by Riley London
But if there’s a chance, any chance, of getting them out – and of getting Father Gabriel home – that’s now.
“Please Erik,” I beg. One more look, those eyes take in the room and Lucifer. Then Erik’s eyes come back to me.
Noah moves in – oh my god, Noah – and he steps close.
“I’m staying,” he growls, close to my ear.
A split second. Time is running out. An hourglass with sand running perilously close to empty. In one swift move, Erik throws Father Gabriel over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and heads for the door.
Lucifer watches the whole exchange, just looking bored. I’m terrified he will kill them on the spot. But he just shrugs. “They’ve served their purpose. Go. Not that they’ll ever get across the boundary.”
Father Gabriel looks at me in horror, those light brown eyes filled with something. Pleading. No, Max. You come. Don’t stay. Max!
They’re gone.
For just a second, I can breathe until the snakelike voice purrs from almost immediately behind me. The teleporting thing? Fucking creepy.
“Maximiliana,” he says, each syllable a perversion on his lips.
For some reason, I notice that there’s a complete absence of smell here. Every level of the dungeon stank like brimstone, bodies and much worse.
The devil’s private chambers just smell like he hit it hard with an odor-covering spray.
Noah rifles in his bag, magical objects clanking together, and Lucifer looks up at him. Stares. For one awful minute, I see the intention of death there and the flash of horror – complete and abject horror fills me – nearly overwhelming my senses.
I throw myself in front of Noah.
“No,” I scream.
Lucifer makes an exaggerated face of annoyance, giving the slightest fling of his hand. Then he gives a wicked grin. “Noah James Foster Brewster-Crane, it’s not time yet for you to dwell with me just yet. Though if you continue you as you are, we’ll have infinite time to catch up.”
Noah’s face is struck with an expression of horror at those words. Lucifer lifts his hand, and one black butterfly lifts drunkenly from the palm. A confusing moment of silence where all eyes are on the butterfly. Then thousands pour from his hands and the beating of their tiny wings is deafening. Noah lifts as if on a breeze and bounces off the nearby wall like a ragdoll.
Terror fills me. I’ve been in the deep end before, but I’m over my head and caught in a riptide. There’s no way that we’re making it out of this alive.
“You don’t want him,” I try. “I will stay. Just let him go.”
Strange, goatlike eyes that glow with the purest red embers meet mine. “Oh, very well.”
He turns to where Noah lies groaning, rising to his feet. “Noah Brewster-Crane, I banish you to the boundary of this place.”
Boredom drips from his voice.
Some force pulls Noah out of the room, his whole body and everything he’s clinging to, go backwards at blinding speed. Through the room toward the door, out the door, and out of sight.
A distressed sound escapes my lips and I take a frantic step after him, but Lucifer raises a finger and I freeze. Paralyzed. Unable to move.
“Maximiliana Pale-Ryder, you wouldn’t renege on a promise to the devil himself, would you?” He cackles at his own joke.
I don’t know what I expected. Most of the demons that I have fought have been terrifying. Huge, brawn, leaking evil and uncontrollable chaos magic.
This man, or this creature, is nothing like those things.
He reads my mind, or he reads my face.
Or both.
“Oh no, I’ve had millennia to refine my edges,” he says dryly.
What am I seeing? It’s like his appearance is always in flux, constantly shifting, each feature rotating through a set of options and then settling on one while he tests another.
“What is wrong with your face?” I spit out.
Immediately, the kaleidoscope effect stops and he settles into a stable visage.
Tall, muscular. Dark eyes, dark hair. Strong features, with something that reminds me a little of Erik, with a slightly large nose that’s clearly been broken. The coloring is all Tristan. The way the hair flops forward, and something about the set of the eyes? Noah.
“A composite of your desires,” he confirms, voice cold.
“But enough about me, Max,” his voice is razors on skin, nails on a chalkboard. “Let’s talk about you.”
Still unable to move, I stand frozen while he circles. Assessing. Appraising.
“How about a little mood music?” his voice is dark, deep, holding the promise of something.
The sound of Gregorian chant, but evil and in agony, fills the room.
Seriously. I didn’t think this could get worse.
My terrified eyes find him.
He wiggles dark eyebrows. And when our eyes meet, he taunts me with a weird flicker of his tongue.
Was that supposed to be….sexy?
The thought hasn’t even registered, when a mutiny of my body steels my resolve. Arcs of pleasure wash over me, pebbling my nipples, soaking my core.
I hate this filth and everything he’s done. What he did to Gabriel. What the last few weeks have cost.
I focus on building a wall against his invasion of the mind.
He tilts his head, curious. “How interesting.”
I hate the way he rolls his Rs.
He makes a little purring sound, and revulsion rolls down my spine.
“Oh, Maximiliana, you are a delight,” he says, his voice taking on a tone that I recognize. Compulsion. Enchantment. Everything that Tristan has taught me to defend against.
“So much better than I’d hoped.”
“Why do I even matter to you?” None of this makes any sense.
What had started out like a retaliation against the church, a war on one of the most successful exorcists, had quickly melted into a mess that I fail to grasp even now.
“Oh, this has never been about Father Gabriel,” Lucifer says. “He was merely the lure.”
The lure.
Serena had said something like that, back in her office.
“You’ve had the chance to spend some time here, Max,” he continues. “Hell’s a great place, but it’s got a rather limited view don’t you think?”
“Let me go,” I plead.
To my shock, he does, but when I stumble forward he catches me.
It’s not an embrace, and not not one either.
In fact, like everything here, it’s a little like an overblown tableau from the cover of some cheesy novel.
He just needs a fan for the hair.
I don’t even think it before I feel the exhale of some unseen wind on my skin.
But here, at this distance, it’s getting harder to resist the pull. He turns up the volume. Dialing in the frequency.
A composite of your desires.
“There are very few things I want anymore, Max,” he hisses, his breath hot on my ear. My body is rigid with fear, but I can’t look away.
My body moves a little. “You happen to have something that I want very much. And the fact that you’re putting up such a fight? Well, let’s just say your prospects are looking better and better. A better view. Distractions from the boredom of eternal torture. Someone with the will still left to resist.”
Something is hot and hard against my leg.
For a second, I think with horror, that Satan’s boner is rubbing my thigh.
I make a little gurgle of horror. But he doesn’t seem to notice.
Whatever it is, it’s not him. It’s actually on me.
That’s when I remember the dagger.
The plain, unadorned dagger.
It’s so hot through the thin cloth of my pocket that it sears my skin.
“The thing about the world Max, is that intentions rarely work the way that you think they will. Every grand machination, every big plan. Usually, they fizzle out. But once in awhile, circums
tances conspire and bring together the unexpected.” Lucifer leans in, dragging that lizard tongue down the side of my throat.
Skin sizzles, and the blade in my pocket turns to a red hot poker. A tear leaks from my eye, but it helps.
Helps me focus.
Helps me pull my mind back a little from his invasion.
Helps me think that maybe, just maybe, there’s the barest chance I will still get out of this.
If my pant leg doesn’t catch fire.
“A happy accident, if you will. Pure concentrated witch blood. Demon Hunter. Seasoned by the church, molded by the fervor of an exorcist. And below it all, the key. Something so ancient, so vast, that even I could open new possibilities.”
The smell of flesh burning is mine, and I’m close to gagging with the pain.
My hand drops. The zipper is open enough that my fingers could grasp the knife.
I remember Ari’s face, intent on mine.
Keep it with you.
You’ll know.
“What I hadn’t anticipated was the possibilities, the idea that life and death could come together to create something entirely new. An intoxicating alchemy,” he says, his voice dropping into a sexy-register that’s evoking chills and shudders.
It’s exactly the effect he wants.
“Just a taste of your blood. A few drops, or gallons. Who knows what we could unleash?”
Life and death. Dark, ancient forces below the witch blood. I have no idea what he’s talking about.
Those strange slitted eyes meet mine and widen almost imperceptibly. “You don’t know, do you?”
I don’t know anything, you fucking monster.
Except for the fact that I’m taking my shot.
In that instant, I see him. A form, rounding the corner.
Tall, lean, dark hair, dark eyes. So familiar, so foreign.
Not unlike the visage the beast has taken.
But it’s all real. No composites. No manipulation. Just flesh and bone.
Tristan.
“Illuminare,” he screams.
My heart pounds as I reach into my pocket, seizing the dagger, wrenching it out.
The flesh on my hand is burning away, and leaving scars that I will have forever.
It’s unbearably hot, and I plunge it into the space where Lucifer stands.
Making contact, I feel it sink it.
The screams of a thousand angry devils join together in a chorus of fury.
My hands fly up to my ears, but I can’t see anything.
Blinding screams of fury. Blinding light.
A hand, familiar, sure, wraps around my arm. Gentle, but urgent, it pulls me forwards. Tristan.
Dark and Sexy to the rescue, I think, improbably.
At just his touch, that familiar hope washes over me. The sense that everything’s going to be okay.
He picks up speed, runs. I keep up, despite the difference in our legs. He doesn’t let me go, hauling me behind him as we tear through the brightness that’s beginning to recede over the uneven terrain of Hell’s ground below.
There’s the sounds of footsteps in pursuit. First a few, distant. And then many, so many that my blood runs cold. They grow closer, hissing and taunting and shrieking Lucifer’s fury.
Then a voice, a familiar voice. Noah.
“Tristan! Max!” I find new strength, new speed, leaning into that core that propels me forward. It comes into view. There’s a river, a river that looks like it’s water and blood.
Not deep, but wide. Slow. A dead, sluggish river that runs red with the blood of Hell’s victims.
The River Styx.
Even Tristan comes up short, and we’ve got precious seconds. Erik has Father Gabriel over his shoulder, but he lowers him to the ground. He reaches for his weapons. Ready to ford the river and what?
Die with us.
Better than to watch you get slaughtered, his face says.
“Cross it,” screams Noah.
He clutches that weird flask in his hand.
If there’s ever been a time to drink, some distant part of my brain quips.
I don’t know if you can cross it. One way to find out.
We plunge in, and it’s like moving through watery sludge, but we push forward and we’re halfway across before the first demons splash into the edge behind us.
Heart thundering, mouth dry, I push on. Half-dragging Tristan, half-being dragged.
What else can we do?
Noah screams words that I can’t decipher and hurls the liquid from the flask into the river. Instantly, there’s a sizzle and screams behind me.
The demons.
The words that Noah screams come into focus.
Holy Water.
He manages to work a spell that transmutes the fucking River Styx, the border between Hell and the other planes, into a steady flow of Holy Water.
Demons rage on the other side, a few of the braver ones plunging to their deaths.
As we come out and up into the sand, Tristan collapses.
I just stand there, looking unsure from Noah to Erik to Father Gabriel. And to a form huddled behind them.
The woman prisoner, what was her name? Bella.
A damned soul.
If we get out of here, can we take a damned soul with us?
Should we?
Gabriel groans, and Erik turns to pick him up.
Noah clears his throat. “You’re safe.”
It’s more a question than an answer. I throw myself at him, hold him for just a second, then let him go.
I look back at the river. “Thank you.”
And then I add, “Teach me that.”
He grins.
Tristan looks up at Noah.
“How long?”
How long do we have?
The grin falls away.
Not long.
The sizzling sounds are falling quieter by the second.
Fuck.
We cannot get a break.
I look around. We’re on a sandy embankment, beneath a cliff that seems to go on forever.
To one side, the river. To the other, a wall that’s impossible to scale.
I won’t die here.
I won’t let them die here.
Noah is saying something, “Can you do it Max?”
Do what?
Erik has Father Gabriel in his arms, cradling him like a child. It’s like he’s passed out.
Please just be passed out.
Don’t let us have come this far for him to die.
“Tell me what to do.”
Tristan pushes Noah aside, and stands in front of me.
“They wanted your blood, Max,” he says.
My blood? Witch blood? Lucifer’s voice drifts back.
Something darker. More ancient.
“To open the gate,” he says urgently, turning to me – not gently – toward the wall.
All I see is stone. He has the map in his hands, pointing at the wall.
“It’s just stone.” I sound a little desperate.
“It’s not,” he insists. Noah moves beside me, his mouth already moving as he puts his hands against the stone.
Communing. Communicating. Scouting.
Bella’s moved closer to Erik, clearly deciding he’s her best chance at defense when this all goes sideways.
Smart woman.
Noah’s eyes flash wide and he points toward what looks like a discoloration in the stone. A lightning bolt slash.
He points. “There?”
Tristan stares hard at the map. “Yes, it’s there.”
There’s a splash behind us, then a scream, but also another splash. It hurts but is no longer killing the demons.
We’ve got minutes, maybe seconds.
I scream an almost primal sound, plunging forward with my hand outstretched. It smacks the rock. I will it to open.
Nothing happens.
Oh my god, I’ve failed.
They’re all going to die, and it’s my fault.
&
nbsp; But then, a thought. Blood.
“Give me your knife,” I say to Erik. But it’s too late.
Noah pulls the small switchblade from his pouch and flips it open.
“I’m sorry,” he says, grabbing my hand, starting to slash open my palm.
But then he flips my hand over, cutting above the knuckles.
“You’re more of a puncher.”
Damn right I am.
I slam my fist back into the rock, unable not to scream at the pain of the impact.
The last thing I do is reach out and grab the edge of Erik’s shirt. I can already feel Tristan’s hand on me. I pray he has Noah. And that someone grabbed Bella.
We stumble forward, and then, we’re on the lawn in front of Salem Academy.
I’m on my knees, in the dirt and grass. Serena rushes forward, and she murmurs over Father Gabriel.
Ari grabs my arm, wrenches me around.
There’s like a tear in the fabric of reality.
I start to gag.
Ari grabs my hand, squeezing until more blood pools, kneeling down beside me.
“Repeat after me,” he commands, moving my hand so blood hurls at the space where there’s a gaping chasm between Hell and Earth.
I say everything he says, as fast as I can.
It seals itself up, leaving no evidence it was ever there.
That the divine seams between the worlds parted for just a second to save the people I care about.
Except four demons that managed to get through.
I fight, trying to rise to my feet. So tired.
A voice from behind me, a sharp, strong, woman’s voice.
“Oh fuck no,” says Serena, raising her hands. She brings her fingers together like fists, and I watch in fascination and horror as they implode, folding in and in on themselves until they disintegrate where they stand.
“Blimey! ’Oly shit,” declares a cockney voice from somewhere out of sight, sounding impressed. Bella.
Long minutes pass.
I just stay where I am. Erik comes and kneels beside me. I squeeze his arm, but don’t rise.
He, Tristan, and Serena move off toward the academy to tend to Father Gabriel. Tristan speaks to Bella and she follows them inside. Only a few minutes have gone by before a dark SUV arrives, a woman in a white coat runs into the house.
“The doctor,” says Noah.
I turn. He looks awful. Tired and drained. Covered in gore and filth and who knows what else.
I notice he’s clutching his arm. Injured.
