Sacrifice of the Septimus: Part 2 (Afterlife saga Book 7) (31 page)

“Just keep that love alive, honey,” Sophia said and I had to say that was going to be much harder said than done looking now at what we faced.

It looked as though burnt red skin had been stretched across the typical face of a Devil. He even had a chin that curled upwards mimicking the shape of his horns, that grew straight up from his forehead. These were also covered in the same skin and it was pulled so taut across the nose and high cheek bones that it created lines and ripples, flattening the nose bone underneath.

Its lips were none existent along his long slitted mouth, with only its teeth to be seen poking through the same reddish skin. Dotted glowing eyes grew brighter as they took in the sight of my fear.

His body was also covered in the same skin that had been stretched across a bony frame and each part seemed to be pierced with metal rings that all pulled painfully in the direction of the weight from the weapons they carried hooked onto them.

“This one has pretty flesh,” said the one looking at me, raising a skinless finger that reminded me of sharpened bone in the shape of a spider’s legs. The deadly long talon that had been carved at the end scraped along the length of the rock formation that was locking each of us in. The symbols all lit up one by one as he touched them.

I thought back to what Sophia had said about melting to the bone and wondered if maybe they were the only ones that could open the cells as they had no flesh on their hands?

Either way I knew we were all screwed if we didn’t think of something and fast. I tried not to see them as they looked but view them as something else of this world that could be killed. I just needed to find a weakness and home into it. Focus on drawing up my energy and blasting it their way the second he opened the door.

Okay, so this was easier said than done as realistically when was the last time I could do anything helpful with these so called powers I had. Since I had been here that side of me had all gone to shit. No, I needed to think this through or at least hope that the others had a plan to win this fight.

My biggest worry had to be Ari who, along with the rest of us, still had no idea who she was. So as far as she was concerned, she was human and in this game that was not always a good thing. Power was the name in this game and without it, survival was the next on the list. I was surprised she had lasted as long as she had without falling to pieces. I sometimes forgot how hard this must have all been for her. After all I had been somewhat eased into this crazy life but for Ari, well she had been thrown in head first and then just expected to know how to swim upside down.

But her bravery at every turn had astounded me and for someone who was still on her own mission to figure out who she really was, then this just managed to make my respect for her double in size. Now all I could wish for was to see her happy and settled into this world I felt responsible enough for dragging her into and if that was with Vincent then all the better. Of course, these thoughts kind of went out the window considering my first wish was to see us all survive these ugly bastards and get the hell out of here and back to our men, speaking of which,

As I looked to the side to try and see how many Demons there were, that was when I first saw it…

A hooded shadow.

Chapter 66

Flames that Fall

I blinked a few times just to check that my eyes weren’t deceiving me. It had moved so swiftly I barely caught sight of it. But what I did see was one of the same demons fall silently to the floor behind the one that stood opposite me now. I only just managed to catch a glimpse of the blade sticking from its neck, glinting silver from the flaming torches as it went down.

My eyes widened in surprise when the hooded figure suddenly appeared directly behind the demon near me and his laughter quickly faded as he must have felt his presence standing there too. He turned quickly trying to catch him off guard but the hooded shadow was quicker. He simply sidestepped just as the demon tried to spear him in the gut with his dirty knife and instead, he grabbed his arm as it stretched out mid thrust, and snapped it down against the joint.

The demon howled in pain and held his dangling arm to his chest like a wounded dog tucking in his damaged limb.

“You will pay for that!” he promised but it quickly became an empty threat as the hooded figure spun around, kicking him to the bars, where his back instantly started to sizzle at the contact. The smell of cooking meat started to make me feel sick and I heard Pip briefly ask,

“Is someone cooking steak up there?”

The hooded figure ignored her and grabbed the demon’s head towards him as he kicked out one of his legs so he fell to his knees. I heard the sickening snap of bone but had little chance to recover from it before another disgusting thing happened. He twisted the demon around and pressed his face against the stone bars making all the skin quickly melt off the bone and stick to the stalagmites. If I thought I was going to be sick before, then now I was actually having to turn around to
be sick.

Just as I continued to heave up an empty stomach I briefly looked back just in time to see the hooded man grab the demon by the horns, positioning his hands ready for something. Then with one quick twist, he snapped his neck, killing him instantly and from the looks of things putting him out of his torturous misery.

The demon slumped forward still burning against the symbols, his flesh sliding away in great big chunks leaving nothing but bloody bone beneath. Then I watched as he placed a foot to the back of the demon’s neck, grab the horns again and this time when he jerked his body sideways, he did so with enough force that he ripped the demon’s head clean away from the rest of its body.

Unsurprisingly this had me heaving again but nothing would come up.

“Stand back!” The man growled an order and I did as I was told, placing my back flat against the far wall of my cell and wiping the spit away from my lips with my sleeve. The man stepped over the body and kicked back so that the headless demon rolled over the side of the steps and down to somewhere I couldn’t see. Then with the head still held by one horn in his hand, he swung it up, gripped it a certain way so that he could place the horns through the rock formations sideways.

I had no clue what he was doing but noticed that the horns didn’t burn against the symbols the way the flesh had done. Which suddenly dawned on me, was he using the demon’s skull as some sort of key?

My question was quickly answered when, in one quick motion, he twisted his body downwards and the action caused the horns to break apart the stalagmites and stalactites, making them crack all the way to the top until they all started to crumble to the floor. My natural instincts took over as I covered my head with both hands.

“Get out!” he ordered in a stern voice before moving along with the skull still held firmly in his grasp. As soon as I heard the cracking sound of rock next to me, I knew that he was using this to open the rest and free us all.

“Cool!” I heard Pip shout after her cell was next.

“Hurry, this way,” he said once we were all free. I looked back to see the guy had taken out the four demons that were sent to get us, five including the headless body that looked to be at the bottom of some ravine.

“Not exactly a man of many words,” Ari said to me after I gave her the once over checking she wasn’t hurt.

“No, but of many deadly actions, which right now is better than being able to talk them to death.”

“Good point,” she said agreeing with me, for it was true, I couldn’t have cared if he didn’t know more than the seven words he had spoken already. As long as he was good with the sword that hung from his waist, I was more than happy with that.

“Let’s move,” he snapped back and Ari leaned into me and said,

“Well, there’s two more,” before winking at me and walking on ahead. We followed the hooded man whose every step seemed to be with well thought out reason and purpose. His hood hid his face well enough for none of us to know who he was, but considering it was obvious that he could have killed us all before we blinked, then it wasn’t farfetched to assume he was here to help us.

He was mainly wearing all black, with a long cloak that strapped across his chest. He also wore some sort of long tunic style jacket with thick metal clasps holding it shut. Leather straps crisscrossed around his chest and waist, each holding an array of different blades and weapons in place for easy reach. Black leather trousers were strapped tight around his legs with cord and he reminded me of some ancient looking highwayman, ready for a night’s ambush.   

We continued along a series of makeshift steps that had been chipped away in the stone to get us from one walkway to another. It was obvious we were inside a mountain or underground in some secret network of caves, because the only thing that lit our way were the burning torches that were anchored to the bare stone walls.

“Not the best place for someone scared of heights,” I muttered as we got to a narrow part and had to hug the wall to fit along the jagged rock path that had a sheer drop on one side. 

“How much further?” Sophia asked looking around and sounding all businesslike.

“Not…wait!” We never found out what he would have said as he raised a quick hand to stop us all from moving.

“They know, hurry!” he said and just after this we heard a horn being blown that echoed through the honeycomb of tunnels using the walls to travel along. This was when we started to pick up pace and after turning a corner a space suddenly opened up in front of us. It brought us out into a gigantic opening that looked as though it had once been two mountains next to each other that had then fallen together from an earthquake and this was what space was left in between. Well, if I thought the drop before looked bad then this one was something else, for you couldn’t even see the bottom.

There were natural bridges dotted along the cavernous space that joined the two sides but I think if asked to cross one I might have found myself the one at the back quickly wussing out. Some areas across them looked narrow enough that even a wheelbarrow would struggle getting across.

“Brace yourselves for here they come!” Sophia said looking back and pointing at what looked like a demon army heading our way. Another horn blew and this time it was followed by an echoing dong sound.

“A weapon! We need weapons!” Sophia cried as the first wave hit the stranger head on. He quickly made short work of them as he had done back in the cells. In three swift moves all three of them were down and falling off the side into the endless canyon. It seemed every move he made was a killing blow and it looked utterly flawless.

Then came the clash of weapons as he slashed out sideways at the next set but this time as each of them fell he would catch their weapon and hand it back until we all had one. He was just kicking a body off the side to make room for us to run through, when he looked back over our heads.

“Pip, you get at the back and I will get in between the girls!” Sophia shouted after following his line of vision, letting me pass her so that I was right behind our mystery saviour.

“Get ready, for here they come again!” Pip shouted back before turning to face the demons. We continued to move but this way it was slower with us continually getting surrounded with each new wave. I looked back to see Pip was swinging her battle axe smiling the whole time. Forget clowns and strippers at her next birthday party, just give her a war to fight and she would have been as happy as a dog in a muddy puddle.

“COME ON, YOU FUGGLIES!” she screamed, laughing as she mowed them down, flinging them off the side like they were nothing but cardboard cut outs. I looked down at my own short blade that was slightly curved and shaped like a Gurkha knife. I tried to ignore the fact that the handle looked as if it had been made out of part of a femur bone and fused together with some thick black tar-like substance that had hardened solid.

Another horn sounded and this time it was for longer, which was quickly followed by a collective howling sound, like a horde of beasts had just been released. It turned out that I wasn’t that far off as Sophia suddenly shouted,

“Gorgon leeches!” after she had effectively beheaded one of the demons.

“Oh no,” I muttered and Ari gave me a panicked look.

“I take it we are not dealing with cute little demon puppies?”

“No, try the things that would most likely eat them,” I told her and then Pip looked over shoulder at us and added,

“And then puke them back up only to eat them again.” Then she swung her axe up, getting one demon in the man parts without even looking.  

“Up ahead, we cross over there,” the man said taking no notice of us as he sliced into the chest of one demon, causing him to fall into another, taking him over the side with him. Thankfully, there seemed to be a break in the demons ahead of us so we picked up the pace and ran faster to where we could see men battling it out on the other side.

“Friends of yours?” Sophia asked but unsurprisingly the man ignored her and continued on.

“Look out! Above us!” Ari shouted raising up her weapon just as the first wave of Gorgons hit us. I slashed out and ducked out of the way as the dead body of a gorgon leech fell from above me. These looked slightly different to the ones I remembered back on the cliff face where I first saw them.

Instead of cracked skin over twisted mangled bodies, they had slightly thicker limbs that split at the joints. Their skin looked to be dusted in ground stone and wet cement but their bleeding eyes were covered in dirty bandages, whereas their snapping teeth were entwined with spiked metal wire, making them even deadlier than usual. Some even looked to have their entire bodies covered with the stuff and these were the ones you had to watch dropping from above as both Ari and I got snagged by a few.

“Go past!” the man told us, ready to take them on alone. We did as we were told with Pip and Sophia now taking the lead and trying to get to where he told us to cross. I looked behind me just in time to see him unhook a wired glass vial from one of the many leather straps around his waist and throw it up as high as he could so that it smashed above the Gorgons, raining liquid down above them.

This didn’t look as if it had done much damage until he hammered his heavy sword down on one of the torches, freeing it so that he could catch it. Then he swung it up like he had done with the vial and boom! The second the fire touched the first leech, the rest of them caught fire one after the other like a wave of flames was rolling over the lot of them.

“GO!” he shouted to me as I watched him following behind us running with the sight of flaming leeches falling from above and into the gorge below. They looked like blazing lanterns from a distance lighting the dark chasm below as they fell.

I did as I was told but found myself coming to a dead stop as the path in front of me started to crumble away. Thankfully the others made it ahead of me and just as I was turning around to tell our hooded saviour about our new problem, I felt myself being picked up by the waist and anchored under his arm.

“What are you…AHHH!?” My question was cut short as I screamed as I found myself suddenly flying over the deadly drop as he jumped us both over it. I thought I would fall forward and put my hands out to catch myself but never got there. He righted me before pushing me on the back to me keep running to join up with the others.

The rest were just getting to the other side of the bridge to join the armed men that were fighting the same demon foes as we had been. We were about to run over when I was suddenly yanked back and held against the wall by a strong arm across my chest. I was about to ask why when I followed his gaze up to see a huge jagged boulder come crashing down with ropes snapping all around it. I looked then to the other side to see where those ropes led to and it became obvious the demons had destroyed the bridge in order to trap us on this side by cutting the net that held it in place. The boulder smashed its way through the narrow stone arch from above, shattering it as though it had been made of glass.

“Is there another way across?” I asked.

“Come with me.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me behind him, swinging me to his back and then to his front, whenever an enemy got near so he could fight them head on and I was out of danger.

“There, up ahead.” He nodded to a single rope bridge that looked to have half broken slats across, obviously the one they used before the stone bridge was made. I did as he said knowing I had a better chance of surviving the bridge than I did the demon horde still headed our way. Although the second I stepped on it and it started to sway I couldn’t help but take a step back.