Ruby Shadows (30 page)

“
Thank you, that is all I
ask. Now come, we must be going.”

He led Kurex back out onto the shifting
sands and we resumed our journey in silence.

Chapter Twenty

Laish

We made better time to the end of Minauros
than I had hoped. Gwendolyn was silent during our trip but I felt
that at least it was a thoughtful silence. One thing I liked about
her was that she wasn’t blindly prejudiced against me as so many
were against demons. Maybe in time she would find a way to trust me
again, despite what she had seen in the Hotel Infernal. I could
only hope and wait. In the meantime, I was being careful not to
pressure her. I knew very well that by trying to draw her to me I
would only push her away.

I did wish I could have
found a way to get her to eat some. She’d had nothing substantial
since the sandwich she’d eaten yesterday before we entered Baator.
I didn’t count the little piece of fruit she’d eaten that
morning—it was hardly one bite. Traveling through Minauros was a
grueling journey. I watched her anxiously as we went—wanting to be
certain she wasn’t swaying in the saddle. If she got too faint and
weak I could always
force
her to eat but I didn’t want to do that. It would
erase any last vestige of trust she might feel for me and I had an
idea I would never gain it back.

Still, she couldn’t be allowed to starve
herself to death. I watched her covertly from the corner of my eye
as Kurex plodded across the constantly shifting sands.

Her face was impassive, making it impossible
to guess what she thought. Sometimes I caught a little of her
internal monologue—because we were in my own realm where my powers
were strongest and because she thought so very loudly. But I needed
to be close to her—it helped especially to be touching and I was
being careful not to do that unless it was absolutely
necessary.

The little white lily-moth that had somehow
followed us through the barrier between Baator and Minauros still
clung to her shoulder like a good-luck talisman. I wondered again
how it had gotten here, how it had gotten so far from home. Just
seeing the tiny creature made me ache with a pain so old I had
almost forgotten it. What was it that humans called it? That
feeling of missing the place you once belonged and can no longer go
back to? The name escaped me but I felt it now and fought it—such
emotions would do me no good in this quest. We needed to press
onward to our goal.

I was watching the sands, leading Kurex
carefully around yet another sand trap when I heard Gwendolyn say,
“Oh!” in a soft, awed voice. Looking up, I saw that we had found
our way to the edge of the Desert of Death.

We had come at last to the Jealous Heart.
But whether we could get through it or not would be entirely up to
Gwendolyn.

* * * * *

Gwendolyn

“
Where did that come from
all of a sudden?” I asked, looking at the huge mountain that rose
suddenly before us. It was huge, so tall I couldn’t see its peak.
Something so vast should have been visible a long way off—we should
have seen it the whole time we were traveling towards it. Instead,
it had simply appeared, just like the Iron Spike and the city of
Baator had both suddenly appeared. I was beginning to think this
was the norm for Hell—things just blinking into existence like
they’d been there all along. But it was no less unsettling for all
that.

But even freakier than the
suddenly-appearing mountain was the vast, dark opening I saw in its
side. It looked like the mouth of a cave—twenty feet high and at
least ten feet across. But though it was wide enough and facing
towards the sun, no light penetrated its entrance. It was pitch
black inside—like someone had hung some kind of black-out curtain
across the entrance. Just looking into that yawning mouth and its
endless slice of midnight made my heart do a funny little skip in
my chest—like it was trying to get up into my throat.

“
Ah—the Jealous Heart,”
Laish said, stopping about twenty feet from it. “We have arrived
even sooner than I had hoped. We can stop here for the
night.”

“
No,” I said, looking at
him. “No, I don’t want to stop. Let’s go on—let’s go as far as we
can.”

He frowned at me. “I don’t think you
understand. There are necessary preparations one must make before
crossing through the Jealous Heart. Steps that while tedious, are
necessary for a safe passage. And then there is the small matter of
the barrier which is at the exact center of the cavern.”

“
The barrier?” I faltered.
Somehow I’d managed to forget about the fact that we had to pay the
Sin Tax in order to move between one circle of Hell and the
next.

“
Indeed.” He raised an
eyebrow at me. “Do you wish to pay the tax now…or
later?”

Remembering my vow to myself, I lifted my
chin.

“
I don’t want to pay it at
all—or at least, not the way we’ve been paying it,” I told him. “I
mean, it’s called a Sin Tax, right? Not a
lust
tax. So it stands to reason
that there must be another way to pay the tax. Some other, uh, sin
I can commit.”

“
Indeed there is,” Laish
said quietly. “There are many sins to choose from although some are
hard to commit in such a way as to breach the barrier.”

“
Such as what?” I looked
around me. “Look, are there any pits here? I’d really like to get
down and stretch my legs before we go on.”

“
The area around the
Jealous Heart is free of sand traps. Just be careful not to get too
close to the mouth of the cavern.” He reached up to take my hand
and I grudgingly let him help me down.

Laish sighed as he got me safely to the
ground.

“
Well, pride—the excessive
belief in one’s own abilities—cannot be your sin, as you just
allowed me to help you off Kurex’s back.”

“
What? I didn’t know we
were starting now!” I protested. “Let me get back on and we can
redo it!”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t work that
way. And anyway, I do not believe pride will break the barrier or
we would have felt it give way when you tried to mount Kurex
earlier and nearly slipped into the trap.”

I shivered at the memory.

“
Ugh! That was awful. Um…”
I scuffed my foot against the sand. “I don’t think I thanked you
for saving me. So, well, thank you.”

“
You’re welcome,” he said
gravely. “And I think we must rule out anger as your potential sin
as you no longer seem to be angry with me.”

I sighed—he was right about that. I had been
frightened and upset and yes, angry, with him for not telling me
his true nature before. But now I couldn’t summon any rage against
him at all. I just felt…sad though I didn’t even really know why.
Because I’d been having feelings for him and had been forced to
make myself let them go? Because I wished our circumstances were
different?

Things would be so much easier if he was
just a nice guy I’d met in a supermarket somewhere. Someone I could
strike up a conversation and form a relationship with. Preferably a
real one that would end in a soul bond and eternal love, like what
my Grams had had with my grandpa.

Then I realized what I was thinking and
scoffed at myself. How ridiculous! As if someone like Laish would
ever look at home roaming the aisles of Publix or Winn Dixie.

As if I could form a soul bond with a being
who had no soul.

I tried to shake the feeling and get back to
business.

“
Okay,” I said firmly.
“What else could I do?”

“
Sloth cannot be your sin
because you have undertaken an arduous quest to close the door into
the Abyss,” he said thoughtfully. “Greed will not do as you do not
seem to desire either excessive wealth or power.” He raised an
eyebrow at me. “Except the power to take revenge on the one who had
wronged you?”

“
I’m not discussing that
with you,” I said shortly. “It’s not your business.”

“
Of course not. Well, I do
not believe it would work anyway. In general, the sin one uses to
pay the tax must be an actual physical action.”

“
Great…just great.” I
began to pace back and forth, forgetting my earlier fear of the
dark mouth of the cave. In fact, I hardly noticed it now—I was too
busy thinking about my dilemma. It felt good to stretch my legs but
my mind was in an uproar, trying desperately to think of some way
to break the barrier between the circles without doing anything
sexual with Laish.

“
I think gluttony must be
ruled off the list of possible sins since I cannot now convince you
to eat anything I give you,” Laish said dryly, watching me
pace.

In fact, I was feeling lightheaded and empty
at the moment—it had been a long time since that single bite of
cantaloupe that morning and even longer since the PB&J from my
broken Sponge Bob container. But I tried to ignore my rumbling
stomach.

“
I’m still not hungry,” I
lied uneasily.

“
You mean that you still
do not trust me.” He cocked his head to one side for a moment and
shook his head. “And your lie has not broken the barrier either,
though I thought it might. Apparently a stronger sin is needed. Not
surprising really—as we get deeper into the Infernal Realm,
progressively stronger sins will be needed to break the barrier
between circles.”

“
Well, what can I do,
then?” I asked desperately. “Because I’m not…not up for what we did
last night again. Especially if we have to go further than we
already have.”

“
I’m sorry you feel that
way,
mon ange,”
he said quietly.

“
Laish,” I began. “It’s
not that I don’t find you attractive—I
do.
You know I do. I just
can’t—”

But my sentence ended in a strangled gasp.
Skuttling towards me, out of the mouth of the cavern Laish had
called the Jealous Heart, was one of the most hideous creatures I’d
ever seen.

It was a spider—but not like any spider I’d
ever seen. It had the body and legs of a tarantula which was
horrifying enough but then it had the head of a chipmunk. Either a
chipmunk or a squirrel. Anyway, some kind of little woodland
creature you’d coo at and try to feed some of your lunch if you
were having a picnic. But that head was stuck onto a huge, hairy,
eight-legged body bigger than my hand and it was headed straight at
me!

“
Ahh!” I screamed and
jumped back. Yes, I know I said bugs don’t bother me but I was
talking about
insects
. Spiders are a whole different ball game. The way they
move—all skittery and quick—freaks me right the hell out. Once when
I was eight one of those big wolf spiders got on my arm and crawled
right up in my
hair.
I was hysterical for hours afterwards, even after Grams got
it out and killed it.

“
Gwendolyn, wait!” Laish
was saying but I barely heard him.

The spidermunk or
chipspider or whatever you wanted to call it was coming towards
me
fast.
All I
could think was that it probably wanted to crawl on my skirt.
Or
under
my
skirt! Oh God, I couldn’t take that! I tried to get away but it
kept following me. I was afraid if I went too far back I might fall
into one of those awful pits and this time Laish might not be close
enough to grab me and save me.

“
Get away from me!” I
shrieked at it. “Get
away!”

But it ran right up to me
in that awful skittering way, making me want to puke or faint or
scream or all three. Yes, I know it’s girly but what can I say?
I
hate
spiders.

The thing got right up to
my skirt and I actually had a mental image of it going right up
inside the long green dress I was wearing.
Oh no, that’s not happening—no way in Hell!
said a grim little voice in my head. Instinct
took over and I lifted my foot and stomped down on the hybrid
creature as hard as I could.

It gave a loud shrill shriek and there was
an awful crunching sound which is the main reason I hate killing
bugs—that sound like somebody stepping in a bowl of Frosted Flakes.
Ugh! Then it twitched once and I felt it go limp under my little
black ballet flat.

I skipped backwards and tried to wipe the
black ichor the thing was leaking from the bottom of my shoe. I was
so grossed out and worked up I almost felt like I wanted to scream.
Waves of revulsion ran through me, strong enough to make me shake,
especially when I looked at the mangled mess that was left in the
sand.

“
Ugh—gross, gross,
gross!”
I muttered to
myself, bile rising in my throat. It was a good thing I hadn’t
eaten anything much that day or it would have come right up at that
moment. Luckily my stomach was empty but that didn’t stop me from
gagging anyway.

The chipspider looked up at me with one eye
which could still see—the other was popped like a smashed grape.
It’s long, hairy legs were still twitching feebly and black blood
was leaking through its sharp white teeth. It made a final, feeble
noise—almost like a squeak you might hear from a regular chipmunk.
Then, as I watched, the light died from its remaining eye and it
went completely still.

At the same time I felt a now familiar
ripple in the air around me. I looked around, dragging my eyes from
the small, mangled corpse that was already being buried by the
sand.