by Eve Langlais
The later two she didn’t mind. Nothing wrong with a bloody death if it fed a need. However, this was her world, not Hell’s, and she was damned if she would stand aside to let it take over.
From the crack oozed an ochre mist, the tendrils moving without a breeze. She didn’t need Ella’s power to guess what the vermillion fog meant. Swirling demonic spirits looking for hosts. Bad news, but not what truly drew her attention.
Sitting cross-legged on the ground before that giant crack? The missing Ella. And she didn’t look happy at all.
Nineteen
“Trussed up like a turkey about to get roasted.”
“Free yourself. Or don’t. Hehehehe.”
The voices offered all kinds of advice as Ella sat on the ground, legs folded lotus style, her hands tied behind her back. As if mere rope could hold her. But she let her captors think her subdued. Played the meek and subservient prisoner. She’d do anything they wanted until she set eyes on Zane.
Because she was here to save him—even if he’d grumble that he was supposed to save her. Thing was he didn’t seem to understand that his love saved her every day. It kept her from going too far. From letting the ghosts take control permanently.
Without him, I would be lost.
“Not lost. We’d be there for you.”
Exactly what she didn’t want, which was why she had to get him back. Oh, and save the world, according to the new ghosts hovering all around chattering at her. By now, she should clarify that she meant just met because, when it came to age, these were the oldest spirits she’d ever encountered. And boy did they have lots to say once they realized what Ella was.
“You mustn’t wait until the blood moon. That is when the rift is strongest. It will be harder to seal shut.”
“Be sure to use every spirit you can find.”
“Even the living.”
The last piece of advice caused her to cast her glance at the people who’d brought her here. They lined the walls of the cavern, slack-jawed and red-eyed. Definitely in need of a priest and some holy water. Given the creepy vibe they exuded, she kept expecting them to suddenly crack a few new joints and spider climb the wall to dangle on the ceiling.
For the moment, they didn’t move or speak. Did nothing but stare and drool, which might be a good thing given there were more of them than expected. Ella and the gang had assumed the demons sent all their guys out looking for them. Wrong. Apparently, hunting Ella and friends down was only part of their plan. The other part involved the piles of merchandise scattered before the temple.
The giant cavern was filled with stuff. Magical stuff. Gorgeous glass bottles, the jeweled exteriors wound with intricate workings of gold and silver. Given the bulbous stoppers on them, and the fact they occasionally rattled despite no one touching them, she’d wager they housed the captured djinn. They weren’t the only things collected. Vases and armor, jewelry and wands. There was a mishmash of items stacked in piles, with one thing in common.
Power.
Lots of power.
The kind needed—along with the blood moon only hours from rising—to crack open a door and invite in the legions of darkness.
A few of her ghosts actually wanted that to happen.
“All hail the dark days.”
“It is the time for the prince of thorns to rule.”
“I wanna be a minion of evil.”
However, Ella wasn’t a person who thought she would thrive in a world of only shadows and fear. Sure, Zane might enjoy not having to hide during the daytime; however, even he would have a problem with the loss of his fancy wardrobe and fast cars. Demons weren’t into the whole industrial revolution thing. Destruction and death were their jam, not the capitalists’ dream.
Apart from her need for strawberries picked fresh from a field, the sun needed to remain because Ella enjoyed the feel of sunshine on her face. Less so demon claws ripping out her heart. That would hurt.
But how to stop it? She’d come here hoping to find out. Lucky her, there were spirits she could ask.
Eyes shut, she rocked in time to the buzzing words of the ghosts swirling around. So many of them these days. Hard sometimes to tell them apart. But she had to sift through them, shutting out the ones who spoke English, looking for the melodic tones of the old ones trapped here for centuries. Their spirits bound into the stone of this place. Twelve, to be exact. The thirteenth one had escaped, and if she didn’t do something, the other twelve would follow and the world would end.
As to how one managed to get away? The genie who’d spilled his blood on the stone was how. His death released the first spirit lock.
The head devil had hoped to find twelve more, but the demons sent on a mission to acquire miscalculated. They killed before counting.
It cost them. Only eight bottles lined the step. Apparently, genies were a little scarcer than expected. There weren’t enough to break the spell, which was why there were still twelve locks. The devil didn’t want to waste the djinn he had. In order to put them to best use, he set a trap.
For a soul sorceress. Because only one with control of the spirits could amplify the magic.
“The devil wants you, Ella,” the voice cackled.
So he stole Zane to force her to do his bidding.
She stopped breathing as she discerned her husband nearby. His anger a dark, seething thing.
He sensed her. Knew she was near. There existed such a strong bond between them. He’d told her, “You are the only thing that makes me feel alive.” She was his reason for being. Through their link, his love pulsed strongly, as did his determination to protect her at all costs, even the price of his own life.
My dark knight. Didn’t he understand dying wasn’t acceptable? Good thing she’d arrived and would make sure he didn’t foolishly pay it.
Showtime. She only had to ask her spirit friends, Free me, for them to snap the ties binding her. Foolish devil. Did he really think he could control her? She’d come to Hell’s rift willingly. She wanted to be here.
Ella stood, hands by her sides, calm inside despite the danger. She had to be steady. Ready to act. She saw the red pinprick eyes all focused on her.
Good. Had they heard what happened to their friends? She’d be more than happy to give them a first hand re-enactment.
Before she could reach and squeeze the closest one, she froze.
Froze because Zane suddenly appeared, trussed tight in a cocoon of silk webbing and dangled by a...
Long.
Hairy.
Jointed.
Leg.
“Spider!” Yeah, she didn’t keep that scream to herself. How could she? This went beyond eight-legged freak into nightmare.
Like any person doing her best not to pee herself in fear, she stared as the monster of nightmares lowered its bulbous body on its sticky rope, taunting, with a swinging Zane–whose dark eyes glared at her.
She could read the message. What are you doing here?
Ella waggled her fingers in reply. “Hey, honey. Missed you.”
Would those words count later when he punished her for putting herself in danger? Hopefully not. She did so like it when he got overprotective. He usually made her scream—in pleasure—for hours.
He angry-talked with his gaze some more. Get out of here.
As if she’d leave. Zane was here. Even though her biggest fear had come to life, she wouldn’t run. Maybe wet her panties a little, but she would stand against the arachnid minion of evil. She just hoped it didn’t have siblings. She dared a peek overhead to see if she could spot another amidst the jagged stalactites dangling from the ceiling. There were too many shadowy pockets, so she sent some of her ghosts to find out. A few others went to check on Zane. Her beautiful husband. About to become spider food unless she acted.
Ella planted her hands on her hips and made her demand. “Put him down. Right now, or else.”
She didn’t really expect a reply, yet she got one. The very crack in the wall itself seethed and breathed
, the words deep and resonating, understandable, if chilling.
“Open the door and you can have your mate.”
“If I open the door, you’ll eat me and my mate.”
“If you don’t, he dies right now.” The silken thread holding him shortened, and he was drawn to the mouth of the arachnid. A big mouth. With teeth.
“Think he’ll scream when my pet bites?”
Being the manly stoic type, probably not, but Ella would.
“Open the door.”
She couldn’t ignore the voice. Heard its command.
Didn’t dare disobey, not with those shearing mandibles so close to Zane’s head. Even she couldn’t fix a decapitation.
But…I don’t want to end the world.
World or Zane?
In the end, there was no real question.
Twenty
The grating voice wasn’t meant for Felicia or Tariq. Yet they heard it. Heard the awful choice that was almost as bad as the monster that would enforce it.
The dilemma was clear. Ella would open the door to save Zane, which meant they had to act.
Of course, Tariq had his own solution. “We need to force the spider to kill the vampire.”
“How does that help?” she snapped.
“It puts Ella into a rage, and she’ll do anything but help the demons.”
Felicia glared. “Or how about we save Zane, make her super happy, and then she saves the world from annihilation.”
“Your way sounds harder.”
“My way doesn’t have her hunting us down afterward and tearing our souls out to torture us for our role in her husband’s death.”
“Harder it is.” Tariq eyed the spider, Zane, the wall. Then pulled a knife and threw it. In the battle of wills, with thick magic and spirits choking the air, no one noticed the metal blade. Yet it sliced through the cord holding Zane. He dropped hard.
Ella gasped. “Zane!”
“Get out of here, moonbeam!” he yelled. “Don’t let them use you.”
At his words, all hell broke loose. Not literally. The crack was still just a crack and not a doorway, but the minions against the walls sprang to life. Although with their red eyes, snarls, and jerky movements, they seemed more undead.
Possession didn’t agree with them.
They loped toward Ella, slack-jawed and fingers extended like claws.
Some might see a horde of trouble. Felicia’s tummy rumbled. “You take care of the spider that wants to eat Zane. I’ll handle these,” she said, dropping into a crouch.
“There’s too many,” Tariq argued.
She snorted. “Not for me. You might be weak against them, but you forget they’re in human bodies. Also known as a buffet.” She didn’t worry about what he’d think if he saw her tearing into flesh. Either he accepted what she was, or he didn’t. Best to find out now.
Ignoring Tariq, she rushed the demon-possessed humans, cutting them off before they reached Ella. The first one stretched to grab her, and she allowed it, only to regret it as a second later as she felt the adrenalized strength.
This wouldn’t be as easy as usual. But she didn’t mind a challenge.
She also didn’t fight nice. A kick to the balls hurt the possessed just as much as a regular guy. When he doubled down, she grabbed his head and wrenched. He dropped, and she had two pairs of grasping hands to contend with.
She was lucky they didn’t choose to attack with weapons. Actually, there was little finesse at all. She absently wondered, as she tore into a jugular, if the longer a demon possessed, the less able a body became.
Grabbing hold of another, she swung him and noticed from the corner of her eye that Tariq had made it to the temple and faced off against the spider.
Better him than her.
Where was a giant can of Raid when you needed one?
Twenty-One
If only the cartoon-sized cans of bug spray really existed. He would have expended all his magic to call one to battle the eight-legged freak he faced. However, Tariq had almost no magic left. The rift in the stone sucked at it. He only had himself. His wits. His need to prevail. Oh, and the thought that if the world ended, he’d never get to be with Felicia. He really wanted to be with her. So he’d better ensure it happened.
He drew the machete he’d managed to keep and used it to slice at the leg that jabbed at him. The blade stuck in the hairy appendage and ripped away.
Not exactly the most propitious of events, but it gave him a moment. He dropped to his knees and used what magic he had left to burn at the silken strands binding Zane.
They turned to ash, just in time. The vampire rolled and missed the leg that stabbed down with a pointed tip. Zane scrambled to his feet.
“Can you conjure something to kill it?” Zane asked.
Tariq shook his head and then danced, his back arching, his hips drawing inward as another leg swung. “I used the last of my magic to free you.” Better give it to an ally than feed the hungry rift.
“Any ideas?” Zane ducked and rolled, coming up under the spider. A punch upward didn’t even make the thing flinch.
Only now did Tariq wish he’d searched the camp for better weapons. He’d relied so long on his magic he didn’t often think to equip himself. Good thing someone had gotten used to living within his means and not magic.
Crack. Crack.
The gunfire echoed loudly in the space. The first shot missed wildly and hit the wall in a shower of sparks. The next rounds, though, hit the spider in the head. It shuddered and recoiled. The third, it let out an unearthly squeal as part of its eye exploded in chunks. And still Jamaal fired.
His damned fool of a brother, refusing to obey and leave.
Thank the gods.
With the arachnid retreating, Tariq focused on the room. Azzam had chosen to aid Felicia, who—while looking slightly battered and bloody—grinned at him.
The fact she had time to breathe could have indicated she’d vanquished the possessed humans. But it didn’t. Rather, they’d turned their attention to something else. The bottles.
“Oh fuck.” The expletive slipped from his lips as the first minion grabbed an emerald-colored glass and flung it to smash on the wall. The screaming mist that emerged was sucked right into the rift.
Good-bye, Balthazar.
A new fissure appeared, and they all heard the pleased and resonant chuckle from the other side.
Tariq ran for the rest of the bottles, not fast enough to stop the ruby red container from getting shattered. Or the amber decanter.
He had no magic to protect his people. But he had to stop it. Stop them from being killed. Thus, he attacked with his bare hands. His virtually human hands against the demon-infused bodies. He felt them trying to claw at his core, his empty magical core.
He grinned. “Nothing there, suckers.”
The bottles stopped smashing as his allies joined him in ridding the world of the bodies that hosted the demons. With nothing else close by, the demons returned to a misty state, and he began to believe they’d win.
That perhaps they might walk away alive.
Then Ella spoke. Only Ella wasn’t home.
Twenty-Two
“Too late, puny creatures. Already the wall breaks, and now, with the help of this witch, it shall be destroyed.” The words hissed from Ella’s lips as the devil leader used her to speak. However, she drew the line when he attempted to add in an evil laugh.
Only Ella could muahahahha. She grabbed hold of the devil’s piggybacking spirit and held it tight.
It wiggled in her grip.
“Let me go.”
Only she could hear him, hear the astonishment as she clenched his incorporeal form.
Why would I let you go when I need you to fill in a crack?
It didn’t take a genius to see how the spell keeping the rift sealed worked. Sacrificed souls locked the magic in place. More souls also unlocked it.
The mistake Azzam and the rest made was they assumed the mention of the thi
rteen who’d originally put the spell in place was they were all sorceresses.
Wrong.
Then, as now, there was only ever one soul sorceress.
And thirteen djinn.
Those genies gave their magical lives to seal the hole. They willingly bound their spirits to the wall holding back Hell. Prisoners for all time.
Until an idiot tried accidentally set them free. The powerful dying blood of a djinn cracked the spell and freed one of the trapped spirits.
Which gave Ella an idea, and it involved the demon spirits. The key word being spirits.
Had everyone forgotten what she controlled? The devil had thought to use her to remove the djinn souls powering the spell. And she would, but only so she could replace them.
Keeping a grip on the strong soul of the devil, she reached up and plucked a floating demonic mist. It wiggled, a tiny little bug in the scheme of things. She yanked it along much as a mother would yank the ear of her child to get it to behave. She slapped it against a crack, still stained in the blood of the djinn who died and started the chain reaction.
The devil in her grip stilled. Whispered. You don’t want to do that.
Actually, the very fact he appeared fearful was why she did.
The demon mist wiggled in the crack, sought to escape, but Ella slapped her hand on it and pushed. Not exactly the right word and yet the only thing to explain how she ground it into the crevice and cemented it there. The spirit screeched as it found itself caught. A cry cut off as a tiny section of the fissure pulled together.
She heard her allies whispering. “What is she doing?”
Fixing the wall. What did it look like? But she fixed it better than her earlier counterpart. Rather than sacrifice anyone, she used demon spirits to power the spell, using the bigger ones for the largest parts of the cracks. Once she got down to the hairline ones, she had to get fancier because those fine filigrees still had djinn spirits holding them together. She swapped those souls with demonic mists, letting the sigh of relief from the released spirits fill her with strength. Because now that the trapped djinn were ghosts, they could help her too.