The pathway was nothing more than a dirt track about a foot wide, and I was almost a hundred percent positive I was strolling on unmarked graves.
“Gods, I hate cemeteries.”
Aiden placed a hand on my back. “Dead people can’t hurt you.”
“Unless they’re zombies.”
“I doubt there are any zombies around here.”
I huffed, hitting the button on the sickle blade. It extended, one end forming a sharp point, the other a nasty, reaper-looking scythe. “One can never be too safe.”
Aiden shook his head, but kept on trekking up the narrow path. Eventually the walkway faded, overgrown by brush weeds and itchy grass that clung to my cargos. A prickly feeling skated across my neck and down my spine as we neared the foundation of the church. I wanted to look behind me, but I seriously expected to find a horde of brain-eating zombies standing there.
I edged around one lonely-looking tombstone and stepped beside Aiden. We were no more than a foot away from the crushed stone.
Aiden straightened the straps on the bag as he cocked his head to the side. “So, you see anything—?”
Suddenly, the wind stopped. Like, completely.
An unnatural stillness permeated the air, raising the tiny hairs at the nape of my neck. Under the black thermal, tiny bumps stole across my flesh. A stale, musky scent seeped in from nowhere. I let out a ragged breath and a small, frothy white cloud formed.
“Okay,” I whispered, tightening my hold on the blade. “Not normal.”
Aiden’s breath lingered in the air, too. Holding a hand between us, he nodded toward the thick stand of trees crowding the remains of the church. Two darker shadows stood a few feet in, almost indistinguishable among the foliage.
My muscles tensed. Guards? Ghosts? I wasn’t sure which was worse.
“Showtime,” Aiden said, silently slipping off the backpack. He placed it near a rickety stone cross.
I nodded. “Yeppers peppers.”
The two figures drifted forward. They were hooded and shapeless, and I realized that their feet—if they had feet, which was up in the air—didn’t touch the ground. Their dark-red robes trailed an inch above the grass.
Slowly, their arms rose and the material slipped back. A weird creaking noise followed the motion. Slender, pale-white fingers reached for the hoods, drawing them back.
Oh… oh, wow.
Under the hoods were nothing but bones. Pale white bones and empty, vast blackness where eye sockets and nostrils would’ve been. The mouths… the jaws hinged on loose joints, so the mouths gaped open. There was no skin, no meat or hair. They were skeletons—floating, freaking skeletons.
Not as frightening or dangerous as zombies, but still, they were creepy.
I stared at them, wanting to look away but unable. It was eerie… their eyes. They were just holes, but the longer I stared at them, something… something moved deep inside them, teeny, tiny dots of flickering light.
My fingers loosened around the sickle blade. “I could just… blast them with akasha.”
“Your idea has been noted and discarded.”
“Oh, come on.”
“Using akasha tires you out, right?” he said evenly, keeping his eyes on the things. “Why not use it for something other than a bag of bones?”
“Oh. Good point.”
Those “bags of bones” reached into their robes at the same moment.
I arched a brow. “I hope they don’t flash us. Really don’t want to see a skeleton pe—”
And then they withdrew two thick and shiny handles. Wondering if they were going to chuck the handles at us, I admitted I was quite disappointed by the guards. No wonder mortals had discovered the gateway when all that stood between them and the portal were two walking Halloween decorations.
“Alex,” Aiden murmured.
My chin jerked up, just as sparks flew from the handles, bright and intense in the darkness. Fire spread rapidly, fiery red and powerful, each forming a shape of a long, deadly blade.
“What the…?” My eyes widened.
They flew at us, bones rattling and knocking in a gruesome chorus. Aiden ducked under the first burning blade. Pivoting around cleanly, he planted a foot in the back of one skeleton.
The other lurched toward me, swiping the blade so close to my neck that I felt the heat. Darting to the side, I swung the sickle in a wide arc. The deadly sharp blade sliced through the robe and bone.
In a flash of light, the sword fizzled out and the bones collapsed into a smoldering heap. Taking a step back, I caught the sight of the same thing happening with Aiden’s opponent. The fire-sword disappeared, and then nothing remained but bone and wisps of smoke.
I waited for them to get back up and do something, maybe even an entertaining jig, but nothing. Lowering the sickle, I frowned. “That was way, way too easy.”
Aiden stalked toward me, his eyes darting over the landscape. “You’re telling me. Stay close, because I have a feeling they were just meant to distract us.”
A low growl rippled through the silent cemetery, and my stomach dropped all the way to my toes. Together, Aiden and I turned. I don’t know who reacted first. Whether it was Aiden’s explosive curse or my groan, it didn’t matter.
Crouched in the ruined remains of the church was one big, mean, ticked-off-looking hellhound.
Stone crumbled under meaty paws the size of Aiden’s hands. Claws, as sharp as the blades we held, gleamed like onyx. The body was huge, about the size of one of those energy-efficient deathtrap cars, but the heads—those were three of the biggest, ugliest things I’d ever seen. It was like taking a mutant sewer rat and mixing it with a pit bull. And the teeth… they belonged in a shark’s mouth—white, wet and very, very sharp. Drool foamed under pink gums and dripped onto the ground, where the soil burned as if splashed with acid.
Six ghoulish yellow eyes settled on us.
“Damn,” I muttered, falling into a crouch. “Don’t cut the heads off. It’s the hearts that we need to hit.”
“Got it.” Aiden flipped the dagger in his hand, like a total badass.
“Show-off.”
Aiden smirked. “Wonder what this one is called?”
The hellhound’s ears twitched as the massive body lowered, preparing for attack. I slid my hand to the middle of the blade, feeling my heart pound and the adrenaline kick my system into overdrive. In the pit of my stomach, the cord started to unravel.
I swallowed. “Let’s call this one… Toto.”
Three mouths opened in a growl that sent a cold chill down my spine, and a wave of hot, fetid breath smacked into us. Bile burned the back of my throat.
“I guess it doesn’t like the name,” I said, moving slowly to the right.
Aiden’s powerful body tensed. “Here, Toto…’’ One head snapped in his direction. “That’s a good Toto.”
I slipped around the ancient cross, creeping up on the hellhound from the right. The middle and left head focused on me, snapping and growling.
Aiden clucked his tongue. “Come on, Toto, I’m pretty tasty.”
I almost laughed, but the damn thing lurched from the pile of rubble, landing between us. The ground shook from the impact. Behind us, a few tombstones shuddered loose and toppled over. For a brief moment, it looked like Toto was coming straight for me, but at the last second, it lunged at Aiden.
Caught off-guard, Aiden stumbled back a step, his foot snagging on a fragment of stone. My heart leapt into my throat as I spun toward them, throwing out my free hand. There was a spark, a strong scent of burnt ozone, and then a ball of fire shot forward, more violet then red, unnatural and consuming. It smacked into the belly of the hellhound.
Toto reared back, shaking his three heads, about as affected if a bee had stung its paw.
Well, apparently the fire element didn’t hurt it. Good to know.
Then Toto powered off the ground, launching into the air. There was only a second, if that, before it came crashing down on me. I hit the ground, inwardly cringing because I was sure I was atop a grave, and rolled, shoving the pointed end of the sickle up.