by Sam Cheever
I looked up into Gerch’s worried, red face; one side of which was covered in blood, the eye swollen shut. He held a thick finger in front of his craggy lips and pushed me deeper into the alcove, pulling the heavy wall hanging over the opening.
“What the hell’s going on, Gerch?” I whispered.
He shook his head and peered down the hall through a crack between the wall and the hanging. After a moment he turned to me. “You need to get out of here. If one of the council sees you you’ll be dead before you can blink.”
“Not until I find Dialle.”
He grabbed my arms and looked down at me, his uninjured black eye swirling with irritated color. I’d never seen Gerch’s eyes swirl before and was surprised by it. Though I knew he was just about one of the highest level non-royal devils I knew. “I can’t protect you both, Astra.” It was a measure of his distress that he called me by my name instead of his usual, snark-infused address of “my queen”.
“Where is he, Gerch? Is he safe?”
He swore, looking past the hanging again. “No one is safe in the court anymore, my queen.” And he was back. “But you and the king are especially vulnerable given the current situation.”
“What exactly is the current situation?”
“I don’t have time to talk about this now. You need to shift out of here and I’ll bring the king to you as soon as I can.”
I shook my head. “I’m not leaving without him so you might as well take me to him, Gerch.”
He swore again but crossed his massive arms stubbornly over his broad chest.
We indulged in dueling gazes for several beats and then I sighed in defeat. “All right, you’re not giving me much choice.”
The muscles in his jaw relaxed and his shoulders came just a fraction of an inch off square. “That is the point, my queen.”
I nodded. “Fine.” He turned away to look back out at the action and I lifted my hands, grabbing the heavy wall hanging in both hands and jerking it loose from the wall. As it dropped I ran forward, shoving the dense hanging before me like a shield. The hanging gathered dark worlders as I ran and I used my power to smack them hard into the wall.
I spun, swinging the heavy material around me like a bludgeon. The power-infused swing took the legs out from under two demons and a royal who were coming at me with blade and claw. As they hit the ground I shot them in the chest with a jolt of magic, killing them. “To Hades with you fools, for God hath tired of you.”
I ran toward the end of the hall, heading for Dialle’s throne room. Trouble dogged my heels. I wasn’t sure how I heard him coming over the rest of the noise, but my senses seemed especially alert since the adrenalin had kicked in. I spun just as a tall, skeletal royal lunged. If I hadn’t turned he’d have buried his blade in my heart and I’d have died before I even knew he was there.
I shoved the heavy tapestry I still held in front of the blood-covered blade as it swung back, and arched away as it sliced clean through. Fire seared my ribs where the blade grazed me. I yanked the hanging sideways, pulling the sword from the royal’s long fingers, and flung it against the wall. With a scream of pure rage, I flung myself at him, smacking him hard on the forehead and sending energy in a thin stream of bright light into his brain.
He was still twitching on the floor as I leapt back to my feet and took off running.
The battle thinned as I neared the throne room and I had high hopes that Dialle was safe there, locked behind the double doors made of gold. When I spotted Gerch’s guards standing in front of the doors, swords drawn and already covered in blood, I felt even better. Several bodies littered the floor before them, evidence of their work.
I ran toward the guards. “Let me in!”
The soldier in charge stepped forward, his sword lifting. “I cannot open these doors. The king is in danger.”
“Open the doors you steaming pile of gargoyle shit, or I’ll blast you and open them myself!”
The man started to shake his head and I lost all patience. But instead of striking out at one of the apparent few who were willing to protect Dialle, I finally took Gerch’s advice. I pictured the space on the other side of the golden doors and shifted.
The world dropped away and fell silent. A moment later I felt it slide over me again like a shroud, my feet hitting the firm stone of the floor. The room was dark, so silent that I thought for a moment I was still in my space-shift. But the area smelled gamey, like...
A low growl throbbed through the silence, not more than five feet away from where I stood. Two sets of red eyes glared at me through the deep black and I squinted to see movement in the dark.
“Ah, shit.”
Two low-slung, densely muscled forms started toward me, their growls turning to saliva-drenched snarls as they opened enormous jaws filled with impossibly white teeth.
Hell hounds.
“Frunk me,” I murmured. “This is definitely going into the shitty day book.”
I pulled power into my palms and held it, spitting and ready. I knew from experience that Hell hounds could move with impossible speed. They would be on me in the time it took to blink. My only hope was to send power directly into their chests as they slammed into me. Because if I missed I’d be torn into tiny little pieces before I could try again.
The energy spitting in my palms illuminated a circle about four feet around where I stood. I waited for the hounds to step into the light, knowing it wouldn’t make my job easier if I could see them. But the hounds stopped just outside the circle and waited, temper throbbing in their throats in a constant drone. When I realized they didn’t intend to come closer, I risked speaking. “Dialle?”
A soft scuff of shoe on stone made my gaze shift in the direction of Dialle’s throne. “Are you all right?”
A gentle wash of breath, like a sigh, filtered toward me. “Dialle, talk to me.”
Light blossomed like the sun, filling the room with eye-straining illumination. I blinked, my gaze sliding to the two massive black canines sitting calmly just a few feet away, their wide, snubbed snouts wet with slobber.
As my eyes adjusted to the light I cast my gaze toward Dialle’s throne. What I saw there was more terrifying than the two Hell hounds could ever be.
Dialle sat slumped in his throne, his head dropped to his chest, his limbs sprawled loosely as if he were unconscious. I softly repeated his name, barely more than a whisper, and his head slowly lifted. His beautiful face was a portrait in despair, the sexy black eyes completely devoid of color or passion. He looked like a man just a heartbeat from death. But he had not a single wound or injury that I could see.
His wounds were all internal.
“Oh good Him, Dialle. What have I done to you?”
He just stared at me, the black gaze dancing icy fingers down my spine. His once-beautiful hair hung limp and dull around his face and the clothes he wore draped loosely, like cast-off clothes on a farmer’s scarecrow.
How far he’d fallen in the few days since I’d left.
I took a step closer and the Hell hounds snapped, sending spittle in a wide arc around their massive heads. I jerked to a halt. “Call them off, Dialle.”
His cold gaze slid slowly toward the hounds and then back to me. “Go away, Astra. Leave me alone.”
“I’m not going anywhere without you. Come with me, Dialle. Let’s get away from this place and I can make it better. I promise.”
His black eyes suddenly spiraled with icy, hostile silver. “You’ll make it better? How? I nurture a cold, dead mating mark in my breast. No light infuses the mark. Only the oily black of Hell. My court rots around me, like my cursed soul. The very air I breathe is like poison. I no longer belong here. There is no making it better, Astra. Unless you’ve come to tell me you’ve regained your power.”
I opened my mouth to tell him exactly that, despite the fact it wasn’t strictly true. In that moment, I realized I’d do anything to save him. But the doors behind me slammed back against the wall and, startled into action,
the hounds attacked.
I’d started to turn to see who was coming at me from behind when the first massive hound hit me, throwing me to the ground and sending me skidding across the floor. I rammed up against something that felt like rock and looked up to see Gerch peering down at me. Acidic dog spit dripped onto my cheek. Standing on my chest snarling, the hound’s sulfurous breath painted my face. My hands pressed against its chest, holding the snapping teeth away from my throat.
Just barely.
Gerch stared at me for a moment, his craggy face dark with anger.
“A little help here?” I gasped as those impossibly white teeth made headway toward my cringing flesh.
He reached down and grabbed the hellhound by the scruff of the neck, flinging it away. The thing landed with a yelp and the two hounds skulked away, tails tucked.
“How strange to see you here, my queen, since I told you to leave.”
I climbed to my feet and brushed rock dust off my ass. “And I told you I wasn’t leaving without Dialle.”
Gerch frowned, his small, black eyes nearly disappearing beneath a wide, red brow. “Well, since you’re here we might as well escort the king from this place together.”
I nodded and we turned. Horror knifed through me and I had to reach out and grab Gerch’s arm as dizziness made the world spin.
“Where is he, Astra?” Gerch spoke the question in a soft voice, his eyes sliding to mine.
“I...” The throne was empty. As was the throne room. Oh Good Him. Dialle had left without us.
~SC~
With the last of my quickly faltering power, I shifted Gerch to the office. The subterranean workplace was empty when we got there. Apparently Bob and Ralph were out on a job. We spent the next hour contacting everyone we could trust, asking them to come to my office for a confab on what to do next. Then Gerch and I settled into my office to wait for my friends and family to arrive. While waiting, I tried to fill Gerch in on what had happened before he arrived in the throne room. “I’m afraid Dialle’s going to hurt himself. You should have heard him.”
“What makes you think I haven’t?” He fixed me with an accusing look that made me bristle. But knowing the loyal Captain of Dialle’s guards had done his best in a terrible situation, and he’d remained loyal when everyone else had turned against us, I bit back my angry retort and said nothing.
Again with the maturity. Impressive, yes?
The air in front of my desk shimmered and Brina appeared, looking slightly the worse for wear. The skin under one of her eyes was puffy and bleeding, she had a long, healing wound down one slim arm, and blood caked her usually silky black hair. The feisty royal still held a bloody sword in one hand. “I tried to trace the king’s magic signature but lost it at the dimensional split. He’s definitely left this dimension.”
“The Shadows?” Gerch ventured.
The royal shook her head. “I can’t know for sure but I don’t think so.”
Slayer shimmered into the room and picked up the conversational thread. “Could he have gone to Olympus?”
We all looked at each other but Brina finally said. “It’s possible.”
My sister shimmered in next. She and Slayer shared a look that made me distinctly uncomfortable.
I inclined my head in her direction by way of a greeting and told my gathered friends what I knew. “He’s very depressed. I’d even say suicidal. He told me that he no longer belonged here.”
Slayer frowned. “If he doesn’t feel he belongs here he probably wouldn’t go to Olympus either.”
“Or any of the light dimensions,” Brina agreed.
“He could have gone to Hell.”
We all looked at Gerch. He met my gaze and I realized he’d been nursing that thought for a while but hadn’t wanted to voice it. “He’d feel more comfortable there,” I whispered.
Myra and my father shimmered into the room. When I looked at them I had to blink tears away. “What are the chances Dialle’s soul will survive a prolonged visit to Hades right now?”
The air beside my father flickered and Emo shifted into the room. My father turned an angry look toward my friend and partner but Emo just returned it with a stoic expression. I knew that look. He was dug in. Nobody would be altering his decision. Whatever that was. I smiled when he turned my way.
Myra touched my father’s hand as if to say “let it be” then answered my question. “If Dialle is in Hades that would be very bad. We need to get him out of there. As quickly as possible. He’ll not only lose his soul if he stays, he’ll most likely die. He’s not built for that kind of darkness anymore. Not after walking in the light for three years.” Her clear blue gaze held mine, carefully devoid of accusation. But she didn’t need to say or even think the words. They were in my mind anyway.
What she meant was, after two years of being tied to me. And now he was set adrift, an empty vessel with a hole in him the same size as the one I harbored inside me. By taking himself to Hades he’d made sure only one thing could fill that void.
Black, oily evil.
I shuddered. Every minute he spent there would take him further away from the man I knew and loved. Further from the hope of a future together. “We’ll leave as soon as I’ve recharged my power.”
Darma stepped forward, touching my arm. “Astra, you don’t have any powers. And we don’t even know if he’s there.”
I glanced at my aunt. No one had told Darma about my temporary fix. “You’ll be my power, Darma.” My sister looked at me as if I was mad. “Think of me as a battery you need to keep charged. I’ll explain while Myra gives me what I need to get started. And as for Dialle’s location, I know he’s there—in my heart—but even if he’s not, we have to check that off the list of possibilities first because it’s the most dire one. He’s in the greatest danger in Hades. So that’s where we’ll start our search.”
Gerch nodded. “I’ll return to the court and retrieve as many of my men as I can gather.”
“Thanks, Gerch.” I touched his arm. “It means a lot to me...and Dialle...that you stood by him despite everything.”
Gerch stared at me for a long moment, his craggy mouth thinning slightly. He looked as if he wanted to say something but he didn’t. He finally just nodded and stepped back.
Slayer’s voice pulled my thoughts away from Gerch. “Do you want me to go to Olympus and get dragons?”
I thought about this for a minute. It might come in handy to have them, but it would also make passage into the Hell dimensions more time consuming. “I don’t think—”
A horrendous crash sounded in the main part of the office and, in the blink of an eye, everyone in my office was in battle mode.
Brina and Slayer clutched their swords at the ready, Darma had a ball of energy fizzing in each pale palm, and my father and Myra were exponentially larger, their combined glow of power pulsing against my skin.
Gerch was already running for the door, his own sword clutched in his fist. I grabbed my knives and took off after him.
I stopped in the doorway and gave the place a quick scan. I didn’t see anybody in the main part of the office, but it appeared to be raining in the center. Below where the skylight used to be.
The window was currently lying in a shattered pile on the floor.
Sorry, mother halfling. My bad.
I rolled my eyes and turned to the assembly still behind me in my office. “Stand down, everybody. It’s just Glynus.” Walking toward the watery mess in the center of the office greeting area, I craned my head to look up. A huge, elegant snout filled the space. Glynus’ head was tilted so she could fix a bright-turquoise eye on me.
Why is part of the ceiling lying on the floor, Tadpole?
I was just trying to see inside but I might have accidently stepped on it.
She didn’t mean to do it, dragon fighter.
I smiled. Glynus’ new mate was with her. Hello, Spence.
Greetings, dragon fighter.
I shook my head. I’d told the youn
g dragon to call me Astra repeatedly but he insisted on the formal title. Why are you two here?
I came to help you. You are upset and worried.
But I didn’t—
You didn’t guard your emotions, mother halfling. I sensed your turmoil and came right away.
Sighing, I realized she was right. I had assumed our connection would be broken with the loss of my power. But apparently my borrowed energy was enough to fuel it. I’m fine, Tadpole. You and Spence can go on home.
You’re not fine and I’m not going home. I clearly heard the new note of haughtiness in her tone. My Tadpole was quickly assuming the mantle of royalty she was destined for.
I glanced at Slayer. He’d spent a lot time around the dragons and knew their ways much better than I did. I knew he would have heard our telepathic conversation.
He shrugged. “They might as well come with us, Astra. They could be a big help.”
When I still hesitated, he added, “She’s not going to take no for an answer anyway. That dragon is more queen than her mother is.”
I knew he was right. “Shit.”
Mother halfling, do you still have the swear jar?
Glynus’ voice warbled with good humor and I smiled. No matter how regal my dragon got, some things would never change. I got rid of the frunkin’ thing, it was sending me to the poorhouse.
Glynus giggled in my mind.
“All right, you can come with us,” I shouted up to the hole in the ceiling.
Snoopy’s coming too.
I expelled a frustrated breath. You really shouldn’t call him that, Tadpole.
Spence’s elegant white head showed behind Glynus’ in the opening. I don’t mind, dragon fighter. It’s a term of endearment.
Let’s see if you still feel that way when your enemies start calling you Snoopy.
I felt Glynus bristle in my mind. They wouldn’t dare, mother halfling. If they did Snoopy and I would have to kick some major ass.
I laughed, shaking my head. I’m sure you would. In the meantime, feel like returning to Dialle’s castle in Hell?
Glynus and I had spent some time there one Christmas, trying to find out how the green dragons were escaping Hell. She’d made some good friends among the greens while she was there.
