Pretty Dark Sacrifice (20 page)

Tingles of electricity coursed up her arm as she pulled the box free. The same runes that had flown through the air now adorned the wood. They blazed bright against her pale skin as she traced them with a finger. A bright flash made her blink, and then the symbols faded, leaving nothing but scorched marks along the sides and the top.

Six inches long and four inches deep, the box looked wooden but had the weight of stone. The sides and top were worn smooth except for the now darkened symbols engraved on the domed top and across the sides. Petrified black with bits of dark mossy green and light gray running with the grain, it looked old, an artifact that should have been displayed behind museum glass instead of at the bottom of the river.

A memory of a forgotten dream fluttered to the surface of her mind. Aaron handing her a box just like this one, an angel with wings the color of molten lava standing against a dark wasteland, a horde of demons at his back. Finding this box on the bank near where Aaron drowned had to be a sign.

“Aaron?” Rubbing her arms against the sudden electrical charge in the atmosphere, she straightened.

The air before her shimmered and thickened as every molecule around her prickled in anticipation. Before falling asleep each night, she imagined what she would say when she came face to face with him again, but as Aaron’s essence manifested into being, her heart held her words captive.

“Quinn. Thank God you’re here.” Two strides, and he closed the gap between them, standing so close she could see the rise and fall of his chest beneath his shirt. Ripped and soiled clothes clung to his pale, thin frame, and his hair hung in long black cords around his ears. Like Quinn, he was a soul outside a solid body, but his spirit took on his earthly form.

“Aaron? Is it really you? Are you okay? What happened to you?” All the questions Quinn had been holding in spilled out at once. “Are you hurt?” What she really wanted to know was, was he dead? The word choked her, and she didn’t dare ask for fear of the answer. A thousand apologies ran through her head, none of them right, none of them good enough. She wanted to pull him into a kiss, to wrap her fingers through his hair, to hold him and never let go, but all she could do was stare into his bright green eyes. “I thought I would never see you again,” she sobbed.

“Me neither.” The essence of Aaron’s hand brushed a tear from her cheek, and she flinched. Something about his touch felt off, wrong.

“Quinn. It’s me.” Aaron frowned. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Quinn tried to smile, but she couldn’t suppress the dread rising in the back of her throat. “This place, it’s just unnerving.” She forced herself to stay still as he came closer, his eyes wandering from her face to the box in her hand.

“Where did you get that?” Aaron cocked his head, and a deep hunger pushed against Quinn’s essence. She clutched the box to her chest and took a step back.

“Here, between the realms. It was buried over there in the riverbed. The storms must have washed it in from the Gulf.”

“Can I see it?” Aaron grabbed for the box, and she pivoted just out of reach. Something about the way he smiled, the left side of his mouth slightly twisted, forced, frightened her. Afraid of Aaron? Ridiculous. Aaron would never hurt her.

“Don’t you trust me?” Aaron asked. The pained look on his face broke her heart. Of course, he could sense her distrust, as she sensed his hurt at her betrayal, through this strange link they had.

“Of course I trust you.” Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to relax and held the box out to him. Before he could touch it, a spark of lightning leapt from it to his essence, and he drew away his hand.

“Damn thing bites,” Aaron hissed and rubbed the place where he’d been shocked.

“Never mind the box.” Quinn tucked it into the pocket of her hoodie and out of sight. “Where are you? What happened?”

Aaron looked into the woods behind them and ran a hand across the back of his neck. “The Underworld. I don’t know how I got here, Quinn. I’m scared. She’s holding me prisoner.” He hunched his shoulders and lowered his voice. “I think she’s going to kill me. I can’t take any more of her torture.”

“Who?”

“Lilith,” he whispered. “The demons call her The Dark Mother.” His voice, ragged and full of fear, pierced her to the very core.

“Demons?” Cold dread prickled at the base of her spine.

He nodded, and she sensed his fear and pain.

“You don’t know what it’s cost me to get to you. She’s powerful, more powerful than me. Every time I try to make contact with you, she … ” he swallowed, “ … stops me.” The way he said “stops me” froze Quinn’s blood. “Something distracted her, and I managed to sneak away. I wasn’t sure you would hear me. I tried so many times before.” He shivered.

“How do I get you out? There must be away.”

“I think there is. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. We’re connected. I felt it that day I fell into your nightmare. I didn’t understand it then, but I know now.” Aaron’s eyes flicked to either side. The ground rumbled beneath them. “Oh, God. She’s found me. It’s not safe. You have to go. She knows.”

“No. I’m not leaving you.” Heat spread through Quinn as lightning crackled through her, filling her with dread. Another quake opened up small cracks around them, and the tether binding them started to unravel.

“Those demons you saw, they’re nothing compared to what’s down here. Please, Quinn. You have to help me. I’m scared. I want to come home. To you.” Aaron’s green eyes filled with tears, and Quinn swiped at her own cheek. “You don’t know what she’s capable of. You have to get me out of here, please. You’re the only one who can.”

Panic clamped Quinn’s stomach at the thought of losing him again, but she was powerless against the forces bent on ripping them apart. Not now, not yet. There were so many missing pieces she needed him to fill in, but the thread that bound them grew thinner and thinner with each passing second.

“Please, Quinn. Promise you’ll come for me,” he begged. His fear, cold and hard, sliced against her essence, and she wrapped her arms around him, as if that could anchor him to her forever. The tremors were getting stronger, making it hard to stay on their feet. “I don’t know how much longer I can last.”

“You have to hang on until I find a way.” She touched her forehead to his. “I’ll come for you. I swear.”

Another quake ripped a gash beneath his feet, and he screamed.

“Aaron!” Quinn grasped for him, but she wasn’t fast enough. Her fingers found nothing but dust as his face, twisted in fear, disappeared into the gaping darkness below, and the hole snapped shut.

“No!” Quinn beat her fists on the ground. “What do you want? I’ll give you whatever you want if you bring him back.”

The world around her growled and shook, violent and angry. Dark gashes, like thick fissures of ink, scarred the entire sepia landscape. Shadows swarmed from the cracks and crawled out from the abyss. Their essences pushed against hers, agitated, excited. She was a fly, the encroaching darkness like two hands converging to trap her inside. No time to think, she had to get back to her body, but ever-widening fissures ate away the land between her essence and her flesh.

Muscles tense, she ran. A tendril of fog exploded next to her. Dodge to the left, roll to the right. Instinct took over fear. Her body sat less than six feet away now. A crack opened in front of her and her essence leapt, landing an inch from the edge. Three feet. Almost there.

She glanced over her shoulder. A dozen or more demons, different from the ones she’d seen before, were closing in. She’d never seen anything so frightening. All the demons she’d met up until now looked like sweet kittens compared to these. With their approach, the box shivered and knocked against her, making it impossible to hold, and it tumbled from her pocket and across the ground. Quinn scrambled after it, catching it with the tips of her fingers, and she shoved it back into the pocket of her hoodie.

Another burst of speed, and she slid into home, but coming out of her body was much easier than going back in. Knee to knee, finger to finger, nose to nose, no matter what she did, her essence would not merge back into her flesh.

Please let me back in. Please.

The demons were closer now, mere feet from her and Marcus. Elongated bodies, roughly the size and shape of a Doberman Pinscher, were held up by ten long, spider-like legs. Red-needled spikes poked through bruise-colored, armored skin. Their tails curled above them like a scorpion’s, menacing and dangerous. Quinn didn’t want to think what kind of poison they might carry. She could sense their intent: they would attack, and she was too vulnerable with her guard down. Torn between fear and desire, she wrestled with the urge to flee, but where would she go?

Hundreds of faceted, red eyes gleamed around her. Giant pincers protruded below them, clicking and clacking as they scurried closer and closer. Tears poured down her cheeks. She tried to quiet her mind, to focus, but her failure spurred them on. Inches separated them, their rotting smell choking her. She had no choice. He wouldn’t be happy that she’d been trying to contact Aaron, but she didn’t know what else to do.

She formed his name on her lips and screamed her psychic call for help.

“Azrael!”

His named boomed like a shockwave, silencing the clattering of the demons as they stopped to look at the sky. Quinn looked, too. Half a dozen golden lights ripped through the smoky blackness.

Azrael, followed by five other angels dressed in armor, hurled downward into the waiting throng. Azrael landed in front of Quinn, his swords flashing blue and gold against the sepia sky, and shouted commands in a language that sounded like something the elves spoke in
The Lord of the Rings
. The small angel army advanced, swooping down and raking their weapons across the backs of the scorpion-like demons. The demons spit cannonballs of glowing red poison from their pincers, but the angels were nimble and quick, evading the balls of fire by banking left and right, coming in from new angles, wearing them out.

“Stay behind me. And for all that is holy and good, get back inside your body and get your shields up!” Azrael’s face was all sharp edges, and his voice hard as flint.

“I can’t,” Quinn pleaded. “I don’t know how I came out of it in the first place.

The look on Azrael’s face said it all. She was in big trouble now. Before she could say anything in her defense, his hand connected with her essence and shoved it backward. Being forced back into her body felt like being squeezed into a too-tight dress, restrictive and oppressive. Her essence squirmed and writhed under her flesh, trying to readjust to being tied up inside skin, muscle, and bone again.

“Sometimes I think you are more trouble than you’re worth.” Azrael bowed before her and shot into the sky to join the others in battle. As the two sides collided, the insects’ screams were like the twisted metal of two cars crashing. Swords gleamed with blue and gold.

A rainbow of colors whirled with her, the human realm coming back to life around her. She heard Marcus suck in a breath, his hands warm beneath hers as her eyes flew open.

“What the hell?” Marcus stared at her. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost? Did it work? I didn’t see anything? What’s that?” Marcus pointed to the box lying in her lap. “It looks like something my grandmother would buy at a flea market.”

Suddenly aware of the cold, Quinn’s whole body quaked and her teeth chattered. Marcus grabbed a bag of chips from the backpack and began munching as if they were on a picnic.

“Man, all this medium, hocus-pocus stuff has made me hungry. Should we take silence as a failure or a success?” Marcus shoved another fistful of chips into his mouth, unaware of the battle raging around them.

Behind him, one of the demons reared up on two of its hind legs. An angel with silver-green wings dive-bombed it, hacking off three of its legs. The demon howled in rage as it fell on its face, body twisting in pain while its unattached appendages flapped and flailed around it. Purple goo spurted from the demon’s wounds, covering the angel, teeth bared, as he delivered the killing blow, turning the demon into ash. Then he was off in a flash of green and gold and on to his next target. He looked totally in his element, ready to take on all the evil in the world with a smile and a laugh.

“So what’s next?” Marcus asked. “We could try a real medium.” The angels were too busy to notice that a shadow had detached itself from one of the lifeless legs, but Quinn watched in horror as it slithered over Marcus’s shoulder.

“Mm-Marcus,” she stuttered. “I need you to give me your hands.”

“What? You want to hold my hand again? Did you like it that much?”

“Please, trust me. Give me your hands, now.”

He grinned, offering her an upturned palm just as the shadow darted into his ear. His eyes went wide, the whites filling with oil as the demon took hold, and he dropped the bag of chips, crumbs spilling down his sweatshirt and across the rock.

Quinn pushed her barrier up, extending it out in a wide arc. Marcus shuddered as light inched along his arm like a golden glove. Her body trembled with exertion as she tried to expel the demon’s essence, but it was wrapped tightly around Marcus’s, so much so that Quinn couldn’t tell where the demon ended and Marcus began. Not to mention the fact that she had no idea what its name was. Without its name, she couldn’t expel it from Marcus’s body.