Redemption (Covenant Book 3)

by John Everson

  “You’re an idiot,” Alex yelled. With one quick motion she shrugged Ariana to the side, and then brought her knee up fast, catching the other woman in the gut. Then she rolled to her feet and yanked the chain from Ariana’s hands again.

  “You stay here if you want,” she said. “I’m going home.”

  Alex turned and ran again. Joe and the woman were almost to the arch. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Helone emerge from a hallway to the left. The demon’s eyes blazed when she saw both Joe and Alex had nearly made it to safety.

  Helone’s hand raised in the air and the demon screamed “Stop!”

  Even amidst the shaking of the last earthquake tremors, Alex could feel the power of Helone’s command. It crackled through the air like fire, and its effect was instant. Just two yards from the archway, Alex felt her feet lock, just as her hand reached out to Joe. Inches from her fingers, she saw him and the woman next to him freeze in place as well. She could see the spark of recognition in Joe’s eyes as he finally saw her. Too late, though.

  Ariana arrived, and grabbed the chain around Alex’s neck. “Not this time,” she said, and pulled on the chain to drag Alex back to Elotan.

  But Ariana couldn’t budge Alex’s feet. She was locked in place by Helone’s power. It didn’t matter; a moment later the demon himself was there. “Well done,” Elotan said, accepting the chain back from Ariana.

  Alex felt her heart sink as he took her bindings again. Once more a prisoner. But then that pit in her stomach grew even colder.

  “They’re mine,” Helone yelled, stepping across bodies to make her way to them.

  “I told you she had plans for you,” Elotan’s low voice said to Alex. “You have really got her claws out.”

  “Let us go,” Alex whispered. Her lips struggled to move. “If she is going to take me from you anyway, just let me go.”

  “And what would I get out of that?”

  “The satisfaction of knowing that she didn’t steal me from you right in front of you. She’s about to, you know.”

  Alex could see the anger rising in the demon’s eyes. No matter how you cut it, he was going to come up the loser in this equation; he knew was not going to win going head-to-head against the Queen of Doors.

  “You have caused me nothing but trouble since you turned up in my doorway,” he said. “Let’s put an end to that.”

  Elotan opened his mouth and gave out a cry of fury. And then he flung one arm out, toppling Ariana, but also Alex, Joe and Cheyenne. But his anger didn’t simply toss them to the ground. A handful of demons who were near the portal fell to their knees as well, and a chorus of angry voices joined Elotan’s own war cry. The demon was going to earn some payback for his outburst. But Alex intended not to be there to see it.

  “Malachai,” she whispered in her mind. “We are never going to be any closer. If you want to get back to Earth, you’d better help me now.”

  “You think you’ve been doing this all on your own up to now?”

  “Just shut up and give me strength!” she yelled silently.

  For once, the demon didn’t argue with her. Alex could feel his strength instantly surge through her. Between Elotan’s concussion of anger, and Malachai’s funnel of power, whatever paralysis Helone had cast on her was wiped away. Alex took advantage of both, and also tapped into a well that she’d only just begun to discover in herself. She refused to be a prisoner again, to Helone or Elotan or anyone. She thrust herself up from the ground and grabbed Joe’s arm, dragging him to his feet. He moved slowly, as if trapped in tar, but he moved.

  “Cheyenne,” he said.

  The blonde who had been running with him remained face down on the stone floor. Alex reached down and grabbed the woman’s hand. Cheyenne responded, gripping Alex’s hand back and starting to push herself, ever-so-slowly, to her knees. Alex pulled hard on both of them, and together they began to finally stumble to the archway. They were nearly there, when Ariana leapt forward and grabbed Alex’s chain.

  “Not so fast, little girl,” Ariana said.

  “You think you’re going to get some kind of reward for stopping us?” Alex said through gritted teeth. She didn’t stop dragging Joe and Cheyenne towards the door. Each could move, but only barely.

  And then Helone was there.

  For a second, Alex lost her drive, and simply stared at the demon. She didn’t at all resemble the crone that Alex had met just a few days before. Alex’s emotional storm had fed her, restored the vibrancy and lushness to her face and skin. But now her flesh looked even more youthful than before. All the curves of her breasts and hips were visible through her veil, and her black skin was shiny and flawless. When the demoness smiled, Alex could see perfect teeth behind her full, thick lips. But that smile was both cloying and cruel.

  “You left without saying goodbye,” Helone said.

  “I didn’t have anything more to say,” Alex answered.

  The earth trembled beneath their feet but Alex held her ground.

  “I would never have let them take your skin,” Helone said.

  “No,” Alex said. “What you would do was more painful.”

  “Really?” Helone said. She cocked her head and looked harder at Alex. “The whispers of your conscience hurt more than knives in your flesh? I find that hard to believe.”

  Helone looked at Elotan and pointed at Joe and Cheyenne. “Help me with them, and I’ll let you keep your slut.” She waved at Ariana who stood to the side, still holding Alex’s chain.

  The earth rumbled and everyone staggered. It was like standing on a lurching bus with no poles to grab onto. Alex didn’t waste the moment.

  “We’d love to stick around and see if this place blows up or slides into the ocean or whatever happens here when earthquakes get really bad but…”

  She yanked with superhuman strength on Joe’s and Cheyenne’s hands, and leapt forward at the same time, pulling all of them into the center of the arch. Ariana stumbled at the sudden movement, and fell forward against her will.

  For one split second, Alex caught the fiery eyes of Helone before completing her thought and diving into the invisible door between worlds.

  “… Goodbye.”

  CHAPTER 66

  “YOU DID IT!” Joe yelled. “Alex, you brought us back!”

  All four of them had fallen out of the doorway and onto the dusty floor of the mission chapel. Only, it didn’t look much like the place they had left.

  “But back to where?” Alex asked, sitting up and brushing the dirt from her arms. “What is this place?”

  Cheyenne took a good look around. The walls of the mission had collapsed, and there were cracks across the floor six inches wide. Chunks of adobe lay in piles everywhere, though miraculously, the center of the chapel remained clear of any large debris; the altar was open to the sky. Behind it, the heavy beams that had held the ceiling up for centuries stuck out like broken toothpicks.

  “Welcome to Santa Fe,” Cheyenne said. Her voice was far away. As if she were talking in a dream. “Where they don’t have earthquakes. Ever.”

  “This is the place where we came through the door to find you,” Joe explained. “There was a cult here who performed a ritual to open the door between worlds, just like Ariana did back in Terrel. But for some reason, when the sun came up the next day, this door didn’t close.”

  “And it is still not closed,” Ariana said.

  Two men had just threaded their way between the overturned and broken pews and the chunks of wall and ceiling. One had cast an odd look at the four still sitting on the floor, but he’d continued walking. And a moment later, their bodies had suddenly whisked upwards through the air and vanished in a blur.

  Joe nodded. “We should probably move to someplace a little less conspicuous.”

  Cheyenne broke from her trance. “You don’t think Darin is still here, do
you?” Her voice trembled.

  Joe shrugged. “I don’t know, but I don’t want to find out.”

  Alex looked up at the place where the two men had just walked into the sky. “Helone won’t let us go, you know,” she said. “She will send them after us. As long as the doorway remains open…”

  “How do we close it?” Cheyenne asked.

  Ariana fingered the sheer piece of silk draped across her chest. She twisted it back and forth in her fingers, dragging it across the tip of her breast. The nipple responded, and she closed her eyes for a moment before speaking.

  “The same way they opened it,” Ariana said. “You need to perform a human sacrifice.”

  “We have to murder someone?” Cheyenne gasped. “We can’t do that!”

  Alex looked at Ariana, and then at Joe. “We can and we have to,” she said. “And fast.” Her voice was not the voice of a teen. She sounded cold as a demon.

  “Where are we going to get a sacrifice?” Cheyenne said. “And who is going to hold the knife? I’m not doing it.”

  “I know one person here who won’t have a problem holding the knife,” Joe said. He stared at Ariana.

  She gave him a half-smile. But then her face went dark. She shook her head. “Not this time,” she said. “I opened the door once before, in a different place. I should be the one to close it.” She looked at Alex. “I’ll be the sacrifice.”

  “What?” Cheyenne said.

  Joe thought of all the murder and violence Ariana had caused. Of how, because of her, he and Alex had driven cross-country, following in the wake of her murders, trying to catch up to her before she let the Curburide through the gate between worlds in the same way that Darin’s mob finally had. And despite all of that, he agreed with Cheyenne.

  “No,” he said. “We are not going to kill you.”

  Alex hadn’t broken eye contact with Ariana, but she answered Joe. “You’re not going to,” she said. “I am.”

  Joe’s eyes widened and he opened his mouth to protest. But then he felt something cold slipping in behind his eyes. Something snakelike.

  Evil.

  “They’re here,” he whispered as he felt his limbs suddenly lock and then move of their own accord. “The Curburide are coming to ride us.”

  CHAPTER 67

  “MALACHAI, CAN YOU protect us?” Alex asked. “Hold off the Curburide until we can close the door?”

  “I have some experience with that,” the demon answered. “Put your hands on Joe, quickly.”

  Alex did as the demon asked, grabbing Joe by his forearms. Joe grinned, but not in a happy way. He opened his mouth and announced in a voice that sounded like sandpaper, “Time for you kids to come back home. Mommy’s not happy with you.”

  And then Alex felt a spark drive through her fingers, and Joe’s eyes suddenly rolled back in his head until only the whites showed. Alex gripped his arms tighter, as Joe’s body suddenly went limp. She levered him to the ground and his head lolled to the side. His mouth opened.

  “What happened?” Cheyenne cried. She slipped her arm beneath his head to cradle it and then lifted his head to her bosom. “What did you do?” she demanded.

  “Is he okay?” Alex asked silently.

  “He’s fine,” Malachai said. “I forced the demon from him and it wasn’t gentle. But he should wake up in a bit. He might have a headache.”

  “Are there more?”

  “Yes. I’m holding five off right now. I can do this because they are unfamiliar with this world, and I have been here a very long time. But I cannot hold them off forever. You must perform the sacrifice and close the door. Soon.”

  Alex put her hand on Cheyenne’s arm. “He’s going to be okay. Malachai – he’s a demon that knows Joe – stopped him from being possessed. But he will probably be knocked out for a little.”

  Then she looked at Ariana. “You’re sure you want to go through with this?”

  Ariana made a face. “Of course I’m not sure. I don’t want to fucking die. But I don’t want to be here anymore, either. I spent years preparing to bring the Curburide through to our world. And then I ended up in theirs. And now I’m back in this pit.”

  “It didn’t work out like you planned.”

  Ariana shook her head. “I don’t care anymore. About anything. So go ahead and cut me. Maybe I’ll feel something one last time.”

  “How…” Alex said. Her voice shook a little as the import of what she was preparing to do sunk in. “How do I do it? Is there a spell?”

  “The words don’t matter, the focus is what’s important. But if it makes you feel better, there is a ritual in the Book of the Curburide.”

  “And where am I going to get that?” Alex asked.

  Ariana pointed at the altar just a few feet away. “Right there, where the last idiots left it. They even provided you with a knife. Ironic, huh?”

  Alex stood up and walked to the altar. She lifted the heavy leather bound book lying there and then grabbed the knife with her other hand. It was a decorative weapon, with green and blue jewels in the haft, which shone as silver as the blade. The weapon was made to be seen… and to kill.

  She sat down next to Cheyenne, who was running her fingers through Joe’s hair. He remained unconscious.

  “Why isn’t he waking up?” Cheyenne whispered.

  “Give it time,” Alex said.

  “Men are weak,” Ariana offered.

  “And women are bitches,” Joe answered. His voice was soft, but strong.

  Alex smiled when she saw his eyes open. But a moment later, Cheyenne blocked her view as she bent to press her lips to his.

  “Well, there ya go,” Alex said, and turned her attention back to Ariana. “You’ve studied this book; do you know where the ritual is?”

  Ariana raised an eyebrow. “I have to let you kill me and show you how to do it. You really are just a kid, aren’t you? So disappointing.”

  Alex held her tongue. She knew she couldn’t afford to fight with Ariana now. She didn’t know why the other woman was agreeing to this at all, but she couldn’t allow her to bail out now.

  Ariana flipped through the book until she arrived at a place she knew. “The Ceremony of the Twenty-One Cuts is here,” she said, and then leafed a page or two farther. “The way to undo it is not far away.”

  She skimmed page after page, and then suddenly stopped and pointed. “Here,” she said. “This is the ritual to close a door between worlds.”

  Ariana thrust the book into Alex’s hands. “You need to use whatever that part is inside you that kept you alive in Helone’s and Elotan’s homes. You have something… and if this is going to work, you need to use it. All of it.”

  “I am ready,” Alex said. “And the demon Malachai will help me.”

  Ariana lay down on the ground, and spread her arms.

  “When you begin, I will not stop you,” Ariana said. “Follow the words, and the meaning, of the invocation, and it will work. Promise me one thing though?”

  Alex looked at the woman’s thin nose, and naked body and rather than feeling sympathy for what the woman was about to endure, she felt… antipathy. She had seen the pain and destruction Ariana had caused here on earth. And she had seen how Ariana enjoyed the sadism of the Curburide on the other side.

  No, she found she had no qualms with stabbing Ariana. And she was not inclined to grant the woman any last kindnesses. A part of her was disturbed at how cold she felt about the whole thing.

  “What?” Alex said, after looking the woman over.

  “When the door is closing, throw my body into the center,” Ariana said. “I want my body to lie with the Curburide.”

  Alex nodded. She could respect that. Ariana’s heart and soul did not belong here.

  “There are more of them,” Malachai warned. “I can’t hold them off forever.”


  “Got it,” Alex said. She turned to Joe and Cheyenne. “I need your help for this.”

  Joe nodded. “What do we have to do?”

  “You were at the ritual that Ariana did in the caves in Terrel,” Alex said. “The book says we need to be stripped of our modesty.”

  “You just want to see me naked,” Joe said.

  Alex raised her hand and shrugged. “You aren’t exactly hiding much now,” she said. “Anyway, the book says we must release our inhibitions completely, find our primal selves, bare our bodies and our sacrifice, and then, as I open her veins, share her blood between us. When she has been cut and cut and her blood flows on all of our hands, I will say the final words to ignite the power of our act. And with a final stab to her chest, I will demand that the door to the world beyond be closed.”

  “That’s it?” Joe said. “Sounds like a typical Friday night.”

  Cheyenne snorted.

  “Laugh it up, assholes,” Ariana said.

  Alex shook her head. “This is serious. I am going to share Ariana’s blood with you. And you have to be with me. One hundred percent. I need your energy. You both have to focus with me. It will only work if we are all in the moment together.”

  Joe looked at her without humor. He nodded. “Got it. Are you sure you can do this?”

  Alex nodded. “Malachai will help. But I need your energy too. I need you to focus.”

  Behind them, two men and a woman walked through the destruction of the chapel. The leader, an aging man in a crewcut with the lines of the desert well cut into his forehead, stopped next to them. “The door is right here,” he said. “Are you going through?”

  Alex shook her head. “This one needs to be sent through sacrifice. We’re preparing her now.”

  The man shook his head, as if that made all the sense in the world. “We will see you there,” he said, and the threesome walked through the symbols on the floor and into the center. And then they rose like mist into the air to twist and disappear into nothing.