To Hell and Back (Hellcat Series Book 4) (31 page)

Athena put her hands out to the empty air. “All I can do is
bring it down,” Athena told her a second later. “It would be better
if they did that, but then the demons could overwhelm
us.”

Gabi nodded understanding.

“
You and Benedict will have to work fast,” she warned the
Magus. She checked that Fergus had their defence under control, and
prayed Kyle and Alexander had the Dark Ones occupied; then she
opened her mind to Julius and yelled at him. She could see him now,
though he was facing away from her. She watched his body twitch;
then he moved himself so that he could see her. His face was a mask
of strain and annoyance. Gabi had the feeling the annoyance was
directed at her. She grinned impudently and made a knock-knock
motion with her free hand. His lips thinned, and he nudged Benedict
with an elbow. Benedict turned to them too, his grin a little more
welcoming. A small space had opened up around them as the demons
realised just how deadly Fergus was. Julius held up three fingers.
Gabi nodded understanding.

“
Ready in three,” she yelled at the other two, then redoubled
her attack on a small tentacled creature trying to wind its
slithery appendages around her ankles. Suddenly the power near her
vortexed, swirling viciously enough to pull her off balance as it
withdrew. Athena and Gabi flew over the empty space, Athena nearly
crashing into Benedict as she rushed to explain what she needed
from him. Gabi went to Julius a little slower and planted herself
at his side while the demons who weren’t being chopped up by Fergus
milled around, wondering if they could now approach.

“
What the hell are you doing here?” Julius asked
her.

“
Well, I’m not in shining armour, and I’m not on a horse,”
Gabi said, “but I’d thought I’d come to the rescue
anyway.”

Julius’s lips thinned. “What’s she doing here?” he inclined
his head towards Athena, but didn’t take his eyes off the
demons.

“
Come to banish the Wraith,” Gabi explained.

Julius just nodded; the demons had begun edging warily closer.
Gabi moved away from his side a little, giving them both room to
fight. Fergus broke away from the edge of the horde and backed up
to take up a position in front of Athena and Benedict.

“
Can you see Kyle?” Gabi called over her shoulder to
him.

“
Aye,” Fergus rumbled. “He’s ’eading over this way noo. He’s
got a wee human with him, but I doon think it’s one of
them.”

“
What’s he doing?” Julius asked.

“
Covering us from the Dark Ones,” Gabi explained. “Didn’t want
them shooting or throwing magic at us from the shadows.”

A loud keening howl began, and the Seeker raised its cloaked
arms towards the ceiling of the cave.

“
Oh. Shit,” Gabi said with feeling.

“
What?” Julius demanded.

“
I think it’s trying to collapse the cave on us,” she replied,
throwing a chin in the Seeker’s direction.

“
Oh Gods,” Julius breathed, also glancing the Seeker’s way.
“Benedict, hurry.”

“
The rest are coming, Julius,” Benedict yelled over his
shoulder. “Use the fire; I can magnify it.”

Gabi dragged her gaze off the Seeker to see the remnants of
the demon force closing in quickly.

“
Fire?” she asked, confused, but not daring to glance Julius’s
way, readying herself for the demons. She could feel Julius’s
uncertainty, but then his resolve hardened. The power radiating
from him swirled faster, suddenly giving off a sense of stinging
heat, as though tiny sparks of flame were hitting her exposed face.
She was forced to move another step away from him. She heard him
pull in a deep breath, and felt some kind of electric zing between
him and Benedict. Athena’s quiet chant continued, unrelenting, and
the closest demons were just a few feet away. Gabi raised Nex,
palming a second sword in her left hand, and then a wall of flames
taller than her and at least a foot deep leapt to life two feet in
front of her.

“
Holy smoke,” Gabi yelped, backing up a step from the searing
heat.

The nearest demons couldn’t halt their forward progress
quickly enough and ran into it. Instantly they began an unearthly,
keening yowl, surging back and batting wildly at the flames that
now encompassed their bodies, feeding on their clothing, weapons,
body hair, anything combustible. Gabi looked around, her mouth
open; she could feel the heat on her tongue. The wall of magical
fire surrounded them in a tight circle. Demons on all sides were
suffering the same plight. The forerunners’ crazed flailing around
quickly passed the fire to others near them; within seconds they
were all reeling around in apparent agony.

Gabi forced her open mouth closed just as the original flames
began to splutter and die out. She turned to Julius just in time to
see him sway. Gabi dropped the spare sword to shove a shoulder
under his right arm. His lack of protest to her support caused her
heart to beat a little faster in her chest. She looked up at him to
see sweat running down his face. His eyes were glazed, and he was
breathing in short gasps.

“
Crap,” Gabi muttered, taking as much of his weight as she
could manage and wrapping her left arm around his waist. Suddenly
the rocky ground under her feet rolled, heaving and bucking as an
awful, prolonged boom shattered the air. “Athena, how long?” she
yelled.

“
Almost. There,” Benedict’s voice answered her. The words
sounded as though they came from behind clenched teeth. Acrid,
foul-smelling smoke was filling the cavern as the demons burned,
stinging her eyes and searing her throat and lungs.

“
I’ll take ’im, lass.” Fergus’s voice boomed in her right ear
as she succumbed to a coughing fit.

“
Gabi, come on,” Kyle’s voice yelled urgently over the
unending thunder of moving rock and earth. She reluctantly
relinquished her position at Julius’s side to Fergus, his taller,
bulkier frame far better suited to supporting him, but she didn’t
like the feeling of separation when Julius was so vulnerable.
Another more localised shockwave hit and sent Gabi sprawling on her
butt. She knew the taste of the magic, though; it was Athena. She’d
released the banishing spell. A long, angry shriek sounded from
where the Seeker had been standing; then it suddenly cut off, the
eerie green illumination with it. Gabi brushed smoke-induced tears
from her eyes and pulled her shirt up to cover her mouth and nose,
squinting into the deep gloom. Kyle, only a few feet away now,
dodging stinking heaps of burning demon, yelled at her to move,
waving his arms wildly.

“
Come on,” she rasped, hardly able to hear herself over the
chaos, but the others responded, following her lead. Athena and
Benedict clung to each other, but Gabi wasn’t sure exactly who was
supporting who. They both looked frayed around the edges. The earth
gave another sickening lurch under their feet, bringing them to a
halt while they reeled, trying to stay upright. Dozens of rocks,
some Gabi-sized, rained down from the walls and ceiling, adding
clouds of dust to the already thick air.

“
Hurry the fuck up.” Alexander materialised out of the
darkness, alongside Kyle, and rushed to take up Julius’s other
side.

“
I’ve got the rear. Go!” screamed Kyle as she passed
him.

She broke into a slow, shuffling jog; visibility was down to
less than two feet. An eternity and a half later they seemed to be
clear of dead and dying demons, but Gabi only had a vague notion of
the direction of the water-chute cave. All this and not only had
they not achieved their target, they didn’t even know where the
Dark Ones were.

“
Ten degrees left,” Alexander shouted.

One thing at a time, she reminded herself, forcing her
attention back to the ground in front of her feet and making the
necessary adjustment. Ten more breaths, forty-six steps and two
more changes in direction and suddenly the entrance to the smaller
cave appeared from the murk.

“
What’s going on? Is that you guys?” A voice echoed from
inside the cave. It was male, but unusually high pitched, stressed
and excited. “Please don’t be demons. Please don’t be demons. Oh
shit, this place is coming down.”

“
Who the fuck—” Gabi began, but Kyle cut her off.

“
Get inside,” he bellowed and then broke off coughing.
“Explain later,” came out as more of a wheeze. A loud,
spine-chilling crack sounded directly above them, and there was no
more time to argue. The seven of them tumbled into the cave just as
a car-sized chunk of rock careened off the wall above where they’d
been standing and landed with a resounding explosion of sound and
debris, fracturing into several smaller pieces and spraying sharp
granite chips in every direction.

“
Anybody got some light?” Gabi asked in the sudden silence.
She was face-down on the hard-packed ground with someone lying
across her legs and one hip. Too heavy to be Athena and too warm to
be a Vampire, it could only be Kyle. “Gerroff,” she wheezed,
coughing and thumping him with her free arm. She’d lost Nex
somewhere in the crush and hoped no one had been stabbed by
accident. The familiar glow of Athena’s crystal lit the cave as
Kyle rolled off her legs. She jumped to her feet, counting heads
and sagging in relief when she realised they’d all made it inside.
As the others unjumbled themselves, Gabi went to assess the
entranceway.

“
Oh, by all the gods of Atlantis,” she muttered. “Will
anything go right today?” The way into the larger cave was
completely blocked by the humongous rock; their only way out now
was back up the slick, smooth, ten-foot-long water
chute.

CHAPTER 19

Gabi leaned her butt against the wall near the blocked
entrance of the tiny cave and bent forward, racked with coughing as
her lungs tried to rid themselves of dust and dead demon. She
pulled a strip of fabric from a pocket inside her leather jacket
and wiped her eyes clear of tears and grime. She glanced around,
checking on Julius, who was sitting on the ground with his back
against one wall. He looked beyond tired, but alive. Kyle and
Alexander came to inspect the no-longer-an-entranceway. If the cave
had been crowded with five of them inside earlier, it was close to
claustrophobic with seven, no, hold on, make that eight of
them.

“
Kyle, who the hell is that?” she rasped, waving
vaguely at the scrawny young man fidgeting nervously next to the
pool of water at the bottom of the chute.

“
Don’t really know,” Kyle admitted. “Found him lurking in the
shadows when I went looking for the Dark Ones. He’s human, as far
as I can tell.”

“
Uh…” the man started, paused, then rushed on,
his words almost a jumble. “Uh, my name is Henry. You…uh…you guys
aren’t like those other ones, are you? You’re not going to bleed
me, drink my blood, use it for magic rituals? Holy crow, what were
those things out there?” He spoke so fast it was hard to keep
up.

Gabi wanted to slap him, but didn’t have the energy to waste.
She held up a hand, and his words trailed off. “Henry, what are you
doing down here? How did you even get here?”

“
Well,” he said, his eyes flicking nervously from Fergus to
Julius to Kyle and back to her. His disregard for Athena, Alexander
and Benedict had to be based on physical looks, meaning he truly
had no idea of the supernatural world. He licked his lips and then
continued. “I was just walking home after a movie. Last night…no,
wait…it could’ve been two nights ago. What day is it
today?”

Gabi gritted her teeth, thinking it may be a good thing she
hadn’t found Nex yet. “Short and sweet, Henry, get to the point
quick,” she growled. Then she regretted her impatience as the human
froze, panic setting in, and the Vampires all glanced his way, his
fear and anxiety calling to them. She sighed. “Keep going, Henry.
No one here will hurt you,” she said, trying to inject reassurance
into her tone, but tacking on, “Except me,” under her
breath.

“
Um, yeah, well, they grabbed me,” he finally continued,
“these two weirdo guys. They looked exactly alike, but…weird. And
they had this weird vibe about them. And, well, I didn’t want to go
with them, but what else could I do. And we got into this car, and
there was a woman inside. She really gave me the creeps, the way
she looked at me. I swear it’s the way a butcher looks at a pig.”
His words came so fast that they almost ran into each other; Gabi
was waiting for the pile-up.

“
Henry,” Gabi said, a tiny note of warning in her tone. The
shaking of the ground had stopped, but that didn’t mean they were
safe from further rock collapses. She wanted to get out of this
place as fast as possible.

“
Yeah, right, sorry. So they took me to this
warehouse, and inside were lots of people, men and women, but there
was something off about all of them, but not the same as the first
weirdos. And then the double-act and the woman made me follow them
down here to these other two old guys. They also freaked me out.
They had this hungry look in their eyes, and they talked funny and
wore black cloaks. There was a bit of an argument between the young
ones and the old ones. The old ones told them I was a Null, and I
was useless for whatever they were supposed to be doing. I didn’t
know what they were talking about. I didn’t understand half of what
they said. The young ones went off in a huff and disappeared, and
the old ones seemed to forget about me. I was left standing in the
big cave, like a rock or something. Later the young ones came back
with another guy, and they—” The non-stop chatter broke off. His
throat worked like he was swallowing back bile; his eyes were
suddenly haunted. “And they…they just cut his throat, right there
in front of me, and collected the blood in a silver vase thing. I
don’t know much else. I think…I think I sort of passed out after
that. The next thing I remember they were standing in front of a
thing that looked like…I don’t know how to describe it…maybe like
the ghost of a mirror?” He looked over at Gabi, his eyes beseeching
her to understand. “They seemed happy and excited, like they’d won
the Superbowl or something, and then each one stepped into the
mirror and disappeared. When the last one disappeared, I looked
around, and him,” he pointed to Benedict, “and him,” he motioned to
Julius, “came rushing into the cave and all those…things,” he
shuddered, “came rushing out of the shadows towards them. And you
kinda know the rest.” He trailed off with a shrug.