Destroyer Rising (12 page)

Carter started forward at a quick marching pace. “You
meet the dark-touched, and you understand how the breaking of the
Seal was so bad a thing.”

Bubbles chuffed and head-butted my lower back,
propelling me forward to match Carter’s pace.

“I thought the dark-touched had already crossed over
onto our plane,” I said, stumbling as Jasper swirled around my legs
before coming to a stop on my shoulder. He made a series of
clicking sounds before stilling.

“Several of them did,” Carter said. “We’ve still
found a few here. They mostly stay inside the tenth circle with the
would-be rulers of the Burning Lands.”

“I thought there were only nine circles in Hell,” I
said.

Mike cast me a thin smile over his shoulder. “I
already told you this isn’t the metaphorical Hell of any human
religion.”

A trio of golden souls flashed into being before
vanishing over a hill with shouts and whoops.

“Who are they?” I asked.

“
What
they are is more important,” Maggie
said. “They are free souls, sent hunting those who suffer.”

“They don’t hunt them,” Jimmy said, breaking his
silence. “They track them and free them.”

“And they’re corporeal? They weren’t part of the
Pack, were they?”

“That was me,” said a firm voice.

I looked up at Vicky as she swayed on Happy’s back.
“You did that?”

She nodded. “We needed allies.”

It sounded so simple, coming from Vicky. We needed
allies, so we what? Created them? Made the freed souls corporeal?
Her powers had developed in ways I could never have imagined. It
shouldn’t have surprised me. She’d been thriving in this place, a
realm I could scarcely understand, even with a fire demon at my
side.

We walked in silence for a while, Jasper hopping from
my shoulder to Mike’s and back again. I never saw him take to the
wolves. If Mike or I weren’t close, he’d roll along the ground
beside Happy and Vicky.

“How far is the next fortress?” I asked, looking up
at the thin disc of the red sun that remained.

“It is farther than we can walk before darkness
reaches us. We make for the Jaws.”

“That doesn’t really answer my question,” I muttered.
“And what are the Jaws?”

“A great jagged chasm,” Mike said. “There are fingers
of earth that stretch out above the cliffs. They are easily
defended, which makes them a prime choice for our camp.”

We still didn’t have much in the way of food, or
water, for that matter. I didn’t know if camping without those
things was such a great idea. “Mike, what about water? I didn’t
bring any.”

“I am quite sure I told you the story of water in the
Burning Lands,” the demon said. “When the sun darkens, the storms
will begin. It may be harder to find food if your body rejects the
fruit of this plane. I suppose we will know soon enough.”

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know what he meant by
rejecting the fruit of any plane. I held up my pace, carrying
Jasper and the backpack with me as a great darkness grew in the
distance.

Someone matched my pace after a time, and I was
surprised to find Jimmy there when I glanced away from the horizon.
We were both silent, until the shadows grew longer and the werewolf
spoke.

“Why did you come here, Vesik? Why now?”

I glanced over at Vicky. She and Happy were a good
distance away, on the far side of Carter and Maggie. “For her.”

Jimmy looked at the girl riding the ghost panda, and
then back to me. “You came here just for her? Not even the draw of
the Pack bonds was strong enough to bring you here? But you came
for her?”

I nodded. Maybe Jimmy would understand if he knew the
whole story. Maybe he already knew and he was baiting me into
something else. Either way, telling him why I was here wasn’t going
to hurt anything, and it might bolster my own resolve. My words
were quiet, little more than whispers. “We couldn’t save her.
Foster and I couldn’t save her.”

“You slaughtered the men that killed her.”

So he knew the story. “Yes.”

“Rumors in the Pack say you put the souls of her
killers into a dark bottle, and Philip used them to raise
Prosperine. You gave him the very tools to curse her in this
life.”

His words stung. I knew he wasn’t wrong, but it still
kindled a fire in my gut. “Sometimes things go bad, and we have to
make do with what we can.”

Jimmy blew out a breath through his nose. “So now
you’ve come to the Burning Lands to die? That’s selfish, and it
doesn’t help anyone.”

“I don’t intend to die.”

“That little girl doesn’t deserve to become the
Destroyer, Vesik. She’s been through enough.”

“That’s why I’m here.”

He eyed me for a moment before turning his head away.
“You get people killed and damned to existences they don’t want.
I’ll help if I can, because I understand Vicky needs to be freed,
but it still seems like killing you before Stones River ever
happened would have been best for everyone.”

His words weren’t angry. They were matter of fact,
like he’d thought about them for a very long time. I pondered that,
thinking how Carter and Maggie would still be alive. Philip
wouldn’t have gotten his souls, Cassie never would have faced
Gurges. My pace slowed, and Jimmy pulled ahead of me. The young
wolf’s broad shoulders left his back in shadows in the rising
darkness. He clenched his jaw and gave a violent shake of his head
before walking away. I think he meant well underneath the venom and
hate.

Jasper chittered on my shoulder and started bouncing.
I reached up to scratch him, and as my fingers met the soft
dust-bunny-like clumps of fur, a series of visions flashed through
my mind. Sam saved from Devon, Zola freed from Philip’s grasp, my
parents saved from a madman, and Nixie … the water witches might
never have tried to change if not for Nixie and me.

“Thanks, Jasper.”

He trilled and purred and settled against my
neck.

It didn’t take away all the doubts, though. War was
coming between Nixie’s faction and the Queen’s. More people would
die, and it would be on my head again. I guess I wouldn’t have to
worry about that if we didn’t survive the night.

That dark thought kept me company while the sun
turned black and the shadows came to life.

***

“I’m a little confused,” I said as I looked out
across the plain. What had been short, innocuous-looking grasses
had grown and changed into a rolling field of fire. Not much more
than ankle high in most places, but still, walking through fire
didn’t seem like a great idea.

“Think of it like a tide,” Mike said. “Only, instead
of an ocean of water, the fire seas move through stone and rise
through the ancient roots. There are deeper places of the world
where the fires reach higher than the fortresses themselves.”

I frowned at that thought, remembering the imposing
mass of the fortress that vanished into the skies above. “If it’s a
tide, does that mean these small flames are going to grow
throughout the night?”

Mike nodded. “It’s one of the reasons we’re camping
here.”

I glanced down at the embers beneath my feet. “This
doesn’t seem like a very good place to sit down.”

Mike gestured to the north. “See the darkness
ahead?”

I did, and it was close; maybe one hundred yards,
maybe less. “What is it?”

“The Jaws.”

We’d closed most of the distance when I came to
understand why they called it the Jaws. Sharp, teeth-like
protrusions of earth and stone jutted out from the side of a cliff.
Far below, deeper than I imagined a canyon could be, a dim orange
light filled the blackness.

My boots thumped onto white stone. There were no
grasses here, no channel for the flames to rise up and scorch us.
Farther onto one of the wider fingers waited a half-dome of rock,
like some ancient amphitheater dropped into the middle of the
Burning Lands. It looked natural, which made it even more odd.

“Camp,” Mike said as he led us forward. The fire
demon raised his hand and snapped his wrist forward. An orb of
floating, burning light zipped into the cavern, revealing how large
the dome was.

We were farther away than I’d thought. It took a good
minute to cross the rest of the rocky earth that led up to our
campground. A gentle downward slope led to the dome. I ducked as my
head neared the floating ball of fire. It was mesmerizing, a
constant roll of fire and shadow that licked up from the bottom of
the orb and crackled as it turned to ash.

“How far are we from the sixth fortress?” I
asked.

“Two hours at most, but there is no need to risk the
journey,” Mike said.

I glanced at Vicky as Happy paced the depressed inner
circle of the dome. She stood silently near the entrance to our
little camp.

“That is not what I meant,” Mike whispered as he
crouched beside me. “The black sun will last but three hours, and
then we will have twelve hours until darkfall.”

“Darkfall?” I said.

Mike raised his thick eyebrows slightly. “You do not
know the word?”

I shook my head. “Should I?”

“It is the hour that demons ascend, and devils are
born.”

“Vicky,” I hissed as I turned to look at the girl
standing at the other end of our shelter.

“Yes. Time grows short, but being in the open during
the black sun will do nothing but get us killed.”

“You lived here for years,” I said.

“Centuries,” Mike said. “I survived by not being an
idiot.”

“I guess being a demon didn’t hurt either.”

Mike offered a weak smile. “No, it didn’t. I will
stand guard. Try to rest, or do what you must.”

The fire demon walked to the base of the finger. He
started talking to Carter and the other wolves while I pulled the
Book that Bleeds out of my backpack, and tried to get comfortable
on the stones.

Mike summoned a webwork of fire that arced up from
the earth and met the dome’s edge above. Bright white flashes of
power shot through the thinnest parts of the pattern, revealing
that the barrier wasn’t merely fire. Mike talked to Carter while I
flipped through the Book that Bleeds.

“It will keep out the majority of things during the
black sun, and most importantly the dark-touched.”

“I’ve seen them walk through fire,” Carter said.

“In this plane, perhaps,” Mike said. “This fire is
different, as I think you know.”

Happy wandered over and nudged me in the back. I
leaned forward and he wiggled himself between me and the wall. I
leaned back into the furry ghost bear, grateful for the cushion.
Jasper swirled around my arm before settling in the crook of my
elbow.

I flipped to the back cover, looking for any
indication of something hidden within it. The front was just as
bare, save for the sticky blood and rough leather. I ran my
fingertips across the spine, feeling the raised bands beneath the
surface.

It waited on the bottom edge of the book, in the
center of the back cover. A thin bump, much like the tiny bands on
the spine. I couldn’t see it when I looked at it, but it was raised
beneath my index finger. The leather was thicker than it looked and
I finally looked up when a knife blade entered my field of
view.

“Thanks,” I said, taking the knife and cutting the
leather before handing the blade back to Mike.

A sliver of gray metal waited within, and I pulled on
it with my fingernails. The book resisted at first, grasping at the
metal as though refusing to give up another secret. When the sliver
of matte gray Magrasnetto finally slid out, there were enough runes
carved into its surface to make my head spin. I could have sworn it
was the same pattern as the metal Cara had formed into a dark
bottle, the plates we’d found in the lost city of Pilot Knob.

Jasper’s growl vibrated my entire body.

I flipped the metal over, and it was not runes that
greeted my eyes. An incantation waited there, so long and complex I
thought it might have been a speech. I traced the etched letters
with a finger, and came away bleeding for my trouble. The letters
themselves were jagged and razor sharp.

I rubbed the bleeding pad of my index finger against
my thumb. The blood stopped almost immediately, and I raised my
eyebrows as the wound closed on its own. I looked back to the
incantation and read.

By the time I finished translating half the text, I
realized it wasn’t just an incantation. It was a document citing
the abilities and bloodlines needed to perform the Demon’s
Sacrifice. There were names on that tablet that I knew as gods,
Hephaestus, Hades, and a slew of others. Toward the bottom, I found
what I feared I might.

Anubis.

The last line was the incantation itself; five little
words, a simple chant that could destroy a soul utterly and turn
its power into a weapon beyond comprehension. If ever I had feared
that the arts I controlled were those of a dark necromancer, I knew
that this would cross the line. This was the blackest of arts.

I let the sliver of metal slide out of my hands and
thunk against the cover of the old tome. Vicky stood at the edge of
the dome, her arms crossed, looking out through the blazing wall
Mike the Demon had raised.

There weren’t any guarantees. I might use the most
powerful art inside the Book that Bleeds, and we could still lose
Vicky to the Destroyer. And then what? Then I would use the Demon’s
Sacrifice to strike down the very girl I’d sworn to protect?

“You look troubled,” Mike said as he sat down in
front of me, crossing his legs.

I held up the etched plate.

Mike frowned. “I have not seen that in a very long
time.”

“It’s one of the most awful things I’ve ever read,
Mike.”

“It is a weapon of the gods, Damian. Most of the
great arts are as terrible as they are powerful.”