63
“Jack, there’s a clearing ahead. A big one. Weeds. And a darkness. Some other kind of darkness.”
“The clearing? The second mirror?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Rat-servants?”
“I don’t see any, but that doesn’t mean they’re not around.”
“Star? Obelisk?”
“I can’t see them, either. Maybe I can, once we get out from under this canopy.”
We steal cautiously into the clearing. My heart thumps in my chest, hopeful and painful at the same time. Does our escape from Avichi loom before us?
A cliff abruptly sheers away almost at our feet and we scramble back, Kovac’s boots and my high heels sending showers of gravel off the edge. Gravel and debris clatter down the cliff, echoing fainter and fainter, disappearing in depthless silence.
The ground gives way beneath me, and I slide halfway off the edge. Kovac seizes my arm, pulls me from the brink. We stagger back from the treacherous edge, scrambling as more ground crumbles beneath our feet, and stumble to gain a solid foothold.
“My God, what is it?” I say.
“An abyss. A lot of hells have them.”
“That’s good to know.”
I stagger into the scratchy embrace of a bush thrusting up from the barren ground. As I’m disentangling the hem of my jacket, I notice a peculiar gleam caught on a twig, shining dully in the muddy moonlight.
It’s a resin cabochon strung on a braided black leather cord imprisoning a little blackish-red scorpion. The cord has been twisted around the twig and deliberately tied.
I untie the cord and sling it around my neck, settling the cabochon on my chest. “Well, well.”
“What is it?” Kovac asks.
Before I can answer, Alastor looms out of the darkness, close enough to poke my tattoo with his long, white finger. The chimera is nowhere in sight. “Abby Teller.”
I shrink from his touch and dart back, mindful of the crumbling cliff. “Where’s your l’il horsy?”
“I do not need Ravenhead to do what I want to do to you.”
“And what’s that?”
The demon flings down his empty quiver. “I want to kiss you, Abby Teller.”
“Thanks, but no thanks. You’re not going to suck my soul out of me or push your power down my throat.” But my tattoo throbs, sending more of those lustful shivers through me. Not fair! Not fair!
“Kiss you for the last time.”
“I see. Then will you let us leave Avichi?”
The demon doesn’t answer.
Hunting horns wail and wail, coming closer.
“Abby, Abby, Abby,” Kovac calls, but his voice magic is drowned out by the crackle of enchantment emanating from Alastor.
The demon edges closer, and I brandish the scorpion cabochon as if the pendant holds some power. I have no idea if it does but, considering who wore it, maybe so.
“Brand wore this the last time I saw him alive. The night you murdered him and the girls. What did you do, Alastor? Shoot them full of arrows, then drive them in the abyss?”
Alastor’s hand whips out, tears cord and cabochon off my neck, and flings the pendant over the cliff. Bye-bye, scorpion.
“Shoot them? Certainly. Like pincushions they were, such as my seamstress uses when she fits my clothes. Marksmanship is one of the greatest pleasures of the Wild Hunt, second only to the slaughter. As for driving them in there”–the demon shrugs at the abyss–“I should say not. They leapt of their own free will. Is that not the empty expression you humans use? ‘Free will’? A useless illusion, though quite a comfort to you, I suppose.”
“Quite a comfort, indeed, especially when it’s true. For instance, I refuse of my own free will to kiss you now.”
“Do you? We shall see.” He takes another step. “I was annoyed when they leapt. The man possessed a lot of power. As do you, Mistress. I craved his invisible bodies, all of them. Just as I crave yours.”
I resist the assault of his power inside me, outside me, but my resistance strains me. I feel exhausted and nauseated. I hate feeling exhausted and nauseated. Worse, I hate being kept from the truth.
“Is there a portal in the abyss leading out of Avichi?”
“Certainly not. The abyss is quite bottomless, yet bound within Avichi. There is no way out.”
“But Brand and the girls fell into our world.”
Alastor shrugs again. “The man must have used his power to fabricate a portal. Did him no good, though, did it?”
I mimic his shrug, mocking the demon as he mocks me. I need to buy time, and I need to think. What does Brand’s leap in the abyss mean for Jack Kovac and me? “Maybe not, but if a puny human sorcerer could fabricate a portal and escape Avichi, surely a great prince like you could, too. Have you tried? Have you leapt in the abyss?” When Alastor doesn’t answer, I taunt, “Don’t tell me you’re afraid.”
“I fear nothing. Of course I have leapt. After an eternity of falling, I always find myself in the lobby of the Garden of Abracadabra, unable to step across that accursed triangle.”
I smile in spite of the wail of the hunting horns. So. Alastor isn’t omnipotent. He isn’t all-powerful, not even in the hell of Avichi. He’s got his limits, like any other evil. “I’m glad we’re having this little chat. Tell me, Alastor, you go back seven thousand years. How did you come to rent Number Sixty at the Garden of Abracadabra?”
My cozy question must take the demon by surprise because he answers readily enough. “A magician took Avichi in a chest lined and locked in bronze from the Tower of London to California. There her relative, the Owner, had just bought the Garden of Abracadabra from the man who had built it.”
“That would be Jeremiah Hancock the Second.”
“The gold miner, yes. The Owner took custody of the chest from the magician and made arrangements with me and my family.” Alastor smirks. “The Owner has much too soft of a heart.”
I mull that over. “And before the Tower of London?”
“Over the centuries, other magicians took the chest from castle to castle, prison to prison, catacomb to catacomb, pyramid to pyramid. From the accursed tomb where the Overlords bound Avichi in the chest after banishing us from your world in the war waged by Cavazzacca.”
“Wow.” I glance at Kovac, who is mouthing tinny words I can’t quite hear. “Then the Owner is related to the line of magicians who served Cavazzacca?”
“Why do you not ask him yourself.”
“That’s a swell idea, Alastor. And I will, just as soon as Jack and I return home. Oh!”
While we’ve been chatting, Alastor has edged closer, much closer. Now he stands a handsbreadth away. He seizes my face and forces my chin up. He licks his too-full lips, flicking out his lethal tongue.
“And now, my last kiss.” The demon’s mouth smashes against mine. He wastes no time parting my lips with his tongue and thrusting his power deep into my throat.
My heart palpitates so violently, I can feel my heartbeat pounding against the silk of my dress.
Should I wait for another moment when my concentration is clearer? My focus stronger? When I’ve had more practice using the shape-morpher? When I’m more sure of my power? No! The time is now.
I’m glad that Alastor holds my face in a viselike grip because his hands aren’t free. But mine are. Slowly, stealthily, I unbuckle the belt and slip it off my waist.
The shape-morpher gyrates in my hands, wildly changing into one weapon after another. I’ve got no clue what the weapons are since Alastor’s face fills up my field of vision. Then the familiar hilt of a dagger solidifies and I run my fingers down the blade just to be sure, seriously slicing my thumb.
Self-inflicted pain works me up into a mood for mayhem. I plunge the blade deep into Alastor’s chest and listen gleefully to his gasp of pain and shock. I yank the blade out, pull my mouth away from his, and jump back before demon blood can splatter my dress.
His deafening enchantment falls silent, and Kovac’s voice magic calls to me as if from a great distance, though he crouches right behind me. “Abby, check the blade! Check the blade!”
I wipe a trickle of perspiration from my eye, spit the loathsome taste of Alastor out of my mouth, and check my weapon. The shape-morpher has changed into a very fine dagger with a hardwood handle and a razor-sharp blade of some silver-colored metal. Stainless steel? Tempered iron? I can’t tell, only that it’s the wrong metal. Dead wrong.
Alastor staggers and gazes wonderingly at the gash in his chest, then at me. He whips a dagger of his own from a sheath hidden in his boot, expertly wields his weapon, and advances toward me.
Well, hell. “Street Smarts for Women” has so not trained me for a knife-fight. Especially a knife-fight with a demon prince.
Kovac steps up beside me and reaches for the dagger. “Give me that thing and stand back. You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“No kidding. But I can learn. I’m a good learner.”
Alastor’s hand whips out and seizes Kovac’s shoulder, effortlessly tossing the man in the abyss. But Kovac is quicker and invokes his spry magic, seizing a ragged bush and hanging on, his boot heels scrabbling up the cliff.
I do the only thing any mortal man or woman could truthfully do in my place.
I pray and fake it.
I crouch. I circle warily. Hey! I frown, street-smart tough in my silk dress and high heels. I watch Alastor’s every move, glancing now and then in his eyes to draw a bead on where he’s looking. At me, always at me, that glittering blackness seeking to hypnotize.
Kovac pulls himself over the edge of the cliff and springs to his feet, circling behind me. I’d love to hand him the dagger and watch him carve Alastor into mincemeat, but I’ll be mincemeat myself if I lose my concentration for even one precious second.
Kovac must realize that because he steps back and focuses on his voice magic, that vibration of resonant sound bites thundering in my ear, coaching me. “You’re moving too close to the edge. Move to your right now! Step forward. Good! Bronze, Abby, think bronze!”
Bronze. I visualize bronze or think I have, and a blunderbuss obligingly fits itself in my hand.
“No, no, no!” Kovac shouts.
“Maybe, uh, it’s got bronze shot.” I check the flared front-loading muzzle for the misshapen little ball that masquerades as a bullet. A useless iron slug rolls out into the palm of my hand. Rusted-out iron, at that. That won’t work.
Alastor circles closer, his chest flesh knitting and healing before my eyes. He lunges, swipes his dagger low, and carves a line of blood and pain across my ankle just below the arrow bobbing in my calf. I scream and dart back. I don’t give a damn what metal his blade is made of. I’m human, the cut hurts like hell, and I won’t heal anytime soon.
“Damn it, Abby, bronze,” Kovac shouts. “Give me bronze!” He swings a sturdy tree branch at Alastor’s knife-wielding hand but the demon blocks the blow, shattering the branch to splinters.
Bronze, bronze, bronze. The color of bronze, the image of bronze deserts me.
“Like tarnished gold, if gold tarnished,” Kovac shouts. “Old gold! Dark gold!”
A spear as long as I’m tall shoots from the muzzle of the blunderbuss. Solid bronze from its thick handle to its lethal tip. Yes! Grunting, I fall to my knees from the sudden heft of it, nearly losing my grip. I hold on, but I can’t possibly lift the thing. The tip drops to the ground where it does me no good. No good at all.
Alastor steps back, aghast. Then smirks, scornful of my human weakness. The gash in his chest has nearly healed, a faint red stitch in his glowing white skin. He darts forward with his dagger, carving a line of blood and pain across my shoulder.
I flinch away and scream, “Jack! It’s too heavy! I can’t lift it alone!”
Kovac charges at Alastor, brandishing another branch like a ramrod, and beats the demon back, shoving him away. Then Kovac scrambles to my side and lifts me to my feet. We both seize the spear and, groaning with the exertion, together we manage to raise the weapon.
“Charge!” Kovac shouts.
I dig my heels in the crumbling dirt and, with a full-throated shout, push forward, half propelled by Kovac pushing behind me. We charge, a light brigade of two, aiming for Alastor’s gut.
Alastor roars, a tumult of monstrous sounds I’ve never heard in my life and hope never to hear again—animals screaming as they’re butchered, men groaning and cursing as they die on a battlefield, women wailing as barbarians rape them and murder their children. His roar infuriates me. Kovac and I lunge desperately forward, attempting to impale the demon before he changes position.
Just as we ram the bronze spear against his belly, Alastor back-flips away, deeply flexes his knees, and vaults high into the air. He reaches in his pocket, seizing a fistful of teeth and tiny bones, and scatters the detritus all around him in a baneful cloud. The cloud materializes a pair of great black wings, each shiny pinfeather imprisoning the tortured face of a human soul stitched together with ten thousand other souls.
The winged cloud bears Alastor across the abyss, and he disappears into a thick, dark mist roiling across the sooty sky.
I trade troubled looks with Kovac. The haunted disappointment in his eyes is almost too much to bear.
“Is he gone?” I whisper.
“At least for now.”
The hunting horns wail closer and I hear the hoof-clops of chimeras. People screaming and weeping. Fewer people.
The bronze spear gyrates, emitting an ear-splitting hum. With a shout, Kovac drops his grip. I hold on as the spear folds up into an accordion with bronze flaps, a bronze fireplace poker, a ballerina’s tutu with a bronze ruff. At last the black leather fashion belt with a bronze buckle lies placidly in my hands.
I wind the belt around my waist and buckle up. “Much better with a belt, this dress.”
“Where the hell did you get that thing?” Kovac demands.
“At the Garden of Abracadabra. Where else?”
We sidle to the edge of the cliff and peer down in the abyss. The bottomless pit, stripped of all light and life, hurts my eyes and chills my blood. In the end, Brand may have been foolish, but he had courage. Crazy, wild courage. And the girls? Trish and Zarah simply hooked up with the wrong guy.
“Can I tell you something, Jack?”
“You can tell me anything, Abby. What’s up?”
“I, ah, kind of have this fear of heights.”
“I thought you grew up in Buckeye Heights.”
“Yeah, but it’s not like the suburbs come equipped with abysses.”
“I distinctly recall seeing you skip across the top of your swing set.”
“Yeah, but I was a kid. And that was only eight feet up. Jack? I really, really don’t want to leap in the abyss.”
“It would be hit or miss.”
“And I don’t want to miss. Or hit. Didn’t Brand and the girls suffer concussive trauma, along with the puncture wounds?”
“They sure did.”
“Couldn’t we just fight our way back through the woods? Find the clearing, go through the second mirror? Rock ‘n’ roll across the ballroom to the mirror leading to the Garden of Abracadabra and go home? I could use a nightcap. Make that three.”
“I’m with you, my lady magician. You owe me a dance.”
********
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