Destroyer Rising (22 page)

I tapped my backpack and said, “Jasper.”

The gray furball shot out of the pack and took up
residence on my shoulder. Tessrian stared at him, wide-eyed.

“Impossible,” she whispered.

“This is my friend,” I said. “I have known him since
I was a child. He fought with me at Gettysburg. He fought at
Falias, and saved my sister. I owe him my life several times over,
and yet he is loyal to me.”

Tessrian’s gaze never left Jasper. When she finally
spoke, she enunciated every syllable. “You do not need a key from
one of the devils. Nudd’s key will cut through any barrier in that
place.”

I squeezed the Key of the Dead so hard I thought it
might leave indentions in the metal. Another of Glenn’s
manipulations? Did I dare to use the key inside the Burning Lands?
What choice did I have? Let Vicky become the Destroyer? I ground my
teeth.

“Carve the rune hagalaz upon the doorway to the
enclaves, and it will crumble.” Tessrian lowered her focus to the
crystalline floor. “You have my word that these things are
true.”

Hagalaz. I knew the rune, drawn like a capital H, but
the center line was left at a sharp angle meeting neither the tops
of the bars in their center, but that wasn’t what concerned me.

“That rune has many meanings,” I said, watching
Tessrian closely.

She made a deep throaty grunt. “Perhaps in your
realm, but not in the Burning Lands. In the Burning Lands, it means
only destruction.”

I held my backpack open and let Jasper climb back
inside. “I’ll come back for you.”

Tessrian watched me for a moment. “I will be
surprised if you survive this foolish quest. I will be equally
surprised if you keep your word.”

I nodded at the demon before striking the wall of the
bloodstone twice, forming a red X. I glanced at her one last time
before stepping through. A demon who had fought against Zola,
imprisoned here for centuries, and potentially freed by Zola’s
apprentice. An odd existence, to be sure.

Red light strobed around me and the Abyss bloomed
into existence a moment later. Gaia snatched my hand before I could
make heads or tails of the starry darkness.

“It is done?” she asked, deliberately keeping her
eyes away from the Key of the Dead.

I nodded. “I need to return to my realm and secure
the bloodstone.”

“Be quick.”

The Abyss faded, and the sudden appearance of
sunlight almost blinded me as my butt slammed into the driver’s
seat of my car. I blinked. Jasper squeaked in the backpack.

“Nice aim,” I said to the severed arm in the
passenger seat. I scooped up the bloodstone and buckled it into my
backpack along with the Key of the Dead. There was no reason to
subject Gaia to that thing any more than I had to.

I took a deep breath. “Ready, Jasper?”

He chittered back at me from the backpack.

I laced my fingers with Gaia’s and returned to the
Abyss.

I groaned and braced my hands on my knees.
“Fuck.”

“I did warn you this time,” Gaia said, standing
before the Seal of Anubis.

“Yeah,” I muttered. “That’s like warning a drunk they
should stop drinking because of hangovers. If you’re already drunk,
you’re probably getting a hangover.”

Gaia looked up at the Seal. “You mean to make for the
tenth circle, but there is no pathway to it.”

“How close can we get?” I squinted and looked up.

“I can only see the seventh. The path to the inner
circles shattered when the Seal broke. From there, it will be up to
your dragon.”

I opened the backpack and let Jasper flow out onto my
shoulder. “You ready for this?” I asked the furball.

He purred like an oversized cat.

Gaia looked at Jasper and then back to the
immeasurably large Seal. “We must reach the center. It will be an
unpleasant journey.”

“Do it,” I said, wrapping my arms around Jasper and
closing my eyes. Gaia didn’t hesitate. My stomach lurched as we
shot into the air. I clenched my teeth when Gaia suddenly jerked us
to the side. The change of inertia felt like a car wreck, and then
it happened again, and again. “I thought we just needed to go up.”
I groaned and put a hand on my stomach.

Vertigo almost brought me to my knees when I opened
my eyes. The endless stretch of gray stone reached out in every
direction, spinning in my vision even though it did not move.

“Up?” Gaia said. “You have much to learn about the
Abyss, young one.”

We stood before a fracture in the stone the size of a
skyscraper. Massive bolts of power cascaded through the break,
meeting in the center to form a core of white and blue. It swelled
and receded and crackled like lightning, racing through the broken
Seal.

“That is your path,” Gaia said. “The center pathway
is broken, but it will reach the inner circle if your dragon can
navigate the old ways. Jasper must maintain his speed when you exit
the Seal, or you will never breach the barriers. Are you
prepared?”

I took a deep breath. “More than I was last
time.”

Yellow light exploded around me. Even prepared, it
was a blinding thing. I cracked my eye open. Oh yeah, we were on a
direct collision course with the Seal.

I waited for the lightning to serve up one order of
crispy fried necromancer, clamping my arms down on Jasper, wrapping
him up in my forearms as the first bolts of power tore through us.
I expected fire and shocks and stabbing pain, but here it was more
like passing through frigid ice water … with shocks and stabbing
pain.

Jasper expanded in my grip. My eyes were closed, but
I still felt his fur become scales, and my floating body suddenly
had support beneath it. I kept a choke hold on the dragon even as
my skin froze solid and began chipping away. I didn’t watch the
exposed muscle and bone this time. I didn’t need to see that ever
again.

The world became a frozen crystal at the heart of the
Seal. I couldn’t look away once my eyelids grew translucent in the
freezing power. I had a horrible thought of my arms shattering and
of losing Jasper, of being trapped inside this frozen hell.

Jasper spiraled through the darkness and roared. His
wings spread out to either side, and then he dove. The dragon’s
head smashed through a crystalline wall that looked like the
opposite of Tessrian’s prison, and then we were out. The
overwhelming power left, and my body became my own once more.

It was only then that my face fractured into a smile.
The warm wind of the Burning Lands whipped at my head while I
rocketed through the air on the back of a dragon. Below us, the Sea
of Flames boiled, and we shot past it, soaring toward the inner
circle.

I ran my fingertips over the scales on his throat,
and the dragon purred like a giant flying cat. Images flashed
through my mind. I’d come to realize it was how Jasper spoke, in
images and clips and symbols.

Three things became obvious in his little slideshow.
We were about to pass one of the fortresses. We were about to crash
through a barrier to catch up with the others. Darkfall was upon
us.

My heart slammed against my chest and I stared at the
sun. The disc was nearly black. Only a pinpoint of light remained.
A dark stone edifice blurred by beneath us, and Jasper tightened
his body, hurling us forward at a terrifying velocity. Lightning
sparked around the dragon’s head, and I saw the golden barrier a
split second before we hit it.

Golden bolts of power lanced into the sky and tore
into the earth as Jasper plowed through, hurtling over the Sea of
Souls. He swooped toward the fiery body, and the heat rising from
it threatened to flay my skin.

Ahead were the opposite cliffs and the outline of the
Bone Sails. Graybeard raised a fist to us and pointed toward a
blood red fortress. Jasper threw out his wings and slowed.

“No,” I said, patting the dragon’s neck. “Take us to
the tenth.”

Jasper closed his wings and shot forward once more,
catching the heat from the Sea of Souls and streaking forward. I
watched the earth below us for any sign of the others. There was
nothing. They were already inside the ninth fortress. Without
knowing what waited inside, it was better to take Jasper to the
tenth. If Gaia thought he could do it, I had to believe.

Turrets soared into the air around us. It would have
been impossible to pass this maze of stone without slowing. But was
Gaia wrong? Jasper evaded the jagged towers by taking sharp turns
and swooping below impossibly tall bridges. Any time I slipped, the
dragon righted himself, or nudged me with a wing.

Darkness loomed ahead. I looked back to the sun.
Time, we still had time. Jasper didn’t have to show me the black
grid of power we had to break through. It was plain to see,
intertwined with a sickly black and red. It figured that a demon’s
aura would guard the devils’ sanctuary.

Jasper slowed. An image of a golden dragon flashed
into my mind, wrapped in power, wrapped in a soulart.

I didn’t hesitate. Maybe I should have, but we’d come
this far. I unleashed the souls locked up inside me and let them
flow around the dragon. They cried out as they filled the crevices
between his scales so completely that he looked like a golden
screaming sun.

Jasper hurtled forward, falling into a steep dive
before pulling up at the last second and smashing into the wall of
darkness.

I would have screamed if I hadn’t been concentrating
on the soulart. A flash of the devils tore into my mind, a legacy
of blood and pain and horror. Flayed bodies scoured my vision, but
I didn’t so much as try to look away. I held the web over Jasper.
This was out last chance. We broke through, or Vicky became our
greatest nightmare. The dragon roared as though he’d heard my
thoughts, clawing at the darkness, stretching the barrier further
and further until, finally, it shattered.

A hail of darkness fell below us, peppering the grass
and dirt. The sky crumbled above, and for a moment I feared it we
were done for. The giant tumbling sections of the barrier caught
fire in the next second, and then they were gone.

“Damian!” someone shouted from far below.

“Take us down Jasper. Fast.”

The dragon dove, hitting the earth hard enough to
crack stone. I grunted as my face smashed into Jasper’s neck.
“Oww.”

I slid off his back and patted his bulky leg.
“Where’s Vicky?”

Carter and Maggie carried her forward. Her wrists
were bound in a hellish light. She struggled, throwing herself
against the bonds. Her eyes met mine and she bared her teeth. My
heart fell into my gut.

Darkness was all that remained.

“There is still a chance,” Mike said. “Turn her over.
Carve the rune.”

I drew the Key of the Dead.

“Come now, Vesik,” Vicky said, and the voice was all
wrong. It wasn’t Vicky at all. “Let us discuss your options.” The
words fractured and the voice put emphasis on all the wrong
syllables. “Surely you do not wish for the child to perish
here.”

Maggie strong-armed Vicky and flipped her over. “She
won’t shut up.” Maggie’s face looked hollowed out, haunted. “The
things she’s said. If we can’t stop this, we have to kill her.”

I placed a hand on Vicky’s back. She bucked and
writhed and screamed into Carter’s hand. “Vicky help me,” I
whispered. “Please, if you’re in there.”

The child’s body froze. I didn’t wait. Two quick
slashes formed the X and two more drew out the legs. I recoiled at
the sight of the Devil’s Knot. It bloomed across her neck,
vanishing beneath her shirt and crawling up into her hairline.

Vicky stilled.

I raised the dagger and aimed for my heart. One deep
breath, and then—

“No!” Mike said, grabbing my wrist.

“You heard them,” I snarled. “It has to be done!”

“After you kill Prosperine. Do not make the bond
until then. You could bond the devil to your sister if you do not
wait.”

I almost dropped the Key of the Dead at that thought.
“Fuck. Fuck! Why didn’t anyone say that?”

“Touching,” said a cold, familiar voice.

Vicky bucked and shifted in Carter’s grasp. “Get
off!”

“Vicky?” Carter said.

She looked up and the blackness of her eyes was shot
through with a sickly red. “Mostly.”

Her answer sent a frisson of terror down my
spine.

“It’s her,” Maggie said, releasing her grip on
Vicky’s upper arm.

“So touching,” the cold voice said again.

I looked toward the modest wall standing between us
and the devils’ enclaves. It was there, outside the tenth fortress,
that the dark-touched returned.

“You have come far, Vesik. Some of our kind assumed
you would. I did not.”

“Who are you?” I asked as Jasper paced behind me.

The dark-touched vampire’s mouth turned up at the
corner. It was almost a smile, but the elongated face made it one
of the most horrible things I’d ever seen. “Who? You are a curious
being. To most, I am a thing. A thing to be feared. A thing to be
battled. But to me, I am a leader set to destroy the last of the
necromancers.”

I did plan to destroy the dark-touched, but he
couldn’t possibly know that. A quick glance showed me how close
darkfall was. We didn’t have time. I played the fool, and asked
him. “Why? What have I done to the dark-touched?”

His smile shifted to a flash of silvery gray fangs.
“You bear the name of necromancer, but you have no concept of the
power of a true lord of the dead.”

“You speak in riddles,” I said. “Why shouldn’t I kill
you where you stand?”

“You could not, even if you tried. I am many, and as
a whole, we are immortal.”

Mike’s voice hissed in my ear. “We smash through
their lines, and you find Prosperine,” Mike said. “Let Jasper carve
you a path.”

Lines? What did he mean by … the thought trailed off
as I realized that the hunched gray stones behind the vampire were
made up of at least twelve more dark-touched.