Darkness Raging

  Trytian was busy blocking the door, and the two remaining daemons with him were joining the guys. I raced toward the cage, leaning my ax against the side of it. The sight of my wife, trapped and wild-eyed, triggered me, and I grabbed the bars and began to bend them, slowly working the metal with as much force as I could. My hands were burning—the part of me that was Fae still reacted to iron, but I would heal. Nerissa began to calm down, though she hadn’t said anything yet. But another scream chilled me to the bone. I glanced over my shoulder. Tico was gone. That left Jacob. And one of Trytian’s comrades had also fallen, which left Lokail, one other daemon, the guys, and me. We were rapidly losing our forces.

  “Go, help them!” Nerissa finally found her tongue.

  Grabbing up my ax, I let go of the cage and headed over to the nearest demon.

  He was wearing a brilliant ruby—the spirit seal that I recognized from our fight with Karvanak, the Rāksasa. And he wasn’t carrying a stake. He was fighting Trillian, wielding a nasty-looking sword against Trillian’s slim but lethal silver blade. The demon was winning, driving Trillian back toward the wall, the spirit seal giving him a tremendous amount of skill. But there was something off about his movements, even though his strength seemed greater, and I realized he wasn’t quite in alignment—almost as though he was blurred, out of sync.

  The spirit seal isn’t meshing with his energy—that has to be it!

  As I swung in behind him, he suddenly realized I was taking aim, but it was too late. I raised my ax high over my head and brought it down to bear right on his back, cleaving the blade in between his shoulders. He let out an unholy scream and almost yanked the ax out of my hand as he turned, blood spraying Trillian. I managed to keep hold of the hilt, dislodging it from his flesh and swinging it again.

  He lunged forward, all semblance of skill vanishing as a look of panic spread on his face. I still had no idea of what kind of demon he was, but he let out a garbled screech—I had no doubt it was some sort of curse—and swung his sword hard. I danced to the side as my ax met his blade, cleaving the sword in two. But I had been so vigorous in my attack that my battle-ax—not meeting flesh or something more solid to dig into—continued its motion, lodging firmly in the stone floor.

  The demon stabbed at me with the broken sword, clipping my arm, hard. It couldn’t really penetrate the way it would have with the tip, but it sliced through the jacket, gashing my arm deep. Thankfully, it didn’t sever it, and so I yanked the ax out of the stone and, one-handedly, brought it sideways, biting deep into my opponent’s side.

  At that moment, Trillian attacked from the back, the thin tip of his sword skewering through the demon’s chest to spit him like a chicken over a rotisserie. Between our combined attacks, the demon wavered, tried to clutch at the spirit seal but failed, and then toppled forward.

  I glanced over to see Shade and Vanzir working on the guard next to us, so I darted forward, grabbed up the spirit seal from the fallen demon, and thrust it into my pocket. A surge of energy raced through me and I was startled to see the wound on my arm begin to heal up. I healed fast—vampires always did—but this was definitely quicker than usual.

  Jacob and Lokail were fighting the third guard. Trillian had moved on to help Trytian, who—with the remaining daemon—was working on the fourth guard. I decided that Jacob and Lokail needed my help the most, and I was right, because at that moment, the demon skewered Jacob through the heart and he vanished.

  “That does it . . . I’m done with this shit.”

  I slid in beside Lokail, who was grimly hacking away with his sword, and began to repeatedly batter the demon with one quick blow after another. That gave Lokail the chance to slip around behind him and slice him between the ribs.

  The demon—this was the Tregart—blinked in surprise, right before I brought the ax down on his head. Wincing—brain matter is ugly no matter who you are, unless you’re a zombie and then it’s lunch—I jumped back out of the way as the Tregart face-planted in front of me. I motioned for Lokail to go help the others while I retrieved the spirit seal from the dead demon’s neck. Emerald. The first seal we had found. Shadow Wing had stolen it from us when he killed Tom Lane. Somberly thinking about Titania’s fallen lover, I quietly slipped the seal in my pocket with the other and zipped it shut.

  Shade and Vanzir had taken down their opponent and tossed me the smoky quartz necklace. But Trytian and Trillian were having a hard time with theirs. We couldn’t all fight him at once, there wasn’t room, so I went back to breaking Nerissa out of the cell. I had just managed to bend the bars far enough apart for her to climb through when there was a short, harsh scream, and a roar. I whirled around just in time to see Lokail go flying across the room—without a head.

  The demon was no longer in human form, but where he had stood, there was now a massive hydra with four heads. The chain holding the spirit seal had snapped as he transformed, apparently, because I saw the amethyst pendant fly through the air to fall next to me. I snatched it up, stuffing it in my pocket with the others.

  “Let’s get the fuck out of here!” Trytian shoved Trillian toward the door. “We can’t fight a hydra.”

  “I can.” Shade moved back and the next moment was transforming into his dragon self. The rest of us ran for the door.

  As we burst out of the complex, I frantically looked around for any more demons, but the rest seemed to have marched off with the contingent we had seen leave. Frantic, I grabbed Nerissa’s wrist and we made for the cover of the scrub. As we reached the first massive, sprawling tree, we turned to see the two monsters breaking through the roof, locked in combat.

  “Damn Shade, we could be off and going now if he hadn’t decided to stay and duke it out.” I was furious. We needed to get the hell out of Dodge, and there wasn’t room to play hero here. It wasn’t like they wouldn’t figure out who had gutted the complex.

  “Get moving.” Trytian pushed me forward.

  “But Shade—”

  “Move. You remember the route, I’ll bring up the rear.”

  Trillian gave me a grim jerk of the head. “He’s right. Get a move on. Vanzir, go with them. I’ll fall back with Trytian.”

  I realized Nerissa was barefoot. I wanted to give her my shoes, but that wasn’t possible—she couldn’t fit in my boots and that would hurt worse than the desert floor. But I motioned to Vanzir. “Your shirt. Tear it so she can tie the rags around her feet and have some protection.”

  “No, I’ve got a better solution.” Nerissa stepped back and—in a shimmer—changed into her puma self. She started loping along beside me, sleek and confident.

  We headed out. I didn’t want to leave Shade, but then a moment later there was a great shaking of the ground and we turned to see Shade swooping in behind us. The hydra had fallen. Shade landed beside us and I realized what he was up to.

  “Climb on his back. We can make better time back to the gate this way. Nerissa—change back.”

  “We’ll be noticed by everyone and everything in the area.” Trytian frowned.

  “Like word isn’t going to get out about what just went down? This way they may not have time to catch us. Hurry up!”

  I hoisted Nerissa up onto Shade’s back, then climbed astride the skeletal dragon’s vertebrae. Within seconds, Trillian, Vanzir, and Trytian joined us. Shade took off, a bumpy takeoff for sure, but we were airborne and aimed directly for the forest. We swept overhead and from the air, I realized just how dangerous a labyrinth the forest was—even as clear of undergrowth as the petrified trees were, the chances of getting lost were incredibly high. The forest stretched on east and west for miles.

  We flew over the soldiers below and, without being asked, Shade dove lower and strafed them with dragonfire. Screams rose as we passed by, and I didn’t see how deadly the attack had been, but that pretty much guaranteed Shadow Wing would remember us with none too fond a thought.

 
We came to the Plain of Winds and the ride grew very bumpy. Nerissa leaned forward, and I pressed against her, trying to keep our balance as the gusts landed like walloping fists, ever-shifting. The next moment, we were in the Ionyc Seas. Dizzy from the ride and the winds, and now the currents of the sea, I let out a groan, but within moments, it seemed, we were out again, and we were over the hoodoos. There was one place near the Demon Gate that seemed big enough for Shade to land, and so he did. As we staggered off his back, stumbling around like we were all drunk, Shade shifted back into his natural form.

  “Damn, that was one hell of a ride.” Even Trytian was reeling.

  “Let’s get through that damned gate. Remember, if I immediately fall asleep, just arrange me on the table until nightfall.” And with that, I grabbed Nerissa, who looked dazed and exhausted, and headed over to the Demon Gate, never so happy to see a portal in my life.

  One by one, we stepped through. And as the burning pain hit, I welcomed it in. Because I had Nerissa with me, she was alive, and we had managed to survive the Sub-Realms.

  * * *

  As I opened my eyes, after the first fury of waking subsided, I realized I was, indeed, lying on the table in Wilbur’s workroom. But Trytian, Trillian, Nerissa, Shade, and Vanzir were there—along with Wilbur, and none of them looked like they’d bothered to clean up. None of them were near enough for me to attack them, either.

  Wilbur snorted. “Good aim, Dead Girl. You picked three minutes before sunset to return. So you’ve had the shortest nap in vampire history.”

  I blinked. I actually did feel exhausted, and the weight of the trip hit me full force. “I kind of wish we had returned at sunrise so I could sleep it off.”

  “You want I should create another Demon Gate for you to go through so you can come back in a while?” But the mountain man necromancer was laughing, and his eyes crinkled as he smiled softly. “I destroyed the other the moment I realized you were all back . . . well, those who made it.”

  He paused, and I realized that he was talking about the five vamps I had taken with me. “We lost our men and Trytian lost his forces, too.” I turned to the daemon. “I owe you one. A big one.”

  Trytian, for once, just shrugged. “No, you don’t. We’re in this together, and because of your mission, you managed to deal a heavy blow to Shadow Wing—one that will help us tremendously. I have to return to my father and tell him.”

  And then I realized what he was talking about. I had a pocket full of spirit seals. Shadow Wing was left with none of them. The swirling energy suddenly surged through my body, even though I wasn’t wearing them, and my fatigue dropped away.

  I sat up, cautiously. “Yeah, you’re right. Come on over to our house. We need to talk about this—all of us—and what it means. And Camille needs to . . . put these into hiding.”

  Wilbur came with us; it only seemed right, given we had yanked him into our service again, and we headed across the street to our house. As we walked, I pulled Nerissa off to the side a little.

  “How are you? Did they do . . . did they hurt you?”

  She shook her head. “Not really. Oh, I’m terribly hungry and thirsty. But they were definitely using me for bait. And as far as I could tell, the demons wearing the spirit seals were there, waiting to take possession of the ones they expected you guys to bring to them. Shadow Wing must truly be off his nut if he thinks you’d trade them for me.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say. How do you tell your loved one that you wouldn’t have bargained for her life because the price was too high? But Nerissa said it for me.

  “I’m . . . listen. I’m so grateful to be alive, and back with you. But thank you for not doing as they asked. I had prepared myself to die. There’s no way we could ever give Shadow Wing the spirit seals and hope to keep him from destroying everything. I guess what I’m saying is that I didn’t expect you to come for me, and I would have understood if you hadn’t. I thought . . . I thought I heard Camille calling, but I guess that was my imagination.”

  I smiled softly. “No, she was searching for you. We had to do something. But you’re right—in a war, you don’t hand over the ultimate weapon to your enemy to save a life.” I kissed her then, softly, on the cheek. We’d have our time later, but for now, we still had work to do.

  * * *

  Trytian left us by the door. “I need to get to the Demon Underground. I have to get back to the Sub-Realms and let my father know I’m alive and tell him of our victory. This is a huge blow to Shadow Wing, but you know he’s going to go ballistic. Be cautious. I’ll be in touch as soon as I know anything more about what he’s planning. I think now is a good time for my father’s army to strike.”

  He took off into the night. I found myself hoping we’d see him again, hoping he would make it through the war. If he and his father could take over in the Sub-Realms, maybe we’d have some chance of forging a treaty with them—some possibility of peace.

  The moment we opened the door, the household was in an uproar. Camille and Delilah dragged us into the living room, and Hanna immediately began clanging the pots and pans in the kitchen. We were probably going to be facing a feast—or rather the others would.

  Shade let out a long whistle. “We’re exhausted, dirty, hungry, and thirsty. Let us have a chance to wash up first, please, before we go into details. Nerissa’s all right, given the circumstances, so give us a little breathing room.” He laughed, but I had the feeling he was one step short of barking orders. The fight with the hydra seemed to have set him on edge. But then again, the whole experience had set me on edge.

  They backed off, and I sent Nerissa down to bathe, while I motioned for Delilah, Camille, and Smoky to follow me into the parlor. I closed the door behind me and turned to them.

  “While we’re cleaning up, you have to get these to the Dragon Reaches. Smoky, you and Camille need to travel there tonight. Now. We can’t chance losing them again. Even now, Shadow Wing will be raging, trying to plan his next move against us.”

  As I spoke, I unzipped my pocket and withdrew the four spirit seals. They hummed in my hands, their proximity to one another making them practically vibrate. As I laid them in Camille’s hands, she gasped. Delilah let out a shout and so did Smoky.

  “Shadow Wing had his faux knights guarding Nerissa. We had one hell of a battle, and we lost all five of my vamps, and all of Trytian’s comrades. It was touch and go there at the end.” I softly stepped back. “Take these now—please. Don’t wait. We’ve dealt Shadow Wing two horrible blows in the past few days and he’s already unhinged. The Unraveller is going to be after us now with everything he’s got.”

  “But now that we have all the spirit seals—well, except for the final one that still remains hidden—can’t we just assume he’s locked up for good again?” Delilah frowned, staring at the seals like they were ticking time bombs.

  I shook my head. “No, because the portals are still breaking down, and because now he’ll have revenge in his heart. We can’t let down our guard.”

  “Our next step is to find the final seal and the Keraastar Diamond. Then I can create the Keraastar Knights and bring them together to fully destroy Shadow Wing. But I have to take the throne first—and that will happen next month, during Litha. The Summer Solstice is going to be one hell of a show, that’s for sure.” Camille glanced up at Smoky. “She’s right. We need to get these to the Dragon Reaches now. Your mother is a secure guardian.”

  He nodded. “True. Get changed for the climate, while we guard these. I don’t want to take any chances, not even here in the heart of our home. Not with four spirit seals in our hands.”

  Camille headed off, stopping to give me a kiss on the cheek. “I’m so happy Nerissa is home, love. Take care of her. Even if they didn’t hurt her, the Sub-Realms . . . I can see it in your eyes. There are places our kind should never go, places that scald the soul.”

  I nodded. “Too true
.”

  As she closed the door behind her, I gazed over at Delilah, remembering what Shade and I had talked about. “Kitten, come over with me by the fireplace. Smoky, can you . . . well . . . just give us a minute.”

  He nodded, moving to the corner of the room where he sat in one of the overstuffed armchairs, staring at the pendants in his hand.

  Delilah frowned. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing . . . not really. I just . . . I wanted to talk to you about something that I thought of when I was in the Sub-Realms.”

  “What’s it like there?”

  I shivered. “Harsher than you could dream. Harsher than any place has a right to be. There is no softness there, no gentleness. Kitten, just being there reminded me of why we fight against Shadow Wing.” I drew her down on the sofa. “Listen, I was thinking . . . while we were trudging through a forest of stone, about when we were kids. About when you thought you would be dishonoring Mother’s memory if you ate eggs and ham instead of porridge for breakfast.”

  She tilted her head to one side. “What a curious memory to crop up while you were there.”

  “I know.” I didn’t want to tell her what Shade had said to me. She might think he didn’t have faith in her. “But it made me think . . . it’s going to be hard when Nerissa and I move in with Roman. And then, Camille moves to Talamh Lonrach Oll next month. You realize this will be the first time we’ve ever lived apart? I guess it just hit me while I was over there, how we’re all going our separate ways.”

  She smiled softly. “Shade’s worried about me, isn’t he? He asked you to talk to me?”

  I sputtered, but she shook her head and took my hand. “I know him—this has concerned fiancé written all over it. And it’s okay. Really. I’m glad he cares enough about me to worry. But I think . . . I think the little kitten who, when we first came Earthside, would have been terrified to face this day, has grown up now. I’m ready to face what life has to offer. This last bout of training, to gain a handle over seeing the dead and talking to them? Has made me aware of how many stages of life there are. And it made me see how fear can trap us. I don’t want to be like one of those ghosts—trapped because I’m afraid to face the fact that life is moving on.”