Psyched (20 page)

A chill enveloped her and crept down her neck like slimy fingers. She shivered. Her feet, still clad in pathetically feeble flip flops, burned with icy heat on the slick rock as she worked her way carefully down the rough trail which led them deeper into the chasm.

Beside the path, a stream of tar oozed and bubbled, splattering on the surrounding walls that gleamed like glacial prisms in a chandelier. The air around them would have given Aisi goose bumps if her own fear hadn’t already taken care of that, but the white heat rising from the stream pulled and tightened her face, like when she sat too close to a camp fire.

The air reeked of rotten egg. Her eyes watered, and the further she went, the more she struggled to breathe. Just ahead, the black sludge running along the path pooled and gurgled at the stream’s end. Giant black crystals blocked the path just ahead of them.

“This is awful,” she managed to gasp even though the sulfurous stench scorched her throat, making her gag and cough. “Smells worse than my brother’s room.”

She paused and tried to smile at Vance, who looked pale and a little queasy as he covered his nose and mouth with a cupped hand. “Try having two brothers who share a room with you and like to eat chili before bed,” he countered, his voice muffled.

Aisi’s eyes danced. “No, I’m good. Thanks anyway. What’s that down there?”

She looked ahead, where it looked like the path turned. It curved out of site, the nasty rivulet puddling and running under the rock wall. A bubble in the dark pool of sludge popped, sending beads of boiling tar into the air. Several small specks hit her in the face and hands, blistering her skin instantly. She refused to scream, despite the pain. She wasn’t about to give Malus the pleasure.

They walked silently in the near dark until they turned the corner, and a sudden burst of white light hit them. Aisi gasped. The light didn’t move, reminding her of a flashlight shining from the ground. She crept closer to its source and squatted down. The headlamp on a miner’s hardhat glowed impossibly, defiantly, ignorant of the fact that its battery should have died fifteen years before. She placed a hand on the ground to steady herself as she looked sadly down at the remains of the old miner.

His skeleton lay tucked under an outcropping of stone. The man’s legs stretched straight out and crossed at the ankles, his arms extended and bent so his hands supported his head like a pillow. His headlamp lay beside him. It flickered on and off, winking at her. When she touched it, she heard the barest hint of his voice:
Take it with you, sis. Give ‘em somethin’ to bury
.

Aisi shook her head in awe. Instead of fearing death, he embraced it. He refused to let Malus control him, mind or body, so he came to this spot to die alone. On his own terms. Now he wandered outside, trapped but still refusing to submit, fighting to regain in death what the demon stole from him in life.

Aisi stood, handing Vance the head lamp so he could see it. “For his family.”

“I can’t believe that thing still works,” Vance remarked in disbelief. He flipped the switch a few times, but no matter what setting he tried, the light still radiated from its rusty casing.

“The old man is doing that for us, I think,” she said confidently.

Vance looked dubious. “You think?”

Go get ‘em, sis
.

Aisi grinned. “Yeah. Pretty sure.”

She took the lamp back and moved carefully forward. Clutching the light, an heirloom cross, and an old book firmly in trembling hands, she led Vance into the dark heart of the devil’s lair.

Chapter 21 Dark Abyss

“It is so very nice to finally have a bit of
sunshine
down here, in my dark abyss of captured souls,” Malus hissed, his voice oozing toward Aisi as she and Vance cautiously approached the end of the path where the rocky slope opened up into an icy cavern. She passed the light to him, and he held it up high to light the way. The trail grew steeper as they approached the end of the path, and the narrow tunnel walls reached higher the deeper they went. A muted, phosphorescent blue light flickered oddly where the path opened up.

Aisi heard him before she turned the final corner, and she jerked to a halt. Mud pools boiled on either side of her on the rock-strewn path, but she couldn’t hear the odd bubbling sound or feel the superheated muck blistering the tops of her feet. She didn’t want to go in, but the thought of who she might see when she went into the demon’s den propelled her forward.

She took a deep breath and, unafraid, turned the corner. Vance stepped beside her and took her hand. Whatever happened now, they were in it together. She clasped his hand determinedly, holding the book and necklace even tighter with the other. If there were any chance at all she could get her sister back, she had to try.

“Wow,” said Vance as they entered. “Can we have a moment of silence in honor of what just might be the creepiest place I’ve ever seen?”

Aisi closed her eyes and shook her head. “Do you always ask awkward questions at the worst possible moment?”

Vance nodded. “Yes, I do. Nervous habit. But in my defense…” Using his free hand, he waved toward what waited for them at the end of the trail.

Glittering blue-white stalactites, like crystalline daggers, plunged almost to the ground on either side of the high-ceilinged cavern, dripping gray water into pools of acid. The puddles steamed and hissed angrily with each drop. The dark shadows of Malus’s minions clung to the iridescent ceiling and walls, red eyes trained on her. A lake of molten lava simmered in the center of the craggy floor. In the far corner, buried in the depths of shadow, more shining stalactites plunged down and stalagmites soared up, interweaving as they met. Just above this, two holes in the glassy rock glowed with red light where lava flowed over the edge and down the wall, like empty, weeping eyes above a skeletal grin greeting them as they entered.

“Love what you’ve done with the place,” Aisi called, her voice resonating hollowly through the cavern before fading out, drowned by the steaming sizzle of acid leeching from the rocks and the bubble of boiling lava. She looked around, eyes watering from the unbearable stench in the room. Shadows surrounded them, but distantly, and Malus was nowhere to be found. She scanned the rest of the cave for any sign of human life.

“I heard you, so I know you’re here, Armaros,” she said, hoping that using his real name would make him angry enough to present himself. She couldn’t fight an enemy she couldn’t see.

His deep laugh emanated from the walls around her and filled the room, but still he did not appear. “
Vos es hic. Meus opus est perfectus.”

“You think your work is all done just because I showed up?” Aisi snorted in reply. “How stupid. You’re not even going to put on your scary ram head costume and try to freak me out? That’s pretty weak.”

“
Si vos requiro
…”

Malus emerged from the shadows, behind the stony cage in the dark corner. Her heart skipped a beat and may have plunged for just a moment into her stomach when she saw how much taller he’d grown since she last saw him, and how solid he really was.

The fully formed ram’s head, with sinister eyes gleaming at her, was much more fearsome in the light. In the dark she could convince herself her imagination had run wild and it wasn’t so bad. His muscular body, covered only with a long loincloth draped around his hips and falling to his knees, was the same deep black as her father’s. The demon’s broad chest and powerful legs were covered with short, shiny hair.

“Nice underpants,” she smirked, pointing to the loincloth.

“Silence!”

It was hardly more than a whisper, but it grew louder as it resounded through the cavern. Sudden pressure squeezed her head as if this simple word were a vice grip enclosing her skull. She closed her eyes and covered her ears as Vance cried out in pain, too.

“Your smart mouth will do you no favors in my realm
,
Sunshine,” Malus taunted. “Now that I have completed the set for my collection, with a juicy little bonus treat,” he said, eyes flickering toward Vance just briefly, “I can go forth and gather the rest. I told my brothers I would reclaim what they stole from me, in their foolish and misguided attempts at atonement. I am so close. How foolish to think they might thwart me.”

She didn’t need him to continue to understand how wrong she’d been to walk so willingly into his clutches. She sank to the ground as the vision of what he planned to do filled her head, making it thud in agony. He would come for Leo next, and when Jorja went insane after losing the last of her children, her father would present no challenge at all.

She swallowed hard, refusing to give him the pleasure of seeing her puke. She shut out the ugly scene he forced into her mind and looked up to see an unholy grin on the demon’s hideous face. Time to face reality: she was probably going down, but like the old man, she’d choose death before an eternity with the beast who wanted to take out her family.

“And you thought I would just sit here and let you do that?” she asked, finding the strength to stand back up. She shoved the book at Vance and shifted the old cross in her hand, so its jeweled face pointed at Malus. With a quivering arm, she thrust it forward. “Nobody messes with my brother but me. It’s all cute how you used visions of the old man to get me down here and made me think there was a chance I might get Nakia back, but if you think I plan to just sit here and take it, you’re a bigger idiot than I am.”

As soon as her sister’s name escaped her lips, a pained, high-pitched wail filled the air. Vance stepped back, instinctively covering his head and ducking as the shrill sound caused loose rock to rain from the ceiling and tumble down the damp walls.

“No! No! No! Never say that word!”

“
Quieti, fileus meus
,” Malus said, glancing up at one of the holes in the limestone wall behind him. “
Vade tergum dormio
.”

“The demon is trying to send someone back to bed?” Vance asked in quiet disbelief from behind Aisi, but he was cut off by another scream.

“NO!”

A tall, lanky girl clad in a filthy nightgown much too small for her, ripped at the neck and under the arms where the seams split, emerged from the clenched jaws of the skeletal cage. She was hardly more than a skeleton herself, sickly thin with unnaturally pale skin. She clutched an old, well-loved teddy bear close to her chest. Her frizzy, unkempt curls tumbled willfully out of two braided pigtails on the sides of her head.

As soon as one set of silver green eyes met the other, Aisi knew. Those nightmares she had through the years…nightmares of wandering alone in the yard of their old house with her sister’s favorite stuffed animal, nightmares of meeting a boy in black before the portal cracked and she woke up. She hadn’t been dreaming. She was seeing her sister. How often had she wished she could see Nakia, talk to her? Yet her sister was the one sending messages to her. All her resolve vanished in that moment and she was no longer Aisi Turay, hard-core demon fighter. She was a kid who lost her sister and would do anything to get her back.

“I warn you, Sunshine. Do not speak to her,” Malus said quietly, his silky smooth voice still carrying the hint of threat. He turned and walked back to where Nakia stood. He whispered to her in hushed tones, but her eyes remained locked on Aisi, who returned her gaze tearfully.

“
Soror…?”

“She is only here to taunt you.” Malus’s whispered into Nakia’s ear, but the words echoed through the room as the demon moved to stand behind her. His arms slithered around her shoulders and neck so she couldn’t move. She sank back against him, looking relieved and scared at the same time.

“Do not believe her lies, Princess.” One clawed finger pointed at Aisi. “She is the one who forced you out and stole the love your parents owe you. She is here to mock you, to remind you of what should have been yours. She stole everything from you. I am the only one you can trust. I am all you have.”

“No! Nakia, he’s a liar!” Aisi rushed toward them. What she planned to do, she had no clue. Body slam him? Wrestle for her sister? She didn’t know, but rage unlike anything she ever experienced overwhelmed her. She hadn’t gone far when legions of shadowy demons lunged from the ceiling to keep her from reaching Malus. They surrounded her. “Get away from me!
Abyssus!
”

The demons backed away, but Aisi had no way to move past them and reach her sister. Fury threatened to knock her over. With a grunt of approval, Malus grinned. “I do love your anger and despair, Sunshine.”

“I hate you!”

A wicked laugh of triumph emerged from his mouth, shooting out with a narrow beam of white light which spread in a widening circle from where he stood in the center of the cavern. It blinded them as it hit and caused more rocks to tumble down and block the path that led back home.

She paced as dust rained down on her. She watched the demons hovering nearby as she debated what to do. Malus was feeding off Nakia, and Aisi had no doubt he would hurt her to get what he wanted, or kill her when he no longer needed her. She thought back to what Father J told her as they left. She needed everything she knew to conquer this demon.

What did she know? Her sister was here, maybe others, but as she looked around she couldn’t see anyone else. What else did she know? Her ability to move things with her mind! She turned to the rocks blocking her way out and focused on them. She closed her eyes. The rocks wouldn’t budge. She held her breath as she tried to move them but failed. She exhaled in frustration, head throbbing. Earlier in the day, she knocked over a whole bank of lockers just by giving it a dirty look—surely she could shove a few rocks out of her way. Her head pounded as she refocused and tried again. Her face burned while she strained, but nothing.

Malus clucked his tongue. “Silly, pitiful girl. You are…how can I say it so you will understand?...on my turf now. Your little mind tricks won’t work here.”

Aisi ignored him, shaking with the effort to move the rocks. It always came so easily to her, yet when she needed to do it, nothing happened. Tears squeezed from her eyes from the strain of trying. Sweat beaded on her temples and ran down her face. She finally collapsed, panting from the hopeless effort, her eyes seeking out her sister as she opened them. Nakia, still enfolded in the demon’s gloomy embrace, stared back at her.