'Tween Heaven and Hell (35 page)

The very shadows around me seemed to beat against my brain until
it sounded suspiciously like a heart beating in an open chest. With each
thunderous beat my breath became a little shorter and my own heart ceased to
work its solitary magic. I could feel my own rhythm slow and merge with the
rhythm of the shadows. I tried to take deep breaths to calm myself and nearly
choked on the thick, slightly sulfuric air. I coughed and closed my eyes,
fighting to remain calm and pull breath into my lungs. When I opened them a
moment later I tried to find Dialle and the guards but couldn’t see them. Fighting
panic, my lungs struggling to stay inflated, my chest screaming for air and my
heart trying to leave my chest, I threw my sensing power out and scanned the
immediate area with it. I could sense other life forms nearby, but I couldn’t
tell if they were friend or foe. Come to think of it, I didn’t really have any
friends with me. They were all foes, even the ones who’d entered the shadows at
my back.

I opened my mouth to call out to Dialle but my voice
clenched in my throat, I felt dizzy and I realized I was having a full-blown
panic attack. Suddenly Dialle’s words came back to me and I wasn’t sure if he
was in my mental drawers or just a figment of my memory.
Do not show any
weakness, Astra
.

Much easier said than done. I initiated a field trip,
looking for Dialle.
Dialle, you out there?

The silence in my head was deafening. Suddenly the shadows
wavered and split and a familiar form appeared in front of me. The shadows
wreaked havoc on depth perception so that, at any given moment it looked like
the Demon King was standing several yards away from me, or just inches from my
face. All I knew for sure was that he nearly glowed in the deep gray of the
shadows around him. As usual he was dressed entirely in bright white, to match
his tint-free skin.

Seeing Abrine pushed my feelings of panic to the back of my
mind. At last I had a visible, physical enemy to deal with. Things were looking
up.

His glowing, white face stared at me for a long moment
before he spoke. I would have tried to come up with some kind of smart-ass
remark but I wasn’t sure my voice would work and I didn’t think “Frunck you”
would be very effective if it came out in a mouse-like squeak.

Finally the colorless lips opened and he spoke. “I have to
admit I’m a little surprised to see you here in the shadows lovely Tweener. Your
kind generally doesn’t fare well here.”

It took only a couple of throat clearings and a few croaked
syllables to get my response out. “Now you tell me.”

I guess he laughed. I heard laughing sounds and his chest
jerked, but it was hard to see the individual features within his blank, white
face.

The shadows wavered and split behind him and several figures
emerged to stand beside and just behind the demon king. I recognized a few of
the demons from Demonica in the thick, shadowy fog. I was particularly
displeased to see Mx. Wormhead amongst the disreputable crew. “I see you’ve
brought your friends. You don’t by any chance know where my friends are do you?”

Abrine’s snowy shoulders rose a fraction of an inch. “It
appears they’ve deserted you. I guess you’ll need to come with us.”

It was my turn to shrug. “No chance in Hades of that,
Abrine.”

His instruction to his guards was more a twitch than a
movement, but suddenly they were moving toward me. I didn’t have much time to
decide what I would do, or whether my powers would even work in the shadows, I
simply reacted and prayed.

I grabbed my power and space shifted, ending up somewhere in
the deep gray shadows beyond the demons. Turning my head to the right and then
left, I saw Abrine’s glowing form several feet away at my back. I moved quickly
away from them as quietly as I could, trusting the thick, dense air to muffle
the sound of my movements. I wasn’t sure if the demons could see better than I was
able to in the gray murk but I suspected that they could. Creatures of the dark
world are truly in their element in the shadows. They move freely among the
shades of gray and black with little concern for the thickness of the air or
the low visibility. In fact those things strengthen them, providing food for
their very existence. Although I have a dark side as do all Tweeners, my light
side was definitely not happy being in that murky, soulless land and I was
finding it increasingly hard to breathe and concentrate as I plowed through the
lighter shades of gray and moved into the charcoal gray around the edges.

I forced myself to plod along, although my calves had begun
to ache as if I were walking through thick, wet sand and my eyes stung from the
torture of trying to see through the constantly flexing, low light environment.

After a period of time that felt like hours but was probably
only a few minutes, I thought I sensed movement from the darker shadows on my
left and stopped. My heart had begun to beat wildly in my chest and my body was
suddenly drenched in a cold sweat. After a moment of peering determinedly into
the deeper shadows, I took a deep breath and forced myself to move toward the
black abyss at the outer edges of my vision. If there was something out there
it would be better to meet it head-on than to have it sneak up on me. But as I
drew nearer to the dense, black shadows, I felt myself being pulled into a
full-blown panic attack that had me panting and nearly buckling over from the
sharp pains in my bowels. I realized that I was reacting to the blacker shadows
and stopped.

Fighting to regain some semblance of calm, I decided to test
that theory. I turned back toward the lighter gray and nearly ran in that
direction. Although there was really no light in the shadows, the lack of dark
created the illusion of light and I could feel my pulse returning to normal and
my breathing slowing as I moved toward the lighter area.

When I had created enough space between myself and the hated
black area, I was able to think more clearly and I realized I needed to use my
powers. Closing my eyes, I threw out my sensing net and cast it in a three
hundred and sixty degree arc around me. At first I didn’t sense any life. But
after a moment I thought I felt just a flicker of life at the furthest reaches
of the net. I realized that the life must be outside of my power sweep, but
close enough so that I’d caught a sense of its aura.

Unfortunately I couldn’t tell if the life was friendly or
hostile and, since it had come from approximately where I thought I’d left
Abrine and his demon guard, I had to assume it was them that I’d sensed. The
good news was that they were apparently still some distance away. The bad news
was that so, apparently, were Dialle and the rest of my support structure. That
just sucked.

I retracted my sensing power and tried again to reach
Dialle. The silence that met my foray into the mental arena was very
disconcerting. There I was, in a strange, very unaccommodating land, alone,
with no way to return to the physical world. I had no way of knowing at that
point if I’d been ditched deliberately, or if something had happened to Dialle
and his crew as we’d crossed into the shadows. I didn’t even know at that point
if they had crossed over. All I knew was that my powers still seemed to work in
the shadows and that I still needed to find the evil duo. The good news, if you’re
bad at making hard decisions like I am, was that my options were extremely
limited. The bad news was that my options were extremely limited.

Sighing, I initiated another foray into the mental arena.
Nille.
I know you’re out there. We need to talk.

At first I didn’t think I was gonna get a response. But then
his voice filled my head. Even in my head his voice was larger than life, like
his power and the core of his evil.
Astra? Imagine my surprise. What are you
doing in the Lion’s lair?

Good question. Remind me to find an appropriate response
for that some day…after I’ve taken care of you and Nerul of course
.

My head filled with the rich full bass of his laugh and I
felt a tingling sensation move through my body, causing me to shiver despite
the fact that the air was warm.

Or was it? The temperature around me had changed. Where it
had been hazy and warm it was now very cool and the air had begun to swirl
visibly around me, throwing off a backdraft as it cleared into a kind of tunnel
in the midst of the shadows. Incredibly I could see a pinpoint of light in the
distance. Without realizing what I was doing my feet started to move toward the
light. Even while my head told me I was a frunkin’ idiot. I mean…how clichéd is
that? Moving toward the light at the end of the tunnel? That’s only a good
thing if you’re on the other side. And I was definitely not there.

While I knew I was being compelled somehow to move toward
that light, I didn’t seem to have the strength to stop it. I tried to grab my
power but found that it had been walled off somehow and to make matters worse,
I was starting to get that panicky feeling again. My legs screamed with the
effort of trying to stop their forward movement and my heart felt like it would
explode. I was covered in a clammy sweat and my heart had begun to pound to its
own rhythm again.
Do not show any weakness, Astra…that’s pretty frunkin’
easy for you to say, Dialle…where are you when I need you?

As the light grew near, I discovered that if I stopped
fighting the pull I could actually reach some of my power. But unfortunately it
also meant that I moved toward the dreaded destination more quickly. Just
before I reached the end of the tunnel, in a last-ditch effort before I faced
whatever awaited me there, I coated myself in a protective bubble of my power
and locked it into place.

As I emerged from the tunnel into a well-lit room that
looked suspiciously like the attic room of the Church of the Twined Hands, I
felt a little better under my coating of power. But then I found myself on the
receiving end of a glowing blue gaze and realized that I’d merely covered
myself with tissue paper and the world’s biggest, meanest pair of scissors was
poised to rip me to shreds.

“Hello, Astra.”

Show no weakness…

“Prince Nille. We meet again.”

“Yes. And for the final time, lovely Tweener. I’ve grown
weary of your persistent interference. Unfortunately it’s time for you to die.”

Chapter Thirty

To Die to Die

The shadows they did roil and pant and bring her to
her knees,

But our fair lady must refuse to be conquered by the
Beast.

I shrugged. “We’ll just have to see about that, Nille. I don’t
die easily.”

He continued to stare at me, a small, self-satisfied smile
settled across his face. I couldn’t help thinking how beautiful he was and how
unfortunate it was that beauty and evil were not mutually exclusive so that we
could all look at each other and know exactly what we were dealing with.

I pulled my power more tightly around me like a magic binky
and waited. Since I didn’t know where I was or what was going on around me I
figured it might be better to concentrate on reacting, rather than trying to
instigate whatever was going to happen next. First one to talk loses. Besides,
I was still hoping that Dialle and his motley crew would come riding to my
rescue. A prospect that was looking more and more unlikely by the moment. But
what the hell, I’m nothing if not optimistic.

Just as the silence was becoming too much for me and I
thought maybe I should be trying to kick some ass, someone—or should I say some
thing—
did join us in that room. Abrine and his worm-eaten army emerged
from the shadows and joined Nille across the room from me.
Shit
.

A silent standoff ensued. I was determined not to lose this
one so I settled in to await the inevitable. It didn’t take long for my fate to
catch up with me. The first fire bolt hit me right between the eyes, singeing
my eyebrows and bringing stars to my eyes. I reeled backward but the magic
bullet didn’t do any serious damage because of the cushioning power of my
shield.

I decided it might be prudent to make a move.

I dove behind a large, heavy chair just as another fire bolt
pinged off the dense wood of the piece of furniture, slicing it off neatly and
leaving behind a smoking incision where once there had been a dense, wooden
arm.

Gathering my power around me, I space shifted too quickly
and ended up in one of the lower circles of Hell.

As I shimmered back, a horrific screeching met me. My body
felt very strange and I knew something was very wrong, though it took me a
minute to figure out what had happened. The horrible screaming ricocheted
around in my head and made it difficult to think.

My lower extremities were numb and immobile, though I
appeared to be flying around the room and my upper body hung at an odd angle
and felt as if it were on fire. At first my mind couldn’t register what had
happened, but then it hit me. I’d rematerialized half in and half out of old Wormhead.
My lower body was embedded in her torso and my upper body hung off her right
side. Hell’s version of Siamese twins.

Son of a demon. If I survived this, I really needed to take
some space shifting lessons. What if I had ended up inside a wall or something?

My new hostess was not taking my visitation well. The room
blurred across my eyes as she took me on a merry ride around the room. We
pinged off walls, furniture and other demons as she tried to escape my embedded
presence. As we charged past the rest of the evil crew assembled in that room,
I almost laughed at the looks of true horror on their faces. It takes a lot to
horrify a demon. Quite an accomplishment if you’re inclined to celebrate it. But
right at the moment I was getting a pounding headache from the screaming that
was going on in my ear and I knew that if old Wormhead got it together and
stopped trying to outrun me, I’d be in trouble. To magnify my predicament, I
felt the whisper touch of something heavy and slimy against my hair.