Once Bitten, Twice Shy (32 page)

With only seconds to spare before somebody figured out their sacrifice had grown a spine, I sprinted from puddle to puddle, lighting them up like road flares behind me. When I was done, a fence of noxious flame trapped Liliana and the Tor. Both of them screamed at Bozcowski, Aidyn, Assan, the crowd, not one of whom had thought to stock the dungeon with a fire extinguisher.

I had one more moment to grab a second torch from the wall before the bad guys reorganized. Behind me, the Tor and Liliana cringed against the back wall as putrid green flames licked the air and pronounced it kindling. I held the torches out in front of me and the crowd backed up. I took a step forward. They retreated another step, their shoes squelching in a puddle of mire large enough to hold fifteen pairs of feet.

"I'll bet you guys didn't know I went through college on a track scholarship," I said, glaring into their flushed and wary faces as they tried to figure out how to surround me. "For javelin."

I tossed the right-hand torch up in the air, caught it in an overhand grip and launched it at their feet. The puddle ignited instantly, catching a woman's skirt and a man's sleeve.

The crowd stampeded, throwing their burning brethren into the muck as they went, stomping bones along with the flames. They reached the stairs as a herd, scrambling over each other to reach the top. Men cursed, women screamed, people fell, got up and jumped back on. Bozcowski, Aidyn, Assan and I watched, spectators at a train wreck. Then Assan shook his statue at me.

"You're dead," he croaked, advancing on me slowly.

I nodded grimly. "You don't know how right you are."

He stopped, not sure what to make of this. Aidyn and Bozcowski tried to flank me. I waved the torch at them. "Don't. Move."

Behind them the crowd's roar doubled. The men turned to look, so I risked a peek as well. The Deganites were backing, tripping, falling down the stairs in the face of a pair of space-age guns held by Cole and Bergman. As those two cleared the stairs and began to round up the Deganites, they were joined by Vayl, leaning just slightly on his cane, and Cassandra, holding the key in one outstretched hand. In her other hand, the Enkyklios was transforming, its marbled parts rolling into the shape of an hourglass. She was already chanting, and I risked a look behind me to see if the Tor had heard her call. Evidently she had. Despite the heat of the fire that trapped her, she'd pulled away from the wall and risen to her full height, her eyes glued to the key.

The screech of buckling metal drew my attention back to the stairs. Cole and Bergman had made it to floor level with their prisoners. Vayl and Cassandra had reached the fourth stair when the whole structure collapsed. Vayl tried to balance Cassandra, but she lurched out of his hands and onto the floor, averting her face just in time to miss the taste of mud and flammable gases. A portion of the stair glanced off her head and shoulder, the artifacts flew free and her chant ceased.

Holy crap
! My heart froze as I looked back at the Tor. She'd fallen to her hands and knees, was lapping Liliana's tainted blood out of the offering bowls, one after another.

"Cassandra!" I yelled, "Hurry! Get control!"

Assan chose that moment to attack, rushing me like a crazed linebacker. I never could've met that mad attack full on, but then I never meant to. I faked a run to the right until he committed to that direction, then I came back left and connected with a leg sweep that sent him sprawling. I moved toward him, meaning to follow up with a bone-crushing kick to the skull, but Vayl's voice stopped me, "Jaz! Behind you!"

I spun around in time to see Liliana launch herself over the wall of flame, which was vastly shorter now than it had been a moment before. The Tor's chuckle of triumph told me she might've had something to do with that. I tried to dodge out of Liliana's path, but stepped into deep, thick mud. It grabbed at my shoe, slowing me just enough that Liliana's nails grazed my neck as she landed, reopening the wounds Vayl's fangs had made.

"Now I've got you!" she exulted, keeping her distance as I desperately jabbed the torch at her. Assan struggled to his feet and drew his sword. His eyes were on the trickles of blood running down my neck into the collar of my shirt as he said, "Now, Jasmine. Now is your time to die."
Son of a bitch
!

Liliana began to circle me, her expression a study in satisfaction. Assan followed suit. "It looks as if our rat is finally cornered," she told him. "Shall we play a bit before we take her soul?" He grinned and nodded, licking his lips as if he was about to sit down to a luscious feast.

As I turned to keep Liliana and Assan in full view, I could see Vayl and Aidyn over their shoulders, struggling for possession of the key Cassandra had dropped. The Enkyklios sat forgotten, half-buried in gook. Something about the scene it played called to me, and I narrowed my eyes, trying to discern details I was too far away to see. Vayl distracted me, shooting the sheath off his cane just as Aidyn threw a punch that connected with his shoulder. The missile flew off course, missing Aidyn completely, but hitting Assan in the back of the head, taking him directly to his knees and over onto his side.

Liliana didn't even spare him a glance as she said, "You must admit I have the upper hand, Jasmine. Perhaps
now
you would like to hand over Cirilai? No? Well then." She held both hands out, as if she meant to grab me by the shoulders. Then she closed her fists.

The vice gripped my heart so suddenly, so painfully, that I screamed. It felt as if she'd actually sunk her claws into my chest and squeezed. But that wasn't the worst of it. The worst part was that I couldn't catch a full breath, just shallow pants that made me even more desperate for air. A moment's release allowed me one whopping inhale, then the vice closed again, bending me backwards, bringing tears to my eyes. Through the numbing wall of blood and panic that pressed against my body I heard the sharp crack of a rifle shot. The Deganites screamed and the vice around my heart dropped away.

I looked up from where I'd been crouching, one hand on my chest, the other on my thigh, trying to prevent a full-body muck bath while the torch sputtered on the ground beside me. I had a moment to be grateful nothing else had caught fire as I searched for the source of the shot. Cole was swinging his gun back around, training it on the Deganites, though he spared me a look that could've meant anything. I read it as a command.
I've done my part. Now stand up and do yours
.

Liliana stood swaying, hands out for balance, the hole in her chest a bloody blob of muscle and bone. I grabbed the torch. It flickered to life as I raised it and leapt toward her. She held her hands out as if to resist me, but the injury left her too weak to maintain even token resistance. At the last moment I flipped the torch in my hand and rammed the jagged handle into the opening Cole had left for me. Liliana clutched the torch and staggered backwards, the shock and denial on her face lit by yellow and orange flames. Then her face was nothing more than a ghostly shadow made of smoke and steam as the remnants of her physical being fell to the floor, a heap of clothes and fake hair with a few particles of dust and ashes mixed in.

I moved past Bozcowski, who was digging in the mud, apparently under the impression that we were in the middle of trench warfare. "Where is it? I thought I saw it fall over here. Where is the key?" he kept asking himself. I was pretty sure he was in the wrong spot, so I went to help Vayl, inwardly cheering as he delivered a smashing uppercut that lifted Aidyn completely off the floor and threw him five yards back. A black slash at his throat revealed how close Vayl had already come to taking his head. Then Assan rose to block my way.

"Oh, no you don't," he muttered, holding his sword out before him with both hands, "I still have plans for you."

"It won't work, Assan. I'm not a willing sacrifice."

"But you were once, and like most contracts, supernatural or otherwise, the word given to seal the deal is the one that counts."

I felt an immense, fiery hatred for this miniscule pile of bones and trash that had dared to masquerade as a loving husband, a charitable soul. I would disarm him with a couple of well-placed kicks. Then I would disembowel him with his own sword which, as I eyed it, seemed more and more familiar. Where had I seen it? And recently too.

He jabbed at me, forcing me to back up, to close the distance between the Tor-al-Degan, still trapped behind a knee-high wall of flame, and myself. Then I suddenly had it.

"The Enkyklios," I breathed.

"The what?"

The scene that had played out just beyond my vision had involved the sword. Someone, a tiny blurred figure shining with sweat, covered with blood, had fought the Tor-al-Degan with Assan's sword.

"I need that sword," I told him.

"Don't worry, you'll get it." His smile, white and gold teeth gleaming from a face half-caked with mud and grime, made him look purely demonic.

"Then come give it to me," I demanded.

"I was never one to turn down a beautiful woman's invitation."

I'll bet
. I glanced over his head. Vayl had Aidyn down on his knees, one hand at his throat, the other holding his wrist, pressing hard, trying to squeeze a dagger out of his grip. He leaned over, inhaled deeply, opened his mouth and breathed icy air into Aidyn's face. I saw Aidyn's skin begin to crackle and darken. Meanwhile Bozcowski had moved to another mudhole in his desperate search for the key. Then Assan demanded my full attention.

He charged straight at me, sword held high before him. "Run bitch!" he screamed. "Run from your fate!"

"Now why in the world do you think I'd take your advice?" I asked him. Utter disbelief crowded the rage from his eyes as he saw I meant to stand my ground. But he didn't stop. He came steamrolling toward me, mud flying from his ruined shoes, sword cocked and ready for a killing blow. Still I let him come, and just as he began to make the cut I jumped at him, coming in under the arc of his swing, giving the blade only air and a small slice of my calf, not even enough to sting until later.

Remembering every tip I'd ever heard Albert give David during his high school football days, I went in low, head up so I could see, catching Assan just above his right hip, driving him backwards into a pillar. When I heard the air whoosh from his lungs I grabbed his right wrist and twisted while I drove my other hand hard into the back of his elbow. His agonized scream told me I'd done the move right. From there it was easy to tear the sword from his grip and drive him to his knees. He hit the mud one last time, cupping his broken arm with his whole one. I swung the sword hard and straight, taking his head so cleanly that it stayed on his neck for a teetering moment before it toppled off, hitting the mud a second before his body followed.

Twenty feet beyond my left shoulder, Vayl had also found a use for one of the pillars. He slammed Aidyn into one and the resulting crack surely signaled a fractured skull. Then he looked at me. "This is your kill, Jasmine. I have been saving him for you. Come—" Words failed him as his eyes tracked away from mine,
behind
me, and the horrified expression on his face told me nothing, nothing, nothing, ever goes as planned.

I turned on one heel to find the Tor-al-Degan standing inches away, her reeking breath making me feel like I'd just entered a sewage pipe. I jumped back and she smiled, revealing at least three rows of graying teeth, all of which looked shark sharp.

"Cassandra!" I yelled, "center-stage, girl! Reel this monster in!" I risked a look back and wished I hadn't. While Cole guarded the prisoners, Bergman struggled to help Cassandra sit up. She looked ill, like somebody had slipped raw eggs into her morning juice. Vayl fared only slightly better. Aidyn had taken advantage of his momentary distraction to disarm him. Now they were duking it out like old-school boxers, standing toe-to-toe, delivering blows that would've sent most men to their knees.

Only Bozcowski continued as before, a frustrated pirate digging for treasure.

I looked back at the Tor, a wave of despair dulling my vision, making my mouth taste of metal and grave dust. I felt my shoulders slump, watched my sword arm drop.

"This is how it will feel when I eat your soul," the Tor whispered. "Everything that was good and glad in you will nourish me, bring me full into this tasty, luscious world of yours where I will eat, and eat, and eat…" She subsided, glassy-eyed, smiling hellishly at the prospect of such a meal.

In that moment she reminded me strongly of a balding, thick-lipped serial killer Vayl and I had recently dispatched. He'd worn that same expression right before we blew his brains all over the wall. I wanted to call it an omen, but it was too late for that. I laughed bitterly.

As soon as my laughter hit the air I felt better, and knew she'd been bewitching me. I'd just been so focused on Cassandra and Vayl I hadn't noticed my magic-meter spiking.

"You laugh," said the Tor, "why?"

"Because you won't be able to squeeze enough joy out of my soul to qualify as an anorexic's dinner." I shoved the sword into her and she screamed, her rotten-egg breath burning my nostrils, making me gag. She staggered backward and I pulled the sword free. As she turned to run I struck again, slicing into her slithering hump, my sword sliding through it easily until it lodged in her spine. She screamed again, but when she turned to look at me over her shoulder she wore an evil grin.

"Gotcha." In that one word her voice tipped the scale from old hag to nether-being. At the same time her ripped gown fell to her feet. The whole room got a nightmare glimpse of sagging, pustule-covered skin and then all hell broke loose.

Surely if Dante could've seen the rock-lined pit under Club Undead he'd have thought it an accurate depiction of at least one of his many hells. Lit by torches and burning bits of floor, the Tor-al-Degan's current residence stank of flammable gases, blood, vomit and outright evil. It also rang with the voices of her worshipers, who'd agreed it would be a bright idea to summon her fully into our realm—a big, bad carnivore who saw the entire world as her Little Red Riding Hood.