CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO #2
Her sharp voice brought him to attention. His heels snapped together, and his spine stiffened. His fear remained, but he had a job to do. “Right,” he muttered, and tightened his grip on the torch. “Onward.”
He stepped forward, passing through the area which had gleamed so fiercely a moment ago. No reaction from the shield.
“Looks like my blood is pure,” he joked nervously.
Hero’s crimson eyes were unreadable wells. “If there’s any trouble…”
“What?” he asked, voice quavering.
“Run.”
Hero paced on the ancient flagstones, kicking up bone dust and wishing she had a tail to lash like some of her demonic kin.
A fine, forked tail of reptilian nature would add to her mystique.
It would give those damnable nuns a fright, too.
She whirled, giving a flick of her imaginary appendage, a nice whip crack.
Nasty creatures, nuns. Always looking down their noses at her – when they weren’t trying to vaporize her with Goddess-blessed water, that was.
Why she even cared about a dead nun at all was the greatest mystery of this entire investigation.
In this wretched underground crypt, the overwhelming stink of malevolent power surrounded her, mocked her.
She was insignificant in comparison, a helpless bug.
She’d called her flames for more than just a handy torch.
They were her armor, her protection against a foe she was only beginning to understand.
What had she gotten herself into? Her own miserable sire seemed worried for her.
So. Why was she still here? For what? A dead nun?
My past. My brother. My niece. My sanity.
She shouldn’t have sent Keen ahead without her.
Turn. Pace. Turn. Pace. The fires dripping from her clothes lit the floor in incandescent shimmers.
Not because she and Keen were particularly close – quite the contrary, but it wasn’t right for him to be taking all the risk.
He was good with his weapons, yes, but he was young, inexperienced.
What did he know about the true power of demonic enemies?
He hadn’t even been able to best her with a surprise attack.
And what sat at the heart of these catacombs?
What defensive traps might be in place for unwary trespassers?
She spun, facing the invisible shield and the black depths beyond.
The light of Keen’s torch had vanished by now, swallowed by the dark and the distance.
How far was he going? Too far, if she couldn’t see his torch anymore.
“Keen!” She held her breath, listening to her voice echo in the empty corridors, ears pricked for any response.
Dogs had nothing on her hearing, nor her sense of smell – which she regretted right now, her gorge rising as a sudden stench, like that of a thousand corpses rotting in the sun, wafted along the corridor.
It wasn’t the smell that clutched at her stomach – she’d lived in a sewer for a year, after all – but the fear crawling up her throat, strange and unfamiliar. “Keen! If you can hear me, come back!”
Silence, except for the beating of her own heart. Thud. Thud. Thud.
“Keen!”
Goddess, she was starting to sound shrill.
She gritted her teeth, put a hand against the shield – ignoring the pain – and pushed, palm out, fingers splayed.
A low hum made her jaw ache, but she didn’t let up.
Could she break it? Crackling energy erupted across the surface of the shield, and it reached out and snapped at her, sizzling across her skin.
Her power flared, flames roaring in response, and she pushed harder.
Knives lanced her palm, sliced through her fingers.
Her lips pulled back from her teeth, the pain igniting anger in her belly, almost enough to override her terror.
In the dark beyond, she heard howling, like violent winds whipped to a frenzy. Distant, but growing closer. Somehow savage and gleeful.
“Keen!”
Her cane hit the floor with a dull clatter and she pressed both hands hard against the shield. It burst into a raging lightning storm, engulfing her even as she pushed with all her might. Her partner was in deep trouble, and she’d let him walk into it all alone!
Fuck me to the end of time. I never should have let–
The thunder and rattle of Keen’s blunderbuss echoed up the tunnel. The howling turned vicious. Beneath it, she could hear a voice shouting defiance. Then a second blast, different in timbre – a potion exploding. Shrieks followed it, close to human-sounding but not quite.
It’s guarded .
The random thought shot in and out of her head and she clawed at the shield with renewed desperation, cursing herself vehemently. Of course it was guarded! And not just by a spectral shield. Whatever “it” was – the Academy, or the thing which had created it. A demon? Demons? What?
Her hands were bleeding and burning. The power in the shield was like acid against her skin. She didn’t care. She fought through the pain. She’d rip this damnable thing open if it killed her.
There. A glimmer in the dark. A swirl of red and gold, reflecting off the rock walls of a twisting tunnel. Fire demons. On this plane! Not like the hellhounds waiting to ambush her in the realms of Chaos. These beasts had been summoned.
More flashes. A streak of silver. An explosion. Another. Good. Keen was fighting, deploying his noxious potions. The tinkle of breaking vials reached her ears, a bright note in all the chaos.
“Use the phosphammite!” she screamed. “Vials of Extinguish!”
The bedlam roared closer. Her partner appeared around a bend, a whirling figure at the center of the storm, fighting back with saber and potions as he ran for safety.
He’d lost his torch, but the passageway glowed with elemental demons – there were glimmers of sylphs among the fire creatures, bright blue alongside their crimson cousins.
They had him surrounded. Silver fangs took their toll in flesh.
A mist of blood hung like a nimbus, caught in a tornado of swirling demons, but the wounds didn’t seem to be slowing him down.
Adrenaline. It wouldn’t last.
Snarling, desperate, she pushed against the shield, paying her own toll. She managed to move a few feet closer to the yawning tunnel entrance just as Keen burst through–
–and stumbled, going hard to his knees. The fall knocked his saber from his hand and the demons pounced, tearing at his uniform with their claws, catching at his hair and skin.
He fought wildly, trying to knock them back with his blunderbuss.
His wide eyes found her as he struggled, beseeching.
He would have been close enough to touch if not for the damnable shield!
Hero roared and her hands, red and burning, skin peeling loose, plunged through the shield and grasped his shoulders. She had him! She pulled–
Power shivered through the invisible shield – a repulsive force.
Together, they were flung back, landing in a heap outside the protective barrier.
The shield re-formed, oozing closed like disturbed scum on the surface of a lake.
Trapped on the other side, the elemental demons could only howl with rage.