"Where are we going, exactly?" asked Spike about an hour later, now not leaning on me quite as heavily.
"Following our noses to the dragons. Garrett says Tony and them are in some kind of trouble." Even the idea of it made me feel a little sick, but I refused to dwell on the maybes. I was better off focusing my energy on finding them rather than letting myself burn out over the stress.
"Did he specify exactly what kind of trouble? My imagination's running a little wild with that one right now."
"No, he didn't. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I kind of like the idea of not stressing until I have to. I think my blood pressure is already through the roof as it is."
"Yeah, I hear ya."
Tim came flying towards us from up ahead, his wings going so fast I couldn't even see them and his arms waving like he was fighting off a cloud of gnats. "Get off the path! Get off the path!" he said, whispering loudly, passing right by us and continuing off into the trees.
I grabbed Spike's hand without even thinking twice about it and dragged him into the forest with me, yanking him next to me behind a large evergreen. Spike blended pretty well with his black clothes, but I stuck out like a friggin light in a dark room with my white tunic. I made sure all of my body was tucked behind the tree before finally coming to rest, calming my breathing as much as possible.
"What's up?" Spike whispered right by my ear, tickling my neck in the process. Another time it might have been pleasant, but right now all it did was kick my fear up several notches.
I put my finger to my lips in a gesture of silence, and then pointed to the trail.
Spike nodded his understanding and moved to cover my body with his.
Within seconds of being hidden, we found out what had Tim so agitated. A group of orcs was walking down the path, headed in the direction we'd just been coming from, and at the front of their little party was Leck.
The orcs were grunting in their weird guttural language, but Leck was speaking English like they could understand him. "They should be coming through here at any time. The troll guard has passed the message that there are three in their party. I want your group to wait here by the entrance for them to appear. And as soon as you see them, take them under your control. Do not kill them, though. He stopped almost parallel to where we were hiding, turning to face the largest orc, the one following closest to him. "I hope I am being absolutely clear here, Bor. No killing. At least not the elemental. Anyone else she brings, you can eat. But not the elemental. Do you understand? No killing the elemental. You bring her to me. To me. Do you understand?"
Bor the orc grunted something that sounded more like he was hawking up a loogie, but Leck seemed to take it as a sign that everything was copacetic. "Good. I will leave you here, then. I must get back to the caves and see to our guests."
Leck pushed through the beasts and went back down the path, and the orcs advanced towards the entrance to the void.
We waited until they were all out of sight before stepping out from behind the tree. "That was really close," whispered Spike. "Too close."
"No shit," I agreed. "We need to not get eaten by orcs on this trip if we can manage."
Spike laughed bitterly. "Apparently, you're not on the menu, unlike Tim and me."
"Pfft. Do you honestly think those orcs have the brains to differentiate between an elemental and an incubus?"
He thought about it for a second before saying, "You have a point there. I guess none of us is safe."
"Yeah, and menu or not, I'm pretty sure Leck isn't sparing my life to invite me to a tea party. I've already been a guest of his before, and I really, really don't want to go through another brain-melting if I can help it."
"I don't blame you. Okay, so our mission then is to find our friends and a dragon and not get caught or eaten or brain-melted."
"Ten-four good buddy. I'm down with that," I said. I looked around the tops of the trees. "Now where did that pesky pixie go off to this time?"
"Never fear! Tim is here!" yelled a tiny voice from above our heads. "Wow, that was a close one. I was ready to unleash on that Leck guy. He so has it coming."
"You're right, he does; but I would appreciate it if you would keep your ... whatever ... leashed so we can stay a little incognito over here."
"Yeah," agreed Spike, "let's fly under the radar as long as possible."
We were back on the trail now, Tim flying out in advance to warn us about possible interceptors. I changed my mind about having him along. It was much better having a grown pixie with us than the baby. With every step I felt more confident that a brain-melting was not going to be in my future.
"What is that smell?" asked Spike, his nose scrunched up, his eyes scanning the space around us as he tried to locate the source.
"That's dragon-breath, and it means we're getting close."
"How come I don't remember smelling that around the other dragons?"
"I have no idea. Maybe it's brimstone. You know, the stuff in hell or whatever."
"I think brimstone is lava. Melted or burning stone. At least that's what a preacher told me once."
"I didn't know you were a churchy guy."
"I'm not. He was on the street near where I was playing one day. We just got to talking and ended up on the subject of fire and brimstone."
"Wow. I think I would have liked hanging out with you while you played on the streets."
He smiled. "I would have liked to have you there. You've got a decent voice - you could have been part of the act." He reached out and pulled me close, walking with his arm around me for a while.
I laughed softly for a second but then stopped. The idea of a simple life of playing guitar and singing for money was so far from my reality right now, it wasn't really that funny. Six months ago, living on the street and singing for change would have seemed so wild, so dangerous, so far-fetched ... and yet here I was strolling through hell with an incubus and a pixie, hunting down dragons and all manner of supernaturals I called friends. Holy quantum shift in perception. I didn't regret it though, even now, doing this. Life was meant to be lived to the fullest, and no one could call my life boring or pointless now.
Tim came towards us from the path. "We're getting near the place where the dragons live. I can smell them, and there are bones all over the place. Plus some huge piles of dragon doo that I'd rather not ever have to see again, thank you very much. I think I saw a whole dwarf in one of those piles." He fake-shuddered.
"Holy crap, Tim ... are you serious? What'd you tell me that for?" Now the visuals were dancing around in my head, torturing me with their nastiness.
"What'd he say?" asked Spike.
"You don't want to know."
"Maybe I do. Tell me. You never know."
I huffed out a breath. "Fine. There's a big pile of dragon shit up there with a dwarf in it."
Spike's face screwed up in such a mess of disgust I had to laugh.
"I told you that you didn't want to know."
"Dude!" Spike said, aghast. "That is just ... that's just ... wrong, man. Really, really wrong."
"The visuals, right? They're killing you right now? Me too. Fucking pixies."
"Dude's not right." Spike was shaking his head.
We were coming up to a wider section of the path up ahead. Small trees and bushes had been flattened, as if some large machine had come in and just mowed them down.
"Dragon hangout," said Spike, gesturing at the destruction.
I nodded.
"Dragon doo on your right!" yelled Tim, a little too much delight in his voice.
I tried not to look. I really did. But my head dragged my eyes over there, and then I just stared in fascination at the mess before me.
"Damn," said Spike, after following my gaze and stopping once he'd seen the pile. "Dragons sure eat a lot."
I started laughing and couldn't stop. It was too surreal. We were hunting dragons and finding them by their scat, just like the guys on Animal Planet did in those shows To
ny and I used to watch. But no pile of crap had ever been this big.
"There is a dwarf in that one," said Spike, his voice full of a mixture of fascination and disgust.
I shoved him hard. "Stop looking, stupid!"
Spike shook his head and looked away. "Yeah. Right. Sorry."
Tim came back to land on my shoulder. "There's a large entrance into the side of the hill up ahead. I recommend we do not go in there."
I looked up at the face of rock in front of us. "This isn't a hill, Tim. It's a mountain."
"No, not really. Most of the cave is underground from what I can tell. This is just a big rock here that doesn't continue up. It kind of just drops off on the other side."
I nodded absently, wondering what kind of nasties lived under the ground in the Underworld. Whatever they were, I didn't want to know, and I didn't want to see them.
We picked our way carefully through the dragon crap and bones and other disgusting things that marked the entrance of the dragons' home, reaching the edge of the cave and stopping at its entrance.
"Now where?" I whispered, looking to Spike and Tim for direction.
"You stay here. I'll go ahead and check things out," said Tim, leaving us and advancing into the darkness.
"What's he doing?" whispered Spike, the echoes of its soft hissing bouncing around in front of us. There seemed to be some sort of large opening just inside where we were standing, but it was impossible to see without any decent light coming in from outside. The Underworld was like London on its rainiest day, gray and soggy and depressing. I'd seen a day like that in a British movie once and had never forgotten it. To live in it for ten thousand years or more? Pure torture. No wonder Moriah liked stabbing things for fun. I might too if I were stuck here, just to have a distraction from how awful this place was.
Tim was taking forever to get back. "Where is that little shit?" I said. "He should have been back by now."
"What's he doing?" asked Spike. "Getting a whole map of the place?"
I was getting a really bad feeling. "No. I think something's happened to him. He'd never stay gone this long. Come on. We have to go find him."
Spike grabbed my arm to keep me from going where I was headed. "Wait. Maybe we should find another way in."
"Why? This is good enough."
"Yeah ... except our friends are in trouble and now Tim maybe, too. I think it's fair to say that they probably came through this entrance too, since it's so big and obvious."
I stopped pushing against his arm. "You think there's another way in?"
"If I were a dragon I wouldn't want to be stuck in a place that only had one way in and one way out."
"You've got a point there. It's not good strategy in the Underworld to be stuck like that, probably."
"Come on." Spike took me by the hand and pulled me from the entrance, leading me around the side of the hill. We reached a spot that looked like a turning point in the mound that the dragon lair was inside, but the ground started dropping off steeply. To keep following what looked like the contours of the cave, we had to go uphill now, or diagonal. We were walking with one leg much higher than the other, which was not only awkward but uncomfortable, too.
"What the hell is up with this cave?" I asked. "I thought Tim said it wasn't a mountain."
Spike looked up to our right as we struggled along. "I don't think he's wrong, but it definitely seems like this cave or whatever is bigger than it looked from that other side."
The wind picked up, whistling eerily through the trees, the cool air pushing my sticky hair off my sweaty face. It might have felt nice if it hadn't had the stink of dragon breath on it and carried the sound of unhappy souls.
"Man, oh man, is that creepy," said Spike under his breath.
I could see a lighter gray area ahead, so I picked up the pace a little, anxious to be out of this dark forest that had at least a few orcs that I knew of wandering around in it.
When we finally reached the source of the light, my heart plummeted.
"Wow. That's quite a drop," said Spike, walking up to the edge of the hill that was so steep it probably should have been called a cliff. "How far down do you think it goes?"
"Far enough to kill us if we fall down it? I don't know." I grabbed his shirt and pulled him away from the edge. "Come on. Let's go back."
"We can't go back, we're here now," said Spike, looking at me like I was crazy.
"Here where? This is nowhere! The edge of the Underworld! Look!" I gestured towards the pit that went on forever or far enough that I knew I wanted nothing to do with it.
"Yeah, but here's where we need to go in." Spike had his hands on his hips now and was looking as determined as I'd ever seen him.
I shook my head. "Are we dealing with another mesmerizing? Demon possession? Witch's spell? Because I'm not following."
"Look," said Spike, pointing off to our right, to the face of the cliff that was the back side of the dragon cave's hill. Tim was right. The side that we were was merely a hill. This side was the edge of a cliff, as if a huge mountain had been here and a giant knife had come in and cut three quarters of it away, leaving a jagged but mostly flat face behind. And up near the top of it, was a big, black hole.
"That's a cave. That's where the dragons are going in and out. We were standing at their back door before."
"Their toilet," I said.
"Yeah. Essentially."
"Great. So your plan is to what ... ? Sprout wings and fly up there together?" I threw my hands out, letting them fall down and slap my thighs. "Fine. Go for it. Text me when you're done. Oh wait ... that's right ... we don't have wings or cell phones!"
"Cranky?" he asked me, a smile notching the sexy up about ten levels.
"Shut up. I'm being serious."
"No, you're being sarcastic. I'm the one being serious. Come on, just follow me."
He took me by the hand and pulled me towards the spot where the trees stopped and the rock started.
"This is a bad idea. A seriously bad idea," I complained on the way. "We have no climbing gear, none of those hook things, no ropes ... we're going to fall and become fae pancakes."
"We don't need it. Come on, you'll see." He kept walking, waiting patiently for me as I stepped over bigger and bigger rocks, trying not to sprain my ankle in the process.
We reached the spot where we were on solid rock, and I could finally see why Spike thought it might be possible to go this way.
"See?" he said, gesturing proudly to the chunks of rock sticking out all over the place, that he apparently thought would be sufficient hand and footholds to get us from here to the cave a hundred yards away.
"You must be high on some seriously bad drugs to think that I'm going to climb the side of this cliff to get over there." I turned around. "No thanks. I risk the doo-doo."
He grabbed the sleeve of my tunic and pulled me back. "No, you're not. Come on. We're going this way. They'll never expect to see us out here, so we'll be totally safe."
"Yeah!" I said, in full freak-out mode now. "Except for that little issue of being on the side of a cliff a mile or ten above the ground!"
"It's not a cliff, it's just a very steep hill. See?" he said, going over and starting the journey, "you can lay on the side of it and hang on like this." He put his feet on the nearest small ledge and laid his torso on the rock's face, grasping onto some small outcroppings.
I watched as he sidestepped to the next spot, lying against the rock the whole time.
"See? I'm not even standing up. You've got at least a twenty degree angle towards the hill here, maybe more."
"Cliff. It's a cliff, Spike. Not a hill." I was still complaining, but my feet propelled me forward. I was scared to death, but he was making enough sense that I couldn't argue with him too much without sounding like a big baby. "If I fall, you're going to have to explain to Tony how you forced me to do this. You'll probably end up in the Underworld as punishment."
"Good. Then I'll go down and find your bones and collec
t them to put in my vampire house."
I grabbed the first set of handholds and walked onto the small ledge Spike was using. "That's just wrong, Spike. Morbid and wrong."
"What can I say? I like the medieval look."
"You and Ben," I said, thinking about his furniture, which was doing a good job of getting my mind off the fact that I was now ten feet out onto this cliff face and not going back.
"He likes the medieval look too?"
"You've seen his room, right? Heavy, vampirey furniture, tapestry with the dragons in it."
"I heard about that tapestry and stuff, after you got all wasted with it. What's the deal with that thing, anyway?"
My cheek scraped along the sharp rock, but I didn't care. At least I knew I was close to it and not falling back. I slid my left foot along and then my right, following Spike. We were one quarter of the way there, now.
"I don't know, actually," I said breathlessly, a little panicked still about falling even though the going had been fairly easy so far. "He said they were trapped there to keep the wrong people from getting control over them or something, but I don't know. When we were in the Overworld, he seemed to be riding around on that dragon without any problems. I don't know if the tapestry needs to come down, get folded up, burned, cut ... whatever. And I don't know how he ended up with it, either. Maybe it's just there to communicate with them."
"Yeah, why him and not some other fae?" asked Spike.
His foot slipped, sending a bunch of small rocks cascading down the cliff. I screamed, thinking for a second he was going to go too.
"I'm fine, I'm fine," said Spike, trying to reassure me, but his voice was too shaky for me to believe him.
"Just stop talking and focus on where you put your feet," I said, sounding more angry than I really was. "We're halfway there." I breathed in and out a few times before taking my next step, trying to calm my racing heart.
As I prepared to move my foot, the sound of a roar came from off in the distance. My pulse, that I'd finally gotten some measure of control over, started going nuts again, my adrenaline coming out and making me shake like crazy.
"What was that?" asked Spike in a quiet voice.