bedeviled & beyond 01 - bedeviled & beguiled (34 page)

As the light grew near, I discovered that if I stopped fighting the pull I could actually reach some of my power. But unfortunately it also meant that I moved toward the dreaded destination more quickly. Just before I reached the end of the tunnel, in a last ditch effort before I faced whatever awaited me there, I coated myself in a protective bubble of my power and locked it into place.

As I emerged from the tunnel into a well-lit room that looked suspiciously like the attic room of the Church of the Twined Hands, I felt a little better under my coating of power. But then I found myself on the receiving end of a glowing blue gaze and realized that I’d merely covered myself with tissue paper and the world’s biggest, meanest pair of scissors was poised to rip me to shreds.

“Hello, Astra.”

Show no weakness...

“Prince Nille. We meet again.”

“Yes. And for the final time, lovely halfling. I’ve grown weary of your persistent interference. Unfortunately it is time for you to die.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

To Die to Die

The Shadows they did roil and pant and bring her to her knees,

But our fair lady must refuse to be conquered by the Beast.

I shrugged. “We’ll just have to see about that, Nille. I don’t die easily.”

He continued to stare at me, a small, self-satisfied smile settled across his face. I couldn’t help thinking how beautiful he was and how unfortunate it was that beauty and evil were not mutually exclusive so that we could all look at each other and know exactly what we were dealing with.

I pulled my power more tightly around me like a magic binky and waited. Since I didn’t know where I was or what was going on around me I figured it might be better to concentrate on reacting, rather than trying to instigate whatever was going to happen next. First one to talk loses. Besides, I was still hoping that Dialle and his motley crew would come riding to my rescue. A prospect that was looking more and more unlikely by the moment. But what the hell, I’m nothing if not optimistic.

Just as the silence was becoming too much for me and I thought maybe I should be trying to kick some ass, someone (or should I say something) did join us in that room. Abrine and his worm-eaten army emerged from the shadows and joined Nille across the room from me. Shit.

A silent standoff ensued. I was determined not to lose so I settled in to await the inevitable. It didn’t take long for my fate to catch up with me. The first fire bolt hit me right between the eyes, singeing my eyebrows. Stars burst before my eyes as I reeled backward. Fortunately, the magic bullet didn’t do any serious damage because of the cushioning power of my shield.

Still, I decided it might be prudent to make a move.

I dove behind a heavy chair just as another fire bolt pinged off the frame, leaving behind a smoking incision where once there had been a dense, wooden arm.

Gathering my power around me, I space shifted too quickly and ended up in one of the lower circles of Hell.

As I shimmered back, a horrific screeching greeted me. My body felt very strange and I knew something was very wrong, though it took me a minute to figure out what had happened. The horrible screaming ricocheted around in my head and made it difficult to think.

My lower extremities were numb and immobile, though I appeared to be flying around the room and my upper body hung at an odd angle and felt as if it were on fire. At first my mind couldn’t register what had happened, but then it hit me. I’d rematerialized half in and half out of old Wormhead. My lower body was embedded in her torso and my upper body hung off her right side.

Hell’s version of Siamese twins.

Son of a demon. If I survived I really needed to take some space shifting lessons. What if I had ended up inside a wall or something?

My new hostess was not taking my visitation well. The room spun past my vision as she took me on a merry ride. We pinged off walls, furniture and other demons while she tried to escape my embedded presence. As we charged past the rest of the evil crew assembled in the room, I almost laughed at the looks of true horror on their faces. It takes a lot to horrify a demon. Quite an accomplishment if you’re inclined to celebrate. But right at that moment I was getting a pounding headache from the screaming next to my ear and I knew that if old Wormhead got it together and stopped trying to outrun me, I’d be in trouble. To magnify my predicament, I felt the whisper touch of something heavy and slimy against my hair.

Revulsion took hold when I realized my face was just inches from the creepy passengers on her head. The sub-demons had begun to wriggle frantically, stretching and writhing as they tried to reach my eyes and nose. I knew what they were attempting to do. Sub-demons can enter a person’s external orifices and eat away at their organs, killing a human in mere minutes . It wasn’t a peaceful, painless death by anyone’s definition. Needless to say that was not something I wanted to experience.

The nasty things stretched and grew until, even though I was leaning as far away from them as I could, they were still able to touch my skin. It was only a matter of time before they managed to climb into an ear or up a nostril.

I needed to do something. Fast.

Closing my eyes, I pulled the power from its core and used it to probe Wormhead’s innards. Locating her frantically pounding heart, I wrapped the power around it, squeezing gently at first to see what would happen. She stopped dead in her tracks. She didn’t move or even breathe for long seconds as her horrified brain assembled the facts on hand and decided that I was going to pop her evil heart like an overextended balloon. Then her maggot ridden head turned slowly to face me. Her cold, black eyes spat terror at me like sparks and I could see her running through her options as she stared at me.

I knew her instincts for survival would force her to take me out before I could finish what I’d started. I also knew I had to finish killing her before she killed me. Unfortunately, Nille wasn’t going to allow me the time I needed. His usually melodic voice barked words in guttural Hades and the demon’s eyes widened as she realized what she needed to do.

The arm on the side of her body that was away from me moved toward my neck. She grabbed my throat with her free hand and started squeezing.

I tightened my power around her black heart and prayed that she would die before I did. Lights danced before my eyes. My lungs screamed for air. And something in my throat creaked as it was slowly, painfully pinched off.

The first sub-demon slid up my nostril and I think I shuddered but I couldn’t do anything to stop it. Cold, like tentacles, wrapped around me and pulled me down into a black pit.

We both hit the floor at the same time. Wormhead wasn’t moving and I knew she was probably dead. But then so was I. So what difference did it make?

Something tugged at the corners of my mind, reminding me there was a damn good reason why I shouldn’t die, but I couldn’t remember what it was.

The last thing I was aware of as I succumbed to the shadows, was a shifting of my mental drawers and Dialle’s frantic voice, masked behind the static of my dying brain. He was calling my name. I think I might have answered him. I’m not sure. It’s hard to think clearly when you’re dying.

The first thing I felt as I swam back to consciousness was a healing warmth spreading through me. The feeling of warmth was quickly followed by a tingling sensation that made me want to twitch my legs. There was only one problem...my legs were still buried in old Wormhead. Mingled with the warm, tingly sensation was a painful throbbing that centered around the mark on my neck. That was a good sign. Maybe Dialle was close by. That thought brought with it a stab of dread. The last thing I wanted was for Dialle to see the predicament I’d gotten myself into. Shit.

I moved slowly from a dream state into full consciousness. Something made me lie very still and play dead. Nille and his band of merry weirdoes were leaving me alone. In fact they’d moved away from me and were discussing Dialle’s impending visitation. Apparently they thought I, like my unfortunate hostess, was dead. I was happy to allow them their illusion as long as they kept ignoring me.

I needed a plan. The first thing on the list had to be removing myself from the unfortunate demon on the floor with me. Second was vowing never to spaceshift again. Third was kicking Dialle’s ass for giving me a dangerous power and not telling me how to use it. Fourth was kicking Nille’s ass and defeating Abrine and the demons to save the world.

All in a day’s work.

Since I wasn’t sure how I was going to accomplish any of the things in my plan, I just lay there for a minute and listened to Nille.

“Dialle will be here any minute. When he discovers what his lovely lady has done to herself he won’t be pleased. I need to be sure your people are set to act as soon as he’s spotted.”

Abrine’s frosty tones floated my way, seeming, if possible, even frostier than usual. “I’ve told you, your Highness, my people are situated at every portal and will let us know as soon as Dialle and his followers arrive. They will notify us and then flood the entrance to all portals so Dialle cannot escape. Their deaths are assured. You have nothing to fear.”

Nothing to fear? Interesting. It seemed while we’d been occupied with being afraid of Nille, he had been busy being afraid of us. Well...he was afraid of Dialle anyway. It’s hard to fear a halfling who’s moronic enough to spaceshift into a demon. My predicament had undoubtedly lost me just a tich of respect from the dark worlders. I fought back a sigh. Being laughed at made me want to overcompensate. I’d been that way since I was a tiny little testicle buster. It was probably small woman syndrome. But whatever. I’d just have to use their low opinion of me to my advantage.

Focusing my thoughts and power within, I pulled a thread of energy from its core and sent it out, probing the room. I touched the demon’s brain and found nothing. She was gone. The warmth that had entered my body in my unconscious state had given me feeling back in my lower extremities again and I concentrated on moving my toes. All ten toes moved. I opened my eyes just enough to peer through my eyelashes and determine if anyone had noticed the demon’s body moving with my embedded toes. Nothing. They were too busy plotting mean and nasty things to pay much attention to the mess on the floor behind them.

If I could wriggle my toes then I was still a separate, albeit very embedded, object. Which meant I should be able to spaceshift back out of old Wormhead. Which is exactly what I would do. But before I went spaceshifting willy nilly around the room, I needed to have a plan.

Another plan.

I risked opening my eyes completely and scanned the room. Nille, Abrine and their assorted nasties all had their backs to me and were clustered together several yards away. In the wall directly opposite where I lay, was the door that, in the physical world, would have corresponded with the door into the tower room of the Church of the Twined Hands. I saw no other doors. I didn’t know what stood on the other side of that door but I didn’t see any other options. I wasn’t confident enough to try to shift to a spot behind some piece of furniture. Not only would that not give me a way out once they discovered me missing, but I didn’t trust myself not to
become
the piece of furniture. I was visualizing my head and arms sticking out of the divan as I made my final decision. I’d go for the other side of that door.

I gathered my power and thought about being on the right side of the heavy, wooden door. The room blurred and whirred past and I was suddenly standing in the shadows looking at the other side. Breathing a sigh of relief, I looked around. I was standing in a space at the top of a shadowed staircase that looked very much like the murky stairway leading up to Deaver’s church tower.

A huge, claw-laden hand clamped itself onto my shoulder and I would have screamed, except someone laid a well-shaped golden hand over my mouth. A lean, hard body pressed itself against the length of my back and a sexy, familiar voice whispered into my ear.

“Where have you been, Astra? We’ve looked all over for you.”

I quickly forgot that I wanted to kick his ass and turned to stare into those beautiful blue eyes. “Dialle. It’s about frunkin’ time you showed up. Where the hell did you go?”

As I fought to regain my shaken composure, I found myself praying that he’d never hear about my unfortunate “spaceshifting into the demon” episode. I might be able to survive a hit like that to my dignity, but I didn’t want to. In the meantime, I was damn glad to see him and Gerch, who finally released my shoulder as I reached up to rub the spots where his claws had broken through the skin.

It occurred to me that I was really in trouble if a two members of the royal devil court were looking good.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

To Kill to Kill

At last young Miss has found her friends, the future looks less bleak,

But how to kill the slavering Beast, with arrows made of cheek?

A burst of sound from inside the shadowland version of the tower room informed me that the room’s inhabitants had finally noticed my absence from old Wormhead. I turned to Dialle and he touched my hand.

The world shifted into neutral and we emerged in another part of the shadowland church. Looking around, I quickly realized it was Deaver’s office, or at least its mirror image. I doubted that the baptismal font on the other side of the room held holy water. It probably held blood.

The room was very crowded. In addition to Gerch and his army, I was extremely surprised to see several familiar but unexpected faces.

“Hello angel.”

Myra gave me one of her rare smiles and reached out to touch my cheek with a pale hand. “I’m glad to see you whole again, Astra.”

I threw Dialle a guilty look and then tossed a scowl at Myra. I tried to shoosh her with my eyes before she could share the entire, embarrassing predicament with Dialle and his assemblage. Myra’s grin told me she would make good use of my embarrassment in the future.