The Deadliest Bite

What I saw instead was that the fog was rising. Or maybe she was being swal owed within it.

“This door is closing,” Raoul said. “We need to leave the room in case something reaches through it at the last minute and manages to trap us inside it.”

“Could that real y happen?” Aaron asked me nervously.

“Just the fact that you can ask that question shows what a rookie you are,” I said. “Now, see how Bergman has hustled his butt to the hal way? There’s a guy who knows how to take physical threats seriously. You should fol ow his lead.”

“Except when it comes to raiding old cemeteries, right, buddy?” said Cole, slapping Bergman on the back as he joined him outside the room.

“Huh,” was Bergman’s pale-faced response. Thank goodness Astral had witnessed that event or we might never have known the extent of his heroics. “What about the bed?” he asked Raoul as he, Vayl, and I joined him in the hal .

Raoul said, “By morning very little wil be left to show that the room was once a gate to hel .” We looked around at each other. Raoul seemed the worse off for injuries, having been cut deeply in a couple of places. Cole and I had each taken minor wounds to the arms that we hadn’t even felt until this moment. Vayl’s two chest wounds were already closing. Dave, Cassandra, and Bergman hadn’t been touched. We’d been lucky, we knew that. Hel wouldn’t be so kind the next time.

Vayl wondered aloud, “Wil we be safe here or should we move on immediately?”

“I can make us safe for at least an hour,” Raoul replied. “It wasn’t like we were going to tackle that gate anyway. Our scouts wil find us a much less wel -traveled route.” Cole snorted. “Which the prophets have already seen.”

Cassandra said, “Kyphas was trying to tel you something about that. I think there’s a way to cloud their vision.”

“I agree,” Raoul said.

“Then I need to consult my Enkyklios. And Astral,” she added. “If there’s a way, I’l find it.” Vayl nodded. “Do that. Everyone else must eat, and think. If you have any ideas of how to improve this mission, now is the time to come up with them. Because as soon as we find a way to rescue Hanzi, Jasmine, Raoul, and I must leave for hel .”

CHAPTER THIRTY

Sunday, June 17, 5:00 a.m.

Raoul’s idea of protecting the hotel from further invasion was simply to bless it. He took my holy water, scattered it at the four corners, and prayed as he walked around the building. It seemed like such a simple solution. And yet, as I watched the part I could see from the room Vayl and I had temporarily claimed on the ground floor, it seemed to me like if I turned my head just right I could see Raoul, transformed by the ceremony and his place in it into his true self. The shining white beacon whose slightest whisper could blast my brain to jel y if he wasn’t careful.

It wasn’t that he shone with an inner light or that I could see his skeleton glowing through his skin.

It was that I could glimpse, just for a second or two, the rare and beautiful creature he’d become moving just behind the physical form he’d taken in order to walk with us. And I had to wonder—was this what Granny May had become? When Matt had chosen paradise over me… had he known this perfect grace, this wisdom wrapped in white fire, was waiting for him?

I felt Vayl before I heard him, his fingers moving gently up and around my shoulders, his chest pressing against my back as I dropped the curtain. “Does it hurt you?” I asked. “Standing inside a blessed building?”

“Yes,” he admitted. “But Raoul gave me this. It shields me from the worst of it.” He turned me around so I could see the amulet hanging from his neck. Made of gold, the pendant looked like a reverse question mark in which the circle had nearly been closed. Inside the circle, held there by fine golden lines that reminded me of Queen Marie’s favorite palace room, was a second nearly complete circle whose opening was at the exact same space as the first. Fil ing those spaces was a golden arrow so intricately made that I could see the fine lines of its feathers had been hammered in by some meticulous craftsman.

I wanted to touch it, but settled for laying my hand against the soft shirt below it. “So.” I looked into his eyes, trying to gauge his mood. They were brown. Leave it to him to be total y relaxed before the biggest mission of our lives. “Hanzi. And then hel ,” I said.

“Yes.” He caught my other hand in his and brought it to his lips. “We have had so little time together of late. And now.” He pressed his lips into my skin and I closed my eyes, concentrating on the feel of him, his hips crowding closer to mine. His tongue tracing a path to my wrist. Had the air just thickened? As I took a deeper breath, I thought maybe so.

I raised my eyelids and smiled as I watched his eyes brighten to hazel and then to the emerald green that always felt like a celebration to me. “What do you say we leave them in the future where they belong?”

He glanced toward the window. “Dawn approaches. Already tomorrow is nearly here.”

“How much time do we have?”

“Perhaps an hour.”

“Then let’s make the most of it.”

Even now that our deadline loomed like a factory boss in our heads, yel ing at us to get to work fast because every second counted, we undressed each other slowly. Savored each new bit of skin an unbuttoning revealed with lips and tongues and softly worded murmurs.

The bed creaked like its box springs had been sitting at the bottom of a river for the past twenty years, so we moved the bedding to the floor and lay in each other’s arms as comfortably as if we’d been testing out a Tempur-Pedic mattress.

Vayl wrapped his arms around me and pul ed me close, my breasts flattening against his chest as he whispered in my ear, “Tomorrow may be our last day together. I try to banish the thought, and yet it keeps tearing through my mind.”

I shuddered, holding him tight. “Listen, I’m not letting you go. No matter what happens to us, I’l find you. Somehow, I’l come for you. Okay?”

He buried his mouth in my hair, muttered something I didn’t understand, and then kissed me so fiercely that I couldn’t have formed a single coherent thought for fifteen minutes after that.

We made love with a desperation I’d never experienced before, a love so immense I realized my cheeks were wet, and then knew that I was weeping. But it was al right, somehow. Our rhythm was the rhythm of the universe, and it sang out that we were meant to be. That we would always find one another, because music like ours was timeless… eternal. Afterward we lay in each other’s arms until another rush of fear, of need, of desire pushed us forward again, to that place where only we could go together.

I must’ve dozed off, because my eyes felt heavy and my concentration dim when Vayl final y said,

“Dawn is breaking. I need…” He trailed off. I’d never seen him go into the daysleep before. But now I’d looked into his face just in time to see his eyes flutter shut, his expression relax. I slapped my hand against my heart. He’s not dead. He didn’t just die. Chill, Jaz. He’ll be up again at dusk. If you can make sure no light hits him in the meantime.

I went to our luggage and dug out the sleeping tent. Since there was no way I’d be able to lug him onto the bed, I set it up right next to our spot. When it was done I levered Vayl into it, using angles and his weight, more than my muscles, to get the job done. Once I’d zipped the door closed I sat down beside him and cried. Because the past hour had been one of the best we’d ever spent together. And despite what I’d said, I wasn’t sure we’d ever get the chance to repeat it. Then I jumped into the shower. Because everybody should face their fate with clean hair, a ful stomach, and at least an hour’s worth of lovemaking behind them.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Sunday, June 17, 6:20 a.m.

What is it about the shower? Water hitting your head in just the right pattern? I don’t know, but I get some of my best ideas while rubbing suds into my hair. This time it helped a lot that Jack chose that moment to poke his head in and give me that doleful look that meant he had digested every morsel in his massive gut and I had neglected him shameful y by not feeding him in the past two hours.

I raised my eyebrows at him. “Seriously, dude. I have a feeling you wouldn’t be my buddy like you are today if I didn’t have the key to the chow cabinet.”

And that made me think of doorways. And my sense that the portals fol owing me around the planet were somehow alive.

I finished showering in record time despite the fact that I had to fend off another nosebleed, dressed, fed the mutt, and ran for Raoul’s room.

“How long?” I asked as I burst inside without even knocking. With any other guy I’d have worried about interrupting something a little bent but, as expected, I found my Spirit Guide reading the latest issue of Model Railroader and chowing down on peanuts.

He sat up like he wasn’t that surprised to see me. “Until what?” he asked.

“What’s our window until it’s too late for Hanzi? Do I need to try to wake Vayl up somehow, or wil it hold until sundown? Can you at least tel me that?”

He shook his head and looked toward the window. Whose curtains were closed. Which was when I realized he hadn’t been reading the magazine or eating the peanuts when I’d burst into the room. He’d been staring at those ugly beige window treatments.

“What?” I demanded.

“I was about to come see you,” he admitted. He stood so straight I felt like an officer about to begin inspection. “I just got word from our scout. He’s discovered a route to one of the most far-flung gates in Lucifer’s domain. We have a very narrow window until the fence guardians catch his scent and come to investigate. As soon as Vayl rises we’re leaving.” He’d muttered most of this information over my right shoulder, like a TV crew was maybe standing behind me. Now he dropped his eyes to mine. “I’m sorry, Jasmine. There’s no time to help Hanzi. It’s al about you now.” I wrapped both my hands around the despair threatening to choke the breath out of me and said,

“Look. We can do both. What if we grabbed Hanzi before the accident and took him into hel with us? What better way to show him his potential future than to sink him straight to the pit with a couple of pitiless assassins and an Eldhayr warrior who can show him the best way out?” As Raoul hesitated I rushed on. “You know his chances of survival there are slim to none anyway; it’s not like we’d be vacationing in the Wine Country or something. At least this way there’s a better chance he’l choose the good fight. Plus Vayl gets to save his kid. And I don’t have to spend the rest of my life walking under a thundercloud of guilt for denying him that chance. What do you say?” I realized I was clasping my hands in front of me like a little kid begging for a double dip of chocolate/vanil a twist before the ice cream van passes her by.

Raoul nodded. “I need to check with a few people. But I believe that could work.”

“Yes! I would make you do cheerleader kicks with me, but I can tel you’d pul a hamstring or something.” So I hugged him which, as soon as I was done, I realized he’d dealt with about as suavely as a sixth grader. As I watched the blush fade from his cheeks I made a mental note, which my inner librarian dutiful y filed away: Next time… do the kicks. I said, “Okay, do me a favor then.

Tel the crew there’s been a change of plan. We’re camping out here until further notice.” He sat up straighter. “What are you going to do?”

“I’ve figured out how to get me and Vayl to Hanzi without driving.” His eyes gleamed. “I hoped you would. Do you want some company?” I shook my head. “Your hands are pretty tied on this one, Raoul. I don’t want to take you to a place where you’l be too tempted to break the Eminent’s edict. Especial y when you’re already in hot water over us.” As his face fel I said, “You guard the troops, okay? No tel ing what kind of trouble they’l manage to get themselves into if left to their own devices. As soon as Vayl and I get back with Hanzi, we’re jumping to hel . Then I’m gonna need you like crazy.” He nodded resolutely. “This is true. I’l see you when the kid is safe, then. Be careful. And remember, some surprises are nice ones.”

I tilted my head at him, but when he didn’t elaborate I said, “Okay,” as I backed out of his room.

With a whole day ahead of me and zero sleep behind, I skipped back to the room for some shut-eye. Jack had gobbled his breakfast and settled into one of the chairs for his morning nap.

“Seriously?” I asked him. When he nodded I said, “Okay, but wake me up if you need to take a dump. We don’t want another fiasco like we had in that Motel 6.” I made a few more preparations for the night ahead. And when I was satisfied I’d done al I could I shed my clothes, curled up under the covers beside Vayl’s tent, and snoozed until his whoop of indrawn breath brought me to my feet. I might’ve been stark naked, but I held Grief in one hand and my bolo in the other, so I felt at least half dressed. I also could’ve kicked myself for reacting so violently to the sound of him waking to life for yet another evening. I should be used to it by now. I had been, back at his house. Which proved how much this mission had frayed my last nerve. Not a comforting way to start out what could be the most important night of your life.

Especial y when I looked down. Shit! Another nosebleed had left my chin, my neck, and the front third of my torso caked in half-dried flakes of blood. I supposed I should be grateful that I hadn’t ruined one of my favorite T-shirts. But I just felt… tired. I touched my nostrils. Stil damp from Brude’s latest onslaught. Go ahead, you fucker. Try me. I’m not going down without a fight.

I considered throwing my weapons on the bed while I cleaned up, but Jack had decided that if Vayl and I weren’t going to sleep there it was fair game for him. He’d spread out across the middle of the dingy mattress and was blinking up at me sleepily while Astral stared at both of us from the perch she’d found on the ancient TV set. So I set the lethals on the dresser and, before I hit the bathroom, took one more minute to set up supper for the bottomless pit.

“How hungry is the poopmeister?” I asked Jack as I dug into our luggage for his food supply. He bounced to his feet, making the bed creak so alarmingly I wondered if I was going to have to rescue him from the rubble of its col apse. But it held up at least long enough for him to leap to the floor and claim his food, which he chomped happily, pausing only to smile up at Vayl after he’d emerged from his tent and come to give me a good-evening hug. Which he delayed when he saw the state I’d risen in. He shook his head.

“I hope, more than anything, that tonight sees an end to your pain,” he said as he pul ed me into his arms, dried blood and al . When I thought about it, that was real y saying something.

“That was very cool of you to say, considering,” I replied. I shivered inside his arms. “You’re cold.”

“I have not yet eaten.”

“Mmmm.” I led him to the shower, underneath the spray, let him rub my skin to its usual pasty paleness. And al the while his lips brushed my neck, nipped at my skin. Eventual y my shivers had nothing to do with temperature.

I said, “What you said earlier, about eating. Maybe it’s not such a bad idea for you to take from me once in a while after al . I mean, the last time we joined we didn’t even trade fluids. It was just—

emotional.”

“I know.” He set the soap in the dispenser and pul ed me in until it felt as if every inch of my skin was touching every bit of his. “I have a feeling our journey toward a new otherness cannot be derailed, but only delayed. And even that may not continue for as long as we had hoped.”

“Then we might as wel enjoy the ride,” I murmured as I stroked his broad, muscular back. “I was just wondering, though. If this al works out, I’m definitely going to want a shower after we get back.

What do you think about three in twenty-four hours? Too much?” He considered the question as his hands drew erotic circles down my sides to my hips and back up again. Final y he said, “Wel , they do say that cleanliness is next to godliness. And, considering our vocations, that cannot hurt.”

“You’re just saying that because you like to get wet with me.” His grin made my heart go pit-a-pat just like in romance novels. Or so I’ve heard. He said, “That, also, is quite true.”

I turned in his arms, waiting until he’d clasped his hands across my stomach before I said,

“We’ve got to exploit every advantage. Especial y since I’ve got a big night planned for you. So give me that soap and let’s get dirty, uh, I mean clean.”

We used up most of the soap. Al of the hot water. And every bit of strength in our legs. By the time we left the shower our kneecaps were no firmer than spaghetti noodles. We helped each other dress in colors so dark we’d have lost each other inside a movie theater, and then col apsed on our homemade bed for five minutes of recovery time.

At which point I told him about our change in plans. He leaped off the bed. “What are we doing here, then? We should have left the moment I rose!”

“About that,” I said. “I figured out a way for us to get to Hanzi. I even tried it out to make sure it would al work earlier today. I’l show you soon. The point is, your kid isn’t going to be at that location or on that motorcycle for another”—I checked my watch—“fortyfive minutes. We don’t have time, no.

But we have to take it. Raoul told me that, for some reason, the only time it’s okay to grab the kid is right before the accident. He’s got to see something happen there before we take him to hel , or the deal is nul and void. So ‘patience’ is the word of the day, okay?” Vayl kissed me so thoroughly I almost forgot we had important items on our to-do list. When he lifted his head he said, “You are a wonder.”

“I try.” My lopsided smile told him to cut out the sil y compliments, they were just too far over the top.

He touched the spot where I’d taped a piece of gauze underneath my right breast. I checked to make sure it didn’t show through the thick cotton of my front-pocket pul over as he asked, “Did I hurt you?”

I brushed my palm against his cheek. “A little. It’s teeth in skin, babe. You know it’s got to. But the pleasure is so intense. I can stil feel the tingle in my toes. And the bubbles are stil popping in my brain. You get me high in a way that leaves me permanently powerful. Even after the crash. How does it feel for you?”

He caressed my lips, studying them so closely I would’ve thought his next step was to re-create the image on canvas if he hadn’t started talking again. He said, “When I taste you, when I am inside of you, and you surround me, then I am no longer alone.” He stopped. Stared into my eyes. And I suddenly understood the significance behind the looks he’d been giving me since before I realized how he felt for me. He’d been trying to tel me how lonely he’d been. Al those years, searching for his sons. It hadn’t mattered who he’d touched, whose blood he’d swal owed. He’d never truly connected with anyone in al that time. He’d been isolated, like a TB carrier stuck in quarantine, until he’d met me. And now he was about to risk losing that forever.

I wrapped myself around him until my arms and legs ached. Only then did I say, “I know a little bit about these things, Vayl. People have choices, even after death. I promise, I wil always choose you.”

He pul ed back so he could look into my face. “Not Matt? He may be waiting for you in paradise, you know. He may be standing behind the pearly gates holding a beach umbrel a in one hand and a margarita in the other.”

I jumped to my feet. “I was real y going to do this later. Afterward? But no, now real y seems…” I rushed to my suitcase. It didn’t take much digging. I knew right where I’d packed the box because I’d checked on it every day since to make sure it hadn’t disappeared.

I came back to Vayl, who looked like a male model the way he sat in front of his sleeping tent, one leg stretched out in front of him, the other bent at the knee so it could prop up his arm. I said,

“God, you’re gorgeous. Have I ever told you that? Don’t let it go to your head. Egotistical vampires are the worst. Here.” I shoved the box into his free hand. “This is for you.” Which was such a stupid thing to say, but I was suddenly, incredibly nervous.

I sat on my knees in front of him, trying not to twirl my curls nervously as he unwrapped the classy blue paper and pul ed out the black velvet box. When he opened it he went al Vampere on me and I couldn’t tel at al what he was thinking behind his stil -as-death features. So I began to babble.

“You said I could give you a ring. Remember? In Marrakech? So I asked Sterling to make me one for you, to sort of match Cirilai, which is why it’s gold. I went for a semi-plain band because you don’t seem the gemmy type to me. I mean, when I met you, you were wearing Cirilai around your neck, so… did I guess right?” When he didn’t answer I rushed on. “The runes on both sides are, wel , he wouldn’t explain exactly how he did it. But my blood is in there. Not literal y. That seemed a little too Angelina Jolie/Bil y Bob Thornton–esque to me. But it was part of the spel that burned the runes into the band, inside and out, see? Which was how he said that some of my essence melded with the ring. When you wear it I’l be literal y wrapped around you. Does that make sense to you? Are you ever going to speak, or am I just going to keep yapping like one of those annoying diva dogs?

Vayl?” By now my voice had risen about three octaves, Stewie Griffin style.

When he final y looked up, Vayl’s eyes had gone the honey gold I associated with his deepest feelings for me. The amber flecks mixed with green sparks to steal my breath, so that for a second I felt that time had stopped, and nothing existed beyond the love showering me from those wide, wondering eyes. “I have never before held such a treasure,” he said, his voice so low I had to lean forward to make sure I didn’t miss a word.

I sighed and felt the lurch as my world decided to keep spinning. “That was such the right thing to say.” I took the ring from his square-tipped fingers and slipped it onto his left hand, watching his face as he registered the fact that I’d mimicked the same moves a bride would’ve made. He watched the ring slide over his knuckle and snug into the space just above his palm, made a fist to assure himself it fit wel , then looked up at me again.

“You have made me a gloriously happy man today, my pretera.” I leaned forward and kissed him, tasting him ful y, the way he’d taught me to, breathing in his scent, his maleness, his rising desire. I murmured, “That’s my job, you know. The assassin thing is just a sideline.”

“But you do it so wel .” He ran his lips down the side of my neck and I shivered. But I’d learned a few tricks since our first encounter, and when I slid the tip of my tongue down the edge of his ear he grabbed me with both hands, pul ing me forward until I was straddling his lap.

“I do other things wel too,” I pointed out, just in case he hadn’t noticed, as I feathered a dozen kisses down the line of his jaw.

“Ung.”

Oh baby, what can be better for the ego than rendering your mega-experienced Vampere lover speechless? I felt like I’d just gained a bra size and learned how to walk in stilettos without appearing bowlegged al in one swoop! And then? Just because I wanted a little icing on the cake, I said, “We should go. I’m sure they’re waiting on us. Vayl!”

He’d wrapped both arms around me and swung me to the floor, managing to land on top without bruising either of us. I kinda wanted to see the instant replay, but he already had his lips buried between my breasts, who I guess he thought should hear the news first. “Our crew can wait. You just gave me the best gift I have ever received in my extremely long life. I must thank you appropriately.

Like this.”

He did something with his lips that made me giggle uncontrol ably. “Vayl! What did you—okay, you can total y do that again.”

Which, thankful y, he did.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Sunday, June 17, 7:00 p.m.

We met the rest of our crew in Raoul’s room an hour after sundown. I don’t know if it was kindness to us or reluctance to start the last leg of the mission that had kept them from pounding on our door, but they’d left us alone, al owing us to join them when we final y decided we were ready to go.

We were pretty crowded in there, with Bergman and Cole sitting crosslegged on one bed while Raoul took up most of the other, though Astral had sprawled out beside him with her legs stretched in either direction as if she’d suddenly gone boneless. Aaron took up the single chair by the rickety old table. Each crew member held a double-edged blade that he was buffing to a shine that would send arcs of pain through your eyebal s similar to a camera flash if you looked at it just wrong.

Astral peered at us from her perch for a moment, then she said, “The devil’s in the detailsssss,” drawing the S out so that she sounded like a hissing snake.

Bergman looked up apologetical y. “She’s stopped running random videos, but I can’t figure out yet where the funky audio links are coming from. The wiring’s pretty intricate, and my best diagnostics equipment is in my lab.”

I nodded. “It’s okay. We should let her talk.” Especial y since I suspected she was trying to help. I sat down beside her and patted my lap. She took my meaning and hopped on, putting her paws on my chest so she could whisper into my ear, “Hel o.”

“You’ve got the hel right,” I murmured back to her.

Vayl had moved over to stand by Aaron. “What is this, a cleanser?” he asked, pointing to the goop that wetted his son’s rag.

Aaron glanced up. “Raoul says it has powerful properties of its own. Here it just looks like albino Turtle Wax. Down there it’l make the weapon feel a little lighter so it’l move through the air—and other things—cleaner. And then there’s the writing.” He pointed to an ancient script that had been carved into the blade. “Raoul says it’s Hebrew.”

Cole said, “Raoul’s right. I’ve only been able to read a few words because I just started learning the language. But it seems to me like these swords are loaded for bear. I wouldn’t be surprised if they grew legs and a tail and carried you down to the gate on their pommels like some sort of sword/horse breed known only to Disney cartoonists and Eldhayr fanatics like Raoul over here.”

“I am not a fanatic!” Raoul replied, pretty quickly and kinda loud for somebody who shouldn’t care what a bunch of Earth-dwel ers thought.

“Wel , you are wearing a uniform,” Aaron said.

Bergman piped up. “And a couple of hours ago you freely admitted to liking Kool-Aid.” I grinned at my little buddy, who was not only developing some pure brass cojones, but a stel ar sense of humor to match. Raoul thundered, “I am not some sort of cultist!” just as Cassandra threw open the door.

“Of course you are, Raoul,” she said cheerful y. “And we love you for it. Everyone should be so passionately committed to one thing that they have no other life whatsoever, at least for a while.” While Raoul tried to figure out exactly what she meant, she came over to me and scratched Astral under the chin. The cat’s eyes closed and she began her mechanical imitation of a purr. Geez, could Bergman pul off the robotics or what?

I said, “I thought you were going to be closeted with the infomercial here al day long.” I nodded to the cat on my shoulder.

Cassandra cocked her head at us. Something seemed different to me. I stepped back to try to figure it out. Was she actual y dancing in place? Yeah, her ruffled yel ow skirt was definitely swaying back and forth in time with some rhythm that also occasional y sent her shoulders bobbing and the beads on her freshly cleaned and patched purse clicking.

“Cassandra? Are you al right?” I asked. Then I saw Dave grinning in the hal behind her and knew it couldn’t be al that bad.

“More than that,” she said. “But real y it’s no thanks to your cat. I think we need to upgrade her databases or something. She had no information about hel ’s prophets anywhere in them.”

“Wel , of course not. I don’t think anybody on Earth has ever even seen one and lived to tel about it. The Great Taker seems to keep them even more secret than Apple does their next-generation gadgets.”

“True,” Cassandra al owed. “But they have been felt. I’ve even had a glimpse or two.” Her mood quickly dropped off. “It’s like rubbing up against a wal of slime. But once you get past the ick factor, you can manipulate them.”

Everybody in the room sat a little straighter as she explained. “These prophets who’ve been trailing Jaz and Vayl know they’re coming. They even think they know by which gate. See, they’re tapping the future, the same way a vintner taps a keg. Shoving their psyches into the fabric of time and forcing its juices to reveal pictures of what is to come. But they’re bound by the same laws as I am.”

“Meaning what?” Dave asked.

“Meaning they need something of Jaz’s or Vayl’s to drive that spigot in correctly. Preferably something they can touch. If we gave them something new, they’d be ecstatic. They’d feel like they had an even better feel for where you’l be going and when you’l get there, so they can set up an ambush and drive you right into it.” She paused, grinning at Vayl. “After you snatch Hanzi, of course.” He nodded at her, giving silent thanks for her optimism.

Raoul was rubbing his forehead. “And how do we turn that to our favor?”

“We feed the wrong story into the item. Wel .” She looked at the floor bashful y. “Actual y I would do that. It takes pretty immense psychic power to pul that off and, since most of you know how long I’ve been around by now, I think I should volunteer.”

“Now, wait a minute,” said Dave. “I may not know a lot about what you do, but I know it takes energy, sometimes so much that you’re exhausted by the end of the day. How are you supposed to pul off something this big without hurting yourself and the baby?” She nodded. “I’ve already thought of that. I need your energy. Al of you,” she added, looking around the room. “I need to feed off it so this transfer doesn’t kil me or…” She reached out to Dave, who grasped her hand in both of his, bowed over it, and pretended not to cry.

“You are going to need a personal item of ours as wel , correct?” asked Vayl.

Cassandra said, “Yes, like a piece of jewelry.” She looked at me hopeful y and I realized almost instantly what she wanted. Which is fine, I told myself. It’s not like I didn’t know this day would come.

But it was hard, it hurt to pul the ring Matt had put so much thought into, the one he’d slipped on my finger the night he’d asked me to marry him and I’d said yes, it was so much tougher than I’d imagined to lay it in Cassandra’s hand and say, “Here. This has been with me through the best and worst times of my life. It should work.”

She closed her fingers around it and smiled gently. “It’s for the good of the Trust,” she said.

“Yes,” Vayl’s agreeable voice sounded booming next to my whisper. I stared around the room with its rotting bedspread, peeling wal paper, and chipped dressers, feeling the loss, waiting for the moment when it would be okay again. Then Jack was there, shoving his nose into the backs of my calves, which was his way of saying he’d had enough snacks for one day, it was time for dinner. And oh, by the way? I love you, Jaz.

I knelt down. I love you too, buddy. And we both love Vayl, who’s waiting as patiently as he can.

But, look at him. He’s terrified that Hanzi will die in that wreck just like Dave foresaw. Isn’t it about time we shoved that monkey off his back?

I looked around the room. “Thanks for making such great preparations, guys. It looks like you’l be set when we get back.”

Sudden silence as my friends faced the fact that we might not return. Even Aaron managed to look concerned. I took Vayl’s hand. “There’s no room in here,” I said. Then I smiled, my eyes twinkling up into his as I said, “We have a lot of luck with showers. Let’s try in there.” His lips quirking, he said, “I bow to your vast experience in this area,” and fol owed me into the room, which was covered with faded pink tile, its grout so dingy that it almost looked black. Since he hadn’t been told to stay, Jack fol owed us, watching with interest as I slid the ivory shower curtain to one side and then leaned against the sink. Vayl buried one hand in the scruff of Jack’s neck fur as I thought about summoning the door, just like I had in Brude’s dungeon. Only this time I considered it more like a phone cal to a dear old friend. Come on, girl. Pick up the line.

The portal shimmered into being inside the tub like it had always been there, but I’d only now gained the visual acuity to see it. Framed by blue-and-orange flames, it stood at ceiling height and took up the entire length of the tub. It was the biggest door I’d seen, discounting the one I’d cal ed to transport Aaron Senior’s cel .

I leaned over, placing one hand on the tub’s edge, keeping the other firmly on the comforting reality of Jack. “I know who you are,” I whispered.

The flames danced merrily.

“You and Raoul,” I went on. “You’re the only beings who’ve ever real y seen my soul. The fact that neither of you ran screaming—I appreciate that.”

Another leap and twirl of flame. I began to associate it with joyous laughter.

“I understand now that you were helping me before, when you chose a familiar battleground where I could fight the Magistrate with sort of a home-field advantage. And when you appeared in Brude’s territory so we could escape—that couldn’t have been easy or safe for you. Now I’m ready for that favor I was tel ing you about before.”

As I spoke the flames banked and rose, as if every thought and breath of the creature who appeared to us al as a plane portal was communicated through that movement. When I felt she understood, I motioned for Vayl to come forward beside me.

I whispered, “She’s wil ing to help.”

“She?”

“Um, yeah. I think you’d cal her, like, a guardian angel. Only she’s more about movement than destination, so there’s probably a neutral word that works better. It’s just that I don’t know her language so I couldn’t tel you what it is. My Sensitivity is wide open since you took my blood, so I’m feeling her pretty strongly. I can tel you she was once a spectacular human being. But she hasn’t had a body like we know them for thousands of years.”

“What is she going to do?” Vayl asked.

“Jump us to Spain. Pul us back.”

“Why?”

I shrugged. “As near as I can tel ? It’s who she is. Al I had to do was stop limiting her, start seeing her possibilities, and now infinite travel destinations are open to us.” His eyes began to glow. “We could go anywhere. Safe from your people and mine.” I nodded. “But we could come back to visit. Because my family is stil mine. And I won’t abandon them.”

“Nor I.”

“Speaking of which.” I motioned to the portal. “Let’s go get that crazy kid of yours.” Vayl’s smile lit up my entire heart. “Indeed.”

He took my hand, I grabbed Jack’s col ar, and together we stepped into the hotel tub, through my guardian’s doorway, into the loudest damn arena I’d crashed since Dave and I had sneaked into the monster truck ral y during our junior year of high school and nearly gotten thrown out when we’d found one idling backstage and decided to take it for a spin. Literal y. Lucky for us we’re real y fast runners.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Sunday, June 17, 7:15 p.m.

I’l give this to my portal, she had a sense of humor. She’d set us down at the back of a temporarily fenced-in tract of watereddown dirt that looked like it was normal y used as a range for long-distance target practice. Near the horizon I could see the hulks of bombed tanks and trucks. Closer to hand, set in a semicircle around the fence, mobile spectator stands had been erected. In them GIs and their families cheered on the stuntmen who were currently putting on an engine-revving, tire-spinning show for them in the cool of the Andalusian evening. At the moment three bright yel ow racing-striped cars were taking turns running up to a ramp and hitting it with their front and back wheels, which levered them up into the air. Then they competed to see how long they could run around the ring before fal ing back to their natural state.

“Your son is a nutbag,” I murmured to Vayl.

“Hanzi always was the adventurous one,” he replied.

“Uh-huh. So how do we find him before—Oh, I see.”

Lined up down the middle of the track were five semi trucks with their trailers attached. A ramp led up to the first one and another led down from the last. Hanzi must have intended to jump these, probably at the end of the show, since the hoops at the tops of the ramps looked flammable and it would, no doubt, promise to be the team’s most spectacular stunt.

“Wel , I guess we know which truck Dave saw Hanzi slamming into now,” I said.

“What if I drove off in the last one?” Vayl asked. “Hanzi could hardly do the stunt then.”

“Do you remember how to hotwire a car?” I asked.

“Al right, then, you do it. But I am coming with you.”

“Of course. Who else is going to make me invisible to al those yel ing soldiers?” So Vayl raised his powers, camouflaging us both so successful y that only our footprints in the dirt showed signs of our passage. We careful y walked up to the last truck in line. I eased open the door. And then careful y shut it again.

“We’re outta here,” I said, grabbing Vayl by the arm and pul ing him backward.

“What happened?”

I grimaced with effort, yanking desperately and having no luck in budging my sverhamin whatsoever.

“The truck is rigged with explosives. I’m assuming it’s supposed to blow during Hanzi’s big performance. I imagine that’s what he’s supposed to see right before we grab him.”

“Who would want to kil my son?”

“It’s a military base, Vayl. Who wouldn’t want to kil an American stunt crew on an American base in Spain?”

“Point taken.”

The sound of a motorcycle revving turned our attention to the dirt oval at the edge of which the stands had been set. The crowd went wild as Hanzi, dressed just as Dave had described in black riding leathers and a tinted helmet, came tearing into the arena, popping such a big wheelie I was amazed he didn’t flip completely over.

I elbowed Vayl and pointed. At the edge of one of the spectator stands stood a group of five men dressed in private’s uniforms. They wouldn’t have looked so out of place to the casual observer. It was just that I’d gotten demonic vibes from them in such strong waves that I figured they’d been sent in hungry. I suddenly doubted that much of Hanzi’s soul was meant to make it to the pit intact.

I directed my attention back to the rider. Once he’d completed his circuit of the crowd he came back, this time balancing on the back of the bike like it was a circus pony.

In the meantime, two stagehands had lit the rings at the tops of the ramps.

“Vayl. We’re out of time.”

He was staring hard at the rider whose soul had once inhabited his son’s body. “Look at the bomb again,” he told me. “Does it have a timer?”

I bit my lip to keep the obscenities from spil ing over my lips as I eased the door open and took more time to study the future Dave had foreseen for Hanzi. “No,” I said final y. “Somebody in this crowd is holding the detonator.”

“Cassandra?” he suggested.

“No, Dave would never be okay with that,” I said, trying to imagine her pressing her hand to al that C4 in order to get a vision of the culprit, if we’d even had that kind of time. Besides.

“Remember, Hanzi’s got to see the explosion. I figure we have to grab him close to the edge of the jump.”

“I agree,” said Vayl.

“Okay then, let’s grab ourselves a couple of motorcycles.”

Here’s the thing about being wil ing to do anything for the love of your life. It turns out—you real y wil do anything. While Hanzi continued to wow the crowd with his way-cool bike tricks, I ran to the trailer parked at the side of the track, Vayl gal oping smoothly at my side. We knocked out a couple of perfectly innocent guys who would wake without ever knowing a skinny redheaded chick and a brooding vampire had punched them so hard their brains shut down for a few seconds. And then we stole their precious vehicles. Sometimes we just suck.

We drove back to where we’d left Jack, who jumped onto the front of my bike like he’d been riding since puppyhood. “Hold on, boy,” I told him. “We’re going airborne.” He tilted his head up so the air could brush back his fur, then he looked straight up so he could see me over the top of his head. And he grinned.

“You are truly the best dog ever,” I told him fondly as we revved our engines.

“Time?” Vayl yel ed over our noise.

“Yeah!” I shouted. He nodded and we drove, hard, to where Hanzi had now decided the only way the crowd could be happier was to see him drive on a tightrope made especial y for cycles. Riding twenty feet off the ground on a modified rope with no net made Hanzi seem especial y suited for one of the straitjackets I’d seen displayed recently in the Museum of Torture in Prague. Then I had no more time for thought.

Hanzi had made it across. Driven down the tightrope ramp and gunned it for the final stunt. The flaming hoops had been lit. We were driving to catch up and the crowd was screaming wildly, thinking it was al set up for them, a surprise three-cycle jump over a damn long distance.

“Hanzi!” Vayl bel owed.

I yel ed, “Vayl! That’s not his name now!”

Ten more seconds and we’d caught up to the stunt driver. Who looked from Vayl to me and back again with surprise so immense we could feel it, we could even see it despite the tinted visor.

“Change of plan, kiddo!” I yel ed.

“What?”

“Aim for the big door in the sky!”

“What?”

Vayl put every ounce of hypnotic power in his voice when he bel owed, “Aim for the big door in the sky!”

Now we’d rounded the curve and I could see the soul-rippers who’d been sent to fetch Hanzi running toward us. They, at least, had figured out that al was not copacetic in Andalusia this fine evening. But, stuck in human form, they couldn’t make their little legs pump any harder than was standard, and it was clear they’d never catch up to us in time to stop the bul et train we’d set in motion.

We accompanied Hanzi back to the starting point of the run, gunned our engines, and nailed our throttles, pushing the motorcycles hard toward the ramp. As we rushed toward the temporary wooden structure, which had only been made to hold the weight of a single rider, I prayed that the builders had supported it a little extra for today’s stunt, and then I concentrated on my newest friend, my portal to anywhere.

Sitting in front of me, his fur flying back from his face and chest, his tongue hanging free like a thick pink necklace, Jack barked joyful y as the doorway appeared in the air just ahead of us. But shit! The flaming hoop wasn’t big enough for al three of us!

I glanced at Vayl.

“One at a time!” he yel ed.

We quickly formed a line, with Hanzi in the lead, him in the middle, and Jack and me fol owing.

Hanzi leaped first, taking to the air like a rocket, the motorcycle fal ing away from his body slightly as gravity did its deed. He made it through the natural flames of his crew’s hoop, and my portal’s flames had just begun to reach out to him when the semi exploded.

He looked down, panicking as the world beneath him vanished in a bal of flame and flying metal.

An instant later he’d disappeared through the portal.

Vayl, already airborne, twisted as the force of the explosion hit his cycle. He control ed it masterful y, flying through the door just before a twisted hunk of door flew past the back of his head.

The concussion flipped Jack and me in a complete circle, making the crowd yel with excitement at what they assumed was our amazing trick as I struggled to keep the machine from tumbling sideways in the air and Jack scrabbled to stay on board, his nails scoring the gas tank as he pushed back into me. I wrapped my left arm around him, praying that I was strong enough to keep the handlebars straight with one arm when it came time to land the sucker, as we punched through the door. He yelped and I whispered stupid, soothing remarks into his flat-backed ears like, “When we get home I’l buy you that new Frisbee you’ve been eyeing. And I’l never offer you another leftover taco again. Just hang on, okay?”

As we flew through my portal I realized it had led us right back to The Stopover’s crossroads.

Only we were shockingly close to the goat track, flying much lower than expected to the pitted road, which was more dirt than gravel, not to mention the towering trees beside it. We were so close to landing I had no time to prepare for impact. Which was nice in a way. At least I didn’t have to worry about whether it would hurt more to break my neck on the road or crush my skul against a tree trunk.

“Shit!”

I tightened my arm around Jack. Made sure the other was strong on the handlebars but ready to bend if adjustments were necessary. I tightened my thighs around the cycle and leaned forward, pressing against Jack to give him more security when we dropped. And it came so fast. Suddenly our wheels were on the ground. We were going too fast, I knew that, but for a couple of seconds I stil thought we were going to make it.

As I began to brake, out of the corner of my eye I noticed that Vayl and Hanzi had pul ed off to the side and leaned their cycles against a couple of beeches, like they’d decided to have a little picnic and enjoy the scenery. Something about the kid seemed off, even in that brief a glance, but by then my hands were too ful to figure out what it was. I’d hit a trench, probably dug by a wagon wheel after the last big rain, and my speed, combined with the fact that I only had one arm to maneuver with, wouldn’t al ow me to ride through it smoothly. The wheel tracked sideways just enough to catch and throw the entire bike off balance. I tried to pul it back, but the handlebar torqued out of my palm like it had been pinched and twisted by a bul dozer. I felt the rol begin and automatical y relaxed.

Wishing I could advise Jack to do the same, I grabbed him around the middle with both arms.

“Sorry, sweetie. This is gonna hurt.”

They teach you al kinds of skil s in spy school. How to shoot a terrorist through the eyebal at five hundred yards. How to withstand hours of torture. Even how to wreck a motorcycle. Resistance, as they often say, is futile. Seize up and you tend to bruise and break a lot more necessary parts. This is why alcoholics can fal down so many flights of stairs and total so many cars without sustaining much more than a scratch. It’s al in the muscle relaxant. Which was why al I did was make sure we were headed down the road rather than into trees before I let the momentum spin me into the ground and rol me like a doughnut in powdered sugar. My only concern was Jack, folding his legs under my body so they wouldn’t break, cupping his head close to mine so it wouldn’t flail during the fal .

Which lasted forever.

We hurtled across the scarred and granite-strewn trail like a couple of off-road racers who’ve lost their taste for machinery. As our course took us closer to the shoulder, I heard Jack yelp, his pain shooting through me like it was my own. I barely felt the rock that sliced such a gash in my thigh Raoul later told me it was a miracle my bone held firm.

Final y we stopped. I knelt over Jack, the blood from my wound spil ing down my leg as I checked him over. He lay panting, his eyes half-closed, an arm-long branch that had fal en from one of the beeches protruding from his side.

“Vayl!” I yel ed without looking up. “Vayl!” He was there before I could cal again, crouching beside me, gently pul ing back the fur beside the wound, trying to see how deep the stick had stabbed into our boy. When he looked at me with troubled eyes I began to cry. “Oh, no. Oh, no you don’t!” I stumbled to my feet, pointing a shaking finger at him. “We saved your fucking son!” I shoved my finger at Hanzi, who’d taken off his helmet to reveal a mane of shoulder-length hair and the features of a beautiful young—woman? Wel , at this moment I didn’t give a shit if she was a Smurf! I was going to get my way, goddammit! I said, “You pick up my dog, and you take him into that hotel, and you figure out how to make him better! Or by fuck I wil never, ever forgive you!” I glared at the girl for good measure. “Or you!” I roared.

I didn’t mean it. Vayl told me later that he knew that, and I hoped he was tel ing the truth. But just then my heart was breaking in two, and this heart of mine… it just doesn’t have that much flexibility left in it.

He said, “Jasmine. He needs your peace now, and your love. Shal we get him to a softer bed?” I nodded wordlessly and clutched my arms around my waist as Vayl lifted my 120-pound malamute like he weighed nothing, carrying him back to our room as gently as if he were his own child.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered the moment he put Jack on the bed. “I didn’t mean… I shouldn’t have said

—”

“Hush,” Vayl told me, turning and taking me into his arms. “Raoul wil know what to do. You should get him.”

So I ran for my Spirit Guide, who showed such concern that I forgave him every petty irritation I had ever felt or would ever experience about him again.

“What happened?” asked Cole, running close behind us as we headed for the sickroom. As I explained, Bergman, David, Cassandra, and Aaron strained to hear, asking inane questions that I either ignored or snapped answers to until Cole put a hand to my shoulder and said, “Dude. Imagine sitting in a cramped hotel room wondering if your best friend, your sister, is going to die tonight. And then imagine her coming back hysterical talking about her halfdead dog and Vayl’s son who’s actual y his daughter. Can’t you cut us some slack?”

As Raoul entered my room I turned in the doorway, my eyes gathering in the friends who had saved my life in so many ways. And Aaron, who at least hadn’t done anything to make it worse in the past few hours. I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. Yeah, we saved Hanzi. Who isn’t a boy anymore.

Which is so weird, but neither of us have had any time to deal, because on the way back through the portal I wrecked my motorcycle—”

“Where did you get a motorcycle?” asked Aaron in a voice so lost and confused that I started back at the beginning, speaking as slowly as I could bear considering I wanted to burst back into my room and, what? Provide miraculous medical assistance when I, in fact, knew zilch about veterinary care?

In the end it was Cole who opened the door and ushered me through. Raoul was leaning over the bed. Vayl stood beside him. The girl, his beautiful new daughter, sat in the chair by the window, her feet propped up on the table… smoking a cigar.

I stomped up to her, tore the tobacco from her hands, ignoring her angry, “Hey!” since it just made me want to slam her against the wal even harder.

I handed the foul item to Cole, who proceeded to flush it down the toilet, and said, “If you ever smoke around me or mine again I wil choke you to death. Do we understand each other?” She started to laugh. Then she looked around the room and realized nobody else was amused.

“What the hel ?” she asked.

Cole answered her. “That explosion that just nearly blew you to bits? Demon-laid. Because, guess what? You’re a flaming jerkoff and the world is tired of your crap. But I wouldn’t feel relieved to have escaped the firestorm just yet. Because you’ve been rescued by two of the baddest assassins on earth. And one of them”—he pointed to me—“is highly pissed. Which means she’d feel so much better if she could kil something.” He pointed to her. “If I were you, I’d spend the next few hours making sure that something wasn’t me.”

She showed at least some of her father’s bril iance by settling back into her chair. So I turned to check on my dog. “Raoul?” I asked as I moved to stand between him and Vayl. They’d covered the wound with rags torn from one of Vayl’s shirts. “How is he?”

Raoul said, “He feels very sick to me. I think we need to get him some help, quickly.” He turned to Bergman. “You have access to al kinds of technology, right?” Bergman nodded, pul ing his personal computer out of his shirt pocket expectantly. “Find us a veterinarian and get him here as quickly as possible.” He glanced at me and then back at Miles. “I know this sounds strange, but this may be the most important thing you have ever done for Jasmine in your life.” I felt tears begin to rol down my face as Miles said, “I’m on it,” and wheeled out of the room. I leaned over Jack, rubbing my face against the fur of his cheek, listening to him pant and, every fifteen seconds or so, moan softly into my ear.

“It’l be al right, buddy. I’m right here. I’l be right here.”

“But, Jaz,” Raoul said, as he knelt beside me. “You can’t stay. You have to go now. You gave me your word.”

I turned to look at my Spirit Guide, his face blurring in and out of focus as the tears continued to rol down my cheeks. And in that moment, I didn’t hate him. Because I’d made my choice long ago.

But I knew, now, that I needed to turn another corner. That I couldn’t keep leaving people I loved like this. Jack was the final straw. He didn’t understand, wouldn’t know why his Jaz was deserting him when he needed her gentle touch and loving voice the most. But the rest of them, they’d known.

When Bergman had been bleeding onto the bricks in Marrakech, tel ing me to go and kil werewolves, he’d understood. He hadn’t complained, and yet he should’ve. When Evie had been nearly ready to give birth, and she needed me there because our mom and Granny were dead, she’d understood that I had a job to do. She hadn’t complained about al my traveling. But she should’ve. Because family, friends, the people I adored who’d pul ed me through the nightmare days and nights of my life… they mattered more even than the monsters I’d destroyed to protect them.

And it was time to show them that. The shit of it was, I could never do that, I’d die before I had the chance, if I didn’t leave my poor Jack one last time.

Raoul said, “Jaz? What is it?”

“This is the end,” I whispered. “I’m done fighting after Brude is vanquished. Do you understand?” He nodded gravely. “Yes. I do.”

Cole came forward, tapping Raoul frantical y on the shoulder. “Wil she die, then? Like, there are no instant dropsies in the contract, are there?”

“No. She’s earned her right to live in peace.”

Vayl ran his hand down my arm and pul ed me to my feet. “Then it is time. Come, Raoul. Before we change our minds. Let us gather our weapons and chal enge the gates of hel .” CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Sunday, June 17, 7:30 p.m.

Suiting up for hel took less time than expected. Holy water on the right wrist. Gauntlet to protect against biting creatures on the left. Raoul’s special y crafted sword in its sheath on my back. Bolo in the right pocket. Grief in its shoulder holster despite the fact that I only carried it for reassurance.

Bul ets wouldn’t do harm in the netherworld.

Vayl paid a visit to Miles to recover his cane and check on his progress. He’d found a good veterinarian twenty miles away and had already left to pick him up. There was no question in my mind that he would be coming back with him.

Raoul returned from his room carrying his sword and a shield that covered most of his left arm.

He also carried his dagger, which he offered to the girl, along with an introduction that Cole, David, and Cassandra listened to with rapt attention. “My name is Raoul,” he said, almost shyly. “You are somewhat famous among my kind. Do you stil cal yourself Lotus?”

“Yup,” she answered, giving him as much of a going over as the weapon she took from his hand.

“Why am I so famous?” she asked. “Are your people into stunt shows?”

“You possess immense skil s,” he said.

She snorted. “You could say that.” She spun the dagger in her hand and threw it across the room. It stuck into the head of the portrait Sanji, the innkeeper, had so careful y hung on the wal .

Then she licked her lips, winked at him, and leaned over so far Raoul couldn’t help but notice her boobs practical y springing from her dark blue T-shirt. “I have al kinds of skil s.” Raoul’s expression never changed. “You also hate yourself more than any other woman I have ever known.”

She sat back so fast it was like he’d slapped her. I said, “Where we’re going, you’re gonna want that dagger.” I nodded to the weapon and then looked at her hard, letting her know she’d better get her ass out of the chair before it came to a confrontation.

Lotus tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, revealing a row of silver earrings, including one that looked like a straight pin had been shoved through the ear’s top curve in two separate places. Ugh.

Hey, I’ve got a bel y ring. My best friend has more earrings than a ful y stocked Claire’s. But that one just looked like she’d taken a bad fal into a nest of nail guns. Which was why it was an effort not to shudder with sympathy pains as I studied her eyes. They were such a vivid blue that I hoped they didn’t change the way Vayl’s did. It would be a shame to see that color fade. Her heart-shaped face escaped being described as cute only because of the way her jaw jutted when she talked, like she was warning you ahead of time you’d have to be tough to deal with her.

Her eyes crawled to Raoul’s as she got up and rescued his dagger. On the way back to her chair Lotus said slowly, “This vampire says he’s connected with me. Him and the marshmal ow over there.” She gestured carelessly toward Aaron, who’d backed into a corner and made us al forget he was there. Quite a trick, I suddenly realized. How many times had he done that when I wasn’t looking? I didn’t have time to ponder because she’d gone on. “What’s that about? I’ve never met them before.”

“But you have,” Vayl said, unable to hold himself back any longer. “We are your family, from the time you were born to me as a baby boy named Hanzi in a beautiful wooded area where we had camped just outside of Bucharest.” He pointed to Aaron. “This man was your little brother then. We cal ed him Badu.” Aaron nodded awkwardly. His expression said, Hello, sister who used to be my brother. You are one scary dudette. Do not approach without warning me at least five minutes in advance.

Lotus laughed. “Wel , I’l be damned. Talk about the weirdest family reunion ever.” She looked up at Vayl. “You do realize I don’t believe a word of this shit, right? I mean, I’m a stunt driver. I spend most of my time traveling around the world doing motorcycle tricks. And when that gets boring, I find… other ways… to fil my time. Most of them il egal. Or, at least, immoral. It’s how I rol .” Vayl shook his head. “We were always so different, you and I. Never understanding one another, never able to come to a meeting of the minds. Now I believe I see why. And I wish it were not so.” He crouched before her, his expression ful of the earnest desire of a daddy trying to figure out what his little girl real y wants for Christmas. “I wish to know you better. Is that al right?” She sat back, her cheeks hol owing like she’d just discovered a lemon seed stuck in her molar.

Then she said, “Nope. I’m outta here.” She lunged to her feet only to find Raoul’s blade at her throat.

“No, you aren’t,” he said, his voice rimmed with the thunder that had often brought me to the edge of consciousness. “Your destiny has lost patience with you, and selfish pride is now a choice with consequences you must face. You wil join us. Now.”

Final y, something other than sarcastic prickishness crossed that lovely face. Was it bad that I enjoyed seeing real fear? I glanced at Vayl and was reassured that he felt the same. Sometimes that’s the sign—that inside the actor there’s stil a real soul that can be saved. We had to hope it was true for Vayl’s firstborn.

She whispered, “Join you? Where?”

Raoul said, “The demons who tried to kil you today meant to land you in hel . We do too. It’s up to you to decide whether or not you stay there.”

He nodded to me. I leaned over Jack and whispered in his ear. “Okay buddy, if you ever understood anything I said, now’s the time. I have to go. It’s only so I can come back for good. So rest easy. Miles is getting a doctor to make you better and I’m coming back as soon as I can.” I stroked his head just like he liked it. “Love you, poopmeister.” Then I turned and strode into the bathroom, not looking back because if I did, no way would I be able to take another step away from my family and toward the potential end of my life.

I was leaning on the tub, waiting for the portal to appear, listening to Raoul, Vayl, and Lotus breathe behind me. I knew the rest of my crew was huddled in the doorway, with the exception of Miles—and Astral, of course. She had decided to sit between my feet. I couldn’t speak, not to any of them. The moment was too big, the potential for disaster too real. What do you say to people you wil probably never see again? I had no words.

Then Dave cleared his throat. “We were talking. Remember, before? About Kyphas and her prophets and how they knew you might be coming?”

I nodded as Vayl said, “Yes. Cassandra thought there might be a way to set them onto a false trail.”

“It’s too late,” I muttered.

Cassandra sat on the tub beside me and leaned until she could look into my eyes. “Never,” she said so adamantly that I felt a little shock run through me. “I have lived forever, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve been married and widowed and seen my children die before they were born. I’ve been a slave and a priestess and everything in between. And I’l tel you this, girl. It’s only too late when you’re dead. You”—she circled her finger at me like I was three and she was trying to make me giggle—“are stil kicking.”

I stood up, the flames from the portal coming to life like a frame around my body. Hel ’s citizens suddenly appeared in my peripheral vision as they walked their endless hike of pain, and I wondered if the gate stood that close to my original landing zone, or if the portal had only opened that pathway because it was so strong in my memory from the last time I was there. With no answers to that question readily available, I asked one that could be answered: “Cassandra, what the hel does that mean?”

She pul ed a handkerchief out of her pocket and unwrapped it enough to show me that inside sat my engagement ring. Her smile, so delighted, made my lips twitch. “We did it!” she said.

“It’s ready!” Dave echoed her, like he’d been the one toiling over it for the past hour. “My wife is a genius! You should al bow down to her!”

“Or not,” Cassandra said, though her smile hinted that she kind of missed those days. “I’ve imbued Jaz’s ring with a spel that makes al the emotions it’s absorbed over time more vivid. The prophets who are looking for her wil find it first.” She held it up to me. “Al you need to do is get somebody in hel to put it on and wander around with it while you run the other way.”

“Or, more practical y, force them,” said Dave. “I was thinking if we shove it down their throat, we probably have a good twelve hours before the prophets clear their heads.”

“Too risky,” said Cole, leaning against the door frame and shining his clicky vamp teeth against his shirtsleeve like they were covered in jel y stains as he spoke. “Half of you could be dead before you get within ten miles of the gate.” He cocked his head to one side and grinned as he set the teeth on the floor, aiming them toward Aaron, who stood just behind him and jumped satisfactorily as they came trundling toward his feet. Cole said, “I have a better idea.” Before we could stop him he lunged forward, grabbed the ring from Cassandra’s hand, slipped it on his pinky, and waved happily at us as he leaped through the portal, cal ing, “See you on the flip side!”

“Shit!” I reached for him, but Vayl grabbed me before I could step through. “Cole! You son of a bitch! Don’t you dare—!” But he had. And the portal had suddenly gone black.

“Open it up, Raoul,” I said grimly.

He spoke the words that cleared the door. Cole was not on the other side. In fact, the section of hel had changed completely. Now we were viewing the oceanic part that Kyphas had landed in during our fight in Marrakech. “This isn’t helping,” I said, trying to keep my voice level, sticking my hands in my pockets before they punched something.

Raoul inspected the portal’s frame, watching how the flames jumped and what colors they turned when. He said, “Hel does not want us to know where Cole dropped. But I can contact the Eminent.

We have scouts everywhere.”

I looked over my shoulder at Vayl. He said, “Cole made a choice. For you. Do not let it be in vain.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying not to feel as if everyone I cared about was fal ing away from me.

That next I would have to watch Raoul bleed his last drop into hel ’s river, or see Vayl’s spirit waft away into its fiery skies. I said, “Okay. Raoul, quickly contact your guys. And then, for God’s sake, let’s get this over with.”

I felt Raoul’s hand, hard on my shoulder. “Consider it done. And remember, it’s a massive domain. Plenty of room for our scouts, and Cole, to sneak around in. We’ve got a good chance of finding him before any hel spawn do.”

Vayl turned to David. “You wil guard our return? We may come fast and accompanied by the worst hel has to offer.”

Dave nodded. “I’l make sure nothing blocks this door for you.” They gripped hands as Raoul began to chant and the scenery, once again, began to change. I realized the next time it landed I would be facing what could be my final destination. I looked at Lotus. She was purely fascinated by this whole exchange. Soon she’d feel differently.

“We are ready then,” said Vayl.

“What about me?” asked Aaron.

“You…” Vayl sighed. “Make sure you do not die again before I have a chance to know you better.”

Vayl stared at the three people he was asking to stay behind. “Please also attempt to contact Cole via the Party Line and any other contraption Bergman has left lying around his room, remembering that he adores combustible traps. We wil do the same from our location. Try to find out where he has gone. Astral may be of help in that area.”

The cat, hearing her name for the first time in a while, perked up her ears and said, “Hel o. Hel -o Hel ’s o-ver your shoulder.” She turned and looked at me, without blinking, and added in her purring kitty voice, “Don’t look over your shoulder, Jazzy, no matter what you do.” The chil that had clamped to my spine now tried to climb right up into my brain and explode out the top of my head. It left me with chattering teeth and the feeling that icicles were growing inside my eyebal s.

“We have to go,” I whispered.

The cat responded by lifting one forepaw and delicately licking it. I took that as permission, picked up the robokitty, and boogied my ass straight into hel .

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Sunday, June 17, 8:00 p.m.

Here’s what happens when you walk into hel without your sword drawn, with your robokitty in ass-grenade mode, and without letting your Spirit Guide go first.

You get sucker punched by a pint-sized demon with skul spikes that resemble rotten bananas.

I dropped the cat and doubled over. Pain shot up my chest and down my legs as I stared straight into the hel spawn’s bloodshot eyes. Then I grinned. “You little shit,” I said. “How could you tel I was spoiling for a fight?”

I planted my fist into his face so hard that he flipped head over heels and landed on his butt in a puddle of steaming glop that smel ed like burned cow manure. When he tried to scurry off I caught him by the high col ar of his green sequined jumpsuit and said, “Oh no you don’t. You’re coming with me.”

I turned around to find the rest of my party had arrived and was observing the fight from a narrow path beside the field I’d fal en in. Clear of weeds, or any greenery for that matter, its stark sunblanched furrows were planted in body parts. Arms, legs, and torsos stuck out of the nuked soil like crops grown by Jeffrey Dahmer in his FFA phase. I pushed the demon toward them. Vayl caught him, holding him at arm’s length like a piece of dirty laundry, and paying about as much attention to him, because Lotus had already begun to bug out on us.

“What the fuck?” she demanded. “No!” she said, slapping away Vayl’s arm when he tried to keep her from prancing around in circles like she badly needed to pee and nobody would tel her where the bathroom was located. “Seriously! Who are you people? I mean, I’m up for adventure and al ? I figured you for mega-mil ionares who recognized a fel ow thril -seeker when you saw one. But this?”

She was screeching now, jumping in place and shaking her fists at the mutilated bodies that would never have moved in her world, but in this one would not keep still.

Raoul strode up to her and grabbed her by the arms. “You are a bril iant young woman. Wrap your mind around this right now, Lotus. You nearly died today. You probably wil anyway, but at least now the choice is yours. This”—he gestured at the ghastly landscape—“is where you were going to end up. Satan’s field was your final destination because of how you chose to live life above.” She was looking around, her eyes wide and terrified. But seeing now, understanding as Raoul spoke. The greenish tinge to her face made me think he maybe shouldn’t be standing right in front of her, though.

He went on. “Vayl and Jasmine made a deal for your life. And this is it. You must walk through hel with us. The choices you make here wil determine your future.” His arm swept in a ful circle, making her see every horror around her. “You can stil save yourself. As Cassandra said before, it’s never too late.” He leaned forward and whispered in her ear. I only heard because I had the Party Line tapped into mine. Unfortunately, so did Vayl. His eyes dropped to the ground as he heard my Spirit Guide tel his daughter, “Personal y, I think you’re too high on adrenaline and too afraid to see what’s under the stunt costume to bother. Take my word for it. You’l be planted in this field before Jasmine takes her first hit at the gate.”

Leaving Lotus to stew on that piece of news, he strode forward and swept Astral into one arm.

“Are we moving yet?” he asked.

“Not in a straight line,” said Vayl. He motioned to the hel spawn, who was putting up a little fight, trying to kick Vayl in the shins when he wasn’t digging in his heels. He also made an attempt to head-butt Vayl, which would’ve been painful had one of those spikes impaled him, because they looked to be leaking some sort of greenish acid.

Vayl lifted his adversary completely off the ground. “I am sure Jasmine thought you might be helpful to us. Certainly newcomers to hel ’s shores need al the friends they can get. However, I find you quite rude.”

The demon shoved his head toward Vayl’s thigh like some sort of miniature bul . But the Vampere are particular about etiquette, and they react violently to being gored. Which was partial y why Vayl jerked the demon’s head backward and buried his fangs in its neck. He drank deeply, spat on the ground, leaving a tiny, smoking crater as he murmured, “Agh, it is like drinking vinegar.” But I understood his motives when his reddish black eyes bored into mine and he confessed, “I have missed the powers I lost, my Jasmine. Would you begrudge me this chance to regain something of what was taken from me?”

I stared at him for a moment, making myself truly see him. His fangs and lips crimson with blood.

His eyes bright and hungry, hands gripping his prey so tightly that the demon showed no more signs of resistance than the occasional twitch. This was the same creature who had chased me merrily through his house a few days before, shucking clothes and trading kisses until neither one of us could quite see straight. And I realized I loved them both equal y.

I said, “Take what you need.”

He drank again, deeply, like a desert hiker who’s just realized he doesn’t need to ration his water anymore. And then he snapped the demon’s neck like a chicken bone.

Raoul was already pul ing a garbage bag out of one of his jacket pockets. “Here,” he said, “put the body in this. We may need it later.”

I cleared my throat as Vayl fol owed his suggestion and he closed the top of the bag with a cheerful red-and-white-striped twist tie. “Do you always carry garbage bags for this reason?” I asked Raoul.

“Yes,” he said matter-of-factly. “Almost everything here feeds on flesh. It’s nice to have extra around so your skin isn’t the first target the monsters go for.”

“Oh.”

Vayl flung the sack over his back and set his cane to the path, and I tried hard not to think about horror-movie Santa Claus similarities as we headed onward, Raoul leading him while Lotus fol owed and I pul ed rear guard.

Now that I’d gotten over the first shock of brawling with a demon my training kicked in. Despite the fact that my eyes wanted to jump from horror to horror, never resting until they found a friendly face to ease the pain, I saw that the trail was built on a bed of human bones mired in salted earth and red clay. The appendage fields ran as far as I could see in either direction. And each body part imprisoned a diamond-shaped, multi-hued soul that was straining, and failing, to fly free. Without a complete physical form to make it whole again, the soul battered against the body part, flailing helplessly like a tethered eagle. And above them al , just like I’d remembered, a sky so ful of fire I couldn’t look at it long without imagining that the whole thing was going to drop down and incinerate us al .

“If we had a map, what would this particular region be cal ed?” I asked Raoul.

“You have probably heard it referred to as Limbo,” he said. “It is, in fact, right outside of hel ’s easternmost gate, of which there are thirteen. It is a place where souls are stored until they decide what they want out of the afterlife.”

“That sounds a little crazy,” I said. “I mean, to hear you talk before it sounded like souls could be kidnapped into hel , and that you and the other Eldhayr regularly tried to rescue them. Or that they came here because this was where they belonged.”

“Yes,” said Raoul. “But some are here because they want it. They’ve done something hideous in life that they were never punished for, and they feel they deserve to be here. Those are the ones Satan admits personal y.”

“Oh. And uh.” I hesitated. Did I real y want to know? Yes. Because we’d been to hel together before. And to have shared this horror once meant we had more of a stake in getting it right the second time. “What are you seeing?” I asked.

He glanced around, his face more pale under his natural tan than I’d seen it in months. At first he stared at me, like he couldn’t believe I’d asked. But then I could tel he understood. And he said, “It’s a great clearing in the jungle. Fires have been set everywhere around it, and on them are big boiling cauldrons.”

I almost asked him to stop there, but I could tel he had to finish now. So I clenched my teeth together as he said, “Inside the cauldrons are the bobbing heads of those who can’t decide what to do. Their eyes are rol ing, Jaz. They’re stil , somehow, alive. It may be the worst thing I’ve ever seen.

And I have seen so very much.”

I reached my hand forward past Lotus and Vayl and squeezed Raoul’s hand, tightly, for just a second. And then let go.

I glanced at Lotus. She’d gotten the shakes sometime during our march. After Raoul’s description I didn’t want to know what she saw. But I could tel , even if she’d started out in deep denial, she’d been unable to keep it up. She was seeing her future and it scared the shit out of her.

We walked on.

As we traveled among the undecided dead, Raoul, Vayl, Lotus, and I watched their souls fight.

Some of them, I thought, real y must have wanted to be free. But they couldn’t get past whatever they’d done in life. They knew time must be served. Maybe even forever. But others reminded me of moths battering themselves against a porch light. It seemed to me, after a while, that al they wanted was to cause themselves pain. And I imagined that even here, outside one of the most remote of his gates, I could hear the Great Taker laughing.

Only once did Lotus turn to me. Her eyes, wide with horror, begged me to make it stop. I said,

“This is hel ’s suburb, kid. Think of what it’s like inside.” She whispered, “I always knew I had to be punished. I just figured—” I said, “When you were sixteen and Vayl’s son, you got your brother kil ed. That was over two hundred years ago. How have things been since then?”

She fel silent, a single tear rol ing down her cheek as she turned back to the path.

Final y, after forty-five minutes of watching and walking, we came to the end of the fields and the edge of the great river that surrounded Satan’s domain. It had gone by lots of names over time, the most recent of which was the Moat. Sure I’d read about it. How you get across. Ways to pay the Ferryman. How the Ferryman, who also had lots of names, was one of Satan’s bosom buddies, which was why he’d landed such a swank job in the first place. Fight beside a guy long enough and, yeah, you’re going to get rewarded. Even in a shithole like hel .

This being sort of the back way in, we didn’t see him. Which meant we’d have to find our own way across water that, in some places, was rumored to be deeper than the Mariana Trench, containing whirlpools, undertows, and creatures so terrifying even catching sight of a fin or claw had been known to drive the dead mad.

I said, “Looks like it’s gonna be self-serve.”

Raoul nodded his agreement. “Just keep in mind what happens when we get to the other side.” To this point I hadn’t let my eyes or my conscious thought go to that spot, looming like a haunted house on the opposite bank. A gate fashioned to resemble a mastiff’s head, its snarling face daring us to enter uninvited, stood closed against us, tal er at its apex than a threestory building. Blood, fountains of it, dripped from a trough that ran along the top of the fence that bordered the gate, emptying out of the dog’s eyes, nose, and mouth and rol ing into the Moat, where it was quickly absorbed by the current.

The fence itself was built to crush the spirit, its black posts sprouting razor-sharp spikes at random intervals and angles so that any thought of trying to climb them was immediately fol owed by images of self-crucifixion. It ran so far to either side of the gate that I couldn’t see to the end of it.

And, even though this had been part of the report Astral had played for us when we wanted to know more about the Rocenz, I stil felt my heart drop at seeing the entrance to hel and knowing that what lay beyond it would come for me sooner or later. The worst part was that I stil didn’t know how to carve Brude’s name on the black metal face that growled at me like it was alive. And hungry.

Get it together, Jazzy. Granny May’s warm voice had never been so welcome in my head. I saw her standing on her front porch, hands on her hips, the way she did every time I got ready to leave.

Now I understood that she’d always despised those moments the same way she hated this one. But she’d get me through it, just like she’d helped me go back to a home ful of raised voices and mistrust. Because I needed her to.

I turned to Raoul. “I don’t suppose you’ve got an inflatable raft tucked into a secret compartment of your belt or anything?”

“No,” he said. “But I have this.” He pul ed out his sword, banged it against the ground, and voila!

It became a long staff that would be the envy of every one of Robin Hood’s men.

“Did you learn that trick from what’s-her-face?” I whispered, referring to Kyphas’s old habit of transforming a regular human item like a scarf into a local y made and lethal y sharp weapon.

He blushed. “A good idea is a good idea,” he muttered.

“Okay. But I don’t get yours.”

He sighed. “And you ran track in col ege!”

“Wait.” I held up my hands. “You want us to pole-vault over this river?”

“Not this stretch,” he said, waving at the wide water before us. “But my scout said that it narrows radical y down there.” He pointed to our left.

I looked at Vayl, expecting a slew of logical and valid objections. He stared at me quietly, waiting for me to see the bril iance in my Spirit Guide’s plan. At which point I grabbed the pole and stomped off in the direction Raoul had pointed, suddenly, unaccountably, furious. At some point Astral had jumped from her perch on Raoul’s arm, and now she trotted beside me, flicking her ears toward me as if she wanted to catch every word.

“He thinks we’re just going to graceful y vault over the water, like we’re Olympic gymnasts or something. Can you believe that? I’m trying to save my damn mind and I don’t even get the respect of a boat ride for my final mission. Because you know what’s going to happen, don’t you, Astral? My pole is going to get stuck in the mud. And if it doesn’t sling me straight down into the waiting jaws of a sharkogator, I’l just end up stuck there, Jaz-on-a-stick, until I final y lose my grip and slowly slide down into the muck, which is probably worse than quicksand, at which point I wil drown. Dumb damn Eldhayr.” And yet I stil strode on, because I couldn’t think of a better plan, and part of me thought it’d be great fun. Especial y if none of us were eaten alive.

Which led to Astral’s dilemma. “Can you pole-vault?” I asked my robokitty. She shook her head.

“I didn’t think so. Okay, I guess you’l have to ride. But if you dig in those claws, I wil have them chopped off. Just remember that. Now where the—oh. I see.”

The bank pinched in on itself before me as if it were trying to bite into a particularly luscious piece of pie. Made, no doubt, of four and twenty blackbirds just like in that craptacular nursery rhyme my mom insisted on chanting to us right before lunch every damn day until we final y screamed at her to stop.

I halted at the narrowest spot, probed the water, and found it satisfyingly shal ow while I waited for the rest of our merry band to catch up with me. Vayl came to stand beside me, brushing his shoulder against mine in the way he knew would instantly soothe me. I looked up at him. “I can’t tel you how much this is sucking. Brude is tap dancing across my frontal lobe like he’s wearing steel-soled work boots. I have no idea if we’re going to be able to open up the Rocenz, so my stomach has shrunk to the size of a walnut. And yet my intestines have shifted into ful gear, so if I don’t shit myself before this is al said and done it’l be a goddamn miracle.” He smiled at me. “I adore you.”

“Likewise.”

“I have no idea how this wil al end.”

“Me neither.”

“But we have been through other hel s and survived. I believe that raises our odds somewhat astronomical y. And as long as we are together, I think we can triumph over nearly anything.” Even death? I wanted to ask as I gazed into his eyes. And then I decided. Damn straight!

Nothing’s stopped us yet. Why should I suppose hell itself could stand in our way?

I handed him the pole. “You first, twinkletoes.”

“I never told you I was considered something of an athlete in my day.” I looked his broad, muscular body up and down. And then took another, slower tour. My mouth had started to water. I licked my lips so the drool wouldn’t escape as I said, “I’m not surprised.” Another quirk of the lips to let me know he knew what I was thinking and felt I should think it some more at a later date, out loud, when he could react in a more physical y pleasing manner. Then he backed away from the bank, ran at the sucker like he meant to overpower it with his bare hands, landed the pole in the middle of the water and vaulted himself to the other side without even a grunt to show that he’d exerted himself in the process. He pul ed the pole out and threw it across to me.

“That was a good spot I found,” he cal ed to us. “Do you think you can set it down in the same place?”

“Absolutely!” Lotus was the one who’d replied. She grabbed the pole from my hand, so happy to have discovered her niche in the netherworld that she’d leaped across the river before any of us could give her a serious lecture about how she should approach this jump. Raoul caught the pole when Vayl sailed it across the next time. He tried to hand it to me but I said, “You go next. I’ve got to get Astral zipped into my jacket just right. Plus, with you three over there to catch, I’m pretty sure I’l have something soft to land on.”

With a smal grin and a nod he took the leap. Leaving me and the metal cat to consider our immediate future.

“You got an appropriate song ready for this one?” I asked her.

She poked her head out of the top of my jacket, pul ed her lips back, and said, “Metamorphosis in five, four, three, two, one.” Suddenly she went flat enough to slip down and curl around my belt.

“Oh, great, thanks for the vote of confidence. Now if I squish you, you’re already only an inch high.

Smart move, genius.”

Maybe it was just my imagination, but I real y thought I heard a round of tinny laughter accompany me as I walked to where Vayl had begun his run. Then I gave myself ten extra yards, which put me beside an arm whose hand gently waved in the breeze caused by its captured soul. I stared at it for a second. Then my sick sense of humor got the better of me. “I’d ask you to clap for me, but I can see that’s out of your grasp. Maybe if you just snapped your fingers?” When the hand slowly lifted its middle finger I began to laugh. The feeling lifted my feet into the fastest run I’d managed since a satyr named Lil yzitch had chased me through the Mal of America. I knew my speed was perfect when I hit the bank. I had my eye on just the spot Vayl had picked and Lotus and Raoul had fol owed. I’d aimed the pole true. Then a monster the size of a half-ton pickup rose out of the water, blocking the pole’s path.

“Shit!” I yel ed as Lotus, Raoul, and Vayl howled my name.

I rammed the pole into the hel spawn, whose slime-covered bel y had rol ed toward me during its ascent from the water. It punctured skin and muscle, throwing blood so high into the air that I felt the spatter blanket my skin as I flew over the top of it.

I landed in the water twenty feet from shore, stil holding the pole since I knew Raoul would need it as his sword later.

“Change this pole into something I can use, Eldhayr!” I cried out, and the pole immediately transformed into a, wel , a scarf. Damn. Didn’t that guy have any imagination? I tied it around my neck and began to swim toward shore.

Vayl began yel ing, “Fin to your left! Swim, Jasmine, swim!”

He ran to the bank, his cane sword unsheathed, as Raoul and Lotus slapped their hands on the water twenty yards to his left, trying to convince the creature they tasted better even though they were harder to catch. I put al my energy into carving my arms through the water as if it were a solid mass I could push myself through and paddling my legs like twin boat motors.

“It is gaining on you!” Vayl cal ed. “Faster now!”

But I was already pul ing top speed. Every muscle in my body was burning. I could sense the creature, hungry for my flesh, zeroing in on the section of meat it would tear away first. I began to wonder how bad it would hurt. Or if, maybe, my brain would be kind and send me straight into adrenaline overload and shock. I thought not.

Suddenly something splashed right next to me, startling me so much that I frog-jumped at least a foot forward. It was the body of the demon who’d sucker punched me. Vayl had hurled it into the path of the water monster. I risked a look as I moved back into escape rhythm and saw a maw ful of jagged white teeth open wide and then sink into the corpse floating beside me.

That sight was enough to propel me into Vayl’s arms. He held me tight, lifting me out of the water and pul ing me so far ashore that my feet didn’t hit land until we stood right next to the fence. I felt him shudder. Heard him whisper, “You are al right. Yes. You are just fine,” and realized he was comforting himself as much as me. Then Raoul and Lotus were there, and Lotus was jumping up and down, slapping me on the shoulder. Raoul was hugging me so hard I couldn’t breathe anymore.

And Astral spoke loudly from somewhere around my bel y button, announcing, “Metamorphosis in five, four, three…”

“Aaahhh! I gotta get her outta my pants before they rip to shreds!” I reached inside my belt and pul ed the dripping robokitty from her pole-vaulting position just as she reinflated. It felt so bizarre to be holding her, like it might feel to hold a bag of popcorn as the kernels zapped into fluffly edible nuggets of goodness.

Final y I found enough breath to say, “Thanks for saving—” What’s left of my life? Let’s not go there, okay? “Yeah. I’m good. In fact—” I smiled up at Vayl, reclaiming Cassandra’s positive attitude as I said, “When we get back we should probably get a pool and throw a shark or two in it to chase us around just to make sure we’re getting a good cardio workout every day.” When he chuckled I knew we were back in business.

He pul ed me toward the gate to our right, Astral trotting between us, Raoul, and Lotus as he said, “Come. Let us finish this before we discover that hel ’s swimmers have grown shore legs.” I didn’t quite yip, but I did nod and grab his hand tightly in mine as we hustled toward our ultimate goal.

I’l say this about journeys so important that old-fashioned dudes in armor cal ed them quests.

Somehow they always end too soon. Standing at the back entrance to hel , I wanted nothing more than to be a thousand miles away from it, stil trying desperately to reach it. Because now that I was here, with Brude banging against the wal s of my mind like his fists had transformed into ice picks while Vayl stood tal and grim beside me, reminding me of the price of failure, I’d never been so terrified in my entire life.

I squeezed his hand, feeling the ring I’d given him brush against my fingers, reminding me of the fact that I final y had a future worth fighting for. I’d even al owed myself to picture it in my mind, a dazzling piece of art built on remembered pain and new hope. As I stared at Satan’s bloody gate, I decided I was damned if I was going to let some megalomaniac slash my dream to ribbons.

I said, “Vayl. I keep getting nosebleeds just like the mutt on this gate.” He replied, “This is true.”

“Brude is slamming my synapses like he’s found a damn drum set that he’s just learning to play.

And I’ve had it.”

Vayl turned me toward him. Looked deep into my eyes. And kissed me, gently, as if we had al the time in the universe. He whispered, “I suppose, then, that is a sign that it is time?”

“I’m thinking so.”

“I love you, Jasmine.” He’d said it before. A lot. And maybe someday I’d get used to the words.

But, oh, how they sang off his tongue like a soul-felt melody, wrapping around my heart and pul ing it so close to his that I was sure they beat with the same rhythm.

I slid my hands around his waist, up his strong back, pul ing his chest to mine until my breasts heaved into his. “I love you too, Vayl.” I rose to my tiptoes and touched my lips to his, savoring the everlasting dance of soft skin and wet tongues as we sealed our own bargain. When I realized I’d gone breathless I dropped my heels back to earth. “What do you say we summon that cowboy?” I asked, managing a smile despite the pain behind my eyes and the fear in my gut.

“I like that plan.”

I nodded, recal ing the directions Kyphas had given me: Stand by the gate, give it your blood, knock three times, and shout his full name.

I looked up at my lover. Cleared the sudden blockage from my throat. I said, “Are we ready?” He glanced over his shoulder at Lotus, Raoul, and Astral, who’d turned their backs to us to guard against attack. I was beginning to think it wasn’t likely, this side of the river. Then a howl, so far off we’d probably only heard the echo, made them swing in that direction. Raoul looked over his shoulder. “Hurry,” he whispered, as if the creature could hear us, even from that distance.

I nodded, drew my bolo, and sliced into the soft skin above my wrist. I made sure I had a generous supply of blood on my fingers before I swung around to the gate, drew a double slash across the mastiff’s jaw, and then rubbed my offering into it. The metal trembled at my touch, soaking up the blood so quickly that within seconds I couldn’t tel where I’d left my mark. Which I thought was weird, considering the generous portions flooding its face. But, of course, that was probably coming from hel ’s citizens. As an outsider’s, mine probably tasted a whole lot better.

I knocked three times and yel ed out, “Zel Culver! This is your summons! Come out and be questioned!”

On the other side of the gate a man ran out of the mist. He was sprinting across the rock-strewn ground with that look of abject fear you often see on the faces of those who are at the front of a mob of Black Friday Walmart shoppers. He wore a tattered brown shirt that he stil kept tucked into the waistband of his darker brown trousers. Which were held up with an empty gun belt. Hmmm.

“Zel ? Zel !” I yel ed. He glanced my way. I peered into the fog behind him. I couldn’t see or hear anything huffing, spitting, or gal oping within half a mile of him. Good. That meant I’d only cal ed the cowboy, not whatever had been chasing him. “Dude! You’ve escaped! Get over here, wil you? I don’t have that much blood to spare!”

He shot a look over his shoulder. The expressions that crossed his face—confusion, then relief, then even deeper bewilderment—would’ve been comical in any other situation. But the howling on our side had been joined by a joyful sort of hooting. And they’d both gotten closer. I began wondering if their makers could swim.

I said, “You’re Zel Culver, right? The guy who destroyed the earthbane with the Rocenz?” He jogged over to us, careful y wrapped his hands around the bars of the fence next to the gate, and said, “Only for a day.” He grinned, showing a dimple on each cheek and another on his chin.

“Sometimes I stil think it was worth it, though.” He tipped his hat to me, a wide-brimmed ancestor to the Stetson with a tal black band and battered flat top that looked like it had been used to beat off mosquitoes the size of his fists. However, perched back on his wel shaped head, setting off eyes that managed to twinkle even in these circumstances, it looked as comfortable as his scuffed old boots. “I don’t believe I’ve had the honor to make your acquaintance.” I wil only admit this because if I didn’t Vayl would probably take out an ad in The New York Times cal ing me out. Zel ’s old-fashioned gal antry went straight to my head. My hand went al floppy like I’d suddenly been airlifted into the 1850s, where women routinely lost al muscle tension in their extremities. My limp fingertips raised to my neck, where they brushed my col arbone in an I-do-declare reaction to his chivalrous manners. And I said (yes, dammit, in a slight Southern accent),

“Mah name is Jayaz.”

Then I heard myself. Also Raoul snickering behind my back and Lotus muttering, “What the fuck?” while Vayl literal y bit his lip to keep from laughing. I dropped my hand, thumping my fist into my thigh as I added, “I cal ed you here for a reason. You’re the only one we know of, besides an unhelpful demon, who’s ever managed to separate the pieces of this tool.” I pul ed the Rocenz out of my belt. “It’s imperative that you teach us how to do that.” I jerked my head around as the sounds of hunting animals grew louder.

Zel shook his head sadly. “I’m sorry, I can’t remember.” He slowly rol ed up his left shirtsleeve.

What I saw crawled my fingers right around my neck. The place where his captors had carved away his tattoo had never healed. His entire forearm from inner elbow to wrist was covered with oozing sores and stank of gangrene.

Schooling my expression into carelessness, I reached into my jacket pocket and pul ed out the piece of skin that had been cut from him. I unfolded it and showed it to him. “We recovered this recently,” I said. “If we give it back to you, do you think you’l remember how the separation spel works then?”

He nodded. “There could be no other reason for them skinning me. It should work. Yes. I’m sure of it.” He was stil nodding when he said, “But first you have to promise to get me out.”

“I promise,” I said quickly before anybody else in the party could think of any objections.

He nodded. “Give me that knife.”

Without question I handed him the hilt. He sliced into his bicep, grabbed the blood, smacked it into the back of the gate. Vayl and I barely had time to trade looks of dread before he’d knocked three times and yel ed a name we both knew. She appeared as he had, running for her life, her ragged white dress flying out behind her like last decade’s kite.

I stared as she went through the same emotions Zel had as she realized she’d been miraculously saved. It gave me time to gather my wits as wel . Then I final y found the words I needed to say. “Vayl. Is there anything you want to tel me?”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Sunday, June 17, 9:00 p.m.

If people hang around me long enough, they learn that I don’t appreciate surprises. Because in my case they rarely turn out to be pleasant ones. Take the time my darling sister decided to pay me a surprise visit in col ege. She walked in on a huge breakup scene and caught a flying vase in the middle of the forehead. I had to haul the poor kid to the emergency room and explain to the doctor why he was stitching up a wound meant for my “Sorry, Jaz, I just realized that I like guys” boyfriend.

So when I turned to my lover, he knew immediately that I was prepared to hurl objects large and smal , probably starting with the robokitty, if he didn’t come up with a reasonable explanation as to why a woman who looked exactly like my mother had joined Zel Culver on the opposite side of Satan’s fence.

He cleared his throat. It was the first time I could remember seeing him sweat. And so he should.

Because that wasn’t the only problem I had with this amazing coincidence. The name Zel had uttered was Helena. The same name Bergman had labored under during our mission to Marrakech, when Vayl had been convinced we were al members of his household from 1777. Bergman had argued that he suffered the most, because Vayl had thought he was a girl—his adopted daughter.

Which had al been fine and good then. When I didn’t know what she looked like.

But I’d seen her before. Right here in hel . At the time I’d actual y believed she was my mother, Stel a. Mainly because she looked and talked just like her. But she’d helped save me from a bunch of howling demons, something Stel a never would have done. At the time I’d convinced myself even a mother like mine would sometimes find a smal store of generosity and love to act upon. Now I knew better.

You shoulda figured it out back then, scoffed my Inner Bimbo. She spoke to me from a tub ful of steaming water and white bubbles. Stretching one long white leg out of the bathwater and idly watching her red-painted toenails point toward the showerhead she said, Stella would never have helped you escape from hell. Shit, Jaz, she’d have clapped you in irons and arranged for some rank torture if it would’ve meant freeing that first husband of hers.

At my core I knew that. But I’d wanted her, just once, to be a real mom so badly that I’d bought my own fairy tale. And I’d even had evidence to make me believe Helena was my mother. Because only someone of my bloodline could’ve left her mark on me, the curl of white hair that proved I’d been touched by a family member in hel . Which meant—

I grabbed Vayl’s arm, as if he wasn’t already tuning in to me so completely that the only reflection I could see in his eyes was my own. I said, “Your adopted daughter, Helena, is my ancestress.” I didn’t mean to sound accusing, but it sure came out that way. “You’ve been fol owing my family’s line since 1770!”

His eyes, a distant, steely blue, gave nothing away. “Yes, I have,” was al he said.

Helena, smiling gently at us through the bars, said, “It’s good to see you again, Jasmine, although I would choose happier circumstances.” She looked up at Vayl. “And you, Father? Has Lucifer final y caught you?” Her voice broke a little, tears fil ing her eyes at the question, though she stil kept hold of that angelic smile.

His brows crunched together as he turned to the girl he’d raised from the age of eleven. “My darling. What happened? How did you end up here?”

Helena had been standing in the circle of Zel ’s good arm. Now she slipped her slender fingers through the cracks in the fence. “Life was so good in America, just as you had promised us it would be,” she began. I remembered, then, how Vayl had told me that she’d married a man named John Litton. That they’d moved to the States and that, a couple of years later, she’d died after giving birth to twins.

She continued. “We thought we had escaped Roldan. But we were wrong. He came into my room after my daughters were born. He and that monstrous gorgon that rides him kil ed me and tossed my soul into the pit. But I remembered everything you taught me,” she told him proudly. “I fight here. Zel and I have organized a little pocket of resistance. It isn’t much, I suppose. But it is what we need to survive.”

Zell and I, I thought. What a strange coincidence that you two found each other. I looked at Vayl, waiting for him to find it odd as wel , but he’d stopped thinking straight as soon as he saw his daughter behind the bars that he was now trying to shake with white-knuckled fingers. “We are getting you out. Both of you. Now!” he said, his voice as hard as the metal that stood between us and them.

“You already promised,” Zel reminded him, the practical cowboy in him finding this display a little overwhelming and somewhat unnecessary.

“Yes, we did.” Vayl spun to face me. “Jasmine, get that infernal demon out of your head. We have innocent souls to save.”

I glanced at Raoul, wondering what his reaction might be, but he and Lotus were stil scanning the horizon. Okay, mostly him. She was starting to jump every time the water bubbled or the wind sighed. So far she’d stepped on Astral’s tail and nicked Raoul. I thought if she managed not to faint before a demon cut her to bits we’d be doing very wel for ourselves.

I looked back at Vayl, who certainly hadn’t included my soul among the innocents. Huh. Well, okay, it might have a few black streaks. But I suddenly felt relegated to the bottom shelf with last season’s shoes and that old pile of National Geographic s that subscribers always feel too guilty to dump. Then he grabbed me by both arms and planted the most passionate kiss on my lips that either of us had experienced in at least an hour. When he was done I stood blinking at him, my mouth gaping like one of those fat goldfish at the botanical gardens that just keeps begging for food pel ets despite the fact that one more wil probably instantly transform it into eight boxes of McNuggets. His smile, scary enough to give kids nightmares, made me feel warm al under as he said, “My avhar, we are almost home.”

I nodded as I worked my hand through the bars and offered the missing part of Zel ’s arm to him.

He gave it to Helena, who unfolded it like it was no more problematic than a lace-trimmed hanky.

Vayl and I traded intense looks. I could see his thoughts as clearly as he could read mine.

My darling Helena! What has she seen here? What has she been through these past 220 and more years? He didn’t want to ask more than that, but I’d already given him the answer.

Your adopted daughter has walked through horror the same way you and I hike through your woods at night. Torture, maiming, pain, and battle are her life. She’s not the girl you knew. But she’s managed to survive this awful existence without losing the ability to love a cowboy or help a descendant being chased by demons. And that was because of what you taught her all those years ago. So you were a good father after all.

He reached for my hand, and I grasped his as tightly as I could manage while we peered through the bars at the two people who mattered most to us at this moment. “Look, Jasmine,” he whispered.

“It is as if Zel ’s skin was spel ed to return to its former position!” And, of course, it probably was. That’s what happens when you tattoo a rune onto your forearm.

Zel , being an English speaker, had translated it for himself. Slowly, as the edges of his existing tattoo melded with the severed portion and the dying tissue underneath began to heal, the words revealed themselves until I could read the entire phrase.

I pul ed the Rocenz clear of my belt and held it in front of me as I repeated the words now glowing a vivid red on Zel Culver’s arm. “The soul splits, pairs and destroys, until it is one again.” The silver tool heated so quickly I was afraid I’d have to drop it. I was about to grab the hem of my shirt to use as a buffer when it reached maximum temperature and began to separate, a crack appearing right up the side of the handle of the hammer where it met the chisel. I grabbed the edges with both hands, not pul ing, just holding each side firmly as a sound as loud as a rifle shot came from the tool and it tried to jump out of my hands. Again with the popping sound, four more times as the two parts of the Rocenz released one another. And, final y, I stood before the gates of hel holding Cryrise’s hammer in my right hand and Frempreyn’s chisel in my left.

I laughed out loud as Brude screamed inside my head and blood poured out of both my nostrils.

“Go ahead, you fucker,” I whispered to the domytr. “Throw the biggest tantrum you can manage. At the end of the day I’m stil gonna rip you out of my head and smash you against this gate until there’s nothing left of you but a moaning pile of mud.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Sunday, June 17, 9:45 p.m.

I set the chisel that had been carved from the rail who’d failed to beat Lucifer at his own game against the bloody maw of the mastiff and hauled the hammer back for my first true blow against Brude since he’d invaded my head four weeks before.

“Wait!” Raoul’s warning, bel owed from three feet away, nearly put me on my knees. “Remember the warning on the map that led us to the Rocenz in the first place!” I turned to look at him, my eyes scanning the horizon for the source of the howls that stil split the air intermittently as he pul ed the rol ed leather out of his pocket and unfolded it. Zel cleared his throat. In fact, he seemed to be on the verge of saying something a couple of times, but then he pressed his lips together and stared at the toes of his boots.

As soon as Raoul held the map so we could see it, he said, “The message at the bottom. It’s clear, yes? ��Who holds the hammer stil must find the keys to the triple-locked door.’ That has to refer to Zel . We needed him. We needed his skin. And we needed the spel on his skin.” I didn’t mention that the first key to Zel had been my Granny May. Or that the last key had been a demon. Neither one seemed like a comfortable subject to bring up at the moment. And since they had worked, it seemed doubly unnecessary.

Zel opened his mouth, but Helena put a hand on his newly healed arm and murmured something. Since her lips were partial y hidden by the fence, I could only read the last part, which was, “for themselves.” What did we need for ourselves? Before I could waste time guessing Vayl said, “I wil agree with that assumption.”

Raoul went on. “But the phrase at the top of the map must be just as important. More so, because it’s mentioned first. ‘Cursed and thrice cursed be ye who raise the Rocenz without offering proper dues or sacrifice. For Cryrise’s hammer and Frempreyn’s chisel may spel your salvation, or your doom,’” he read. He stared hard at us. “I hate to ask for theories on that meaning, because I know what kinds of ideas I’m having. I’ve only known demons’ minds to track one way when they start talking sacrifice.” His eyes went from Lotus to Astral to Vayl to me. Then he included Helena and Zel in his concern before he said, “I think this tool has to have blood before it wil work properly.

In fact”—he stopped, shook his head, forced himself to go on—“I think it needs death.” I shook my head. “I don’t know. Back in Marrakech, Kyphas only had to rub her blood on it and chant a few words before she separated the parts. She was already working her heartstone when I found her.”

Raoul held up his fingers as he ticked off his objections. “She’s a demon. They can use the tool differently. She told you that herself.”

“True,” I admitted. I looked at Zel . “You got anything to add?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Nothing that wil not make my tongue turn to ash inside my mouth the moment I say it. I can only confirm what you deduce on your own.”

Vayl stepped forward. “Is that why you are here, Zel ? Did they capture you and bring you to hel because you know al the secrets of this tool, and it is so valuable that they cannot risk al owing your soul to fly free?”

Zel nodded. “You hit that one on the head.”

“And this last secret?” Vayl continued. “Are we on the right track?” Zel just stared. Vayl’s smile looked a lot more triumphant than I felt. “I wil take your silence as a positive sign.” He turned to Raoul. “Let us assume Kyphas managed the death this tool requires and we never discovered that detail—”

“I say we give it what it wants.” We al looked at Lotus, whose face had paled so drastical y she looked like a mannequin before the makeup’s gone on. The starkness of her expression, her absolute certainty amid al our doubt, made her seem more Vayl’s progeny than anything else she’d done so far. “Then we can go, right? Then this whole nightmare wil be over?” I said, “Not necessarily for you, snookums.” I kept my voice gentle as I pointed to Helena and said, “She was a good, honorable woman. And she’s trapped inside, stil being righteous, stil fighting on the side she chose when she was just a girl. You, on the other hand, are stil trying to turn your back on the pile of bul shit you’ve made out of your life when you’re actual y buried under it.” I pointed to the souls that had chosen maiming and torture. “That’s you if you don’t start digging.” I made a fist. “And I’m not helping you make it worse by kil ing someone in this crew.” Astral had been sitting quietly beside Raoul al this time. Now she stood up, looked over at me intently, and then stared at Lotus. “Grenade?” she offered politely, as if she knew exactly how I was feeling and had already figured out a quick way to rid myself of the unwanted company.

“Not at the moment, thank you,” I told her.

“Maybe later, though,” Raoul said.

We al looked at him. “What if we invite the noisemakers”—he jerked his head toward the howls we’d been monitoring since our arrival at the gate—“a little closer?”

“Are you sure you want to do that?” asked Zel . “Normal y spiderhounds aren’t creatures you fight. They’re ones you hope you can outrun.”

I stared him straight in the eyes. “I have to put this name on the gate, Zel . You, of al people, should understand why.”

He nodded. “I have another idea. If it works, it might even get us out of here. But you have to trust me.”

“No problem,” I said. “Anybody else have any issues with trusting the cowboy?” I asked. Then before they could answer I did it for them. “Nope, we’re al for your plan. Don’t even bother fil ing us in. Just throw it in motion and we’l learn as we go.”

Zel nodded and began stomping. It was hypnotical y rhythmical, like the precursor to every stage show that had ever involved drums and heel taps. Helena joined him, linking her arm in his and adding a double stomp every fourth beat. Sometimes she would pause and grind her toe into the chalky soil, leaving a crescent moon–shaped indentation that, combined with al the others, began to look a lot like some of the spel s I’d seen scrawled across pieces of ancient parchment.

While Zel and Helena performed their bizarre dance, my comrades pul ed every blade they’d brought with them. Since my job was to bloody the Rocenz with its sacrifice, I gave Vayl my bolo. He held it in his left hand while his right continued to grip his cane sword, its sheath stil lying at the foot of the gate, waiting for the final outcome.

Raoul held his shining weapon with both hands while Lotus gripped the dagger he’d lent her.

They both stared off into the horizon thinking such different thoughts that it was a wonder to me that they could stand next to one another without smal lightning bolts zapping into their brain stems until one of them final y blew a gasket.

I didn’t see any weapons on Zel or Helena, though I sensed they were both carrying. Maybe it didn’t pay to display, especial y when you were basical y walking around inside a huge prison al day long.

Astral, perhaps sensing the rising tension, paced restlessly among the four of us as if we’d caged her. Most often her nose pointed toward the source of the howls and a new, deeper rumbling that signaled many more than two or three creatures heading our way. It seemed like she already knew Zel ’s plan and her place in it. Especial y when she leaped into my arms and said, “Hel o!” Suddenly the ground under my feet tilted. I grabbed Vayl’s arm as Astral anchored her claws into the soft meat of my shoulder. Vayl wrapped his arms around my waist as another rumble of unstable ground moved us into an awkward fighting-for-upright dance.

Zel and Helena intensified their movements on the other side of the gate, barely acknowledging the dead earth beneath their feet groaning like an arthritic old man trying to get out of bed in the morning.

“Guys,” Astral hooted.

“What?” I turned my head so my ear was next to her mouth. “What do the guys need to do?”

“Geyser coming!” she shouted just as a fountain of boiling-hot water shot out of the ground on Zel ’s and Helena’s side of the fence, its perimeter inside the perfect circle I could now see that Zel and Helena had made with their boot, toe, and heel marks.

“Do you see how we did it?” Zel cal ed.

“Yes,” said Vayl.

“We’re gonna need at least three or four on each side of the fence before the durgoyles wil smel the water and come to drink.” He didn’t have to explain further. Durgoyles were hel ’s livestock, herds of four-leggers inhabited by the souls of those who had plodded through life with rings through their noses, al owing everyone from gangbangers to dictators to lead them into evil as if they were as docile and dumb as cattle. Bigger and meaner than ful -grown moose, they fed on scavenged meat and spent most of their waking hours thinking up new ways to maim each other. If we could attract a herd, one of them could be sacrificed to the Rocenz. Unfortunately, where there were durgoyles, you could usual y count on at least a couple of spiderhounds as wel . Somewhat ironical y, even death’s realm had a circle of life, and the spiderhounds had managed to climb the food chain faster than the durgoyles. What a crazy flipping world.

What Zel had surmised was that we’d been hearing spiderhounds fol owing a herd somewhere south of us. Now he wanted to turn the durgoyles our way. Which was an excel ent plan since we didn’t want to sacrifice any humans to the Rocenz. But none of us discussed the possibility that we’d probably have to fight their natural predators if we meant to get back to our world alive. Instead we paired up and joined Zel and Helena, copying their moves until every one of us, Vayl included, had become an expert at the watering hole dance. One by one geysers shot into the air, until we had to stand on the far right side of the gate in order to avoid being burned.

And stil Astral continued repeating her message. “Geyser coming!”

“Okay, okay,” I final y told her. “I gotcha.”

“Do you think that is enough?” Vayl asked as we watched seven fountains stink up the atmosphere. They smel ed of sulphur and unwashed ass. I couldn’t imagine any living thing sticking its face in a concoction with such an obnoxious odor, especial y one designed to boil your nose off the second you came within a foot of it. But within five minutes we could hear the steady clip-clop of what Zel estimated was a herd of between forty and sixty durgoyles. And Raoul said, “I see them!

Horns on the horizon and closing fast!”

They emerged from the water-induced fog like a fleet of sailing ships speeding into view, their gray skins resembling stained sails, their protruding ribs reminding me of rigging. The yips and howls continuing at the back of the herd explained their speed. I don’t know where they thought they were headed, but the plan definitely seemed to involve escaping the spiderhounds snapping at their hooves.

The doomed animals’ horns grew straight out from their heads and then curled back in, so that the tips were constantly rubbing against their necks, leaving a steady trickle of blood that turned their forelegs a permanent rusty color. Flies pursued them relentlessly, buzzing in and out of their ears, forcing them to slap their hindquarters with whiplike tails that left bloody slashes, opening sores for the insects to lay eggs in, many of which had hatched and flourished, transforming the sores into oozing pits ful of wriggling maggots.

As if they needed yet another reason to be permanently pissed.

Fights broke out at the brushing of a flank. Horns clashed almost constantly, fil ing the air with echoes of bone smashing against bone. At least once a day a durgoyle fel to its knees, where it was promptly trampled by the rest of the herd, which didn’t moo like cows. The sound they made, and they did it with the frequency of New York car horns, squeaked through the air like dolphin cal s, making me suspect my ears would also be bleeding before this episode had ended.

“I think I wanna kil them al ,” I said. “Is that a bad thing?”

“Just pick the one you want,” Vayl told me.

“Wait,” said Zel . “We need them to crash the gate first.”

“And how are we supposed to do that?” I asked. “They’re on the wrong side of the Moat.” Zel said, “Four of the geysers are over here. Half of them wil cross just to drink this water.” He nodded at Astral as a series of yips made us look beyond the herd. We stil couldn’t see the spiderhounds at its edge, but their cal s were clearer than ever. “The durgoyles wil think your cat is one of their predators. Not a spiderhound, of course, but perhaps a zenqual, who hunt in herds of sometimes twenty or more. I noted she can talk. Can she make special sounds too?”

“When she’s in the right mood.”

His eyebrows quirked. “Wel , the zenqual often hunt silently, but many of them squeal like a hog at feeding time too. If you can get her to make that sound while you help herd them toward the gate, panic should do the rest.”

I glanced over my shoulder at the huge metal edifice leering behind me. Even with the entire herd butting their heads against it at once, I doubted they could round up enough force to break open an entry that the devil himself had ordered closed until further notice. But it was worth a try. So I nodded as Raoul and Lotus went to the other side of the gate to make sure they’d be somewhat on the opposite edge of the herd once they moved into range.

The yips got louder and more frequent, assuring us that the spiderhounds had stayed on the durgoyles’ tails. We became even more positive when the pace of the herd increased. When their heads came up, their ears swiveled, and they began to squeak at each other more often, we knew we’d be seeing predators sooner rather than later.

The first of the durgoyles hit the Moat without even hesitating, swimming strongly toward the geysers we’d danced out of the earth despite the depth of the river at this point. Luckily the current was slow enough that it didn’t carry the creature far downstream at al . Within minutes half of the fifty head had joined it.

I pul ed the cat, who’d been perching on my shoulder, into my arms. Somehow it felt important to maintain eye contact as I said, “You need to squeal like a pig as soon as the durgoyles hit shore so they’l run toward the gate. Make it seem like you’re fifty cats, not just one. Can you do that?” I asked.

Her reply was a soft grunt that sounded an awful lot like contented pig. But I wasn’t real y sure until she headed toward the water and jumped in. As if I hadn’t been impressed with Bergman’s invention or the fact that he’d deigned to give it to me rather than sel it to some mega-rich country for enough dough to retire on, now I felt real affection for Astral as she emerged from beneath the water, swimming strongly against the current, and making pig squeals so authentic I could almost see the wal er from here.

Unbelievably, every time she made noise, the durgoyles lunged forward as if they’d been tased.

It began to be entertaining. Until we got a whiff of them.

“Whew!” exclaimed Lotus as she pinched her nostrils together. “They’re in the frigging water!

How come they stil smel like rotting meat?”

“Because, in a way, they are,” Raoul explained. “Now herd them toward the gate. Raise your arms. Yel a little. You should know a lot about that, thril seeker.” She actual y looked hurt, which amazed me. I glanced at Vayl and caught him smiling. Then the expression changed to one of intense concentration as he looked first toward Astral and then to me.

“Be ready,” he said. “Let us get this right the first time so you do not have to suffer any longer.” Which was why I so loved the guy. I’d tried not to complain anymore, but it had begun to feel as if my head might literal y explode. Also, the rest of my body was now unaccountably sore, as if the nosebleed had reversed itself and spread, and now every organ had sprung a leak.

Astral cleared the water and ran to my side, where she paused long enough to shake al the water she hadn’t yet shed onto my jeans. Vayl pointed to the nearest field and said, “There. Beside that torso wearing the Raiders sweatshirt. Do you see it?”

I did. Spiderhounds are easy to spot, mainly because their heads are covered with eyes. Thirty-two of them to be exact. Not al of them work at the same time or in the same way, which is what makes them such a dangerous enemy. But then, they are a vulnerable area on the animal, and one it pays to target. Because the hounds are also big, fanged, clawed, and vicious. If you can even partial y blind them you radical y increase your odds of survival.

This one, a pure white giant that made Jack look like a dachshund, was wagging its spiked tail up and down like it was about to play fetch with one of the feet that stuck out of the ground at paw level. I was about to signal the hound’s location to Raoul when I realized one set of its eyes was the same shade of yel ow as those I’d seen in Vayl’s memories of Roldan. But in those visions his fur had also been covered with patches of black, proving this was just another coincidence. Like Zel finding Helena. I factored in the knowledge that Kyphas’s eyes turned yel ow when she was pissed off too, and decided that hel just preferred that color. So I shrugged it off and let Raoul know where the spiderhound was located. He quickly showed Lotus.

I leaned in to Vayl. “Do you see any other spiderhounds?” I asked.

He nodded. “The second is trotting at the back. I have only been able to see his eyes twice. They are glowing.” Raoul signaled that he’d heard. And wasn’t happy about it. Because it meant the alpha had come along for this hunt. Not unusual, but bad for us. Alpha spiderhounds, besides the obvious attribute of larger size, also carried sacs of poisonous spiders underneath their jowls. Not a threat from a distance, but if the alpha could put the bite on you, so could his little friends. By the tens of thousands. It was not a pretty way to die. I’d seen a couple of the corpses that had made it topside before succumbing. They’d al gone screaming.

Wel , that wasn’t how I planned to face my end. But if it happened here, while I was fighting beside the man I loved, nobody would hear me bitching when they found me looking up his address in the afterlife.

I tightened my hands on the Rocenz and wiped my nose on the hem of my shirt yet again. It wasn’t fancy, just a black pul over, but I’d liked it once. Now the sucker was going straight to the rag pile when I got back home.

“They’re coming,” Zel whispered. “Get your cat ready.” He and Helena were crouched beside the fence, their hands clutching the bars so tightly that the spikes had begun to cut into the edges of their fingers. To be free after al this time—I couldn’t even begin to imagine what it might mean to them. Or how our failure could crush them. So I didn’t try. I just crouched beside Astral, pointing out the durgoyles I wanted her to chase as soon as I gave the word.

I glanced up at Vayl, hoping for a little moral support. But his glance had crossed the Moat, where it was glued to the spiderhounds. They’d targeted an old cow that looked to be limping.

The squeals of the spiderhounds signaling their attack galvanized Zel as wel . “Now, Jaz!” he yel ed.

“Go get ’em, Astral!” I gave her a slight push and she took off, squealing irritably at the durgoyles as she waded into them, deftly weaving in and out of their paths, jumping clear of an irately jerked horn or kicked hoof. At first it seemed like al she was going to accomplish was to piss them off so much that they’d either find a way to stomp her into scrap or massacre each other trying. And then she sprang up and bit a big old bul in the butt. When she landed she began singing a Bloodhound Gang hit at top volume: “You and me, baby, ain’t nothin’ but mammals, so let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel.”

The bul had felt the double insult like it was a pitchfork thrown by the Great Taker himself. He jumped into the air so high that al four hooves cleared the ground at once, his eyes rol ing whitely as he shrieked in panicked protest. Every durgoyle gate-side flinched as if it had been struck, and the air suddenly fil ed with high-pitched what-the-hel squeaks. Chaos broke out as mothers tried to protect their young, the young trotted in circles trying to figure out where the hel safety had gone to, older males each decided it lay in five different directions, and the biggest bul of them al trumpeted for the herd to get their heads out of their asses and fol ow him.

He came charging straight for Vayl. Who stood his ground like a Neanderthal determined to skewer some fresh protein for his starving tribe. My sverhamin, so ful y channeling his inner Wraith that the tips of his curls had gathered frost, raised both hands over his head, his sword pointing straight at the fiery sky like it was a match he needed to light. The sudden gust of arctic wind whacked the bul on his brown nose, turning him directly toward the gate. His herd hesitated. Tried to turn. But Raoul and Lotus were on the other side, yel ing, singing, and trying out their own version of pig squeals.

And then Vayl opened his mouth. From it issued a stream of tiny red crystals that blew off his tongue like frozen fire. And I knew it was the hel spawn’s blood that he’d taken upon entering this realm, transformed into his own personal weapon, pelting the durgoyles into action. They fol owed the bul at a jump, thirty squeaking, flank-bashing, panicked lemmings headed straight off the cliff.

Or, in this case, into the gate.

They crashed into Satan’s doorway with the jaw-clenching sound of breaking bones, screaming wounded, and trampling hooves. Metal groaned. Hinges screeched. On the other side of the river the remnants of the herd mil ed and fought, as if they were irritated that their neighbors were making them wait to move on. The spiderhounds howled in triumph as their prey made a fatal mistake and wandered too far from her sisters. They pounced, each of them taking her at a different angle. The rest of the herd distanced themselves from her, ignoring her dying screams in the I’m-glad-it-wasn’t-me way of the future victim.

On our side of the river the pile of dead and broken durgoyles grew as the herd continued its mindless assault on the gate. It didn’t give in the middle, where the two doors met. Instead the bottom set of hinges on our side splintered so badly that they fel to pieces at our feet. The durgoyle who’d made the break shoved the gate aside. It swung back and smashed into the bul behind it, tangling in its horns, forcing it to its knees, where it formed a living door prop for the rest of the herd.

I eyed the spiderhounds feasting noisily on their kil . “Should we take them out next, while they’re distracted?” I glanced at Raoul, then at Lotus, not sure which of them could come up with the most dastardly game plan for this particular creature.

Raoul shook his head. “If you can finish your business before they’re done eating, we should be able to slip past them. In this case I agree with Zel . It’s better to avoid a fight than to force one.” I glanced at Zel , momentarily forgetting that he couldn’t hear our Party Line conversation. He’d been busy glancing over his shoulder. Now he had Helena by the hand and they were moving to cross over. He said, “Whatever you have to do, rush it. They’l know the gate is breached. People wil come to escape. Demons wil come to stop them. We’re out of time now.”

“I’m on it.” Without wasting another second I turned one of the dying durgoyles. Feeling like an old-school biblical figure I whispered over it, “Uh, so you’re the sacrifice. If you promise not to gore me, I’l make this quick and painless.” It fulfil ed its side of the bargain, so I did too, watching the relief flit through its brown-onbrown eyes as its blood coated the Rocenz and what remained of its hel ish life slipped away.

The two parts of the tool shivered in my hands as indentations appeared beneath my fingers, giving me a better grip for the job ahead of me. I waited for Zel and Helena to slip through the opening in hel ’s gate. And then I set the chisel onto its surface.

Less than three weeks before I’d watched Kyphas use this same tool to mark Cole’s name onto her heartstone. Until now I’d never wondered what it had felt like for her to raise the shining silver hammer and bring it down, clang! onto its brother. Now I understood the look of ecstasy I’d seen on her face. Though our motives were as different as heaven and hel , our feelings, as they often had, ran paral el. Power, baby. Fiery energy running up my arms and into my body until I felt like I could touch a dead heart with a single finger and jolt it into action again.

I realized I was grinning as the B took shape on Satan’s gate. The domytr inside my head beat his fists against the wal s of his cel so relentlessly that the pain behind my right eye final y shut it down. Half-blind, bleeding from my nose and both my ears now, I laughed aloud as I chiseled the R

and then the U. I could feel Brude draw the tattoos that covered his arms and chest together into the armor that had protected him so wel against Raoul’s attack back in Scotland. Now I thought of it more as a shroud as I tapped the letter D into hel ’s doorway.

Behind me I heard Lotus yel , “Something strange is—watch out! The spiderhounds are…

changing! Goddammit, you should never have let them get this close! Why don’t any of you people have guns? Oh my God, they’re not what we thought they were at al !” Vayl said, “Lotus is right, Jasmine. The spiderhounds are slipping their skins. They may be some other form of spawn we have never seen. Whatever they are, I believe they have tricked us into taking this path in order to regain the Rocenz. Right now they are raising some sort of bridge from the bottom of the Moat.”

I couldn’t have spoken if I wanted to. Al my inner girls were running around like disaster victims, some screaming mindlessly, some weeping. Even Granny May was pacing frantical y while she bit her fingernails like she hadn’t eaten for a week. I felt Vayl, Zel , Raoul, and Astral arrange themselves behind me, readying themselves for the fight, protecting me from yet another attack. Lotus was just pacing, muttering, swearing at anyone who seemed easily blamed. I didn’t want her to distract me.

But when she fel over the cat, I was suddenly grateful, because it reminded me of what Astral had said to me before our descent.

“Don’t look!” I yel ed as I continued the work. “They’re not real y spiderhounds. I was right! The one with yel ow eyes is Roldan! Which means the alpha is his gorgon. So whatever you do, don’t meet her eyes. If you do, you’l be destroyed!”

“Turn around!” Vayl cal ed as Raoul bel owed, “Face the gate! The alpha’s eyes are transforming into snakes!”

Believe it or not, I was relieved to hear that I was right. Gorgons have this odd code of honor.

They’l kil you, oh yeah, in about three hundred different ways, starting with the whole paralyze-you-withtheir-steely-vision trick. But they wil not attack unless you’re facing them. So I knew that as long as my people kept their nerve I could continue cutting the cords that had connected the domytr to me.

Only a few remained, and my inner girls—having received at least a short reprieve from certain death—hacked those free like a bunch of slayers out for a midnight run. When the final connection snapped they cheered as the locks fel from the cel that Teen Me and I had trapped Brude in. The door creaked open to reveal his ghostly form standing in the middle, head down in defeat, arms hanging loose at his sides as he faded into mist. The moment the final droplet disappeared from my mind, a shimmering form began to take shape just on the other side of the gate.

It wasn’t a clean transition, like a beam-me-up-Scotty moment in which the traveler arrives even cleaner and tidier than when he left. As I worked on the E, Brude began to convulse. Wounds appeared on his chest, arms, legs, even his face. Funny. The more he bleeds, the better I feel.

My sight came back first. Then my headache disappeared, along with the bleeding from my ears and nostrils. As I put the final cut into the gate, I felt a satisfaction like an actual weight leaving me, though no physical burden could’ve been as hard or heavy to bear. On the other side of the twisted metal dog, the last image of Brude fel to his knees, so roundly defeated I wouldn’t have been surprised to see him beg for mercy. But he just knelt quietly and waited the three beats it took for his fate to catch up to him.

I pul ed the Rocenz away from the gate. Staring proudly at me, he said, “You could have been my queen,” as his skin, his hair, even his eyebal s began to leak fluid like a faulty radiator. As the thick pink liquid flowed into the ground, smal beetle-like creatures with barbed tongues and pincers at the ends of their tails scuttled out of their holes to slurp it up, and then to explore the source of their unexpected snack. They swarmed up Brude’s legs while his body steadily shriveled, melting into their mouths like a finely cooked pork roast.

When the creatures reached his chest it got hard to watch. But I reminded myself of what this domytr had put me and mine through. What he’d tried to pul on the Great Taker himself. And what that might’ve meant to the Balance if he’d managed to succeed. I didn’t even blink when the muscles in his jaw failed, his mouth dropped open, and the skin-suckers scurried inside. He didn’t scream long.

I waited until nothing was left of Brude but the elements his body had been made from. Then I reached out to Vayl. “He’s gone,” I whispered.

His hand tightened on mine nearly to the point of pain, clear communication of the depth of his relief. “You are free.”

“Not quite,” said Raoul. “I’ve been watching the gorgon out of the corners of my eyes. She’s raised a bridge.”

Lotus sounded close to hyperventilation when she said, “It’s made out of scum-covered skeletons. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my—” I put my hand on her arm, squeezing hard enough to make her stand stil .

I said, “Skeletons with souls trapped inside, Lotus. The souls of people who’d made themselves into doormats in the world just so they could manipulate the strong into doing their dirty work for them. Now they’ve discovered how eternity feels about those who let others trample them just so their families and friends wil be forced to shoulder the load.” She drew a sobbing breath. “I don’t want this.”

“No.”

“It’s not too late?”

“Lotus, you deserve better than this, don’t you think?”

“Yes.”

“Then act like it!”

She dropped her face into her hands, and I thought she was crying until she began to report on what she was seeing from the corners of her eyes, “The bridge is wide enough for a couple of cars to pass, but the footing wil be iffy. It could work to our advantage. Or not. My guess is that as soon as it’s completely clear of the Moat, the gorgon and her slave wil start their crossing.”

“Her slave is a werewolf that hasn’t yet changed,” Raoul told her. “He’s moving so slowly you’d almost think he likes his man form better. Also, just so you won’t be surprised, Jaz, the alpha’s nest of spiders is now the gorgon’s necklace of scorpions.”

Zel turned to Helena and sighed. “I’ve never fought a gorgon before, have you, dear?”

“No, but you’ve told me how to kil scorpions and snakes. And surely they can’t be any tougher than strangling a krait.”

“You got yourself a point there. We wil just think of her as a nest of nasties and fight her that way.”

Nice to know the cowboy and his immigrant bride had a plan. As for me and my vampire? He smiled down at me. “It looks as if our training is about to pay off, my dear. Shal we make the CIA proud?”

I pul ed my sword, so high on my new freedom that I didn’t care if it sounded obnoxious as I said,

“It’s a good thing Astral’s here to record this. Now we can put on a show the rookies wil be studying for years to come.”

Vayl’s dimple appeared as Zel asked, “Then what are we waiting for?” He glanced at Helena as he pul ed a roughly made weapon from the seam of his homespun pants. It looked less like a dagger he pul ed a roughly made weapon from the seam of his homespun pants. It looked less like a dagger than like an extra-long bolt with a handle on one end and a handsharpened point on the other. She smiled at him, flipped up the skirt of her dress just long enough to give her access to the bowie knife she had stowed there, then dropped it back down again.

“Why Granny H,” I murmured, gaining raised eyebrows from Vayl and a broad smile from her.

“What a big knife you have there.”

She nodded once. “I took it off of the carcass of my first kil . I had to smash his head in with a rock.” She grimaced. “Awful business, that. I wouldn’t recommend it to the easily nauseated.” I caught just a hint of her former accent. Once strongly British, it also had nearly surrendered to the onslaught of hel ’s eternal attack. And yet, when she smiled at Zel with that glow of love in her eyes, I couldn’t help but admire her for hanging on to what real y mattered.

Granny May had fal en into her front porch chair and found a hand fan from church emblazoned with the words god be praised, and in smal er print, shop your hometown grocer, which she was using to give herself more air as she openly admired our forebear. Well, that explains where we get it from. I guess you can’t beat heredity after all. She stared at the cheap paper set into a balsa wood handle, watching its almost hypnotic back-and-forth movement as she said, almost to herself, Even when your mother spends her whole life trying. I wonder what she couldn’t face. Hmm. I really should look her up sometime. After being dead all these years, maybe she’d finally feel free to tell me.

Raoul’s voice interrupted my inner monologue. “I’m thinking that as soon as the gorgon and her pet are halfway across the bridge we should turn and attack. It’s a fairly wide crossing so that if a couple of us can get behind them, considering that we’ve got them wel outnumbered and most of us are skil ed fighters, hopeful y they’l see reason and surrender quickly. Is everyone happy with that idea?”

“I’m scared of snakes,” Lotus said in a wavery voice. “But I’ve been in my share of bar fights. In fact, I once shoved a stiletto through a guy’s eye. Purely out of self-defense, I’d like you to know. Just saying—I can hold my own out there.”

I glanced up at Vayl, realizing instantly that he had no idea how to digest this new information about his daughter. Final y he said, “I do not care for snakes either.” And when they traded smal grins, he was happy that was the route he’d chosen.

At a nod from him we raised our weapons and spun, steeling ourselves for the battle that lay ahead of us. Among the six of us, seven counting Astral, we must’ve seen it al . And yet we stil froze, stunned into paralysis by the scene that lay before us.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Sunday, June 17, 11:45 p.m.

Gorgons are, first and foremost, death-eaters. They haunt battlefields and burn wards. Nursing homes—not so much. Because they love riding their victims through time, sucking up the soul’s reluctance to move on, like kids at a candy counter. And young souls work so much harder to beat death than old ones. They say gorgons can survive for centuries on the backs of seven-year-olds.

The fuckers.

You can’t see them in the world unless they’re about to make a deal. But you might get hints.

Maybe you’l catch them in a stray expression that doesn’t quite fit your husband’s face, or a disturbing personality quirk in your sister that appears suddenly after a nearly tragic accident that the doctors explain as the result of brain damage. It’s not dead brain matter, it’s a gorgon. Sliding up against your sweetheart’s back like the strumpet she was born to be, clutching him so tight he can only breathe when she inhales for them both.

But in hel ? Yeah, we could’ve seen her clearly if we’d wanted to spend the rest of eternity as statues. But since we al enjoyed mobility, we caught her in darting glances as she advanced across the bridge, pul ing her al -you-can-eat-buffet behind her on a delicate silver chain that must’ve been hidden in his fur when he’d been masquerading as a spiderhound.

Roldan, I thought as I exchanged a shocked glance with Vayl. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

In the world, with the gorgon riding him like a shadow, he’d held himself like the most-wanted vil ain he was. Gawd, how long had his gaunt, hard-eyed face stared at us from the kil -’em-ifyou-can bul etin board in Pete’s office every time he cal ed us in to assign a new mission? A king among cutthroats and thieves, the Sol of the Valencian Weres had gained so much status with his decimation of NASA’s communication centers in California and Madrid that his fol owing was threatening to become a worldwide cult. Not so shocking to see him touring the netherworld, considering his worst enemy (Vayl) and dearest love (Helena) had managed to find each other again. But as we watched him connected to his parasite by a single thin metal cord, we understood what he’d real y become.

“No wonder he didn’t want to take human form,” Lotus said in a hushed whisper. “While he was stil a spiderhound the gorgon kept leaning down and hissing into his ear. Slapping him on the back of his head, even flicking at his eyebal s. Nothing. Then she found that chain, yanked it a couple of times, and suddenly he stood up and became… that.”

Now the man he’d been born to become, he shambled behind the gorgon aimlessly, trying to wander off the path until she jerked him back to heel, blood trickling unheeded from the spot on his neck where the col ar had cut into his skin. In wolf form he was a fearsome hook-fanged creature with black claws and fur generously patched in black. That had been one scary monster. The spiderhound form had been even more fearsome. This? This was a skinny old man with sunken eyes and receding gums who kept trying to draw the number eight in the air, and then forgetting how to finish the final loop, forcing him to start al over again. Then I reminded myself. This piece of shit had been responsible for the deaths of Ethan Mreck and my old boss man, Pete. He was going.

Fucking. Down.

“The old man I can take. But I’ve never had to battle a gorgon,” Lotus noted nervously. “If Zel and Helena are going for the creepycrawlies, what am I supposed to target?” We waited for Raoul’s word on the subject since it had been his plan in the first place. “Gorgons are very nearly godlike,” he admitted. “The best we can hope for is to harry her until she finds us too painful to deal with and decides to go play with easier prey. So, Lotus, just try to make her bleed.”

“I’m a lot better with the sword than I used to be,” I said, “but damn, Raoul. Considering her defenses, that’s kind of a thin plan.”

“If you can think of anything heftier, speak up,” he said. We were in such desperate straits he didn’t even sound irritated.

Vayl said, “Why did it have to be snakes? Her hair could have been crawling with rats and I would have gladly faced her a thousand times over.”

I didn’t have to look at him to know his jaw was tight as a vise. I reached for his hand and gripped it. “I’l make you a deal,” I whispered. “I’l protect you from those snakes if you agree to get me out of the assassination business.”

He looked at me sharply. “You are finished?”

I looked at him squarely. “I risked my soul for my country. I carried a damn demon around inside me for the good old US of A. I think I’ve done enough, don’t you?” He squeezed my hand. “What if you find you miss it?”

“I figure Bergman can keep us busy enough to make sure we’re never bored. But this way I can say no to the missions that make my skin crawl. Plus I can make time for my family whenever they need me.” I raised our hands like we were about to shake. “Deal?”

“You know I would do nearly anything to avoid those serpents. But this I would have done in any case.” He raised my fingers to his lips, kissed them, and said, “Deal.” Feeling about fifty pounds and ten years lighter, I said, “I don’t guess anyone brought a mirror?” Silence al around. “Didn’t think so. Wel , that whole reflect-the-evil-eye-back-on-the-nasty-gorgon scheme probably never worked in the first place.”

As the bridge continued to rise from the depths of the Moat and the gorgon led Roldan to its front edge we moved to meet them. Waiting silently at our end of the bridge, hands gripping our swords or rubbing the sweat off on our jeans and then finding a new, more comfortable position on our weapons, we watched the bridge rise to its zenith. Water poured from the jaws, femurs, and shoulder blades of flesh-picked bodies that had been interlocked so tightly that you couldn’t tel where one began and another ended. What you could make out clearly were the moans and groans coming from the souls trapped inside them. And we were supposed to step on these people?

Desecrate their skeletons, break their bones under our feet just so we could fight and probably die on top of them?

Hell yeah! yel ed Teen Me. Stop being so melodramatic! They sucked. Now they’re paying.

Just get on with it, okay? I have a life to live. It sounds like it’s going to be übercool and I’m going to be so mad if you die before you’re even thirty. Plus we have to pee.

Al excel ent points. So when the gorgon and her pet werewolf reached mid-bridge I was ready. I didn’t even flinch when Raoul yel ed, “Charge!” like some damn cavalry captain. I just hauled off right along with Vayl, Zel , Helena, Astral, and Lotus, and fol owed his orders to the letter.

I’d never fought a gorgon on a bridge made from scum-covered skeletons. As Lotus had predicted, it’s a tricky proposition. First of al , the footing sucks. Also, the footing sucks. Which is what I discovered the first, second, and third times I fel into the water.

“Fuck!” became my battle cry as I fought beside some of the toughest warriors I’d ever encountered. And for once I wasn’t the biggest potty mouth in the bunch.

“Take that, you manky bitch!” cried Lotus as Raoul’s sword found an opening, causing the gorgon to spin toward them. Lotus shoved her dagger at the monster’s face with such hope in her eyes that I felt her disappointment in my own heart when she missed wide and nearly went al cementy before Vayl yel ed a reminder at the last second for her to avert her eyes.

“Fuckaroo!” she cried. “That was too fucking close to shitsvil e for me!”

“Lotus!” Vayl objected as he dodged a lunging snake and spun aside to make room for Zel to move in low with a stab to the gorgon’s thigh that Helena fol owed up with a slash at her ribs, which also connected.

“What?” Lotus demanded, backing off before the gorgon’s nest of hair-snakes could reach out and turn her into a quivering blob of poison-fil ed organs.

I sighed as I pul ed myself out of the water—again. “I think your language offends,” I explained, having been on the receiving end of that tone many times myself.

She huffed. “It’s how I talk! It’s how I was raised, for shit’s sake!” I put my hand on Vayl’s arm as he twitched, al his dreams of a wel bred daughter going up in flames when Lotus added, “Speaking of which, let’s take this gorgon down quick, shal we? I’m in dire need of a crapper.”

“Did my child just say ‘crapper’?’” he asked the world at large.

“Yeah,” I told him. “But you should look at the bright side of this.”

“There is a bright side?” he asked incredulously.

“Of course. At least she’s potty trained.”

With Roldan pretty much a no-show—he barely noticed he was surrounded and seemed to have no desire to take on his wolf form and jump into the fight—we concentrated on his mistress. While Lotus took wild pokes with her dagger that sometimes landed, the rest of us took turns making the gorgon wish she’d stayed topside chowing on the old wolf’s mortality where she could digest in peace. Looking back, I have to think the battle would’ve gone down in history as a lot more militarily important and political y influential than it ended up being if I’d just kept my mouth shut. But, uh…

I said, “Roldan, you mangy old mutt. How on Earth did you talk yourself into rol ing over for some cobra-haired bitch who wouldn’t give a shit if the moon became a strip mine?” His vacant gaze, which had been wandering across the landscape like a dreamy painter’s, locked on to mine. “What did you say?” His lips drew back from his unbrushed teeth, and even from ten feet away I could smel the stench of decay blasting out of his throat. It was as much a psychic odor as a physical one, making my brain shrink for cover. And I realized, looking into eyes whose spark had nearly suffocated, that what I scented was the rot of a living soul.

Vayl explained, “Jasmine likes to needle people into a murderous rage before she kil s them.

Otherwise she feels it is not a fair fight and the guilt is more difficult for her to bear afterward.” Oh. Is that what I do?

Roldan’s eyes widened. It wasn’t the first time they’d crossed Vayl’s face. But now I could tel he was seeing the vampire for the first time. “Vasil Brâncoveanu,” he hissed. The snakes in the gorgon’s hair echoed him. Only because I was watching closely did I see a fine shudder shake Vayl’s hands in response to the gorgon’s wriggly do. Then he forced himself into stil ness as he lowered his head slightly in acknowledgment. Roldan’s boss lady whispered into his ear, and his head turned until he could see Helena standing between Zel and Raoul, her bowie knife dripping with the gorgon’s blood. He held out both hands. “My Helena.” He walked to the end of his chain but the gorgon held him back. And I realized this little jaunt to hel must’ve been her idea. What was she gaining from it? More juice from a soul that had shriveled to nearly nothing? The fun of torturing her longtime partner by showing him that he real y hadn’t punished Helena after al ? Or was she real y trying to give him a gift by kil ing us al for him? I couldn’t tel .

While I tried to guess her motives, Zel put an arm around Helena’s shoulders and both of them raised their weapons in response to Roldan’s advance. Zel said, “Helena is mine. And I’m hers.

That’s how it’s been for over a hundred and fifty years, and that’s how it’s gonna stay.” Wow, romance in hell. Who knew? My Inner Bimbo had made it back to the bar, where she’d settled in at her favorite table. Now she raised her hand. Oh, waiter? Bring me a goddamn martini!

Extra olives on those little sticky thingies! She drew a picture in the air, holding an imaginary plastic sword with one hand while she pointed to a couple of imaginary olives with the other. How strange that the image she drew in the air was exactly like the nearly-number-eight Roldan had been tracing.

Before I could make sense of the similarity Roldan spun around, nearly tripping over the chain that bound him as he grabbed his gorgon by the shoulders. “Is this why you brought me here, Sthenno? So you could shred my heart into even smal er pieces than you do every single day?” Raoul made a sound, soft enough that it didn’t distract our foes, but loud enough to catch my attention.

“What is it?” I asked softly.

“Sthenno isn’t just any gorgon,” he replied. “She’s one of the original three. Her list of crimes is so long there’s a whole bookcase reserved for her in the Hal of Monitors. But what matters most right now is that she’s the mother of Lord Torledge.”

“Wait. What? The demon who made the Rocenz? That Lord Torledge?”

“Exactly. And he despised her, Jaz. I mean, we know of at least two separate occasions when he tried to kil her.”

My brain spun into action. Lord Torledge had crafted the tool I’d defeated Brude with for demon hands, though I’d never been convinced its original purpose was to turn humans into spawn, as Kyphas had attempted with Cole. Or that Torledge had ever imagined humans would be able to reduce demons to their most basic elements with it. As with al magical y imbued items, the Rocenz had shown itself to be ful of unexpected surprises.

What had been predictable was the fact that the Rocenz could separate Sthenno from Roldan, and if that happened they’d both die. Especial y here, where Sthenno had no other wil ing soul to host her. This had to have been why Torledge original y designed the tool, so that he could trap his mother and her dinner partner in hel where whoever was carrying the Rocenz at the time would be forced to vanquish her.

So al Torledge had to do was let the Rocenz be “stolen” and wait for Sthenno to hook herself up with the right partner. Once she’d made the deal with Roldan, and Torledge recognized the Were’s hatred for Vayl, he knew these were final y the perfect circumstances for murder. He just needed to figure out a way to lure them both into his realm. Al owing Roldan to throw Helena into the pit must’ve seemed a bril iant plan, especial y after he managed to hook her up with Zel , the only man on the plane who knew how to operate the Rocenz. After that, al he had to do was add Vayl to the mix, but that turned out to be more difficult than it sounded. Enter Brude, who (probably also manipulated by Torledge) formed a partnership with Roldan. Together the two of them pushed Vayl and me closer and closer to the abyss, until we final y had no other choice than to jump, bringing the Rocenz to hel ’s gate, Zel Culver to the exact spot where he could be of the most help, Helena between Vayl and Roldan, and Sthenno into a no-win situation. Because, despite knowing al about Lord Torledge’s dirty damned dealings now, there was stil no way I was going to let his mother win this battle.

“Fuck me.”

“Jasmine!” This time it was Raoul objecting to my choice of words.

“Sorry, I just think, wherever I look lately, I end up deciding I’m working for the wrong damn people.”

“We can make good come from it.”

“You’re Eldhayr. You’re supposed to believe stuff like that.”

“So are you.”

I thought about that while I watched Roldan confront his gorgon. He’d been yel ing at her for a while. Working himself into a frenzy of spittle-on-the-lip fury because she’d made him witness the love of his life with another man when al the time he’d thought she was in utter misery here. He was outraged that she’d used him so badly over the centuries, leaving his heart-sworn enemy hale and hearty while he had been reduced to little more than a bag of bones under her care.

When I dared a glance at Sthenno, it was to see her staring at him calmly, a smal smile pasted across her paint-me-and-be-instantlyfamous face. Final y two of her snakes sank their fangs into him, one in each shoulder. His knees buckled. She lifted the chain to keep him from fal ing flat on his face. Watching him shudder as his body tried to say uncle and his soul fought to stay at anchor, she final y pul ed him into her embrace, pressing his head between her breasts. It would’ve been a loving gesture in anyone else. But for her it meant convenience, al owing her to reach down his back and claw his shirt up over his shoulders. I winced at the thousands of marks on his back, like unhealed mosquito bites, some of which had turned black and begun to leak a dark, oily fluid that looked like it should never come from a human body.

Sthenno looked down, giving me a chance to scope out her face, which (if you managed to ignore the snakes) seemed to me to be the perfect combination of high cheekbones and pouty lips that every woman dreams of but only plastic surgery pul s off. Even I felt slightly envious at those perfectly sculpted brows and thick black lashes. Until something pink and worm-like emerged from the inner corners of her meet-their-gaze-and-die eyes.

They stretched down both sides of her nostrils, over her lips, down her neck, and onto Roldan’s hair. Stil stretching, wriggling from her eyes, they moved as if they knew exactly where they were going. And when they reared up, revealing two smal , three-fanged mouths, before they buried them in Roldan’s back, I believed they did.

So this was how Sthenno ate Roldan’s death. Every day she kil ed him, and then she chowed down. It made sense. She wouldn’t want him to die natural y. What if she wasn’t ready with the utensils at just the right time? Her meal could actual y cross over and then she’d be in a world of hurt.

Which was just where we needed to put her.

I whispered to Raoul, “Okay, so we need to use the Rocenz on her. But how? I don’t figure her name on the gate is going to work the same way it did on Brude, even if we could convince Roldan to do it.”

“No,” said Raoul. “We need her heartstone. Remember the one Kyphas had? It wil be locked inside her chest.”

“Oh, that’l be easy to snatch.”

Vayl spoke up. “What is that saying? I like it quite wel . Jasmine?” I wanted to stick out my bottom lip, but it seemed a little immature to pout in the middle of Satan’s playground. So I just said, “There’s no time like the present.”

“Yes,” he said with such immense satisfaction that I found myself smiling instead as I watched him blast his way in, swinging his sword right at the wormlike appendages that were just now withdrawing from Roldan’s pockmarked back. But Sthenno’s snakes had been keeping watch while she was busy, and their reach was much longer than he’d anticipated. He jumped back just as a cobra that was bigger around than and twice as long as my arm darted toward him, its jaws open so wide I could see the pink of its throat.

I lunged forward and hacked the snake’s head off, which caused Sthenno to scream with pain and rage. She tucked her little soulsuckers back into her eyes and turned them on me, trying to transform me into Jaz-granite. But I avoided her glare as I leaped in for another shot. This time I missed, but hitting hadn’t been my intention. I just wanted to distract her long enough to give Zel and Helena a chance to step up. Which they did. Zel danced past the snakes just long enough to slam his bolt-knife into Sthenno’s side while Helena threw her knife so accurately that she decapitated another snake and stil had time to rescue the blade before fal ing back to stand beside her cowboy.

We continued to hassle the gorgon, feinting, waiting for mistakes. As a result she, and Roldan, were becoming more and more infuriated. The Were, especial y, was bitching out his gorgon like they were an old married couple.

He said, “Why don’t you just kil them? It’s only my worst enemy and the woman I confessed to you that I could never live without. Right here! In hel ! Why don’t you tear them to pieces already?” he demanded.

I couldn’t get past it. Even in dotty old man form this was the Sol of the Valencian Weres. Why was he just talking? Why hadn’t he made a single attempt to wound one of us? Or better yet, why hadn’t he changed? Even in hel I had to figure he could transform pretty much at wil . So why was he stamping his feet like a three-year-old demanding a second piece of cake for dessert?

Because he wants you to win, whispered Granny May from her seat on the porch. He’s old and tired, worn to the bone from the looks of it. He’s trying to distract her, throw her off her game without seeming to, so you can dig out that heartstone and chisel her name onto it.

I stared at him thoughtful y. No, not her name, I told my Granny. I don’t think that would work. But the glyph that he was drawing in the air, the almost-number-eight that our Inner Bimbo was retracing when she was demanding her drink before. I pointed to our fast-and-loose girl, who’d leaped to the stage and was now singing along with two other karaoke stars. That, I think, will do it.

Then what are you waiting for?

The snakes, there are so many of them, and it seems like for every one we decapitate two more grow in its place. We need, I don’t know, a couple of eagles or something. They eat snakes, don’t they?

Granny May nodded at me, her eyes wandering over my shoulder to let me know my attention should be moving elsewhere pronto. Eagles I can’t do. But what about those two?

I turned my head and, though I know I should’ve been pissed, I can admit here at least that I’d never in my life been so glad to see Dave and Cole come darting through the field, taking cover wherever they could find it. Often that meant lying prone while a fence of forearms waved in front of their eyes. Or sliding into the shadow of a row of bodiless legs, their shredded connections screaming silently of chainsaw disasters and land mines.

“Geyser coming!” Astral said triumphantly.

“Oh!” Final y I understood her message. Dave and Cole had probably found a way to tap into one of her databases to message me that they were on their way. Only, given the circumstances with the durgoyles, I’d completely misunderstood.

I al owed myself a second to feel relieved that Cole had survived his solo stint in hel , and to be thankful that he’d given us the time we needed to get to the gate in the first place. Then I whispered the news on the Party Line, and Vayl and Raoul quickly let Lotus, Zel , and Helena in on it. Together we intensified our attacks, doubling up on Sthenno while Roldan screamed his frustration and did absolutely nothing to help.

Though we managed to avoid the snakes, the gorgon began to fight desperately enough that her claws became impossible to dodge, especial y once Dave and Cole left cover. Raoul took the first hit, a slash to the skul right at his hairline that brought the blood gushing so fast he had to back out of the fight to bind it before it blinded him.

Surprised at how deeply an injury to Raoul pissed me off, I rol ed under Sthenno, slicing up into her rib cage as she bent over to intercept me. I was stil rol ing back out of range when I saw one of the rattlers leap out of her hair. Fuuuuck! The angles were perfect. It would land exactly where I meant to stop. I dug my heels into the ground and reversed myself just as Vayl stepped up, holding his sword up by his ear like a big-league batter. As soon as the snake hit the sweet spot Vayl swung for the bleachers, and it dropped in two pieces by my side.

I scrambled for safety as Vayl said, “I thought I had forgotten how to do that.”

“Holy crapinator, Vayl, I never realized you knew how!”

“I wil have to tel you sometime.” He nodded over my shoulder to where Zel and Helena were battling. Helena had just crushed a snake’s head under her boot, which I found extra badass considering she’d been brought up to swoon at the sight of an earthworm, but then Zel managed to impress me even more when he punched Roldan in the face (although maybe that was just on principle because the Were was only baring his teeth), shoved his bolt-knife through the gorgon’s cheek, and caught the black mamba that was preparing to strike with his bare hand, snapping its neck and leaving it to dangle from Sthenno’s do like a greasy curl.

Cole and Dave were racing toward the gorgon and the Were at ful speed, their swords held tight and low for piercing. They’d each put on a pair of reflective sunglasses for the fight, which I didn’t quite see the point of until Cole whistled.

“Oh, Gorgonzola! Give us a kiss, ya big, beautiful girl you!” She spun around. Dave and Cole had put their heads together and grinned, like they were posing for a picture one of them was taking at close range. That much charm packed into such a tight space? I couldn’t resist looking. And neither could Sthenno. She stared straight into those mirrored shades behind which, I guessed, two pairs of eyes were tightly shut. Because Cole’s skin remained its typical golden brown and Dave’s kept al its freckles. Hers, on the other hand, began to get that leathery look you see on old gals who’ve sacrificed softness for tanning. Even her snakes looked a little gray around the edges.

“You think this wil kil me?” she bel owed as she dragged forward a foot that had suddenly gone sand-tinted. “After generations of men, al of them more bril iant and virile than you, have tried to freeze me with my own stare?” Second foot forward. She looked like an elephant trying to reach its water bowl after a hard night of partying.

“This only slows me down!” She looked over her shoulder at us, her gaze even more venomous than the snakes waving almost drunkenly around her skul . “And makes me harder to stop.”

“That works for us,” Dave cal ed. He swept his sword up one side of her head. The snakes regenerated much slower than before. That gave Cole time to carve a ravine in her chest that should’ve laid her flat. But she was one of the original three, and stil connected to Roldan to boot.

Which meant she stil had the strength to bat his sword away as if it were no more irritating to her than a kid’s toy. Cole went flying, landing among a planting of hands that caught him and rol ed him into the mud like he was a round of pizza dough.

Muttering so low that I couldn’t catch the words, only that Vayl sounded like he was giving himself the lecture of a lifetime, my sverhamin rushed up behind Sthenno and shoved his hand around the front of her, into the gaping wound Cole had caused. She screamed, turning her head to sink her teeth into his shoulder. Her claws sank into his hips as he reached for her heartstone, but the snakes struggling to respawn couldn’t join in the fray. They yawned their baby mouths and reached out to him like chicks in a nest, begging for regurge, and he laughed as he yanked his hand free, the blood and gore dripping from his fist unable to disguise the treasure he’d found.

“Jasmine! Here!” He tossed me the heartstone, which I caught despite the droplets of ick flying off it and the slick layer of goo that made it slippery as an ice cube. For a second, as I turned toward shore, I did lose my grip. In that nightmare moment I could see it fal ing through the gaps between the ulnas and skul s on the bridge into the river, where we’d never be able to recover it again. I leaped to land, ran about ten yards, and put it safely on the ground. Not even giving myself time for a sigh of relief, I steadied Sthenno’s heartstone between my boots, pul ed the hammer and chisel from my belt, and began my second carving of the day while Astral sat so close it was a wonder I didn’t smack her on the upswing.

Visualizing the symbol that Roldan had traced repeatedly in the air and my own Inner Bimbo had copied, I tapped the pattern into the stone. Sthenno screamed again. My peripheral vision told me she was coming for me, but everyone in my crew blocked the bridge, their blades forming a barrier her claws and slow-growing asps found impossible to breach.

The rock was slippery. So was the mud underneath. This made the chiseling harder and slower than it had been with Brude. And, perversely, now that Roldan could feel his death drawing near, he’d decided to fight forevery last breath. When I heard the growls of a ful y changed werewolf, my heart launched into triple time.

Isn’t that just like a villain? said Granny May. Can’t even hold on to the little bit of honor he’s found for ten damn minutes. She and the rest of my inner girls had al brought their lawn chairs onto her front porch for the final showdown.

Popcorn? You’ve decided to watch me battle for my life as if you were at a movie theater?

Not completely, said Teen Me, holding up her snack. I have yogurt. She took a bite and then, with her mouth ful of strawberry-banana lusciousness, added, Isn’t it interesting how demons react differently to having their heartstones carved by humans? When Kyphas did hers with Cole’s name he got all demony and she was all, “Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha.” But now that you’re doing Sthenno’s, she’s acting like it’s the end of the world!

Hopefully it is for her, said Granny May. Now, hurry up, Jazzy. Your people may be good, but the snakes are growing and Roldan is getting stronger. Finish that already!

Luckil ly I work wel under pressure. I chinked in the last flourish of Sthenno’s glyph just as Roldan broke free of her chain and charged our line. He ran straight for Zel . And though Vayl, Cole, Dave, and Raoul al closed on him quicker than NOLA cops on a rowdy Mardi Gras tourist, he stil had the head start and the speed. Zel went down under his snapping jaws and tearing claws.

Helena’s scream tore at my heart as I ran to help, stil holding the pieces of the Rocenz in my hands, the completed heartstone forgotten in the mud just like the slumping form of Sthenno behind us.

When the men pul ed back from their attack on Roldan, his white coat was stained a dark, bloody red. Vayl, alone, tore him off Zel , the sight of whom brought another jagged cry from Helena.

He was also soaked in blood, his throat torn open so badly I thought I could see his spine shining at the back of it. But he’d given as good as he got, which we saw when we rol ed the Were over to find his homemade dagger sticking out of Roldan’s chest.

Helena leaned over Zel , weeping so desperately that her entire body shook. She clutched at his clothes and demanded for him to come back, to wake up. When I looked to Vayl to see if watching this scene was breaking his heart too, I saw two bloody tears tracking down his face.

Helena wrapped her arms around her love and cried even harder, which I hadn’t thought possible. Vayl crouched down to lay a hand across her shoulder. The rest of us stood by, helpless.

Behind us, a sigh. We turned. Sthenno had dropped to the ground, her snakes limp around her head, her entire chest such a bloody mess she looked like she’d just fal en off an autopsy table. But she wasn’t too far gone to whisper, “Cole. You’ve hovered over the edge of the pit before.

Remember al the delectable temptations Kyphas dangled in front of you? She could have given you everything you ever dreamed of. But I can give you more. Not just eternity. You have that now, I can see it in your eyes. Not just women, your skil s are so renowned that even I have heard of them.” Her dying eyes turned to me. “I can give you Jasmine. She considered you once. She’d be easy to turn. And then you’d have a lifetime. Redheaded daughters and towheaded sons. A house on the beach and a big-screen TV to cuddle in front of on rainy nights. What do you say, Cole? Al you have to do is accept me. You’l never even see me.”

He looked at me, then at Vayl. “My girl is waiting for me out there. And I have a feeling she’d be überpissed if I dumped her before we even met. Plus—” He shook his head at Sthenno. “Girl, your sales pitch is just old. Kyphas tried it on me weeks ago and it worked like a salvage-yard reject.” Sthenno sighed again, closed her eyes, and crumpled in on herself like a wilting flower. Which seemed kind of appropriate given her location.

Helena had now begun the hiccup sobbing that let me know she was fast dropping into hysteria.

I knelt beside her, opposite Vayl, suddenly acutely aware that this woman was probably my granny’s greatgreat-grandmother. That she’d died giving birth to twin girls, one of whom had continued a line that Vayl had watched over until he’d final y met and fal en for me. Had I been the only one? I couldn’t bear to look at him, much less ask just now. So I shook her, whispering, “Helena. Helena,” until she looked up and I was staring into the clear blue eyes of my ancestress. I asked, “What are the rules here? Can he die? I mean, considering the fact that he’s already dead?” She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Raoul spoke up. “He’s being given a choice. He can stay in this body and continue to work with Helena. Or he can find peace. If he chooses the latter, we’l see his soul ascend within a few minutes. If he decides to stay, he’s going to be in real danger. The pain wil be immense, and the chance for some sort of wicked infection setting in on a wound like that is excel ent. As soon as we know, we should move him.”

“Then I’d better get busy.”

Cole had shoved his shades back, which swept his hair away from his face as wel , giving him a much more serious look than usual. He held out his hands to me. “I need that tool.” Something about the way he said it made me decide that questioning his motives was so far out of order that I might lose his friendship if I went there. So I just raised the Rocenz to him. He took the hammer and chisel in his hands, holding them so comfortably I’d have thought he’d been born to work wood, except I’d never seen him craft anything more artistic than a ham-and-cheese sandwich.

He took a stone from his pocket. The same one Kyphas had used to carve his name on in Marrakech.

“Cole,” said Vayl, his voice firm, warning. “Do you know what you are doing?” Cole stared into his eyes. “I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life.” He glanced over at me solemnly. “I have to do this.” I nodded, only barely understanding. But I didn’t have to. He was my friend. He needed my support. That was al I real y had to know.

Steadying the rock between his feet just like I’d done with Sthenno’s heartstone, Cole began to chisel letters. K. Y. P. H. A. By the time he got to the first curve of the S, the sky above us had begun to darken. We tried to ignore it, but Helena began to look worried.

“We need to get out of here,” she whispered to Dave, who was bending over Zel , providing the first-aid skil s he’d learned in the military.

He nodded. “I agree.” He looked up at Raoul. “Can you take him to your place? He’s dead so, you know, I can feel his state pretty clearly.” Dave cleared his throat uncomfortably as we tried, and failed, not to gape at him. “The good news is that he’s back.” Helena clapped her hands to her mouth to hold back a whole series of sobs that insisted on pouring out around the edges of her fingers anyway. Dave stared at her grimly. “The bad news is that he’s already infected with something, and he’s not fighting it off because he’s so badly hurt. It’s less like a disease than a way of thinking. He’s already considering giving up.”

“That’s not my Zel ,” said Helena.

Dave shook his head. “No. I think it’s hel , getting into his spirit. And if we don’t evacuate him soon, it’l sink into his core. I’m not saying he couldn’t beat this on his own. He’s got you, Helena, and that’s a lot. But if what Raoul said is true about hel ’s atmosphere, and I’m right about this infection��”

“Then we go,” said Raoul. He picked Zel up and threw him over his shoulder like he weighed only slightly more than a basket of dirty clothes. “You can handle this,” he told me.

“Of course. I’l be in touch.”

He smirked. “That I know.” Then his lips stretched into a smile. “I’m proud of you, Jasmine.” That was al he said. And I didn’t know how to answer except to blink like a damn barn owl. Then Helena distracted us both, reaching out to Vayl, who took her hand, bowed over it like they were stil living in eighteenth-century London, and kissed it. When he rose again, the sorrow in his eyes was so deep it threatened to swal ow them both.

“My girl. Had I known you were here—”

“I know. You would’ve rescued me in an instant. And probably died, or worse, been captured and suffered endless tortures in the attempt.” She smiled up at him. “You showed me the way to survive.” She glanced at Zel . “Even to be happy. And then I found out how to continue on my own. Isn’t that what good parents do?”

He shrugged. “I would not know.”

She put her arms around him. “But you do. I love you, Papa. Zel and I wil come visit as soon as he’s better.” She glanced over at me. “We have a lot of catching up to do, don’t we?” No shit, Sherlock! I glared at my Inner Bimbo, but she was belting out the wrong words to

“Banana Fana Shoshana” along with her newfound backup singers between long sips from her third margarita, so I looked further. To my mental librarian, who was skidding around the stacks in her sensible pumps, pencils sticking out of her bun in five different directions as she searched wildly for something to write with. She found a crayon lying on top of a slightly dented study carrel and waved it at me as she yel ed, Helena is family? And Vayl never told you? Shouldn’t we feel betrayed? Plus, what does that make him, your… guardian-in-law? Should we be grossed out? Or mad? How do I categorize this???

I looked at Vayl, who was watching his adopted daughter help Raoul balance Zel on his shoulder. The love on his face, purely paternal, changed radical y when he turned to me. You know what, Book Lady? We’re just going to let this one go.

A sound, something between a scream and a cry of anguish, turned us both toward hel ’s fence.

As it had with Brude, the air had begun to shimmer and then to take shape. Kyphas appeared, stil enveloped in her bil owing black dress with its extra-long sleeves and face-masking hood. It was pul ed back to reveal her expression, shocked out of its misery as soon as she realized what Cole was doing.

She held up an arm. “No,” she croaked. “I haven’t paid my dues.

They’l come after you if you do this.” He paused to look up at her. “In the end, you showed me a moment of true love. How could I move on without doing the same for you?”

“Cole—”

Her head jerked back as he finished her name. She screamed. And a mil ion black moths shot out of her mouth, flapping into the sky with the sound I had always secretly thought Death would make as it sneaked up to an old man’s bedside. When she dropped her chin, we gasped. Her face had re-formed, its beauty so breathtaking I found it hard to sit stil beneath that bril iant golden gaze.

The hood had completely fal en off, revealing her mane of blond hair. And when she raised her hands to stare at them wonderingly, they were complete, the skin back to the healthy tan that pale women like me had envied in her better days.

Love and gratitude spil ed from her eyes along with her tears as she said, “Thank you. Oh, Cole, thank you.” And then she closed her eyes as she began to glow, the color brightening first to bright orange, then to red. It didn’t seem to hurt. Her expression remained serene as she burst into so many pieces that she resembled the sparkling residue from a high-flying fountain whose droplets cross into the sun before they drop back into their pool. Hers had direction as wel , pointing themselves directly to the rock Cole had carved: They poured themselves into it until it sparkled like a gemstone. When the light show had finished, Cole dug a hole with his fingers and gently buried Kyphas’s heartstone in the field. Raoul told me later that a red rosebush grew in that spot, and that occasional y Cole asked one of the hel scouts to bring him a flower from it.

I wasn’t so sentimental as my old friend. But, then, I didn’t have to wait nearly as long as he did for the love of my life to show. He walked beside me al the way back to the world while the rest of our crew fol owed at our backs. He was holding my hand as we stepped through the plane portal.

And he was the one who hugged me first when Bergman rushed into the bathroom to say, “Jasmine!

Jack’s going to be okay!”

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Monday, June 18, 3:15 a.m.

Funny how seeing your dog attempt to wag his tail as you enter the room brightens your entire outlook on life. Even Aaron, who’d had to spend the entire mission holding a gun to the portal and hoping he didn’t have to shoot it, seemed cheered by the sight.

After our battle-wind-down powwow, during which we al retold our stories, Bergman demanded to be repaid for the exorbitant vet fee, and Aaron apologized a thousand times for doubting us—

because, damn, it’s a little mind-shattering having to guard the only escape for a whole group of innocent people when the pregnant woman’s husband informs you he’l kil you if you fail—everybody scattered. Cassandra and Dave wandered back to the honeymoon suite. Cole and Bergman waved good night and went their separate ways. Astral curled up on the bed beside Jack, who instantly began to snore. Which left Aaron and Lotus sitting at the table with Vayl and me.

He regarded his children, first his son, then his daughter, with adoring eyes. “You have turned into quite fascinating people over time,” he told them. “I cannot even begin to tel you how it fil s my heart to know you are wel . That your souls survived and continue their journey even into today.” Lotus nodded. “I’m tel ing you what. This girl?” She pointed to herself with both thumbs. “Not journeying back to hel . Ever. Even if that means wearing a bra every single day.” I turned my laugh into a cough as Vayl went into the absolute stil ness that occasional y substituted itself for deep embarrassment. Final y he said, “I am overjoyed to hear that.” After a beat, he went on. “I shal not make a pest of myself. But if you would both al ow me to check in on you from time to time, I would be grateful.”