“And yet…” Raoul cocked his head. He came forward and yanked off the black blanket that covered both the bed and the creature’s lower half, and we all jumped back. It wasn’t sitting on a bed at all. It was dangling. Impaled on a spike that reached down into a fog that writhed with tortured souls.
The creature’s smile turned ghastly as blood welled up from its throat and coated its teeth. And that was the easiest sight to handle. Because its spike didn’t stand alone. In the space the bed should’ve taken up, standing as if in a cavern created from another universe, more posts carved to evil points at their tips rose from a surface that smelled like a slowly burning landfill. Every post was stuck through a body. And every single body twitched or moaned in its turn, assuring us that no creature who rode a roughly hewn spear had been blessed with death.
Finally I found my voice. And the knowledge that had been scratching at my brain for the past few minutes. “Kyphas? Is that you? We thought…” I glanced at Vayl. “We were sure you’d died.”
Even without her lips, the demon whose beauty had once raised a desire in me that had made me grateful I liked guys managed a sneer. “Since when have you played pretty with your words, Jasmine?” She compounded the insult by pronouncing my name as only Vayl did, Yaz-mee-na, hoping, I was sure, that the next time he whispered it in my ear, my shiver would be as far from one of ecstasy as it was possible to get.
She said, “Speak it plain, or by all that’s evil I will break my vow and suffer torments stacked on those I’ve already brought on myself just for the satisfaction of seeing you pout.”
I briefly considered shooting her through the head. The only reason I decided against it was that it would only cause her more pain. Instead I said, “Miles and I saw you sucked through that planar door.” Bergman had hugged against my back the moment he realized we were facing the demon who’d nearly dragged him into hell with her. I could literally feel him nod in agreement. I went on. “We also saw Vayl and Astral jump through to fight you. And when they came back, all they brought with them was your severed hands.”
“What? You mean these?” She raised her arms and the material fell back.
“Jeeezus,” whispered Bergman, who’d never felt the need to call on any deities in person until this moment and who, I was pretty sure, had been raised Jewish. I would’ve joined him, but I was too busy watching all my inner girls fall to their knees in panicked prayer.
Even now, three weeks later, Kyphas’s wrists were still leaking black gouts of blood and gore. But they didn’t end in stumps as we’d expected. The same villain who’d burned her face into an unrecognizable mask and shoved her on a stick like some sick puppeteer had welded a three-headed hydra to each of her wrists. Each head was taking turns sinking its fangs into her wounds, causing her to shake like a malaria victim as it drank its fill.
“What happened to you?” Vayl asked, his shoulders tightening into steel plates at the sight of Kyphas’s snakes. “You are the daughter of a Lord of Hell. Where is your father? Why did he allow this?”
“I gave up my heartstone,” she said. “Or have you forgotten? Leonard has turned his back on me.”
“Oh, don’t act like it was some great act of charity,” I snapped, using my resentment to cover my horror at her pain and my surprise at her lineage. Her father was the Lord of Black Magic and Sorcery. I couldn’t believe he hadn’t tried to pull some strings to give her at least some relief. “You were trying to turn Cole into a demon. If you hadn’t given your heartstone to us he’d be trolling Satan’s playground for cute babes to skin alive even as we speak.”
“I broke the Second Law,” Kyphas informed me.
Even though I’d never warmed to Kyphas, I was beginning to believe she really had wrapped her arms around this fate for Cole’s sake. Demons took all kinds of crap for letting souls slip through their fingers, but they never experienced true punishments for the failure, because it was so hard to snag them in the first place. Only when someone like Cole was allowed to escape on purpose, breaking Satan’s Second Law, did demons burn. Which meant she’d acted out of real love. Damn.
I cleared my throat. “How long…” I couldn’t finish, couldn’t imagine the pain she must be enduring.
She said, “I am to be punished for the next half-century for my crime. And yet my vow supersedes even my jailer’s power. So I’ve come to give you the last bit of help that I’m required to.”
“How did you know we were coming?” I asked, knowing that as soon as she fulfilled her vow she’d disappear again. And that even this small break was helping her push back the agony.
She pointed down at one of the women writhing beneath her, the snakes on her right wrist coiling up her arm at the sudden movement. “Lesia is a prophet. Ironically, the more they burn her, the clearer her visions become. Which is why I know that my beloved has crept through the attic access in the bathroom and is waiting just outside the door for your signal.” She sighed. Then she said, loud enough for her voice to carry across the room, “Cole. Mercy or revenge. Either way you think of it, your bullets can’t kill me.”
The bathroom door swung open and Cole stepped in. He regarded Kyphas for a long time, his face so still that none of us could figure out what emotions were moving behind his clear blue eyes. Finally he said, “Tell Jasmine why you came and then go back to hell where you belong, Kyphas. We’ll follow you when the time’s right.”
He glanced at my belt, where the Rocenz hung heavier than ever. When he looked back at Kyphas some silent communication passed between them, because they both nodded and, despite her immense suffering, she seemed almost… relieved.
She nodded to me. “That lovely piece of artwork you carry in your pocket is obviously incomplete.”
I nearly put my hand against the hanky-wrapped skin, but kept it steady under the butt of my gun instead. “I noticed.”
“The rest is still on the cowboy, Zell Culver. He’ll come if you call him. Stand by the gate, give it your blood, knock three times, and shout his full name.”
“Thank you, Kyphas,” Vayl said. “Your promise to us is fulfilled.”
She barely acknowledged his words. Her eyes, the only bright and shining parts of her soul left unshattered, kept a steady watch on Cole. “You look fine,” she said. “I’m glad of that.”
He nodded. “My friends brought me back.” His stare, full of dark memories and nightmares, wouldn’t give her an inch. This was the Cole that stayed hidden, the man I knew least and liked best. “I’ll never forgive you for what you did. You should know that.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
What she said made perfect sense. She should feel apologetic for what she’d done to Cole, even if she had paid in skin and blood. But the prickling between my shoulders told me she wasn’t talking about Marrakech. I spun around as Aaron shrieked. Miles, still hanging at my shoulders like a badly organized backpack, hampered my movements and my line of sight. For a second all I could see were two blurs leaping through the doorway.
“Vayl!” I yelled, relying on my Spirit Eye to guide me until the rest of my senses could come into play. “Hellspawn!”
Bergman ducked, I thought to get out of my way until I realized he was rolling up his jeans. Hoping whatever he’d built into his boots wasn’t another one of his unreliable prototypes, I triggered the holy water strapped to my wrist, filling my palm with an attack-ready syringe even as I knocked the first demon back with a barrage of gunfire that wouldn’t kill it in this world. But judging by the squeal, it hurt a lot more than beanbags. That, and the flying steel from Vayl’s shotgun as well as Cole’s rifle, gave me a few seconds to assess our situation.
As I’d thought, we only faced two opponents, but they were a couple of the baddest fighters hell had ever puked forth. Called Ichoks by those who’d encountered them and survived, these creatures could throw so much nasty into one blow it felt like you were facing five well-trained enemies. Part of that was because they were ambidextrous, wielding their katanas equally well wit
h either hand and with such speed that people were left staring at the stumps of arms and the gaping wounds from which their intestines had begun to snake out without even having felt the blows. Ichoks could also deal a potentially fatal strike with what I called their spit glands. Located in a specialized pouch tucked inside the lining of their bloated, gillcovered cheeks, the glands could be emptied with force, usually into an opponent’s eyes. Blindness was the first result, after which the Ichok could finish you off at its leisure. But if something distracted it, you’d eventually die from the poison as it worked its way through your system, paralyzing major organs along the way.
They preferred to fight in a crouch, which left a much smaller target to aim for. And, like most hellspawn, they came shielded, though their armor was easy to see, even to Unsensitized eyes like Bergman’s.
“What’s that chest plate made of?” he whispered to me as I reloaded. “It looks like…”
Knowing he’d never be able to finish the sentence, I did it for him. “Skulls, Miles, those are human skulls. The top, cap part, to be exact. Hundreds of them cut to fit into neat little rows and linked together with bits of silver chain. What a great Halloween costume that would make, huh?”
He caught my bitterness and seemed about to respond, but he couldn’t look away from the armor. “All those people,” he whispered.
“If you don’t want to become one of them, you need to give me a little more room,” I told him.
He backed off, moving to stand next to Aaron, who’d tipped an armchair over in the corner and hustled Jack and Astral behind it.
Beside me Vayl had also reloaded and gone another round, blowing his Ichok back into the wall. But even before that his most effective weapon had already swung into full motion. In fact, the second the demons had entered the room I felt Vayl’s power working at my hands, which were cold enough that I worried they wouldn’t squeeze the trigger in time. And in my nose, which had begun to run. Even in my breath, which poofed out gray and frost-laden. I realized this might be the biggest storm Vayl had ever called.
I glanced at Miles and Aaron. “You might want to bundle up.”
Already their teeth were beginning to chatter. Still, Bergman kept struggling with his boot. I couldn’t see the hilt of a knife, so what the hell? “Did Vayl have to be a Wraith?” he complained. “I hear lethryls are a lot warmer.”
“They also require a lot more blood to heat up the place, which usually means a couple of full-time suppliers working the entourage angle. Do you want to be some lethryl’s bitch?”
“Point taken.” He gave up on the boot. “I’m freezing. And my VEB is stuck. Feel free to start without me.”
Wondering what a VEB was and if I should’ve taken out insurance against being disintegrated by one, I emptied my clip into Cole’s Ichok. Its armor had kept its chest from turning to dog food, although blood trickled down its arms and legs in a steady stream, and our combined rounds had thrown it to its knees. But still it was roaring and spitting, warning us that soon we’d be wishing for more powerful weapons.
I reached for the sword Raoul had lent me. As I pulled it, I realized my Spirit Guide was not waiting patiently for us to finish with the long-range fighting so he could wade in with his own weapon. He was standing just outside the door, fully engaged with a third Ichok who stood at least a head taller than the two we were holding off. His blade arched and slashed so quickly it was just a blur, but so were the Ichok’s weapons, and I swallowed a spurt of fear as I saw that his uniform was ripped in several places where blood had darkened it to black.
Then, like the warning had been ripped from the middle of her chest, Kyphas cried, “Watch out, Cole!” and I had to turn back to our fight.
He’d had to throw himself to the floor to avoid a spit-patch of poison that now dripped from the wall behind him. Worse yet, the blows from our bullets had begun to ping off the skulls of the Ichoks, as if the armor had learned how to deflect them in the time we’d been shooting.
Cole’s hellspawn had risen and begun to twirl its double katanas like saw blades, and all he had was a now-ineffective sniper rifle and a sheathed sword that he’d never be able to compete with in a fair fight.
By now my blade was in hand as I stood beside him. “Draw steel,” I ordered, although I didn’t hold out much hope for our survival.
Next to us Vayl had centered the cold of the grave he’d never entered on the hellspawn whose realm was full of the burning dead. In one massive cloud of air that looked like a perfect coil, Vayl surrounded the Ichok with tiny, razor-sharp shards of sleet. And then he drove them into it. The boom of sound that accompanied the strike shook the floor, making us all stagger backward as Vayl’s opponent shattered into a million pieces.
Cole and I pressed our advantage, swinging our blades at our unbalanced adversary as he leaned toward the wall. Unfortunately he recovered quickly, and soon we were both on the defensive, fighting for our lives against blades that seemed to be everywhere at once. Of course, this was giving Vayl a chance to move around behind the creature, but given the speed of this attack nothing was going to save us in time.
I glanced over my shoulder at Raoul. Nope, he couldn’t wade in beside us, because his hands were full as well.
Then I saw Dave and Cassandra running down the hall. Dave had drawn his knife. The sheen of its blade matched the edge of steel in his eyes, making me glad I was fighting on his side. Suddenly I felt sorry for the Ichok who was about to die. But only a little.
I turned back to my own fate. Cole, back on his feet and fighting more fiercely than I’d ever seen him, raised his sword just in time to parry a blow meant to separate my arm from my shoulder. And then Bergman yelled from behind us, “Okay, I’m ready, guys! Duck!”
Cole and I traded a single look. And dropped to the floor like we’d just heard the whistle of a bomb zeroing in on our coordinates.
The Ichok, seeing its prey do the don’t-slice-me dance, leaned over us with a leer on its butt-ugly face and roared. I saw its throat work and realized, “Cole. It’s going to spit on us. Cover your eyes!”
And then I forgot my own advice, because Bergman whooped like a cheerleader whose team has just won the playoffs. “It’s gonna work, guys! Watch this!”
We all turned to where Bergman stood, holding his boot in front of him like it was his very first twelve-gauge, the toe tucked under his arm for support, the empty leg pointed toward our foe. Only it wasn’t quite empty, as we could tell from the blue spiral of smoke curling out of it. My guess? Bergman had just lit a fuse.
He said, “So long, mo-fo,” growly, like he was just recovering from a bout of laryngitis. And then the back blew off the boot, smashing into the wall behind him, shattering a mirror that had been hanging there. He glanced over his shoulder, frowning. “That wasn’t supposed to happen. Maybe I have the power-boost too—”
He never finished his sentence, because out of the opening his leg had so recently filled shot a series of cannonballs so small they looked like marbles. Except they hit like vats of acid, leaving smoking holes that ate at the skin, growing larger with each second, making the Ichok scream and writhe with pain.
“Bed,” Cole panted.
I nodded, and without another word we charged. I fended off the Ichok’s weak attempts at defense as Cole drove it toward the narrowing gap between worlds, a door closing quickly behind Kyphas and the other sufferers like it was a living thing that knew we wanted to use it to our advantage.
Who knows? came the random thought, maybe it is. Maybe all the doors are. And that’s when I knew, as surely as I knew my dad would never stop bitching at me because that was the only way he could tell me he loved me. I’d stood at the threshold of such a door at each moment of my death, my soul about to shatter into thousands of diamond-like shards that would travel the universe, settling into my family, my friends, and other destinations I could only imagine. I’d communed with the creature that provided pathways into worlds beyond worlds. Felt her fire caress th
e gemlike skin of my being. And promised her, one day, that I’d return so she could fly me home. So now she was always near, letting me know the trail was clear, no matter which turn I chose to take.
With this thought fresh in my mind I snapped, “Open up,” at Kyphas’s door. “Or I swear I’ll put a hole in you so big cement trucks will be able to drive through it.”
The door hesitated. Then slowly reversed course as Cole continued harrying the Ichok toward the bed, slamming it with slicing blows that left it looking like the victim of an old-time British Navy whipping. I slammed my heel into its knee, cracking it so soundly that my ears rang. It screamed and fell into the pit just as Cole swung his sword, cleanly decapitating the hellspawn just before it hurtled out of reach.
We turned to help Raoul, Dave, and Cassandra just in time to see Raoul shove his sword deep into the Ichok’s side while Dave’s lightning knife strike left the creature’s right arm limp and hanging.
“He’s going to spit!” Cassandra cried, but neither one of the men was in any position to prevent the strike. So she stepped in and dumped her enormous, beaded bag over its head just as it let go. We could heard it scream as its venom hit falling tubes of lipstick, a paperback book, and a bright green cosmetics bag, not to mention a smaller purse full of necessities and at least one full bottle of Febreze. Some of its spit also dripped down onto its neck, where it began to eat into its skin like a plague of carnivorous beetles.
Dave caught a pair of handcuffs as they fell from the bag and locked them around the handles.
“Oh, baby,” murmured Cole. “I gotta know the story behind those puppies.”
“Shut up,” I said as I cranked my elbow into his ribs. “For all you know Cassandra’s a deputy sheriff.”
“Ha!” Cole’s laugh was cut short by another elbow. This one to his gut. One guess who threw it.
Now Dave and Raoul hefted the Ichok between them, shuffled it to the portal, and, after a three-count that allowed them to swing the creature into a nicely rhythmic arc, threw it into the pit. I don’t know if they aimed or it was just dumb luck, but the demon hit an empty stake about halfway down and impaled itself on it. The last thing I heard before the door closed was its screams.
The Deadliest Bite Page 20
