“As much as I’d love to stay and finish her off, Mac, we have to get out of here before we’re cut to ribbons!” Jenna said, grabbing hold of my shoulder as my tattoos faded. The Princess wasn’t dead, and from the look in her remaining eyes, I knew I’d be dead once she got back up.
Fortunately, she’d been blown in half, and while I could see tendrils of flesh snaking back in an effort to put all her bits back together, I knew we’d easily make it to Beleth’s gateway before that happened. And people say I’m not lucky.
“I hear that,” I mumbled, letting her help me get to my feet. I threw my arm over her shoulder as we hobbled toward the gateway. My vision was starting to clear, but as I wiped my face, I realized it was covered in blood. Only it wasn’t from the cuts on my scalp. No, blood was oozing from my pores. Fuck.
“You will not escape!” the Princess cried, her voice a staccato crack.
She pulled her broken body toward us as we approached the gateway to Beleth’s lair, but before we could make it through, she howled in that strange demonic language. My eardrums popped, and the sky above us shattered into a tornado of death and broken glass.
I threw my arm up instinctively to ward off the oncoming death spiral as Jenna jerked me through the mirror. Hitting the surface was like leaping into a glacier, and for a second, I thought I might freeze to death.
If only I’d been so lucky. Instead, I got to feel my intestines pulled out of my nose before being shoved back down my nostrils. I wasn’t sure if it had actually happened or not, but if it had, it’d all taken place in the space of a nanosecond. Meaning, before I had even finished comprehending the pain and horror of it, I found myself lying next to Jenna on the black-and-white checkered tile floor.
As my hazy vision cleared, and I looked around, I realized Jenna and I were lying on a giant chessboard. Black and white chess pieces that reminded me of the Karazhan boss fight in World of Warcraft surrounded us. Each one was an armored monstrosity the size of an oak tree, and even though they moved like automated robots, their weapons glinted like they could slice through me with ease.
Thankfully, most of the humans and orcs were concentrated on the far corner of the board, and as I got to my feet, I realized why. Vitaly and Marvin were both in that direction, having cut a swath of death through the chess pieces. Still, it must have been a pretty difficult fight because Vitaly had transformed, and even though he was the same height as his opponents, his clothing was cut to ribbons.
“Want a hand?” I called as Jenna climbed to her feet next to me and stared out across the board with narrowed eyes.
“You made it just in time to go,” Vitaly called as he dodged the slash of an enterprising human knight and buried his massive werebear fist in its horse’s face. The horse piece clattered to the floor unconscious as the knight fell off his steed and rolled across the board. The big Russian glanced at us with a huge grin on his blood-spattered visage. “Is good. I was getting bored.”
My gaze swept past the dismembered corpses strewn across the board around him and locked on Marvin. He was a few feet away and had what looked like a porcelain pawn’s staff in one hand and a blackened obsidian sword in the other. He danced through the ranks of the black and white pawns with ease, slamming the marbled pole into their carapaces with a sound that reminded me of someone stepping on a cockroach. He finished them by jamming the blade into the resulting cracks and twisting violently.
Gore sprayed over his blood-spattered body as he kicked a white pawn off his sword and spun to block an oncoming attack with his stolen staff. Even Jenna didn’t move that fast, and it seemed like she knew things were coming before they’d even happened. If we’d had Marvin with us against the Princess of Mirrors, things might have turned out very differently. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that to be honest.
“How’d you know we were in the game room?” Marvin asked, not even slightly out of breath as he glanced at us over his shoulder while twirling past an oncoming attack. Without even looking where he was swinging, he took a pawn’s head off with a flick of his sword. “I figured the two of you were dead. I was sort of wondering if we’d find your still warm corpses strewn along the way back.”
“Not dead, just detained,” I said, rolling to the side as a rook dove out of the sky, its heavy stone talons missing my face by inches and tearing gouts into the tile. “Have you been waiting long?”
“Yes and no,” Vitaly replied, spinning on his heel and delivering a hammer blow that cracked the rook’s head into powder. I was a little in awe to be honest because I’d seen Ricky, my werewolf girlfriend, deck a gargoyle before. Even with the advantage of being super strong, she’d done little more than break her fist. Evidently, Vitaly did not have this problem. When he punched a statue, the statue broke.
“Come on,” Jenna said, scrambling to her feet and sprinting across the board in a display of speed that made me envious. Ahead of her, I could see what looked like a drawbridge suspended in mid-flight. It wasn’t lowered enough for us to easily pass through, but it was close. “I’ll get the door.”
“Good. This is starting to get boring,” Marvin said, flinging his sword across the board. It smacked into the back of the rook nearest to Jenna and punched through its stone body. The creature fell to the board, gripping the blade protruding from its chest as blood flowed through its claws.
Jenna didn’t seem to notice as she dove forward, twisting her body to avoid an axe-wielding queen. She landed lightly on the other side of the queen, squatted down, and leapt upward with all her might. Her fingers grazed the edge of the drawbridge, and as they did, the queen’s axe came back around in a flash of silver.
Somehow, Jenna lifted her feet as she fell, avoiding the edge of the weapon by millimeters before kicking outward. The muscles in her legs flexed as she pushed off the still-swinging axe and propelled herself upward. Before the axe had even completed its arc, she grabbed onto the drawbridge and hauled herself up in a quick gymnast’s movement that left me in awe.
“Wow,” Vitaly said, echoing my sentiments. “That is pretty good.” Then a bishop’s spear exploded through his chest, splattering me with his blood.
The Russian werebear looked down at the spear protruding from his chest, let out a sigh that whistled through his punctured lungs, and grabbed hold of the spear’s haft. He pulled, tearing it free of the black bishop’s grip. The Russian jerked it free of his own body while whirling around to face the bishop. Then he buried the spear in the chess piece’s skull. The bishop dropped like a rock, and by the time it hit the ground, Vitaly’s wound had already healed over, leaving no trace that he’d ever been hurt.
I’ll be honest, as I climbed to my feet, I was starting to feel a little inadequate. Every other person on this team seemed to be a bad ass of the highest caliber, and here I was, the stand in. It seemed a little crazy. Sure, I’d managed to take on some tough guys in my time, but I had no doubt in my mind that if it had been him instead of me, Vitaly would have torn Pierce Ambrose in half without batting an eye while I’d had to throw the guy out of a plane to take him down.
Marvin was some sort of un-killable demi-god, and Jenna, well, I didn’t know what she was, but she was damned good. And I was just Mac Brennan, a Cursed who didn’t even know how to use his own powers. I felt like the intern who suddenly got invited out to lunch with the VP of corporate finance and on the drive over, started getting quizzed about derivatives and exchange rates. I was so out of my league it was scary, and the worst thing, the absolute worst thing, was that I didn’t even have a goddamned gun. It just wasn’t fair.
A gunshot shattered my thoughts, and as I turned toward the sound of it, I realized the drawbridge was coming down. Jenna came flying off the top of it in a wild leap. Her arms wind-milled as she crashed down on top of the white queen, smashing the piece’s skull into the ground with a wet splat.
As Jenna stepped off the queen and put a bullet into the piece’s head, I rushed toward her, intent on helping her.
“Get back!” she
called as a half-black, half-white king the size of a monster truck stepped across the drawbridge and onto the board, cracking the tile beneath its cloven hooves.
Its black and white, sunken eyes scanned the board, taking sight of each of us and finding us wanting. A cruel smile flashed across its face as it raised a glittering sword bigger than my entire body into the air and roared.
Chapter 15
As the king’s roar faded, the chess pieces surrounding us exploded, causing a gore filled shockwave to throw me from my feet. I landed hard on my shoulder and slid across the board in an avalanche of black goo.
I sucked in a breath that smelled like an ammonia-filled cat box and tasted even worse. I wiped the gunk from my eyes and tried to get up, but as I did, my feet went out from under me. I flopped hard on my chest, my chin sinking into the dark sludge. My compatriots were no better off. For all their awesomeness, every one of them lay on the board covered in gunk. It almost made me want to stick my tongue at them and make a snarky comment. I didn’t, but only because I didn’t want to risk tasting the slime again.
“I’m guessing you triggered the wrong failsafe,” Martin said, leaping to his feet like some kind of ninja-Bruce Lee hybrid. He landed lightly on the balls of his feet before sliding toward the massive twenty-five-foot-tall king chess piece like an ice skater. “Should have known better. Never send a woman to do a man’s job.”
“Saying things like that are exactly why you always wind up jerking yourself off,” Wendy squeaked from within his backpack. Instead of replying, Marvin smacked at the backpack with one hand, while keeping his eyes firmly locked on the king.
“You shall not pass!” the king rumbled in a voice that made me think he could repel a Balrog with ease.
“What if I want to pass?” Marvin asked as the king reared back. “What then?”
“Then you die!” Its huge sword swung high over its head as Marvin skated forward, seemingly oblivious to his plight.
The blade came down in a blur that sent a sonic boom rippling through the air. I covered my ears from the sound, turning away and shielding myself from the wind coming off the weapon. As the sword struck the board, splitting it with a sharp crack, it sent waves of black sludge splashing in every direction.
“Missed me,” Marvin mocked, standing beside the king’s sword. He stuck his tongue out at the chess piece before darting forward between the king’s massive legs.
Before the king could even lift its sword, Marvin lashed out with his straight razor, slicing through both the king’s Achilles tendons in a blur of silver. A roar of agony filled the air as the king collapsed like a broken telephone pole. Its sword went flying across the board as it crashed to the ground beside Marvin.
With an almost absent effort, the teenager leapt between the king’s shoulder blades, grabbed it by the flowing mane of black and white hair spilling out of its crown, and hauled its head backward. Marvin’s arms corded with the effort as the king struggled vainly to swat him.
“This is why I’m more of a checkers fan,” Marvin said, letting go of the king’s hair with one hand just long enough to slit the chess piece’s throat with his straight razor. Black blood spilled from the king’s ruined throat as Marvin calmly hopped off its back. “I guess that’s checkmate.”
He landed lightly on the ground, barely splashing any of the black blood and sauntered toward the drawbridge. The whole thing had taken less than three seconds, and something about it made me feel cold inside. Up until this point, I hadn’t really seen any of my compatriots do anything I couldn’t have done, but watching Marvin had been unreal. It was like watching a Lakers game and knowing how out of your league Kobe Bryant truly was. I mean, I was a pretty confident guy, but the farther we got, the more inadequate I’d felt. Still, I was Mac Brennan, and I didn’t feel sorry for myself. No, I was Mac Brennan, and I stepped the fuck up.
“That was pretty impressive,” Jenna said, awe filling her voice as she pulled herself to her feet and began carefully picking her way across the slick chessboard. Vitaly was on his feet too, but his attempts to cross the tile reminded me of a dog on linoleum. It made me feel a bit better about myself.
“So impressive you’ll give me a blowjob?” Marvin asked, raising an eyebrow.
“There’s so little chance of that happening, the only thing smaller is your dick,” Jenna retorted as she reached the drawbridge and slapped a gooey hand on the boy’s shoulder. “No offense.”
“Going with the whole ‘he’s Asian so he must have a small penis’ thing,” Marvin said as she wiped her hands off on his jacket, smearing gunk all over his shoulders. “Classy.”
“Well, you know me. If it’s not both racially and sexually offensive, I don’t go for it,” she replied with a shrug.
“I’m going to pass on the rather obvious reply I could make to your comment.” Marvin smirked, ignoring his goo-covered jacket, and turned to look through the drawbridge. “I’m guessing that because you returned with, tall, dead, and boring over there, the door didn’t transport you any crazy place.”
“Why, are you scared?” she asked, quirking an eyebrow at him.
They went back and forth like that for the next couple minutes, which was good because that was how long it took me to reach them. I’d tried skating like Marvin and keeping my steps careful like Jenna had done, but neither had seemed to work for me. By the time I reached them, I’d slipped so many times I had decided to just stay on my belly and slither toward them like a snake. That said, I still made it before the big Russian. I wasn’t sure why, but his plight filled me with a strange sense of satisfaction.
“Glad you could join us, Mac,” Jenna said, reaching out and grabbing my wrist before I could fall flat on my face.
“Don’t mention it,” I said, letting her help me onto the drawbridge. I don’t even know how to explain how good it felt standing on solid ground, but I was really close to dropping down and kissing the dark mahogany slats beneath my feet. Really, really close.
“But she already mentioned it,” Vitaly said, lumbering up behind me and shaking his huge head. Somewhere during his trek across the chessboard he’d reverted back to human form. Evidently, the whole three-ton bear thing hadn’t worked for crossing an oil slick. I wasn’t sure why because I doubted I’d have to take the big man on mano a mano, but I filed his lack of ability to deal with slippery floors away for later. Just in case.
“It’s a figure of speech,” Marvin said, shaking his head. “Russians.” He sighed.
“Anyway, Mac. The reason I’m happy to see you is right beyond that door. Why don’t you go have a look while I wait for you here?” Jenna said, making a face of total innocence before looking away and whistling.
“Um… okay? Why? Does it help us get to the kids?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. When she didn’t respond, I glanced at Vitaly who shrugged. Marvin did the same. Apparently, all our communication was going to be in shrugs. Well, this was going great.
“Don’t be a pussy,” Marvin said, grabbing his crotch. “Just pretend you have some balls and charge in there.”
“I’m not seeing you charging in there either,” I grumbled, making my way past them. I wasn’t sure what I was going to find when I crossed over the threshold of the drawbridge, but I really hoped it didn’t try to eat my face.
The threshold itself looked fairly normal, and as far as I could tell, the other side was just more of the same black-and-white tile that made up the chessboard. Still, I’d stepped through more than enough doors tonight to know appearances could be deceiving.
For all I knew, this particular door would lead me to the top of Mt. Everest. Part of me sort of hoped it did because I really wanted to climb the mountain. I mean, I never would because I didn’t want to risk dying in a blizzard while other hikers marched by ignoring my screams, but hey, I had dreams.
“I wasn’t the one volunteered. Besides, I did just take out a twenty-foot-tall giant with my shaving kit,” Marvin replied, pointing at the downed king with his
straight razor. “What have you done exactly?”
“Aside from your mom? Shaved,” I said, poking my head through the doorway. “We both know you couldn’t grow a beard if your life depended on it, so why don’t you stop overcompensating with that thing.” As the words left my mouth, I found myself looking out at a room made of purple fire. The walls were fire. The ceiling was fire. And the floor? Don’t get me started on the floor. It was made of boiling purple lava.
Just beyond the doorway was a platform covered in black-and-white tile. I was pretty sure that’s where the king had stood, but now that the chess piece was dead, it was vacant. Well, that was good. At least I wouldn’t be stepping straight into lava. Still, I was glad I’d looked before I’d leapt.
I pulled my head back out of the fire world and sighed. “Unless you have some lava-resistant wading pants, I’m not sure what you expect me to do in there.” I pointed at the doorway. “It’s nothing but fire.”
“Correction,” Wendy said from within the backpack, but her voice was so muffled I couldn’t make out the rest of what she said.
Marvin grumbled and unslung the backpack. He unzipped it and pulled her out. “Would you repeat yourself, dear sister? I don’t think anyone heard you.”
“Well, if you wouldn’t zip me inside, people would hear me.” The tiny doll glared at him.
“And if frogs had wings, they wouldn’t bump their asses when they hopped,” Marvin replied solemnly.
“Anyway,” Wendy said, ignoring her brother. “There should be a lever inside there somewhere. All you have to do is find it, pull it, and the fire will vanish.” She nodded. “Easy as pie.”
“How do you expect me to find a lever in a room filled with fire?” I asked, staring at her incredulously. I wasn’t sure if she was kidding or not. She didn’t seem like she was kidding, but at the same time, it was a room full of lava. Did she actually expect me to venture inside and not die?
“It’s not fire. It’s Hellfire. Totally different,” Wendy replied, glancing up toward the ceiling of the chess room. For a moment, it looked like she might be about to detail the differences, but before she could, Marvin spun her around and glared at her.
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