Hellforged d-2

by Nancy Holzner

  Boarding, I felt almost cheerful, even when a dozen people trying to cram too-big carry-ons into too-small overhead bins slowed our progress down the endless aisle. Even when we got to our seats in the very last row, center section, right in front of the toilets. Perfect. Pryce and his first-class ticket would never come back here. When we landed at Logan, Kane could pick up his scent again, and my “cousin” wouldn’t know we were onto him until I sliced off his damned demi-demon head.

  I LET KANE TAKE THE AISLE SEAT. WITH HIS HEIGHT, HIS KNEES were right under his chin unless he could stretch his legs into the aisle. Not that he got much chance. From the moment the FASTEN SEATBELT light blinked out, a parade of passengers marched back and forth to the bathrooms behind us. The line held steady at three or four people deep, which meant there was always someone standing in the aisle beside Kane, crowding him.

  Wolves need lots of personal space. After a while Kane snarled and sprang from his seat, startling the flannel-shirted guy who’d been leaning against it. Kane stalked up the aisle. A couple of minutes later he came back down the other side. When he got near the bathroom crowd, he turned around and walked up the aisle again. He kept going like that, pacing up one aisle and down the other. All coiled energy and nowhere go.

  As the hours passed, he’d come back and sit for a little while, then jump up and go back on the prowl. When the flight attendants blocked the aisles with their meal carts, I thought he was going to explode.

  While Kane paced, I thought about tomorrow night’s Monster Paul concert. With a critical mass of Morfran in Boston, did Pryce still need me as a bridge? How would he proceed? There was only one place to look for that information. I removed The Book of Utter Darkness from my bag and set the book on my tray table. Its pale-tan cover radiated malevolence. I didn’t want to open it. I didn’t want that cacophony of words to push its way into my mind again. The other passengers wouldn’t like it; people get nervous when someone starts screaming on a plane.

  I touched the cover, and Hellforged twitched in its sheath. I’d better get centered first; maybe that would make it easier to deal with the damn book. I closed my eyes, ignoring the roar of the engines, the crush of people around me, the nauseating chemical-and-shit bathroom smell. I went inside myself, deep, listening to my own breathing, my own heartbeat. When I felt calm and sure, I opened my eyes. The book still gave off its evil vibe, but it bothered me less. It was only a book; I was stronger. I opened to a random page. No storm of words swirled into my head; Hellforged lay calm against my calf. So far, so good. I turned the pages slowly, scanning the text, waiting for understanding to creep into my thoughts.

  Instead, a suitcase-sized purse landed half on my tray.

  “Sorry,” smirked the thirty-something woman on my left. She was styled to within an inch of her life: spidery mascara-laden eyelashes, fake tan, so much goopy lip gloss that if a fly landed on her mouth, it’d be stuck there forever. I could’ve rapped my knuckles on her stiff hair without making a dent. She didn’t look the least bit sorry.

  I shoved Ms. Iron Hair’s purse off my tray and returned to the book. Right away, understanding flooded my mind. And shall thrice-tested Victory be conquered? First, the carrion-eater consumes living flesh. Second, a battle in the world between the worlds. Third, Victory falls.

  Yeah, yeah. I had all that down. I wanted the book to tell me something I didn’t know.

  The words pulsed in my mind like a heartbeat. I’d survived all three tests: the Morfran attack, the battle in the pub, the race through the slate mine. Maybe the book was taunting me because I’d passed them, reminding me that I’d proved myself worthy of becoming the last thing I ever wanted to be.

  Lucky me.

  I looked up to see Kane coming back down the aisle, then returned to the book. I called to mind the new prophecy Mab told me about that morning: As the dead dance, the Brenin shall claim what’s his. Maybe focusing on that would force the book to reveal more.

  But I never got the chance, because the plane dropped.

  Kane, along with the entire bathroom line, flew upward and smacked the ceiling, then came down and hit the floor hard. Ms. Iron Hair slammed into the seat in front of her, somersaulting halfway over it. Screams erupted. The overhead bins popped open. A blizzard of papers flew everywhere and iPods, laptops, briefcases, and dozens of other items tumbled through the cabin like clothes in a dryer.

  For too many heart-stopping seconds, the plane fell. Then it leveled off.

  The Book of Utter Darkness was still on my tray. I’d slapped my hand on it when the plane dropped. I stuffed the book into the seat pocket and started to close the tray.

  The FASTEN SEATBELT sign flicked on, as sobs and groans filled the cabin. “Ladies and gentlemen,” said a shaky female voice over the PA system, “the captain has turned on the FASTEN SEATBELT sign. Please return to your seats and—”

  Before anyone could move, it happened again. People who’d been trying to stand were tossed back into the air. Kane landed half on me, half in his seat, snapping my tray from its brackets. I helped him into his seat and scrambled to get the seatbelt around him. But what good does a seatbelt do when you’re dropping like a stone out of the sky? How far can a plane going 500 miles an hour fall in ten seconds? The math was beyond me, and I didn’t think I wanted to know the answer.

  Once again, the plane leveled off. This time, the screaming didn’t stop.

  “Are you okay?” I asked Kane.

  “I think I broke my shoulder blade,” he said. “I’ll be all right.” His superfast werewolf healing would take care of a broken bone, but even Kane couldn’t recover from a plane crash.

  On my other side, Ms. Iron Hair clutched my arm, crying.

  The plane nosed upward. The pilot was trying to regain some height.

  The PA system bonged. People shushed each other so they could hear the message. Other than the thrumming engines and a couple of hysterical screamers, the plane was quiet. “This is your captain speaking. Please remain calm. It seems we have a glitch in the aircraft’s stabilization system.”

  Glitch. As soon as he said the word, I felt a tug, and everything went gray. Demonic laughter rang out; something had grabbed my perception and yanked it into the demon plane. I whipped my head around to see if Difethwr shadowed me. As I turned, a movement outside the window caught my eye.

  Pryce, in his demon form, his massive wings expanded, flew beside the plane. He held up three taloned fingers.

  Third, Victory falls.

  The plane dropped again.

  Oh, God, no.

  This was the third test. Not “Victory falls in battle” but “Victory falls from the sky.” How the hell was I supposed to keep a jumbo jet in the air?

  I braced against the seat in front of me as the plane fell. Pryce had loosed a Glitch and escaped into the demon plane. The Glitch was frying the system that kept the plane in the air. And there was nothing below us except thirty thousand feet of empty space and the Atlantic Ocean.

  33

  I HAD NOTHING WITH ME TO FIGHT A GLITCH. NO BRONZE weapons, no Glitch Gone. Nothing. And the plane was bucking and swooping like an out-of-control roller coaster.

  Ms. Iron Hair half-tore my arm out of its socket. I pulled away, but she grabbed me again. Mascara smeared her face in two black streaks, but not a single hair was out of place.

  That stiff hair—I had an idea. “Do you have any hairspray with you?”

  She actually reached up a hand to check her hairstyle.

  “No, for me. I need hairspray.” It sprayed, it was sticky. It might work like Glitch Gone. Or it might not. But it was the only idea I had. “It could fix the plane.”

  She looked at me the way people look at a scary-crazy seatmate, but just then the plane dropped with another stomach-lurching jolt. “My purse! It’s in my purse.” She scrabbled around under the seat in front of her. “Oh, no! It spilled.”

  Pens and lipsticks rolled around our feet, along with gum, a cell phone, a makeup compac
t, keys—no hairspray. I bent over to get another look and whacked heads with her. I couldn’t see the hairspray anywhere.

  “What are you looking for?” Kane asked.

  “Hairspray. I think I can use it to draw the Glitch out of the instrument panel.”

  He went up the aisle on his hands and knees, peering under seats. A woman screamed when he lunged toward her. “Got it!”

  He tossed the bottle back to me. I grabbed it from the air and shoved it into the front pocket of my jeans. Then I unclipped my seatbelt and started up the aisle.

  It was like trying to walk with one foot on each side of the fault line during an earthquake. Kane had the right idea; I dropped to all fours. I met him a few feet up the aisle. “Vicky,” he said, looking into my eyes. “If you can’t—”

  “No. No good-byes. I’ll stop it.” I wasn’t sure how, armed with nothing more than three ounces of hairspray, but I was not going to let Pryce kill all these people. I brushed my lips against Kane’s and crawled past him.

  It was rough going. The plane would dive, and I’d slide or tumble or somersault forward, banging into seats, legs, junk that had fallen into the aisle. Then it’d rock violently the other way, making moving forward like climbing a cliff. I grabbed the seat legs and pulled myself forward with my arms.

  Somehow, I made it to the front of the plane. A flight attendant was strapped into a seat by the cockpit door. She clutched the sides of her head; panic contorted her features.

  “Get me into the cockpit,” I said.

  “You can’t go in there. Federal regulations prohibit—” The plane lurched, and her scream cut off her words. I slid forward, whacking my head on the cockpit door with a bang. I started banging with my fists, too. “Let me in! I can stop the Glitch!”

  The door remained closed.

  “Stop it,” the flight attendant hissed. “They’re trying to keep this plane in the air.”

  “So am I.” I climbed to my knees. I closed my eyes and thought of strength—eight-hundred-pound gorillas, elephants, the Incredible Hulk. Not enough concentration to shift, but enough to bulk up my arm. Strength surged into me. I made a fist and hit the door, right above the lock. The door buckled. I drew back and hit it again, and then once more. The lock gave way. I yanked the door open.

  Two pilots sat at an instrument panel that shot sparks like Fourth of July fireworks. The pilot on the left wrestled with the controls. The one on the right aimed a gun at me. Or tried to—the way the plane jumped around, it was impossible to keep steady. “Get out!” he yelled.

  “I can help!” I yelled back, grabbing the door frame to keep from sliding away as the plane bucked upward. “A Glitch is a demon. I kill demons!”

  His eyes narrowed, and I thought he was going to shoot. I got ready to duck in case by some fluke he got lucky. Instead, he lowered the gun. “It’s a … demon?”

  “A Glitch. They hate technology.” Understatement of the year.

  He must have decided that anything was worth trying, because he motioned me in. I crawled into the cockpit and braced myself against the wall. The view outside the windshield was dizzying—sea, sky, sea, sky—as the plane seesawed. I focused on the instrument panel. A fountain of sparks shot from its center, showing the Glitch’s location. I dug the hairspray from my pocket and leaned forward.

  “Is that hairspray?” The copilot clearly thought he’d let a lunatic into the cockpit.

  “This? Um, no,” I lied. “It’s a magical Glitch-fighting elixir. I put it in a hairspray bottle to get it through security. You never know when a Glitch might strike.”

  Aiming at the sparks, I pumped a dozen quick squirts at the instrument panel, praying it would work.

  I held my breath. Nothing changed.

  Then a blast of sparks erupted from the instrument panel, and the plane took a nose dive.

  “Shit!” shouted the pilot. “I can’t hold it!” We screamed straight toward the ocean. The plane shuddered like it was breaking apart.

  With a loud pop and a stink of ozone, grapes, and rotten fish, the Glitch sprang from the instrument panel. It landed in the lap of the copilot, who screamed and shook as a couple thousand Glitch-volts zapped him. The demon slashed the man’s face with its claws and ran from cockpit. I nailed it with more hairspray as it leapt over me. It howled with rage and took off down the aisle.

  The pilot pulled the plane out of its dive. Slowly, groaning, the plane began to climb.

  I ran after the Glitch.

  The hairspray had forced the Glitch to materialize in daylight, and it wasn’t happy about that. It leapt around the cabin, landing on seatbacks, on the floor, on people’s heads, trying to avoid the light that streamed in through the windows. Its skin smoked where sunlight touched it, giving off an odor of charred Glitch-flesh.

  A woman screamed when the Glitch landed on the back of her seat and grabbed her head with its claws. Electricity sizzled over her skin.

  “Open your shade!” I yelled. “It can’t take sunlight!”

  Shades flew up along both sides of the plane. The Glitch jumped toward the center row, clawing at people’s ankles as it scrabbled under a seat.

  “Over here!” a man called. “What the hell is that thing?”

  “The Glitch that was making the plane fall—don’t let it spit at you! And watch out for its claws.” I ran to him, kicking debris out of my way. I had to make sure it didn’t re-infest the controls.

  I dived to the floor by the row of seats where the Glitch was hiding—and flinched away as a wad of spit sailed out. But not fast enough. The spit landed in my hair and stung my scalp. Damn. I hate getting Glitch spit in my hair. The Glitch snapped and swiped its claws at me, but its movements were restricted by the limited space under the seats. Passengers had barricaded it in with bags and coats and laptops and anything else within reach. Its only way out was the narrow opening I was watching. The demon convulsed, hawking up another wad of spit.

  This Glitch wasn’t trying to escape; it was guarding its hiding place. I squirted more hairspray at it and considered. If the Glitch stayed trapped, it couldn’t jump back into the stabilization system. The hairspray seemed to work better than that damn expensive Glitch Gone; I’d never seen a Glitch stay in physical form for so long. The extreme stickiness that did its thing for Ms. Iron Hair’s helmet head kept the Glitch from shifting into its energy form.

  Another wad of spit flew out. It missed, and I nailed the Glitch with more squirts. The trouble was, I didn’t know how long the hairspray’s effect would last. And even under the seats, there were plenty of places where the Glitch could go if it switched to its energy form—laptops, cell phones, all the electronic gadgets people carry with them on long flights. Even the aircraft’s entertainment system. It was too risky. We were still over the ocean. We had to fly far enough to land somewhere, and there was no way to stay in the air safely with a Glitch on the plane.

  I’d have given anything for a simple bronze knife. A fast stick and it’d be over. I squirted the Glitch, then shook the bottle. The hairspray was getting low. As I rose to my knees, another wad of smelly spit shot past me, splatting against the arm of a seat a couple of rows back.

  “Does anyone have anything that’s bronze?” I called. “A pin? Bracelet? Cuff links?”

  People stared at me. I probably looked crazy—although I was getting used to that, especially with a sticky purple lump of Glitch spit in my hair.

  “Bronze kills demons. It’ll get rid of this Glitch so it can’t crash the plane.”

  A buzz went up and down the rows of seats as people asked their neighbors for bronze. I dropped to the floor again to keep an eye on the Glitch and gave it another spritz.

  “Here,” said the man who’d pointed out the Glitch. “Will any of this work?”

  I kneeled up and he poured a pile of costume jewelry into my hands. Bronze obviously wasn’t on this season’s list of must-have fashion accessories. People had donated gold, gold-plated stuff, even silver, but not a single
piece was bronze.

  I dropped back down and recoiled as a claw struck, missing my face by a quarter inch. I pressed the pump on the spray bottle. Nothing came out. I unscrewed the top and flung what little was left onto the Glitch. I was out of time. Evening sunlight slanted through the windows, but it wouldn’t for much longer.

  I pulled off my leather jacket and wrapped it around my hand to get some insulation against the Glitch’s electrical field. I put my face within striking range. A claw swiped at me. Moving fast, I grabbed the demon’s hand and pulled.

  The Glitch howled with rage and lobbed wads of spit at me. The man in the seat next to me reached down to help and got a nasty shock before I could warn him away. Electricity sizzled through the jacket and buzzed up my arm. The leather smoked. The Glitch grabbed at the seat legs with its free hand, but I was stronger. I kept pulling. The Glitch let go and launched itself at me, attacking with claws and teeth. Slashes of electrifying pain tore through my face and arms, but I hung on. The man saw what I was doing and called for a leather jacket. Someone tossed him one. He wrapped it around both hands and hugged the Glitch. A third person joined us.

  “Help me get it in the sunlight,” I said, and we made our way down the aisle with the struggling, screeching Glitch to a patch of sun a little longer than the demon’s body. We lowered it to the floor, smack in the middle of the light patch, and held it there. It fought and squirmed and howled and spit, but we kept it pinned.

  Sparks erupted from the Glitch, and its body wavered under my hands. No, not now! It couldn’t change to energy. I started to ask for hairspray, but the sparks came faster—bigger, brighter—little flickers of flame burning whatever they landed on. I turned my face away.