Chapter 16
16
M oving fast through a thick jungle sounded a lot better than it actually was—we couldn’t really run. The fastest I could manage was a walk with a few steps of jogging peppered in as we tried to dodge the thick brush that seemed to be constantly in front of us, grabbing at us, tearing at skin and clothing and wings.
Panic lodged itself deep in my heart, in the center of my soul. I knew we were going to be too late. We weren’t going to make it to Crash, and not only would I lose him, but my friends would all be killed because we had failed.
A chirp came from our right and I dared a look over. A figure slid through the ferns and fronds of leaves, there and then gone. Gray skin. No eyes.
I didn’t point it out to my friends, because let’s be honest, it didn’t change anything. Unless a path opened itself up to us, there would be no way through this thick jungle.
Unless…I dug into my hip bag for the Hunk-O-Mania lighter again—that visit to the strip joint had done more for me than I’d have thought at the time. Pulling it out—mind out of the gutter—I did a slow spin, looking for something that might light up. Something that would make a solid torch.
“Good idea,” Kinkly breathed.
“Is it?” Corb countered, looking more and more like himself every time I glanced his way. “You want to light this place on fire? With us in it?”
“Robert—” I turned to him, “—weigh in on this. To burn or not to burn?”
His eyes were crinkled around the edges, his mouth turned down. “We don’t have a way through this place. Fire is not ideal. But we might be able to do a controlled burn. If we each take a torch, start the grass at our feet and push it outward. It could work. And we are running out of time and options.”
A series of chirps lit up the air, and movement within the bushes and trees around us had my heart stuttering.
Corb flinched. “I agree. Maybe we’ll get lucky, and it will eat up whatever that is out there waiting on us.”
Nancy grumbled in the sheath. “You four are idiots, but so far your idiocy has gotten you through what should have stopped you. I vote for whatever the sentinel decides.”
I didn’t have time to second-guess my idea, not if we were going to have any chance of making it to Crash before we ran out of time.
I flicked the lighter and the tiny flame burst to life. Robert handed me a stick, and I ran the flame over it.
I hoped for a bit of a flame. What I got was nearly a blow torch. I handed it to Robert, and he gave me one more to light up, which he handed to Corb. A final stick with a spiral in the wood was mine.
The tip burned bright and hot, crackling.
Kinkly touched my arm. “I’ll use my wings to fan the flames in the right direction. You just pull me out of the way in case it doesn’t work.”
I squeezed her hand. “Okay, let’s try this.”
I held the burning wood to the bush directly in front of me.
The flames caught immediately, and Kinkly’s wings sent a woosh of air, pushing the flames away from us.
“It’s working!” I yelped.
Working in tandem, Corb, Robert and I set the flames and Kinkly worked to keep the wind blowing in the right direction.
“Tricky buggers,” Nancy said. “Shouldn’t work, but it seems to be. Whatever luck you have is holding.”
The heat of the air, the moisture in it, and the heat from the flames had me sweating like crazy. My throat was parched, dry and aching. A drink of water wouldn’t have been wasted on me.
In a very short time—which could have actually been long, it was hard to tell time in this place, and I was afraid to look at the soul sand in my time piece—we had cleared a huge patch, and the flames were eating their way through the jungle.
The flames didn’t act like normal flames. They demolished what was in front of us at a speed that was mind boggling.
A chirp from behind me turned me around. The gray-skinned creature stood twenty feet away, its head tipped to the side as it watched us. Well, the word “watched” implied it had eyes, but it didn’t. Its face was smooth, as if it had a gray balloon pulled over its face. There were indents where maybe there had been eyes and a nose, but its only definable feature was a mouth.
And that mouth let out a tiny chirp.
Other gray bodies slid from the jungle behind us, stepping onto the burned and still warm freshly burnt foliage.
I reached blindly for the others. “Guys…I think we have a problem.”
“Did the fire curl around us—oh shit.” Corb turned around first.
I looked back at the door we’d come through. We weren’t far from it.
“Kinkly…can you get to the door to the wind realm? Open it. Hold it and let the wind come through.”
“I’m on it,” she whispered, flying up, but not well. Her body sagged and her wings struggled after all the damage she’d taken, as she flew up to the door we’d fallen through. I didn’t know for sure we’d be able to open it, but we needed to take every chance available to us.
I took a step back, away from the gray-skinned, head-tipping chirpers.
“The nameless,” Nancy breathed. “This is bad. They can actually destroy your soul, suck it right out of you.”
Robert grabbed my hand. “Anything else you can tell us?”
“They don’t like fire, so that’s good, but fire kills you too, so not good.”
I held my torch out in front of me as I backed away. “We don’t have time to fight them all,” I could feel the sand slipping through the time piece, one grain at a time but still too fast.
I was not losing Crash when we were this close.
The grey-skinned nameless kept on walking, their hands out, heads cocked.
“They’re attracted to sound,” Nancy said. “Not good eyes as you can see.”
I bent and picked up a rock, blistering hot from the fire, and chucked it over the heads of the creatures so that the sound pinged away from us. They all turned as a unit, their heads swiveling in the other direction. Helpful. But it wouldn’t save us if we didn’t get moving.
I looked up as Kinkly dangled from the door frame, pulling herself up. She had her hand on the knob as the nameless looked back at us.
Hurry, Kinkly . But I didn’t dare say it out loud.
The handle of the door clicked, and it flung open, a massive gust of cold wind shooting into the jungle and then directly into the flames. The fire crackled louder than ever, sounding more like a jet engine than flames.
If I thought it was fast before, it was nothing to what being pushed by the mountain air did to the fire.
Kinkly dangled from the door, holding it tightly as long as she could before she let go. The wind swept her high over our heads, over and over, tumbling without control.
“We need to run,” Robert whispered as he jerked me backward. His voice was all it took to get the nameless moving. They burst toward us, moving together.
We spun and ran across the freshly burnt jungle, chasing the flames as the nameless chased us.
Each step was as loud as a gunshot on the charred ground, and I would have cringed if I’d had enough energy to do so. The chirping lit up around us, as more and more nameless joined in the race to whatever doorway we could find. Assuming we could find it before we were caught.
My thought had barely formed when I was grabbed from behind, long fingers tangling in my hair, jerking me to a stop.
I yelped and shoved the torch back at the nameless one. It shrieked as the flames bit into its skin, and then it took off, on fire, lighting every bush it touched.
“Bree!” Robert lurched back toward me, swinging his torch like a sword. The nameless ones backed up enough for me to get space between us.
“Here, take my hand!” Corb yelled. I didn’t hesitate—I just put my hand in his and then we were running again, Corb all but dragging me along.
“Remember when you thought I was too old for this shit?” I gasped out. “I think you might have been right.”
Corb’s laugh was sudden, almost as sudden as the door that appeared in front of us, erupting out of the soil and burned brush.
“We can’t leave without Kink!”
I would not leave her behind. I promised her I wouldn’t. But even without the promise, I wouldn’t have.
I spun and found the nameless circling us. I knew that the minute we opened that door, we’d all get sucked through, which meant I wasn’t touching it until she was with us. “Back-to-back,” I said, “torches out.”
Corb and Robert did as I said, and we brandished our weapons—burning sticks, whatever—at the chirping gray monsters. They would swipe at us, get too close, and we’d light one of them on fire. The flaming creatures would run off and the others would be more cautious for a few breaths, until they got bold again.
“Bree, check the time,” Robert said. “We can’t wait forever.”
I bit the inside of my cheek and took a quick look at the soul sand. Twenty-five percent. “Another minute, we give her another minute.”
He nodded, his face grim. “KINKLY! You have ONE MINUTE to get your ASS TO US!”
His bellow took me off guard, but then, there was no need to be quiet, was there? The nameless knew exactly where we were, and we needed her to find us. “KINKLY! Fly your ass off!”
Corb added his voice and for the next minute we hollered and bellowed, screaming her name.
I counted backward as we waited, and at the ten second mark, I knew that we were going to have to leave without her. What would that mean for my friend? Would she ever escape this place or were we losing her?
She said she knew I would come after her, if she were the one trapped in hell.
Tears pooled up in my eyes as I reached for the door behind me. “I’m so sorry, Kink. I’ll come back for you, I promise.”
“Sorry for what?” She swept overhead and dropped almost on top of me. One of her wings was bent at a bad angle, but she was still flying. Sort of. “I’m here! All that yelling, it saved me! They had me cornered, but then…boom, you fools started screaming, and they all ran from me.”
Her grin was wide, her face shocky and pale, but she was here, and it was time to go.
I grabbed the door and twisted the handle, and we were sucked through it once more, away from the realm of jungle and earth and into something new.
Or rather, something old.
We were kicked out onto cold cement floors that were rough from use, puddles of water collected in the dips and dives. I lifted my head, blinked a few times, and hefted my still burning torch. “Robert?”
Nothing.
“Kinkly? Corb?”
My voice echoed in the space around me.
“You have reached the fifth level of hell, where souls are kept in limbo.” The secretary’s voice rippled through the air. “You each have your own path now. Your friends will either find their way out, or they won’t. You must face the trials alone from here on out.”
“What the duck? Are you kidding me?” I yelled back. “They aren’t here for anything—”
“Sentinel.” Her voice deepened. “You have each arrived here for a reason, despite what you might think. Find your fae king, that is your reason. Your time is running out.”
Her voice faded in the air. I lifted my torch high to see that I was in a long hallway made of brick and mortar, steel doors set into the wall at uneven intervals. There was no single door the same as another. Some were small, less than three feet in height, others towered over me, nearly touching the ceiling. The hinges were in many cases solid, as if they’d rusted shut completely.
No point in trying those.
I started down the hall, doing my best to focus on finding Crash but worrying about my other friends, nonetheless.
“Please be okay,” I whispered the plea into the damp, cold air.
Laughter flowed out of the door closest to me. “Nobody be okay in here, gurrrl,” someone said, growling out the last word.
“Werewolf?” I asked, knowing in my heart that whatever he was, it wasn’t nearly as scary as what I’d dealt with so far. And he was behind a door that he’d been behind a very long time if the hinges were any indication.
“Werelion,” he growled back.
“Sucks to be in there,” I pointed out.
His snarl rippled through the air and the door rattled. I kept on walking. Checking doors, brushing my hands against the steel. How could I find Crash faster?
I was part fae. Could I tap into that side of me, see if it could help me find him?
It was worth a try.
I closed my eyes and thought about Crash, about the feelings and magic that he invoked in me. I touched the bracelet he’d made, feeling the connection to him, stronger than before.
The sensation in my belly grew slowly and slid through my body. I kept my eyes closed and took a step forward. The feeling faded. I stepped backward, and it intensified.
Back and back I went. Then I went too far back and had to step forward.
“Gurrrl.”
I frowned. Stepped to the right, away from the werelion, only to have the sensation fade again.
Toward the growling voice I went, and the sensation grew. I tried jumping and crouching to see if my fae sense was leading me up or down, but nope. I wasn’t that lucky, damn it.
I pressed my hands to the door. “You have stairs or another door in there?”
“A door. You want into it?”
There was a snick of metal, and a thin slat opened and gave me a glimpse of the werelion, just from his nose to his forehead. His fingers gripped the edge of the opening that he’d made. He was all gold and bronze, right down to flashes of amber eyes. “You’d have to let me out first, and then I’d kill you.”
“Hmm. True.” I had already pulled Nancy free of the sheath on my thigh. “What do you say, Nancy , can you kill a werelion?”
“Oh, that’s simple.”
I doubted it would be simple at all, but the truth was, I needed to get in there. Fae magic was calling to me from inside his cell. “I’ll make you a deal,” I said as I put my blade to the first hinge. “I’ll let you out, and you can go wherever you want.”
“What if I want to kill you? What then?”
“You aren’t making this easy, and honestly, I really am too old for this shit,” I muttered as I drove the tip of the knife in deeper, prying away at the rusted metal. It gave way with a slow groan.
“Too old? Not too old to be fucked and not too old to die,” he growled.
“You know, I have a sneaking suspicion that I understand why you’re in here. You got a name?”
His growl deepened. “Steve.”
“Well, Steve, I suppose you’re here because you’re just a misunderstood kind of guy, right? Don’t make me destroy what’s left of your soul.” I bent and worked on the bottom hinge.
“You sound like my ex,” he growled. “She thought she was tough too.”
“I’m sure I’d like her,” I said.
“You don’t know her. She’s a damn housecat with attitude.” He leaned into the door. The metal groaned but didn’t give way. “How can you like her?”
“She’s your ex. That means she must have figured out you’re a douche.” The words were inflammatory, sure, but he was really rubbing me the wrong way. “Like I said, you don’t sound like a winner, so you probably deserve to be here. Just a guess.”
“I was framed.”
I couldn’t help my snort laugh as the last hinge gave way.
“Somehow I doubt that.”
With a snarl, he slammed into the door, which sent me back first into the far wall of the narrow hallway.
Black dots and tiny sparkling stars danced across my vision as I stared up at the tall, blond man within the cell. He had deep amber eyes and each step he took spoke of a lethal predator.
“I don’t want to hurt you.” I lifted a hand. “You should just go wherever it is you wanted to go.”
He bared his teeth and charged at me.
So, it was to be the hard way then.