Dax moved to Meredith’s side, shielding her. “Aunt Cara, would you also be so kind as to hand me the pendant?” He held out his hand.
“Whatever do you mean, dear?”
“The one there—just behind your left foot.” He held her gaze, then looked down. Her eyes automatically followed.
“Oh!” Cara said, her smile radiant. “What in the world is that? What a primitive design! Who would ever wear such a thing?”
“If you would just hand it to me, I would appreciate it,” Dax said.
“But I have been rather clumsy lately,” she said. “Even losing my diamond earring! And my shoes are a bit slippery on these hardwood floors. I would never forgive myself if I dropped something that means so much to you.”
With the force of a thousand lightning bolts, Dax knew that Cara wanted nothing more than to do just that. To split the pendant into its parts. To pry the silver casing from the stone.
“Meredith, would you please get it for me?” Dax said calmly. “And take this.” He handed her the scepter.
Meredith did as he asked.
Dax dangled the leather cord on one finger, swinging the pendant gently back and forth.
Cara winced.
Dax took a quick step forward. Cara jumped back to avoid contact.
“What’s the matter, dear?” Dax said, eyes pulsing. “Demon got your tongue?”
“What’s going on?” Meredith said. “What...”
The air in the room was replaced with smoke and the acrid scent of burning sulfur. Meredith coughed.
“Hold on!” Dax said. “Don’t leave, Meredith!”
As quickly as it had materialized, the smoke cleared. The spot where Cara had been standing was filled with a massive beast. One with leathery gray skin and eyes like polished onyx. The creature made a bone-chilling cawing sound, then spread its wings, scraping bits of plaster from the walls.
Dax tightened his grip. Meredith’s pendant was the only thing keeping this evil at bay. For now. “Why, Cara?” Dax cried. “You were supposed to be one of us. The one my mother trusted. After father died, and after she knew she was dying. She trusted you to raise me as her own. Why did you betray us?”
The creature made a hoarse laughing sound.
“Your mother was pitiful,” Cara’s voice emerged from the beast. “Her love for you made her weak. She couldn’t keep her mouth shut. Saw that you were special—destined for battle, even though you’re a filthy half-breed. But she just couldn’t resist telling you our secrets. Secrets that we kept hidden for centuries—millennia! Secrets that got her killed back then. That will get you and this pretty little thing killed today.”
“This stone is round!” Dax said. “It’s the silver casing that makes it look square. And since you’re a demon, you can’t touch it. Had to call in some worthless expediter to help you, but that didn’t work out so well, either. Must be frustrating as hell.”
The creature cackled. “Hell is many things, my dear, but frustrating is not one of them.”
“Good-bye, Aunt Cara,” Dax said, spinning the pendant above his head and releasing it. The creature opened its mouth, but it was too late. The blow to the demon’s forehead stopped it cold.
It buckled into the space near the bed, next to Randy. The mark left by the contact with the stone turned black and smoldered, then burst into a bluish flame.
Dax knelt beside Randy, grabbing his wrist. “He’s gone,” he said after a few seconds. “Damn it!”
“I can’t believe this!” Meredith said.
“There’s no time to think about it now,” Dax said. More than anything, he wanted to grieve for his friend. He and Randy had been like brothers, at each other’s side through 250 years. He had been counting on him to help him deal with Cara’s betrayal. Now both his aunt and his best friend were lost to him forever.
He took Meredith’s face into his hands. “Do you remember the stone I gave you for safekeeping? After the first battle, when I knew I was in love with you. No matter what happens today, even if we are separated for all of eternity, I will love you.” He kissed her tenderly. “But now I’ve got to get back to the portal. All hell must be breaking loose.”
“Dax, I love you, too,” Meredith said. “But you shouldn’t be alone down there. Give me something to do.”
He smiled. “You’re human,” he said, “Powerless against demons during battle. But you can help. Stay right here. Cara’s body—and Randy’s—should disappear in a half hour. Make sure that happens. In the meantime, I’ve got to get to the portal. To figure out how to put the stone back in the scepter before it’s too late.”
Chapter Seven
Meredith waited until the kitchen door closed, then exhaled. Dax was gone, possibly forever. She had to find a way to help him to keep her heart from breaking. There had to be something she could do besides stand there watching a demon corpse decompose.
Then she thought of Randy, who used his dying breath to tell her the secret that helped Dax defeat Cara and Elena. If she couldn’t be with Dax, she could at least pay her respects to this brave warrior.
She replayed the scene with Elena in her mind. Life was funny. Meredith had sensed that something wasn’t right when Cara, practically a stranger, had refused to touch the pendant just now. But through all these years, she had been blind to the clues that Elena had been an expediter.
Now it all made sense. Why Elena insisted on living with their grandmother when she could have gotten her own place in a better part of town. Why she had dropped the pendant as if scalded when their grandmother gave it to her on her deathbed—and why she claimed to have forgotten the words to the riddle. Why she hadn’t told her that there was a real-life Dax Thelassian. Why she demanded increasingly outrageous sums of money from Meredith now that the book was a success.
Meredith glanced at the bodies, bracing herself for blood and bones. Instead, the bodies were simply draining of color, as if being erased. She tried not to think about what she was witnessing.
She wrote the book because she thought it was an interesting story. She enjoyed having designer clothes and a new car, and a custom-built home in the most coveted zip code in the city. Now it all seemed worthless.
Bitter tears stung her eyes. What if the evil energy were escalating because of her? She had found Dax after all these years, only to face the possibility of losing him all over again. It was too much to bear.
Then the thought came to her, emblazoned in her mind. If she were the one who caused these things to happen, then she might also be the one to make them stop. She didn’t have to stay behind, feeling useless.
She went into the office to get the chair from Dax’s computer station. The light on Dax’s laptop glowed, indicating that it was fully powered. She slipped it from its cradle.
This would help her pass the time and take her mind off Dax. Curious, she plugged the words of the riddle into a search engine. Nothing. “Dance through the fire, Dax,” she whispered. “Please. For me. For us.”
****
Dax rushed through the cavern, forcing Meredith from his thoughts. He had to focus on opening his senses to the energy around him. As he neared the cave with the portal and crystals, the negative vibrations intensified, although there was no indication that demons were present.
They hadn’t escaped from the underworld. Yet.
Good. He would have time to work on the pendant. Using a flashlight, he found the marking that Meredith had mentioned:
melkranos
. The roundness of time, from beginning to end, and back again. He owed her dinner, after all.
Wind rushed through the corridor, swirling dust. The air filled with the flapping of wings and high-pitched cawing and shrieks.
The demons had arrived. Hundreds of them, more than could fit into the room with the crystals. They were spilling into the adjacent spaces. Mere feet from Dax.
The corridor filled with an eerie, yellowish-red fog. The stench of sulfur.
Dax’s eyes burned. He dropped the flashlight, put the pendant in his pocket, and gripped the scepter as he would a club. Perspiration trickled down his forehead as the space grew unbearably hot. He had to wait, to conserve his energy. To outsmart the demons using cunning alone. If the stone were not replaced in the scepter, he could not win using brawn.
The red fog glowed like fire. Dance through the fire.
Fire
!
Dax’s heart raced. He dropped the scepter and fished the pendant from his pocket. He had to figure out how to attach the pendant to the scepter.
Then it was gone, rolling silently through the dust on the uneven cavern floor. Damn it! Not a second time! Dax began to crawl, sweeping his hands across the dirt.
“Missing something, Mr. Thelassian?” Dax looked up into piercing black eyes.
He froze.
Voran!
He would recognize that gravelly voice anywhere, even though he looked nothing like the demon shape he had taken on nearly 250 years earlier.
Identical bird-like creatures huddled behind Voran, wings tight against their bodies. Their bodies made a dry, raspy sound as they brushed against one another. Their blinking eyes were barely visible through the hellish fog.
“I’m missing my crew. You know that as well as I do, Voran,” Dax said.
Voran chuckled. “What an unfortunate state of affairs. I understand you recently lost your aunt, too. Pity.”
Dax had to keep Voran talking. Buy some time to spot the stone, or at least grab the scepter. Otherwise, he was defenseless. He moved to his knees and scanned the ground. He coughed, choking on noxious fumes.
“Life is never easy for you, is it, Dax?” Voran said. “Not as long as human blood trickles through those veins. It’s a good thing you can rely on your demon-warrior blood. Oh, wait. That’s right—won’t do you much good if you’re the only one left.” Voran gave a backward glance, chuckling.
The other creatures cackled and twitched, restless. Eager to attack.
A hint of silver flashed through the fog. Dax grabbed the scepter and jumped to his feet. Voran took a step back to accommodate him, extending a giant wing.
“Ah yes,” he continued. “The scepter. But without the stone, you’re pretty much...what do the young creatures on your planet say these days? Red meat. No, that’s not it. Dead meat.”
Voran leaned forward, his breath like acid on Dax’s face. “And now you will die.”
The creatures flew into a frenzy of snapping and clawing. Lunging and diving, screaming in the heat.
Dax held the scepter in front of him and charged. Pointed beaks and razor teeth ripped his flesh as he passed through the fray. Claws grazed his scalp. More wings unfurled and then flapped as the creatures filled the adjacent corridors, giving each more room.
Dax vowed to die standing. He plunged the scepter into leathery hides, snapped thin bird legs like matchsticks.
As time crawled by, Dax transformed his body into a numb fighting machine. He refused to acknowledge that victory was virtually impossible. That he would lose Meredith so soon after finding her. That this time,
melkranos
had come to its end. They would be separated for all of eternity, not just the next two centuries.
Dance through the fire to lost worlds found. You are my world, Meredith.
****
Meredith tried to concentrate. Being human might make her physically weak against demons, but perhaps her intellect gave her an advantage.
The stone is round. The stone is round.
The voice of the child in her dreams taunted her.
Meredith took a deep breath and focused on what she knew. Dax was fighting for the future of humanity at this very minute. His power over his demonic enemies was greatly reduced because the scepter was missing an object. Her pendant—the one Dax had slipped into her pouch 200 years ago, when he was a Spaniard and she was a Lipan Apache—was square.
But the stone within it was round.
Meredith ran as fast as she could down the stairs and into the cavern.
****
Dax couldn’t keep going much longer. Bloodied and bruised, his strength was waning. By now, the pendant could have been kicked yards down the dusty path or stomped into the dirt.
But even if he had it, he could not be sure that it was the missing piece of the scepter. All he wanted to do was shut his eyes and use his last breath thinking of Meredith.
He had found her again, and that would have to be enough.
“I love you, Meredith,” he shouted, his voice barely audible above the dry rustling of demon wings and the roar of burning sulfur. His lungs burned but he had to be honest, for himself at least, even if Meredith would never know.
“I’m sorry I let you down,” he said in a much softer voice. He could fight no more, but he could lose himself in memories.
“I love you, too!” Her voice echoed in his mind. He smiled, not caring about the demon talons that clawed at his skin.
“I love you but I can’t do this alone!” He opened an eye, sure that he was hallucinating. But her hands gripping his shoulders, urging him up, were all too real.
“Meredith! You promised you would stay away!”
“Never mind. Where’s the pendant?”
“I shouldn’t have given it to you all those years ago. Humans have short memories and I can’t remember...”
“Dax, we need the pendant! I know what the riddle means!”
“It’s here. Not sure where...” Dax felt his life force recede further as she released him and began moving her hands along the dirt.
****
Meredith moved as quickly as she could on her hands and knees, out of sight as much as possible from the demons that towered above. Her arms and legs were bloodied by their razorlike talons, but the creatures did not seem aware of her presence. Her eyes stung as she forced her fingers into the hot dust beneath her.
There—something hard. She clawed at the dirt until she pried the pendant loose. But it was too soon to feel relief.
Dance through the fire
. She concentrated until her fingers found the tiny, smooth plate that was engraved with the symbol for fire. Holding her breath, she pressed.