by Tim Marquitz
We dropped the Polartaur a short distance away, not wanting to drag too many predators to our front door, and then set about cutting off what we figured might be the tastier bits. While not much of an outdoorsman, I knew my way around a steak. And that’s pretty much what I decided to consider this thing as we traipsed back to the tree-quarters with a load of uncooked and dripping meat. Katon would have a fit with the trail I was leaving behind, but it couldn’t be helped.
Once we were back inside, he saw the mess I’d made and shook his head, heading out after us, most likely to clean up. That was fine with me.
“Anyone want some of my meat?” I got a few groans in response, but mostly everyone gathered around to see what I was packing. “Now if only we had some way to cook the stuff.” I glanced over at Rala.
She waggled a finger. “Don’t look at me,” she said, dropping into a shivering heap alongside Chatterbox, picking him up and dumping him in her lap with shaking hands. The kid was spent. There would be no dragon roast.
“Well, looks like raw is on the menu.”
Karra came over and took a slab off the pile. “Your meat is always raw, Frankie.”
I could have sworn I blushed.
“Raw enough to catch salmonella,” Veronica added to a chorus of way too many giggles. “And it comes with a side of crabs.”
“Hey now…” I started, but there was way too much estrogen to even pretend I might win out, so I left it alone. Once the majority of the food had been sorted, I slipped into Ilfaar’s alcove. “Here you go.”
He looked at the piece of meat through narrow eyes, but he pulled it from my hands and took a tentative bite. “When in Califzan…” he said with his mouth full, trickles of blood running down his chin.
“Uh, yeah.” Whatever the fuck that meant. “You gonna make it?”
He gave me a wet grin. “I shall, never you fear.”
I wanted to dispute his optimism, but I kept my mouth shut. He looked damn near ready to keel over. His stump still pressed against his wound. Though it had mostly stopped bleeding out, it looked rather septic in the poor light. Dark ooze bubbled and gave off a sour scent, which was never an indicator of good health. I peeled my eyes from his injuries and gave him a nod, backing out of the alcove. I was starting to think I’d need to draft Veronica before too long. Had we been back on Earth, I would have just let the fucker die and Karra could take care of the rest with her necromantic voodoo. Then again, if we were back on Earth, we wouldn’t be dealing with all this bullshit.
I sighed and went back into the main room to find Katon had returned. He stopped by Rahim for a moment before drifting past us. He looked at me as he did and, for once, he didn’t have his usual pissed off look. The wizard, however, kept his cards close to his chest. He peeked over his shoulder to see where everyone was, and then, apparently satisfied they weren’t listening, leaned in close. “We need to talk.”
I nodded reluctantly, realizing he didn’t mean right then. There were still too many ears for a private conversation. I went over to Karra to keep folks from paying too much attention our little pow-wow. If anyone noticed, they didn’t show it. Karra, though, was on point as I flopped down beside her. She could read me like a smutty romance novel.
“Everything okay?”
I smiled and wiped a dribble of blood from her lip. “As good as it can be.”
“That’s hardly positive.”
A quick shrug only got her to stare at me, her eyes demanding answers I didn’t have and didn’t want to get into right then. “We’ll know soon enough,” I whispered, leaning in to give her a kiss and muffle my comment.
She sighed into my mouth, surrendering to the clandestine environment despite how much I could tell she didn’t want to. Sadly, I was in the same boat. Rahim’s statement had an air of importance to it, which was only going to drive me nuts while I waited for everyone to go to sleep so I could figure out what the wizard had discovered on our little jaunt. I had an idea, more of what I wanted him to find out, but that didn’t make me feel any better about waiting. In fact, it only made it worse.
Being kept in the dark was gonna make for a frustrating night.
Nineteen
I couldn’t have been asleep for more than an hour or so when a muffled scream woke me. The sound was cut short, but my senses reported it was awful close, though it didn’t seem to be in the hole with us, which was fine by me. That meant it had to be outside. So rather than jump up like a frightened idiot and make a bunch of noise that might signal our location to whatever was out there running amok, I just glanced toward the sound hoping I was right. Katon stood rigid, peering through the mesh that led to the forest, watching something going on beyond my line of vision.
But before I could get up or ask what was going on, a flutter of movement off to my right set my nerves on fire. My fingers tightened on the spear beside me as a shadow welled up from the deeper darkness of the side alcove where Ilfaar was located and spilled out into main chamber. Watching through narrowed eyelids, my brain recognized Shaw as she dropped silently alongside the sleeping Venai. In the span of a heartbeat, she appeared to be just as asleep, her head lolling onto her partner’s massive shoulder as if it’d been there all night.
Rather than feign that I was sleeping, too, I popped up with a start and whispered, “What was that?” as if I’d just come awake. There would be no Oscar at the end of the night, but I think I pulled it off rather nicely, thank you very much.
Katon silenced me with a hiss and called me over. I didn’t so much as glance at Shaw, which told me he hadn’t seen her sneaking about, but I could feel her eyes on me as I stumbled over to the enforcer. She was up to something, but I didn’t want to let on that I’d noticed, so I focused on what had Katon so riled up and peered between the slats. I almost wished I hadn’t.
Not more than a few yards away, a devourer was doing its namesake: devouring. A greenie lay on his back, his head and one shoulder already in pieces inside the creature. The guy kicked and squirmed and punched while the multiple mouths tore at him, swallowing him bite after bite, but there was no way the dude was getting free. Stick a fork him in, he was done.
A pang of uncomfortable empathy hit me, but I shrugged it off. There wasn’t room in my head for any of that between the cheesy one liners and porn references. The greenie being chewed on was there for a reason, and that reason was likely because he was a scout of some kind, out looking for us. He wouldn’t have been out there otherwise, or at least I didn’t think so.
“Tracker?”
“Probably.” Katon nodded, casting a sideways glance my direction. “Good thing I cleaned up your mess.”
“Good thing, huh?”
He shook his head and went back to watching. So did I, as uncomfortable as it was to see. The guy never stopped fighting as he slid deeper and deeper in the gullet of the devourer despite the extent of his injuries. It was very unnatural.
“How does it do that?” I found myself asking.
“It doesn’t look as if it actually eats the person, but more like it alters the matter of the things entering its mouth.” He pointed to its face, the last damn place I wanted to look, but I did anyway. “See those flickers?”
The slightest hint of green glistened where Katon motioned, the soft glow shining through its teeth at every bite. The barest waft of energy tickled my skin as it did it. “It’s…teleporting him?”
“More transferring matter on a cellular level, it would seem.”
It made a sick sort of sense given how the devourer reconstituted the victim’s body inside of its own, but the idea of it disturbed me on a level I wasn’t prepared for. The thing was half blender, half Star Trek transporter, Scotty on a rampage. I remembered every instant of pain as the other creature devoured me, and seeing it do it to the greenie brought all that back in flash. I almost couldn’t watch; almost.
As I stood there, experiencing the process from a different side, I couldn’t help but wonder what I’d missed while bein
g eaten. Here was my chance to find out. My fists clenched involuntarily as I forced myself to keep looking, but it wasn’t long before the act was over. I half expected to see the devourer wipe its mouth and burp once the greenie was fully gone. Instead, the creature straightened, revealing the eerie, insubstantial form of the man inside its willowy center.
The thing hovered in place without moving for a good couple of minutes. I was starting to get antsy, wondering what the hell was going on, when a tremble set its extremities to twitching. A soft glow, much like the one its mouths had emitted, appeared at its eyes, the color chasing away the purple. I stared harder and realized the light burned inside the creature’s head was growing. It pulsed for a moment, building speed, and then erupted. Emerald light ran through what I imagined was the devourer’s veins, its gleam reaching all the way down to the tips of its…uh…robe toes-things. Then it was gone.
Shit just got nastier from there.
Much like a cat hacking up a particularly reluctant hairball, the thing started hurking over and over, the whole of its willowy body acting as if it were about to explode. To my regret, it kind of did. All I could think of right then was the Monty Python skit:
“And, how are we today, sir?”
“Better.”
“Better?”
“Better get a bucket.”
And someone should have. The three mouths of the devourer slid across its face and became a single, gaping orifice as though it were a sand worm from Dune. Once it did, the greenie spewed from its depths and flopped to the ground, again very reminiscent of cat puke. Wet and oozing with bile, the greenie stayed where he’d fallen, milky eyes empty of anything resembling life.
And with that, the devourer drifted off with a happy flutter in its floaty step. “Revenge!” Its voice was a beacon as the creature faded into the darkness, only its warning echoing back to us until it, too, was gone.
“That was precious,” Karra said right behind my ear, causing me to jump.
“Damn it, woman.”
She gave me an amused grin, setting her hand on my shoulder. “Relax, Frankie. I won’t let the big meanie hurt you again.”
I was just about to respond in kind to her shit talk—or cry—when Katon saved me the hassle of either.
“That’s how you ended up this way?” he asked, motioning to my current Halloween costume.
I nodded. “I only remember the first part. You know, the getting eaten bit. Not all the rest of that.”
“I’d say that’s a good thing,” Karra said. “The way I see it, had you reached the point of being barfed out, you’d be dead.”
My gaze unconsciously went back to the greenie lying stiff outside. Once more a chill came over me, cold reality slithering down my spine. She was right. That could have been me. The devourer Azrael lured to our world to eat me and split our souls apart could just have easily killed me rather than left me bundled in my current vampire body. It was a terrifying thought.
Karra kissed me on the cheek, no doubt seeing how much that thought bothered me, and then gratefully changed the subject. “How long until morning?”
“An hour or more,” Katon answered. “We’ll be on our way soon. You two should rest while you can.” He gave her a smile and me a nod, then turned back to his watch.
As if I could sleep after all that. “Why don’t you get something else to eat? I need to check on something.”
Karra gave me that look. The one where she knows I’m keeping something from her but don’t plan to tell her yet. She hates when I do that. She also knows the look scares the shit out of me, which is why she does it.
“I’ll tell you when I know what the hell I’m doing,” I whispered and walked off before I broke. She wouldn’t make a scene, especially knowing we were surrounded by enemies—and friends who might as well be enemies—but her stare bored into my back as I headed toward the ladder. She wasn’t happy, though there was nothing I could do about that now.
I bumped my foot into Rahim’s as I passed, hard enough to wake him up but not so hard as to earn a braining by his mace. He grunted and gave me a blurry-eyed nod as he realized what I was up to. Without waiting, I slipped up the ladder, pulled the latch, and quietly slipped out into the dregs of the Tenebraen night. I drew in a deep breath of the cold air, just to see if I could taste it, and let it out with disappointment. I missed being me.
Rahim didn’t give me long enough to get melancholy, which was a good thing. He crept out of the tree-quarters and shut the door behind him with silent proficiency while I watched. Once he was done, and had glanced around for a moment, he turned to me with a smile on his face; an honest to goodness smile.
“I hope that look on your face isn’t you finally going off the deep end.”
His grin only widened. “I spoke with Michael.”
The words were gibberish, just as if Jessica Alba had crawled into my bed and told me she wanted to take my virginity. “Wait. What?”
“Well, spoke might be an exaggeration, but we communicated, if only for a fleeting moment. He bombarded me with the current state of affairs before we lost contact.”
“They can open the portal?” My undead heart fluttered at the thought.
That’s when his smile faltered. “They are…trying. Without much success, I’m afraid.”
I swallowed my own smile, thoughts of a happy ending going sour. “What about Scarlett and Rachelle?”
“They are well,” he answered, the simple statement tugging the anchor from my chest. “Both are with him.”
“Thank Starbucks.” I hadn’t dared think too much about it since I’d handed Scarlett over to Rachelle and begged her to take my wounded cousin to Heaven. Hearing they’d made it was the best news I’d gotten since we ended up here. That said, my compassion and sympathy moment out of my system, I got back to thinking about me. “So, where does that leave us?”
“No worse off than we already were.”
“But no better,” I countered, wishing Rahim were better at blowing smoke up my ass.
He shrugged, glancing up at the invisible sky. “Perhaps not, but I have faith that we have not heard the last from our friends on the other side.”
“And Azrael?” Just saying his name made me sick. “What’s the body snatcher up to?”
“He remains a threat, though he has yet to make his move, whatever it might be.”
“Revenge,” I answered, modulating my voice so it sounded just like the spurned devourers. Only with him, he was packing the arsenal of the Anti-Christ. “It’s as simple as that.”
“The archangel Uriel is with Michael, as well, so perhaps he can stop Azrael before too much damage is done.” He didn’t sound hopeful.
Longinus’ powers having been mine I couldn’t muster much confidence in that happening, either. I’d only begun to tap the magic I’d inherited and Heaven feared me, if Duke Forcalor could be believed. I was dangerous. Azrael would know how to access every ounce of power in my hijacked body and make it work to his advantage. He’d be unstoppable.
“I hope so,” I said, wanting none of my concerns to bleed out onto the wizard. He had enough shit to worry about. “Let’s go back inside.”
Rahim gave a shallow nod and returned to the hidey-hole, pulling the door open and returning inside.
I followed after in a haze. It was good to have some news from home, but it really hadn’t changed the complexion of what we were facing. The hope of a jailbreak was slim to none, but maybe there was some way to use what we’d learned. I stared off toward the invisible mountains for a moment as a thought hit me, pausing before dropping down into the hideout.
Maybe we were doing exactly what we needed to already.
The shimmering portals headed toward the volcanic gate, it stood to reason we’d get more opportunities to chit chat with Michael and the others. It’d be easier, as well, seeing how we’d be climbing up the mountain and getting closer.
Closer to the dragons and whatever else waited up there, too.
I pushed that aside and sealed the door behind me. We were still lost in an ocean of shit but we’d found a toilet paper life preserver. Now if only we could hold on a little longer.
I dropped into the hideout to see that everyone but Rahim and Katon were asleep. Not trusting Shaw, I waited there at the ladder for a while, watching her. After a bit, I had to admit I saw nothing that made me think she was faking it. And trust me, I know all about faking having been married to Veronica.
Rahim and Katon quietly whispering near the mesh window-thing, I decided to find out what the wight had been up to. I waited another few seconds to be sure no one spotted me, and then entered the alcove as quietly as I could. Ilfaar was huddled in the far corner, his arms hung at his side as he slumped in exhausted sleep. And while the room was dark, my vampire eyeballs allowed me the first clear look at the wound in his gut. It was filled with dark, crusted blood alongside the ooze of a magical discharge, but it didn’t look anywhere near as bad as I first believed. A closer look only confirmed that. He’d been injured by magic of some kind, and was certainly suffering since he couldn’t heal, but he’d looked on the verge of death’s door since we stumbled across him. If that was true, it sure wasn’t this particular wound that was taking him there.
Ilfaar stirred, likely sensing my presence, and his eyes popped open. He drew in a startled breath and his hands came alive—well, what was left of them. The stump darted back into position at his gut while the other whipped in front of my face, the last of his wriggling fingers attempting to obscure my view. Before the latter did its job, I spotted a glimmer of something that shone in his wound; something out of place there. It was gone an instant later.
“What is it?” he asked, wary hesitation in his voice, like I’d caught him whacking off under the blankets.
“Just checking on you.” I answered with a grin. “You looked a little out of it. Wanted to be sure our exit strategy hadn’t slipped away in the night.”
