“You don’t have to do that,” I yelled. “Just cut them—if you break the skin, the bronze does the rest.”
I didn’t see his response, because another imp launched itself at me, landing square on my face and hugging my head. A face full of imp belly—
yuck
. I slashed my knife across its back and went to work on the others, never-ending waves of them. It was dirty, tiring work. And it was slowing us down—which was exactly what Pryce wanted.
To my right, Kane had got the hang of it. Dead imps piled up to his shins. He twisted to get at one that hung from his back, stumbled, and fell. A dozen imps swarmed over him, hiding him from view. His arm burst from the heap, waving the knife wildly. I waded through imp corpses to help. I slashed three with one stroke and swept them away. I skewered another and hurled it into the darkness. I grabbed Kane’s arm and pulled him to his feet. A new wave attacked. We stood back to back and resumed our slice-and-dice routine.
Eventually, the attack subsided. The ranks thinned; the imps came more slowly. When the last imp was toast, its dead comrades began to dematerialize, melting into the ether. Soon, the stone floor was clear.
“Are you okay?” I asked. Kane breathed hard, his clothes ripped and speckled with blood. A nasty-looking gash bled on his cheek. As I watched, the blood stopped flowing and the cut’s edges crept toward each other. Even in human form, werewolves healed fast.
“Fine,” he said. “You?”
My clothes weren’t in any better shape than Kane’s, but I was more or less unhurt. But the imps had cost us time; we’d lost ten minutes. I called to Mab, but she didn’t answer. In the fight, I’d lost track of the direction she’d taken.
We explored the cavern’s perimeter. Besides the way we’d come, which was easy to identify from the pile of slate at its entrance, there were two other tunnels. Nothing indicated which one Mab had taken. I called down one, then the other. No answer.
“We need to split up,” I said. “You take this tunnel,” I indicated the tunnel to our right, which proceeded more or less levelly, “and I’ll take the other one.” The second tunnel, across the cavern, sloped steeply downward. Mab had said we needed to go deeper into the mine to find the cavern with the Morfran.
Kane opened his mouth like he was going to object. Yeah, yeah—he never let anyone tell him what to do. Well, neither did I, and we’d already lost too much time.
“We have no choice,” I said, my voice sharp. “One of us has to find Mab.”
His gray eyes glowed almost silver in the darkness. “I agree. I was just going to say good luck.” He pulled me to him and kissed me hard, a deep, lingering kiss.
I put my arms around him and pressed my cheek against his chest, letting his scent of moonlit forest overpower the smell of cold, dead rock. For a minute, I held him. A minute we didn’t have, but it was one I needed.
I let go. Kane squeezed my hand and ducked into the right tunnel. I watched his light bob along the walls. Then I turned and hurried across the cavern. I plunged into the tunnel and started down the steep incline.
28
I HALF-RAN, HALF-SLID DOWN THE TUNNEL. THE MINE FELT darker as the stone walls crowded in. Again, I couldn’t stand up straight, and with my head bent forward the slope felt even steeper—I kept expecting to pitch forward and somersault to the bottom. To make things worse, each step loosed a small landslide of rocks. I couldn’t have made more noise leading a brass band.
Since it was obvious I was coming, I called out Mab’s name every few feet. If she answered, I’d know I’d chosen the right tunnel.
Instead of Mab’s voice, a booming tone reverberated through the mine, like someone had struck a huge gong. The noise bounced and echoed, until it seemed to come from inside my own head. I called Mab again.
One word came back, short and sharp: “Here!”
I was almost at the bottom of the incline. My headlamp showed the floor flatten out ahead. Beyond was blackness.
Another gong sounded. One more strike, and the Morfran would be free. I drew my baselard and scrambled down the last of the incline. The floor leveled out and the walls fell away as I stepped into the cavern.
The cavern seemed immense in contrast with the tight passage I’d just left, though it was impossible to see more than a yard or two in any direction. I listened. There was a sound of rushing water—a river? A waterfall? Scuffling noises came from my right. I looked that way but couldn’t see anything. Where was Mab’s light?
A blade sliced the air with a
whoosh
. Metal crashed into metal, punctuated by grunts of effort. I moved toward the noise, my headlamp cutting through the darkness like a lighthouse beam through fog. After I’d taken a dozen steps, the light splashed across Mab and Pryce. They faced each other, swords drawn. Mab thrust; Pryce counter-parried. Mab moved in with a doublé attack, but he evaded her.
We had him. Pryce couldn’t fight us both at the same time. I rushed in to help.
Pryce must have heard me coming. He turned and gestured at me. It looked like he threw something, so I ducked. Mab saw his distraction and lunged. But I couldn’t see whether she hit him, because my headlamp went out.
The darkness, its suddenness and absoluteness, froze me in place. I fumbled for the flashlight on my belt. It would be awkward to fight and hold a flashlight at the same time, but I’d have to manage. I clicked the switch. Nothing happened. I tried again, but no light pierced the cavern’s darkness.
Flick, flick.
I moved the switch back and forth, then shook the damn thing.
I was hundreds of feet underground, and I had no light.
I pushed down the urge to scream. This was no time to panic. But how was I supposed to fight in this endless, crushing, utter darkness? Pryce was one of the Meibion Avagddu, the Sons of Utter Darkness. He could probably see in here. In fact, he must feel right at home.
Blade hit blade, slid off, hit again. Feet shuffled, grunts sounded. The fight moved deeper into the cavern. It was eerie, hearing hard fighting when I could see nothing. I crept toward the sounds. My sword was still drawn, but I might as well have left it in the car. What use was it if I couldn’t see? I didn’t want to aim for Pryce and hit Mab instead. In the darkness, Pryce cursed. I hoped Mab had gotten a good hit.
Mab had to be fighting in the demon plane. It was the only way she could expand her senses enough to see in the dark. Mab had no demon mark, no bond to a Hellion, so there was no reason for her to hold back. For me, though, it was too risky. I was too close to the place where demons had been born to step into their world.
Then Mab gasped and cried out. Pryce laughed. There was a loud groan—a sound laced with pain. Was it Mab? I couldn’t be sure. Then Pryce laughed again, and nothing else mattered. Mab needed me. I took a deep breath and opened my senses to the demon plane.
In a blaze of agony, my demon mark ignited. I screamed. A flare shot from my arm, lighting the cavern like a torch. Beyond it, a dim gray light—the eternal twilight of Uffern—spread feebly throughout the cavern. Cawing, muted but frantic, called from the slate. Mab and Pryce stood thirty feet ahead. They’d paused their fight. Both stood and stared at me.
Mab looked like an avenging angel, fifty years younger and shining with the same silver radiance that lit up Hellforged’s obsidian blade. Pryce showed his double form. He still looked like the tall, elegant, black-haired human who called himself my cousin, but his demon self hulked behind like a nightmare shadow. Cysgod was bigger and uglier than in the pub; it towered over Mab by a dozen feet. The demon held a sword, longer than I was tall. Fire reeled in and out of its mouth as it breathed. It laughed, and flames shot toward me.
I jumped back, and the flames extinguished on the ground at my feet. But the blaze from my demon mark grew, jetting toward the cavern’s ceiling in a fountain of fire. I batted at it with my left hand, burning myself but unable to smother the flame. The heat blistered my left palm but left the skin around the mark untouched.
I looked to Mab for help. She gaped at me across the gloom, her mouth hanging open in horror.
Pryce bounded behind her. His shadow demon lifted its sword.
“Mab, look out!”
My warning came too late. Cysgod rammed its sword into her back, skewering her. Steel glinted where the tip protruded from her chest, although the demon itself remained a shadow. Pain squeezed my aunt’s features. The creature drew back its arm, lifting Mab off her feet, then whipped the sword forward and flung her across the cavern. She hit the far wall and crumpled onto the floor.
“No!”
Iran to her.
Pryce’s laughter echoed through the cavern.
Mab had rolled onto her back. Her chest wound, four inches long, pumped out blood. Her clothes were soaked with it, and it puddled on the floor. I reached out to put pressure on the wound, but my damn demon mark still spit flames, so I used my left hand. Blood welled between my fingers.
“Mab,” I choked out. “You’re going to be all right.”
Behind me, the third gong-strike sounded. As if in answer, frenzied cawing and the flapping of wings burst into the cavern.
Mab’s eyes fluttered open. “The athame, child,” she whispered. I had to lean over to hear her. “Don’t let the Morfran escape.”
“It already has, you old fool.” Pryce sneered from the darkness behind us. “Today sees the death of the Lady of the Cerddorion, as prophesied. Your niece knew it was coming; the book told her. Yet she did nothing to save you. She chose my side.”
A look of revulsion crossed my aunt’s face.
“Liar!” I shouted. I bent over Mab. “Don’t listen to him,” I said. “I’ll get you out of here, get you to a hospital.”
Mab opened her mouth, but instead of words, a thick gout of blood surged out. She shuddered, then lay motionless. Under my hand, the pulsing blood stilled.
“We’ve defeated her.” Pryce was jubilant. “Thanks to you, cousin. If you hadn’t entered Uffern—”
I was on my feet, charging him, before he could finish. I grasped my sword in both hands, lifting it high over my head, ready to split him down the center.
Pryce danced out of the way. Instead of drawing his own sword to fight me, the coward turned and sprinted toward the tunnel. He leapt into it and scrambled up the slope on his hands and knees. Cysgod squeezed into the tunnel after him.
I hurled a knife at his receding figure. The angle was too awkward; the knife struck the tunnel’s ceiling short of its target, fell to the ground, and slid down the slope. I scooped it up as I ran.
Rocks and debris rained down as Pryce made his way up the incline. I didn’t need a lamp because my demon mark still burned with its own fire. As long as I didn’t try to put it out, it didn’t burn me. Ahead, Cysgod snatched up junk from the floor and tore chunks of rock from the walls to throw at me. I dodged them as I climbed, but I still got hit in the face, the shoulders, the chest. I barely felt the blows.
Pryce reached the top of the tunnel and disappeared into the upper cavern. Two seconds later, a yelp of pain echoed.
I emerged from the tunnel and saw Kane sitting on the cavern floor, holding his dagger and looking dazed. Pryce was already almost to the next tunnel.
I paused beside him. “Are you okay?”
“I think I winged him,” Kane said. His eyes widened when he saw my flaming arm, but he didn’t ask. “Something just … swatted me away.”
Cysgod. Kane’s a solid two hundred pounds, but the shadow demon was huge. Kane got to his feet, rubbing his jaw. Across the cavern, Pryce climbed over the pile of slate at the entry to the tunnel that led back to the surface. Kane started after him.
“Mab’s hurt,” I said. “She needs help. She’s in the cavern at the bottom of that steep tunnel. When you get to the bottom, turn left. She’s by the wall.”
I don’t know why I lied. Maybe I couldn’t face the fact that Mab was dead. Maybe I couldn’t bear the thought of her body lying alone in that cold, dark, underground tomb. Maybe I wanted to kill Pryce myself, with no help from anyone. Maybe all of the above. I pushed past Kane and ran after Pryce. I didn’t hear any footsteps behind me, so I knew Kane had gone the other way. Good. He’d watch over Mab’s body until I could get back to her.
I slipped and fell once on the wet slate, but I was up and running again a second after I’d hit the ground. I clambered over the slate pile on my hands and knees, then sped up the incline in a crouching run. I couldn’t see Pryce or Cysgod, and no hunks of slate or rusty pickaxes came flying at my head. I was too far behind. I went faster.
Then, before I knew it, I was outside. There was no proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, just tight walls giving way to open space. If anything, it was darker out here than inside the mine. It should have been twilight still—how long had we been underground? I looked skyward and saw why it had grown midnight-dark. Overhead, thousands of crows flew. More than that—tens of thousands. They circled silently, as if waiting for something.
Shit.
I’d left Hellforged in the mine.
I couldn’t go back for it now. If the Morfran attacked, I’d never make it as far as the first cavern. I’d rather get to Pryce and kill him before the third phase blew me to pieces.