Waltzing into Damnation

by Rita Stradling

  And then I remember Cassidy.

  Grabbing the bunny around his soft, furry belly, I swim toward the surface, frantically searching for Cassidy. Last I saw of her, she was passed out, and it doesn’t take long for someone unconscious to drown in a pool. And we’re clearly in a pool. As I surface, two other familiar heads surface with me.

  “What—what--where are we?” Linnie sputters as she dog paddles close to my side.

  “Bloody hell,” Cassidy calls as she looks around frantically. “Where’s the house? Why are we in a pool? And why the bloody hell are you holding a bunny?

  “Uh, long story. I’m just glad you’re not unconscious anymore.” I lift the soggy rabbit up from under his shoulders, holding Nicholas bunny while treading water by kicking with my feet.

  Linnie looks around frantically. “Is that a . . . samba line?”

  Swimming over to the pool edge, I push Nicholas up onto the thick fake-wood pool deck.

  Latin pop music thrums through the air. And indeed, a samba line dances around the pool, a chain of people wearing colorful floral shirts and bathing suits kick out their legs just a little out of sync.

  “You guys are doing great,” a man’s voice calls out with a slight Latino accent over the speakers. He emerges a second later, a tall dark-haired man holding up a cordless microphone. Dancing at the end of the samba line with much more grace than the line’s occupants, he calls out, “Feel the rhythm! You guys are amazing dancers.”

  This is all so very surreal.

  Except for a few of the closest swimmers, no one seems to be looking even though Linnie, Cassidy, and I are still wearing sweatshirts and shoes in the pool.

  The air feels twenty degrees hotter than where we just left. It’s hard to see much of our surroundings, as there are so many people dancing around the pool, but glass walls surround us and all sides. Above us, smoke or steam billows out of two giant chimneys. People walk around a balcony above too, leaning against the railings or jogging past

  “Raven, are we on a cruise ship?” Linnie asks as wrinkles crease up her brow. She pushes the brunette hair plastered to her cheek back absently. “And haven’t these people got the memo that there’s an apocalypse going on?”

  “I think I know where we are, but I really hope I’m wrong.” Cassidy swims over to grab onto the pool deck beside me, fixing me with serious amber eyes. “Tell me exactly what happened, starting with where Nicholas is now.”

  “Uh . . .” I look up at the bunny. Poor Nicholas looks even smaller and more adorable soaked through with his large, floppy ears plastered to his body.

  He thumps his foot twice as his large black eyes fix on mine—or at least I think they’re fixed on me. I get the feeling he’s telling me to get on with telling her.

  “So . . .” I clear my throat. “Well, you see . . .” How to put it . . . “So, the raven hit you, and your blood fell in the circle, and then–”

  “Raven,” Cassidy snaps, “please just tell me about Nicholas first. Is he okay?”

  I scratch my nose. “So, he’s safe and alive.”

  “Good.” She sighs and throws an elbow over the edge of the pool. “Where is he?”

  “Here with us. He’s the bunny . . .” Her eyes go wide, and I raise a hand between us. “It’s not permanent,” I rush to say. “Barbas said it wasn’t permanent, so it has to be true.”

  Cassidy leans in, a new expression overtaking her beautiful features. I’m not exactly sure what it is, but I have a sneaking suspicion I’m seeing fear for the first time ever on my friend. “Did you say Barbas?”

  “Yeah, I think I need to start from the beginning.” As Linnie and Cassidy lean in toward me, the cruise ship parties on around us, and I give as succinct a version of events as possible. I only gloss over the part where Linnie almost walked into the salt circle. For the other parts, I lay all the awful details bare.

  I’m about to begin explaining the terms of the deal I made with Barbas to save all our lives and bring us here when Nicholas huffs and shakes his head. I glare at his little drying fuzz face. “I wouldn’t have had to make a deal if you hadn’t let the demon out of the salt circle by going all action star with the big gun, bunny Nicholas.”

  Nicholas only wrinkles his nose and goes all glary-eyed.

  “Raven, stop fighting with bunny Nicholas and tell me exactly what Barbas said about this ship,” Cassidy whispers. “This is very important. If this ship is what I think it is, we’d likely be better off still in that house with a loose greater demon.”

  “He said absolutely nothing about the ship, other than he was sending us where Santiago the hypnotist lives.”

  From the rounding of her eyes, she recognizes the name.

  Cassidy grabs my arm, her fingers squeezing. “We steal a lifeboat right now and leave the ship.”

  “What . . .” I shake my head. “I can’t.”

  “I’m serious, Raven.” She sounds serious, deadly serious. “Get out of the water now. We go in a group, grab towels from that rack over there and wrap them around ourselves—”

  “No, I mean I actually can’t, Cassidy.” I grab her arm and squeeze her back. “The moment I turn away from my quest to kill Andras for any reason, Barbas takes me to Hell.”

  “Um, guys.” Linnie taps my shoulder just as Cassidy leans in.

  “You’re not serious?” Cassidy asks, her accent thickening. “So many things could happen to sidetrack us. That’s the stupidest deal you’ve ever made with a demon.”

  Unfortunately, I think she’s exaggerating, but her point is valid. It doesn’t make me any less annoyed though when I catch Nicholas bunny nodding to Cassidy’s words.

  “Raven, Cassidy,” Linnie whispers in a panicked voice. “There are people talking to each other and pointing to us up on that balcony.

  We all look up to see she’s so right, and from Cassidy’s tightening grip on my arm, it’s not a good thing.

  She lets out a stream of very creative expletives under her breath and then whispers, “This ship is named ‘Sanctuary,’ as in what you claim in a church after you murder someone and don’t want to face the consequences. It’s neutral territory for demons and other deities and supernatural creatures—most of which eat or torture humans for entertainment. There’s a reason these people are celebrating the apocalypse. This boat is pretty much Hell on Earth with cocktails and a pool.”

  “Demons?” I look around from face to face, for the first time seeing beyond the bathing suits and dancing bodies.

  At first they all look human to me, but small details start catching my attention. Glowing eyes shine on an elderly lady as she twirls her neon fish bathing suit skirt from side to side. The skin of a man and woman lounging on pool chairs glimmers with iridescent scales along their spines. Short horns twist out of a young man’s head, almost hidden by his sandy curls. His companion balances a large blood-red cocktail between hands that much more closely resemble hooves split into fingers.

  “Demon puppeteers,” I whisper as I lean in close to Cassidy. “All the demons here are Andras’ demons, too, aren’t they?”

  “Yes,” Cassidy whispers, “so I’d avoid telling anyone our true purpose here—they can’t hurt you or harm you according to Andras’ proclamation, Raven, but there are a lot of creatures here who could do the job for them and probably would enjoy it too. And that’s saying nothing of us three.”

  “Are we going to just stay here in the pool in our clothing?” Linnie whispers between clenched teeth, her voice going to a high octave. “Because the people up there are talking on radios and still pointing to us.”

  “Yes,” Cassidy says. “We stay precisely here and do nothing to draw attention to ourselves. The staff on this boat are the least likely to publicly murder us. So, let’s try not to make a scene, and if they try to detain us, we’ll go with them without a word of protest.”

  “Do you think they’ll help us?” Linnie asks.

  “Oh, no.” Cassidy shakes her head, blowing out a breath. “I
should have clarified. They’re going to try to murder us. They’re just less likely to do it here in the pool. We may even get a chance to convince them to let us live—though it’s a slight chance.” She says it all matter of fact. “They’re coming.”

  I see them, too. Tall, muscular and in uniform, they look like security officers but could be any sort of demon wearing security guard’s skin. One woman and two men weave their way through the ruckus crowd.

  Cassidy’s fingers dig in even more. “Whatever you do, Raven, don’t tell them who you are or what you’re doing here. There are too many demons to lie about anything outright, but the truth will get us killed within seconds. If Andras broke the seals of Solomon and unleashed the demon apocalypse, these people would just pop more bottles of champagne.”

  “Can we see your guest cards?”

  We all look up into the faces of the three large security guards. They wear crimson and yellow starched uniforms with an emblem of what looks like bloody hands on the lapel, and each probably weighs in at around three hundred pounds of muscle, even the woman.

  My heart sinks as I glance between their faces and three sets of glowing eyes look back. Demons. All three of them are demon puppeteers.

  Cassidy is right to curse my stupidity. I brought us from a house where we stood stuck with one demon to a ship stuck with hundreds—maybe thousands.

  Reaching up, Cassidy puts a protective arm over bunny Nicholas and says, “We’d like to claim sanctuary.”

  “Sanctuary?” the woman guard growls. She leans in, her dark hair falling over her face like a partially drawn curtain. Her red eyes glow all the brighter as she bares sharpening teeth. “You’re stowaways?”

  “No, nothing like that.” Cassidy sounds astoundingly calm—a little flippant, even. She gestures to me. “My friend here made a deal with a demon, and part of that deal had the demon delivering us to this boat. She took a mark for the deal, her fourth.”

  Not sure what I’m supposed to do, I hold out my arm to show Räum’s mark, as it’s the easiest to show.

  “She looks familiar,” one of the two male guards says as his teeth also grow.

  Our little scene is drawing attention. Several sunbathers even sit up in their chairs and lean in to get a better view. One tall, slender woman paces over to stand nearby, openly watching while swirling a glass of blood red liquid. And behind us, I can hear and feel swimmers nearing at our backs, but I don’t dare look.

  “We’d like asylum from your captain. I’m infected by a greater demon, she’s four-times marked, she is the four times marked’s sister—”

  “And the bunny?” one of the big male security guards asks. From his sharp teeth and red glowing eyes, I’m pretty sure I know in which way he likes bunnies.

  A tingling sensation prickles up behind my ear, and suddenly a knowledge comes to me. It’s just like that, not a voice in my head or anything, but a sudden certainty. The female security guard loves bunnies, but in a very different way than her companion. She’ll never admit it, not even to save the mortal body she inhabits to prevent her from being thrown back into hell. But that massive security guard demon wants to rub her face all over the bunny’s soft fur and hug and kiss it. She might disembowel it later, but she wants to snuggle it for hours first.

  Cassidy yanks bunny Nicholas halfway into the pool. “He’s a human—”

  “. . . impersonator,” I add on a sudden whim.

  Everyone looks over at me, and several of the demons’ eyes brighten.

  “Lie,” the female security guard proclaims.

  A slimy hand caresses down my arm, and I turn to find a fish-looking humanoid had swum up next to us to stare at Linnie unblinkingly. She must have been underwater this whole time because there’s no way I’d have missed her inhumanness earlier.

  “Soft flesh,” she whispers wetly.

  Oh, boy.

  Linnie stays very still, but her eyes meet mine and silently scream, ‘help!’

  “Okay . . .” I clear my throat and turn back to the security guards. “Well, maybe that’s not the best way to put it . . .” I chew on my lip for a second before coming out with, “A demon made him this way with his power. He’s smarter than a normal rabbit. Do you want to see him do some tricks?”

  Nicholas bunny, squished awkwardly against Cassidy’s side, gives me as much of an ‘are you out of your mind?’ look as a bunny probably can.

  But the demons watching us look interested, like almost mesmerized by the possibility. It makes me wonder if the bunny fixation spread further than the one demon.

  “All right, then,” the big, barrel-chested security guard says with a glare. “Show us bunny tricks.”

  “We’ll all, uh, have to get out of the pool to do it,” I say as the slimy demon reaches to pet Linnie’s hair.

  “Uh, excuse me; I’m going to get out now.” Linnie wince-smiles at slimy, who I’m pretty sure isn’t a demon, as its full daylight and she definitely isn’t inhabiting a human body, but her razor-sharp teeth aren’t exactly comforting either.

  Slimy grins wide, bearing several rows of fanged teeth, and waves her webbed limbs in a gesture of ‘go ahead.’

  We push up on the pool edge and out of the water, all of us sodden in our non-pool clothing. Even though I’m all soaked through, I feel a little hot in my sweatshirt. So, I’m taking a stab in the dark and guessing we weren’t in the Pacific North West anymore.

  The samba line dancers come to a halt halfway around the pool, dispersing to join the crowd gathering around us. The man with the wireless mic doesn’t miss a beat, clearly sensing we’re diverting the attention from his pool deck festivities. Pushing his way through the crowd, he narrates, “And now, we have a slight interruption in our dancing entertainment to gather around these fine passengers.”

  “They’re not passengers,” one security guard growls. “And they’re going to do a bunny show.”

  The moment the words are out of his mouth, the rest of the occupants of the pool deck either wander over or crane their necks.

  A full bar sits on a raised platform to one side of the pool, and even the diners eating and chatting at the tables along both sides of the glass wall stand or crane their abnormally long necks. Outside one side of the ship, a crystal-blue ocean and bright green mountains passes in the distance.

  Cassidy looks at me with a forced smile as she sets down bunny Nicholas. “Do something.”

  Right.

  Bunny show.

  Chapter Twelve

  Three Days Before

  Looking around at the mixed crowd of demons and other various creatures, I consider what a demon might find entertaining aside from maiming and torture . . . and obviously bunnies.

  Nicholas looks up at me, wrinkling his nose.

  “Nicholas . . . sit.”

  Everyone looks at the bunny and then at me.

  “He was already sitting,” says the cocktail swishing demon.

  “Stand,” I say.

  He gets to his little bunny hindquarters and stands.

  The crowd of demons titters just the littlest bit.

  “Walk to Linnie,” I tell him.

  Nicholas shoots me a look like this is the stupidest thing he’s ever done in his life, then he flops forward and rolls in summersaults all the way over to Linnie’s legs.

  Reaching down, Linnie scoops him up. “Good bunny,” she says.

  Nicholas glances around at the demons while hanging from Linnie’s hands and clearly rolls his whole head in exasperation.

  Several of the demons openly laugh.

  “He doesn’t like it when you call him good bunny,” one of the security guards guffaws.

  Maybe taking a cue from the audience’s clear adoration, Nicholas pulls his legs up between his body and Linnie’s and launches himself off her chest.

  With amazing comedic timing, Linnie calls out, “Bad bunny!”

  “Bad bunny,” repeats the man with the microphone.

  Several of the demons laugh openly w
hile the others shoot amused glances at the bunny and each other. Many are still glowering, unimpressed, over their cocktails. For some reason, I feel impressing this crowd right here and now may make the difference in whether we get off the pool deck or splatter across it.

  Leaning in, I go on instinct and call, “Bad bunny, get your fuzzy little butt over here and do a trick.”

  Thankfully, Nicholas picks up on what I’m trying to do. He stands to his full rabbit height, leans against Cassidy’s legs, crosses his bunny arms and shakes his head.

  This gets a bigger laugh from the audience; a few of them even buckle forward, splashing their crimson cocktails onto the plastic deck.

  “What a bad, bad bunny,” the announcer on the microphone says.

  “Bunny, do a front flip,” Cassidy says.

  Nicholas does a backflip.

  The demons find this hilarious. One humanoid starts hee-hawing like a donkey.

  And I almost can’t believe my eyes, but Nicholas sticks his fuzzy rump in the air and shakes it at Cassidy.

  A look of shock smacks Cassidy in the face, and then she says, “Bad bunny.”

  Even Cassidy is fighting a laugh now, and most of the demons are in hysterics.

  A tall, curvy woman—demon—I correct myself as I see her red eyes, gently maneuvers her way through the crowd, stopping beside the security guards. Reaching forward, she takes the microphone from the tall man who was helping us out for some reason. “Bad bunny, all right,” she says with a sharp-toothed grin. “Caroline, your cruise line director here. Thank you so much for watching our impromptu bunny show here on the pool deck of the Sanctuary. In fifteen minutes in the atrium, Avianess and her feathered dancers have prepared a breathtaking aerial show for you! Thank you for choosing us.”

  Many of the demons cheer and disperse, but others still focus on Nicholas.

  “When is the next Bad Bunny show?” the hoofed demon-man asks Caroline, the cruise director. I’m a bit surprised, as he was one of the few demons that didn’t crack a smile.

  “The schedule for the Bad Bunny show hasn’t been set yet,” Caroline says with a smile that looks more like a grimace as she throws her long blonde hair over her shoulder.