Vision Quest (The Demon's Apprentice Book 3) (4 page)

“When?” I asked.

“At the beginning. If you were here, though …” she said, then gave a soft little moan that curled my toes. “Would you stop me this time?” My right hand curled into a fist as I remembered her taking her shirt and her bra off like it was yesterday. I’d stopped her then because it hadn’t felt right. We both knew how to use sex as currency, and neither of us had been able to say no until then.

“I wouldn’t want to,” I rasped.

“But you might?” she said. I didn’t say anything for a moment, torn between what she’d said and the thought of what I
wanted
to do. She sobbed, and I sat up.

“Shade, are you okay?” I asked. Stupid question, yeah, but it was all that I could think of. “What’s wrong, baby?”

“You … you’re determined to make me fall in love with you, aren’t you?” she said, her voice breaking a little.

“Well, yeah,” I said, feeling like I was missing half of the conversation. My thoughts were slow and clumsy, and even I didn’t know exactly where they were going. “And yeah, I might still stop you. But … not why you think.”

“Then why?” she asked.

“I’m not sure. I just … I guess I’d know what to do if I was there.”

“God, why the hell aren’t you here?” she almost whined, but I could hear more of her wolf in the question than a teenage girl being pouty.

“The proctor guy the Academy sent showed up like seven hours late, so we have to take off in the morning. He’s a real dick, too. He’s a Boston Gage, talks like his teeth are stuck together half the time.”

“I already don’t like him,” she said, sounding more teen than wolf. “He’s keeping my Chance from me. And I get cranky if you’re not here to kiss me and nibble on my neck enough.”

“We’ll have to fix that,” I said, my own voice suddenly husky again at the thought of doing just that. The sound of the screen door opening and closing reached my ears, and I heard Lucas greeting Junkyard.

“Dude!” he called out. “Pizza’s here! I’m not waiting on you.” Over the line, I heard Shade laughing.

“What?” I asked her.

“You’re going to feed Junkyard cheese, aren’t you? You know chemical warfare is against the Geneva Convention, right?”

“I’m a very bad person, I know,” I said. “But he really, really deserves it.”

“Damn straight he does,” she agreed. “He’s keeping my man away from me. When are you leaving?”

“Oh-dark-thirty,” I said. “We’re only stopping for gas and food.”

“Get drive-through,” Shade said, her voice smoldering again. “I can’t wait to see you.”

“I can’t either. I’ve gotta go. I miss you.”

“Miss you, too.”

We hung up and I headed for the ladder. Winthrop Gage was going to regret making me late getting home.

Chapter 2

~ Our shadows are often our anchors, our reflection in negative. ~ Lazarus Moon

“I’m beginning to see the appeal of car sickness,” Gage said after the first hour on the road. Lucas was leading the way, and I had Linkin Park in the CD player. “At least then I would have something else to focus on than that noise and this God-forsaken landscape.” He looked a little less dapper without his blazer, and no amount of product in the world was going to keep his hair in place in a car doing seventy with the windows down. Okay, seventy-ish. Most of the time. His white shirt was unbuttoned at the top, and it was still visibly damp under his armpits. Of course, the back of my Miskatonic U. shirt was pretty much soaked with sweat, but that wasn’t unusual for an eighty degree morning.

“There’s a box of eight tracks in the trunk,” I said as “Burn It Down” ended. “If you’re looking for something a little more classic rock.”

“I believe I’ll pass,” he said. “Perhaps we can forego the music entirely for a bit.”

“Sure,” I said, and hit the stop button. The Mustang’s muted rumble filled the sudden silence, and I drove on, all the while envying Lucas, whom I could see through his rear window bouncing to whatever he was listening to.

“Lord, what is that smell?” Gage asked a moment later. We had topped a hill, and I could see the rows of white buildings to our left. The morning sun was just hitting them, and we were being treated to the smell of agriculture in action. Below us, I could see the road ahead, with patches of sunlight and shadow from the big, puffy columns of cumulonimbus clouds to the east.

“Fresh air and eau de pig,” I said with a little more relish than the moment called for. In the rearview mirror, I saw Junkyard pop his head up. He sniffed the air for a moment, then nudged at my neck with his nose.

“What is it, big guy?” I asked as we hit the base of the hill. He gave a soft huff of a bark and put a paw on the seat.

“He probably objects to the smell even more than I do,” Gage said. “Though I’m amazed he even has a nose left, given the stench he produced last night.”

I ignored the comment and grabbed the walkie talkie from the middle console.

“Lucas!” I called out. There was no response, and I could see his head still bobbing in time with his music. I tried again, but he still didn’t respond so I sped up a little and flashed my headlights at him. It wasn’t until I honked my horn that he noticed me.

“Sorry, dude, what’s up?” he asked over the radio.

“Junkyard’s—” was all I got out before the world around us went dark.

“Whoa!” Lucas called back. “You didn’t just play a glowing ocarina did you?”

“This isn’t me,” I said. “No matter what, you just keep moving till you see sunlight. You got it? Keep heading north.”

“Yeah, I got it! Keep movi—” Lucas’s voice disappeared in the hiss of static. His tail lights came on in front of us and the road in front of him lit up under his headlights. I let up on the gas and watched him pull away.

“Junkyard, backpack,” I said as I opened the top of the center console. The LeMat was nestled inside. I reached over my shoulder and felt Junkyard’s fuzzy head under my hand, so I reached down and followed his jaw until I could grab the handle of my backpack. “Good boy,” I said, and he let go.

“What are you doing?” Gage demanded. He had his phone out and was busy running his finger over the surface of it. “We need to set a ward and call for help!”

“Yeah, you have fun with that,” I said as I dropped the pack into his lap. “And once you figure out you don’t have signal, open that up and grab my Ariakon.” The car coasted to a stop, and I opened the door.

“Your what?” he asked.

“The big pistol-looking thing in the holster-looking thing,” I said as I got out of the car and reached into my front pocket. The smooth, flat surface of my touchstone slid beneath my finger as I fished for what I wanted, finding the rounded surface of the stone Dr. C had given me. I pulled it out and held it in the palm of my open hand. This was different magick than I usually did, mostly because I was asking someone else to do all the heavy lifting. “Little brother, I need roots that go deep and hold strong.” The stone suddenly grew heavy in my hand, and my skin tingled as something out in the darkness turned a powerful and horrible attention on me. The taint of true darkness had a different feel from what we were in the middle of. This was shadow, easily lit. We’d passed under the shadow of a cloud right before this had started, so I was guessing whatever was behind this wasn’t looking to get a tan. And that could work for me. All I needed to do was ground the shadow.

“I found it!” Gage called out, his voice high-pitched and bordering on panic. “Get in the car!”

I stepped away from the Mustang and straddled the yellow line in the middle of the gray asphalt. My left side seemed to tingle more than my right, so I turned my head to face that way.

“I feel you out there,” I said to whatever it was. “I drop a rock on your shadow.” My hand turned slowly, and the rock slid across my palm and fell toward the ground. It seemed to drop forever, and when it hit I could feel a surge of power pulse by me. The world seemed to ripple at my feet for a moment, then it was past, and I heard the otherworldly screech of something Infernal and pissed-off.

“What did you just do?” Gage demanded as I slid back behind the steering wheel.

“Dropped an anchor on something’s foot,” I said, and then floored it. The Mustang fishtailed for a moment, then leaped forward with a roar of eight-cylinder glory, and I power-shifted through all four gears as I tried to catch up to Lucas. Over the engine’s full-throated rumble, I heard something snarl, a sound like reality splitting down the middle. Then the smell hit. Not even Junkyard’s worst emissions could compete with the stench of brimstone. People had compared it to Sulphur once, but it wasn’t even close.

“What is that smell?” Gage managed to gasp.

“Brimstone,” I said. “Makes rotten eggs smell kinda like Pine Fresh, doesn’t it? What color is the tape on the top of the paintball gun?”

“Red, I think,” Gage said. Incendiary pellets were marked with red. It would do for the moment, but I needed something a little more potent.

“Let me have it. Look in the backpack for one with white tape on it.”

“What do you have it loaded with now?” he asked as he rummaged in the pack.

“Flaming hot sauce,” I said as I looked out my window.

“And the white-marked hoppers?”

“Holy water and garlic,” I said. Something big was moving alongside the road, keeping pace with us.

“A much better option,” he answered. I pushed the gas pedal down a little further and watched as the speedometer climbed up past eighty, then ninety. Up ahead, I could see Lucas’s tail lights getting brighter. As we got within a hundred yards of him, he swerved and a shadowy shape narrowly missed his back fender. I had only a second or two to maneuver before I was right on top of it, but I just straightened my arms against the wheel and ran it down. There was a screech at the moment of impact, then it was like the thing burst into a black goo that splattered against my windshield and seemed to evaporate in a few seconds. I looked at my hood, but it wasn’t dented. Whatever it was had dissipated almost as soon as the front bumper had hit it.

The list of demons that could come out during the day on their own was short. The list of shadow-based demons who could defy the sun was even shorter. But only one ran with a horde of minions that had a problem with anything ferrous.

“Orlaggish,” I said softly. “Servant of Nergal.” As soon as the words left my mouth, I felt the tingle of magic down my arms confirm my guess. Now the field was a little closer to level. Up ahead, Lucas was swerving left and right, trying to avoid Orlaggish’s shadow hounds.

“Why doesn’t he just ram them like you did?” Gage asked.

“Airbags,” I said as we got closer. “His front fender isn’t made of steel like mine is, either. You wouldn’t happen to know any combat spells, would you?”

“No,” he said, sounding almost offended. “I’m not a Sentinel.” We were almost even with Lucas by then, and I realized I was moving almost faster than I could improvise.

“What about a spell for light?” I said as we drew up beside my best friend.

“Of course I know light spells,” he said. “Every idiot learns those in first yea—”

“Then cast the brightest one you can in front of us!” I said as we surged past the
Falcon.
A shadow hound hit the front bumper and disintegrated, then another as I pulled in front of Lucas.

Gage looked at me with a frown on his face, then moved his right hand in a complex gesture and uttered “
Fotizei!”
A bright ball of light appeared between his fingers. The inside of the car got blindingly bright, and I had to close my right eye with my head turned a little away.

“Can you focus that a little?” I asked as I squinted at the road. The front bumper shuddered a few times as I mowed down more hounds.

“Aktina,”
he said a moment later, and the inside of the Mustang stopped looking like a firefly’s ass. The light narrowed and seemed to intensify. Ahead of us, a shadow hound got caught in the narrowed cone and became an expanding cloud of black vapor. “
Foteinóteros!”
Gage called out, and the beam got even brighter as I poured on the speed. More and more hounds made black blossoms against the force of his spell as we plowed through them. Only a few hit my bumper, and none of them got close to the
Falcon.
I risked a look in my rearview to make sure Lucas really was okay, and saw Orlaggish astride his steed, a six-legged monster that looked like a cross between a beetle and a horse. Of course, my luck being what it was, it ran like a horse, and it ran fast.

“We’re almost to the edge!” Gage said. I tore my eyes from the demon behind us and looked ahead. Sunlight showed beyond the edge of the shadowed zone, but I could also see another shaded place on the road maybe half a mile beyond it. I wasn’t sure Orlaggish was the kind to just shrivel up the second he hit sunshine. He was a creature of shadow, not darkness. The smart money was on him being stronger than the nasty little surprise I’d dropped on him and surviving until he got to the next batch of shadow. And betting against demons was never a good plan.

A hundred yards away from the edge, I gestured for Lucas to keep going, then pulled to my left and hit the brakes. The Mustang slewed to the right and Gage’s spell faltered as Lucas sped past us. I reached over and grabbed the white-marked hopper from his lap and changed the incendiary load out for it.

“Are you nuts?” he asked. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Loading the dice,” I said as I turned the car around and started heading back toward Orlaggish. Shadow hounds dove to either side as we approached, parting like the Red Sea … if the Red Sea was black, and made of Infernal hounds. Behind me, Junkyard growled, and I could see his hackles up.

“Even your mutt doesn’t think this is a good idea,” Gage said. Junkyard barked at him and bared his teeth.

“Don’t call him a mutt,” I said as I sped toward the bad guy. “And get that light spell handy again. We’re gonna need it here in a second.” As the distance between us closed, I started to agree with Gage; this was a bad plan. I only knew Orlaggish’s name and little about him. As we kept going and he kept getting bigger, I began to realize that he was huge, easily eighty feet tall on his mount. He came to a hill, and I could still see his head and chest above it as he came closer. Then he was over it, eighty feet tall if he was an inch. Even from the top of the next hill, we were at the same height as his waist. I hit the brakes again and grabbed the Ariakon as I pulled the steering wheel to the left.

“Aim at the mount!” I said as we screeched to a halt with the passenger side facing Orlaggish. Gage lit his spell up again and pointed it straight at the mount’s compound eyes. It skidded to a halt and reared back, front legs and mandibles waving even as they started smoking. In a heartbeat, I had my door open, my left foot on the ground and the paintball gun steadied on the roof of the Mustang. I pulled the trigger as fast as I could, aiming high and center. My target was at pretty much maximum range for the CO2-powered pistol, but it was also just freakin’ huge.

Seven of the holy-water-filled rounds hit it. The results were, to say the least … explosive. Holes the size of manhole covers appeared in its body, and one of the legs was blown off by the last shot. Orlaggish leapt off of its body as it fell forward, and I tossed the paintball gun at Gage as I slid back into the seat. The back wheels spun on the asphalt as I hit the gas, and I twisted the wheel around hard. The demon got small in my rearview mirror pretty quick, and we raced toward the edge of the dark zone.

“Fasterfasterfaster!” Gage said as he turned in the seat and looked out the rear window. Junkyard was perched on the back seat with his paws against the top, barking at the thing following us.

“Working on it,” I said, and shifted into third. The line between shadow and sunlight got closer, but Orlaggish didn’t get any smaller in the mirror. I shifted into fourth and started to gain some ground on it, but not nearly enough. “Come on,” I said as we got closer. “Get to the end …” We hit the edge and were suddenly bathed in light. Heat washed over us and I let up on the gas. The
Falcon
was pulled off to the side of the road a couple of hundred yards ahead, and I coasted until I was even with him, then turned left across the road and opened the door. Lucas almost bounced out of his car, his face creased with worry. I grabbed the LeMat and got out.