bedeviled & beyond 07 - beset & bewildered (17 page)

Something deadly flared inside me. Something oily and evil burst, spreading like ink through my system. The stench of death filled my nostrils and energy, like electricity sizzled against my skin. With an enraged shout I threw my arms up and, holding the power close for a single beat of my heart, I spread my fingers and flung every bit of it toward the evil creature.

The magic burst away from me in a wall of sizzling white energy, so thick I couldn’t see anything in the room beyond it. The force of the blast nearly took me off my feet, but I dug my heels in and held on, rage giving me the strength to lean into the magic and savor its burn against my skin. I closed my eyes, enjoying the way the power seared through me, and pictured Morta being melted into a nasty black puddle.

Moments later, I let the magic slide away and stood with my eyes closed, breathing as if I’d climbed a mountain. After a moment I opened my eyes and looked around. The cavern was empty. I was standing in the center of the horrible dank place. Completely alone. I tried to move my feet but couldn’t. Glancing down at the shimmering cords wrapped around my ankles, I tried to jerk a foot free. It wouldn’t move. Twisting frantically, I used everything I had to break free but my feet were fixed to the floor. Pain seared through my shoulders and I looked up. My arms were stretched above my head, the wrists bound by the same unbreakable magic holding my feet to the floor.

Soft footfalls approached and my head snapped toward the sound.

Morta stopped mere inches away, a wide smile on her horrible face. “I must say. I haven’t had such fun in a very long time.”

I frowned. “What’s going on? Where’s my sister? And Slayer?”

Morta stood so close her cool, grave-scented breath slithered over my skin. I shuddered with revulsion. Slipping around behind me, the necromancer wrapped an arm around my throat and pressed her body into mine, running a black fingernail over my cheek. “Your sister is a tricky one. She’s managed to evade my guards for now. But I’ll soon have her and I anticipate much sport with her and the yummy Dialle.”

My head pounded with confusion. My stomach roiled. “But you said they were dead.”

Morta’s laughter trailed ice down my spine. “That was lovely wasn’t it?” Her lips touched my skin and it was like being kissed by a corpse. “Such delicious sadness. Such immense rage...” The necromancer pressed more tightly against me and sighed with pleasure.

“It...” I swallowed as my mind finally made sense of it all. “It wasn’t real? None of it?”

“Real? Who’s to say what’s real? It felt real enough to you, didn’t it? You really believed you could best me. You believed your edible partner would die for you.” The horrid creature slipped around me and leaned in, her lips brushing my ear. “You believed your sister was dead.” Morta ran a hand over my arm, sliding it along my side. I arched away from the touch, panic making my pulse race. “Can I tell you a secret? My night visions can only use what is possible in their creation. The visions are based on what could be...given the right set of circumstances.” She nibbled the curve of my ear. “That is why they ring so painfully true.” Her chuckle sent her putrid breath wafting over me again.

“You bitch.” The rage I’d felt had been so vibrant. So absolute. I couldn’t believe it hadn’t been real.

Morta kissed my cheek and ducked away, laughing like an evil schoolgirl. “Go ahead and be angry, lovely one. I consume anger too.” She turned to me at the door. “But I’m rather sated now. I think I’ll save the rest for the morning. Foul dreams, lovely. And save the best for me.”

Her laughter echoed off the high, bare walls of the cavern and then fell like pebbles against the floor. Two ghouls came through the door, scythes in hand, and extinguished the lamps hanging on the walls.

The cavern fell into total darkness. A darkness so absolute I couldn’t see a foot in front of my face. I strained to hear the guards’ footfalls, making sure they didn’t come near. And then, when I thought I was actually alone in the cavern, I allowed the tears to finally fall.

~SC~

Darma...

The voice in my head was nearly lost behind an avalanche of pain. The razors had returned to slice my brain into ribbons again, just as they had in Hell. Apparently the witch’s healing magic had finally faded away.

Where are...

It was so faint, so weak, but I recognized it even through the daze of pain.
Astra? Where are you?

I...

I felt her hesitation, her confusion through our mental link. I couldn’t help asking,
Are you all right?

I’m not sure. I thought you were dead. Dialle is...
A single, gut-wrenching sob filtered across our mental channel.
He’s gone, Darma. That bitch killed him.

Shoving aside a new wave of pain that would have brought me to my knees if I wasn’t strung up like a Christmas goose, I looked past my sister’s obvious anguish to the possibilities in her words.
Astra, you have to listen to me. It’s not real. She’s playing with our minds. She has me strung up in the cavern and she’s been feeding me horrible images and sucking up my fear. She’s probably been doing the same to you. Have you tried to open mental communications with him?

Silence throbbed between us, long enough to make me think she was gone.
Astra?

Nothing.

Astra, dammit! Focus!

Okay, okay, untwist your granny panties. I’m here.

Why did everyone insist on accusing me of wearing granny panties?
Did you hear what I said?

Yeah.

And?

Hold onto your...

Don’t even say it or I’ll apply my knuckles to your head and rub until your hair stands straight up in the air!

Yeesh! Chillax. I’m awake. Looking around... Frunk me!

Where are you?

Something touched the back of my leg and I jumped, yelping in a less than manly way.

“Right behind you.”

I twisted as far as I could, my neck screaming as I wrenched my head around, and saw something white. I thought it might be Astra’s sweater. “Shit!”

She was hanging right behind me. “You’re okay, except for having your heart torn into pieces by that bitch?”

She sighed. “Yeah. Do you suppose Dialle and Torre are here too?”

I squinted but my gaze couldn’t penetrate the dark. “It’s too dark. I can’t see more than a foot from my face. How about you?”

Light flared behind and above me. I glanced up and saw energy dancing in Astra’s palms. “No. But there’s a rocky partition over there. They could be behind it.”

Cursing myself for stupidity, I pulled energy forward and created my own light source, adding power until it illuminated the half of the cavern I could see. “Nothing. She would have been stupid to put them in here with us.”

“Unless she believed she had us firmly under her control.”

“There is that.” I tugged at the bindings on my wrists. “Any idea how we break these things?”

She bumped me again and I realized she was twisting against her bindings. Energy sizzled and silvery light danced along the strand holding one of her wrists. “The restraints are made of black energy. Our light magics can’t break them.”

“Can you use the mark?” When Dialle and Astra became king and queen, he gave her a mating mark that allowed them to share energy like a single entity. Being a royal devil, Dialle’s energy was decidedly blacker than Astra’s.

“I haven’t been able to reach him.”

I could almost feel her frowning behind me. “That doesn’t mean anything, Astra. He could just be unconscious. You might still be able to draw energy from him, though. It’s worth a try.”

“Yeah. It’s worth a try.”

She sounded so sad it made my chest hurt. I knew how powerful Morta’s night visions were. I’d experienced the debilitating pain firsthand.

Behind me, Astra stilled and I waited, shivering violently. The frigid air of the chamber had seeped into my bones and I thought I’d never get warm again. My toes were numb and the tips of my fingers throbbed with pain. They were no doubt already frozen.

A warm breeze slid past and I twisted in alarm. “Somebody’s coming.”

Astra didn’t respond. I stuck my butt out and jabbed her with it. “Astra!”

“Shut up! I’m working here.”

Another warm breeze slipped past and, despite my fear that it meant a door was open somewhere, I reveled in the heat.

My toes started to throb so painfully I had to bite my lip to keep from crying out. I realized then that the air at our feet had warmed enough to thaw them. Whatever Astra was doing, it appeared to be working.

Light sizzled behind me, followed by a crisp snapping sound. Astra gave a delighted cry. “You were right. He’s alive.”

Energy snapped again and my arms dropped, slamming numbly against my sides. Then Astra was crouching next to me, feeding energy into the bindings around my ankles. Finally I was free. When I tried to take a step I stumbled, nearly falling on my ass. “Numb.”

Astra placed her hands over my feet and sent healing energy through the thick leather of my boots. The biting heat was a welcome relief as my frozen toes began to heal. “Ahhh. That feels so good.”

“We need to find Dialle and the others. I’m not sure if Gerch and his soldiers were taken too.”

“There’s a prison level...” I stopped. I had no way of knowing how much of what Morta had fed me was factual, despite what she’d told me. “At least there was in my night visions.”

Astra nodded. “Let’s start there. It makes sense she’d have a prison. If they aren’t there we’ll search level by level until we find them.”

“Can’t you ask Dialle where they are?”

Worry slipped across my sister’s pretty features. “He’s not responding. She probably has him in a trance like we were.”

“I wonder how we broke free?”

Astra shook her head. “I’m just glad we did. Ready?”

I shook my legs and flexed my fingers, finding them as good as new. “Let’s go.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Trapped in a Nightmare

Déjà vu upon deja vu,

We need to go in to go out.

The castle beyond the cavern where I’d been held since arriving was nothing like it had been in my night visions. It was still dark and creepy, but the walls weren’t made of stone, and ice didn’t cover every surface. I must have added that part myself because I was freezing to death in my restraints. I wondered what else I had made up and the nagging question had me worried. If the smaller details were wrong, how much chance did I have that the big things were right? Especially the part about Slayer.

What if he was already gone?

“This way,” Astra whispered, pointing to a wide set of steps at the end of the first hallway. We ran along a passageway that was covered helpfully with carpets to muffle the sound of our boots, and plunged into the relative dark of the staircase carved from rock. Whereas the hallway above had been softly lit with lamps fed by magical energy, the stairwell we were quickly descending was lit only by stinky oil lamps situated about every ten feet. The meager light source left a lot of murkiness at foot level, which nearly did me in more than once. As I stumbled into Astra for the fourth time, nearly sending us both bouncing down the stairs, she shoved me away with a growl. “I don’t remember you being this clumsy before.”

She was right. I wondered if the poison from the malfunctioning mark was taking its toll on me. Or, I lifted my hand with the blackened flesh, the Nightwhiff bite. “You’re right.” I frowned, murmuring, “I’m not at my best right now.” Though I regretted the words the minute they left my mouth, not liking to whine and complain, they had the desired effect on my sister, who looked immediately guilty.

“Yeah. Well, hopefully we’re going to take care of that shortly.”

We hit a landing and peered around the arched doorway into a long passageway that looked remarkably similar to the one above. No prisons there.

We started down another level.

“Oh yeah? How are we going to do that? If you hadn’t noticed, our visit to the necromancer hasn’t exactly gone without a hitch.”

“I have a plan.” Astra sucked back into the shadows, pulling me back too, as a ghoulish guard floated up the stairs from below. As he rounded the curve in the stairs and spotted us, his dead eyes went round and he reached for the scythe resting against his back.

I reached out and sent silvery energy into him, turning him to a pile of ash at our feet. I was glad to know at least that part of my visions had been right.

We started down again. “Please tell me it isn’t your usual plan.”

She turned to me with a grin. “You have something against kicking ghoul ass?”

“Not if it’s part of a real plan as opposed to just a seat of the pants, keep whacking until something good happens caricature of a strategy.”

She laughed softly. “It’s a real plan. But I’m happy to tell you we’ll still be kicking ass and blowing shit up.”

“And I’ll be doing the praying,” I murmured.

We hit the next landing and peered around the doorframe. More carpet, more wooden doors. I was starting to get a funny feeling. “Does this feel kind of off to you?” I asked Astra.

She frowned. “You read my mind.”

We shared a look, both of us no doubt having the same horrific thought. What if we were stuck in another Morta-induced night vision?

“How are we going to figure out if this is real?” she asked me.

I frowned, considering. “I don’t think we can at this point. We need to keep going.”

She speared another glance toward the passageway and then nodded. “Let’s go.”

We started down another flight of stairs. Soon we heard more footsteps. As the guard rounded the curve in the stairs, his dead black eyes went round and he reached for the scythe strapped to his back.

Astra zapped him into ash and we looked at each other. “Okay,” I said. “We’re in trouble.”

Astra leaned against the wall, biting her lip in thought. “Let’s assume we’re currently still hanging in that damn cavern and this is all a bedtime story created by Morta. We need to stop the cycle and call her to us so we can fry her ass.” She looked up at me. “Any ideas?”