A bone.
Scrambling to my knees, I dig it up, the cold earth wedging under my fingernails and tiny stones slicing into my flesh. Then, I find a second one and do the same. It’s my only chance and my only hope.
I open the stoppers on the vials and pour the liquid onto the bones. It sizzles softly, and smoke wafts up around me, acrid and tacky in the back of my throat.
Crack.
Crack.
The chains are barely fastened to the wall anymore, and with a few more lunges, the dogs will be free.
I throw the bones just as the hounds tear themselves away from the wall and race toward me, their massive paws pounding into the dirt and their jaws snapping hungrily.
Each of them snatches the bones I throw out of the air, snapping them in half with their wickedly sharp teeth. It doesn’t stop them from coming. They don’t even slow. There’s no time to run, and nowhere to run to. I back myself against the wall and throw my arms up in a weak defense when they both fall, mid-stride, and slide to a stop at my feet.
Bits of bone fragment litter their snouts, and just the tiniest amount of poison must’ve seeped into their systems from the slivers they ingested. I owe Nico my life. Again.
I move away from the wall and approach the torches, uncertain if I can even touch them, let alone douse them.
That’s when I hear the slap of soles on the dirt behind me.
They are so inhumanly fast, I don’t even have the chance to turn. I’m hit from behind by what feels like a freight train, and I manage to twist as I fall so I land on my back. Kicking my assailant up and over me, I scramble to my feet and spin to face my attacker.
“…Runner?”
15
DOUSE THE TORCHES
Runner is going to kill me.
His eyes are filmy white, vacant, and filled with hatred, and he cannot tear them away from me. There is nothing of the kind man who sped through the streets of Ash City with demons on his cab to get me to safety. Nothing of the person I’ve come to know as a friend who vowed to accompany me on every adventure until I could free myself from Lucifer’s bargain.
I do not know this Runner. And I don’t think he knows me.
“Runner, listen to me,” I say, keeping my voice low and soothing. “This is Trivia working through you. It’s this place. It’s poisoned you somehow. We were warned this would happen, remember?”
A low growling comes from deep within his chest, and his lips peel back from his gums in a vicious snarl. “You do not belong here,” he says, and his voice is gravel and raw emotion.
He’s right. I don’t belong here. I should give up. I should let him end me. The thoughts are seductive and threaten to lull me into a state I cannot come back from, and the moment I realize I’m slipping I redouble my efforts to stay strong against whatever curse or ward that Trivia put on this place.
To see this normally sweet man turn violent and cruel like this is profoundly disturbing, and it only serves to stoke my anger at Trivia to a white-hot blaze.
“You don’t belong here either, and the sooner you help me douse these torches, the sooner we can leave,” I say, pointing to the twin flames behind him.
“I cannot allow that,” he says, shaking his head. “Surrender.”
“Don’t you want to help the witches?” I ask, my tone like honey. Slowly, so slowly, I get on the balls of my feet, ready to dart out of his reach should he lunge for me. Before he came for me he must’ve tossed his jacket away, because he’s in only a t-shirt now, and I’m surprised to find that his muscles are ropey and lean. He’s strong, stronger than I thought he was, and with whatever toxic spell is racing through his system now I could be in real trouble.
“I am helping a witch. I do as Trivia bids,” he responds, and he launches himself at me, a snarl bursting from his lips.
I slide to the left to avoid his swinging hand, the breeze of the near miss ruffling my hair and sending it flying around my shoulders.
“No, you promised to help me. Gray.” I put a hand on my chest. “Your friend.”
“There are no friends when you deal in death,” he says, lunging again. Again I just manage to avoid his attack, but he’s getting better, more agile.
“I thought that too,” I say. “And then you destroyed your car and nearly got yourself killed to keep me safe. You’re my friend whether you like it or not, and I always protect my friends.”
He blinks at me, and for a brief moment hope flutters in my chest that somehow I’ve gotten through to him.
Then the cataract covering the silver in his irises floods inky black, and he comes at me for the third time. I’m as quick as I ever was, but this time it’s not quick enough. He tackles me to the ground and we roll along the dirt, the bits of bone that poke up out of the ground digging into my flesh through my clothes.
He snags one of my arms, pinning it to the ground, and I claw at him with the other, running my nails down his cheek and spattering us both with his silver blood. “Don’t do this!” I scream at him.
He doesn’t hear me. He only hears Trivia’s song in his ears and feels Trivia’s poison in his blood, and her hold is too strong for me to break.
So I stop trying, and I start fighting.
Runner straddles me, pinning both of my arms above my head. I have no leverage. No advantage. My only chance is to get him off-balance before he can rip my throat out with his teeth.
I drag both of my arms toward each other as hard as I can, the hard-packed dirt on the floor scraping against my skin. He fights against me, struggling to get his balance, when I suddenly yank my arms out away from my head and duck to the right, the sudden change in direction sending his forehead slamming into the hard ground next to my face.
Momentarily stunned, he lets me go and I throw his body off of me and scramble out from underneath him.
Without waiting to see if he’s okay, I race toward one of the torches and, throwing caution to the wind, I yank it off of the wall and spin around, brandishing the lit end at him.
He’s swaying on his feet, silver blood streaming from a gash above his eyebrow. “That wasn’t very nice,” he says.
“Neither is trying to kill me.”
The fire at the end of the torch throws green light on his already sickly skin, making him appear eerie and ghoulish in the way I’d always imagined a ghost should look. He smiles, and it makes it worse.
“You have no magic to douse the torches,” he says, “this is a futile battle.”
“Then you should give up,” I counter, and I will him to listen to me with every fiber of my being. I don’t want to hurt my friend. I certainly don’t want to kill him. But he may leave me no choice.
On the far side of the room, a gurgle and growl breaks the tense silence. The dogs are starting to stir.
Runner uses the distraction to come at me again, and with no time to react, I do the only thing I can think of: swing the torch at him, only pulling it at the last second, and nailing him right across the face with the edge of the burning end.
He drops to the dirt floor like a sack of flour, his limbs splayed and his jaw hanging open. His eyes flutter, and then close, and I’m certain that I’ve hit him at just the right angle to kill him. Or that the blow to his head when he fell has cracked his skull. Or that…
I drop the torch and run to his side, despite every instinct in my body telling me to deal with the torches and run. I can’t though. I won’t. The old Gray would’ve smirked down at the fallen assailant and sliced his throat for good measure. This Gray, the Gray I want to be for myself and for David, cares about the people that she hurts. Especially if they’ve only been kind to her. When they weren’t possessed by evil witches, that is.
Runner is unconscious, but not dead.
Unfortunately, so are the dogs, and they’re coming out of their haze quickly.
Beside me, the torch slowly rolls toward us, unstable in the uneven dirt floor, and comes to rest with the burning end in a small puddle of Runner’s silver bl
ood. The flame crackles and smokes as it hits the liquid, and seems to dim ever so slightly.
I snatch the torch up from the ground, and with nothing to lose, I dip the burning end fully into Runner’s blood. The flames wink out in a puff of thick, green smoke, and the light in the room is halved. I stare at the blackened and silvered end of the now useless torch. Whatever evil Trivia has spiked his blood with, it’s somehow managed to douse the flame.
From somewhere above me, a faint scream cuts through the layers of earth to ricochet through the chambers.
Can Trivia sense that one of her torches has been snuffed?
One of the dogs sits up, shaking its head groggily, and I have no time left to wonder about whether I’m in trouble for pissing the worst witch in the world off.
I grab the second torch off of the wall and place the burnt end in the same pool of Runner’s blood. It sputters out as well, and the only light left in the room is from the white flames on the black candles.
And the red eyes of the hellhounds.
Shit.
They’re both on their feet now, and though they sway and seem to have a hard time keeping their balance, it won’t be long before they’re fully aware and looking at me as a tasty snack.
I can’t carry Runner with me, and even if I could he’d still be under Trivia’s spell. We’ve doused the torches, not killed her. Yet. And while he’s still part of Trivia’s world, he should be okay down here with the dogs. I hope.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, and, snatching up my dagger from the ground as I go, I run from Trivia’s chambers, leaving him behind.
The minute I cross the threshold into the tunnel the weight of a thousand years of grief lifts from my heart and my blood spikes with adrenaline and energy.
It’s only a few seconds before I hear the sound of heavy paws echoing through the tunnel behind me.
The dogs are back to their vicious selves, and they’re gaining on me.
Pushing myself to go farther, faster, another scream rings out from somewhere above me, and I realize that it might not be Trivia screeching in anger at what I’ve done. It might be Bex and Kara under attack from the Haunted.
I burst into the basement, the hot breath of the dogs at my back, and take the stairs two at a time, spinning around to slam the door shut and latch it just as they throw their massive bodies against it. The wood bends, sending up puffs of dust, and the hinges rattle, but the lock holds fast.
Racing to the front door, I twist the knob and yank, fully expecting to have to break the damn thing down to get out, seeing as how we were mystically locked in here from the moment we entered. To my surprise and relief, the door swings open easily.
Flashes of blue light streak across my vision as I move out onto the porch, and I find Bex and Kara beating the hell out of the Haunted. Trivia’s soldiers swarm on the witches, only to find themselves thrown back, obliterated, or disintegrated by bright balls of magical energy.
Jumping off of the porch, I run down toward the crossroads and the line of graveyard dirt keeping these necromancers safe. “You two okay?”
“Up until a minute ago, no,” Bex says, flicking a wrist and sending a Haunted slamming into a tree.
“Then these guys seemed to weaken. Get less focused and more reckless,” Kara adds, holding off three Haunted with one glowing palm.
“I think it’s because I doused the torches,” I say, and Kara’s eyes widen in surprise.
“No shit,” she says, and I think she’s impressed.
Bex frowns at me, glances back up at the house, and asks, “Where’s Runner?”
I hate to think of him down there, trapped in Trivia’s chambers with those beasts, but there’s nothing I can do for him now besides take Trivia out.
“He’ll be fine,” I say. “I hope.”
A third scream rings from somewhere in the distance.
“That wasn’t you guys before?’ I ask, suddenly very, very worried.
Bex shakes her head. “We thought it was you guys taking care of Trivia!”
“She wasn’t inside. She’s at the unmarked graves.” I watch their faces fall as I say, “And I think those screams are Mad and Delaney.”
16
NO PRISONERS
“You didn’t see them go past you?” I yell as I dodge the swinging arm of a particularly angry Haunted.
“Obviously not!” Kara yells back as a burst of blue energy shoots from her palm. The Haunted who’d tried to take me out flies backward, crashing into two of her fellow ghostly soldiers, and they land in a heap in the clearing.
The moment I mentioned the unmarked graves, Kara and Bex had shot each other an oh shit look and raced across the graveyard dirt barrier directly into the furious horde. With the Haunted weakened thanks to my dousing the torches, knocking a path through them had been like slicing a hot knife through butter.
Kara’s in the lead, a battering ram powered by magic and fury, and she’s bulldozing over Haunted without breaking a sweat. Bex is behind me making sure no Haunted take us by surprise. She yells, “The woods are full of dark magic, and Trivia controls all. It would’ve been easy for her to cloak Delaney and Mad’s passage, especially if she wanted to keep us separated.”
The Haunted are beginning to thin out, and with one last burst of magic, Kara tears herself free of the onslaught, racing through the open grassy field toward the tree line.
I’m right on her heels, and Bex tosses one last bolt of blue behind us to erase any thought the Haunted had about following us. If they could think. Which I’m pretty sure they can’t. Trivia drained their critical thinking skills along with their free will a long time ago.
With the magic Bex and Kara had been doing, their light had been at a blinding fever pitch, blotting out everything else. Now that there’s no need for it, the blue glow fades and we’re left with the eerie twilight of the Counterfeit sky.
It makes it all the easier to see the streaks of red light in the distance, back through the trees and toward the graveyard we visited when we first arrived in Salem.
“Why would she come back here?” I ask, panting as I do my best to keep up with Kara, who must’ve been a track star before she became a Counterfeit because gods damn is this woman fast.
“Why not? She’s run us around in circles, keeping us occupied for who knows what reason. Maybe just for her own amusement. We should’ve known,” Kara says, and frustration bleeds through every word. “We should never have assumed this would go the way we thought.”
“If she’s draining witches to siphon their power, it’d make sense that she’d come to the place where the witches are buried for an infusion,” Bex adds.
“And if she realized we were coming for her, she’d want as big a hit as possible,” I realize.
“Bingo,” Kara says.
She slows as she approaches the tree line.
“What? Why are we stopping?” I glance behind us to find that, despite the last blast of magic, the Haunted continue their torturous march toward us. There’s no point in going back to fight. The only way to stop them is to stop their maker.
“Her magic has grown stronger. Do you feel it, Bex?” Kara asks.
Bex nods. “Even with our combined magic, we’re at a major disadvantage here. She’s been playing us this whole time. To go in there without a plan…”
“Our plans are for shit. They’ve always been for shit,” I spit. “We keep our wits about us, we get the ring, and we get Trivia. By any means necessary. No plan. Just outcome. And Trivia’s in there, most likely torturing your sisters,” I say, pointing toward the red glow. “So what the hell are you waiting for?”
I plunge into the forest, leaving them behind.
Bex mumbles a curse behind me, but the witches follow all the same. The flashing grows brighter as we pick our way through the underbrush and thick foliage, and moans of pain from up ahead punctuate bursts of illumination.
“We’re all agreed that this is a kill situation, yes?” I ask, wanting confirmat
ion. “Not a let’s take her prisoner type of deal.”
“Yes,” Kara says without hesitation.
“But that’s assuming we can kill her,” Bex adds. “Trivia is strong. Stronger than any one of us alone.”
“But combined?” I say. “And with what Mad showed us she can do back there against the Haunted?”
“I want Trivia dead,” Bex says, her voice low and deadly. “There is no confusion here.”
The red glow flares, and we slow, crouching low as to not be seen. I get the feeling it doesn’t matter, and I’m proven right when a deep, raspy voice rings out through the trees. “No need to make yourselves smaller. You’re already insignificant to me. Step out into the light.”
Jaws clenched and spines straight, arms raised with fingertips sparking blue, Kara and Bex stride out into the graveyard and face the evil witch that killed their sister. Dagger clutched at my side, I follow.
I breach the tree line, and what I see nearly brings me to my knees.
Trivia stands smack dab in the center of the graveyard, enveloped by a crackling field of electricity that snaps and pops around her. The red glow of it is hellish, and it’s as if Lucifer has sent her to us straight from Pandemonium.
Her robes twist and float on a breeze that seems to surround only her, and the ends of her long black hair sway up around her head like hissing snakes. Thin dark lines zigzag across her skin as if she has sludge running through her veins, and her eyes are a poisoned green. A thin crown with a crescent moon fashioned at the brow sits atop her head.
Trivia is every bit the evil queen incarnate, and it is terrifying to behold.
What’s worse is seeing what’s become of Mad and Delaney, who are also encased in that terrible red glow.
Delaney levitates next to Trivia the same way we saw Anya floating in the attic. Her feet are six inches above the grass, her back arched and head upturned toward the sky, her mouth twisted in a silent scream.
HELLION: THE DEAD HEX: (Hellion, Book 2) Page 9
