by Angie Fox
Whoever said keep your friends close and your enemies closer was out of his mind.
"Okay then," I said, standing tall. I refused to go down cowering behind light boxes.
"Wait. Where we going?" Pirate asked, as I scooped him out of the bag.
If I was really going to do this, controlling my dog would be the least of my problems. Pirate would need to be able to move.
"We're going to figure out what the heck is wrong with me," I said, setting him down. "And we're going to learn what in Hades is going on here," I added as Ricardo Zarro hit a high note.
Pirate eyed me warily. "O, biscuits," he said, his collar tinkling as he shook off.
"Come on," I said, looking Pirate square in the eye. "Let's show these creatures what happens when they mess with a terrier."
"That wasn't very smart of them, was it?" Pirate said, his ears pricking. "And too bad for them, I think I've got some Great Dane in me too." He snarled.
"I always suspected rottweiler," I said as we crept down the stairway and under the stage. I braced a hand against the low ceiling as I took the steep, narrow stairs. The wooden beams of the stage hung low over the cavelike room. Extra props, junk and costume racks crowded the space.
This place felt wrong. I stood at the bottom of the staircase, unwilling to go farther, the excess energy from the demons prickling my skin. No way a couple of powerful succubi had any need for anything down here. There were no other exits. I wasn't a gambler, but I'd be willing to bet we'd found their portal.
The small room under the stage reeked of sulfur. Miscellaneous stage gear crowded the place, stacked to the ceiling in some areas. We made our way past a cluster of microphone stands and around a pile of half-assembled scaffolding before I spotted the portal, shimmering among a collection of silk scarves.
No bigger than a soap bubble, the illicit pathway churned dark and menacing as a black hole.
I rubbed Pirate's head as I gathered my courage.
"Oh, Lizzie. Oh, Pup-peroni." Pirate's claws clickety clacked on the hardwood floor. "I'd eat it if I didn't think it'd try to eat me first."
"You're not doing anything, baby dog. You wait for me here."
Pirate sniffed. "You know I'll guard it for you. Shoot. That's what guard dogs do."
I braced myself. I had to see if this was our link to purgatory or hell or whatever held back the succubi. You'd think the 1936 handbook could have mentioned that. I held my breath and the bubble stretched as I stepped through.
Heat gripped me. It was ten times worse than sliding into a hot car on a hundred-degree day, but that's all I could think of as I slogged through the ovenlike tunnel.
Steamy air scorching my lungs.
In an instant, I'd stepped out of the portal and straight into a world of ice. My sweat gelled instantly as frigid winds buffeted me. I stood in the middle of a maze of ice, the sheer white walls towering in every direction. Creatures moved behind the opaque barriers, their claws scratching into the frost.
My heart stuttered. I'd been here before. "Welcome to the first layer of hell."
The portal spit fire and I leapt out of the way.
"It's around the corner," a voice hissed.
I ducked down the nearest passageway. Oh cripes. Last time, I hadn't even gotten my feet cold before a demon sensed me. I glanced over my shoulder. The creatures in the ice had attacked me last time. They looked like white-scaled lizards and they could bite. Hard. No way I was going through that again.
Dimitri's emerald flashed a brilliant green, and I nearly jumped with shock. "What the… ?" I held it away from my chest, but it had already faded to dull again.
Around the corner, a demon received her instructions.
"Assemble your team. Remain here until the portal turns blue. Then it'll be cold enough to pass."
I fought a shiver. They had entire invasion teams ready.
The portal crackled with energy, like a sadistic bug zapper that was somehow churning out superlocusts.
They had to sense me on their home turf. Unhitching a switch star, I braced for the attack of the remaining demon, hoping to heck the ice creature didn't decide to charge at the same time.
I waited, ready, until my elbow stiffened and my fingers cramped around my switch star. "What the… ?" I ducked my head around the corner and found the portal deserted.
How would the demon let me go? Why? I'd never heard of a demon slayer walking around in hell and nobody noticing.
Unless… I sheathed my switch star and stared at the 6-6-6 glowing on my palm—I somehow belonged here now.
Chapter Twenty-one
I was done blending. I wrapped my arms around my chest, braced myself and charged back through the portal. The heat clawed at me. This time, I didn't care. Standing it, enduring it meant I had something good in me. That meant I didn't belong in hell, even if the demons seemed to think so.
In less than a minute, I was back into the costume room and into a mess.
I could tell in an instant that the demons had left the building, yet Pirate crouched in attack mode, stranded on top of an overturned trash can, his tail quivering. The hellhounds paced back and forth in front of Pirate's makeshift island, glowering at him.
"And those grizzly bears knew there was no shame in running away," Pirate said, his nails scratching at the slick plastic, "on account of my utter fierceness."
The trash can rocked as I scooped Pirate into my arms. The creatures didn't stalk me, like they had Pirate. They darted back to the stairs—our only exit—and crouched, fangs bared, their saliva hissing as it oozed onto the floor.
"It's bad, Lizzie. Bad, I tell you." Pirate clung to me, shaking, his nails biting into my skin. "You disappeared and a minute later—zing—hellhounds. They don't talk, they don't sniff. And if you ask me, that's just creepy."
My breath hitched. "Something must have brought them back."
As if I hadn't endured enough surprises in the last five minutes, Dimitri charged down the stairs. He wore faded jeans and a clean black T-shirt, his hair still slick from a shower. "I don't believe this, Lizzie." He looked at me like this was somehow my fault.
"I told you to stay away."
"And the emerald told me differently," he said, his eyes catching the dead stone at my neck.
Lovely. It was too weak to protect me, strong enough to tell on me.
Dimitri towered at the edge of the stairs. "Exactly what have you been doing?"
"I'm surviving," I said. And I'd continue to do so because it was the only thing I could do at this point.
Still, in spite of his accusation and, well, everything—I was glad to see him and reassured that no matter what it cost him, it seemed Dimitri would always be there for me.
The hellhounds glared at us, their eye sockets glowing yellow. I felt my pulse speed up. Omens or not, these things smelled evil. The one on the left wheezed out a breath of frigid air as Dimitri drew way too close.
The beasts snapped and Dimitri leapt back.
Pirate tried to clamber up to my shoulders and I pulled him down. "Easy, guy."
Pirate whipped his head around. "Easy?" He snorted, peppering my shoulder with doggie snot. "You want me to take it easy? Because frankly, I don't know what there is to relax about. We got demons after us and we're trapped down in this room and you have a glowy hand and then you leave me alone with hell dogs." Pirate managed a weak bark in their direction before he nuzzled his nose under the crook of my arm. "I thought they were going to eat me whole and use my toenails for toothpicks."
Poor Pirate. He didn't deserve any of this. I rubbed him on the head and stuffed him under my other arm to free up my switch star hand. The acrid scent of demons hung heavy in the air.
We had to get past these things.
The hellhound on the left snarled, baring row after row of sharp yellow teeth. Dimitri thought he was being subtle, but I saw the calculated way he'd moved to their flank.
Fine. We'd deal with them together. "What do they want?" Accordi
ng to Ezra, these things were omens, not attack beasts.
Dimitri double-checked his weapons like a lieutenant preparing to lead his troops into battle. It had to have cost him a lot of energy to be so close to the portal, but he didn't let on. His wide chest heaved, on full alert as he positioned himself in front of the beasts. "It looks like we're altering someone's fate."
Praised be. "We can do that?"
He shot me a look that made me want to rewrite the entire book on demon slaying. "What do you think we've been doing for the past week?" He returned his full attention to the creatures. "This could mean we're getting close," he said, thinking out loud. "I'm not sure they like it."
Dimitri reached into the back of his jeans and drew out a bronze dagger. Confident and strong as he gripped the blade, he reminded me of an ancient Greek warrior. Oh Sheboygan. Now was not the time to get turned on. Shoulders back, his focus never wavering, he strode directly for the hellhounds.
The creatures roared and hissed, their spittle dripping from rows and rows of yellow teeth. They were going to be on him like Sunday dinner. I flipped the trash can upright and stuffed Pirate inside, despite his protests. I couldn't fight with a dog in my hands. Then, switch stars at the ready, I followed Dimitri's lead.
He was almost on them, graceful as an athlete and intense as a gladiator, watching them as if he were trying to anticipate which mouth full of teeth would attack first. Keeping my breathing even and my concentration tight, I had his back. Then one of the hellhound heads drooped its ears and dipped toward the floor. Then another, and another, and, "What the heck?" The beasts curled and whimpered at Dimitri's feet.
Son of a gun, Dimitri's eyes glowed orange. He'd better know what he was doing. Dimitri's full attention remained on the creatures he'd somehow conquered. His nostrils flared. "Go," he ordered. "Now."
I retrieved Pirate and hurried for the stairs, hoping like anything Dimitri would be along shortly.
We sent Ezra ahead to make sure our escape route was clear, then hustled back down the purple hallway that led to the back exit of the club.
Pirate craned his neck backward as we put some distance between us and the hellhounds. "I changed my mind. I don't think you're evil," he said, as if he'd finally decided for himself. "But I'm not so sure about Dimitri."
"Thanks," I said, refusing to look back again.
Pirate squirmed out of my arms and took up the point position, his toenails clacking on the cement floors as he zipped back and forth in front of us, nose to the floor.
Halfway down, Dimitri joined us. He looked like he'd been wrestling the things. At least his eyes were yellow again. Oh geez.
"There's no way to get rid of the hell dogs, is there?"
Dimitri guided me in front of him. "No," he said, his breathing rough.
Because we didn't have enough problems.
"What happened in there?" I asked Ezra as he zipped overhead. "Did you see my uncle?" The other ghost said he'd be there tonight. "He's short, round—"
"Smells like a Cinnabon store," Pirate said.
"I'm sorry." Ezra's eyes traveled from Dimitri's bronze dagger to the powerful shoulders showing through his torn black shirt. "He left with a dark-haired woman while you were downstairs. You shouldn't have tempted the hellhounds."
"Thanks for the tip."
"Phil is the common denominator in all of this," Dimitri said, shoving open the back door. "I'm sorry, Lizzie, but we're going to have to do some things differently."
Shocked, I stared up at him.
Was he really going to sacrifice my fairy godfather?
I scooped up my doggie and held him close. "You know what Serena said. She's going to kill Phil. But if we go after him, she'll also take his soul." I couldn't risk that. I couldn't make that decision about someone else's eternal damnation.
Dimitri reached for me. His eyes hung with what? Regret?
I ducked away and tore down the back steps of the club.
"We have to stop this. I wish there was another way, Lizzie, but sometimes the good of the many outweighs the good of the few. No matter how much we care about a person."
My boot crunched over a broken beer bottle. Easy for Dimitri to say. It wasn't his fairy godfather in immortal danger. I gripped Pirate so tight he yelped. "Sorry, bub," I murmured into the wiry fur of his neck. I didn't know. I just didn't know.
Ezra cleared his throat. "I don't mean to point out the obvious, but we have no information where they've taken your uncle. I'm sure the succubi are well hidden. Or do you have some ideas?"
I cringed. "Not where to look, but…" I didn't even want to think it.
Dimitri, blast him, finished what I'd been too reluctant to say. "We need to channel him."
A rock settled in my stomach. We weren't so good at channeling. When we'd done it in the bathroom at the Paradise, we lost Phil. The time before that, Grandma ended up in the first layer of hell. Besides, if we wanted to have any shot at living through the debacle without ending up in purgatory, hell, or floating around in a parallel dimension somewhere, we needed the very people I'd been trying to distance from all of this.
We needed the Red Skulls.
Heaven help us.
"We sent the Red Skulls away." I cringed, tempted to borrow a dollop of strength from the mark.
Dimitri laughed out loud and I felt the knot in my stomach unravel a bit. "Do you really think they went?"
"Of course not," I replied.
Still, I didn't relish the idea of putting them in danger again.
Dimitri smiled. "Question is, how do we find them?"
Unfortunately, I knew.
We hurried down the back stairs to my bike, hidden in the shadows. For a moment, I let myself smile at the idea of Dimitri riding behind me for a change. Pirate leapt up on the flat leather seat while I dug into my pocket for our one-way ticket to the Red Skull's new hiding place.
My fingers closed around the vial of fairy dust, given to me by Sid. He said I could use it to call him if I needed him. "Anybody know how to summon a fairy?" I asked, watching the clear contents sparkle and churn inside the small glass tube.
"You'll want to be careful with that," Dimitri cautioned, pulling Pirate's harness out of the saddlebag. "Clear your mind. Use only a pinch. Dust it over a patch of open ground and focus on Sid."
"Got it." The dust felt rough, like sand between my fingers as I drew a mental picture of the short, balding fairy with the foul mouth. "Now's the time, Sid." I released the dust onto the dirt at my feet.
The earth churned and swelled. I stepped back quickly, feeling the vibrations in my toes as the small clearing buckled. Crabgrass and weeds flew as a full-sized fairy sprouted right out of the ground. Sid. And he was pissed.
"Eyow! Argh!" He tossed off chunks of earth. "Aaak!"
If I didn't know better, I'd think he was fighting off a swarm of bumblebees.
"Get it off!" He swatted at his arms, his back, his knees as each emerged from the earth.
"Hey, hey!" I inched as close as I could with him waving and flailing. "Keep it down." I hitched my thumb toward the club. "We got a possessed singer in there."
If anything, Phil raised his voice. "I swear to God, lady." He staggered up and out of the ground, kicking something out of a pant leg. It flew across the pavement and pinged on the concrete behind me.
Dimitri wasn't pleased. He retrieved the object and held it up between his thumb and pointer finger—a shard of barbed wire.
I winced.
"Open ground, Lizzie," he said as if I should have listened better, which I should have.
"Oh, wow, I'm really sorry, Sid," I said to the fairy, who was busy shaking another barb out of the other pant leg.
He shot me a dirty look. "Gee, thanks. Now the barbs in my underwear don't hurt so much. Maybe next time, you can summon me over a pile of broken glass or maybe a vat of used hypodermic needles."
"I didn't realize open ground meant—"
"Save it. What do you want?"
Dimitri towered over the fairy's squat frame. "We need you to take us to the Red Skulls."
"Already?" Sid riffled a chink of barbed wire out of his wiry black hair, sighed heavily and dug his cell phone from his back pocket.
"What?" I asked. "You're going to call them?"
He shot me a stink eye. "Unless you want to saddle up your dog, I need transportation." He spoke with Gossamer Cab Dispatch and a cab pulled up within minutes. The door swung open and out slid a pudgy, muumuu-wearing fairy with stacked red hair and way too much blue eye shadow.
"You look like shit, Fuzzlebump." She nodded at Sid, ignoring us.
I wasn't sure how I felt about another fairy along for the ride. Luckily, I didn't have to worry long. With a loud pop, the red-haired fairy morphed into a firefly. Her empty dress floated to the ground as she fluttered off into the night.
Sid wadded up the dress and stuffed it in the backseat. He looked back over his shoulder, his round bottom holding open the cab door. "What?"
"Nothing," I muttered, heading for my bike. Dimitri, blast him, had climbed onto the front seat of my bike. Why did men always have to drive? But my heart softened when I saw he'd harnessed Pirate onto his chest. I had a thing for men who wore baby carriers, especially when this one happened to hold my dog.
"Hey, Lizzie." Pirate's legs pawed at the handlebars on my bike. "I got taller."
Hitching my leg over the rear of the bike, I settled up against Dimitri's firm backside. There were worse ways to travel. I slid my hands up under his leather jacket and around the waist of his Levis. For the first time, he felt cold. I shoved myself against him and for the first time since we'd been in Vegas, didn't feel my energy seeping away. I didn't know what had changed, but I knew it was bad.
Sid Fuzzlebump drove like a fairy possessed. He flew down Highway 95, weaving in and out of traffic with otherworldly precision. Served me right for hacking him off, although I had a feeling Sid would be no ray of sunshine in even the best circumstances.
