Descendant (12 page)

It was the entryway to the home of a god.

Fennrys and Maddox stood there, uncertain as to what to do next. Then the air seemed to start to quiver all around them. It was as if someone had plucked a massive harp string somewhere and the vibrations were reaching them before the sound. And then the sound
did
reach them. . . .

But it was nothing musical like a harp.

This sounded more like one of those car-masher machines in a junkyard, chewing through the engine compartment of an SUV . . . only it was a distressingly
organic
sound. The horrible gnashing and roaring echoed off what sounded like cavern walls in the darkened distance. And it was getting closer.

“You know what this reminds me of?” Maddox asked.

“I dunno,” Fennrys said, loosening the blade in the sheath he’d strapped to his leg. “The good ol’ days?”

“Exactly! Especially that one time—when that Jack-in-Irons tried to get through the Samhain Gate. Remember that?”

“What was good about that?” Fennrys glared sideways at Maddox. “That pit-spawned monstrosity almost tore my arms off, and it put you in Auberon’s infirmary for the better part of a mortal year.”

“Good times . . .” Maddox sighed, pulling a stout length of silvery chain from a pouch at his belt. As he swung it in circles, the chain lengthened and grew spikes that whistled through the dank air.

Fennrys drew the loaner sword. “I miss my ax,” he muttered.

And then the ground shook as the thing that would be the first test in their descent into the underworld came barreling out of the darkness in front of them. Armored
with scales the size of pancakes, greenish-gray and wafting a swampy stench that was an assault on the senses, the crocodile was maybe thirty feet long. Its massive, cumbersome body was carried along on short, stumpy legs, but even with all its ungainly girth, the thing moved swiftly.

Seeing what was coming, Fennrys resheathed his blade.

It would do him no good. In the Lands of the Dead,
death
itself was something to be employed extremely judiciously.

Fennrys glanced over to see that Rafe stood off to one side, arms crossed over his broad, furred chest. His stare was impassive, and Fennrys understood in that moment that there would be no help coming to him or Maddox. They would have to pass this test—prove their worthiness—on their own. It was just one of those unwritten rules of quests, Fennrys supposed. His shifted his gaze to Maddox, who stood loose and ready, the enspelled chain dangling from his fingers, swinging gently back and forth, and a grim smile of anticipation bending the corners of his mouth. He had no doubt that they probably could, between the two of them, put an end to the beast. But Fennrys decided that a bit of nonlethal diplomacy would serve them better.

“Madd!” he called out. “Let’s do this one up rodeo-style.”

“Ha!” Maddox barked a laugh. “All right—I call clown-in-the-barrel.”

Fennrys grinned and took a step back as Maddox stalked forward, positioning himself just to the right of one of the lotus columns—the mighty stone support was the circumference of a decent-sized giant redwood tree.

“Look sharp,” Fenn said, ducking behind a statue.

“Yo, ugly!” Madd stepped out and waved his arms in a wide arc over his head. “Over here!”

Jaws snapping, legs churning, the croc swung its massive head from side to side as it thundered down the great hall, its tiny eyes narrowing to focus on the movement in its field of vision. Once it zeroed in on Maddox, the thing charged straight for him, moving with blinding speed. Maddox was a fraction of a second faster. He sprinted for the pillar, skidded into a hairpin turn, and disappeared around the other side.

The beast’s momentum carried it past the lotus
column as its claws scrabbled for purchase on the polished floor. Its powerful neck muscles contracted, whipping its head to one side, as its enormous tail scythed to the other, compensating for the centrifugal force that slewed the creature’s massive bulk in a half circle. It gathered its flailing legs underneath it again and, aiming its snout in the direction Maddox had fled, launched itself forward again.

The two Janus had the beast right where they wanted it.

Its momentum squandered, and its back end pointing to where Fennrys crouched behind the base of a statue of Horus, the croc was entirely focused on running down Maddox, who jumped nimbly for the mouth of one of the huge alabaster jars—and disappeared down inside, clown-in-a-barrel rodeo-style. Fennrys took the opportunity to sprint after the creature as the thing’s shoulder glanced off the urn, spinning it like a top.

Fennrys leaped, landing deftly on the croc’s broad, scaly tail, and ran up the creature’s back, toward its head. He was halfway there when a flick of the croc’s tail sent him forward in a shoulder roll along the uneven surface of the armored hide.

As the croc scrambled to a second stop, Fenn grabbed for a ridge of dorsal spikes and desperately pulled himself up along the reptile’s enormous body to lunge for its head. If he fell, he’d be dead before he hit the ground, snapped in half by those terrible jaws. Inching forward, he managed to loop one arm around the beast’s sensitive snout and, with his other arm wrapped around the top, threw all his weight behind keeping the jagged-toothed mandibles shut tight. As the croc thrashed and snarled beneath him, he struggled to keep the massive creature from tearing off his arm.

In that instant, Maddox popped out of his jar with his magickally malleable chain weapon fashioned into a functional lasso. With a deft throw and a sharp snap of his wrist, Maddox snared the great beast’s muzzle, pulling as tight as he could. The creature thrashed and roared deep in its throat, outraged. Fennrys reached down and grabbed first one stubby front leg and then the other, pulling them back like a calf roper as Maddox ducked in again and used the rest of the chain length to secure the scaly, taloned appendages, tying them off with all the
showy aplomb of an experienced rodeo hand.

From where he stood, Rafe sauntered toward them, shaking his canine head, an amused sneer curling one side of his muzzle to reveal a sharply pointed fang, gleaming white in the gloom. Fennrys and Maddox made way as he circled around to the front of the crocodile and crouched on his haunches to stare the beast directly in its unblinking eyes.

“Sobek,” Rafe tsk-tsked. “You are the lamest excuse for a watchdog I have ever had the misfortune of encountering. You realize you just embarrassed yourself in front of a couple of Janus Guards. Don’t you have any professional pride? I mean, seriously.”

The crocodile snarled gutturally around the chain snare that clamped his jaws shut tight.

“That,” he growled through his teeth, “was not a fair fight. I am bound to keep the
living
from crossing over.
That
one’s already dead.” He jerked his head in Fenn’s direction.

Rafe snorted in derision. “Yeah, whatever. The Wolf is only
sort of
dead.”

“Whatever he is . . . he’s in the wrong afterlife!”

“Not the first time,” Fennrys muttered.

“I was only trying to fulfill my mandate according to
your
rules, Anubis.” Sobek writhed on the dusty ground, glaring at Rafe. “Let me up.”

“So you can eat my friends?” Rafe barked a laugh. “I left my kingdom behind, Sobek. Not my brain.” He stood and, hands on linen-draped hips, cast a surveying glance around the place. His lips curled back from his teeth in displeasure. “Where are my baboons? Why isn’t anyone tending the Lake of Fire?”

Fennrys looked in the direction of Rafe’s glance, but all was shadowy darkness to his eyes. He certainly couldn’t see any flaming lake, although that was probably because it had extinguished through lack of tending, he supposed. Whatever the case, he wasn’t going to complain about the absence of fiery obstacles.

Rafe shook his head and turned to glare back down at the giant croc. “I should have known my brother would let things fall to pieces once I left. . . .”

“Things have changed, lord. There just aren’t any believers left to mistakenly wander this way. Nothing to keep us going.” Sobek wriggled again, clearly uncomfortable, and for a moment, the facade of ponderous dignity cracked. “Let me up,” he complained
piteously. “I’m getting a cramp.”

Rafe turned to the two Janus Guards and lifted a questioning eyebrow.

“I can help you,” Sobek said.

Fennrys clenched a fist. He was rapidly running out of patience. He knew how these things went. You didn’t rush a quest—if that’s what this truly was—you ran the gauntlet, accepted all challenges, vanquished foes, answered riddles, jumped through the hoops, danced to the tunes. . . . In short, you played by the rules. Fennrys had never been very good at playing by the rules. But Mason was down there, somewhere, caught in an infernal realm, and that was the only thing that mattered. He needed to find her. And if a talking crocodile had any useful insights, he’d spare a minute and listen. But only a minute.

“Let him up,” he said to Maddox. “We’ll just take him out again if he gets frisky. In a less gentle fashion.”

Once freed, Sobek’s reptilian form began to shimmer and twist, and then, suddenly, a man—bald, stocky, with a craggy complexion and blunt features—stood before them, garbed in a somewhat shabbier version of Rafe’s glittering, elegant accoutrements. Sobek brushed the dust from his loincloth and turned to Fennrys, his eyes narrowing.

“Why are you down here, not-quite-dead boy? No . . . wait.” Sobek held up a hand. His tone shifted, dripping with weary sarcasm. “Let me guess. A
girl
.”

“Isn’t it always?” Rafe sighed.

“Hmph . . .” Sobek’s expression turned pinched, sour.

“I dunno.” Maddox shrugged. “Look how well it turned out for that Greek kid. Whatzisname. Orpheus.”

Fennrys raised an eyebrow at his friend. “He lost the girl and was ultimately torn to pieces at an orgy.”

“He was?”

“Even I know that.”

“Huh.”

Sobek had fixed his ancient, watery gaze on Fennrys and was staring silently at him. “Listen to me,” he said finally. “You should just turn back. There is something about this—whatever you think is happening here, wherever you think you are going—I have lived long enough, seen enough to know that this quest you are on has ‘Bad Idea’ written all over it. I hate to say it, but you,
lad, are followed by an evil star.”

“I’m not exactly sure how you can tell that,” Fennrys said, unwilling to acknowledge just how much that stung him. “Seeing as how we’re underground and all . . .”

“This place isn’t underground.” Sobek snorted, Fenn’s sarcasm having escaped him utterly. “This place isn’t a
place
!” He turned to Rafe. “Did you not explain the way of things before you decided to lead him here?”

“Are you blind, Sobek?” Rafe scoffed. “There’s more to this one than meets the eye, old man.” Rafe pushed Fennrys forward. “Here. Smell him.”

Caught off guard by Rafe’s shove, Fennrys stumbled a few reluctant steps toward Sobek, who suddenly seemed to get a good whiff of Fenn’s scent or aura or soul—whatever the hell it was he was sniffing out—and Sobek’s beady eyes suddenly went wide. He reeled backward, bumping into Maddox, who shot out a hand to keep the demigod from falling on his rump.

“
Ra
. . . ,” Sobek murmured, an oath—the name of the most powerful and revered of the Egyptian gods. And the most feared.

He’s afraid,
Fennrys thought.
Of me.

“What
is
he?” Sobek asked Rafe.

“He’s what he is,” Rafe answered unhelpfully. “A linchpin, maybe. The single thing that holds everything together. Or a time bomb that’ll blow everything apart. Too early to tell.” He sighed. “Can we pass now?”

“You know he’ll never make it through the Hall of Judgment,” Sobek said darkly. “If
I
can smell the wrongs on him, then he doesn’t stand a chance with the Soul Eater.
She
cannot be fooled.”

“Soul . . . Eater?” Maddox went a bit pale.

“I was wrong. I can’t help him,” Sobek continued. “I don’t think anyone can. And I’m sorry to say this”—Sobek turned a grim look on Fennrys—“but it’s probably for the best if she just tears you into pieces too small to find afterward.”

Fennrys could feel his forehead contracting in an angry frown. Where did everyone get off judging him like that? Were the things he’d done in his life so very wrong? What ever happened to second chances?

Aw, to hell with it.

They could think whatever they wanted. He was a changed person. Mason Starling had seen to that. Through an effort of will, Fenn forced the creases from
his brow and said lightly, “Says you.” Then he turned to Rafe and tapped his wrist with one finger. “Time’s a-wasting. . . .”

“Don’t do it, Anubis,” Sobek said. “No good can come of this.”

Rafe looked back and forth between the old, worn deity and Fennrys.

And then he grinned his jackal grin and echoed Fennrys: “Says you.”

Maddox stifled a chuckle and stepped up to flank Fenn, and the three of them started off toward the deeper darkness that was waiting. They’d almost made it the rest of the way down the hall when suddenly, a flaming projectile soared over their heads, and a great wall of flame roared up in front of them. They turned to see Sobek sprinting down the hall toward them, chased by a dozen howling simian creatures, fangs bared, hurling fireballs that they conjured out of the air.

Fennrys glanced at Rafe and saw that he’d gone wide-eyed.

“Your missing baboons?” he asked drily.

The creatures were more like enormous, mutant, apelike monstrosities with dagger blades for fangs and fiery yellow eyes. Bulging with muscle and malevolence, they were terrifying to behold. And closing fast. Sobek, only barely out in front of them, issued a high-pitched wail of panic as he ran.

“My missing baboons.” Rafe nodded and glanced over his shoulder at the roiling conflagration the fireball had ignited, which now barred their way. “And my Lake of Fire . . . yeah. It’s really more like a Pond of Fire these days, but it gets the job done. Unfortunately.” He dodged another ball of fire and muttered, “I’d forgotten how much I hate those freaking monkeys. . . .”