Devil's Paw (Imp Book 4)

by Debra Dunbar

  The easy method of getting there would have involved a helicopter dropping us off in the ice fields less than a half–day’s hike to the mountain. Actually, the easy way would be to have Gregory just gate me there, right on top of the fucking mountain. Instead, we’d taken a helicopter up to Taku Inlet, then a boat along the river to Twin Glacier Lake. The river went deep through the mountains, all the way into Canada, but it would have put us too far south on a mountain range with nearly impassable vertical cliffs. Looking up at the impressive peaks ten miles away from our spot on the glacier, I longed to manifest wings and just fly there. I’ll bet the views were spectacular from some of those heights.

  “Come on, Cockroach. We’ve got a long hike.”

  Yeah, a twelve–hour hike. Devil’s Paw was only fifteen or so miles as the crow flew, but we weren’t flying, and depending on the condition of the ice field, our trip would be agonizingly slow. I wasn’t sure how Raim planned to get up there. At least I was fairly certain we were ahead of him.

  “Why Devil’s Paw?” I asked, struggling along the lumpy surface of the glacier. At its base, the ice ended in huge waves. I could clearly see both sides where the ice terminated and cedars lined the edges. Rocks protruded from the line of trees, splashed like paint with lichen patches. Juneau was a coastal rainforest with lush foliage, even at this northern latitude, but here, vegetation was more limited. Even so, in small sheltered areas that faced south, I could see a burst of color — heather and lupine in summer bloom. It was such an incongruity against the thick ice.

  “You’ll see.” I could hear the gentle amusement in his voice. “I like Devil’s Paw. It reminds me of Aaru in some ways.”

  Great. I fucking hated Aaru. Devil’s Paw was the highest peak in the Juneau ice field area at 8584 feet. The ice field itself rose 4200 feet about the city of Juneau, making the impressive mountains in the distance seem deceptively mid–sized.

  “This is just as stupid as the gate two and a half miles up in the air. It’s on the top of a jagged mountain peak. Anyone who comes through it is going to face a three–thousand–foot drop, a treacherous climb down, then a frozen wilderness hike for days into Juneau.”

  “Exactly. When we made them, millions of years ago, all the gates were this remote. The landscape has changed as the humans have taken over the planet. Not many gates are as we originally designed.”

  I huffed beside him, out of breath. He didn’t seem to have any problems hiking this rough terrain.

  “I thought you made them so the elves could come back if they wanted to? No elf is going to want to step through a gate only to plunge to his or her death.”

  He looked back at me, a strange smile on his face. “They’ll manage. Maybe you demons can post a warning sign, or provide climbing gear on your side of the gate.”

  I snorted and conserved further breath for climbing.

  The twin bands of ice that descended to this lake fronted the massive Taku glacier, which backed against the enormous Juneau ice field. Sections of the ice had suffered summer melt — ablation. The snow covering had vanished, leaving the brownish–blue lumps of ice, and small pockets of brilliant royal–blue pools of water. Summer travel across the ice field would be hazardous. Snow bridges hid deep crevasses. Water flowed above and below the ice, creating areas of instability. Rock falls and avalanches were a reality, as were sudden storms and whiteout conditions. I really wanted to be on a beach in Aruba. Or by my pool. Or eating seal meat in Juneau.

  A mile into our hike, I was ready to keel over. “Holy fuck,” I gasped. “It’s June, and there’s ice and snow everywhere. At this rate, it’s going to take us six months to get to that gate. Not that we need to hurry. Raim will never make it. He’ll be frozen into the ice field, or up to his ears in snow.”

  Gregory plodded on ahead. I could tell he was slowing down to keep me from falling even further behind him.

  “What were you guys thinking? Who the fuck puts a gate to Hel up here? What next? Are you going to shut down the one in Columbia Mall and stick it in Antarctica, twenty feet under the ice? Close Seattle and put it in the middle of an active volcano?”

  Gregory paused at the top of the glacier, and I hustled to join him. Once there, I took a sharp breath as I looked over the vast stretch of white before me. Ice field was a gross understatement. The white went on forever, up and down as it met an equally white sky. Wisps of fog caressed the ground. In the distance, storm clouds hovered, trapped in the embrace of knife–like peaks. The only break in the field of white was the occasional jagged black rock rising like a monolith to the sky. I suddenly saw the comparison with Aaru. Cold and impersonal, a blank canvas of monochrome where any color or sound would be amplified. I shivered, feeling both the beauty and the moral ambiguity of nature at its core.

  “This isn’t going to work,” Gregory’s voice was grim. “It will take us days at this pace to get there. We’ll have to fly.”

  “But he’ll see us!” We’d stick out against the stark landscape, two huge objects moving at speed on a white background.

  “The ice field is like a plateau with canyons, narrow valleys and crevasses — some of them wide. We can’t see them from here, but they break out from the mountain range. If we fly down inside them, we’ll be better hidden.”

  “How wide is wide?” I asked, thinking of his huge wingspan. “And I’m assuming they don’t run the entire length of the range in a continuous fashion. We’ll need to pop out and hop from one to another.”

  “It’s that or spend days struggling with you through this to the gate. I don’t know how fast this demon is traveling, and I want to ensure we arrive before him.”

  I looked out over the ice field, wishing we had cross–country skis, although, with the suncups covering the surface, skiing would have been near impossible. Flying was the quickest mode of travel. Fast and relatively safe — unless Raim spotted us and blasted us out of the air.

  “Where’s the nearest fissure?” I tried to gauge the timing, wondering how long we’d be exposed.

  “There’s one to the left of us, just past the glacier about a hundred feet. It starts to veer west after around five–thousand feet, so we’ll need to come out of it and fly east, to one closer to the mountains.”

  “All righty then.”

  With a burst of energy, I created my wings, trying to keep to a thirty–foot or less wingspan. Gregory’s were closer to fifty feet across, and he continued to have the two extra sets, much to my amusement. His feathers, cream and gray, brushed against the mottled rusty red membranes of my wings.

  “Ready?”

  I nodded and followed him as he took flight into the ice field, heading northeast and trying to remain as low to the ground as possible. I skimmed along, my feet barely off the surface of the ice, trying to stay near the angel. There were no thermals or updrafts to ride in this low altitude, and Gregory’s massive wings beat their full range to keep him airborne. My lighter structure and wing design meant I had less trouble so low to the ground, but the air displacement cause by the angel’s wings rocked me from side to side. I tried various positions, and finally had to fly slightly above him and to the rear. It put me at greater risk of being seen, but also afforded a magnificent view of the fifteen hundred square miles of the Juneau ice fields.

  I squinted at the intense light reflected off the snow. Bands of jagged rocks broke the flat white ice, and a spider web of crevasses spread out from the mountain range to the east and parallel to the black spires. Ice hid under to deepening snow in the north west, covering the glacier formations with a deceptively sturdy surface. Looking out into the distance of the ice field, I couldn’t see anything that might be another demon, but it was impossible to tell what was rock and what might be something else.

  Gregory dropped over the edge of a fissure. I followed him down, amazed to see the depth and bold structure of the rocky walls. His wings brushed the sides of the canyon, and he angled them to avoid causing a landslide. My wing structure was far more ma
neuverable, and I delighted in darting around from side to side, up and down the narrowing opening. After a few hundred feet, we popped out from the tight confines and across a short stretch of ice before dipping back into a larger canyon further east. I caught my breath to see the bottom, far below with sides narrowed dramatically. A fall from the edge would be fatal.

  After two miles, the ravine veered to the west, forcing us up and onto the ice. The fog had cleared, and the landscape was blinding in the sun. As we neared the mountains, the ice field began to buckle like a snowy blanket over a bed of giant golf balls before transforming into a smooth surface of snow. We’d reached higher elevations, but the safety of the snow was deceptive. Narrow crevasses, nearly sixty feet deep, scarred the ice field, and I knew many of them would be hidden under a fragile few feet of loose snow. I was glad for our as–the–crow–flies method of travel. Traversing that on foot would have been treacherous.

  Almost immediately, this canyon began to veer west as the others had. Gregory pulled up to face me, his wings beating in strong tempo to hold him steady in mid–air. Snow ledges on the east side of the canyon crumbled under the buffeting wind of his wings and plunged down in a mini avalanche.

  “There’s one more. It’s a good stretch ahead, and we won’t be in long before we’ll need to come out and fly over the surface the last leg to the mountains. Once we’re there, we can shelter in the cliffs until we reach the summit.”

  Summit. Of course they’d put the darned gate right on top. Where else would they put it?

  We rose onto the ice field, and flew the nearly two miles without incident. We were only in that crevasse for a few hundred feet before we began our mad mile and a half dash to the mountains. There was a bowl carved out of the snowy field, melted in a cone shape around a dark rock that had fallen in a landslide. We dipped down into it for a few hundred feet, and as we rose out of its shelter, I caught my breath at the brutal beauty before me. The mountain peaks were rough horns, narrow and sharp, formed long ago by glacier erosion. There was a harshness about them, an amoral power that impressed me beyond anything I’d ever seen on this planet. I knew at once why they’d named it Devil’s Paw, and why Gregory was so fond of it that he’d graced it with an angel’s gate.

  We angled left and flew into the mountain range, slowing down to maneuver the sharp twists and turns of the cliff faces. At times we burst back into sight of the ice field, but Gregory negotiated the mountain range like he’d been born here. Climbing, we headed toward a flat section midway up what I assume was Devil’s Paw. Two knife–edged horns rose above the ledge, arêtes rising to the sky. As we swept in to land on the outcropping of rock and snow, I saw Raim — saw him right before he saw us.

  I shrieked and plowed into Gregory, knocking him off the side of the mountain as Raim devoured the ledge under our feet. The angel grabbed me and twisted, catching the air with his wings and halting our descent while I pulled my own in tight so as to not hinder him. Circling a section of black rock, Gregory dumped me ten feet onto another ledge, where I landed hard on my rear, crumpling one wing uncomfortably in the process.

  “Stay here. I’ll take care of him. You. Stay. Here. And if the ground starts vanishing around you, fly as fast and as far as you can.”

  He flew away with unnatural speed before I could open my mouth to protest. Seriously? He seriously thought I was going to sit on my ass and do nothing? At the very least, I was going to watch him pummel Raim into oblivion. Thinking I might need it, I summoned my sword, the weapon that was the symbol of office. It didn’t appear, either in sword, or shotgun form, so I dug my hand through my hair to see if it was somehow tangled there in the barrette shape I used to transport it. Gone. Had I left it back in the inn? It should come whenever I called, no matter where it was, but the thing was sentient and had a mind of its own when it came to my use of it.

  I didn’t have time to beg and plead the stupid weapon to come to me, so I leapt off the ledge, bare–handed, and flew back toward where we’d last seen Raim. He was still a good climb from the gate, and as far as I knew, he didn’t have any raw energy left to sprout wings and fly there. He’d need to take the hard way up. I heard the blasts of battle as I quietly climbed a side section of the mountain, using my wings for balance and creating a set of claws to serve as crampons holding me to the cliff face. I first saw Raim, directly converting the matter around him to fuel his attack. It takes a lot of matter to produce enough energy to do any damage, and the mountain range was suffering. Huge sections vanished, enormous holes appeared in the ice field below. Careful to leave the ground beneath his feet intact, he had no problem dissolving any earth near the angel in an attempt to pitch him off the mountain.

  Gregory shot a stream of pure white energy at the demon, and Raim did the impossible. He grabbed it and pulled, devouring and yanking the angel toward him. I screamed in rage, furious that anyone would dare attack Gregory and seek to devour my angel. Raim’s hold faltered at my shout, and he turned to me.

  As the demon’s eyes met mine, time stood still. Raim’s corporeal self was dissolving, and I could see the horrific mess that was his spirit being. He was injured, damaged beyond repair. He clearly had no raw energy reserves, and the damaged parts would keep him from holding or containing any. He was a dead demon walking. As his form dissolved, he’d be unable to recreate it, unable to fix any wounds. The devouring, the direct conversion of matter to energy was like a death rattle — a last ditch effort to survive, even though he surely knew his death would soon follow. I saw beneath the fading form to the mortal wounds that spread throughout his spirit self. I saw the fear and desperation in his eyes. And I saw a collar of shining silver wrapped tightly around his neck.

  “You bitch. You angel–loving bitch.”

  It was true. I wouldn’t allow him to hurt Gregory, and this demon hadn’t long to live anyway. Reaching out, I snapped his connection to the angel and pulled.

  Raim may have been facing an unavoidable death, but he wasn’t going to go down easy. He, too was a devouring spirit, above me in power and skill. He was cornered, fearing for his life. With a high–pitched shriek, Raim frantically converted vast sections of the mountain range and glacier below, sending it all at me as a stream of energy. I absorbed it, storing it inside. Of course, his massive attack meant I was too busy converting and storing his blasts of energy to do anything offensive.

  I felt Gregory continue to fight, to launch his white energy at the demon, but Raim continued to absorb it just as I was absorbing the blasts directed at me. The angel was clearly reluctant to bring out anything more lethal with the pair of us demons connected and struggling for the upper hand on the side of a cliff face.

  Raim held steady, skillfully attacking both of us and succeeding in defending against the angel’s strikes. It seemed a stalemate that would only be won by the being that managed to outlast the others. My money was on Gregory. Raim was on the edge of death, and although he was strong and desperate, if we kept the pressure on, he’d eventually buckle.

  As we struggled, pulling through the connection we’d established with each other like a lethal game of tug–of–war, the demon suddenly lost all control. On the verge of death, he began to blindly discharge his raw energy in a swath of destruction, only Raim had no raw energy storage to discharge. I lost track of what he was devouring and converting, had no time to pay attention to whatever remained of the mountain ranges or glaciers. I couldn’t even tell if the mountainside I clung to remained. All I could do was frantically absorb the energy. I went far beyond what I’d ever stored before, and began to feel strange, like I was floating in air with a misty body around me. The pain and discomfort vanished, and I blindly took everything the demon sent my way with an increasing nonchalance. I saw him fall to shaking knees, a hatred and fury in his eyes as he clawed desperately at the silver collar. His attack sputtered, and I reached out to him and pulled, devouring the other demon. Time slowed, and I saw his spirit self stretch and elongate, winding into me like
thread on a spool.

  Gone. This time not even his body remained. Strange. I’d never done that before. It didn’t concern me, though. Nothing concerned me. I looked around, seeing with some vision beyond eyesight and was vaguely aware that nothing remained. Devil’s Paw, the mountains surrounding it, the Juneau ice field. Everything was gone. The peaks above, ground below — it was no more. I wondered vaguely if there had been human villages nearby with casualties. But I didn’t care. I cared about nothing. There was nothing in the world that mattered. It was all just an assortment of atoms that needed to be collected, combined, and eventually released.

  I turned again, realizing that I was floating in the air, my body a blurred and indistinct form. An angel hovered nearby, his wings holding him aloft. A sword appeared in his hands, a long blade with angel wings curved into a guard at the hilt. It didn’t matter. The angel, the sword, they were all just particles for me to condense within myself. Condense, release, condense, release. Like the beat of a heart.

  The angel raised his sword and paused before lowering it.

  “I can’t,” he said. His sword vanished, and he regarded me with acceptance and resignation.

  His words resonated, spearing through the emotionless haze to something down deep inside me. Red purple burst to life within the confines of my spirit self, igniting a shred of consciousness. I thought of Devil’s Paw, its twin horns rising to the sky in sharp ebony, like twisted fingers toward the heavens. I felt it all within me, the glory of the ice fields with their treacherous crevasses, the suncups, the deep, wide fissures, the harsh beauty of it all. I spread my arms and let the raw energy pour out of me in a wave of creation, instinctively recreating molecules and formations both above and below.

  By the time I was done, I was sorely depleted and feeling rather nauseous as I stood on a ledge across from my angel. My physical form had returned to its solid state, minus the wings and clothing. I shivered, naked in the chill of the mountains, exhausted from the effort it took to create an entire section of the coastal mountains and glaciers.