The empathic fiend, perhaps sensing her flare of emotion, glanced through the window and saw her. He roared.
In a single fluid movement, Emily leapt up, swung her arm, and plunged her knife through the window. The blade sank into his temple. The demon’s roar changed to a yelp. He shook the door. The knife handle would not fit through the bars. It effectively pinned him.
As Grandfather taught her, she tightened her focus like an arrowhead. She stepped from behind the door, facing the demon still standing at the stairs, and put two arrows into his throat before he could move. He teetered for a moment, holding his neck, and then toppled backward down the staircase.
Emily groaned, thoughts whirling. She had to retrieve her arrows, had to hide the body. She stepped into the light falling from the doorway when she remembered the unseen demon still in the room.
Tables arranged in rows filled the room. People in various states of dismemberment lay upon the tables. They writhed and wept. A demon stood in the center of the room, staring at her as if mesmerized.
Emily took it in with a glance. Her gaze fell upon the figure the demon was shielding. All she saw was a small foot—like a child’s foot.
“April.” Emily ran into the room, tugging the sword from the back of her coat where it was sheathed.
The demon stepped back. He held a small knife in his gore-covered hands.
Emily swung her sword, and the blade hummed. It sliced through the demon’s outstretched arm, sending his hand and the knife sailing. Maroon blood sprayed the air.
She swung again, drawing a dark line across his chest. He stumbled against the table. She stepped closer, hacking at him, ruled by fury. Hot blood spattered her face. With each blow, the demon sank a little lower until he was eye-to-eye with Emily. His gaze held dazed surprise.
With the strength of her hatred, she brought the blade down, decapitating him. As if a spell were broken, she dropped the sword and stared in astonishment at what she’d done.
Her coat dripped with blood. Her arms trembled with exertion. Remembering why she was there, she tore her eyes from the grisly sight and looked at the figure upon the table.
It was not April lying there. It was a small man. She stared, her emotions balled up, not sure if she resented him for tricking her or pitied him. Pity won.
He looked as if a line were drawn from the top of his head to his groin, splitting him in two. One side looked reasonably normal, but the other was stripped of all skin and muscle, showing clean white bone. Emily saw his heart and lungs inside his ribcage. His heart did not beat.
But his eyes moved, and as they met her gaze, the man whispered, “Run.”
Emily knew it was sage advice, but she couldn’t leave him there. She took the caretaker wand from her quiver and disintegrated the man.
Her bloody sword was on the floor, and she grabbed it as she rushed from the room. The demon with her knife still hung from the door. His hands twitched. Emily grasped him by the horns and pulled. The knife gave way with a wet, squelching sound. The demon crumpled.
She wiped her knife on the edge of the door, and ran down the hall. She planned to go down a flight and retrieve her arrows—but voices were coming up the staircase.
Panic twisted her stomach. Emily spun, looking for a place to hide. She saw bloody boot prints leading to where she stood.
Cloven feet thundered up the stairs.
FORTY-EIGHT
The demons were coming for her. She’d made a mistake shooting that bastard in the neck and not recovering the body. Now they knew she was there. They were looking for her. With a muffled sob, she leapt for the shadows of the upward-leading staircase.
A group of hell-spawn clambered onto the floor. They approached the demon lying in the doorway. Light framed the body, showing a puddle of blood from the knife wound to his head.
Panic-stricken, Emily backed up the stairs. The onlookers gathered around the body. Then two newcomers stepped into view, and she froze.
They towered at least a head taller than the tallest demon. Their heavy black horns curved from the sides of their heads wider than their shoulders. They wore gleaming, metal gauntlets with raised blades like a frill of feathers down the back of their forearms.
Super demons.
One toed the body as if expecting it to leap to its feet. The other ran a discerning gaze about the hallway. They held the disciplined air of trained security forces. Were these the creatures who would be tracking her? Not demons on vacation but hell’s elite?
Emily reeled beneath waves of sick fear. She had to run, had to escape, but she couldn’t lift her feet.
The group filed into the room, and she flinched, awaiting their shout of alarm at finding the demon she butchered.
Run, she pleaded inwardly, but her legs were like lead, her arms numb. She watched, eyes wide, as one of the guards noticed her bloody footprints and followed them to the stairs. Terror rose like vomit up her throat. Her head swooned. The sword slipped, and she gasped, snatching it. The guard looked at her.
Emily dashed up the stairs. She heard voices and the sounds of pursuit behind her. At a wide corridor, she paused. Shadows danced in the flickering light. With the sword held high, she ran down the hallway, lopping off the heads of torches, putting out the flames on one side of the corridor. At the end, she found a stone block wall, not the staircase she expected. Wind coursed through the brick like it was whistling through its teeth.
She glanced down an adjoining hall. Apprehension swelled within her. Starshine warned that the upper floors were a mass of mazes. She saw herself running, helplessly lost.
The two guards stepped onto the floor. Emily pressed into the niche of a doorway. She held the sword up, the flat of the blade against her forehead, willing her arms to stop trembling.
The demons moved toward her in the gloom. They were so tall their massive horns stirred the spider webs hanging from the ceiling. Besides the gauntlets, they wore only leather thongs that hung in tails behind them.
Halfway down the hall, one guard turned back. The other continued walking. He stopped in front of her, not a pace away, looking about as if not knowing she was there. He was close enough for her to hear the rasp of his breath, see the gleam of his armored body.
Then he saw her.
With an upward thrust, Emily jabbed the sword beneath his jaw. His bony cleft chin deflected the blade through his throat and into his skull. Blood spurted over her hand. He went limp, tipping onto her, threatening to smother her with his weight.
She shoved him away. With her foot against his mid-section, she yanked her sword free. He fell backward as if in slow motion, hitting the floor with a heavy thud. She stepped over the body.
Raising his voice in a war cry, the second demon rushed her. Emily swung her sword overhead. With all her might, she slashed down, hoping to cleave him in two.
The edge struck with a painful jarring clang. She staggered to the side. Her sword had met the fiend’s metal gauntlet and caught in the frill of blades along its back. She wondered if the gauntlet was constructed of the same material as the sword.
With a deft movement, he twisted his arm, wrenching the weapon from her grasp, sending it clattering behind him. At the same time, his other hand caught her with an uppercut. She flew down the hall, bounced off the whistling wall and hit the floor. On her stomach, she writhed and struggled to take a breath. Her chest stung where the gauntlet sliced through her coat.
Vaguely, she was aware of doors springing open and figures moving on either side of the hall. Voices mixed with the buzzing in her head. Blurry eyed, she watched the approach of the guard’s cloven feet, his muscular legs, the swaying bulge of his thong.
He lunged, snatching at her hair, but Emily avoided his grasp. She flipped onto her back, pulled the caretaker wand from her quiver and plunged it into his groin. Light flashed, and he bellowed like a castrated bull, doubling over.
Emily crab-walked out of the way as he dropped to his knees. She leapt to her feet, menacin
g the air with her stubby wand, glaring at the demons now lining the hall. They stared in silence.
She backed away. Her attacker remained kneeling, holding his smoldering gonads. His partner lay in a puddle behind him. Farther away, her beloved sword was lost to darkness.
With her eyes on the dumbstruck vacationers, she entered the adjoining hall, walking sideways, her pace increasing until she was running as fast as she could.
FORTY-NINE
Satan lay in his bed in his penthouse suite listening to the fire roar in the hearth and the wind howl through the shutters. Soon the wind would die and the land would become frozen and silent. It was his favorite time of year.
He rolled onto his side and ran a delicate claw over his plaything. She panted fast, making little mewing noises, eyes wide and unblinking.
Catatonic. Satan enjoyed catatonia. It soothed his nerves.
“My lord,” said a voice. His chief executor stood in the doorway.
“There you are, Marbas. It took you long enough. Did you speak with Abaddon?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Excellent.” He rose from bed, dragging the young woman with him, and crossed the wide room to the window. Wind burst inside as he threw open the shutter. “Sometimes a little shock wakes them up,” he said and tossed the woman out. He gazed down seven stories at her sprawled, torch lit body. “Sometimes not.” He chortled, and then realized he was the only one laughing. He closed the window and poured himself a goblet of vitriol wine. “Report. What does the centaur say happened to my moat?”
“He said the deity dried it up. It offended her.”
Satan paused. “Deity?”
Marbas went on in a rush, as if hoping to say as much as he could before being forever silenced. “King Abaddon saw her himself. Others saw her as well. They say she rose from the lake of fire and entered the castle.”
“She is inside?”
“Yes, my lord. King Abaddon saw her in the delivery room. Patrons lay in dream state at her feet. An aura surrounds the dungeons. One cannot approach without succumbing to rapture. King Abaddon says those fleeing the cold through the tunnels cannot enter the castle because the chambers beneath the dungeons are filled.”
Moving like the bitter wind, Satan crossed the room in two strides. He grabbed Marbas about his neck and lifted him from the floor. “Did Abaddon say what this deity looks like?”
Marbas wheezed. “She looks like one of them.” He motioned to the window.
Satan threw him against the wall. “It’s not the deity, you fool. It’s her.”
He paced. He’d never come upon one like her before. Why didn’t she fear him? How did she invade his realm? He returned to his wine and downed the cup.
Deity. He had to dispel that rumor. He was the Lord of Hell. She was nothing but an enraged mother searching for her pup.
Satan smiled. “The gift I obtained for Chancellor Adramelech’s newling. Is it still in the tower?”
“Yes, my lord. Shall I retrieve it for you?”
“No.” His smile broadened, and he poured another goblet of wine. “Send an entire contingent. And Marbas…make sure they’re armed.”
FIFTY
Running through mazes of corridors, Emily made it up another three flights. Her path ended at a large ornate door. She placed her hand on the wrought surface, and then snatched it away. The metal was so cold it felt like it seared her skin.
Goaded by images of her daughter frostbitten and shivering, Emily jammed her shoulder against the door. Her feet slipped on the frozen floor as she pushed. Wind screeched through the crack, bitter air struck her face. Against the force of the gale, she opened the door wide enough to squeeze through.
She stepped onto a battlement. Wind shoved her against the wall. Half the sky was black. The other half pulsed orange from the lake of fire. The dark silhouette of a tower shimmered in the glow.
“April! Mommy’s coming.” The wind tore away her words.
Groping the icy wall, she made her way along the parapet. Windborne cinders struck like buckshot. With her head down and her hood pulled tight, she shuffled her boots over the slick stone.
Emily entered the tower through an open archway. Wind screamed around her, coursing upward like through a chimney. High overhead, a circular opening was lit red with the lake’s glow.
The stairs mimicked those in the dungeon—slabs of circular stone piled atop one another to form an inverted cone. They rose up the center of the cylindrical tower in a steep slope. Emily climbed on all fours, gouging handholds from the thick frost. The rushing air pushed and pulled her.
Near the top, a hellhound howled. There came a terrified shriek. She clambered up the remaining steps. The first thing she saw was an iron cage suspended from a domed ceiling.
A hellhound leapt at it, sailing through the air as if flying. The beast clung to the bars for a moment before dropping once more to the floor. There came another shriek. Emily narrowed her eyes. The cage held a small figure.
April.
A sob wrenched Emily’s throat. She notched an arrow and took aim. The hound leapt at her daughter again, exposing its gut. She shot. The wind caught the arrow, taking it off her mark, but it struck its ribs with enough force to elicit a yelp. She shot again, hitting its foreleg. The hound spun in place, snapping at the arrows.
With her knife in one hand and the caretaker wand in the other, Emily climbed onto the floor.
“Mommy!” April cried.
Emily’s heart swelled. She wanted to hold her, to kiss her tiny face, but first she had a monster to kill.
The hellhound growled, its hackles rising, making it look massive. Its eyes glowed red. Emily circled, her knife out. As she did so, she took note of the surroundings.
Only the glow of the lake lighted the octagonal room. A large crank stood to one side. Arched windows lined each wall. A carved gargoyle sat in one.
Slavering and baring its teeth, the hound sprang. Emily slashed an X across its face. It crouched, pawing the wound. The snake-like tail whipped its back. She brandished the knife. From the corner of her eye, she saw the gargoyle move. She nearly tripped, spinning to face it.
What she thought was a stone effigy was actually a harpy. It stretched its wings, filling the window, and then hopped off the ledge onto the floor. In the darkness, Emily lost sight of it. She backed away.
The dog growled, circling again. Overhead, April sobbed. Emily scarcely breathed. She listened for the scrabble of talons. Her eyes flicked to the shadows.
On its haunches, the hellhound swiped at her. She evaded the blow, slashing the air with her knife. The harpy’s silhouette crossed a window. With a sharp jab, the handle of the crank prodded Emily. She realized she’d backed into a corner. Distracted, she stepped sideways.
The hound bounded up. Its heavy paws struck her chest. Her head thumped the wall. The beast’s face was inches from hers. Its breath was hot and foul. She pummeled its side with her knife, knowing she was barely penetrating the thick hide. Her leg brushed the arrow in its ribs. She hammered the shaft with her knee, forcing it deeper. The beast yowled. She thrust the animal away, stumbling, and headed toward the center of the room.
With a vicious snarl, it leapt again. Emily hit it with the caretaker wand. There was a blinding flash.
At the same instant, April shouted, “Mommy, look out!”
Emily turned to see a stark imprint of the harpy rise behind her. She brought the wand around. The bird struck, knocking her hand away. With a horrific flapping sound, the dark wings enfolded her.
Emily fell to the floor, the creature’s weight upon her. The wand bounced out of her hand. She squirmed from side to side, ducking slashes of the serrated beak. She pounded its face, and then shoved her armguard into its mouth, holding it open. At the same time, she brought up the knife and plunged it into its throat.
“You. Will. Not. Keep. Me. From. Her.” She emphasized each syllable with a blow of her blade. Hot blood poured over her. Still hacking its neck
, Emily wriggled from beneath the body. She had nearly severed the head.
As she sheathed the knife, Emily looked up at her daughter. April beckoned. Emily hurried to the crank, released the chain holding the cage, and lowered it to the floor. It landed askew, half on the harpy’s body.
She ran to daughter, cupping her face in her hands. April was as cold as the bars.
Emily stepped along the edge of the cage. She shook the door, and then clawed the oversized padlock, crying out in frustration. She’d lost the sword. How could she break the lock?
April pointed with a shaking hand. “Key.”
Near the crank, Emily found a key ring hanging on a peg. She imagined the demons making a show of leaving it in plain sight—the unattainable prize.
She unlocked the cage door.
April launched herself into her mother’s arms, sobbing. “I knew you would save me.”
“Oh, my precious child.”
Emily smothered her face with kisses. She clutched her tight. Gone was the moan of wind, the stench of harpy blood. She knew only the touch of her daughter’s frail body, her cheek against hers.
“I will always come to save you,” she murmured.
April pulled back, gazing with solemn eyes. “Mommy, I don’t want to have a dog anymore.”
Emily blinked, her thoughts transporting her to a warm home filled with light and love, and a table laden with food—and she wanted to stay there, wanted to reject this horrific reality. Her eyes smarted with the tears she could not shed. She hugged her little girl. “My God, you’re like ice.”
She stripped off her leather coat, cringing from the blast of freezing air, and removed the tunic she wore. She dressed April in the tunic, and then wrapped them both in the coat.
“The other birds went away,” April murmured, staring at the harpy beneath the cage. “I don’t know why this one stayed.”
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