Waltzing into Damnation (The Deception Dance Book 3)

by Rita Stradling

  Andras, however, seems unimpressed as he looks at my middle finger, and then into my eyes. A sandy brow raises up his forehead. “It took you all that time to learn how to raise your finger?”

  “Ugh, never mind,” I say, dropping my hand.

  A small smirk plays on his lips before he spins away. He calls back, “If you plan to try to stop me, it might be a good idea for you to get some sleep first. You look very tired. I will wake you before the battle, and if you wish, I’ll take you with me.”

  “I’m really tired of following you everywhere. Maybe it’s a ruler thing, but it’s beginning to piss me off,” I call after him.

  “Then walk faster.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  The Last Day Before

  I wake with the mother of all headaches pounding against my skull. Likely, my migraine has everything to do with the boat continuously bucking under me. The lamps, flat screen, and complimentary sodas on the counter all rattle and clang. The sounds drill into my temples, feeding the headache monster that already took up residence.

  Rolling out of bed, I do my best to stumble to the bathroom. I’d slept fully dressed. Andras might have said he would come get me, but I trust that vague statement somewhere in the zero to one percent range.

  There’s nothing resembling ibuprofen in the well-stocked mirror cabinets. I do find a toothbrush, toothpaste, floss, and then the rest of the cabinet is filled with . . .

  “Demons,” I mutter as I slam the cupboard door quickly. I don’t know what the contraptions are for, and I don’t want to know. Ever.

  But I need to brush my teeth, so I cover my eyes with one hand and reopen the cupboard, extract the stuff and quickly close it. Knowing I’m as ready as I’ll ever be to face this impossible day, I head out the door and toward Andras’ room.

  Thank all that’s holy no achingly familiar violin music wafts down the hall. In my fitful dreams last night, I again dreamt of Leijonskjöld Slott. The dreams had been of that young man Hampus, and they were tRäumatizing, so much so, and I’m now so utterly grateful their details are fading from my memory, hopefully forever.

  One thing is very clear in my mind now, Elena should have killed Hampus herself.

  Taking a steadying breath, I rap on Andras’ door. “Andras? You better have not ditched me!”

  The floor continues to bounce, and I grab onto the wall so I won’t fall. “Yep, he ditched me,” I grumble after a full minute of just waiting. “And why am I even waiting for him to act anyway? Ugh.”

  The doorknob turns at my lightest touch, and the door swings open.

  Across the room, a shirtless Andras stares at me. “You’re not very patient.”

  I spin around and just manage not to slam into the wall. “And yet again, you’re not very dressed. You know that’s not your body you’re showing off, right?”

  “It is now my body,” he says.

  “Except it’s not.” I rub my temples, as my headache isn’t going to allow me to continue this pointless argument. Grabbing onto a lamp fastened to the wall, I attempt to stabilize but only end up repeatedly knocking against a built-in table.

  “This time, I'm not doing it to show off anything,” he says. There’s a long ripping sound, followed by a second. I peek over to see he’s torn the back of the shirt up its length in two places. “I am fixing my shirt so my wings don't rip through it. I'm probably going to have to carry you, and I suspected being shirtless made you uncomfortable.”

  “I appreciate you taking my feelings into consideration, but it's not going to change shit about the way I feel about you,” I say.

  “And that is a lie,” he says, but his concentration is on the shirt. “After what you said last night, I’ve decided just to tell you when you’re lying so you know.”

  I don't have the energy to fight about it. Honestly, I barely have the energy to stand here. I pointedly look away from him as he begins to put on his shirt. “I know why Elena needed Hampus dead.”

  “She never agreed to let me kill Hampus,” he says.

  “Obviously, I'm a lot different from her,” I mutter. “I would've killed him.”

  “That is also a lie. But it is true that you've changed a lot since then; I'll agree with that part. When you were Elena, you were raised to think yourself powerless. I think time in purgatory made you more pensive, cynical and persevering.”

  “I really doubt Elena would've wanted to have another life after what she went through. She probably would've wanted to go to heaven,” I say.

  “You might be right. I wasn’t thinking about what you wanted when I brought you back. I was thinking about wanting you,” he says, his voice quiet and rough. A few seconds later, he’s standing beside me, thankfully not too close. “We should go. My guess is that Madeline has made enough of a bridge to cross.”

  I release the lamp and brace myself against the wall, staring into his all–too–familiar face. “If I manage to prevent you from killing Madeline, are you going to try to kill me?”

  “I'm never going to try to kill you again,” he says.

  I just stare for a moment, trying to find the wiggle room in that statement and failing. “Under any circumstance?”

  “Even if you're killing me, I will not raise a hand against you,” he says.

  I am trying to kill him. No, I’m required to murder him. Somehow, it feels wrong not to give him this information while he makes this promise to me. But I'm not that dumb. I’m not about to tell Andras I have an active plan to destroy him just to make the playing field fair. “That sounds binding.”

  “It is binding. I will not attempt to kill you again in this life or any other,” he says.

  I swallow heavily. “Well, thank you?”

  “You’re welcome,” he says before spinning away, obviously about to walk out again. But he pauses to peer over his shoulder. “Are you coming?”

  “You’re waiting for me?”

  “Yes . . . come walk beside me.”

  After walking through the constantly quaking ship, we come out again on the bow deck. When I step to the edge, I can't help noticing our boat is quite a bit higher than I remember it being last night. And it's not difficult to figure out why. A thick pathway of boulders, trees, and vines lead all the way, miles and miles, from the distant Central American shore to our boat. Stones roll over each other as the tree roots and branches web together, snaking their way toward us. When I look over the ship’s railing, it's easy to see the entirety of the Sanctuary is now hovering out of the water in a leafy canopy. And since a thick root system reaches out of the ocean directly below our boat, my guess is that some sort of tree is holding us out of the water like a child's hand lifting out a toy boat.

  The boughs snake up the exterior of the ship like thick wooden ladders.

  “Where is Madeline?” I ask Andras.

  He points to the thick, webbed plant path. “She's making her way to us.”

  Shading my eyes, I squint against the glare of the rising sun. I can maybe, maybe see something moving on the boulder path.

  “Okay, then. What's your plan?” I ask him.

  “They are.” He nods up to the top of the ship.

  And there they are. Hundreds, if not thousands, of demons line the cruise ship’s roof. Most look humanoid in shape only as they bare sharp teeth, eyes glowing red against the paling effect of the eastern light.

  “All of them against one woman?” I ask as I turn back to Andras.

  “They’re the distraction. Most of them know they’ll be returning to hell today and are just looking forward to a good fight before they do,” he says, though his concentration stays fixed on the figure far in the distance.

  I can’t help giving a skeptical look. “She’s that powerful?”

  “Babylon is as potent as I am now and grows in power every day.” His hands grip the handrail, and he looks up at me through his blond, wavy hair. “I think you know I wouldn’t say this lightly.”

  “Babylon . . .” I spin fully to him
. “Babylon the great?”

  “That is what hell calls her now.”

  Ah. I know the passages about Babylon all too well, as Tobias and other Leijonskjöld soldiers theorized I was Babylon the Great before everyone realized I wasn’t the Anti-Christ.

  High opinion of me, those Leijonskjöld soldiers have.

  “If she’s this powerful, what did you do to kidnap her baby?” I whisper with a glare.

  He takes a moment to answer, his gaze far away. “Ten months ago, Babylon headed to Leijonskjöld Slott on the day of Stephen Tapper’s funeral. She went into labor on the journey, and May was able to conjure Babylon to sleep. After May stole Babylon’s babe, she attempted to kill the Earth witch. It didn’t work.”

  “That’s so evil,” I whisper. “You’re so evil.”

  “I took no pleasure in fulfilling the deal, and I will not enjoy killing her today. But I will do it. She’s ready for us now,” Andras says, pointing down at the path of vines.

  Gripping onto the handrails, I lean over the edge of the ship. With the shaking, leaning out this way is anything but safe. Yet, rather uncomfortably, I know with absolute certainty that if I fall over the ship’s edge, Andras will catch me.

  Down below, the branches pulse and grow, grinding the boulders. Rock, vines and tree merge and writhe, bulging out. A crude mass of organic matter swells from the clotting earth center. It keeps growing, splitting off in seven sections as more vines and rocks pull out of the path, forming what starts to look like a dragon with seven heads made entirely out of earth.

  No wonder they call her Babylon the Great if Madeline is making dragons with seven heads.

  The dragon continues to grow, and from it, another bulge forms. A year ago, Madeline pushed her way out of a tree right in front of me. It was both freaky and foul. It had nothing on this.

  The knotted stone and vine dragon births Madeline out of its back like water from a whale’s blowhole. She comes out in a spray of plant matter. Arms outstretched, she beholds us.

  If Andras hadn’t told me this was Madeline, I wouldn’t have recognized her in a million years. No part of the hot-tempered Earth witch I knew remains in the creature before me.

  She looks like the classic portrayal of the Gorgon Medusa, though instead of snakes for hair, thick, thorny stalks whip about her head. Madeline—Babylon must have grown as well, she looks much too large for how far away she is. Sharp teeth bare from her mouth, and red eyes glower up at us.

  “Send in your legions, Andras!” Her voice booms through the air, a resounding, hissing sound.

  Andras leans back and gives me a look, his sandy brows raised. “You want to give her a baby?”

  “Yes,” I say, but my voice sounds far from certain. Stronger, I say, “It’s her baby. Madeline is going to do her best, and both she and her baby are terrifying, so maybe she’s the one best equipped to take care of what he’s become. She obviously loves him, and I don’t think May is capable of love anymore. She burned everyone she knew alive.”

  Andras studies me like my interpretation is very interesting to him.

  “Pom was a good man in a bad situation—May was friends with him. He wasn’t even part of any of this. And May poisoned him with demon blood just because he was there, and then she killed him just because he was there. To me, that makes Medusa preferable, no matter if May is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen and Madeline looks like a creature from my worst nightmares.”

  “I can understand your reasoning,” he says with a contemplative expression. “But I still plan to kill her.”

  And suddenly a realization hits me, accompanied by the tell-tale prickling sensation behind my ear. The reason Andras won’t give Madeline her baby is that she declared she would not rest until he was permanently dead, so in his mind he has to kill her. Babylon is getting to be far too powerful and might be able to kill this body, which he isn’t going to let happen. Satan declared the Antichrist must have a guardian until puberty, so Andras isn’t going to act against May—no matter his distaste.

  I close my eyes, realizing I’ve been debating with a demon on who is the best parent to raise the Antichrist.

  The Antichrist.

  When I reopen my eyes, Andras still studies me.

  “I’m going to start the attack now, Raven. You’re welcome to try to stop me.” He says it without a trace of irony.

  “I’m going to try, I just haven’t figured out how I’m going to try.”

  Andras’ dark wings shoot out of his back, giant and black and as beautiful in the pale morning light as the first time I saw them. Behind him, his demons tip over the roof of the boat and scuttle down its vine-covered side like spiders.

  The seven-headed earthen dragon climbs forward, now easily a third as big as the cruise ship itself. The dragon pounces onto the boat, climbing up as the demons descend to meet it.

  Beside me, Andras unsheathes his hell wrought fire sword.

  Screams erupt from below. I can’t lean far enough to see the battle, but bloody pieces of what look like limbs spray out from the ship wall.

  Andras raises his sword, but his attention catches on something overhead. He growls, “I told her not to come out here.”

  I follow his line of sight to a new figure standing on top of the upper deck. May stands with her white dress and black hair flapping in the breeze. The snake child is conspicuously absent from around her neck.

  The flapping of Andras’ enormous wings wrenches back my attention once more as he leaps from the balcony and over the edge.

  As soon as he disappears over, I’m running back for the ship. If May doesn’t have baby Antichrist with her, he’s somewhere on the Sanctuary. Seeing what I saw today, I don’t know why it feels so essential to give Madeline her baby back, but it does. It feels like this might be one of the biggest plays I can make against Satan, and that has to be the right move, doesn’t it?

  I run in through the sliding glass doors to find a nearly deserted cruise ship.

  “Räum, this would have been an awesome thing to have a vision about,” I grouse, though I sincerely doubt my demonic recognizance would give me visions on how to kidnap the Antichrist from his Satan-approved kidnapper.

  To my extreme annoyance, the only place where passengers seem to be congregating is in front of the customer service desk, where an extremely harassed looking Caroline, the cruise director, and several other crew representatives stand. The many varied creatures before them do not look happy. As I approach, the smell stings my eyes and makes my already queasy stomach clench. Vomit pools on the floor, reeking of rotten fruit and acid. The passengers yell and screech about missed excursions and messes in their rooms and other things I couldn’t care less about.

  None too gently, I push my way to the front of the line, shoving multi-colored limbs out of my path. More than one creature hisses, snaps their teeth, or growls at me. When they look down to see their bothersome intruder, they fight to get away from me.

  As I doubt any of these assorted creatures are demons, my guess is they’re just plain afraid of being anywhere near me if Andras shows up. Eventually, the crowd gives way and I have a clear path to the gleaming mahogany counter.

  “Hi,” I say as I practically fall onto it.

  Caroline takes a step back, her luminous red eyes going wide. “Your Magnificence, what can I do for you?”

  Her greeting leaves me really confused, but I don’t have time for it right now. “Take me to the woman May’s room, or I’ll explode you into dust and send you to burn in the ashes of hell…or maybe I’ll just tell Andras that after recognizing me, you got one of your lackeys to try to ambush and kill me.”

  I didn’t know for sure that this is true, but from her expression and lack of denial, I know it’s the truth now.

  Caroline takes a tentative step toward the counter, reaches forward and types furiously on a keyboard. Her lips purse and eyes shine with malice as her gaze returns to mine. “Follow me, please.”

  “Yeah, one sec
ond with that.” I raise my hands. “Everyone here, if I die, it’s because Caroline the cruise director killed me. If you tell Andras that, he’ll probably spare your life and maybe even reward you.”

  Yes, I’m betting on the fact that these creatures don’t automatically know truth from lies—because I’m guessing most of that was at least half-lies.

  Caroline doesn’t call me out though; she simply circles the counter and walks quickly toward the stairwell. She doesn’t seem to have any trouble in her extremely high heels. She practically hops up the staircase while I have to grip onto the handrails and still barely keep vertical.

  We ascend three staircases with me slamming into walls the whole way and stop at the floor just by my sleeping quarters. Caroline pivots into a corridor with almost as few doors as my floor.

  Pulling out a keycard from her jacket pocket, she goes to unlock the door, but I grab her wrist. An idea smacks me upside the head, and I find myself blurting out, “You really care about this ship. You care a lot about it—it’s your whole life.”

  “Please let go of me, ma’am,” she says with a smile that’s more a baring of teeth.

  I don’t release her; instead, I stabilize myself with one hand on the wall. “Andras says Madeline will probably sink the ship if she wins, and she actually might be able to do it.”

  Caroline’s eyes narrow on me. “And?”

  “And I want to make a deal with you,” I say, shocked to hear the words coming out of my own mouth.

  “I can’t think of anything you have to offer me. I’d tell you to jump overboard, but you’ve now ensured I’ll take the blame,” she says with a malicious sneer.

  I ignore her snide comment. “This is the deal I offer: if I get Babylon to leave without sinking the Sanctuary, you have to release one crew member of my choice from their lifetime contract. You also can’t tell anyone about it except the specific people, demons or creatures who might try to stop them from leaving. You, or anyone whatsoever associated with you, can’t kill them or threaten anyone they know to try to get them to stay. You’ll have to let them and anyone else who doesn’t work here leave without encumbering them in any way.”