Just like a cat. And so he did. But it would kill me if anything happened to him. Maybe we were still figuring out how we fit together, but he mattered.
He cupped my face in his hands and kissed me: leashed passion, restrained desire, and tenderness too. I knew him now in ways I hadn’t before. I could read between the lines of that kiss: I’m here, and I care. I want you. Butch poked his head out of my bag—I didn’t think I’d ever seen the little dog so worried, and we had been in some dire situations. The Chihuahua whined a little, but he settled. Chance kept him for me, which was probably just as well.
“We must press on,” Greydusk said. I couldn’t read its face, but I thought I heard amusement in the tone.
“Is the route like this all the way down?” I asked.
“Uncharted and dangerous? Indeed.”
I swallowed a sigh. “Awesome. What’s with the bats?”
“They’re demon-touched. Pay them no heed.”
Demon-touched. Obviously. I should’ve thought of that.
I realized then that we stood on more a ledge than a proper path, which meant we had to descend again. The demon whispered a word, too faint for me to catch, and then the golden rope uncoiled above us, drifting down to him in a glimmer of light.
“Would the rope react if we lose our grip?” Chance asked.
Greydusk nodded. “It offers better safety than all the mundane climbing gear.”
That was something at least. The reassurance that magick might catch me if I plummeted gave me the guts to approach the edge while the demon tied the rope off again. His knots were impressive, complex and intricate. This time, the drop was deeper, double what we’d done before. Fourteen meters, and I couldn’t see the bottom. Below us, the darkness was absolute.
Shannon. I built her face in my mind’s eye. Dyed-black hair with colorful streaks. She liked to tip the ends in blue. She had a pretty face, but she always wore makeup to make the most of her pallor and a thick coating of kohl, along with three or four coats of mascara. It made her striking, for sure, and she liked dressing in Lolita-style Goth gear. Her panache made men who should know better take a second look.
For her, I could press forward. I could. The rope felt cool in my palms and I decided to try the demon’s trick. Magick would catch me if I failed, so…I let myself slide down, and the cord slid smoothly through my hands with an unnatural friction. No rope burns on my palms when I hit bottom, and it was way less terrifying than trying to brace my feet on the rough rock face.
“Well done,” Greydusk said.
Chance followed my example, with more alacrity and grace. He was smiling when I aimed my witchlight at his face. This probably felt like an adventure to him, bigger than any job we ever took when we were together. Usually it was pretty mundane stuff—missing persons and belongings, or occasionally somebody wanted to use me as a lie detector, like Escobar had done. Since I could view things as they’d really happened, provided an object with sufficient charge had witnessed the scene, I had done that more than once. Seen a few things I wished I hadn’t too.
This was something else entirely.
In this fashion, I clambered down two more drops. These were like stairs cut by a giant inside the mountain, made more difficult to navigate by that trickle that was growing into a cascade the farther down we went. Water streamed from cracks in the rock, rendering them slippery, but the rope simplified our passage.
The next level was downright wet. I tried to stay out of the downpour, but my movement swung me into the stream. I lost my grip on the rope and plummeted, slamming into the rock face, but the cord twined around my waist before I dropped more than a few feet. My heart pounded wildly as I hung there, swaying halfway between up and down.
Magick. Yeah, magick’s good. I didn’t have a spell in my head. Fear drove them all out until I could only dangle upside down and helpless, listening to Butch yap above me. He knew I was in trouble. Good dog.
“Are you hurt?” Chance asked, his voice taut with worry.
“Fine.” Mostly. Bruises and scrapes on my right side, but without the demon rope, it would’ve been worse.
Greydusk called, “Are you ready to resume?” like nothing had happened.
Gripping the cord in preparation for the positional shift, I answered in the affirmative, and it spoke a command. The rope straightened, and I slid the rest of the way down, where the demon caught me. It set me on my feet without comment, and then Chance followed.
“How much more of this?” he asked.
I wondered too. It felt like we had already come that kilometer downward, but it might just be that I wasn’t used to such activity. Clearly I wasn’t. At the best of times, I didn’t like heights, and the dark made it worse. So much worse.
In answer, Greydusk set off along a path that had become proper flat ground again, not just a slippery ledge. I strode after him, using the witchlight to assess the area. The primitive markings higher up had given way to more disturbing décor; I recognized some of the symbols from the harness that belonged to Caim. Which meant they were demonic sigils.
“What do they say?” I whispered to Greydusk. The heaviness of the dark made it feel wrong to speak in a normal tone of voice. Plus the weird acoustics stole your voice and sent it echoing down distant passageways. Not a good idea, under the circumstances.
The demon’s reply didn’t help. “Nothing you want to know, I promise.”
On second glance, I noted the faint flicker of magick emanating from the runes. The air was cold as a freezer as we passed through, a dark and silent stream running beside us. Some distance along, the river expanded into a shallow underground lake, broad enough that I couldn’t see the opposite shore.
Butch whined then, and Chance put him down so he could stretch his legs and christen the ground. The demon was patient with the dog’s needs, which was a surprising kindness, I thought. Then it knelt and touched the animal on the head with its long, strange fingers. Butch quivered, but didn’t flee, his big, bulging eyes fixed on the creature before him. He didn’t growl, either. Interesting.
“A most intriguing creature,” Greydusk said as it rose. “Shall we move on?”
I was tired, but didn’t want to camp down here; that was for sure. The sooner we got to the gate, the better I’d like it. So I nodded, Chance grabbed the tiny dog, and we set off.
Here There Be Demons
This time we marched for hours. The path led subtly downward, following the lake, wherein…things splashed. Just beyond the range of my witchlight, movement stirred, the hint of fins and tentacles bestirring the water, and that uncertainty was worse than knowing what danger I faced. I hastened my step as Greydusk diverged from the lake, charting a course across more uneven rocks that led to a natural archway painted in more demonic sigils. I hoped this would be the homestretch. Surely we’d almost covered the distance the demon had mentioned.
Earlier we had paused for protein bars, rest, and bottled water. My thighs burned from all the climbing. I concentrated on Shannon. It didn’t matter how much this hurt me; I’d get her back.
This is your fault. Her involvement with me led to her abduction. Yet if I’d left her in Kilmer, she’d be dead. And if I’d taken her away and then found somewhere else for her to stay, I had no guarantee that would’ve ended better. Sometimes there were no good choices.
“What’s Sheol like?” I asked eventually.
The demon answered without turning. “Darker than your world. Colder.”
That didn’t tell me as much as I’d hoped. “Anything else?”
“You’ll see when we reach Xibalba.”
“I thought we were going to—”
“Xibalba is a city.” By its tone, I could tell Greydusk wished I would stop pestering it.
Since my questions could distract from important matters, such as our safety, I shut up, but we hadn’t been walking long when that faint flutter of wings got louder. The demon’s reaction told me that wasn’t good. Not just bats like I had been telling myself for half a kilometer. This wasn’t the small flutter of many leather-winged creatures, but a deep and powerful snap-snap-snap. For reasons I couldn’t articulate, the sound chilled the marrow in my bones.
“It appears we shall encounter heavy resistance,” Greydusk observed. “Prepare to fight.”
The passage had a high ceiling, which wasn’t good. It gave whatever was coming too much room to maneuver. I had five spells swirling in my head, and one of them made light. Not helpful. So really I had four spells at my command, plus the touch, and unless the monster coming for us was wearing some article of clothing, like the knight had been, it probably wouldn’t help. Beside me, Chance crouched in a fighting stance; he had knuckle knives on both hands. Before, I’d always seen him fight without weapons, but a demon’s hide wouldn’t take damage from a human fist.
Even if he’s only half human.
The creature shrieked and dive-bombed us from the shadows, moving too fast for me to get a good look at it. I had a fleeting impression of a monstrously female face grafted onto the body of a humanoid pterodactyl, and I saw claws that shone like diamonds as it dove a second time. Chance slashed at the wings, trying to bring it down, and I mustered my resolve, firming hands that shook as I raised my athame. While this spell might not save us, it wouldn’t hurt either.
The power swelled inside me, burning, hurting, but I let it center me. Pain means I’m still here, fighting. I envisioned it swelling in my hand in a seething rush, gathering, gathering, and then I sent it out on my resolve like a dark and winged thing riding the magickal wind as I whispered, “Hostes hostium caecus.”
The enemy sightless.
I knew nothing about this demon, but it would help if the monster couldn’t see us. Its face looked so hideous that I wondered if this thing might have inspired the Harpy legends, thousands of years ago, but its skull didn’t seem shaped for sonar. A second later, it proved it had no special neural navigation when it screamed and slammed into a wall. The collision stunned it, and the thing dropped. Chance sprang to finish it before it could recover, but Greydusk raised a long, unsettling hand.
“Please. Allow me. Its death can serve us in two fashions if I do it.”
Though I didn’t know if this was a good idea, I nodded, mostly because I wanted to see firsthand what it could do. That might save our lives later, if it gave me time to prepare some defense. My spells weren’t super-blow-the-door-off-the-hinges powerful, but properly deployed, they might save us.
Greydusk strode in, dodged a blind and desperate strike, and slammed both hands—with sucker pads—on either side of the misshapen skull. The creature seized, grand mal tremors rocking it from head to toe. Steam hissed from the point of contact, and an awful purple light ran up our guide’s spindly arms. An orange glow sparked in Greydusk’s skull and then the attacker went limp.
“You killed it?” Chance asked.
It had done more than that, but I waited to see how it would reply.
“I drained it,” the demon corrected. “Its knowledge, memories, and skills are now mine. Sadly, in this form, I cannot use some of them.”