bedeviled & beyond 03 - bedeviled & beleaguered

by Sam Cheever

  This had better not count against my lifetime limit.

  My prophet waved a hand as if that was an insignificant thing but I frowned, knowing I couldn’t trust her accounting.

  The prophet’s startling silver eyes fixed on me and she said, Trust your instincts, Astra.

  What are you doing here? You’re gonna get us all killed.

  They cannot see me. I am but a blip in your mind.

  But why the house call?

  She shrugged, I could not stand to just hang around up there waiting. I wanted you to know that you have it within you to solve this. You must only trust in the fire within your heart.

  I frowned again. You came here to give me gobbledygook now? Are you frunkin’ kidding me?

  The prophet shrugged and then...unbelievably...grinned. It is not gobbledygook just because your ears refuse to hear. She looked beyond my shoulder and frowned. Really, Astra, do you think this is a good place for a child?

  I jerked and turned my head before remembering I was playing zombie. Glynus hovered in the air just behind me, a small smile on her face. “Aw, cheeit?”

  I grinned. “Hey, tadpole.”

  The prophet shook her head, spreading dandelion-seed-like strands upon the air in an arc around her face. What were the gods of Olympus thinking? You suck as a mother, Astra. Ish!

  And then she was gone.

  Fortunately for me the Serpent and his minions were too busy to notice my little slip. I motioned for Glynus to stay behind me and turned to Darma. Let’s do this.

  The mist had thickened to the point where I could see nothing beyond our little circle. The conduits and the Serpent on his altar were clear to me but nothing else was visible. It felt as if we stood in a tunnel, locked away from the outside world as thoroughly as if the mist were concrete and lead.

  The sound of the Serpent’s chanting bounced off the wall of mist and throbbed around us, creating a hypnotic atmosphere that I had to work continually to resist. A tower of pure black energy, six inches in diameter, now rose straight out of the stone altar, through Raoul’s twitching body and into the sky above, its full height obscured by the choking mist.

  Darma closed her eyes to concentrate on pulling the power forward and I started to do the same.

  Help me, Astra! Help me fight it.

  My eyes flew open and focused on Dialle again. He was bent over now, his head resting on his knees and the midnight silk of his hair spread across the dirt of the well trampled ground. My hickey sparked painfully and I jerked.

  His voice had been weak and filled with pain.

  I wavered with uncertainty. Was it a trick? I had resolved to reset my thinking where it concerned Dialle. Had I been wrong to assume he’d turned completely against me?

  Trust your instincts, Astra.

  Oh shut up!

  Scowling, I closed my eyes, determined to get the battle underway.

  Help me!

  “Oh shit!” My eyes jerked open and found Dialle. If possible it looked like he’d sunk lower toward the ground. Making a sudden decision, I pulled my blocking power from the hickey and sent a stream of sensing energy through my link with Dialle. What I felt there made my knees buckle. Dark, malevolence swirled through him, nearly consuming his spirit. My instinct was to pull back. To run away. But something kept me there, probing, searching. Finally I found what I was looking for. A small spark of light sat at the center of all that dark. It was weak and quivering but it was there, trying to hold its own.

  I sent power into that small spark and prayed that it would be enough. It was all I could give him. Everything else I had needed to be given over to the battle. And I was pretty sure I would have to kill him anyway in the end.

  Once again, I blocked our connection and then closed my eyes, pulling everything I had forward. I searched in the magical sphere for Darma’s light. As I had done with Dialle, I had to sift through a lot of black magic to find it. However, unlike Dialle, Darma’s magic wasn’t weak or quivery. It was strong and bright, melting everything in its path in the search for mine. I assumed my magic looked the same to her.

  We reached for each other across the vast space of the magical sphere, far more distant than the physical plane, where our bodies stood only a few feet away from each other. In the magical sphere our magics had miles to travel before we touched. Miles of space within which to battle the Serpent’s conjured blackness, his minions’ roiling darkness. In the center of the sphere was a single, spinning light, which I realized was probably Raoul. I said a silent prayer for his soul and turned away from him. Tears slipped down my face.

  We fought onward, burning off the dark as we went. I prayed we’d be in time.

  Suddenly the black magic started swirling around our encroaching power, pulsing with a new urgency. I realized the jig was up. The Serpent had discovered our little attempt to thwart him and was turning his interest our way.

  We’d run out of time.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Magical Arm Wrestling

  Tween Heart’s Fire and Devil’s Delight, our lady she doth tread,

  Will she succeed and save the world, or end up very dead?

  Our magics had just begun to twine when the Serpent’s power slashed into them, ripping and pulling in an effort to dislodge the fledgling twist of power. Even as the Serpent’s power engulfed ours, I could see the light from Darma’s strand brightening and pulsing in an effort to shrug it off.

  I pulled every ounce of energy I had into my power core and redirected it into the strand that reached for my sister. Between the two of us we were able to grow the reach of our power by one more twist.

  The Serpent’s power dimmed momentarily under ours but then, from somewhere outside the sphere where we concentrated our power, a painfully high pitched shrieking ensued and my physical body started to react. My knees buckled and I hit the ground hard, my head throbbing under the assault.

  The Serpent had engaged the Brownie, whose song of death is pitched at a level so high that it can actually explode the brain. Before it did that though, it caused one hell of a headache.

  I stayed in the magic realm through sheer force of will and renewed my expenditure of energy through the strand. For a moment it looked like we would succeed but then the Serpent’s power surged and we quickly started losing ground.

  My sister’s voice in my head sounded weak. Astra! We need more and somebody needs to shut that damn Brownie up!

  I don’t have any more.

  Do something!

  I opened my eyes and looked at the Brownie, his head was thrown back and his mouth was open wide, his throat throbbing with the passage of his fatal song. Around him shimmered a protective field that I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to breech.

  Can’t kill the Brownie, I thought to myself. It’s Plan B then.

  Okay, I’m gonna try to tap my daemon hickey. The Brownie’s under protection. We’ll have to work fast ’cause I don’t think I can get rid of him, at least until I’m done focusing all my power into this strand.

  A few beats of silence greeted this statement and Darma’s part of our strand started to flicker. I was afraid I was losing her. I glanced her way and saw that she was flat out, face down on the ground. Darma!

  Static met my internal scream. Then a very weak response. I’m here but just barely. I think my brain is melting.

  Did you hear me?

  Yes, I’ll tap mine too.

  What! You have a daemon hickey? When did that happen? Are you kidding me?

  Astra...do you really think this is the time and place for this discussion?

  My mouth flapped a few times and I frowned at my sister’s prone form. You and I are gonna talk about this later, young lady! I thought at her furiously.

  She managed a weak snort before going silent again, hopefully focusing her thoughts elsewhere. The alternative didn’t bear thinking about.

  I forced myself to release the block on my hickey and tentatively tried to pull power through it. What came th
rough the connection was black and oily with evil.

  I shuddered and forced it shut in a panic. Tears streamed from my eyes.

  Dialle.

  Static filled my mind. Astra! I’m sorry.

  Dialle’s voice sounded strange. Weak and haunted. But I didn’t have time to ponder it because the block on my hickey blew off and the dark, oily power streamed into me, burning my insides like fire.

  I screamed, losing my connection with Darma. I surged to my feet as my organs started shutting down from the poison Dialle was shooting into me. My lungs stopped working, my throat clenched up tight, my limbs gave way under me and, finally, my heart slowed enough so that my vision started going gray.

  The ground came up to slam into me as I lost control of my body. My head bounced hard, twice and then I lay shuddering and convulsing as the evil magic ate through my body.

  I was dying, unable to move. Unable to fight back. Completely helpless.

  Astra!

  Emo’s voice was immediately cut off in a shout of pain.

  He’d been right. Dialle had been the death of me, just as Emo had predicted he would.

  A high-pitched, razor-edged laugh filled the clearing and my eyes fluttered open one last time to find the Serpent, standing high above me on the altar, long, muscular arms ending in horrible claws raised to the mist above his head. Raoul’s body spun as if on an axis, reaching such an incredible velocity that I could barely tell he was a human being. I grieved for the loss of my friend, knowing there was no way he would survive the Serpent’s horrible use of his body.

  As if in response to the Serpent’s calls, the mist descended over us, consuming everything in its path. Until all that was visible was a gray sheet of nothingness, like being in the shadows.

  With a start I realized I no longer controlled my power, it was being pulled from me in service to the veil. I shuddered, my heart slowing to a stop just as the cold, clammy mist touched my skin, mere inches from the nurturing soil of Earth.

  Once it touched Earth’s welcoming soil it would lock into place and begin to thrive. And there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.

  I was dead.

  Darma was probably dead.

  And Emo.

  And my father and aunt would be lost for all time, chained to the worst kind of evil and totally helpless.

  The last thing I heard as my eyes glazed over into death was Dialle’s voice in my head, Spurn the poison, Astra. Push it out. Damn it, woman, fight this thing. You don’t think I gave you that shit so you could just eat it and die do you? Use it against him! Twist it into your thread!

  Astra! ASTRA!!!

  His screams reverberated in my dying brain like buckshot off a rock-walled canyon. Pinging unmercifully against my last vestige of awareness as I lay there trying to die.

  My mind flicked at the annoying pings for a while, until I started to get mad. Anger gave me new energy.

  Suddenly I realized I didn’t want to die.

  I wanted to kick the Serpent’s goat-ass all the way back to Hell.

  Adrenaline coursed through me and my eyes shot open. Gritting my teeth against the Serpent’s poisonous grip, I wrenched control of my energy away from him. I yanked it forward and, as I’d done in my office when the Hell Hounds were after me, I didn’t bother to focus it. I knew it was going to hurt like hell but I had no time for anything else. The mist was almost fully down. A mere inch of space was all that stood between total darkness and survival of the human race.

  My power surged into my body, assimilating with the oily power Dialle had fed me and creating a new mix of power, one that I’d never felt before but one which I knew, with the addition of Darma’s bright white power, would be the right mix. The mix that would kill the Devil’s Plague and defeat the Serpent’s poisonous mist.

  My lips stretched upward in a macabre grin as the power pulsed within my power core, filling it to overflowing and throbbing to get out.

  My daemon hickey surged with clean, white power and I gasped as it hit my already abundant power core.

  Dialle!

  Let’s kick some Serpent ass, Astra!

  ’Bout time you joined my party!

  I felt him grinning in my head. I was unavoidably detained. Your idiot partner decided to try to take me out in revenge for killing you.

  Remind me to kick his ass tomorrow.

  You’ll be behind me in that line, my princess.

  Don’t call me that!

  His rich laughter filled my head.

  Then I gave up trying to hold the magic back and let it burst free from my feeble restraints. It rolled out of me in skin melting waves, leaving me breathless under the incredible pain. I just had time to scream Darma’s name before it exploded from my pores, knocking me onto my ass again and filling the mist saturated air with a dull white light. It hit the dense atmosphere in that clearing with a sound like a sonic boom.

  The ground rumbled and swayed beneath me, feeling as if it would break away at any moment.

  I knew the exact second when Darma’s power joined mine and Dialle’s. It was tinged with another magic signature which I guessed was Torre’s.

  The first thing I noticed was that the damnable Brownie finally shut the hell up.

  The second thing I noticed was that the mist reversed course and started to flow away from our power. The Serpent started screaming. I looked up to find him atop the altar, still upright but twitching violently as if he was being mauled by an invisible force.

  Raoul’s poor, battered body lay on the altar’s surface, looking crumpled and lifeless.

  The Serpent’s mouth was opened impossibly wide, splitting his once handsome face almost in two and curved horns had popped from the sides of his head. The mist swirled around his tortured form, shoving him back and forth until he finally fell to his knees under the onslaught.

  The sky above us burst into light as the celestial army arrived in all its beautiful glory. I realized that half of the vibrant, powerful angels which encircled the clearing had been horribly ill with Devil’s Plague just moments earlier.

  Proof that my power mix was everything I’d hoped it would be.

  The Serpent threw back his head under the onslaught of clean, white power from the army and, as he did, the mist surged into him, flinging him from the altar to hang, writhing manically, in the air just in front of where I still sat on the ground.

  I watched him eat the mist and tried to ignore the fact that it felt like my power was ripping my skin away. As the last of the foul mist slid into the Serpent’s writing form, the celestial army moved in, surrounding him. They locked him in an unbreachable circle of white power and then started to lift him away.

  I finally let the energy go, sagging forward with fatigue as the last of it slipped away.

  “I think I know where he’s going.”

  I jumped, turning at the sound of my sister’s voice. She was sitting on the ground next to me, looking every bit as exhausted as I was.

  I smiled wearily, holding up my fist for rock knuckles.

  She tapped my knuckles with her own and smiled back. “God I’m tired.”

  I laughed, “Me too.”

  She nodded toward what was left of the Brownie, “It was fun sending that to the lowest circle of Hell.”

  I lifted my eyebrows. “My, my. Bloodthirsty much?”

  Her mouth opened to respond but she was saved by a warm, familiar hand on her shoulder. I also had one on mine. We looked up into our father’s peaceful blue eyes.

  “I knew you could do it.”

  Healing warmth suffused us from his touch and energy filled my weary body. I looked at his wrists. “Hey! No chain?”

  He shook his golden head, tears shimmering in his eyes. His gaze slid to the spot where my mother had been standing. She was lying face down on the ground, her limbs twisted at odd angles. Prince Nille lay beside her, looking much the same.

  Darma gasped, “We killed her?” I’d never seen my sister look so horrified, not even w
hen she’d been forced to kill that demon in the park to save the little boy.

  But our father shook his head again. “The Serpent took them with him into Hell. I presume as retribution for their having failed him.”

  Shaking my head, I forced back tears. “It doesn’t pay to hang out with the wrong crowd.”

  “Amen,” said a brisk voice behind us. We turned to find Myra with an arm around the pretty young Elf’s shoulders. The Elf looked a little shaky but I got the impression she would live. I noticed her rubbing her wrist and looked down. Her Devil’s mark was still there.

  My eyes widened and I looked down at my own wrist.

  “The marks will stay with us for all time I’m afraid.” I looked up into Dialle’s now, permanently blue eyes. He was, at last, verified as the Great Unifier. Per prophecy, he’d gone against his own people to save the race of humans...and me too.

  My heart swelled even as my lower body tightened. “Hey.”

  “Hey yourself.” He knelt down and placed a soft kiss on my lips.

  “They’ll serve as a reminder to us that evil is always just a heartbeat away.” That, of course, was my Aunt Myra. Always the life of the party. Forever the voice of encouragement. Truly a glass is half full kind of gal. A cool breeze in the desert, a raft in the deadly rapids of life... Well, sarcasm aside, you get my point I think.

  I beamed up at her. “Or...they can be a reminder that we beat it back once and we can do it again.”

  She frowned. “Whatever, Astra.”

  Something flashed on the edge of my vision and I turned toward the altar. I gasped. Raoul stood upon the altar. He was still clothed in white robes but they were pristine and he had huge, silver wings to go with them. My friend held the wings at an awkward angle like he wasn’t quite sure what to do with them but they shimmered in the light that radiated around him and were beautiful. His dark face looked ten years younger than the last time I’d spoken with him and he was smiling. His dark brown eyes sparkled. “Hello, Astra.”

  “Oh my god! You’re stunning!”

  He laughed. “As opposed to before?”

  I grinned weakly. “I’m sorry you died.”