by Karen Chance
“You take him!” he told her shrilly, as Rosier sprang off the wall.
He landed on his feet, like the cat he had always vaguely resembled, and he was in a cat-like crouch, too. Making it impossible for Casanova to return the favor. So he kicked him in the side of his perfectly coifed blond head instead, sending him sprawling. And then the girl surprised him by copying his action, only aiming for the villain’s side, obviously trying to shove him through the narrow gap between the platform and the wall.
And all right, she occasionally did have a good idea, Casanova thought, moving to help. Only to have Rian grab him in a metaphysical clinch, freezing his legs halfway through a step. We’re going to have to talk, he thought grimly, as he toppled to the floor right by her master.
Who promptly poked him in the eye.
The demon cackled, Casanova cursed, and Cassie grabbed him by the arm, trying to haul him back up. But only succeeded in ripping the sleeve off a very expensive shirt. “She’s the gift that keeps on giving, isn’t she?” Rosier asked, and punched him in the throat.
“What is your problem?” Cassie demanded, glaring at him.
Casanova glared back out of his one good eye, tempted to tell her exactly what his problem was, assuming he could still talk. But then the infernal device they were on came to a very abrupt halt. The three of them with bodies went tumbling off the platform and into the middle of a rough stone floor.
It was warm for some reason, and was giving off a strange sort of ghost light that sent grotesque shadows jumping along the walls. But Casanova barely noticed. He also wasn’t paying any attention to the girl’s shrieks or the demon’s curses. He was too busy staring at the half-eaten face that was all of an inch from the end of his nose.
It didn’t move, which was the only thing that kept him from gibbering. But he was close, thanks to the greenish color of the rotting flesh. Not to mention the missing eye, the caved in nose and the cracked skull that had oozed something he deliberately didn’t look at all down the still mostly intact side of the face . . .
“What is that smell?” Cassie asked, grabbing him. She sounded a little freaked.
Join the club he thought, noting that the corpse hadn’t died alone. Half rotten bodies littered the floor of the not-insubstantially-sized room. More lay slumped against the walls or piled in heaps, like so many empty bottles, tossed aside after the yummy contents were consumed . . .
“Casanova,” she said urgently. She apparently couldn’t see too well, even with the faint light. And didn’t he just envy her that right now?
That was especially true after he caught sight of a couple of bodies sitting against the nearest wall. Some of the corpses were old enough to be truly putrescent, but these were newly dead, their blank, staring eyes shining in the dim light, the shadows painting little half smiles on their faces. Like they were welcoming him to the party—
“Did you hear me?” Cassie demanded, shaking him. And something in Casanova finally snapped.
“Shut up!” he screamed, rounding on her. “Shut up, shut up, shut up! Or I swear I’ll save Rosier the trouble and kill you my—”
“Be silent!” someone hissed, and a hand clasped over his mouth, causing his eyes to bulge in sheer unadulterated fury. Until he realized that it was far too large to be Cassie’s. But before he could throw it, and the demon it was attached to, against the nearest wall, he heard something that would have stopped his heart in his chest had it been beating.
“What was that?” Rian whispered, sounding a lot more nervous than a demon had any right to.
Casanova didn’t answer. His vocal cords didn’t seem to work all of a sudden, but it didn’t matter. He doubted that she wanted to know that the faint shushing sound was the drag of scales over an uneven floor. A lot of scales.
Dinner is served, he thought blankly, as something huge blocked out the faint light from the corridor.
“Well, fuck,” Rosier said.
Chapter Eight
J ohn smacked the floor like a sack of sand. That went well, he thought, as a pair of dusty boots stopped by his head.
“You’re braver than your father,” Sid said, kicking him over. “I’ll give you that.”
How kind, John didn’t say, not being quite up to sarcasm at the moment. He settled for palming his knife out of Sid’s waistband when the demon bent over to pick him up.
“But not as bright.” Sid looked at him in amazement as John went scuttling backwards, all feet and elbows, like a particularly inept crab. “What do you think you’re going to do with that little thing?” he demanded. “You can’t kill me with it, and even if you manage to get your arms free, what then? Do you really think that will improve your odds?”
Can’t hurt, John thought hysterically, and rolled to his feet, which is harder than it sounds when you’re basically a sausage with legs.
“What’s the plan, John?” Sid demanded. “You’re underground, lost in a maze, which—believe me—you are not going to find your way through. You can’t use magic, your human weapons are gone, and in the last two minutes, I’ve had no fewer than four opportunities to kill you.”
Five, John thought irrelevantly, but he guessed Sid had missed one. It was the only thing he’d missed. For someone who swore he wasn’t a warrior, Sid was doing okay.
“Why make this harder than it has to be?” Sid asked. “I’ll knock you out; you won’t feel a thing—”
“But you will,” John snarled. “After I bring this place down on your head!”
It was pretty much the only card he had to play. Thanks to the no-magic clause, his options had been narrowed to two: get out—which meant getting past the brimstone so he could transition back to earth—or make sure that neither of them did. The former was looking less and less likely all the time, and the latter . . .
A lot of people believed that John had a death wish. Even some of those closest to him acted like they suspected it, despite denying it when anyone else brought it up. But it wasn’t true. There had been times when he could honestly say that he hadn’t cared much, either way, but it wasn’t in him not to go down fighting, not to struggle for every last breath, not to take as many of his enemies as he could along for the ride.
But suicidal or not, his line of work ensured that he’d faced death any number of times. And he thought he’d at least come to terms with it. Damn it, he had come to terms with it. He knew the feeling like an old friend—the hard ache of despair, the iron strength of resolution, the cold calm of acceptance.
Only he wasn’t feeling so much that way right now. Which was a problem, since the acceptance of death was one of the few things that had so far helped him to avoid it. Get a grip, he told himself savagely, as Sid slowed to a halt.
But despite his lack of forward momentum, the little demon didn’t look impressed. “And then what?” he asked. “If you collapse the corridor with some spell, what happens?”
“We die!” John spat, sawing frantically at the acre of rope the bastard had cocooned him in.
“No, you die,” Sid said blandly. “I am . . . inconvenienced . . . for a time, while forming another body. Which I have more than enough power to do. You’ll delay this, nothing more.”
“But I don’t get another body,” John reminded him sweetly. “This is it. And without me—”
“What?” Sid looked at him impatiently. “John, I didn’t even know you were coming until you walked into my shop! We were planning this for Rosier, all along. You were a happy coincidence, yes, but if you die, we’ll merely go back to the original plan.”
“Assuming the council doesn’t find out about it in the meantime—”
“They haven’t so far, and we’ve been planning this for months.”
“—and assuming your partner survives the explosion. If brimstone really is laced throughout these rocks, setting it off here might bring down the whole mountain!”
He’d expected that to hit home, since Sid’s plan pretty much required keeping his battle queen alive un
til she returned to her former strength. But ether the little demon had a damn good poker face, or John had missed something. Because there was no flutter of those short eyelashes, no slight flush to those plump cheeks. Just a slight moue of irritation.
“She’s two-natured,” Sid reminded him, “or have you forgotten?”
“No. I also haven’t forgotten that she’s weak. She was almost starved, you said so yourself. And I doubt the council was kind enough to feed her before they threw her back in prison!”
“She doesn’t need her full strength to best you,” Sid said dryly.
“But I’m not the scariest thing out there, am I?”
It was what John had been betting on when he’d formulated his plan, in case she got past him. Of course, in that happy scenario, he’d also had a cadre of the council’s elite guards to back him up. But even without them, the Shadowland wasn’t the place to be an unhoused spirit—not unless you were a great deal more formidable than Ealdris was at present.
But Sid brushed that argument away like the others. “You aren’t scary at all,” he said frankly. “And this has gone on long enough.”
John backed up again as the demon resumed advancing, wondering if he could risk a glance behind him. All he needed was a distraction and an open corridor. He might not be able to outfight Sid under the circumstances, but bare feet or no, he was willing to bet that he could still outrun him. And he didn’t need to make it all the way back to the surface; he just needed—
To not fall on his ass. A piece of the damn uneven floor tripped him up, sending him staggering backwards—into a solid wall of rock. He felt around frantically with his foot, but there was no opening.
Dead end, his oh-so-helpful brain quipped.
He was going to have the damn thing examined if he ever got out of this.
“There’s nowhere to go, John,” Sid said, echoing his own thoughts. “Now, why don’t you give me the knife—”
“My pleasure,” he hissed, and threw it with the arm he’d finally worked free of the damn rope.
He saw it connect with the flabby fold of Sid’s neck, saw blood spew in a pinkish mist—and then nothing. The knife had barely left his hand when something that looked like black smoke boiled out of Sid’s pores, his eyes, even his mouth, as if he’d caught fire on the inside. In an eye blink, it had enveloped the two of them in a color so thick, so dense, it almost had substance.
Almost nothing, John thought, as something latched onto him, like a thousand tiny barbs sinking into his skin. His shields should have stopped it, but he hadn’t been able to use them here. And without them, there was nothing to prevent the horrible sensation of something other slithering in through his skin, sinking inside him through a million tiny invasions, draining him dry. He sank to his knees, a scream unable to get out past the suffocating mist pouring down his throat.
And he finally realized why Sid hadn’t seemed too concerned about his partner.
* * *
Casanova had never been much for sports. It had mostly been viewed as training for war when he was young, and even before he met up with the incubus who had once possessed his namesake, he’d always thought of himself as more of a lover than a fighter. But he would have been willing to bet that he broke Olympic speed records getting back to the elevator.
Which meant that he hit it about the same time as the cowardly bastard of a demon lord.
Rosier slammed the heel of his shoe back into Casanova’s face while simultaneously leaning on the lever to raise the elevator. Which went up all of two inches, because Casanova was holding it down with the hand that wasn’t cradling his broken nose. “Going thomewhere?” he asked viciously.
“Bite me!”
“My pleathure!” Casanova snarled, and jerked him off the platform.
Unfortunately, he didn’t also remember to hold down the elevator, which shot up like a rocket, leaving the two of them looking at it in horror. And then at the wall, for a recall lever that wasn’t there. And then simultaneously diving for the only exit that wasn’t currently being blocked by a monster.
Rosier reached it first, only to slam into the floor when Casanova tackled him. “Let me go, you fool!” he grunted. “You can’t outrun her!”
“And you can?”
“I don’t have to outrun her,” Rosier hissed. “I only have to outrun you!” Which was when he flipped over, got a foot in Casanova’s stomach and used it as a lever to throw him over his head.
Straight at the monster.
“Bastardo!” Casanova breathed, even as he grabbed onto Rosier’s leg halfway through the arc, skewing it and sending them rolling and sliding and kicking and biting almost back where they’d started.
And where the blonde whose existence he’d briefly forgotten was still standing, staring death in the face.
Shit. She couldn’t see worth a damn down here, Casanova reminded himself. He was trying to work out how to grab her, lose the villain currently trying to eviscerate him, and make it back to the damn door, all in the second or so he probably had left, when the daft girl suddenly reached out a hand.
And gave death a little push.
Which surprised Casanova almost as much as when death quivered and wobbled and toppled over onto its side.
He froze in shock, allowing Rosier the chance to take a vicious shot to his ribs. Casanova didn’t retaliate, being too busy watching Cassie squat beside an acre or so of gleaming lavender scales. And do it again.
“Thop poking that thing!” he told her wildly.
She looked up, and apparently her eyes had adjusted somewhat, after all, because she found his easily. “Why?”
“Why?”
“I think it’s dead.” She stood up and nudged the horror on the floor with one small shoe.
“What are you—oh,” Rosier said, his head poking out from underneath Casanova’s arm. “Well, look at that.”
Casanova slammed his face into the ground, just because.
Rosier looked up, nose bloodied and teeth bared in a rictus, but his eyes were fixed on the thing on the floor. And Casanova had to admit, it was rather hard to look anywhere else. It had a Medusa-like head, human and reptilian all mixed up in an extremely unfortunate way, only the things poking out of it weren’t snakes. Not that tentacles were a great improvement, particularly not when the body ended not in legs, but in a long spiny tail.
And there’s another fetish ruined, he thought wildly. He’d always found mermaids faintly erotic, or at least the idea of them, since they didn’t actually exist. At least not as far as he knew, and if they did, he wasn’t keen to meet any after today. Because it turned out that a scale-covered tail actually looked pretty damn obscene sprouting out of a naked human torso.
“What did it die of?” he asked hoarsely, before he managed to finish horrifying himself.
“Nothing,” Rosier, said. “And get off me. Unless you’re planning to make me an offer.”
Casanova practically wrenched something getting back to his feet.
“What do you mean, nothing?” Cassie asked, before he could find something vile enough to say to the creature. “She isn’t dead?”
“See for yourself.”
And to Casanova’s utter disbelief, she did, squatting beside the body to feel for a pulse at the pale gray skin of the neck. The scaly, scaly neck, right next to where some of those tentacles were slightly moving, like seaweed in a current. Or unnaturally long fingers reaching out to—
“There’s a pulse,” Cassie said, frowning. “But it’s faint. And she’s cold. And barely breathing. Of course, I don’t know if that’s normal or—”
“It is,” Rosier had gotten to his feet and moved over to the thing’s other side, where he crouched opposite the girl. “For stasis.”
“Stasis?”
He looked heavenward, why Casanova didn’t know. It wasn’t like he was on speaking terms with anyone up there. “Demon bodies aren’t like human ones,” he told her. “Ours don’t require a soul in situ to contin
ue functioning, albeit on a low level. Some of us can shrug off our bodies like a set of clothes, and return to pure spirit form for a time.”
Cassie blinked. “That’s . . . really weird.”
“Unlike being trapped in one body, one world, one plane of existence, unable to see or experience anything except the trickle of information supplied to you by your so-called senses?” He barked out a laugh. “‘Weird.’ As with most words you humans use, you don’t know the meaning of the term.”
Casanova didn’t comment, but he swallowed thickly. He had absolutely no problem believing that, after today.
Rosier glanced at him, amused, and then back at Cassie. “You know, if you’re going to hunt demons, girl, you should perhaps take a moment to find out something about us.”
“I wasn’t hunting her!” Cassie said, scowling. “I wasn’t even hunting you. I wasn’t doing anything—”
“Except risking my son’s life—again. I don’t know why you don’t simply put a knife in his ribs and be done with it.” The last was said with a tone that had the girl practically apoplectic.
“Like you care! Like you’ve ever cared! You sent him here to die!”
“I sent him here to get him out of the way. He wasn’t supposed to find anything this quickly—”
“But he has! And if her body’s here, her spirit probably is, too. And if she’s like most demons, that’s just as—”
“She isn’t,” he said grimly. “She’s worse.”
Cassie sneered at him, and it was a pretty good effort, Casanova thought. She clearly didn’t lack courage. Intelligence, prudence and a healthy sense of self-preservation, yes; courage no.
“What’s the matter?” she demanded. “Afraid somebody else will kill him before you get the chance?”
Rosier’s eyes narrowed. “Coming from the person who has done more to put him in an early grave than anyone in centuries—”
“I’ve been trying to save him!”