'Tween Heaven and Hell

by Sam Cheever

  “We must go.”

  I stood. “I can’t. I have to stay with Emo.”

  Making a wrinkle in time and space, Dialle rearranged reality so that he was suddenly standing in front of me, mere inches away, before I’d even seen him move. “No. Emo will die or not, you cannot affect that now. Nille and Nerul have been found. We must attack immediately while they are unprepared.”

  I stared into the ocean blue of his gaze and, although I noted the change, I wasn’t even surprised. I could feel his impatience vibrating under the forced calm of his appearance and I couldn’t help wondering why he bothered. He and I both knew he could just grab me and shift me away. But I guessed he wanted my cooperation more than he wanted my mere presence. He was right. Together we had a chance to win this battle. A slight chance, but a chance. If we didn’t present a united front we were toast. I don’t particularly like toast. Especially if it’s me.

  Finally I sighed and laid my hand over his. As the world faded to neutral again it occurred to me that we would not truly be partners if I couldn’t learn to mobilize on my own. I tucked that thought away as a lesson for another day. If there was another day.

  Amazingly we shimmered into the blood and gore splattered loft of the Church of the Twined Hands. As soon as we had taken physical form, Dialle and the three guards that had been in the room with us when we left moved forward with urgent steps. Still holding my hand, Dialle headed straight for the center of the room, where the remains of the cross prison lay in a broken heap. Suddenly a lot of things made sense to me. The church had apparently been built on the channel between the light and the dark worlds. A perfect conduit for evil as well as good to enter the physical world. Poor Deaver probably had no idea what he’d signed up for when he’d established his church in that building. His initial message to me about having stepped on some devil toes when he’d moved into the church probably hadn’t been too far off the mark.

  Reaching the barricade of collapsed crosses, Dialle simply swung one hand and pieces of cross flew away to crash into splinters against the stone walls. I gasped. The wood of the crosses was incredibly hard and heavy. It would take a staggering amount of power to move it, let alone fling it with apparently no effort. What had I attached myself to? Shit.

  As Dialle cleared away the cross debris, I became aware that we were being joined, a few at a time, by several more guards. They shimmered into the room, in some cases gaping around in surprise as if they weren’t at all sure how they’d arrived there and stood in formation behind Gerch and his two hand-picked guards. Apparently Gerch had managed to find some who were still loyal to their Prince.

  While Dialle did his dark world version of spring-cleaning, I watched the lesser devils and demons that would stand at our backs in the coming battle. Although I wasn’t at all comfortable with the idea of turning my back on the motley and dangerous looking crew gathered together in that room, their demeanor was not suspect under the circumstances. And, let’s face it, if any of them had any thoughts about betraying Dialle once the battle began, their ambitions were undoubtedly quenched as they watched him treat the thousand-year-old, petrified into iron and at least as heavy, crosses like tiny matchsticks. I personally wasn’t planning on pissing him off again any time soon.

  Once Dialle had cleared a space large enough for all of us to squeeze into, he stepped over the power barrier that had held the cross prison together and pulled me with him. As my feet touched the floor within the barrier I experienced a sudden and intense dizziness and found that I had to lean on Dialle to keep from passing out. I hate feeling helpless and weak, it really pisses me off. I turned my angry and confused gaze upward and Dialle smiled at me.

  “It will pass. You are not used to the power of the shadows. It runs counter to yours.”

  Although the confusion was not in any way cleared up by that cryptic reassurance, the dizziness did indeed start to subside almost immediately. As soon as I could trust my legs to hold me up I let go of Dialle. It wouldn’t do at all to appear weak around this crew.

  I realized that, as I had been working on pulling my senses back together, the area within the power barrier had become very crowded. I now found myself elbow to elbow and butt to…whatever, with the entire dangerous-looking “army”. My nose crinkled at the combined, very pungent smell of demon and lesser devil, but I closed my eyes and forced myself to remain calm. I had to keep reminding myself that they were on my side. Well…at least they were on Dialle’s side and I thought he was on my side. Shit. I really don’t like to share the sandbox with others, it’s just too confusing. You never know who you can trust with your favorite shovel.

  I became suddenly aware of a murmur of conversation around me and felt Dialle’s power beginning to throb in invisible waves away from his body. Expecting the waves to ping off my own power shields, imagine my surprise when I instead absorbed them. As his power flowed into mine, my mental drawers shifted and he was there.

  We enter the shadows, Astra. Do not show any weakness there or you will die.

  I frowned. Gee thanks for the pep talk. Remind me not to come to you for grief counseling if someone I love dies. I can see it now…Dialle, I’m so sad, someone I love has died…you’ll say, death stalks us all, Astra, no one is immune.

  Dialle laughed and squeezed my hand. Then the world shimmered into neutral again and I emerged into every child’s nightmare.

  * * * * *

  The world was nothing but varying shades of black. There was no light at all in the shadows. No geographic forms, no rounded outlines, no trees, grass, or flowers, no buildings, nothing at all but a gray mist, melting into darker gray, flowing into black.

  As disconcerting as the lack of light, was the fact that the shadows were not dead. They lived and breathed around me, flowing alternately toward me and then shifting away as I turned to look at them. They throbbed and scurried and changed shades until my skin crawled with the feeling that it was only a matter of time until the shadows flowed over me and melted me away.

  The very shadows around me seemed to beat against my brain until it sounded suspiciously like a heart beating in an open chest. With each thunderous beat my breath became a little shorter and my own heart ceased to work its solitary magic. I could feel my own rhythm slow and merge with the rhythm of the shadows. I tried to take deep breaths to calm myself and nearly choked on the thick, slightly sulfuric air. I coughed and closed my eyes, fighting to remain calm and pull breath into my lungs. When I opened them a moment later I tried to find Dialle and the guards but couldn’t see them. Fighting panic, my lungs struggling to stay inflated, my chest screaming for air and my heart trying to leave my chest, I threw my sensing power out and scanned the immediate area with it. I could sense other life forms nearby, but I couldn’t tell if they were friend or foe. Come to think of it, I didn’t really have any friends with me. They were all foes, even the ones who’d entered the shadows at my back.

  I opened my mouth to call out to Dialle but my voice clenched in my throat, I felt dizzy and I realized I was having a full-blown panic attack. Suddenly Dialle’s words came back to me and I wasn’t sure if he was in my mental drawers or just a figment of my memory. Do not show any weakness, Astra.

  Much easier said than done. I initiated a field trip, looking for Dialle. Dialle, you out there?

  The silence in my head was deafening. Suddenly the shadows wavered and split and a familiar form appeared in front of me. The shadows wreaked havoc on depth perception so that, at any given moment it looked like the Demon King was standing several yards away from me, or just inches from my face. All I knew for sure was that he nearly glowed in the deep gray of the shadows around him. As usual he was dressed entirely in bright white, to match his tint-free skin.

  Seeing Abrine pushed my feelings of panic to the back of my mind. At last I had a visible, physical enemy to deal with. Things were looking up.

  His glowing, white face stared at me for a long moment before he spoke. I would have tried to come up w
ith some kind of smart-ass remark but I wasn’t sure my voice would work and I didn’t think “Frunck you” would be very effective if it came out in a mouse-like squeak.

  Finally the colorless lips opened and he spoke. “I have to admit I’m a little surprised to see you here in the shadows lovely Tweener. Your kind generally doesn’t fare well here.”

  It took only a couple of throat clearings and a few croaked syllables to get my response out. “Now you tell me.”

  I guess he laughed. I heard laughing sounds and his chest jerked, but it was hard to see the individual features within his blank, white face.

  The shadows wavered and split behind him and several figures emerged to stand beside and just behind the demon king. I recognized a few of the demons from Demonica in the thick, shadowy fog. I was particularly displeased to see Mx. Wormhead amongst the disreputable crew. “I see you’ve brought your friends. You don’t by any chance know where my friends are do you?”

  Abrine’s snowy shoulders rose a fraction of an inch. “It appears they’ve deserted you. I guess you’ll need to come with us.”

  It was my turn to shrug. “No chance in Hades of that, Abrine.”

  His instruction to his guards was more a twitch than a movement, but suddenly they were moving toward me. I didn’t have much time to decide what I would do, or whether my powers would even work in the shadows, I simply reacted and prayed.

  I grabbed my power and space shifted, ending up somewhere in the deep gray shadows beyond the demons. Turning my head to the right and then left, I saw Abrine’s glowing form several feet away at my back. I moved quickly away from them as quietly as I could, trusting the thick, dense air to muffle the sound of my movements. I wasn’t sure if the demons could see better than I was able to in the gray murk but I suspected that they could. Creatures of the dark world are truly in their element in the shadows. They move freely among the shades of gray and black with little concern for the thickness of the air or the low visibility. In fact those things strengthen them, providing food for their very existence. Although I have a dark side as do all Tweeners, my light side was definitely not happy being in that murky, soulless land and I was finding it increasingly hard to breathe and concentrate as I plowed through the lighter shades of gray and moved into the charcoal gray around the edges.

  I forced myself to plod along, although my calves had begun to ache as if I were walking through thick, wet sand and my eyes stung from the torture of trying to see through the constantly flexing, low light environment.

  After a period of time that felt like hours but was probably only a few minutes, I thought I sensed movement from the darker shadows on my left and stopped. My heart had begun to beat wildly in my chest and my body was suddenly drenched in a cold sweat. After a moment of peering determinedly into the deeper shadows, I took a deep breath and forced myself to move toward the black abyss at the outer edges of my vision. If there was something out there it would be better to meet it head-on than to have it sneak up on me. But as I drew nearer to the dense, black shadows, I felt myself being pulled into a full-blown panic attack that had me panting and nearly buckling over from the sharp pains in my bowels. I realized that I was reacting to the blacker shadows and stopped.

  Fighting to regain some semblance of calm, I decided to test that theory. I turned back toward the lighter gray and nearly ran in that direction. Although there was really no light in the shadows, the lack of dark created the illusion of light and I could feel my pulse returning to normal and my breathing slowing as I moved toward the lighter area.

  When I had created enough space between myself and the hated black area, I was able to think more clearly and I realized I needed to use my powers. Closing my eyes, I threw out my sensing net and cast it in a three hundred and sixty degree arc around me. At first I didn’t sense any life. But after a moment I thought I felt just a flicker of life at the furthest reaches of the net. I realized that the life must be outside of my power sweep, but close enough so that I’d caught a sense of its aura.

  Unfortunately I couldn’t tell if the life was friendly or hostile and, since it had come from approximately where I thought I’d left Abrine and his demon guard, I had to assume it was them that I’d sensed. The good news was that they were apparently still some distance away. The bad news was that so, apparently, were Dialle and the rest of my support structure. That just sucked.

  I retracted my sensing power and tried again to reach Dialle. The silence that met my foray into the mental arena was very disconcerting. There I was, in a strange, very unaccommodating land, alone, with no way to return to the physical world. I had no way of knowing at that point if I’d been ditched deliberately, or if something had happened to Dialle and his crew as we’d crossed into the shadows. I didn’t even know at that point if they had crossed over. All I knew was that my powers still seemed to work in the shadows and that I still needed to find the evil duo. The good news, if you’re bad at making hard decisions like I am, was that my options were extremely limited. The bad news was that my options were extremely limited.

  Sighing, I initiated another foray into the mental arena. Nille. I know you’re out there. We need to talk.

  At first I didn’t think I was gonna get a response. But then his voice filled my head. Even in my head his voice was larger than life, like his power and the core of his evil. Astra? Imagine my surprise. What are you doing in the Lion’s lair?

  Good question. Remind me to find an appropriate response for that some day…after I’ve taken care of you and Nerul of course.

  My head filled with the rich full bass of his laugh and I felt a tingling sensation move through my body, causing me to shiver despite the fact that the air was warm.

  Or was it? The temperature around me had changed. Where it had been hazy and warm it was now very cool and the air had begun to swirl visibly around me, throwing off a backdraft as it cleared into a kind of tunnel in the midst of the shadows. Incredibly I could see a pinpoint of light in the distance. Without realizing what I was doing my feet started to move toward the light. Even while my head told me I was a frunkin’ idiot. I mean…how clichéd is that? Moving toward the light at the end of the tunnel? That’s only a good thing if you’re on the other side. And I was definitely not there.

  While I knew I was being compelled somehow to move toward that light, I didn’t seem to have the strength to stop it. I tried to grab my power but found that it had been walled off somehow and to make matters worse, I was starting to get that panicky feeling again. My legs screamed with the effort of trying to stop their forward movement and my heart felt like it would explode. I was covered in a clammy sweat and my heart had begun to pound to its own rhythm again. Do not show any weakness, Astra…that’s pretty frunkin’ easy for you to say, Dialle…where are you when I need you?

  As the light grew near, I discovered that if I stopped fighting the pull I could actually reach some of my power. But unfortunately it also meant that I moved toward the dreaded destination more quickly. Just before I reached the end of the tunnel, in a last-ditch effort before I faced whatever awaited me there, I coated myself in a protective bubble of my power and locked it into place.

  As I emerged from the tunnel into a well-lit room that looked suspiciously like the attic room of the Church of the Twined Hands, I felt a little better under my coating of power. But then I found myself on the receiving end of a glowing blue gaze and realized that I’d merely covered myself with tissue paper and the world’s biggest, meanest pair of scissors was poised to rip me to shreds.

  “Hello, Astra.”

  Show no weakness…

  “Prince Nille. We meet again.”

  “Yes. And for the final time, lovely Tweener. I’ve grown weary of your persistent interference. Unfortunately it’s time for you to die.”

  Chapter Thirty

  To Die to Die

  The shadows they did roil and pant and bring her to her knees,

  But our fair lady must refuse to be conquered by
the Beast.

  I shrugged. “We’ll just have to see about that, Nille. I don’t die easily.”

  He continued to stare at me, a small, self-satisfied smile settled across his face. I couldn’t help thinking how beautiful he was and how unfortunate it was that beauty and evil were not mutually exclusive so that we could all look at each other and know exactly what we were dealing with.

  I pulled my power more tightly around me like a magic binky and waited. Since I didn’t know where I was or what was going on around me I figured it might be better to concentrate on reacting, rather than trying to instigate whatever was going to happen next. First one to talk loses. Besides, I was still hoping that Dialle and his motley crew would come riding to my rescue. A prospect that was looking more and more unlikely by the moment. But what the hell, I’m nothing if not optimistic.

  Just as the silence was becoming too much for me and I thought maybe I should be trying to kick some ass, someone—or should I say some thing—did join us in that room. Abrine and his worm-eaten army emerged from the shadows and joined Nille across the room from me. Shit.

  A silent standoff ensued. I was determined not to lose this one so I settled in to await the inevitable. It didn’t take long for my fate to catch up with me. The first fire bolt hit me right between the eyes, singeing my eyebrows and bringing stars to my eyes. I reeled backward but the magic bullet didn’t do any serious damage because of the cushioning power of my shield.

  I decided it might be prudent to make a move.

  I dove behind a large, heavy chair just as another fire bolt pinged off the dense wood of the piece of furniture, slicing it off neatly and leaving behind a smoking incision where once there had been a dense, wooden arm.

  Gathering my power around me, I space shifted too quickly and ended up in one of the lower circles of Hell.

  As I shimmered back, a horrific screeching met me. My body felt very strange and I knew something was very wrong, though it took me a minute to figure out what had happened. The horrible screaming ricocheted around in my head and made it difficult to think.