CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX #2
As for Hero, she had her sword cane and that was all.
Her demon blood was her best weapon. She wore a long duster over her scapular and billowing pants, but she’d given her last remaining hat to Keen’s mother.
Her eyes spun hypnotically in the deepening dusk.
“Are you ready, Demonhunter? Surprise is our best weapon.”
“Ready, Inspector.”
They waited for another patrol to pass, then rushed the mausoleum, Hero in the lead, surrounded by a nimbus of flame, a raw red-and-orange conflagration.
She bounded over tombstones and crashed through a line of low boxwood hedges while Keen followed in her wake, hoping he wouldn’t have to engage at all.
The two women guarding the entrance met the attack gamely, eyes wide but bodies moving confidently as they lifted their staves in a defensive posture.
One opened her mouth to scream for help, and Hero laid her out with a tap of her ebony cane even as she blocked the other’s staff with a raised forearm.
With impossible speed, Hero shifted her stance and tore the weapon from the stunned nun’s grip.
A quick conk on the head, and the erstwhile guard joined her companion on the crushed-stone pathway.
“Two down,” Hero said, leaping over the two unconscious women to mount the steps into the mausoleum. Keen followed, feeling somewhat useless if relieved not to have had to punch a nun. Yet.
By now, the alarm had been raised and bells rang out across the campus – a call to arms. Inside the mausoleum, Keen helped Hero drag the great bronze doors shut behind them, regretting that there was no way to seal it from the inside – but then, who would need to lock themselves inside a crypt?
Keen glanced toward the inky stairwell leading down into the catacombs.
Maybe they could block it? Knock down the walls at the entrance or something?
A wave of heat made him stumble backward toward the stairwell.
He lifted an arm to shield his face against a sudden swelling of flame as, before his astonished eyes, Hero seemed to grow.
Fire swirled around her, through her, in and out of her like a twisting serpent.
Each time the flames passed through her flesh, she seemed a little larger, a little more terrifying.
His mouth grew dry and his eyes hurt from staring, but inside his heart swelled and his confidence soared. What could stand against this ?
Hero had drawn her slim sword from its ebony sheath and flames now rode the length of it. With careful deliberation, she set the tip against the seam where the doors joined and sparks flew as she drew the sword slowly downward. Where it moved, the bronze glowed red and started to soften and melt.
Keen swallowed. Sweat stood out on his forehead and he backed as far away from his partner as he could.
When she stepped back from the doors, the flames died to a flicker, yet the door still glowed. “There,” she said. “Now we’re sealed inside. No more nuns to worry us.”
Fantastic. The dark well of the catacombs drew Keen’s gaze. Only one way out now…
He turned to his partner. “After you, Inspector.”
Their journey through the catacombs passed in a blur of endless bones, the darkness broken only by Hero’s bright nimbus. Keen kept on her heels; he had no torch this time, but he knew where they were going. They both did.
Keen had hoped never to return to this dreary underground abode of the dead, but he should have known better.
Ever since he’d stumbled upon the eldritch evil lurking beneath Bright Renewal Academy, this confrontation had been inevitable.
One thing he knew for certain, however: this time, he would not face it alone.
There was no way in the whole of the Underworld he would go ahead without Hero Viridian at his side. Not if he hoped to survive.
“We’re here,” his partner announced when they found themselves at the end of a wide, decrepit corridor, standing at the threshold of another stairwell leading down into blackness.
Keen recognized the place and shivered as he remembered fighting for his life on the broken clay bricks, strong hands yanking him from the jaws of doom, a whirlwind of fire and claws and howling monsters.
How had he ever let Abigail seed doubt in his mind about his own partner? Shame filled him.
Beside him, Hero dragged her sword across the air, leaving a trail of sparks behind it. She hissed, sounding somehow both eager and appalled. The shield remained, but she had gotten through it once. She would do so again.
“I’m about to stir up some trouble,” she said, shedding her long duster and tucking the ebony half of her cane through the golden braided cincture around her waist. She looked of her order more than she ever had – girded for battle – but he wasn’t about to tell her that. She was an ex -nun, after all.
“You have to watch my back.” She said it like she wasn’t quite sure if he would, and he was struck by deep shame once more. She’d saved his life that night and a few times since. Saved his mother’s life, too.
“Inspector. Hero.” He spoke softly but earnestly. This might be his last chance to make things right. “I will watch your back. I swear it. You can trust me with your life, Hero Viridian. As I trust you with mine.”
Hero blinked, her flaming eyes spinning languidly. She’d been shaking out her arms, preparing herself for whatever she was going to attempt, but she paused to stare at him. “Are we giving speeches, DH Keen?” she asked, sounding amused. “Should I say something inspiring?”
“I – uh – if you want.” This wasn’t the reaction he’d expected. Flustered, he adjusted his saber and stared at his feet. He deserved her disdain.
“Eh, maybe later.” She raised her sword. Again, flames wreathed it – wreathed her – and one of her flaming eyes darkened in a wink. “I trust you, too. Oleander Keen.” Her voice deepened, grew hard. “Are you ready, Demonhunter?”
He snapped to attention. “Ready, Inspector Death Speaker!”
She pressed the tip of her burning sword against the invisible shield. A needle to a dragon’s heart.