Waltzing into Damnation

by Rita Stradling

  The girl demon’s nails rake gently against my skin as I pass, and I hold my breath.

  If she so much as scrapes me, the demon will vanish, exploding into ash, and be sucked down into Hell.

  And I would be exposed for the big, fat liar I am.

  Instant murder.

  Slowly, I back away from her claws and thank all that is holy and good in this world she lets me go. As we clear the door and make it into the hall, Nicholas rabbit comes hopping quickly at us from one direction while Cassidy runs up from the other. They converge just as weasel-face turns the corner, running after Nicholas.

  “I see. Reckon you think you can trick me with the rabbit decoy, but I know you weren’t in that bathroom,” he says as his red eyes glow so bright, the color casts on everything in our surroundings.

  “I was in the loo. You must have just not seen me,” Cassidy proclaims. And amazingly, to her credit, she doesn’t even sound out of breath.

  The demon raises a hand and points at her. “You piss on your own time from now on,” he declares before storming down to another open door.

  We all rush to the next room, and I hurriedly make the bed with Cassidy. The blankets feel soft and thick, and I keep thinking about José’s trick with the hair. Linnie scrubs the bathroom while Nicholas mostly stays out of our way, watching the door as if he can do something about it if demons come in to attack us. Aside from looking cute, I’m not sure what else he could do.

  The night progresses mostly without incident, but the demon overseer comes by so many times, we don’t get another chance to talk. By midnight, we’re all disgusting, tired, sore and have only accomplished half of what the other cleaning teams managed—something demon-weasel-face announces as soon as we file out of the last room. As one of the other cleaning teams contains a man with six arms, I’m not too hard on our abilities over it.

  “In my opinion—and I know something about this-- you three are the most worthless employees we have ever had the misfortune to obtain to date.” The demon glowers at each of us. “Usually, I only help new employees through their transition. For you three and that tricky rabbit, I think I'll make an exception. I'll see y’all tomorrow mornin’ at nine. You better hope I don't see you before then.” Baring the side of his fangs in our general direction, the demon pivots on his heel and marches away.

  “Well, that’s just great,” Linnie mutters darkly as she wipes her probably grimy hands off on her uniform pants before swiping back her frizzing hair. Her shadowed eyes look as exhausted as I feel. When she catches me watching her, Linnie sighs. “Are you guys actually going to drag me to do something else tonight?” She touches her throat. “I literally taste vomit in the back of my throat, and my head is throbbing. I don’t think I can do it. At this point, I’m about ready to let the demons eat me.”

  I hush her. As much as I completely understand where she’s coming from, my guess is that there are plenty of demons aboard that would take her up on that offer quicker than she could retract it. “Maybe . . .” I roll my aching heel back and forth as I chew my lip and think. “All of us don’t really need to go. Maybe you three can sleep—”

  “No,” Cassidy hisses in a furious whisper as she looks between us. “This isn’t happening again, not now, not here. Raven, Linnie, I love you both, but you two need to stop putting every mission at risk because you’re both underestimating Linnie’s ability to fulfill the missions. I don’t agree with how the Leijonskjöld treated you two, but they got one thing right. The fate of humanity rests on both of your shoulders, and you keep ballsing it up. Raven, if Linnie is so tired that she’s going to throw up, then we will stop and let her throw up and keep going. Linnie, you need to learn to fight. You’re your sister’s biggest weakness. You’re going to end up dying, and it will cost the world . . .” Cassidy pauses as tears stream down her beautiful face, and I begin to think this conversation isn’t really about Linnie and me.

  “She won’t survive it, not really.” Cassidy sniffs, wiping furiously at her tired eyes. “Linnie, you need to start taking responsibility for your own survival—”

  At the beginning of Cassidy’s speech, Linnie looked offended and defensive, but maybe she senses what I do because she reaches up and touches Cassidy’s arm. “Yeah, I can keep going, Cassidy,” Linnie says. “I’ll just swallow down the vomit, okay?”

  “Okay . . .” She scrubs against her eyes.

  I can’t help noticing that in a very un-animal-like move, Nicholas rabbit has his little fuzzy arm around the back of Cassidy’s calf in a clear motion of comfort.

  Cassidy leans down and scoops him up, cradling him in her arms. Stretching his little furry body, Nicholas wipes his furry face across Cassidy’s tear-stained cheeks.

  Her brow furrows, and she looks down at him, a little startled. “It’s fine, Nicholas. I’m fine. To be perfectly honest, I’d love to send you back to the room to hide out, but splitting up is the worst possible decision. And Raven and I need to go—and we’re wasting time.”

  Obviously, I’m a little too wrapped up in my own problems, as I keep forgetting about the fact that Cassidy’s little brother died while Cassidy tried to save him. It seems like what we’re going through is a major trigger bringing up her little brother’s death. I feel a sudden urge to reach out to her, but what could I say, really? I can’t remember a single instance where Cassidy volunteered personal information of anything of significance, and I’ve been too much of a coward to ask.

  Cassidy sighs. “Let’s go, then. There’s a way to get backstage without being caught. If we are caught, I’ll kill as many demons as possible while you three storm the stage.”

  “Uh, no, that is a bad plan.” I lean in and hold up my hands in a pacifying gesture. “We’re just not going to get caught, and if we are, I will talk our way out of it.”

  Unfortunately, when Cassidy turns away, I’m not sure she’s fully on board with my version of the plan.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Midnight, Two Days Before

  When Cassidy said she believed she found a way in to watch the hypnotist show, I expected she’d have us wear disguises and sneak in through an air duct in the back. What I didn’t expect was to be dangling ten stories above the open water.

  Yet, I hang there while my stomach lodges somewhere in my feet. Ignoring the ache in my shoulder, I grip Cassidy’s arm as she holds my already tender wrist. My shoes slip and slide against the ship’s slick exterior.

  “This is the worst. Plan. Ever,” I call up.

  “Get to the door,” Cassidy calls back. Perched on the railing of an out of the way balcony, she hooks her feet under the metal bar railing of the upper deck and doesn’t so much as grimace from my weight. How she spotted this strangely open thick metal port door as she searched for less than twenty minutes, I’ll never know. But it looks like Cassidy found a very secret way no one in their right mind would attempt. Obviously, that didn’t include us.

  The cold, salty air and spray from the waves far below soak through my filthy uniform.

  “I’m going to swing you toward the door,” Cassidy calls, and my stomach somersaults all the way back up into my throat as Cassidy rocks me from side to side. I attempt to walk my feet across the wet metal exterior of the sanctuary, losing my footing more often than catching it. Looking down isn't good for my state of mind, but I see the open metal door on the side of the ship waits only a couple feet to my right.

  Moonlight and the many-colored lights emitting from the windows faintly illuminates the ship’s exterior. Below, lights twinkle over the inky water, petering out into darkness. If there’s land nearby, it’s not land inhabited by many people.

  Looking back up to Cassidy, I call up, “It’s too far.”

  “Bloody hell.” Cassidy looks back, revealing Linnie holding handfuls of her uniform. “Linnie,” Cassidy says, “you’re going to have to grab my shoes, and I’m going to have to do something very dangerous.”

  “I know no one wants to hear from me,” Linn
ie squeaks, “but I feel I need to tell you this is a really bad idea. How are we going to get back out?”

  Beneath her, Nicholas rabbit sticks his little head out of a porthole at the bottom of the half-wall and nods wildly.

  Dangling here, I’m pretty sure my sister and Nicholas have it right. What is this going to do? But we’ve gone this far, and Cassidy is so determined to press further, so I’m not about to turn back now. Every time I look into her eyes, I see her terror that Nicholas is about to transmogrify back into a human any moment now and the disaster that would mean for him and us.

  Unfortunately, Nicholas and his brothers are infamous in this community. I know if the situation were reversed and Linnie or someone else I love had death hanging over their head, I would be concocting dangerous, desperate plans too.

  On the next swing, I manage to hook my toes into the hole of the open door and press the top of my foot into the thick door frame. The metal ridges bite into my numb toes through the thin mesh of the plain-white uniform tennis shoes. “Okay, I have it,” I whisper-call up to Cassidy.

  “Have you got my shoes, Linnie?” Cassidy asks over her shoulder, and without waiting for a response, Cassidy pitches over the rail.

  For a moment, I feel entirely weightless as I lose my footing and plunge downward. The world around me lurches as Cassidy's grip on my arm yanks me to a stop.

  It takes me a second to get my bearings and realize I’m not still plunging off the side of the ship.

  “Bloody hell, Raven. Why didn't you hold on to the doorframe?” Cassidy yells down.

  As residual panic surges through my body, I look around, only to realize I indeed let go. While plunging toward likely death, I swung away from the metal door. I resist the urge to tell Cassidy she definitely could have given me a little more warning on what she planned, but there’s no point in arguing about it now. Instead, I just mumble an apology and kick out toward the ship again, trying to get a foothold against the slick exterior. My feet just squeak and slip downward.

  “Use your arms,” Cassidy huffs. “I can’t do this forever.”

  Stretching out my free hand, I ignore the painful stretching sensation in my shoulder joint and pressure on my elbow. My reaching fingers brush the rough metal handle of the thick open door, and I kick off the Sanctuary’s exterior to close the little bit of remaining distance. My hand closes on the handle, and above Linnie calls out a hushed, “Whoop.”

  Knowing if I take the plunge off the side of the boat, I'll have a very long swim and likely a quick death, I summon all my strength and pull my body toward the door. The metal edges bite into my skin as I close the distance. Body pressing against the door, I lift my knee to the handle and reach over for the doorframe.

  “My arm feels like it is ripping off, Raven. Go faster,” Cassidy calls down.

  I want to call up and remind her this was her stupid plan anyway, but I don't because all my concentration focuses on pulling myself towards the pitch black opening into the ship.

  The front of my body slides against the metal, and I’m almost all the way in when a strange chittering sound erupts from above. I glance up to Nicholas, who, still peering down from the porthole, makes the odd sound again.

  Hesitating only a second, I ignore him and focus back on my task. It’s hardly the time to argue about the wisdom of what we’re doing with a rabbit. My choice at this point is to go through the doorway or drop probably a hundred feet into open ocean. Maybe the chattering sound is, ‘I told you so,’ in rabbit. It’s a valid point. But there’s no fixing this situation now.

  I hold myself to the inner lip of the open thick metal and slowly but surely slide my body across the cold, smooth door. The door shakes, rattling against the hook that holds it open.

  Gripping my hand around the doorframe, I stretch out one leg, then the other, setting them in the open doorway.

  Above me, Nicholas chitters louder, but I really can’t concentrate on that, as I’m pretty awkwardly positioned. Stretching as far as I possibly can, I reach for the opposite side of the door and pull my body inside. The first thing I notice is how cold it is. In contrast to the warm climate outside, the dark, metal room is colder than an icebox. Dangling over the water feels like a dip in the Jacuzzi compared to this.

  Something moves in the darkness, and I begin to cry out, “Cass—”

  Quick as a cobra, a massive body drops down and wraps one hand over my mouth. His other hand grips a handful of my uniform, and I find myself inches away from the weasel-faced demon who tormented us through our last shift.

  “Quiet now,” he warns before he grins razor sharp teeth at me. His red glowing eyes illuminate the space around us in a harsh crimson light. “I told ya’ you wouldn’t want me seein’ you before your next shift. It’s too bad for y’all that as a Lobos demon, I can hear snippets of your thoughts.”

  Cassidy yells down, “Raven? Are you safe? If you are, let go. I can’t hold much longer.”

  I release her hand, but it’s not because I’m anywhere near close to safe. I can see my death in the demon’s red glowing eyes, and I’m not going to take Cassidy with me. I release her.

  “I’m lowering down Linnie and Nicholas now,” Cassidy calls down after a second.

  The demon grins. “Warn them, and I’ll throw you out of this door.”

  I nod, whispering into his hand. “I won’t warn them.”

  He must understand my muffled words and hear the truth contained in them because he lifts his hand away from my mouth.

  “Can I ask you something before you kill me?” I whisper to him as calmly as I can manage while shifting my legs to find a stable stance. “Is your bite infectious or poisonous?”

  “What does that matter, sugar?” He chuckles through his shark-tooth smile. “But I don’t need an infectious bite to kill you.”

  “I’ll take that as a no about the bite.” I thrust my hand up and impale my finger on one of his fangs. Pain shoots through my middle finger just as the demon explodes and vanishes within a single blink, sucked downward into hell. One moment he stands before me, the next I pitch forward onto the cold metal on my hands and knees coughing out demon dust.

  “Thank you, Andras,” I say with a mirthless laugh, stunned that I’m actually thankful to the psychotic demon. When he decreed to all of the demon legions that if any of them so much as scratches me, they’d be sucked down to burn in the ashes of hell for eternity, I had no idea it was going to come in so useful.

  “Raven, come on,” Linnie calls.

  I look back just in time to see Linnie’s sneaker hooking into the top of the doorframe. Grabbing onto the thick, cold doorframe, I lean back out of the doorway and reach up toward where Linnie dangles, holding a very unhappy looking rabbit.

  “Okay, doing this again and really hoping we all don’t die,” Cassidy calls down as she pitches over the railing, and then Linnie comes flying at me.

  Linnie tosses the furry mass that must be Nicholas through the door, and in a big mess of limbs, I somehow manage to get him inside and on solid ground.

  “Raven, my other arm.” I see Cassiy’s hand doing jazz fingers at the top of the opening to the door. Reaching up, I get a good hold on her wrist. Linnie and I both grab on to the opposite sides of the door and hang out.

  Above us, Cassidy dangles by her feet, belly to the ship and arms stretched. She lifts her head to look down as her dark hair halos around her face. “Are you ready for me to let go? It’s going to hurt, but please, don’t let me fall.”

  “We won’t,” I promise.

  “Ready,” Linnie squeaks.

  Cassidy plummets straight at us. With an awkward and painful impact and heave, we all land in a pile on the steel ship floor.

  “Well, that went better than I hoped,” Cassidy says as she rolls off me.

  “You are officially fired from making our plans, Cassidy,” I tell her through labored breaths. Every part of me, save none, aches. “People keep saying I’m a risk taker, but you are on a whole
different level.”

  Nicholas darts around us, and I'm pretty sure I now know why he was chitterng at me earlier. Maybe weasel-face had stuck his head out to see we were coming and poor Nicholas hadn't been able to warn us.

  As we all brush off our uniforms and gather ourselves, I consider telling the group about the demon. But for some reason, I hold back from telling them.

  Maybe it's because I don't want Cassidy to feel bad that her half-cocked plan almost got me killed. Maybe it's because I don't want to relive those moments that so recently ended.

  Or maybe I’m just not ready to deal with the fact that I killed someone who I spent most of my day around, and I don't feel anything at all inside. True, he was a murderous demon and the majority of the day he'd just been an annoyance. But still, I killed someone who looked and acted very human. Aren’t I supposed to be throwing up my guts?

  Pushing the uncomfortable thoughts away, I wipe the blood off my cut finger and onto my uniform before turning to Cassidy.

  “Where to?

  “Well.” She glances around. “There has to be a door leading out of here somewhere and into the backstage area. The auditorium is the only thing behind this area.”

  It isn't an assumption I would have willingly bet my life on if I'd known we were doing guesswork twenty minutes ago. But knowing that weasel-face got in here somehow, I agree with Cassidy that there has to be a door.

  My feet crunch over glass as we walk through the space. Someone, probably weasel face, smashed the light fixtures above in what was likely a previously eliminated area. The light from the open door only illuminates a little of the space, and we feel around the cool metal ridges until I finally find what feels like a handle.

  To my surprise, the door yields easily, opening up to reveal a metal stairway leading down. Thankfully, this area was saved from the light smashing. The sharp contrast of the halogen lights glaring down at us makes us all blink around the metal stairway shaft. Our footsteps echo as we descend-- and here’s hoping there isn't another demon ambusher at the other end because they’d have one hell of a heads up that we’re coming.