor. Both of them screamed at Bozcowski, Aidyn, Assan, the crowd, not one of whom had thought to stock the dungeon with a fire extinguisher.
I had one more moment to grab a second torch from the wall before the bad guys reorganized. Behind me, the Tor and Liliana cringed against the back wall as putrid green flames licked the air and pronounced it kindling. I held the torches out in front of me and the crowd backed up. I took a step forward. They retreated another step, their shoes squelching in a puddle of mire large enough to hold fifteen pairs of feet.
“I’ll bet you guys didn’t know I went through college on a track scholarship,” I said, glaring into their flushed and wary faces as they tried to figure out how to surround me. “For javelin.”
I tossed the right-hand torch up in the air, caught it in an overhand grip, and launched it at their feet. The puddle ignited instantly, catching a woman’s skirt and a man’s sleeve.
The crowd stampeded, throwing their burning brethren into the muck as they went, stomping bones along with the flames. They reached the stairs as a herd, scrambling over each other to reach the top. Men cursed, women screamed, people fell, got up, and jumped back on. Bozcowski, Aidyn, Assan, and I watched, spectators at a train wreck. Then Assan shook his statue at me.
“You’re dead,” he croaked, advancing on me slowly.
I nodded grimly. “You don’t know how right you are.”
He stopped, not sure what to make of this. Aidyn and Bozcowski tried to flank me. I waved the torch at them. “Don’t. Move.”
Behind them the crowd’s roar doubled. The men turned to look, so I risked a peek as well. The Deganites were backing, tripping, falling down the stairs in the face of a pair of space-age guns held by Cole and Bergman. As those two cleared the stairs and began to round up the Deganites, they were joined by Vayl, carrying his cane, and Cassandra, holding the key in one outstretched hand. In her other hand, the Enkyklios was transforming, its marbled parts rolling into the shape of an hourglass. She was already chanting, and I risked a look behind me to see if the Tor had heard her call. Evidently she had. Despite the heat of the fire that trapped her, she’d pulled away from the wall and risen to her full height, her eyes glued to the key.
The screech of buckling metal drew my attention back to the stairs. Cole and Bergman had made it to floor level with their prisoners. Vayl and Cassandra had reached the fourth stair when the whole structure collapsed. Vayl tried to balance Cassandra, but she lurched out of his hands and onto the floor, averting her face just in time to miss the taste of mud and flammable gases. A portion of the stair glanced off her head and shoulder, the artifacts flew free, and her chant ceased.
My heart froze as I looked back at the Tor. She’d fallen to her hands and knees, was lapping Liliana’s tainted blood out of the offering bowls, one after another, taking into her being the plague that would rip the skin from our country and leave behind it a mass of festering sores if we didn’t stop her. Right. Now.
“Cassandra!” I yelled. “Hurry! Get control!”
Assan chose that moment to attack, rushing me like a crazed linebacker. I never could’ve met that mad charge full-on, but then I never meant to. I faked a run to the right until he committed to that direction; then I came back left and connected with a leg sweep that sent him sprawling. I moved toward him, meaning to follow up with a bone-crushing kick to the skull, but Vayl’s voice stopped me.
“Jaz! Behind you!”
I spun around in time to see Liliana launch herself over the wall of flame, which was vastly shorter now than it had been a moment before. The Tor’s chuckle of triumph told me she might’ve had something to do with that. I tried to dodge out of Liliana’s path, but stepped into deep, thick mud. It grabbed at my shoe, slowing me just enough that Liliana’s nails grazed my neck as she landed, reopening the wounds Vayl’s fangs had made.
“Now I’ve got you!” she exulted, keeping her distance as I desperately jabbed the torch at her. Assan struggled to his feet and drew his sword. His eyes were on the trickles of blood running down my neck as he said, “Now, Jasmine. Now is your time to die.” Son of a bitch!
Liliana began to circle me, her expression a study in satisfaction. Assan followed suit. “It looks as if our rat is finally cornered,” she told him. “Shall we play a bit before we take her soul?” He grinned and nodded, licking his lips as if he was about to sit down to a luscious feast.
As I turned to keep Liliana and Assan in full view, I could see Vayl and Aidyn over their shoulders, struggling for possession of the key Cassandra had dropped. The Enkyklios sat forgotten, half buried in guck. Something about the scene it played called to me, and I narrowed my eyes, trying to discern details I was too far away to see. Vayl distracted me, shooting the sheath off his cane just as Aidyn threw a punch that connected with his shoulder. The missile flew off course, missing Aidyn completely, but hitting Assan in the back of the head, taking him directly to his knees and over onto his side.
Liliana didn’t even spare him a glance as she said, “You must admit I have the upper hand, Jasmine. Perhaps now you would like to hand over Cirilai? No? Well then.” She held both hands out, as if she meant to grab me by the shoulders. Then she closed her fists.
The vise gripped my heart so suddenly, so painfully, that I screamed. It felt as if she’d actually sunk her claws into my chest and squeezed. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst part was that I couldn’t catch a full breath, just shallow pants that made me even more desperate for air. A moment’s release allowed me one whopping inhale; then the vise closed again, bending me backward, bringing tears to my eyes. Through the numbing wall of
blood and panic that pressed against my body I heard the sharp crack of a rifle shot. The Deganites screamed and the clamp around my heart dropped away.
I looked up from where I’d been crouching, one hand on my chest, the other on my thigh, trying to prevent a full-body muck bath while the torch sputtered on the ground beside me. I had a moment to be grateful nothing else had caught fire as I searched for the source of the shot. Cole was swinging his gun back around, training it on the Deganites, though he spared me a look that could’ve meant anything. I read it as a command. I’ve done my part. Now stand up and do yours.
Liliana stood swaying, hands out for balance, the hole in her chest a bloody blob of muscle and bone. I grabbed the torch. It flickered to life as I raised it and leaped toward her. She held her hands out as if to resist me, but the injury left her too weak to maintain even token resistance. At the last moment I flipped the torch in my hand and rammed the jagged handle into the opening Cole had left for me. Liliana clutched the torch and staggered backward, the shock and denial on her face lit by yellow and orange flames. Then her face was nothing more than a ghostly shadow made of smoke and steam as the remnants of her physical being fell to the floor, a heap of clothes and fake hair with a few particles of dust and ashes mixed in.
I moved past Bozcowski, who was digging in the mud, apparently under the impression that we were in the middle of trench warfare. “Where is it? I thought I saw it fall over here. Where is the key?” he kept asking himself. I was pretty sure he was excavating the wrong spot, so I went to help Vayl, inwardly cheering as he delivered a smashing uppercut that lifted Aidyn completely off the floor and threw him five yards back. A black slash at his throat revealed how close Vayl had already come to taking his head. Then Assan rose to block my way.
“Oh, no you don’t,” he muttered, holding his sword out before him with both hands. “I still have plans for you.”
“It won’t work, Assan. I’m not a willing sacrifice.”
“But you were once, and like most contracts, supernatural or otherwise, the word given to seal the deal is the one that counts.”
I felt an immense, fiery hatred for this minuscule pile of bones and trash that had dared to masquerade as a loving husband, a charitable soul. I would disarm him with a couple of well-placed kicks. Then I would disembowel him with his own sword, which, as I eyed it, seemed more and more familiar. Where had I seen it? And recently too.
He jabbed at me, forcing me to back up, to close the distance between the Tor-al-Degan, still trapped behind a knee-high wall of flame, and myself. Then I suddenly had it.
“The Enkyklios,” I breathed.
“The what?”
The scene that had played out just beyond my vision had involved the sword. Someone, a tiny blurred figure shining with sweat, covered with blood, had fought the Tor-al-Degan with Assan’s sword.
“I need that sword,” I told him.
“Don’t worry. You’ll get it.” His smile, white and gold teeth gleaming from a face half caked with mud and grime, made him look purely demonic.
“Then come give it to me,” I demanded.
“I was never one to turn down a beautiful woman’s invitation.”
I’ll bet. I glanced over his head. Vayl had Aidyn down on his knees, one hand at his throat, the other holding his wrist, pressing hard, trying to squeeze a dagger out of his grip. He leaned over, inhaled deeply, opened his mouth, and breathed icy air into Aidyn’s face. I saw Aidyn’s skin begin to crackle and darken. Meanwhile Bozcowski had moved to another mud hole in his desperate search for the key. Then Assan demanded my full attention.
He charged straight at me, sword held high before him. “Run, bitch!” he screamed. “Run from your fate!”
“Now why in the world do you think I’d take your advice?” I asked him. Utter disbelief crowded the rage from his eyes as he saw I meant to stand my ground. But he didn’t stop. He came steamrolling toward me, mud flying from his ruined shoes, sword cocked and ready for a killing blow. Still I let him come, and just as he began to make the cut I jumped at him, coming in under the arc of his swing, giving the blade only air and a small slice of my calf, not even enough to sting until later.
Remembering every tip I’d ever heard Albert give David during his high school football days, I went in low, head up so I could see, catching Assan just above his right hip, driving him backward into a pillar. When I heard the air whoosh from his lungs, I grabbed his right wrist and twisted while I drove my other hand hard into the back of his elbow. His agonized scream told me I’d done the move right. From there it was easy to tear the sword from his grip and drive him to his knees. He hit the mud one last time, cupping his broken arm with his whole one. I swung the sword hard and straight, taking his head so cleanly that it stayed on his neck for a teetering moment before it toppled off, hitting the mud a second before his body followed.
Twenty feet beyond my left shoulder, Vayl had also found a use for one of the pillars. He slammed Aidyn into one and the resulting crack surely signaled a fractured skull. Then he looked at me. “This is your kill, Jasmine. I have been saving him for you. Come—” Words failed him as his eyes tracked away from mine, behind me, and the horrified expression on his face reminded me nothing ever goes as planned.
I turned on one heel to find the Tor-al-Degan standing inches away, her reeking breath making me feel like I’d just entered a sewage pipe. I jumped back and she smiled, revealing at least three rows of graying teeth, all of which looked shark sharp.
“Cassandra!” I yelled. “Center stage, girl! Reel this monster in!” I risked a look back and wished I hadn’t. While Cole guarded the prisoners, Bergman struggled to help Cassandra sit up. She looked ill, like somebody had slipped raw eggs into her morning juice. Vayl fared only slightly better. Aidyn had taken advantage of his momentary distraction to disarm him. Now they were duking it out like old-school boxers, standing toe-to-toe, delivering blows that would’ve sent most men to their knees.
Only Bozcowski continued as before, a frustrated pirate digging for treasure.
I looked back at the Tor, a wave of despair dulling my vision, making my mouth taste of metal and grave dust. I felt my shoulders slump, watched my sword arm drop.
“This is how it will feel when I eat your soul,” the Tor whispered. “Everything that was good and glad in you will nourish me, bring me full into this tasty, luscious world of yours where I will eat, and eat, and eat . . .” She subsided, glassy-eyed, smiling hellishly at the prospect of such a meal.
In that moment she reminded me strongly of a balding, thick-lipped serial killer Vayl and I had recently dispatched. He’d worn that same expression right before we blew his brains all over the wall. I wanted to call it an omen, but it was too late for that. I laughed bitterly.
As soon as my laughter hit the air I felt better and knew she’d been bewitching me. I’d just been so focused on Cassandra and Vayl I hadn’t noticed my magic meter spiking.
“You laugh,” said the Tor. “Why?”
“Because you won’t be able to squeeze enough joy out of my soul to qualify as an anorexic’s dinner.” I shoved the sword into her and she screamed, her rotten-egg breath burning my nostrils, making me gag. She staggered backward and I pulled the sword free. As she turned to run, I struck again, slicing into her slithering hump, my sword sliding through it easily until it lodged in her spine. She screamed again, but when she turned to look at me over her shoulder, she wore an evil grin.
“Gotcha.” In that one word her voice tipped the scale from old hag to nether being. At the same time her ripped gown fell to her feet. The whole room got a nightmare glimpse of sagging, pustule-covered skin and then all hell broke loose.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Surely if Dante could’ve seen the rock-lined pit under Club Undead he’d have thought it an accurate depiction of at least one of his many hells. Lit by torches and burning bits of floor, the Tor-al-Degan’s current residence stank of flammable gases, blood, vomit, and outright
evil. It also rang with the voices of her worshippers, who’d agreed it would be a bright idea to summon her fully into our realm—a big, bad carnivore who saw the entire world as her Little Red Riding Hood.
The Deganites, who probably passed as upstanding citizens by day—bankers and insurance agents and definitely lawyers—screamed like a bunch of U2 fans as their goddess began to change. The rest of us just watched, stunned speechless, as a yellowish red substance the consistency of hair gel oozed out of the Tor’s wound.
I let go of the sword hilt and backed up, fear and confusion warring with panic and horror to see which could gain control of my mind first.
In defiance of gravity, the ooze rose, growing over the top of the Tor’s head. It spread downward as well, until it looked as if she had stepped inside an enormous tank of pink Vaseline.
Oh God, oh God, oh God. I looked back at my friends. Cole still had the crowd corralled, but they seemed cheerful about it now. Everything else had gone from bad to worse. Somehow Aidyn had escaped Vayl long enough to deck Bergman, who lay crumpled on one of the floor’s few dry spots like a worn-out bloodhound. Aidyn had then grabbed Cassandra, who still looked spaced out, and now held her in front of him like a shield. The Enkyklios lay at their feet, replaying another fight scene featuring some long-dead hero and the Tor. This one had, not a sword, but a two-handed battle-ax. Time after time the Tor suffered blows that would’ve felled a crazed elephant, and yet she kept coming back for more. Kept . . . healing.
“Give me the key!” Aidyn screamed. “Give it to me now before I break this Seer of yours over my knee!”
“I do not have it,” said Vayl. “One of us must have kicked it into a pool while we were fighting.” He said it casually, a weatherman mentioning the cold front that was about to whip through the region. But his eyes kept darting to the Tor, as did Aidyn’s.
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