Darklands (40 page)

“So you summoned the Night Hag.” Mallt-y-Nos must feel like Miss Popularity, getting called twice in two nights. “Wait, how could you call her? It was a full-moon night—weren’t you in wolf form?”

“Like I said, one of her names is Mistress of Hounds. She can communicate with wolves. But that wasn’t necessary. Moonrise was after midnight, and I called her as soon as it was dark. I was still in this form.” His human form. The moon that shines on the Ordinary is absent from the Darklands, so he wouldn’t change here. “The Huntress—the Night Hag—confirmed you’d
crossed the border ‘with body and soul still together,’ which I took to mean you hadn’t died. Hoped, anyway. But then she said, ‘Many enter, but few return.’ She was in her death’s-head form, and her laugh…Vicky, it sent chills through me.”

“You made a deal with her so she’d let you in to find me.” What price had she demanded of Kane? How many more impossible items would we have to collect before we could leave? Arawn knew what Mallt-y-Nos was up to—what if he refused to let anything else leave his realm? Kane, who’d come to rescue me, would be stuck here himself. “Kane, you shouldn’t have bargained with her. You’re a great negotiator, but the Night Hag is in a different league. You could have your whole staff of lawyers go over any deal she offered, and she’d still win in the end.” Never mind that I’d made a deal with her myself.

He called me on that one. “No bargains? How did you get in?”

“I, um, said I’d bring back a few souvenirs, that’s all.”

“Like what—‘I let a shapeshifter into the Darklands and all I got was this lousy T-shirt’?” Exasperation colored his voice.

“Lord Arawn is helping me. I’ll be fine.” Fine and dandy. Just as soon as I found some duct tape for Rhudda’s arrow, did a little birding on the outskirts of Hell, and brought Arawn the head of the new-and-definitely-not-improved Destroyer.

“Vicky.” He put both hands on my shoulders and stared into my eyes. “What did you promise her?”

“A magic arrow—already got it.” Both pieces. “A white falcon. Arawn’s hunting horn.” I ticked off each item on my fingers as if it were no big deal. One, two, three, and I’d be home. “Arawn has already promised me the horn.”

“Another bargain?”

“He’ll give it to me after I’ve killed the Destroyer.”

“The Destroyer—you mean the Hellion? I thought you already killed that thing.”

“I did. Pryce brought it back.” Kane gaped at me in disbelief. “Remember I told you that Pryce was trying to revive his shadow demon? That cauldron he used to trap demons was the cauldron of transformation, stolen from Arawn centuries ago. Pryce cloaked the demons and returned the cauldron to the Darklands. Arawn tried to purify it so it could be returned to use, but the cauldron was rigged so that the purification spell released the demons. Pryce jumped into the cauldron. All those demons
transformed into the Destroyer, bound to Pryce.” I hesitated. “He, um, tried to pull me in with him, but I climbed out. And then—”

“Wait, he tried to transform you, too? That’s it, Vicky. I’m not going to let you run around this place chasing after him. Pryce alone is bad enough. Pryce plus the Destroyer—no.”

“‘
Let
me’?” I squeezed his hand so hard that, if he’d been anything besides a werewolf, the bones would have cracked. He jerked away. “Since when did I ever ask your permission to do anything?” If this was the result of taking our relationship to the next level, maybe it was time to take one giant step backward.

“Okay, that came out wrong. Sorry.” He didn’t sound sorry. He sounded mad as hell. “But it’s the same as always. You go rushing in alone, determined to save the world all by yourself. No help from anyone. No thought for those who care about you.”

My own anger was seething, too, but again I pushed it aside.
Count to ten. One…two…three…
I made myself stay calm.
Eight…nine…ten.

“You want to help me? Okay. We’ll do this together. We’ll defeat the Destroyer, and then we’ll both go home.”

He pulled me to him again. “The Destroyer is Arawn’s problem. Come home with me now.”

“It’s
my
problem, Kane.” In so many ways I didn’t even want to try to count them. “And the only way I can leave here is to give the Night Hag what I promised her.”

“I can get you out.”

“This isn’t like persuading a jury with a brilliant closing argument. Mallt-y-Nos will never budge on her terms.”

“Let me try. I talked her into letting me in. If she won’t listen to me, we’ll go after the Destroyer together.”

I stepped away. “We don’t have the time to waste.” He looked hurt at “waste,” but too bad. It
would
be a waste of time, and he needed to understand that. “You saw what the Destroyer did to this city. I’ve got to stop it before the whole realm goes up in flames.” And after that, the human world.

Kane opened his mouth like he was going to argue. But he didn’t. His face softened, and he reached out to brush my cheek with his fingertips. “I just want you to be safe,” he said, his voice husky. “And with me.”

Anger melted. I reached up and held his hand against my cheek, then turned and kissed the palm. He put his other arm
around my shoulders and we stood there, close and warm, holding each other. How could I ever want anything else, when this felt so good? After a few, way-too-short moments, I placed his hand on my right forearm, where he could feel the angry, pulsing heat of the demon mark. His eyes widened at the strength of it.

“I’ll never be safe while the Destroyer lives.”

He nodded. And then he kissed me.

I kissed him back, and warmth spread through me. Something deep inside reached toward this man who’d laughed with me, made love to me, argued with me, fought beside me—and ventured into the realm of the dead to find me.

A brisk knock rapped on the door, bringing me back to the here and now. A shade dressed in blue stuck his head inside. “Lord Arawn’s armorer, at your service.”

“We’ll be right with you,” I said. He bowed and shut the door. I turned to Kane. Back to the business at hand. “Arawn wasn’t happy about my deal with the Night Hag. We’d better negotiate with him now, so he’ll let you take out whatever you promised her.”

He shook his head. “Not necessary. She didn’t ask me for anything like that.”

“Then what was her price?”

“Nothing I can’t pay.” He put his arm around me and steered me toward the door. “But never mind that now. Let’s go kill the Destroyer so you can come home.”

ARAWN’S VAST ARMORY FILLED A STONE-WALLED ROOM THE size of a small warehouse. I picked out three bronze-bladed throwing knives. They were enough. I had Darkblaze and didn’t want to be weighed down as we chased the Destroyer. Kane is no swordsman, but he chose a couple of knives and a wicked-looking bronze ax. Ax fighting doesn’t take a lot of finesse, and he had the strength to make each blow count.

Arawn waited for us at a table near the armory’s doorway. The king seemed tense, angry, but that wasn’t surprising with an out-of-control Hellion ravaging his kingdom. He’d spread out a map of his realm, Difethwr’s path of destruction marked in red. The line zigzagged across the map like a jagged scar. From Tywyll, the Hellion had gone south, and most recently was reported west of the city.

“Where’s the border with Uffern?” I asked.

“Here.” Arawn pointed to the section marked Hellsmoor. “In the north. Most of the region is swampland, but a steep mountain range marks the border itself.” He traced a finger along the edge of the map. Beyond the mountain range was a sea of flames.

That was where I wanted Difethwr. At the edge of the
Darklands, far from the Ordinary. If I couldn’t kill the Hellion, I’d do my best to drive it back to Hell.

But I had every intention of killing it.

Once I’d traveled to Hellsmoor, my demon mark would call the Destroyer to me. Like it or not, I was bound to the Hellion. But I could use that bond to my advantage.

“What’s the quickest way to get to the border?” I asked.

“I’ll lend you two steeds from my stables. They can travel anywhere in my kingdom in an hour, whatever the distance.” He watched me from the corner of his eye. “They are the same breed Mallt-y-Nos rides.”

Great, flying horses that breathed fire. The last time I rode a horse, I was eight, and my steed had been hand-carved and fixed to a carousel. Something told me this ride would be more than a little wilder. But if it would get me into position in an hour, I was all for it.

I told Arawn my plan. He agreed to evacuate a corridor between Difethwr’s current position and Hellsmoor, and sent messengers to begin that work. We couldn’t stop the Destroyer from torching everything in its path, but we could minimize the loss of life.

“All right,” I said, heading for the door. “Let’s do this.”

We followed a blue-clad servant down a stone hallway. Arawn walked beside me, Kane a few steps behind.

“Lord Arawn,” I said, a flutter of worry in my chest, “did you ask your archivist about the register?”

He nodded, his lips tight. “Evan Vaughn has not passed through any of the cauldrons.”

What should I feel—relief or despair? I didn’t know. I decided to press for more information. “Outside of your city, there’s a spring…”

“It is forbidden.”

Yeah, I’d kind of gotten that idea when the Keeper tried to lop off my head. “Okay, fine, but if someone did happen to…um, say someone stepped in that spring, accidentally. What would happen?”

He stopped so abruptly Kane walked into him. Arawn glared at me. “‘Accidentally’? When the spring’s Keeper was viciously cut down?”

Somehow, I didn’t think Arawn would want to hear about
self-defense. “I just want to know what effect the magic would have on a shade who was…” I couldn’t say
dying
. “…who was fading.”

Arawn’s hawklike eyes fixed me with a hard stare. He seemed to weigh the Keeper’s death against my offer to kill the Destroyer.

“Go to the stables, Victory, and choose a steed. If you do not leave at once, I shall have you arrested for defiling the spring and murdering its Keeper.” He wheeled around and strode away, his footsteps echoing on the stones.

“What was that about?” Kane asked.

I didn’t answer. I was thinking about Arawn’s words:
murdering its Keeper
. So the spring’s guardian had died. I hadn’t meant to kill him. I’d even tried to save him. But the magic had failed him.

That meant it had failed Dad, too. My heart clenched as I forced myself to admit it: He was gone, his spirit already dissolved into wisps of nothing.

It was the Destroyer’s fault. The Hellion had sent my father here. Dad had only tried to hold on, for too long, to remnants of the life he’d loved. The life the Destroyer had taken away from him.

And Difethwr would continue to destroy, leaving nothing behind but death and pain and misery, until I stopped it. Kane put a hand on my arm, but I shook him off. I couldn’t speak. Hatred, hot and bitter, choked me. Hatred for the Destroyer, for Pryce. For their war on my family. For their vision of a future consumed by flames.

My demon mark burned. Somewhere, a roar of hatred answered my own. It echoed through me, setting my blood on fire. I’d called the Destroyer, and the Hellion had heard me. Now to send it back to Hell.

DESPITE THEIR FEARSOME APPEARANCE, ARAWN’S STEEDS WERE easy to ride. The horses obeyed the rider’s intentions. Just mount, set your mind on where you want to go, and hang on. Within an hour, we were in Hellsmoor. The description of Hellsmoor as a “swamp” was too kind. “A fetid quagmire of quicksand and filthy water” would have been more accurate. The air was heavy with the stink of marsh gas; columns of flame shot upward, then extinguished. Snakes as thick as my arm whiplashed through the water.

I hated this place. And I poured my hatred into my demon mark.
Hear that, Difethwr? Come and find me.

Our horses had landed on a small hummock, beside a cluster of twisted, skeletal trees. About a mile away, sawtooth mountains rose like a fortress wall. I’d wanted to land there, as close to Uffern as possible, but the horses wouldn’t go any closer. Even here, they seemed nervous, pawing the ground and snorting. Flames shot from their nostrils in short blasts. I tried to urge my horse back into the air, choosing a mountain and setting my intention there. He shuddered and whinnied but didn’t budge.

Stupid horse. I’d
make
him do what I wanted. I drew back my arm, my fingers in a tight fist. A hand caught my wrist and held it lightly but firmly. The demon mark on my forearm pulsed and burned, like someone was rhythmically zapping it with electric shocks.

“Vicky, what are you doing?”

Yeah, what are you doing?
echoed a voice inside my head.
Solving a problem with violence, as usual, I see.

Oh, great. The Eidolon was back. It had been so quiet in Tywyll, hiding like a coward in my gut from Pryce, that I’d almost forgotten about it. It hadn’t complained about violence there, when I’d kept its demon ass out of that cauldron.

You don’t care about my ass. You were saving your own shapeshifter ass.

“Shut up, Butterfly,” I muttered.

Kane looked startled. “What did you call me?”

“Nothing.” I opened my hand to show I wasn’t going to hit anything, and Kane released my arm.

“So how are we going to get up there?” I pointed at the mountains.

“Perhaps I can help,” said a voice from the swamp.

I turned around so fast I almost fell off my horse. Behind us stood a man in a boat. He’d poled up silently, not even a splash to announce his approach. I didn’t like being snuck up on. This guy was lucky he hadn’t gotten a knife hurled into his eye.

“I’d offer you refreshment,” he said, “but I have nothing in the boat.” The man was blond, with blue eyes and a thick beard. He wore a red tunic and a sword belt.

“You’re a Keeper?”

“A Border Keeper. My task is to prevent demons from crossing into our realm. Quite a few have left the realm today, with
my…ah, assistance.” He grinned and patted the sword at his side. Then he reached into the bottom of his boat and lifted the corner of a tarp that lay there. Beneath it lay the severed, grimacing heads of half a dozen demons. “There’s a reward for each one I bring in.”