Utter darkness lay on the other side. She summoned a glowing ball of light and set it floating above her, illuminating a pile of tumbled boulders leading down to a natural underground tunnel. The eerie sound of wind moving through narrow passages brought to mind the wailing of doomed souls being consumed by the Wild Hunt.
A shallow pit lay on the uphill side of the tunnel. The air coming from that direction held the faint scent of the distant surface. Mab led Leyak in the other direction, deeper into the underground cavern. When she reached the edge of a second, much deeper pit, she clamped down on her control of the foolish imp’s mind to keep him quiet.
The short sword he wore at his belt was not her preferred weapon, but in the absence of her beloved saber, it sufficed to hack off the idiot’s head. Once it was free of his body, she wasted no time splitting his skull in two.
Demons were functionally immortal, but Mab only needed him insensible and helpless for a few hours. She threw one half of the head in the deep pit. Then she hacked out his heart and stuffed it, still beating, inside her tunic to carry. She hauled the other half of his skull back to the shallow pit and tossed it in, confident that it would take him a while to magically recall all of his various pieces across that much distance.
After wiping his blade clean on her buckskin breeches, she tucked both the sword and the dagger he had used for the bonding ceremony through her belt. Casting a travel portal into existence, she stepped through the flaming oval to freedom.
She’d expected to find herself in the arid, nameless wilderness that surrounded the cavern containing Hell’s hidden gate. Instead, she stepped into bright sunshine illuminating a garish, human-made structure. “Moaning Cavern Adventure Park,” proclaimed a sign in Earthen English. “Twin Zip 1500 Feet Open Daily.”
The writing was cryptic, and the surroundings strange, but it was clear enough that humans had encroached into the area and set up habitation here. Several of the creatures were wandering around, and a few turned sharply to look at her after her sudden appearance. She sent out a wave of subtle power. The humans’ eyes went dazed and uninterested as they returned to whatever they’d been doing before her abrupt arrival.
Truly, this was a blessing straight from Mother Dhuinne. She’d assumed she would need to find the nearest native settlement on the banks of the nearby river—but there were humans right here, ripe for the taking.
What she had planned was distasteful in the extreme. It would also result in her death—not immediately, but soon. Still, her sacrifice would be worthwhile if it made possible the ultimate destruction of the Fae’s ancient enemies. She mounted the wooden steps leading up to the structure and entered it. The inside was an explosion of useless items—rocks and ugly clothing, books, boxes, and trinkets of all description. A young human female with dark hair and brown eyes stood behind a counter piled with more meaningless detritus.
The human’s eyebrows went up. “Whoa,” it said, in bastardized English. “That’s some nice cosplay! Hey... wait. Are you all right? Is that... blood?”
Mab let her power unfold once more. The human’s will bent to hers with only a fraction of the effort it had taken to overpower her demon guard.
“Take me somewhere private, where we will not be disturbed,” she commanded.
The human’s expression went abruptly blank. It stepped from behind the counter, and Mab followed it to a room near the back of the structure. The place stank like a latrine, the scent of human waste overpowered by an appalling chemical stench that made her nose burn. The creature closed the door behind them and engaged a metal locking mechanism with a click. Unnatural lights flickered into life above their heads, the sickly glow contained within long glass tubes.
Mab’s lips curled with distaste, but she set aside the unpleasantness of her surroundings in favor of focusing on the next stage of her plan.
“Look at me, creature,” she commanded, placing one hand over the human’s heart and splaying the other over its forehead—much as she had done to Leyak. “I have need of you.”
A flare of primal fear ignited behind the human’s eyes for the barest of instants before Mab reached in and took control.
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