Chapter 17
17
S teve the werelion, douche of the day, lunged across the space between us. But I’d fought a werewolf what seemed like a hundred years ago and won. Mind you, Robert had been by my side that night. And Sarge hadn’t truly been trying to kill me. I think.
I jerked my hip bag up and around, swinging it a bit like a lasso so that it settled over Steve’s head, blinding him. He roared and jerked back, yanking me to my feet.
What ensued was something of a waltz. If two drunken mates tried to pull one off, that is. He lurched and tried to pull my bag off his head, and I kept my weight low, gripping it tightly. We spun and got tangled up, and I stuck my leg through his, sending him face first onto the floor. He cracked his head on the stone and went still.
“You faking it, Steve?” I asked, then grinned. “I’ll bet you’re used to women asking that question, aren’t you?”
Nancy chuckled. “You know, I don’t want to like you. But that was a good one.”
“Once in a while—” I carefully slid my bag off Steve’s head, “—I manage a comeback worth laughing at.”
Steve’s eye closest to me fluttered. I scooted backward, moving across the hall and into Steve’s cell. I turned sideways so I could keep an eye on the prone werelion, then tapped back into my connection with the fae.
My grandfather’s blood might have been diluted, but it was still there, and between that and the bracelet, I had something to follow.
The pull drew me to the far wall, but there was no door, no window, no secret opening.
I spread my hands across the stones, looking for something that would give me a hint of where to go next.
A low grumble from Steve told me that my time was almost up. “Where is it?”
“Maybe use the blade,” Nancy said. “Me, I’m the blade. Use me.”
I pulled the black blade free and put the tip to the wall, pressing against the stone. The edge cut through it like butter, without even a sound of squealing metal on stone. I carved a small hole, three feet by three feet.
“Bitch, I’ll kill you now,” Steve snarled.
I looked over my shoulder to see him transforming from his human shape into a massive lion. Mind you, he was still staggering some, that blow to the head had slowed him down at least.
“Not today, thanks.” I leaned against the stone I’d just cut and pushed, shoving it a few inches. There was enough resistance that panic caught at me. This was my way out of here, away from a lion bent on killing me.
I put all my weight into the stone, and it screeched as it slid out further. “Come on! GO!” I yelled at it, as if that would help.
A roar behind me spun me around. The oversized lion leapt at me, claws outstretched.
I did the only thing I could.
I dropped flat onto the ground, and the lion hit the loose part of the wall I’d been pushing and shoved the stone the rest of the way through—if the gong of stone falling was any indication. Steve landed, his head right above mine. I was still holding onto Nancy.
“Sorry?” Yes, I asked it as a question because I wasn’t sure whether I would be sorry after this. I drove the blade straight up through Steve’s bottom jaw. He pulled back, which meant the edge of the blade ripped through his jaw, opening him up. There was no blood.
Of course, he was dead, so it made sense there was no blood.
He bellowed and shook his head, which made his jaw flap in a grotesque way, then crouched as if to pounce.
“MOVE!” Nancy yelled.
Yeah, not wrong. I shot up and was halfway through the hole I’d created before Steve caught my leg with one of his claws. The pain was immediate and deep, as if my bones were being gouged. I screamed as the claws dug into my flesh and began to drag me backward.
“Son of a donkey! I hate you, Steve!” I screamed as I kicked out with my free leg, managing to free myself. Whimpering, I dragged myself through the small tunnel. How was it this deep? My blade was only a few inches long, six at best, but I was easily five feet into the wall.
Before I could ask the question, Nancy answered. “Nothing is as it seems, kid. You gotta realize this by now. Also, wrap that leg up before you bleed out.”
I blinked, realizing I could see in the tunnel because it had some strange lights set in the walls. My leg was bleeding profusely too, he was right about that. I dug through my bag, shaking, and found a couple of extra heavy days pads and placed those over the biggest wound. Using a pair of panty hose—also found in my bag—I wrapped the pads on tight.
“That shouldn’t have happened. He didn’t bleed when I cut him.”
Nancy hummed. “The spell that sent us here. Maybe it sent you to this place for real. I mean…I’m stuck in a damn blade. That suggests we’re both here in the flesh. Means we can die in the flesh.”
Wasn’t that what the Dark Council had wanted? To make sure I became a soul that had tasted hell? I grimaced, hating the idea of ingesting anything from this place.
I shook my head. “But I saw myself in the mirror. I don’t look like me.”
“You sure about that? Maybe you just never saw the real you before.”
Getting sensible advice from a demon was a scary thing. “Well…what does it mean?”
“Probably that the time you have left here is it. You will die for real if you don’t get out. Just a guess though.”
Duck, duck, duck. I scrambled forward, biting my tongue on the whimpers that wanted to escape my mouth. My leg throbbed with each pulse of my heart, and I had no choice but to keep moving. Dragging myself through a tunnel that didn’t make sense. Hurting, and terrified that I was going to fail everyone, including myself.
“Stupid tunnel,” I hissed. “Just get me out of here. Take me to Crash!”
“No!” Nancy yelled, but it was too late. I’d spoken, and apparently hell was listening.
The rock underneath me crumbled and I fell, bouncing off something soft-ish and rolling to the side.
I blinked and looked up into a pair of blue eyes flecked with gold.
“ Crash? ”
“Bree…” He strained against chains that held him tightly to the wall, just like I’d seen him before. “How did you find me?”
“No time for that!” I tried to jump up, fumbled on my bad leg and ended up falling into his middle and sliding down so that my face was in his crotch. “Please don’t fart.”
He laughed, a genuine laugh. “That’s the last thing I would do in this position.”
His laughter kind of bounced around the room, and the chains on his wrists and ankles disintegrated. “Damn, was it that easy all along?” He bent and scooped me up into his arms.
I clung to his neck. Part of me could not believe that I was here, that I’d found him. “I’m so sorry, Crash. About everything.”
“No. I…don’t apologize. You tried to move on with your life. I couldn’t be honest with you. I…all the choices I made when I was young, I couldn’t escape them.” He pressed his forehead to mine. “I want nothing more or less than all of you, Bree. But I can’t…I’m trapped here. I’m dead.”
I put my hands on his cheeks. “I am not giving up. Come on. We have to find the others.”
His eyebrow shot up. “What others?”
“Robert, Kinkly, and Corb.” I did my best not to pull a face on Corb’s name. I mean, I didn’t have to, Crash did it for me.
“Corb? What the hell is he doing here?” He wrapped a hand around mine, lacing our fingers together.
“He tried to save me from the galloo, but it got us both, so the spell that sent me here, sent him too. Which is also how Robert and Kinkly got sucked in, because Kinkly died as she landed on me. It’s all kind of a mess.” I spoke rapidly as I moved to the door.
“And what about me?” Nancy yelled.
I lifted the blade up and showed it to Crash. “This is Nancy.”
“That’s the knife I built you,” Crash said slowly. “Is it talking to you?”
“Yeah, demon infested now, baby!” Nancy called out in a sing-song voice.
I went to the door and drove the tip of the knife into the hinges, cutting through them like I’d done Steve’s.
“Bree, even if you get me out of this cell, there is no—”
“Nope, I’ve found you. We need to find the others.” I looked over my shoulder at him. “Got it?”
His smile was soft. “Okay. Let’s go find them.”
Crash put his hand to the door.
“Wait!” I said before he could shove it open. “There is one thing.”
He turned his head to me, and I grabbed his face, pulling him closer and kissing him with every bit of energy I had left. He snaked his arms around my body and pulled me to him, one hand dipping low to grab my ass. A low growl escaped his lips as we fought to get closer, an impossibility given the state of our clothes and current situation but still…he tasted like fire and sharp whiskey, his lips and stubble bruising my mouth and making the rest of me ache.
I’d missed him so much, it was like I’d lost a limb and now had gained it back.
He nipped at my mouth, lifted me higher and put his lips to the tops of my breasts. Biting and sucking at the flesh. I moaned and tipped my head back, which brought the timepiece up.
“What is this?” He stopped and stared at the soul sand. I looked down.
There was not much left, maybe ten percent at best.
Which is all it took to cool my ardor. “We have to go. We’re almost out of time!”
He didn’t argue. Together, flushed from the interlude of touch and taste, we threw ourselves at the door.
The heavy metal fell off its hinges and clattered to the floor of a large, roundish room. There were doors but no handles that I could see.
Better than that…“Robert! Kinkly!”
My two friends were standing in the middle of the room. I ran to them, Crash right behind me. I was doing my best not to freak out. Minutes, we had minutes at best before we were all trapped in here forever.
“Do we know which door is out?” I asked.
Robert turned toward me first. His eyes were incredibly sad. “I couldn’t find her. I thought maybe she’d been trapped here, but she wasn’t.”
I had no doubt that he meant his wife, Evangeline. “Robert. Your wife wouldn’t have been sent to hell.”
He shook his head. “She would have been. At the end of her life…she would have been here. In this place, in the spirit realm, like Crash.”
Much as I wanted to know why his wife would have been sent to hell, because I had a hard time believing that was the kind of woman Robert would be attracted to—we had to get moving.
“Kink?”
“We lost Corb. I tried to find him but ended up here.” I noticed that she seemed smaller than before by several inches. Shrinking back to her previous size maybe?
Crash tugged me toward the center of the room. “One of these doors is out. But which one?”
“Nancy,” I said, “you know this place. Help us get out!”
Each door was marked with a different symbol. A star. A moon. A bird. A paw print. Every door was different. There were none that screamed, ‘hey, that is the one that will take us back to the living side of things.’
“Nancy?”
“I don’t know! Okay, they didn’t teach me this part!”
I blew out a breath. “Then we’ll just have to wing it.” I closed my eyes and thought about Savannah. She was my charge, everyone within the city was mine to protect, and so I was tied to her.
Slowing my heart, feeling every ache and the slash in my leg, I found a tiny bloom of warmth that smelled like a humid blend of flowers, of oak trees and Spanish moss, of ocean and old graves. With my eyes still closed I walked toward the feeling, the smell growing stronger until Crash pulled me to a stop.
I opened my eyes.
The door in front of me was marked with a single tombstone. “That’s the one.”
“You’re sure?”
There was the sound of footsteps and we all spun to see Corb as he burst into the round room, kind of appearing out of thin air. There was no way out except through one of these doors.
“You found him.” Corb gave Crash a nod.
Crash gave him a nod back. Bro talk at its best.
“We’re leaving, get over here.” I motioned for him to draw close. I made a move toward the door and a voice cut through the room.
“You have less than two minutes left. I’m impressed.”
“That’s the secretary,” I whispered.
Crash grunted. “That’s Lucifer.”
I blinked up at him but knew this was not the time to argue. “Whatever, she’s been the only one who talks to us here—”
“You have to know the spell that will take you out. You have to have the right ingredients.” There was definite glee in her voice. “You made it through, and I’ll be honest, the entertainment was fantastic. Best I’ve had in a long time. Hades agrees. We look forward to returning you to the beginning so we can have you do it all again. Once you’re trapped here for eternity, that is.”
I pulled the time piece up. Only a few grains of the soul sand left.
I stepped toward the door and pushed on it. “Nancy, how do we get through?”
“I don’t know!” he yelped. “And trust me, I want out of here too!”
Yeah, I bet he did.
Crash, Robert, Corb and Kinkly all tried to help with the door. Pushing and prying, we tried to use Nancy, but he was not effective on this doorway.
Something else. I crouched and dumped out my bag, looking for something that might help. Something that might…
The jar of spell dirt that I’d scraped off the wall of Haven House rolled out of my bag.
“Here, we’ll try this!” I unscrewed the lid, and the smell of the herbs filled the air.
“How are we going to use it?” Kinkly whispered, the fear heavy in her voice.
“Like this,” Robert said, calm as could be. “Pour it on your hands, all of you. To the city of the dead. Those are the words I would use.”
He tipped it up and poured a little onto my hands, then Kinkly’s, then Crash’s. There was not a lot left.
“There’s only enough left for one of us,” Corb said. “You take it, Robert.”
Robert looked at Corb. “No. I’m dead.”
“Wrong on that, you’re not the only one,” Corb said quietly. “ I’m dead . I am not bleeding despite tangling with some asshole named Steve, I didn’t feel the cold or the heat in any of the realms…There’s no coming back for me. I knew it when we arrived.”
I wanted to argue with him, but death was my game, and I knew down to my soul that Robert and Corb were both dead.
“Ten seconds!” the secretary called out gleefully.
“Kinkly, go through, hands first! Say the words!” I yelled. She did as I said, walking hands first and saying “to the city of the dead.” She sunk through the doorway with the tombstone etched onto it, her body slipping through, her wings following.
“Crash, go.”
“Not without you, Bree.” He linked his fingers with mine.
“Take her, quickly,” Robert said.
“No, we can’t leave them!” I yelled, but Crash dragged me forward.
“Bree. We have to go. We have to get you out,” Crash said. “I don’t know if…either of them will be able to escape.”
Either of them.
“No,” I breathed the word out as Crash pulled me toward the door marked with the tombstone, the stone molded around my hands, but I couldn’t help looking back.
Robert and Corb stood there, watching us go. Smiling at me.
“Go. We’ll be okay,” Robert said.
Laughter built up around us. “You aren’t strong enough.”
It was the secretary, Lucifer, whoever she was.
“I’m too damn old to not be strong enough,” I whispered as the door enveloped me.
Passing between realms felt like stepping through spiderwebs that clung to every part of my body. I knew I needed to keep walking, I needed to.
As I walked, I opened myself to my connection to the dead and reached back for Robert and Corb. My magic wrapped around Robert first. I knew him better, could find him easily and his connection to me was strong. I tightened my hold on him and leaned into that connection. We were tied together, and if I couldn’t get him out, then I’d have to go back for him.
That same laughter flowed around us. “You think so, do you?”
“Bitch, you’d better believe it,” I snapped. I had Crash on one side of me, proof that I could do as I’d said, and I was not about to give up on Robert.
I felt Robert’s surprise as I dragged him through the door and into the ether between the living and the dead. A screech followed as I stole him away from hell.
“I’m not leaving you behind.”
“Friend.” His gravelly whisper was there, at my side.
The world tipped up and around, spinning suddenly. My feet weren’t working, but we were still moving.
There was a beat where I locked eyes with Crash. He smiled at me, his lips just curving up.
“I love you, Bree. No matter what comes. I’m here.”
Fear lanced through my heart. “Crash. Stay with me.”
He touched my face with his free hand and bent his head to press his lips to mine. “I will always fight to be with you, my compass.”
It felt too much like another goodbye.
I tightened my hold on his hand, even as he began to slip away. I felt like I was being pulled in two, Crash on one side of me and Robert on the other as we were dragged through the ether.
I did the only thing I could as his fingers slipped from mine. I screamed his name.