“Mac, I’m tired. Come back to bed,” she batted at me with one hand, her fingers trailing down my chest in a way that felt strangely familiar.
“Jenna!” I shouted, grabbing her by the wrist and pulling her to her feet. “Snap out of it. We need to go!” I threw her arm over my shoulder and began dragging her toward the door on the far side of the room. It was harder than I thought it’d be since she was mostly dead weight. I’d hoped she’d have snapped out of it and started walking, but evidently, that wasn’t happening.
“What are you talking about?” she asked, eyes fluttering open. She blinked at me vacantly, and I wondered briefly if she had a concussion. I really hoped that wasn’t the case. That would drastically reduce our infinitesimally small chances of survival. “What happened?”
“Sepulture tried to kill you so I killed him.” I shot her a strained smile, and she winced away from me, stumbling in the process. I steadied her with one hand.
“Do you have to shout so loud?” she whispered as the confusion on her face melted into a steely eyed glare. “God, it feels like someone is doing a conga line in my skull.” She rubbed the back of her head with one hand.
“Sorry,” I said, letting out a breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding. She might be hurt, but I still didn’t think she had a concussion because she wasn’t vomiting, but for all I knew, that wasn’t a hard and fast rule. Still, I was going to take my wins where I got them, and for the moment, I wasn’t covered in vomit. “Thanks for saving me.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” she murmured, pulling free of me and stumbling over to Sepulture’s burned out husk of a corpse on her own. “The night is young, and I’m still mad at you.”
“Can we put a pin in that until we’re out of here?” I asked, reaching for the doorknob. It turned. So they hadn’t locked us in. Cocky bastards.
“Yes, but only until we’re finished, Mac. You owe me.” She sighed and rubbed her head one last time before sweeping her gaze around the room. “After that, your ass is going to pay up. Believe that.”
“Fair enough,” I replied, not sure what I could possibly tell her that she didn’t already know. I had no memories. I’d lost them making a deal with a demon. I didn’t remember her or our relationship. What more was there to tell? Still, I wasn’t going to push it. The way this was going, we’d be lucky to both get out of here alive. If that happened, I’d tell her whatever she wanted to hear. Even if it was a lie. I owed her that much for saving me, knowing I’d forgotten about our past together.
I pulled on the door, and it swung open easily on well-oiled hinges. The dark hallway beyond was dark and lit with the same glowing flames as our room. Thankfully, the hallway was also empty for as far as I could see in both directions. Odd. Why were there no guards?
“You see anyone?” Jenna asked, picking her gun up from the table beside the nun. She popped the magazine, checked it, frowned, and popped it back in. She lowered the weapon, careful to keep her finger off the trigger and shrugged.
“No,” I said before gesturing at her gun. “Problem?”
“You never have enough bullets,” she said, a frown creasing her lips as she approached me. “I’ll just have to make the ones I have left count.”
I smirked, agreeing with her statement implicitly. As Jenna stopped just behind me, gun at the ready, I crept through the doorway, hoping nothing blew me up.
As I crossed the threshold, the scenery changed, leaving me stranded in the middle of a forest, only the trees were made of polished mirror. Mist wafted off a lake to my left, and as I stared at it in disbelief, Jenna came through the mirrored tree directly behind me.
“Fuck,” she said, eyes glinting with panic as she turned in a slow circle and surveyed our surroundings. “Double fuck.”
“Do you know where we are?” I asked, trying to keep the fear out of my voice as I watched Jenna scan the tree line like a mouse looking for cats. I didn’t see any cats, but I also didn’t see any obvious paths or doors. Where the hell were we supposed to go?
Aside from the ominous lake, everything looked exactly the same in every direction, reflecting outward in an ever-expanding sea of mirrors. Even the sky was just a reflection of the ground, so when I looked up, the multitude of images made my stomach twist with vertigo. I let out a slow breath, counted to ten, and stared at the only fixed point I could see. The lake.
The choppy silver water churned ceaselessly, crashing against the rocky bank in a way that made me hope we wouldn’t have to cross it, especially since I didn’t see any boats.
“We’re in the forest of mirrors,” Jenna said, swallowing hard in a way that made me think she was trying to quell her fear. “Obviously.”
“Okay, what’s so bad about the forest of mirrors?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. Except for our voices, it was eerily silent in the way forests got when a major predator was around. It made me uncomfortable in a primal sort of way, but I tried to ignore it because, for all I knew, it was always this quiet.
I heard the roar of a motorcycle a moment before cruel, high-pitched laughter rolled over me like a desert storm and set my nerves ablaze. I gritted my teeth, whirling to see an ebony pinup girl sitting astride a cherry-red Harley Davidson motorcycle. She was clad in stilettos, fishnet stockings, a short black vinyl skirt, and a fire engine red crop top. She ran one perfectly manicured hand through her dark red hair, sending it fluttering behind her as if carried by an unseen wind.
“She’s what’s so bad,” Jenna whispered, her voice low, short, and clipped. Her gun started to come up, and as it did, the woman astride the motorcycle raised one red-nailed finger and waggled it.
“Uh, uh, uh,” she said, her full, hot-pink lips settling into a self-satisfied smirk as she settled four solid black eyes upon us. There was no white in those eyes, nor any pupil. They were just black orbs with flames burning in the very center. “If you raise that gun, I’ll have to up the ante, and you definitely do not want me to up the ante.” She punctuated her statement by revving the throttle. The bike’s engine roared like the howl of a great beast. “You’ll want me to stay low key. Promise you that.”
“Mac,” Jenna whispered, her hands shaking like a leaf as she held her Baby Eagle in a white-knuckled grip. “We need to make a run for it. Otherwise we’re dead.”
“Why?” I asked, more concerned by Jenna’s fear than by the woman in question. She seemed a bit strange, but not all that dangerous. “Who is she?”
“You ever hear of jousting?” the woman on the Harley asked, pulling a small black baton off the sling on her bike. She whipped it out to her left, and a freaking morningstar head the size and color of a basketball came whipping out of the baton. It hit the floor with a loud thud, skewering the mirrored floor beneath our feet with its ten inch iron spikes. The rusty chain connecting the massive head to the baton snapped taut as she revved her bike again. “Let’s play.”
She came charging forward in a screech of burning rubber. Jenna fired at her, putting a .40 caliber round smack in the center of the biker’s forehead, and it didn’t even slow her down. The bullet hit her dark flesh with a sound like a rock hitting a brick wall before ricocheting off into the distance.
Fortunately, Jenna’s next shot was quite a bit more effective. It hit the front tire of the bike, blowing apart the tire. The bike screeched, veering hard to the left and slammed into a mirrored tree that shattered into a thousand pieces of razor-sharp glass. The biker flew through the air in a flurry of shards that cascaded down around her like silver rain.
We didn’t wait around for her to recover. Jenna grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the lake. As we ran, our footsteps echoed off the mirrored ground. Even if we could somehow find a place to hide in a world full of mirrors, there’d be no way to keep from making noise. It was too quiet, and in silence like this, even breathing was too loud. Still, the idea that we could escape the chick with the Harley by running seemed dubious at best.
“Who the fuck was that?” I asked between huffs of b
reath as we ran toward Jenna knows where.
“That was the Princess of Mirrors. She’s the guardian of the gateways to Hell. It’s said that from here you can enter any demonic realm. Those aren’t just mirrors. They’re gateways,” Jenna told me in her “I’m not even slightly out of breath” voice. It made me hate her.
“So we just need to find Beleth’s mirror?” I asked, a stupid amount of hope filling my voice. It seemed like it ought to be easy to do, especially since I had my own demon. With any luck, maybe she’d point us on our way to the right mirror. Even though she wasn’t the most helpful cat I knew, she’d been similarly helpful before. Besides, it never hurt to ask. If she said no, we’d just have to find the mirror the old fashioned way, by kicking some ass and taking some names.
As Jenna nodded in affirmation, a morningstar smashed through the mirrored tree directly in front of us. Glass blew out toward us in a cyclone of ragged death.
Without thinking, I pulled Jenna in close to my body while spinning and dropping to the ground on top of her. My other arm came up in an effort to shield the back of my head and neck. Even through my bulletproof trench coat, I could feel the razor-sharp shards stab into me. Thankfully, none penetrated my coat, but judging by the gouges in the leather, it had been a near thing.
“Watch out,” Jenna said, planting her feet against my stomach and pushing while rolling back on her shoulders.
The world went topsy turvy as I flew through the air and landed hard on my back. As I lay there, trying to figure out what was going on, Jenna rolled up to her feet. The morningstar smashed into the spot where I’d been lying only an eye blink before. Its ten-inch spikes gouged furrows into the ground with a sound like nails on a chalkboard.
I didn’t even want to think about what would have happened if I’d been there when that hit. From the look of things, even if my trench coat had stopped the spikes from giving me a bunch of new holes, the force of the weapon could have probably broken some things I’d rather not break.
As the Princess of Mirrors jerked on her baton, sending the weapon whipping into the air once again, Jenna reacted like she knew the blow was coming. She was already twisting past the attack, dodging by the morningstar so close, the tips scraped against her dress while lashing out with a backhanded blow.
“Too slow,” the Princess said, snapping a short kick at Jenna’s oncoming form. The Princess’s faster than lightning stiletto caught Jenna hard on the hip, and she stumbled sideways. Her arms flailed for balance as the Princess pivoted and brought her heel around in a hook kick.
Jenna ducked, barely. It was a good thing too because even though I was a few feet away, I felt the rush of air from the kick like a shockwave. If that’d hit her, she’d have been dead. Instead, Jenna bounded upward, driving her shoulder into the underside of the Princess’s knee and knocking her off balance. Then as the four-eyed bitch stumbled backward, Jenna shot her in the eye with her Baby Eagle.
An explosion of black ichor and flame leapt from the wound, but instead of capitalizing on the attack, Jenna spun on her heel and limped toward me, favoring the hip where she’d been kicked.
The princess hit the ground on her back like a felled tree, clutching her ruined eye and howling in a language I didn’t understand. The sound of it was like a mass of fire ants biting at my eardrums. The ground beneath our feet began to shudder violently and the air crackled with electricity.
“Mac,” Jenna cried, covering her ears with her hands while blood ran between her fingers. “Call on whoever gave you that arm and find us the right mirror.”
“Please,” I said aloud because I was too frazzled to try to think it while mentally scanning my inner world for the cat demon. “Do you know which mirror leads to Beleth?”
“Yes…” the word came to me like a whisper on the wind. “But why should I tell you? I care not for this mission.” She stuck her tongue out at me before turning her back, raising her tail, and walking away through the weeds of my mind.
“If you don’t help me, I’m going to die, and you won’t get any of the pretty things I promised,” I cried as the Princess got slowly to her feet and glared at us. My clothes started to smolder as she looked me up and down. Well, evidently her looks could kill. That was bad. Very, very bad. “Sure you’ll get to punish me, but wouldn’t you rather have nice things?”
“You make an excellent point, Mac Brennan.” A sigh swept through my inner world, and as it did, my vision went completely scarlet. Every tree vanished from my sight save for one. It glowed with eerie purple light, and better still, it was barely a hundred yards away.
“There!” I screamed, taking off toward it at a dead run. I made it about seven feet before the Princess grabbed me by the back of the head like she was palming a basketball and slammed my skull into the ground hard enough to shatter the glass floor.
Chapter 14
The whole world went blurry as the Princess of Mirrors gripped my head in one hand and slammed my skull against the ground for the second time. Chunks of shattered glass bit into my scalp and neck as I did little more than flail feebly at her. My head throbbed, and darkness encroached upon my vision from all sides. If this kept up, she’d kill me with ease. It was especially lame because escape was only about a hundred feet away.
Not that it mattered. For all the good it would do me, it might as well have been a million miles away. The princess’s red nails dug into my scalp as she hoisted me effortlessly up with one hand so I dangled in front of her. Blood seeped down my face and into my eyes from where her nails had pierced my flesh.
“Do you know how long it’s been since someone hurt me?” she asked, touching one finger to the eye Jenna had ruined with a .40 caliber bullet. Black gunk oozed from the shattered socket, and as she drew her finger away, a thin tendril of slime came with it. “Answer me.” Her other three eyes bored into mine, and I felt her will push into me, pressing into my defenses like a tank.
“No.” I reached out, grabbing onto her wrist in a vain effort to try and pull her off. Yeah, it was about as effective as playing tug of war with a pit bull.
“You’re not understanding how this works,” she said, opening her mouth to reveal a long serpentine tongue the color of day old mucus. “I’m the pusher, and I’ve come to shove.” Her tongue slithered out of her mouth, sliding between her unnaturally white teeth. It rubbed against my left cheek, leaving a slimy trail in its wake.
“Mmm, you taste good,” she cooed, and the words slammed into my brittle mind like a wrecking ball. My hand clenched around her wrist like I’d been hit with a live wire. “You’ll make a dainty dish to set before the king.”
“As much as I appreciate the compliment, love,” I said through clenched teeth. “I’m afraid, I’m a taken man, and even if I wasn’t, who knows where you’ve been.”
“As if,” she snorted right before her tongue pushed through my lips and pressed against my gritted teeth. It was a losing battle. I knew that, but that didn’t mean I was going to let her stick her slimy tongue in my mouth.
A bullet whizzed by my ear and smacked into her right eye. She shrieked, releasing me as ichor splashed across the front of my face. It burned like fire, and as I fell, I tried to wipe it away. My hands started to burn from where I’d touched the substance, but the pain of it was drowned out by my shoulders smacking into the mirrored ground with enough force to make my head whip back. I wasn’t sure if the crunch I heard was the floor or my skull, but it didn’t matter because everything was fading fast.
“Mac, get the fuck up!” Jenna said, grabbing me by the scruff of my trench coat and dragging me backward with one hand while keeping her gun trained on the Princess with her other. We made it about two feet before the Princess began to rise.
“I’m going to pluck out your eyes,” the Princess snarled, pinching her thumb and index fingers together. “Then I’ll leave you to wander this forest blind and bleeding until you die. How does that sound?”
It sounded pretty fucking horrible to be perfe
ctly honest, and while part of me was glad the threat wasn’t aimed at me, there was no way I was going to let her hurt Jenna. No, I was going to stop her if it was the last thing I did. Call me old-fashioned, but I just don’t like when immeasurably powerful demons pick on women.
The Princess of Mirrors lunged for Jenna, who dodged out of the way. As the Princess slashed through the empty air, I grabbed onto her stocking-clad leg with my left hand and pulled. Her leg went out from under her, and she crashed down to the ground beside me.
“Ignis!” I screamed, smashing my palm into where her kidneys would have been if she’d been human. Hellfire leapt from my hand and slammed into her at point blank range.
Her shriek of agony filled my ears, and the sound of it brought a grin to my inner demon’s lips. That was when I realized I could see her off in the distance, lounging in the branches of a crystalline tree. Her amber eyes glinted as Hellfire surged forth from me in an endless stream.
She yawned, stretching her jaws wide, and my magic punched straight through the Princess’s torso and blew fire out the other side of her body. As the Princess of Mirrors shrieked and flailed in agony, the ground beneath her melting into slag, my darkening vision tunneled so the only thing I could see was my demonic benefactor as she watched from the distance. I wasn’t sure if she was really there or not, but either way, I was almost glad she was watching over me. It meant she was going to help me win, and judging by where I was, I needed all the help I could get.
The rumbling crack of rolling thunder filled the whole of the forest of mirrors. Lightning arced through the sky, shattering crystalline trees and raining down shards of mirrored glass upon us.
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