devil 03 - tween hearts fire and devils delight (36 page)

The Royals were all in a state of ecstasy. Dark power swirled around them lovingly, caressing them with its evil taint.

The elf stood uncertain, like me, looking around the circle. I guessed she had been brought there unwillingly too. The dark fairy had his tiny arms raised to the sky and was chanting something, pulling his share of the black mist around him and making it swirl with dark energy.

The superdemon stood solid and pleased, a large grin on his handsome face and basked in the dark energy swirling around him.

My father and Myra were on their knees, heads bowed. I knew my mother and Nille were most likely pulling their light from them by force through the chains that bound them.

I felt the pull of energy like a whirlwind in the Angel City River, yanking at my limbs and trying to pull my mind into the trance. My gaze shot toward Darma. Her slim body jerked and wavered under the pulling force too. I realized we didn’t have much time.

Movement from across the circle made me swing my gaze toward Dialle again. He was on his knees, his arms wrapped around his middle and his beautiful, dark eyes locked on my face. His features held a pleading look.

I frowned.
What the hell?

The air between us shimmered and the soul form of my prophet suddenly floated there.
Astra…

This had better not count against my lifetime limit.

My prophet waved a hand as if that was an insignificant thing but I frowned. I knew how these things worked.

Her startling silver eyes fixed on me and she said,
Trust your instincts, Astra
.

What are you doing here? You’re gonna get us all killed.

They cannot see me. I am but a blip in your mind.

But why the house call?

She shrugged.
I could not stand to just hang around up there waiting. I wanted you to know that you have it within you to solve this. You must only trust in the fire within your heart.

I frowned again.
You came here to give me gobbledygook now? Are you frunkin’ kidding me?

The prophet shrugged and then…unbelievably…grinned at me.
It is not gobbledygook just because your ears refuse to hear.
She looked beyond my shoulder and frowned.
Really, Astra, do you think this is a good place for a child?

I jerked and turned my head before remembering I was playing zombie. Glynus hovered in the air just behind me, a small smile on her face. “Aw cheet?”

I grinned. “Hey, tadpole.”

The prophet shook her head, spreading dandelion-seed-like strands upon the air in an arc around her face.
What were the gods of Olympus thinking? You suck as a mother, Astra. Ish!

And then she was gone.

Fortunately for me the Serpent and his minions were too busy to notice my little slip. I motioned for Glynus to stay behind me and turned to Darma.
Let’s do this.

The mist had thickened to the point where I could see nothing beyond our little circle. The conduits and the Serpent on his altar were clear to me but nothing else was visible. It felt as if we stood in a tunnel, locked away from the outside world as thoroughly as if the mist were concrete and lead.

The sound of the Serpent’s chanting bounced off the wall of mist and throbbed around us, creating a highly hypnotic atmosphere that I had to work continually to resist. A tower of pure black energy, six inches in diameter, now rose straight out of the stone altar, through Raoul’s twitching body and into the sky above, its full height obscured by the choking mist.

Darma closed her eyes to concentrate on pulling the power forward and I started to do the same.

Help me, Astra! Help me fight it.

My eyes flew open and focused on Dialle again. He was bent over now, his head resting on his knees and the midnight silk of his hair spread across the dirt of the well trampled ground. My hickey sparked painfully and I jerked.

His voice was weak and filled with pain.

I wavered with uncertainty. Was this a trick? I had resolved to reset my thinking where it concerned Dialle. Had I been wrong to assume he’d turned completely against me?

Trust your instincts, Astra.

Oh shut up!

I scowled and closed my eyes, determined to get the battle underway.

Help me!

“Oh shit!” My eyes jerked open and found Dialle. If possible it looked like he’d sunk lower toward the ground. Making a sudden decision, I pulled my blocking power from the hickey and sent a stream of sensing energy through my link with Dialle. What I felt there made my knees buckle. Dark, malevolence swirled through him, nearly consuming his spirit. My instinct was to pull back. To run away. But something kept me there, probing, searching. Finally I found what I was looking for. A small spark of light sat at the center of all that dark. It was weak and quivering but it was there, trying to hold its own.

I sent power into that small spark and prayed that it would be enough. It was all I could give him. Everything else I had needed to be given over to the battle. And I was pretty sure I would have to kill him anyway in the end.

Once again, I blocked our connection and then closed my eyes, pulling everything I had forward. I searched in the magical sphere for Darma’s light. As I had done with Dialle, I had to sift through a lot of black magic to find Darma’s light. However, unlike Dialle, Darma’s magic wasn’t weak or quivery. It was strong and bright, melting everything in its path in the search for mine. I assumed my magic looked the same to her.

We reached for each other across the vast space of the magical sphere, far more distant than the physical plane, where our bodies stood only a few feet away from each other. In the magical sphere our magics had miles to travel before we touched. Miles of space within which to battle the Serpent’s conjured blackness, his minions’ roiling darkness. In the center of the sphere was a single, spinning light, which I realized was probably Raoul. I said a silent prayer for his soul and turned away from him. Tears leaked from my eyes.

We fought onward, burning off the dark as we went and prayed we’d be in time.

Suddenly the black magic started swirling around our encroaching power, pulsing with a new urgency and I realized the jig was up.

The Serpent had discovered our little attempt to thwart him and was turning his interest our way.

I realized with a start that we’d run out of time.

Chapter Twenty

Magical Arm Wrestling

Tween Heart’s Fire and Devil’s Delight, our lady she doth tread,

Will she succeed and save the world, or end up very dead?

Our magics had just begun to twine when the Serpent’s power slashed into them, ripping and pulling in an effort to dislodge the fledgling twist of power. Even as the Serpent’s power engulfed ours, I could see the light from Darma’s strand brightening and pulsing in an effort to shrug it off.

I pulled every ounce of power I had into my power core and redirected it into the strand that reached for my sister. Between the two of us we were able to grow the reach of our power by one more twist.

The Serpent’s power dimmed momentarily under ours but then, from somewhere outside the sphere where we now concentrated our power, a painfully high-pitched shrieking ensued and I felt my physical body start to react. My knees buckled and I hit the ground hard, my head throbbing under the assault.

I realized the Serpent had engaged the Brownie, whose song of death is pitched at a level so high that it can actually explode the brain.

Before it did that though, it caused one hell of a headache.

I stayed in the magic realm through sheer force of will and renewed my expenditure of energy through the strand. For a moment it looked like we would succeed but then the Serpent’s power surged and we quickly started losing ground.

My sister’s voice in my head sounded weak.
Astra! We need more and somebody needs to shut that damn Brownie up!

I don’t have any more.

Do something!

I opened my eyes and looked at the Brownie, his head was thrown back and his mouth was open wide, his throat throbbing with the passage of his fatal song. Around him shimmered a protective field that I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to breach.

Can’t kill the Brownie
, I thought to myself,
it’s Plan B then
.

Okay, I’m gonna try to tap my daemon hickey. The Brownie’s under protection. We’ll have to work fast ’cause I don’t think I can get rid of him, at least until I’m done focusing all my power to this strand.

A few beats of silence greeted this statement and Darma’s part of our strand started to flicker. I was afraid I was losing her. I looked at her and saw that she was flat-out, face down on the ground.
Darma!

Static met my internal scream. Then a very weak response.
I’m here but just barely. I feel like my brain is melting.

Did you hear me?

Yes, I’ll tap mine too.

What! You have a daemon hickey? When did that happen? Are you kidding me?

Astra…do you really think this is the time and place for this discussion?

My mouth flapped a few times and I frowned at my sister’s prone form.
You and I are gonna talk about this later, young lady!
I thought at her furiously.

She managed a weak snort before going silent again. I hoped she was focusing her thoughts elsewhere rather than the alternative…which didn’t bear thinking about.

I forced myself to release the block on my hickey and tentatively tried to pull power through it. What came through the connection was black and oily with evil.

I shuddered and forced it shut in a panic. Tears streamed from my eyes.

Dialle.

Static filled my mind,
Astra! I’m sorry.

Dialle’s voice sounded strange. Weak and haunted. But I didn’t have time to ponder it because suddenly the block on my hickey blew off and the dark, oily power streamed into me, burning my insides like fire.

I screamed and lost my connection with Darma. I surged to my feet as my organs started shutting down from the poison Dialle was shooting into me. My lungs stopped working, my throat clenched up tight, my limbs gave way under me and, finally, my heart slowed enough so that my vision started going gray.

I felt the ground hit my back as I lost control of my body. My head bounced hard, twice and then I lay shuddering and convulsing as the evil magic ate through my body.

I was dying, unable to move. Unable to fight back. Completely helpless.

Astra!

My partner’s voice was immediately cut off in a shout of pain,
Emo…

He’d been right. Dialle had been the death of me, just as Emo had predicted he would.

Shit! That just sucked!

A high-pitched, razor-edged laugh filled the clearing and my eyes fluttered open one last time to find the Serpent, standing high above me on the altar, long, muscular arms ending in horrible claws raised to the mist above his head. Raoul’s body now spun as if on an axis, reaching such an incredible velocity that I could barely tell he was a human being. I grieved for the loss of my friend, knowing there was no way he would survive the Serpent’s horrible use of his body.

As if in response to the Serpent’s calls, the mist descended over us, consuming everything in its path. Until all that was visible was a gray sheet of nothingness, like being in the shadows.

With a start I realized I no longer controlled my power, it was being pulled from me in service to the veil. I shuddered and felt my heart slowing to a stop, just as the cold, clammy mist touched my skin, mere inches from the nurturing soil of Earth.

I knew that once it touched Earth’s welcoming soil it would lock into place and begin to thrive. But there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.

I was dead.

Darma was probably dead.

And Emo.

And my father and aunt would be lost for all time, chained to the worst kind of evil and totally helpless.

The last thing I heard as my eyes glazed over into death was Dialle’s voice in my head,
Spurn the poison, Astra. Push it out. Damn it, woman, fight this thing. You don’t think I gave you that shit so you could just eat it and die do you? Use it against him! Twist it into your thread!

Astra! ASTRA!!!

His screams reverberated in my dying brain like buckshot off a rock-walled canyon. Pinging against my last vestige of awareness unmercifully as I lay there trying to die.

My mind flicked at the annoying pings for a while until I started to get mad. Anger gave me new energy.

Suddenly I realized I didn’t want to die.

I wanted to kick the Serpent’s goat-ass all the way back to Hell.

Adrenaline coursed through me and my eyes shot open. Gritting my teeth against the Serpent’s poisonous grip, I wrenched control of my power away from him. I yanked it forward and, as I’d done in my office when the Hell Hounds were after me, I didn’t bother to focus it. I knew it was going to hurt like hell but I had no time for anything else. The mist was almost fully down. A mere inch of space was all that stood between total darkness and survival of the human race.

My power surged into my body, assimilating with the oily power Dialle had fed me and creating a new mix of power, one that I’d never felt before but one which I knew, with the addition of Darma’s bright white power, would be the right mix. The mix that would kill the Devil’s Plague and defeat the Serpent’s poisonous mist.

I grinned as the power pulsed within my power core, filling it to overflowing and throbbing to get out.

My daemon hickey surged with clean, white power and I gasped as it hit my already abundant power core.

Dialle!

Let’s kick some Serpent ass, Astra!

’Bout time you joined my party!