“Does any of this look familiar? From your dream?”
“Not really. When I saw it, there were lots of demons. It was smoky. There were big cliffs and vines. There’s nothing here. It’s like a gray desert.”
“I think we were duped by the Aegi,” Than growled.
Kynan peered up where reddish, cloudlike wisps floated, providing a sense of depth. “Thanks for letting Reaver take David back to The Aegis. He’ll never be released again.”
Limos let out a dubious snort as Cara sniffed the air. “It’s weird. It smells the same. And I swear, I can feel Hal. Give me a second.” She leaned back against Ares, resting her head against his softened armor. He held her protectively as her lids closed over eyes that were far too dull.
Desperation, sadness, and anger all combined to create an emotional cocktail that threatened to knock Ares on his ass. He’d never felt this way about another person, and his heart was in foreign territory. He wanted to scream at the unfairness of this situation, but he had to get a grip, keep the wall up, because he needed to be stronger now than he’d ever been.
“I can hear him.” Cara kept her eyes closed, but pointed directly ahead. “That way. He’s snarling. He says… he says they’re here.” She frowned. “I don’t understand. Something about a wraith. And a veil. A… whisper veil?”
“Shit!” Ares wheeled Battle around. “Open the gate! Open the fucking gate!”
Sin and Con sprinted toward the Harrowgate. An ear-shattering boom rocked the area, and everyone stumbled, including the horses. The whisper veil, a concealment enchantment, lifted to reveal the true area, which was a sea of demons and weapons, and in front of the Harrowgate, a creature rose out of the ground, all wisps of mist, sharklike teeth, and claws as long as Ares was tall.
“Fucking vapor wraith!” Con grabbed Sin, yanking her off her feet to snatch her out of the way of the beast’s snapping jaws in the nick of time.
Ares hated vapor wraiths. They could be bound to Harrowgates, and while a single beast couldn’t screw much with Ares and his siblings, the three more that materialized, each progressively larger than the first twelve-footer, could put a hurting on them if they tried to get out through the gate.
And he didn’t have to attempt to throw his own portable gate to know that Pestilence had neutralized that ability.
Swarms of demons rushed them from all sides, including from above.
“Watch the arrows!” Than shouted, even as he knocked one out of the air with his sword.
No doubt the tips were coated with hellhound saliva.
“Get me to Hal—” Cara cut off as a raptor horror, a man-sized, eyeless thing with bat wings, swept down and nearly knocked her out of the saddle. Ares caught her by the wrist, tried to haul her back up, but an ax caught Battle in the chest. He screamed, reared up, and Cara plummeted to the ground.
“Cara!”
“Go,” she gasped. “I’ll get to Hal.” Her gaze shifted. “Behind you!”
He twisted around in time to barely avoid being skewered by a sword twice the size of his, wielded by a troll. And yet, in the middle of the battle taking place, everything went slow motion, and he locked gazes with Cara.
Go, she mouthed. I love you.
He tried to say it back, but all that came out was, “Get to Hal!”
Cara’s life was more important than his feelings.
“Get to Hal!” Ares had shouted, but he didn’t need to. Cara was desperate to get to the hound, whose cries rose above even the shriek and thunder of hundreds, maybe thousands, of demons.
Ares said Hal would be kept in the pits by the same symbols that had imprisoned him in the cage Sestiel had put him in. All she had to do was destroy the symbols, and Hal would be free.
Crawling, she avoided being chopped in half by a huge ax blade. The creature wound up for another swing, but Kynan took its head off with something that looked like a sharp Frisbee. Blood showered her, a gruesome rain of blackish-crimson that splashed into her mouth and nearly made her vomit. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it…
Adrenaline gave her waning strength a much-needed boost as she scrambled on her hands and knees beneath the feet of some horrible winged thing, and then rolled between the legs of another. On either side of her, Ares and Thanatos fought, shielding her from the worst of the horde. In front of her, Wraith cleared the way. Like Kynan, nothing touched him. If she hadn’t been so busy trying to avoid being skewered, she’d have been fascinated by the way things would swing at the two men, but at the last minute, the enemy would stumble or fall, or something else would randomly strike them down.
When she reached the pit, her heart stopped. Huge ivory spikes lined the twenty-foot-deep hole, all angled inward to keep Hal—and any other creature that got tossed in—from getting out. Blood, both dried and fresh, splattered the walls and pooled on the dirt floor. Dear God, it was barbaric. She’d love to shove the scumbags who’d done this in the pit with Hal and see how they liked being torn apart.
Except… Hal wasn’t in any condition to fight.
He lay against the wall, his panting, labored breaths spraying pink froth. His tail thumped once, and then he went back to just trying to survive.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered. “Get me down there.” She grabbed Wraith’s pant leg. “Get me down there.”
The demon scooped her up, and in one easy, nimble leap, sailed over the spikes to land, feather-lightly, in the pit. Hal growled, but it was a feeble attempt, the sound fading to a whimper, and her heart broke.
Still in Wraith’s arms, she gestured to the stone walls, which were covered in strange markings. “We’ve got to destroy them.”
“Those aren’t containment markings.” Wraith whirled so fast she shrieked. He hurled a morning star upward, and a batlike demon that had been diving into the pit tumbled in the air and landed in a heap at Wraith’s feet. “Bastard.”
“I hate this place,” she muttered.
“Ditto.” Wraith turned back to Hal. “His collar. It’s got the containment symbols on it.”
“Put me down. You watch my back.”
Wraith eased her to the floor. On her first step, she wobbled. On the second, her legs gave out. Wraith caught her before she hit the ground. Very gently, he placed her next to Hal.
“Hey, buddy,” she murmured. Hal licked her hand without lifting his head.
With the rumble of battle going on above her, and even inside the pit as demons leaped in but were dispatched by Wraith before they landed, she worked the collar. Her vision blurred with tears, and her fingers shook, all of which made for painfully slow progress as she manipulated the mechanisms on the series of tiny pins that held the collar in place. Removal had to be excruciating, but Hal took it like a trouper. When the last one popped free, the collar fell to the ground.
Hal didn’t move. His chest rose and fell in uneven fits and starts, and Cara realized that her own breathing had become shallow and raspy. The world spun and tilted as she wrapped herself around Hal and gave in to the exhaustion that rode her hard.
She was going to die in a pit of evil, wasn’t she? This… sucked.
“Wraith.” Her mouth was as dry as the hot air here, and she had to pause to work up some saliva so she could talk. “Help the others. Need the dagger.”
“Not without you two.” Palming a bone from some long-dead creature, he scratched out the markings on the walls. When every one of them was gone, the spikes at the top of the pit retracted.
“Let’s get topside before demons make a run on this place.”
Fear was a spike right in her heart. Wraith’s scenario would be a disaster. He might be untouchable, but he’d be overrun, and it would only take one demon to slip past him for Cara and Hal to be toast.
Wraith scooped them both up, grunting under their combined weight, and then he leaped, landing once again in a smooth crouch. Even though her energy and thought processes were flagging, she assessed the situation in a heartbeat.