Destroyer Rising (20 page)

The skeleton clicked and rattled and pointed to
shaking form by a coil of rope that was anything but rope. It
looked fleshy, and I didn’t want to know what the thing was. I bent
down and scooped Vicky up.

The world exploded into a booming laughter and
Prosperine’s decayed voice shattered the peace of the Bone Sails.
“I can taste her, Vesik. She is a vessel of legend! I can feel what
she feels and see what she sees.” Vicky turned her eyes on me, and
only infinite darkness greeted me.

“I can send you into the black,” I hissed. “You won’t
have her.”

“Your pathetic edicts mean nothing, Anubis-son. My
time has come, and you have failed once—”

“
Excutio Daemonium!”
The light was not golden
here, it was black and red and smashed into Vicky’s body like a
battering ram. Her voice, the voice of a child, screamed in pain as
the incantation ripped the demon from her.

My arm ached and throbbed. It was covered in blood. I
ground my teeth and blocked out the pain as best I could.

“Vicky,” I prodded at her shoulder gently.

“She’s out,” Mike said.

“It will be a while before she awakens,” Shiawase
said. “Remember how long it took for her to recover before.”

I pushed her eyelid back and cringed. Almost
everything was black now. A few flecks of color remained, and the
rest was shadow.

“We must go to Hugh,” Mike said. “The time is
right.”

A golden hand settled on my forearm. “Do you want to
say goodbye to her? In case you don’t make it back?”

I stared at Carter and almost snarled, “Never.”

“Mike, let’s go.” Something jerked me to my feet by
my backpack. “Alright, I’m ready.”

Mike turned to Graybeard. “Keep them safe, or you
will deal with me, and Adannaya.”

“How will you get the boy back to his realm?”
Graybeard asked.

“On a river of hellfire?” I muttered. “I guess I
can’t be choosy now.”

Mike shook his head. “When I planned to send you here
unaided, yes, that would have been my vehicle of choice. From here,
I can return you to the Abyss.”

I perked up at the thought of not having to get set
on fire. “Gaia can take me the rest of the way?”

“Yes. Once you’re through the gate, the hand should
be able to call her.”

“That’s risky,” Carter said, eyeing us both. “What if
she doesn’t respond at first? What if she doesn’t recognize the
call from inside the Abyss?”

“Then Damian could be lost to the void,” Mike said
quietly.

I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. It’s this or we
lose Vicky. Neither option is without its risks.”

“I won’t argue that,” Carter said.

“Do you have the hand ready?” Mike asked.

My backpack shifted, and I could have sworn someone
pushed me again, but there was no one standing behind me. I pulled
the backpack off one shoulder and opened the flap. Gaia’s hand
waited on top. I didn’t remember putting it there. It must have
shifted when I was moving.

I lifted the hand out and closed the pack.

“I’m afraid I still need to set you on fire,” Mike
said.

“Why?” I asked. “I thought—”

“Don’t let go of the hand!”

I screamed as the demon picked me up and hurled me
overboard in one quick motion. The fires of the Sea of Souls rose
up to greet me, and the army of souls inside my head screamed
back.

Heat. I remembered heat as I plunged toward the sea,
and expected the bite of the flame to cut into my flesh. How long
had I been falling? I knew I should have hit the fires by then.
Gaia’s hand was still clenched in my own. Would it be ash by now?
My eyes snapped open, embracing whatever fate awaited me in the Sea
of Souls.

Light circled me, black and crimson and golden all at
once, spinning around me in a sphere of fire and blood. The pattern
thinned at times, giving me a glimpse beyond, a peek at the
crushing weight of souls saturating the sea around me. They clawed
and screamed and moaned, smashing into the sphere before being
hurled deeper into the flames once more.

I trusted Mike. I trusted him more than I trusted
most people, but for a moment—while I sank deeper into that awful
place—I worried there was more darkness to him than I’d
thought.

Slowly, the sphere of light and fire started
flickering. Symbols and runes expanded and contracted like a
lightning strike in the roiling rhythm of flame. The pattern was
black, but as bright as the sun. I couldn’t stare at it without
pain, but I couldn’t look away.

The pattern swelled again, and this time it did not
fade. A wall of runes rose before me, but I recognized none of
them.

“Now!” Mike’s voice barked from nowhere and
everywhere. “Grab the hand!”

He sounded pained, and I wondered how much this had
cost him. I slammed my palm into Gaia’s and the world went
white.

***

When I opened my eyes, I saw nothing but darkness.
The stars of the Abyss did not wait for me. The road to nowhere did
not feel solid beneath my feet, and when I looked down, I floated
in blackness.

“Shit,” I muttered. My voice echoed back to me a
hundred times, and then a thousand, and then the echoes grew into a
cacophony that threatened madness. Gaia’s hand spasmed and locked
onto mine with the force of a vice.

Slowly, in that cursing hell, the hand began to glow.
The golden motes congealed, and the more of Gaia that formed beside
me, the lesser the noise became.

I breathed a sigh of relief when the stars appeared
around me, and Gaia offered me a smile.

“I nearly lost you, Damian. How did you come to be
here?”

“Mike the Demon threw me into the Sea of Souls and
shot me here with some weird mojo.”

“Mojo?” she asked. “I am not familiar with this
term.”

We took a step forward, and the infinite road
appeared beneath our feet.

“Magic,” I said. “It’s a, uh, slang term.”

Gaia eyed me briefly, but didn’t question it further.
“You have a noble goal, Damian, but there is much that is
uncertain. You may slay the devil, only to have it reborn inside
the child. You must bind her to a Timewalker, or even in victory
you will find defeat.”

“How long do we have after the demon dies?”

Gaia shrugged slightly. “You may have seconds, or you
may have a year. The ancient things within the universe are not so
concerned with time.”

“Can you take me to the tenth circle?”

Gaia looked pained. “I fear I cannot, and I am sorry
for that.”

“It’s okay. I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask.”

“There is a way, perhaps, to get you to the ninth
circle, but you will need the dragon to pull you from the
Seal.”

“Jasper?” I glanced over my shoulder, half expecting
to see back into the Burning Lands. Only the road and darkness
waited behind us. “I can’t risk going back.”

“You will not need to.”

“What do you mean?”

“He is in your backpack.”

“What?” I swatted at my pack and heard something
chitter. “Son of a bitch. Sneaky little bastard.”

“Have you acquired a key to Prosperine’s
enclave?”

“What?” I said, frowning at Gaia.

“You cannot enter a devil’s enclave without it, not
by force and not without invitation.”

“Gaia, we don’t have time. We only have a couple
hours until darkfall. We have to get into the tenth circle before
then. And for all I know, the dark-touched could be overrunning my
home right now.

I curled my free hand into a fist. “I need more
time.”

“You can defeat the dark-touched, Damian. Your
strength is enough.”

“I can’t. I can’t be everywhere at once, and if they
were dumb enough to gather in one spot, they’d overwhelm me.”

“That is true, but there may be a way for you to be
in many places very quickly.”

“How?”

“Take my power and use it as your own.”

I stared at the spirit beside me. What the hell did
she mean by that? Take her power? Gain her abilities? Or get myself
locked into some half life where I spent eternity wandering the
Abyss?

“Say I was insane enough to try that,” I said,
keeping all my questions locked away. “What would I need to
do?”

“You would need to awaken me.”

“Awaken you?” I said. “Awaken the slumbering Guardian
beneath Rivercene that everyone avoids so much as setting a toe
near?”

“Yes.”

“Can you survive that?” I asked. “If you lose your
power, will you die?”

“You cannot take all my power, Damian. I can give you
much in return for your help. I believe it is the right thing to
do, for the king’s spell still makes me feel happy when I say these
things to you.”

I sighed and looked out into the darkness. “How do we
know that crazy old bastard didn’t program a self-destruct switch
in you? Made to destroy anyone that could do that very thing.”

“We cannot,” Gaia said.

“Do you know how?” I asked. “What kind of ritual
would be required? I don’t want to kill anyone else.”

“There is one who would know, and she would have a
key to Prosperine’s enclave. Her name is Tessrian.”

That name. It hit me hard enough that I stumbled,
tripping over my own feet.

“Are you well?” Gaia asked, slowing enough to allow
me to regain my footing.

“Tessrian.”

“You know of this demon?”

Know of her? I remembered retrieving her bloodstone
prison from the graveyard at Mount Zion Church. I remembered the
awful smile on Zola’s face—warm as a knife’s edge—and the blood
coursing over her teeth when she beheaded Agnes. I remembered Zola
allowing Philip to escape. I remembered hiding the bloodstone in
Death’s Door …

“I have her bloodstone,” I said quietly.

“That will make it easier to find her, though you
will still need a gateway to enter the stone. There are old spells
and dark weapons that would allow your entrance.”

Was this Glenn’s plan all along? Is that why he left
it in my possession? I frowned and glanced at Gaia. “I have a
key.”

“There is only one key I know of that can open a
bloodstone, Damian. It is a dangerous thing that should not be
trifled with.”

“It was a gift of sorts from Gwynn Ap Nudd.”

Gaia cocked her head to the side slightly and a small
smile turned up her lips. “A gift from the Fae royalty should serve
you well.”

I didn’t say anything else about the Key of the Dead.
Gaia’s suddenly blank expression was a stark reminder of the spell
the Mad King had imprisoned her with before the Wandering War. I
wondered who she had been before that conflict. An Old God? She
seemed too human for that, or at the least too Fae-like.

I squeezed her hand a little tighter as we weaved
through the stars in the darkness, and the monsters frozen
within.

I tumbled out of the Abyss and fell, shouting before
my fall stopped abruptly on something that was slightly soft,
slightly bony, and very angry.

“Get off!”

“Sam?” I asked, perplexed as my sister picked me up
and slammed me into an empty chair. My stomach lurched at the
violent shift. I was in the reading nook on the second floor of
Death’s Door. My head hadn’t stopped spinning by the time I
realized Ward and Hugh were staring at me.

Reality bent and wavered as a thin orange line
appeared near the stairs. It widened and rounded, smoking like a
wet campfire until Mike the Demon stepped through, and the portal
vanished. He eyed the room with one hand on his hammer. The demon
was ready for a fight, which was somewhat unsettling. I wondered
how I’d beaten him here, but I had other things on my mind.

“What are you doing here?” I said, turning to Sam. I
knew the answer as soon as I’d asked the question, and my face
hardened. “No.”

“Time is short,” Hugh said, apparently unfazed by my
sudden appearance.

I only half heard him. I was still staring at
Sam.

She brushed her raven-black hair with her fingers and
narrowed her eyes. “There’s no one else, okay? I wouldn’t let
anyone else do it, even if they could. I’ll do anything to help
her, Demon, just like you.”

I sagged into the chair and squeezed my forehead. “We
don’t know what will happen. What if it’s different because of what
I did to you?”

“You mean how you saved my life?”

I slammed my arm down on the chair. “Dammit, Sam.
That’s not what I mean.”

“The fragment of your soul that held Sam together
should only strengthen the Timewalker bond,” Ward said quietly.

I turned to shout at him, to let him know he wasn’t
helping, but I didn’t even get to open my mouth. He shut me up with
one tiny phrase.

“It’s our best chance to save Vicky.”

Every protest died away. I leaned forward and stared
at the carpet. My backpack started chittering and vibrating. I
glanced at the white knuckles of my clenched fist and slid it off.
“I didn’t want to risk anyone else.”

“We are all here of our own accord,” Hugh said. He
wore a patient smile. “Ward has agreed to help, regardless of his
oath.”

Ward frowned when he looked at Hugh. “There are some
things worth breaking an oath for. If my art can help you prevent
the Destroyer from taking over Vicky … that is why you have
it.”

“I have it?” I asked.

Jasper exploded out of my backpack and flowed across
the chair, leaping onto Sam.

“Jasper!” she said as she gathered the loose ball of
fluff into her hands.

Mike studied Ward. “It is done? You have already
applied the knot?”

Ward nodded.

Applied the knot? Did that mean he’d already attached
it to Vicky somehow? But she’d been with us the whole time. The
obvious answer hit me like a truck and my heart sank. I turned my
gaze to my sister. “Sam?”

She ran her fingers over Jasper’s head before tucking
him into the chair beside her. She turned, back to the rest of us,
and lifted her shirt. It was subtle and thin, but the lines carved
into her flesh were unmistakable. The pattern I’d seen in the Book
that Bleeds was now carved into my sister’s back. Ward had branded
her with a Devil’s Knot.