devil 05 - the devil you want (25 page)

“Darma!”

The door burst inward and a swarm of buzzing creatures pummeled me, slicing my skin with tiny razor-sharp wings as they surged past. Aubrey grabbed my arm and started to shift me out of there. Before he could engage the shift, a familiar face emerged from the swirling charcoal-gray gloom beyond the door, and a small hand yanked me out of Aubrey’s grip and into the Shadows.

The last thing I heard as the door slammed shut was Aubrey calling my name, and my sister’s horrified screams as she fought the devil’s pets for her life.

Chapter Sixteen

Back to the Shadows

The shadows move, the shadows roil, and ever do they heat,

Our heroine can’t catch her breath, or get her heart to beat.

The grip on my arm was intense. A heated body pressed along my side and another heart beat close to mine. The sound throbbed through the dense thickness of the Shadows, multiplying as it hit the wall of gray and coming back to us muffled and weak.

I turned to Brina and opened my mouth to ask what the hell she was doing, but she shook her head, silencing me.

I looked around, straining my vision, but saw nothing. The soft, moist heat of the Shadows clawed at my lungs. The thick wall of gray pressed against my heart, slowing its beat. My skin tingled with awareness of danger nearby, the reaction pure human fear, and I found it difficult to move my feet.

Brina pulled me slowly through the roiling nothingness, her fingers on my arm painful. Even through the taut expectation that boiled naturally among the Shadows, I could feel her tension.

A dark shape hurled toward us and Brina jerked my arm, sending me sprawling along the cold, hard ground. She sent a jolt of black power into the thing and a single cry thumped along the waves of mist.

She stood over me for a beat and then reached a hand, twitching her fingers. I grabbed the hand and let her pull me to my feet.

We moved again. My head swiveled as we walked but trying to see anything in the boiling charcoal gray was giving me a headache and proving fruitless. When Brina jerked on my wrist to stop me I halted immediately, forced to trust her instincts.

She turned to me, lowering her head to speak quietly. Her soft breath feathered across my face, the sweet scent reminding me of our little sidebar in Mx. Diamon’s guest bed. Even without my Settling, the memory made my thighs tighten with need. “We’re okay for the moment.”

“What the hell’s going on, Brina? Why did you pull me into the Shadows? And what’s happening back there…at Crisanne’s house?”

“Hell on Earth is happening back there. Crisanne had evil woven into the fabric of that house. Once the door opened it was all released. I pulled you here because Crisanne was coming for you. I got to you first. I brought you to the Shadows because it was the only place I could think of where we could hide until I figured out how to get you your powers back.”

I stood there for a beat, trying to assimilate everything she’d just told me. Something I’d been turning over in my mind was gaining focus as I listened to Brina speak. Finally, I said, “I have an idea about my powers, but we’ll have to face off with Crisanne for it to work.”

Brina shook her head. “There’s no way we’re letting her find us until we locate the king.”

My eyes widened. Dialle! I’d forgotten he was there. “Yes, we need to find Dialle.” But then I realized how much danger he’d be in if he were involved. I grabbed her arm. “Does he know Crisanne is prowling the Shadows?”

Brina frowned. “I do not know. But the sooner we find the royal soldiers the better.”

I couldn’t agree more. So we started off again.

We’d been walking for what felt like hours. I don’t know how long we’d actually been in the Shadows because time, like reality, was distorted there. In reaction to the distortion, my heartbeat had actually slowed to the point where I was having trouble breathing and I kept stumbling over my own feet.

I’d felt as if I couldn’t see anything there before, when I still had my powers. Without my ability to see auras I realized how blind I really was. The few times we’d passed too close to danger, Brina had had to stop me and warn me to stay silent.

Staying quiet is not an easy task when you’re blowing air like a space buffalo running from a Martian bow hunter.

But I’d been seeing a small brightness in the distance for several moments, and as we kept walking it was growing larger and closer. When I finally recognized it as a light in the window of a house, I moved faster, hoping we’d find some answers there.

A large black shape loomed up suddenly on my left and I stopped with a sharp intake of breath.

When the shape didn’t move I realized it was a structure. If I squinted I could just barely make out half-rotted gray wood with the occasional spot of faded paint on it. I sniffed and recognized the rotting taint of a place I’d been recently. I looked at Brina. “The old house on Crisanne’s property.”

“Yes.”

My gaze lifted to the light in the distance. “That would be Crisanne’s tree house.”

It wasn’t a question but she answered it anyway. “Yes.”

We’d come full circle.

And we’d reached the exact place where we needed to be.

Each and every place in the real world has a counterpart in the Shadows. But while they were juxtaposed in form and function, geographic location is not ordered in the Shadows as it is in the real world. So the only way to be sure of getting from the real world version of a place to the Shadow version, and vice versa, unless you’re a dark worlder who’s tuned into the place on an unfathomable level, is to enter one from the other.

Since Brina pulled me out of the real world tree house into the Shadows, I would probably never have found the Shadows tree house without her help.

And to get back home, well, I’d need to find the portal from inside the house. Or hitch a ride with a dark worlder.

I glanced at Brina. “Someday you’ll have to tell me how you dark-world types manage to navigate this horrible place so well.”

She shrugged, giving me a soft smile in return. “It is our place. Designed for those who live among the shadows in life. Our blood sings here. Of course we mold its form to our own purposes.”

Alrighty then. I guessed I wasn’t ever going to know how to get around in the Shadows.

I could live with that.

I started toward the light, almost forgetting my anchor in my enthusiasm. I suddenly knew Dialle would be in that house. Because the Pukas would be in that house. And Crisanne would be in that house.

And, as an added bonus, the Shadows tree house was my way back to the real world. And, if I was very lucky, that was where I’d get my power back.

At the base of the tree, Brina grabbed my wrist and bent her knees. Before I knew what she had planned, she jumped, pulling me high into the air with her. I’d been expecting to be space shifted into the house and yelped in surprise as I went airborne through the mist.

Brina shushed me as we landed softly on the wooden walkway in front of an unpainted wooden door.

“Sorry,” I whispered harshly, “I wasn’t expecting that.”

“It isn’t wise to space shift in the Shadows, the magic runs amok here. You never know where you’ll end up.”

Didn’t I know it.

She stood in front of the wood door and looked at me. “Are you ready?”

I pulled my sword from its sheath along my back and nodded. “Open it.”

The doorknob turned with a creak and Brina shoved it inward. I watched her carefully but couldn’t see her pulling her power forward, though I knew she must have. We were entering a viper pit so deep and so dangerous even the vipers would be leery of entering.

Her pretty black eyes widened and her lush lips dropped open.

I peered around her, expecting the place to be empty as it had been on the other side.

But I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The room looked as if it would have been furnished the same as it had been on the other side. Except that the furniture was all in timbers and swatches, with puffs of stuffing floating across the floor like dust bunnies.

The windows were all broken out, allowing thick wisps of dense mist to swirl inside and infuse the room with heat and lung-clogging moisture.

Two men sat on the floor across from the door, their faces battered and bloody. They were small, wiry-muscled creatures with fine features and dense orange hair with dark-gray stripes.

The Pukas.

At least one of them was still alive, though his eyes were dull and he hunched against the wall like an empty husk. The two men leaned against each other and I saw that their hands were clasped.

I pushed against Brina’s back and she stepped inside. I stepped in too, and my gaze swept the room, looking for Dialle.

A thick mound of armor and scaly red skin caught my attention and I hurried over to kneel beside Gerch. Slipping my sword back into its sheath, I ran my hands over him.

Horror tightened my throat. A tear slipped from my eyes and landed on Gerch’s dented armor. He wasn’t moving, didn’t appear to be breathing and his body trailed green blood in thick rivulets all around where he lay. I glanced at Brina. “Get him out of here, back to the court healers.”

She shook her head. “I cannot. I promised the king I would watch over you at all times.”

And another piece of the puzzle dropped into place. Dialle had given Brina to me. Apparently he’d known he couldn’t trust Milc.

“That’s an order, Brina! He’s near enough dead already. I won’t watch this loyal soldier die without trying to save him, do you understand me?”

Something soft passed over her features as she looked at me. Something I’d never seen before from a member of the Royal Court. Something that looked a little like respect.

Finally, she inclined her head. “I will be gone only moments, my queen. You must hide until I return.”

I nodded, anxious for her to save Gerch. “Hurry. I’m not sure he’s breathing.”

“You must promise me.”

“I promise! Now go!”

She scooped the massive lower devil into her slim arms as if he weighed no more than a sack of flour and then popped away.

I sniffed and looked at the Pukas. Their dark-orange eyes stared blankly in my direction. I stood up and walked across the room, touching the older one on a thin, bloodied knee. “Your majesty?”

Slowly, with exquisite deliberation, the orange eyes blinked a response. I nodded. “I’ve come to help you. When the Royal who just left returns I will send her away with you and your consort. The healers at the court of Dialle the Second will take care of you.”

Tears swelled in his orange eyes and drifted down pale-gray cheeks. I glanced at his consort and saw lifeless eyes and a pallid grayness that wasn’t natural.

Even for a Puka.

I was afraid the consort was already dead. There was nothing I could do about that except feel really bad that I hadn’t gotten there sooner.

Patting the king on his knee, I stood and looked around. The door at the top of the landing was closed and I looked toward it wistfully. If things were as they should be, that door would lead me back to my world.

But I couldn’t go there yet. I had to find Dialle and bring him back with me.

As I stood there in an uncomfortable silence, I heard a strange noise coming from the bedroom. Scratching sounds.

I pulled my sword and slipped silently through the debris-strewn place, toward the open door that had led to the bedroom on the other side. Stopping just outside the door, I wished fervently that I had some powers to wrap myself in for protection.

Clutching the sword in two hands, I took a breath and stepped around the doorframe.

A long, elegant body lay draped across the floor, the face hidden beneath a shiny curtain of silky black hair. I gasped, panic coursing through me.

Dialle!

Forgetting about Crisanne, I lowered my sword and ran toward the fallen Royal. Kneeling beside him, I settled my sword on the floor and reached for his shoulder, gently pushing him over.

“We meet again, Tweener.”

I jumped, turning, and found myself staring into the beautiful, cold face of my arch nemesis.

“Evil Barbie. Why am I not surprised to see you here.”

Rayanne blinked and looked down, laughing. “Oh. Sorry. I forgot to change.” Her form shimmered, darkened and grew shorter, becoming Crisanne.

And yet another piece of the puzzle snapped into frame.

“So that was you in Nerul’s death chamber that day?”

She smiled. “I’ve been with you nearly every moment of every day for a week, Astra. Pity you haven’t recognized me.”

Her form shimmered and she became the pain-loving witch, Astis.

Shock battered me.

Stars burst before my gaze and I stood, staggering backward. My sword was in my hand, though I didn’t remember picking it up. Although it was hard to look unaffected when you were stumbling backward in horror, I gave it my best shot. “You’ve been busy.”

“You know what they say about idle hands…” She laughed, the sound hitting the thickening mist like crystal breaking against wool.

“The devil’s plaything? Little do the humans know how relevant that statement really is.” I looked down at Dialle. “Is this your work?”

She glanced down at the fallen Royal, her gaze cold. “He actually believed I wanted to rule the court with him.” She laughed. “Men can be so stupid. Why would I take the court jester when I can taste the king?” Her gaze lifted. “I had hoped I could announce my betrothal to your sexy king when you arrived. But, alas, he proved too quick for me.” She cocked her head. “I’m sure he’ll come for you as soon as he learns you’re here.” Her smile made my stomach churn. “Until then, we’ll just sit tight and wait for him.”

I scooted toward the door but it slammed shut behind me. Alrighty then. Distraction was in order. “So you kidnapped the Puka King and his consort? I suppose you were my client Mx. Davis too?”

“Very good, Astra. You get a black star.”

I nodded, my gaze sliding around the space, looking for something that might save me. “You kidnapped the Pukas, hoping to set Dialle up as Sovereign. Then you thought to get rid of me and join him in the power, become his new queen?”