“Good thing she wants me alive, then.”
“But she’s nuts,” Gan whispered.
Rule lifted his head and snarled.
“I’m pretty sure that means ‘shut up,’” Lily said. “Besides, didn’t you say dragons damped magic or sucked it up or something?”
“Demon magic, yeah, but Xitil’s got goddess stuff in her now! Who knows what that could do? She might be able to—”
“Shut up, Gan.”
The demon swallowed and, for a wonder, fell silent.
Rule laid his head on his paws again, and Lily went back to passing the time the only way she could, by playing her memory game. Where was she?
Oh, yeah. Water beds. That had sprung to mind earlier, when she’d been sitting by the ocean. Before things went all to hell.
Waterbeds sounded wonderful. Imagine a bed filled with water… how soft would that be? You had to pump the water in… Pumps, yes, she remembered pumps. Though the one she saw in her mind’s eye wasn’t for water, but for air. For filling up bicycle tires.
Had she ridden a bicycle? She felt a touch of excitement. It made sense that she’d remember the kind of pump she knew best, didn’t it? She couldn’t picture a pump for a waterbed at all. Maybe she’d never had a waterbed, but she had owned a bicycle.
What kind of bicycle? There were racers and…
Rule’s head shot up. He almost quivered with sudden tension.
“What is it?” she whispered.
He got to his feet and paced a few steps, looking at the rock overhead, making a whining sound. He looked at her and then at the rocky ceiling. Then he shook his head hard, as if trying to clear it, and whined softly.
“What is it? Gan, what does he mean?”
“Nothing.” Gan looked disgusted. “He’s not making any sense.”
“Rule?” Scared for more than one reason now, she went to kneel beside him. “Are you all right?”
He whined again, louder and longer, and then looked at the demon.
“He wants you to tell me!” she cried. “Try. Try hard.”
Gan rolled her eyes. “It’s nonsense. Something about you being out there and in here, too.”
Rule yipped. Then he took her wrist between his teeth gently and tugged as he took a step away.
He wanted her to come with him. She drew a shaky breath and stood. “All right. Are you coming, Gan?”
Rule immediately trotted into one of the black, black holes. That one was a little roomier than some, at least. Though it probably wouldn’t stay that way.
“Follow that idiot? He’s lost it. You’d better stay here.”
She just shook her head and, heart pounding, followed Rule into the darkness.
THEY wouldn’t have survived their first five minutes in hell if the terrain where they came out had matched Earth’s. They’d left a flat, low bluff. They came out into low, craggy mountains. Mountains where creatures were busy killing each other, while overhead, legend battled with nightmare.
“I’m running low on ammo,” Cynna called. “I have to reload.”
“I’ve got you covered,” Lily said. She was hunkered down behind a rocky outcrop. They had no cover overhead, but the aerial battle was a mile behind them now. Just as well. Not only was it dangerous, it was distracting. She’d never thought dragons existed, and to see them flying, fighting… she’d remember that always. And have nightmares about what they fought.
If she lived long enough to dream, that is.
Their progress had been halted in this rough pass between two low peaks. Trapped might be the word to describe their situation.
Crossing itself had been easy. The shimmer in the air had sort of shimmered through her as she stepped through the gate. Then she’d been elsewhere… a dark, nighttime elsewhere, with four man-sized demons standing fifteen feet away, staring at her in obvious shock.
That’s what had saved her. That, and the training Benedict had insisted on. Two of the demons had recovered from their surprise fast enough to jump at her even as she swung her weapon at them.
She could testify that bullets did, indeed, work on demons. Especially when sprayed by a semi-automatic rifle. She’d gotten those two. Cynna, coming through right after her, had killed the other two.
After wiping out the small patrol or skirmishers or whatever the hell the first demons had been, they’d been able to advance steadily. Gradually the eerie, blank sky had grown lighter, until now it was about as bright as a stormy day. The visibility had still been lousy, though, when they first reached the pass. Cullen’s nose had saved them.
There were more demons holding the pass than there had been in the first group. A lot more. A few were man-shaped, but most were four-legged, built like giant economy-size hyenas, but with small arms growing out of their chests. They had jaws that put Rule’s to shame, teeth in rows like a shark’s, and glowing red eyes.
She’d killed four of the red-eyes. It had taken Cullen’s machine gun, though, to stop the big demon, the one who’d looked like a troll on steroids. He’d just kept coming and coming…
She shook her head, throwing off that memory. Later she could have nightmares about it. Right now she badly needed a plan.
The demons were hanging back for the moment, safe on the other side of the pass. The only way forward was single-file through a gap between two enormous boulders.
They had grenades but no way to get close enough to throw one. The same was true with the rocket launcher. They needed a line of sight to use it. Cullen couldn’t throw fire at them. There was an odd dampening of magic here that both frustrated and intrigued him; nothing he or Cynna had learned about hell mentioned it. He could still call fire, but couldn’t send it—his ability to affect anything with magic fizzled out above five feet from his body.
They didn’t know how many demons were left. The red-eyes hadn’t given up and wandered off, though. They liked to yell out ideas about what they’d do once they got their teeth on the humans. And she could understand them. Even though they weren’t speaking anything she recognized as a language, she understood every nauseating detail.
Cullen was on her right, huddled behind the same rocky outcrop. Cynna was several yards off to her left and slightly ahead. She’d made it to a tall, sheered-off bit of mountain and was crouched behind a boulder.
Lily had known the general direction they had to go, but in this rough terrain there was no such thing as a straight route. Max had found the pass. He claimed he had an instinct for that sort of thing, and she supposed he must. But he’d disappeared after the fighting started.
She was trying not to think about that.
“I’m good to go,” Cynna called.
“Right!” Lily barely resisted the urge to say, Go where? They were pinned down, unable to get past the red-eyed crowd. So far they’d been able to hold the demons back, but—
“Fire in the hole!” a voice called from above and up ahead.
Max? What—
Grenades were one hell of a lot louder in person than on a movie screen. Max threw three of them. Even after all the rocks stopped falling, Lily couldn’t hear a thing.
Cullen rose to a crouch. She could see his lips moving. Nothing. She pointed at her ears and shook her head. He motioned ahead, patted his chest, and started forward.
Hard to command the troops when you can’t hear them. But he wasn’t stupid enough to march up to the demons if he didn’t have a good reason to… ah. She heard Max herself now, faintly at first. Then louder.
“Got ‘em all, the bloody boogers! Crash, smash, took ’em all out, rained those rocks down on them!”
He was jumping up and down on top of one of the enormous boulders. How in the world had he gotten up there?
Cullen called up to him. “I thought you didn’t like guns?”
“Hate ‘em! But I love explosions. Boom, crash, smash ’em all down!”