by Sam Cheever
Dialle shrugged and Astra smacked him on the chest. She must have put some power behind the assault because he grimaced, rubbing the spot. “My love, why must you always resort to violence?”
Astra snorted. “Asks the royal devil whose race kills everything that gets in its way.”
He grinned. “To use Astra Q Phelps vernacular...busted.”
I stamped a foot as rage flared. “Focus you two! This is important.”
“What is your plan, my heart?” Torre asked.
I gritted my teeth against the endearment. If things went as planned, he’d have earned the right to call me anything he wanted. “I...” I started to pace again, unsure how to tell them the news. Only Torre was likely to take it well.
“Frunk me to hades on a demon rug,” Astra exploded. “Just tell us. Morta will be back soon.”
“I want Torre to mark me again.”
The cavern fell into deep, emotionally-charged silence. I could almost hear my companions’ thoughts swirling at my idea.
“Have you lost your frunkin’ mind?” my sister asked quietly.
Dialle’s mouth hung open. When I looked at him to gauge his reaction he slammed it shut, shaking his dark head. “Well, I certainly didn’t see that one coming,” he finally said.
After a long moment I forced myself to look at Torre and was shocked to see him frowning.
“Torre?”
He fixed a sad look on me, his dark eyes swirling with passion. “If I believed you wanted the mark...truly wanted it...I’d do it, Darma. I’d do it immediately. But this is only to save him.” His lips twisted with disgust. “I will not tie us both to a loveless binding for him.”
I bit back anger, realizing he was right to feel that way. I’d probably feel the same way in his position. “No. You’re wrong.” I walked over to him and grasped his hand, pulling it to my lips. Closing my eyes, I pressed a lingering kiss to the back of it. He stiffened slightly and then his muscles softened. A barely audible sigh passed his lips.
“I loved you with all my heart,” I whispered. “But you broke me when you left. I didn’t think I’d ever say this to you again but, despite my anger, I know we could be happy again.”
He held my gaze, passionate purple swirled in his black eyes, mixed with the occasional flash of red that told me he still was still nursing some anger. “I wish I could believe you.”
“It’s true. I do want to save Slayer. But it isn’t what you think. It’s not because I’m...” I swallowed hard. “I’m not in love with him,” I said more forcefully. “But he’s my friend and I can’t let him die for me. It’s not right.”
Torre pulled me into his arms, his breath warm and soft against my neck as I folded into him like I used to do. It felt so right and oh so wrong at the same time. It had been too long since we’d been together in love, our futures unfolding before us. There was so much anger and hurt between us. “I’m doing this for the right reasons, Torre. Even if it’s the wrong time.”
“The wrong time?” Astra screeched behind me.
Apparently screeching was in our DNA.
“Have you forgotten that the failure of the first mark is what got you in this mess in the first place?”
“That won’t happen again.”
We all looked at Dialle. It was my turn to have a drooping mouth. I couldn’t believe that he of all people was supporting my plan.
He touched Astra’s chin with a long, elegant finger. “Torre is much stronger now and your sister has better control over her magics. I believe they could make it work.”
Astra still didn’t look happy. “But what good would it even do?”
“Morta is cocky,” I told Astra. “She doesn’t believe anyone can stop her.”
“That’s probably because she is right,” Torre said grimly. “Her power has been forged over many millennia, my heart. By contrast, yours...ours...” He hesitated, his eyes filling with uncertainty. “We can’t hope to best her.”
“Not alone, no. But together, all four of us.” I was warming to the idea. “I think we could do it.”
The air shifted against me, cool and filled with urgent energy. Astra frowned, looking around with a perplexed expression. I rubbed my arms. “You feel them too?”
Astra nodded. “I’ve felt them before, in King Nerul’s court.” She frowned. “But those were lost souls. Morta consumes the souls of her victims. These shouldn’t still be hanging around.”
I shook my head. “Whatever they are, they want something from me and I don’t know what.” My sister’s expression suddenly cleared. Her green gaze widened and she grinned. I knew that look. “You’ve thought of something?”
The door from the hallway slammed open and two ghouls floated through.
Astra grabbed my hand. “I have an idea. Hopefully it will be enough.”
When the guards saw Astra and the two men, they skimmed to a stop, reaching over their shoulders and grabbing the scythes from their sheaths in a bony grip. In a blink they were too close, the deadly blades of their scythes slicing the air where Astra’s head had been.
My sister ducked the first cut and rolled, hitting the ghoul’s legs with an energy-infused force and sending the nasty creature into the air. Dialle’s hand shot out and a weak thread of energy flashed toward the airborne ghoul. It hit him in the hand, just strong enough to shatter the fleshless appendage into pieces. The guard’s scythe went flying.
Torre reached up and snatched it from the air, and, without hesitation, sliced it across the guard’s middle. The ghoul disappeared in a burst of light, showering us with bone dust. I grimaced. The distraction was nearly my undoing. I didn’t see the second guard flash toward me until it was almost too late. With a thought, I grabbed for the energy roiling all around me and embraced it, entering a shift-hop as the ghoul’s nasty fingers closed over the spot where I’d been.
I reappeared as Torre attacked the last ghoul with the scythe he’d appropriated and the ghoul responded with a deadly thrust of his own weapon. Torre easily danced away from the attack and parried with a hit to the ghoul’s torso with the dull side of the blade. Though he stumbled, the guard didn’t go down.
Dialle tried another shot of magic but only a few, harmless sparks emerged. Frowning, he grabbed for his sword, attacking the guard from his weak side as Torre took him on with the scythe.
Dialle was in a dangerous spot. If the ghoul turned too quickly, his reach with the scythe was far greater than Dialle’s with the much shorter blade. I knew I needed to do something. I tugged tentatively at the core of my power and was amazed to find it responsive. So I yanked it forward before Morta’s warding could drain me again and flung it at the ghoul, screaming at the two royals to get out of the way.
His eyes going wide, Torre dived to the side as the energy left me in a wide, unfocused burst. Dialle barely managed to leap out of the way in time.
The energy hit the ghoul in a wash of sparkling yellow light that was powerful enough to blast him into pieces. Unfortunately, when the energy sizzled away, the thing was still standing. I panicked, digging for more magic, but the well of energy seemed to be dry.
Still, the creature didn’t move. Its long fingers opened and the scythe clattered to the ground. Its form rippled under the residual fog of my energy and, slowly, the ghoul lifted its bony face to me. The empty black gaze locked onto mine. Amazement wafted off the ugly creature in discernible waves, its black aura turning red and then yellow on the edges. Like a piece of paper catching fire, the edges of the ghoul’s aura curled up and contracted, disintegrating his form from the bottom up and depositing the remains into a small pile of gray ash on the floor beneath him. As the disintegration started climbing his ugly face, the creature’s mouth opened in soundless despair, and then he was suddenly gone.
“What in Hades was that?” Torre asked, brushing himself off as he stood and rejoined me.
“I don’t know. The energy was there so I just grabbed it.”
Dialle walked over, his handsom
e face worried. “I had nothing. The magic’s locked up somehow.”
I nodded. “Morta’s warded the castle. I’m surprised you managed any magic at all.”
“It’s probably because of his mark with Astra.”
Torre’s remark hit us all like a splash of icy water. I glanced around. “Where is Astra?”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Suicide by Necromancer
He’s a very stubborn man,
Whose determination will be the death of both of us.
“If that monster harms her...” Dialle said, his jaw tight.
I lifted a hand. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First of all, Astra is fully capable of taking care of herself. Secondly, Morta can’t hurt Astra because she already has the payment for my healing.”
Dialle lifted a hand and looked at it. Energy spat weakly from his fingertips and died. “Damn that bitch to Hell!”
“We should have brought Astis,” I murmured. “She might have been able to do something about this warding.”
“Where did Morta take Slayer?” Torre asked. “Maybe that’s where Astra is.”
I shook my head. “I have no idea. But she plans to perform the healing here. So I assume, wherever he is, the necromancer will bring him back.”
“That doesn’t help us find Astra,” Dialle said tightly. Grabbing a scythe from the floor, he started toward the door the guards had entered.
Torre grabbed the second scythe and went after him.
Shrugging, I started to follow.
The world around me shimmered and shifted, nearly throwing me to the ground. I heard Torre calling to me from what sounded like a great distance away. My thoughts were scattered, my mind woozy, and I was no longer in the damp, icy cavern.
But I had no idea where I was.
I blinked several times, trying to clear the haze from my vision and then realized the haze wasn’t going anywhere. It saturated the environment around me, shimmering with energy that snapped on the air and sizzled against me.
A hand flashed past, the fingers curved and dark on the tips with blood. A headless torso floated by, seemingly unaware of me. Then a face, the eyes wet with unshed tears.
As I fought to make sense of the ghoulish miasma, I became aware of a soft droning noise which appeared to be part of the haze.
The sound rolled past me in waves, occasionally growing louder and then falling into an indiscernible rumble that made my teeth ache.
The disembodied voices...because that’s what I finally realized they were...pulled at me, urging me forward.
I took a tentative step and found the ground beneath my feet spongy, uneven. I tried to think what it felt like but it wouldn’t come. The voices became more agitated. I took another step and then another one.
...arma...
I stopped, straining to hear. Had someone called my name?
A child slipped past, her long, blonde hair matted with blood. She threw me a sad look and opened her tiny mouth, letters tumbling out of it like word salad, floating away on the opaque air. I couldn’t read the words. They appeared to be in another language.
She pointed toward the distance and then floated away.
I started walking again, tension threading through my lungs, making it harder to breathe with every step. Something was wrong. I needed to be somewhere. But I couldn’t remember where or why...or who needed me.
...arm...
I blinked. I knew that voice. Frantic with the need to find her, I opened my mouth and screamed her name. It tumbled away from me like chunks of ash from a blazing fire. I started to run, shoving disembodied forms away from me as I plunged, headlong toward my goal.
The ground dropped away and I fell, rolling for what felt like an impossibly long time. I started to worry that I would never stop falling. Frantically I tried to scrabble for purchase. But the spongy ground wouldn’t let me take hold of it. Every time my fingers grabbed onto the uneven surface, it shifted away from me.
In desperation, I screamed her name. “Astra!”
I slammed to a halt, hitting a hard, cold surface that smelled like death. Someone grabbed my shoulder, shaking me. “Darma!”
I shook my head. “I can’t find you in the haze.”
The hands shook me again. “Darma, wake the hell up!”
My eyes popped open and I was looking into my sister’s worried face.
“Thank the Big Him. Finally! Here, let me help you up. We need to move.”
I blinked. The haze was gone. “Where are they?”
Astra got behind me and slid her hands under my arms, yanking me upright. My head spun and I had to grab hold of her for a moment as nausea flared. “Damn...” I swallowed hard. “What just happened?”
Astra held onto my arm as I tried to regain my balance. “I have no idea. But whatever it was, the experience is definitely going into my shitty day book.”
I opened my eyes and squinted at her. Astra’s clothes were torn and her face was covered in filth. Her auburn curls stood almost straight up from her head in spots. She looked like she’d gone several rounds with a super-demon. “Were those...?”
“Nightwhiffs? I think they were. And I didn’t get the feeling they were trying to kill us.” She grinned, her perfect teeth white behind the dirt smeared across her cheeks. “Check this out.” She lifted her hand and shot a power arrow that disintegrated a massive chunk of ice-painted rock across the passageway. I ducked as pieces of ice and rock flew around us. “How?”
She shook her head. “Didn’t you feel it? The magic?”
I thought back to the weird journey, remembering the bursts of energy sizzling against my skin. “Flashes of it. I thought it came from the Nightwhiffs.”
“It did, but it wasn’t random power, Darma. They sense the necromancer magic inside us.”
I frowned. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
She sighed, clearly frustrated. “Don’t you remember? Aunt Deirdre could funnel energy from the dead. She taught me a little of it but to tell you the truth, I forgot about the ability until I ended up in Nerul’s godforsaken cave with the carpet made of human souls.”
My eyes went wide as I remembered. She’d torn a very powerful royal devil to pieces using that energy. “Aunt Deirdre...”
Astra put her hands on her hips and glared at me. “Snap out of it! We have work to do.”
Anger finally worked its way through the fog in my brain. “I am snapped! I was just trying to remember. I vaguely remember her trying to tell me something about that before father told her she couldn’t teach us anymore.”
Astra nodded. “You didn’t want to learn it anyway, but I did. So she continued to teach me. A little anyway. Then I forgot about it when she died.” Shoving a handful of messy auburn hair off her face, Astra fixed me with a determined gaze. “We’re going to use the energy the shadows gave us to save Slayer.”
I liked the sound of that, but there was no “we” in that plan. She was the one with the newly discovered magic. Not me. “You want me to hold your hair while you blast Morta?”
She curled her lip. “Don’t be stupid, Darma. Can’t you feel the power? It’s sizzling through you right now. I can see it in your aura. You’re lit up like a Christmas tree on the North Pole.”
I lifted my hand and looked at it, reaching for the core of my magic and giving it a gentle tug. Power shot out of my hand and slammed into the wall behind me, sheering off a chunk of my hair and burning the curve of my ear as it went.
“Shit!” Astra dove for the floor and I fell on my butt, hair smoking. “Good God in Heaven.”
Astra climbed to her feet. “Believe me now?”
Grimacing, I ran a fingertip over my damaged ear. I would have liked to heal it but wasn’t sure I could control my newfound energy. I might shear off the whole side of my head in the process. “This...death energy we’ve been gifted might actually have a shot at taking Morta down.”
My sister offered me her hand. “If you can stay on your feet
long enough to kick her ass.”
I let her pull me off the floor again. “She won’t be expecting it. She thinks we can’t access our power.”
Astra frowned. “Don’t count too much on her being completely surprised. She’s going to recognize the electronic signature of our new energy. Those are her Nightwhiffs.”
“Okay. You’re right. But maybe we can mask it.”
“The aura hiding technique we’ve been working on?” She nodded. “That might work. Come on, we need to get going. Those spirits told me where she was holding Slayer and how long we have until the healing. It’s not long. And I have no idea how long I’ve been screwing around with you.” She took off running.
I lunged forward, falling into a run beside her. “I just have one question.”
She threw me a quick glance. “What?”
“Please tell me my hair isn’t sticking straight up in clumps like yours.”
She twisted her lips, her jaw tightening. Finally she glanced my way. “Well, it would be. If you hadn’t seared about five inches off the ends back there.”
I yelped, my hand flying to the crunchy tips of my hair, and Astra accelerated, her laughter bouncing softly back to me as she ran.
~SC~
The prisons were several floors below Morta’s throne cavern. Where the upper levels had been damp and cold...grave-like...the level where Slayer was being held was bone chilling. Ice glazed the rough-cut walls and hung in icicles from the iron bars of the cells. The stone that formed the floor of the prison level was so cold it burned the soles of our feet right through our boots. I couldn’t imagine how miserable Slayer had to be. He’d been down there much longer than we had. “There!” I told Astra. “The last cell. Where the guards are focusing all their attention.”
Astra nodded. “We’ll get as close as we can. Then I’ll create some kind of diversion and you shift into the cell and grab him. Take him to the cavern where Dialle and Torre are. I’ll meet you there.”
I shook my head. “They aren’t in the cavern anymore. We were coming to find you when the Nightwhiffs grabbed me.”
Astra skimmed along the glossy wall, the shadows wrapping around her like a cloak. “Go there anyway. I’ll try to communicate with Dialle and tell him that’s where we’re going to make our stand.”