by Deanna Chase
“Hey, I needed shoes.” I was almost glad my mom’s escape portal had sucked off my boring oxfords. My new black boots were comfy and kick ass.
Pirate jumped up against one of my boots and slid right off the polished leather. “Those witches are going to bust a gut when they see you.” He followed me as I strode toward the boat. “And did you know they have salami?”
“Look—sturdy heels. These are definitely me,” I said, more to myself than my twelve-pound terrier. Pirate had moved on to chasing fireflies.
On the ride over this morning, I’d passed a shop in Greenville. A black awning with flames had invited The Inner Vixen to stop by for a look see. I straightened my purple plaid mini skirt. I had to admit, it felt good.
Dimitri’s emerald felt hard and heavy against the hollow of my neck. I didn’t buy the skirt with him in mind. Okay. Maybe I did. He needed a reminder of what he’d lost. Besides, it had shorts underneath, kind of like the field hockey skirts I wore in high school. I’d be able to move a lot easier than I would in pants and, well, my legs are my best feature. Dimitri deserved to suffer. I topped off my kick butt demon slayer outfit with a leather sports bra that looked more like a corset than anything. Still, it was comfortable, I could move and I couldn’t pass up the purple prairie clovers climbing up the sides. They were, after all, the sacred symbol of my demon slayer line. I stopped believing in coincidences a long time ago.
Ant Eater’s head popped out over the main deck. “Are you trying to piss me off?”
Pirate cocked his head to the side. “I think she wants us in there now.”
I scooped him up and jogged over the rickety boards they’d found to replace the rusted gangplank. Let Ant Eater holler. For the first time, I felt like the demon slayer everyone said I would be. And while my nerves jangled at the idea of facing Vald tonight, another teeny, tiny part of me screamed to let me at him.
On the main deck, the witches worked in teams. Two groups had set up on the walkways to the deck, intercepting curious spells. Good thing I’d gotten rid of most of them, especially the Chokers. Another group had chalked off a large pentagram near the shuffleboard court. They sprinkled bits of gobely gook and chanted. Ant Eater conferred with Scarlet. Dimitri was nowhere to be found. Probably lurking somewhere below deck. And if not? My heart sank. It would be easier without him.
“Nice skirt,” Ant Eater sniggered.
“And here I thought you’d have something useful to say,” I told her.
“You wish. Here.” Ant Eater shoved a thick black belt into my hands. The leather had cracked with age. It looked like a utility belt of some kind, with small cases attached.
“What is this?”
“Just something I stole from Phoenix. It was your Great Aunt Evie’s.”
“She brought this with her today?” Maybe I could convince my mom to help.
“Nah. I took it after she screwed us over in ‘78. Phoenix don’t want to be a demon slayer. She don’t get the damned belt.”
“Ant Eater?” Scarlet called from across the deck.
“Coming,” Ant Eater trotted off to join her.
I settled on one of the observation benches and studied the belt. It seemed to be a demon slayer tool belt of sorts. There was a slot for switch stars to the right of the crystal buckle. Inside the pouches, I found colored powders, stones, a cache of vibrating crystals. Maybe Mom was right. I didn’t know what I was doing.
The belt felt about ten degrees cooler than everything around it. I popped another lid off one of the cases. “Stop!” a voice screeched and slammed the lid back down.
Pirate rushed to my side so fast he slid right past me and spun out behind the next bench. “What was that? You want me to eat it?”
“I’m not sure,” I said, yanking at the clasp I’d opened. It wouldn’t budge. I hoped I could handle this.
“Okay, people!” Ant Eater hollered. “Count down is on. Five minutes. Move it or lose it!”
As the witches rushed to complete their tasks, I fastened the chilly leather belt around my waist.
“Ready, slick?” Ant Eater thumped me on the back.
I nodded.
“Easy, Frieda,” she called. Ant Eater leaned close. “We’re borrowing power from the portal your mom made. Makes for a stronger thread. We won’t lose you as easy.”
“Don’t,” I said. I knew she was just being honest, but she’d hit too close to the truth. I could feel Dimitri’s eyes on me. He was here, no question about it. He rumbled in the background of everything I did, like an unstoppable freight train.
Ant Eater looked from Dimitri to me. “I don’t know whether to hitch a Transport Spell to his ass or get you guys another room.”
The way he’d acted? “Transport.”
She let out a grunting chuckle and dug into the pocket of her leather chaps.
“I was only kidding,” I told her, “Really,” I cringed as she shoved a purple noodle of a spell into the pocket of my brand new skirt.
“That’s okay. I trust you,” she said, patting the lump in my pocket.
The witches moved in sober silence, a far cry from the laughter I’d witnessed in the basement of the Red Skull bar. They were worried. So was I.
I hugged my doggie tight. “You listen to Bob, okay? And don’t eat too much salami.”
He burrowed his head under my armpit. “Oh now, Lizzie. You know I can’t stand it when you leave and you used to just leave for the grocery store and now you’re leaving and I don’t know if I’m ever going to see you again.”
I kissed him on the head. “You will,” I said, hoping I was right.
“I’m sorry, Lizzie,” Bob said, “but we’re going to have to chain him.”
I did it myself. My doggie whimpered while I looped Bob’s old ferret chain once, twice around a nearby bench and clipped the leash to Pirate’s collar. Pirate watched me with big, sad eyes as I joined the witches in the semi circle.
Bob eased a Styrofoam cup from the brown paper bag in his lap. Ice ringed the top and steam bellowed from the wide opening.
“Liquid nitrogen,” Ant Eater told me. “We have to get the portal cold enough. Bet this part was a bitch for Evie in 1883.”
We watched as Frieda used a pool cue from the game room to draw a glowing, yellow orb from the pilot house. She carried it toward the center of the pentagram. The five-pointed star cast faint glimmers of blue and silver magic. It offered protection, control. I needed every bit of it tonight.
“Any last words?” Ant Eater slapped me on the back. “Just kidding,” she said. “Don’t fuck up.”
“Two minutes to midnight in hell!” she hollered to the group.
“Aw. Hell!” The orb bobbled on Frieda’s stick before she lost her grip on it.
Oh no.
“Somebody catch it!” Bob hollered.
We scrambled for the orb as it zoomed low over the deck and hovered, out of her reach, over the back end of the boat.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Frieda dangled over the back rail in a vain attempt to capture the dancing ball of energy. I grabbed the pool cue from her and thrust it for the portal. It flitted out of my reach.
“What do we do now?” I shoved the cue at Dimitri, who also failed. We had to get that thing into the center of the pentagram.
“Screw it. It stays there,” Ant Eater announced, as if the portal wasn’t hovering over the sharp paddlewheel and the churning river below. “Change of plans, people. Lizzie’s gonna have to jump off the back of the boat,” she announced. “New positions! We’ll throw the stuff at her.”
Ant Eater yanked me close. “No worries, babe. You’ll be gone before—you know—splat. Just don’t miss.”
Very comforting.
“We’re doing this, people,” she called to the group. “Thirty seconds. Grab your possum teeth.”
She positioned me at the center of the semicircle overlooking the dark waters below. “Possum lungs work better, but it takes forever to scoop ‘em out.”
If she was trying to take my mind off the portal to hell hovering in midair off the back of the boat, well, it wasn’t working.
The witches joined hands facing the back of the boat. I stood between Ant Eater and Scarlet. Dimitri leaned against a nearby bench. He had no right to be anywhere near us tonight.
The Red Skulls closed their eyes, and I felt the magic build.
Ant Eater bowed her head. “We, the witches of the Red Skull, send forth our sister away from our warmth and into the cold. Away from the light and into the darkness. Apart from us, but always with us. We send her forth so that she may die and be reborn.”
I clenched my toes inside my new, kick ass demon slayer boots. Nobody said anything about dying. What was this portal going to do to me?
Forget it. I could do this.
It pulsed, sending off bolts of electricity as it grew to the size of a person. I could still see the hard, sharp paddlewheel below, ready to chop me to bits.
I glanced back at Dimitri, as he glowered in the corner. He didn’t deserve to go with me. He’d asked for my trust, my loyalty. And he’d certainly made it clear that he wanted me. I could hardly believe he’d been willing to use me. But, heck, he admitted it. It didn’t get plainer than that.
The portal snapped and cracked like a giant bug zapper above the churning river below.
If this doesn’t work, I’m dead. If it does? I’m in hell.
I snuck another peek at Dimitri, curse him. No getting around it—he lied. He broke every rule I had about how a relationship should be. I knew he never meant for it to get out of hand like it did. Despite what I’d said to him back at the motel, I knew he cared about me.
“Lizzie!” Ant Eater jammed her finger into my shoulder and I snapped out of my daze. “Do you venture forth freely in the tradition of the great demon slayers of Dalea?”
“I do,” I said, fighting to keep my voice steady. I had to trust in my training, follow my instincts. That meant…oh heck. I reached back and offered my hand to Dimitri. He didn’t deserve it. But I couldn’t think of one other person I’d rather go to hell and back with.
Dimitri took my hand, his grasp warm and steady. The circle widened for him, and I could have sworn I saw the corner of Ant Eater’s mouth twitch into a shadow of a grin. “We welcome them into our fold just as we send them forth.”
“Touch shoulders, grab your possum teeth.” Ant Eater said, eyes on her watch. “Okay Bob. Wait for it. Wait for it. Now!”
Bob hurled the liquid nitrogen. It slammed into the portal, sending off a shockwave of blue energy.
“Roadkill!” Ant Eater commanded.
The possum teeth hit the portal, launching flares like fireworks into the river below.
“Both of you. Together!”
I clutched Dimitri’s hand and we leapt off the boat.
***
A frigid wind buffeted me as I struggled to gain a foothold, toehold, anything. We’d plunged into the middle of a giant maze, carved from solid ice. Bitter cold soaked me to the bone and I cursed the ultra sexy, utterly useless miniskirt as a frigid gust blew straight up.
Ahead, the path veered sharply to the left, and the right, and down into a fissure that threatened to swallow us alive. Behind us, a tangle of passageways wound into oblivion.
I braced my hands against slick walls that rose claustrophobically close on each side. Sulfur tinged the air, making it hard to breathe. My heart thumped as I caught a glimpse of hands, faces behind the ice. I yanked my hands to my chest and when that didn’t stop the shivers, reached out to Dimitri, and let his touch flood me with raw warmth.
“So much for hell freezing over,” I told him.
He pulled me close until my chin rested on his bare chest. Poor guy still hadn’t changed from our encounter at Motel 6. I hope his underwear had dried.
“If you think about it,” he said, “hell is the absence of affection, love, anything good. It should be the coldest place in any dimension.”
He kissed my forehead, my cheeks, my eyes. Each touch warmed me inside and out. We didn’t have time for this. Besides, I was pretty sure I was still mad at him. A bead of heat wound its way through my body. Just one more kiss. After all, I had to keep my temperature up.
He traced his thumb over my lower jaw. “Feel better?”
Damn the man. He was addicting. “You’re not getting in my pants on the way to hell.”
“This is hell, sweetheart.”
I doubted it for a split second, until “What the—?” My voice lodged in my throat as a sharp sting pierced my spine.
Dimitri hissed in surprise. “Don’t look back.”
Chapter 20
It felt like a thousand biting insects burrowed between my shoulder blades.
A white-scaled lizard lurched out of the ice wall behind us. Its claws sliced at Dimitri as he seized it by the neck and cleaved off its head with his bronze dagger. He tossed the body into the snow at our feet. “Turn around.”
His fingers probed my back. I barely felt them over the screaming, eating pain. “It’s not bad,” he lied.
“Jerk,” I said through clenched teeth. He’d promised to stop holding out on me.
“We can’t fix it,” he said, forcing me to look at him. “Put it out of your mind or you’ll never be able to do what you need in order to get out of here.”
I’d never been so afraid in my life. I nodded and squeezed his hand, or at least I tried. Cold shock had stolen the feeling from my limbs. “Which way do we go?”
“You tell me,” he said, his expression guarded.
I nodded and willed myself to focus on the empty world around us, as the creatures pulsed behind the ice walls towering to our right and left. Past a mass of glowing, red orbs, the path broke sharply and went down to an ice canyon from the feel of it. Straight ahead, I detected a fissure of unknown depth. Behind us, a maze of passageways wound endlessly.
Danger screamed from every direction. I opened my mind, called on my demon slayer instinct to run for trouble and picked our poison.
“Down the hole,” I told Dimitri.
“I figured,” he said, as a gray, shrouded figure drifted from the abyss. Empty sleeves beckoned. It wanted us. I struggled to see its face, buried in the shadows, as it slammed an arctic blast into us. Now or never.
I braced a hand against my switch stars and jogged straight for it. It beat me to the punch, gulping me down in a single bite. I spun head over tail through ice water. Rip tides pitched me deeper, farther. My lungs screamed as they fought to breathe. I clutched for something, anything to pull me out of this hell hole. I dug into my utility belt and released powders, crystals, potions—whatever I could find. One by one, I threw them into the freezing void.
Fresh air rushed me like a wave. I breathed deeply, desperately as I struggled to get my bearings. I pushed myself to my feet, hard to do on a floor made from slush. I sunk down to my ankles in icy muck.
Where was Dimitri?
Frozen walls towered in every direction. I stood in the bottom of a deep chasm. Alone. With no chance of escape and—ohmigod—
“What the hell happened to you?” Grandma demanded. Buried up to her sagging cheekbones in icy quicksand, she crumpled her nose like I’d just blown curfew. Her eyes widened in horror as she gaped at my raw back.
“Dimitri said it wasn’t bad.”
“He lied.”
“Thanks for the reminder.”
“Put your hands on your tool belt,” Grandma ordered. “Reach for the third pouch on the left.”
My fingers clamored for the pouch.
“No!” she ordered as my fingers dipped into the third pouch to the left. “Sorry. My bad. Third pouch on my left, which is your right.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “I’m screwed in the head lately.”
Yeah, well I think we were both a little stressed.
“Okay, that’s it,” she said, as I flipped open the third pouch on the right. “Take the crys
tal. Infuse it with healing.”
“What?” Nobody taught me anything about crystals.
“Focus hard and do it. The white crystals—holy shit, get your hand away from your back!”
I yanked my hand away. “Hey, this is my first time flinging magical crystals and pixie dust.” I needed to know where I was aiming.
She brightened. “You have pixie dust?”
“No!”
She rolled her eyes like I was the crazy one. “Just grab a crystal. The white ones are like blank slates. Infuse it with health and happiness.”
“I don’t—”
She glared at me, daring me to ask any more questions.
“Excuse me,” I snapped. “I’m doing the best I can here.” Dimitri had vanished. I was ankle deep in hell, trying to save her sorry butt after some underworld monster took pot shots at me. No one wanted to tell me how to infuse a friggin’ crystal that I hadn’t even known existed an hour ago—Hades standard time—and for all we knew, Vald would be showing up at any second.
“It’s not about you, Lizzie,” Grandma warned.
“Of course not.” I gripped the crystal until it dug ridges in my hand.
Think. I took a deep breath and did my best to shove my anger to the side. Think of the one little guy who’s always happy, healthy, bounding through a clump of wildflowers as gleefully as he rolls in garbage or—soon after on one occasion—Hillary’s white cushioned deck chairs. Pirate knew who he was and what he wanted. Even after I chained him to a bench on the Dixie Queen he’d still found a way to chase fireflies.
“Impressive,” Grandma muttered. “I knew you could do it. Now stick it on your back.”
I felt for the raw wound in my back and hells bells. “I can’t reach it,” I groaned.
“What?” she asked, straining to see.
“It’s too high.” I squirmed and stretched. I could almost feel the slippery blood. My blood. I held my breath and reached with all my might, balancing the crystal on the edge of my own personal nightmare. Warmth rushed through me and I about collapsed with relief. Or was that fear? I didn’t want to know.
