Chapter 7 Atlas
Atlas
There were two things in this world that I cared about more than my own life: my car and my brother.
Watching that Asmodeian motherfucker destroy the first one had enraged me. I wouldn’t watch it kill the second.
Everything happened so fast, and before I knew it, something had knocked my Goddamned lights out. My insides punched and pulled. My soul got ripped out of my body and shoved back in the wrong way. I screamed, but no words came out.
I landed hard on my back and all the air rushed out of my lungs on a loud cough. For a moment, I lay there, staring up at a midnight sky, blinking into the moonlight.
Late summer heat clung to my skin, the humidity of North Carolina in September sticking to my throat as I sucked in an inhale.
Reality came into focus, and I remembered what happened.
A dark arm wrapping around Wes’s throat.
Sharp, pointed claws digging into his chest.
Hot sticky blood pouring out of his torso.
My desperate shout for my brother…my best friend…my only friend.
“Wes.” I tried to scream, but it came out on a wheeze as I turned on my side and pushed up on my hands. “Wes!”
“Over here,” Marta said, kneeling in front of a prone body.
He lay face up on the forest floor, his shirt ripped open, with deep gouge marks down the front of his torso.
The Harlot’s hands were covered in his blood as she waved them over him, muttering an incantation I couldn’t make out.
I struggled to my knees, crawling over to him as my heart thudded. “Heal, Goddamn it. Heal!”
“Is he breathing?” I croaked as I touched his chest and prayed for movement. “Is he alive?”
“I don’t know,” she snapped. “Be quiet. I need to focus.”
Be quiet?
I shot her a glare before I checked for Wes’s pulse. A faint, dull thud hit my fingers, and I scrambled for my brother’s shirt, peeling back the layers so I could assess the damage.
The wounds wept with black pus, ruby red mixed with agonizing pitch. Marta’s white light emanated into them in sputtering pulses, but she must have been weak from the spell it took to push the demon into the liminal.
“Here,” I said, holding my hand out to her. “Use me.”
She ignored it, clenching her eyes shut and continuing to chant.
“Fuck you, Marta. Now’s not the time for your bullshit.” I shoved my hand in her face. “Pull from me!”
When she opened her eyes, they glowed bright white, the pupils and irises completely disappeared. With her squared jaw and lips pulled back in a grimace, she looked damn near as formidable as the monster we’d just defeated.
But she didn’t argue. She grabbed my hand, interlaced our fingers, and started the spell again. Nothing happened. She didn’t pull on me. When I spotted her wide eyes and open mouth, I realized she was trying.
“I can’t—” She shook her head. “The bond isn’t working. It isn’t—”
“What do you mean it’s not working?” I cut in. “Fix him!”
“Shut up,” she said, breaking the contact between us to return to her work. Pale wisps trickled from her palms in sputters, hardly the power she’d had during our first fight with the demon. My heart nearly pounded out of my chest as I waited for her to kick her magic into high gear.
More obsidian ooze leaked from my brother’s chest until it finally ran red, and once it was gone, the wounds stitched back together. She kept chanting until a translucent patch of purple skin knitted over the claw marks, and Wes’s eyes opened.
“Fuck,” he murmured as he arched off the ground, clearly in turmoil.
“Wes!” I grabbed his cheeks and stared down into his dark brown eyes, the gnawing ache of relief flowing through my nerves as I brushed the hair out of his face.
Wes tried to sit up but groaned and fell back, thumping his head on the ground. I moved around him to wrap an arm under his shoulders, helping him into a reclined position on my knees.
“What happened?” His strangled voice nearly brought me to tears, and it wasn’t until I heard it that I realized how close I’d come to losing him.
No. That wasn’t a possibility. I wouldn’t let that happen. There was no world in which Wes didn’t exist, and if there was, I didn’t want to be a part of it.
“That’s a good question,” Marta said, looking at me.
“You nearly became demon bait,” I explained, shaking my head in disbelief. “Good thing I was there to pry him off you.”
“Pry him off?” Marta raised her eyebrows, opening her mouth. “You touched the demon?”
“I touched a demon, not the one you were shoving into a liminal.”
“We were trying to shove all of them into the liminal.” The accusation in her tone raised my hackles. “What did you do?”
I looked around. We were still in the woods, probably the same forest where we’d done the ritual. But the other Harlots were gone. The circle, the candles, the demons, all vanished. Save for the wind in the trees and the birds chirping overhead, we were the only sounds in the place.
“I don’t know.” I tried to remember, but it all happened so quickly. Had I stepped over the salt line? Had Wes? How had the demon been able to grab him in the first place?
“Are we dead?” Wes wheezed.
“If we are, we’re certainly in hell.” Marta let out a sad laugh and bent her knees so she could rest her arms over them. “I doubt any heaven would put the three of us together for all eternity.”
I tried to act like the insult didn’t sting. After all, I hated her as much as she hated me, but worse things were waiting for us in hell, me especially.
“You should be so lucky, witch,” I snapped, grabbing my cellphone out of my jeans pocket to check for a signal. When I had none, I held it up higher and hoped it was just the trees fucking it up.
She shifted that angry gaze to me, her eyes narrowed into tiny slits.
“What the fuck did you do, Atlas?” she snapped. “We were chanting. The liminal was opening. And then…” She closed her eyes, seemingly remembering the last moments before we went ass over teakettle into whatever this was. “You knocked into me.”
“No,” I snarled. “Your shitty wards fell. One of those fuckers got Wes. I had to protect him.”
“You were supposed to be protecting me.” She tried to push to her feet, only to slam back on her ass with a resounding thud, almost like she’d lost her balance or stood up too quickly. “And if it weren’t for those wards, we all would be dead. No thanks to you.”
“No thanks to me?” I scoffed. “I’m the only reason you’re still in one piece, Witch.”
Marta opened her mouth to give me some nasty retort, but Wes cut in.
“Stop,” he said, wheezing as he tried to suck in a deep breath. “Stop fighting. We have to get somewhere safe. We need food and rest.”
Leave it to the one who almost died to bring us back to reality.
“Fine,” I said, garnering my strength so I could push upright.
Stars twinkled in my vision, and my head spun, but I put my hand out to a tree to steady myself.
When my blood pressure caught up to the rest of me, I straightened my shoulders and looked at my wayward companions. “Can either of you stand?”
Marta struggled to her feet, and once she had them under her, she took a deep breath and looked at Wes.
I reached out a hand for him, and he grabbed it so I could haul him upright.
He groaned and winced against the ache in his chest, especially when I ducked myself under one of his arms to hold his weight on my shoulders.
“Which way?” I asked, glancing at Marta. She looked around and shrugged, holding up her cellphone to move it right and left. I guessed she didn’t have a signal either.
“That way, I think,” she answered.
“You think?” I took a deep breath and swallowed the irritation bubbling in my chest. What good was the witch if she didn’t know where the hell we were?
“Do you know which way to go?” She crossed her arms and raised an indignant eyebrow, jutting a hip out.
I rolled my eyes. “No, of course not. But I’m not the one with magic. Can’t you do some location spell—”
“It doesn’t work like that,” she said. “After the ritual and then healing Wes, I’m tapped out.”
“Use me,” I said. “Use us.”
“I can’t. Something happened when we got knocked…wherever we are. The bond is gone.”
“What do you mean gone?” I’d had just about enough of her bullshit. We didn’t have to like each other, but we were supernaturally connected regardless. She might as well use that to our benefit.
“The road between us is closed,” she said.
“Well, open it,” I growled.
“I can’t!” Marta closed her eyes and sighed before pinching the bridge of her nose. “Let’s just…go this way and see if we hit the road. Maybe Isobel and Bridge went back to the car to get something to help us.”
I didn’t argue, but in my gut, I doubted Isobel and Bridge were here. I had a sickening suspicion we’d fallen victim to our own spell, that instead of creating a liminal for the Asmodeian demon, we’d done something far worse.
We stumbled through the woods, Marta leading the way while I struggled to carry most of Wes’s weight. He could barely hold himself upright, and it took us nearly double the time to get to the road. But at least he was alive.
At least we’re both alive.
“What do you think happened?” Wes asked. He gasped through the syllables like each word hurt him to say, and based on the horrifying bruises starting to form on his chest, I bet it did. Marta had only put a magical bandage on him. He’d still need time to recover fully.
“Those fucking witches screwed up the magic. Now we’re trapped.
” In all my years of hunting monsters, I’d seen some fucked-up shit.
I’d seen ghosts and poltergeists that fling people around entire houses.
I’d seen undead creatures that burst into disgusting blood bubbles if stabbed with iron.
Fairies, vampires, shifters, all of it. But when I woke up in the woods with only the two of them, my internal what-the-fuck-meter blared loud and clear.
“Trapped where?” Wes asked.
I had an idea, but I didn’t want to go wandering down that road until I had more reason to.
Marta cleared the tree line to the street, Wes and I stumbling out after her. Her bike sat in the same spot next to Bridge’s and Isobel’s with Leander’s car behind it. But there was no sign of the other Harlots or warriors.
“Bridge!” Marta called out. “Isobel?”
She held her phone up and squinted at the screen, waving it around as she tried to find reception. I checked mine again but came up short. No WiFi. No connection.
“Fuck.” I slid my phone into my back pocket and hitched my brother higher on my shoulder, glancing up and down the road. “This is ominous, huh?”
“Where do you think they went?” Marta asked.
“I don’t know,” I said as Wes’s head lulled down in front of him. “But if we don’t get him to an ER—”
“No doctors,” Wes muttered. “They’ll ask questions.”
“Shut up, man.” I wasn’t prepared to watch him waste away from an infection when his pride was the only thing standing between him and a shot of penicillin. “Witch, open the door.”
Marta helped me load Wes into the back seat, where he promptly slumped over, before she started for her bike.
“Come with us,” I insisted. “Leave the bike.”
“Hell will freeze over before I do that.” She scrunched her features, scowling at the thought of leaving her precious behind.
“I get it,” I added. “But we shouldn’t split up, not until we know what’s going on.”
She remained hesitant, heels dug into her spot.
“We’ll come back for it later. Get. In. The. Truck.”
The disgruntled look on her face made me think she would ignore me, but when she only nodded and climbed into the passenger seat, I went around to the driver’s side and set about dismantling the panel under the steering wheel.
Most modern-day vehicles couldn’t be hot-wired because of push-button start and anti-theft nonsense.
But Leander drove an early ’90s pickup, so getting it started took almost no time.
“Should I even ask why you know how to do that?” Marta asked with raised eyebrows.
“This ain’t my first rodeo.” I winked, put the truck in drive, and set off toward the hospital.