Chapter Fifteen

 

 

 

   Lexa fought Sava’s surprising strength as they abandoned Arim to fight ‘Sin Garu and those demons alone. Cursing and struggling, she knew a fear she’d felt only once before in her life. Arim was alone. Without her, he’d fall as surely as her Light Bringer family had died. Bloodied at the hands of evil.

   When they settled down into a dark room filled with the stench of death, she ripped herself from Sava and readied herself to return but found herself unable.

    “Not yet, Lexa. We’re here for a reason.”

   “What did you do?” Black fear fed the rage growing like a disease inside her. Lexa fed the powerful emotion, growing stronger as she watched Sava with an unblinking stare. Worry made her stronger, and she couldn’t stop the panic. Seeing Arim lunge between her and that demon blast was pain all over again. She could feel the bite of demon flame from her previous altercation with ‘Sin Garu and now knew her lover felt it. A wound he wouldn’t have felt if he hadn’t been so hell-bent on saving her.

   Why the hell had he done that? The stupid, foolish, loving idiot. If he died before she returned to him, she was going to follow him into the Next and berate him for the rest of his life after death.

   “Look, Lexa. We’re never going to defeat ‘Sin Garu with all those demons, not when they’re feeding on Tanselm’s energy. We have to stop them in order to save Tanselm.”

   What Sava said made sense, but she still socked him in the gut, pleased when he doubled over in pain. “Fine. But you didn’t have to drag me here to do it. Someone needs to save Arim from himself, that overprotective lout.” Nerves jumbled, and the thought that even as they argued he might be dying killed her inside. “Do your thing while I go back.”
            “Not yet.” Sava coughed and grabbed her fist. “I left Arim some protection, but we have to make this fast.”

   Relief flooded her that Arim would still be there when she returned to kick his Light Bringer ass. “Fine. Let’s hurry though.” Lexa took two steps into darkness and stopped. “Where are we?”

   “In Orfel. This is where ‘Sin Garu planted the foundation for the demon bridge. I was going to just destroy it, with your help of course. Then Arim reminded me we can’t, not yet.”

   “Why not?” Lexa glanced around. Her vision immediately adjusted to filter the slim bands of light from the clinging Darkness of the place. The Dark Lord in her revelled in the negative energy around her, even as the woman within forced herself not to gag at the reality of decay holding fast to the air she breathed. She saw nothing more than black and grey rock on the floors and ceiling. There were a few visible walls, but for the most part the Darkness of the space bled out into the vague empty/fullness of the between.

   She narrowed her gaze. “There.” She pointed, glad she’d come with Sava, a Shadow dweller who could see as well as she could in the Dark. Arim would have been as blind as a bat.

   “I know. I’ve been here before.”

   “What are you talking about?”

   “While you and Arim were getting reacquainted in Seattle, having tons and tons of sex, I was traipsing around the between looking for ‘Sin Garu. I found him here, in Orfel, surrounded by eviscerated bodies. The stench in the next room, if you can call it that, is overpowering. And the sight… Let’s just say this rivals some of the nightmares I’ve had for sheer brutality.”

   “Great.” Lexa didn’t want to see what he was talking about, but they had to find and destroy that demon bridge to free Tanselm, so the land might lend Arim some much needed energy. “Let’s go.” She took a few steps before he stopped her again. “Dammit, Sava, we don’t have time for this.”

   “Make time.” His implacable tone made her pause. “We can’t destroy the bridge until you use it to get your soul back. Because once you’re in, you’ll definitely need a way out. With so many of the demons up here powering ‘Sin Garu, there will be less in Mount Malinta for you to deal with. Just hurry up.”

   Lexa stared at him in astonishment. How could she have forgotten about that part of her that was missing? “My soul.”

   “Yes.” Sava swore under his breath and pulled her towards the narrowed corridor. “Arim will have my head if we return without it, not that I could blame him. We need to move. I’ll distract the enemy here while you use the bridge. And Lexa, I don’t have to tell you that time is as much our enemy as the demons.”

   He looked worried, and Lexa’s heart raced with trepidation. He was right. This would be her best shot at finding that part of her soul. But what about Arim?

   “Lexa, now. Arim wants this and you need this. I told you I left him some protection, but it won’t hold forever. You have to hurry up so we can get back to him.”

    Much as she still wanted to crush Sava on the spot for tearing her from Arim, she knew this plan would in fact help her Light Bringer. That didn’t mean she had to like it.

   She followed Sava through the corridors of this Dark retreat, uncaring about what or who might hear her. At this point, the demons would have to be both blind and deaf not to realise that their sanctuary had been breached. Lexa’s and Sava’s arrival had been extremely loud. “I can handle the Netharat. It’s that demon flame that throws me.” She suppressed a violent shiver, clearly recalling the last time that venomous green blaze had eaten at her flesh and spirit…as it was now doing to Arim.

   “Leave the demons to me.” Sava murmured under his breath and clutched a small black satchel in his hands, a satchel she hadn’t seen before. He opened it and removed what looked like a small black rock from a pouch that promptly disappeared. He closed his eyes and swallowed the small stone. For a moment, silence surrounded them.

   Sava opened his eyes. Their colour had shifted from a warm brown to a cold, hard black. He nodded at her to walk with him, and they moved swiftly towards a hazy spot that looked like a doorway. It appeared as though the archway led to another room, but Lexa couldn’t see through the sudden density before them. Once they breached what felt like an icy wind, demonic shrieks filled the air and echoed in the cavernous room now lit with an eerie, green glow.

   The narrow passage ended a few feet in front of them, where the greenish light was brighter. Lexa glanced at Sava to see what he made of it all. What lurked in his gaze froze her in fear. Lexa’s friend, a man she’d known nearly her entire life, abruptly took on an appearance rivalling that of the altered Dark Lord they’d just left. The Shadow in the Aellein king drained into a monstrosity far worse than Dark wraiths or evil Shadren.

   “Use the ladder to get to the bridge,” Sava commanded in a horrifying amalgamation of pitches, echoes and gendered voices. He grabbed her by the arm and dragged her after him.

   She instinctively sought to shield herself, burning him with a Dark Lord’s blue flame before she could stop herself. The cold should have taken his hand clean off, snapping it into a solid block of ice to shatter into pieces. The energy in Sava, the many souls pushing at one another for control, turned his pale, perfect skin a sickly green that began to blister and burn with something much worse than blue flame.

   Lexa forced herself to focus, to remember that Sava did what he had to in order to help them defeat ‘Sin Garu. He wasn’t setting her up to fail and hadn’t separated her from her lover to kill them both, but to save the future for them all.

   That in mind, she swallowed around the lump of fear in her throat—a fear she moulded into a useable anger—and broke from Sava’s grip, flying right into the maw of the demon stronghold.

   Though the demons reigned in Mount Malinta on her homeworld of Malern, in order to affect Tanselm the way they had, they would have had to move closer. Orfel, situated in the between, was an ingenious hideaway. A crossroads for those moving from magic to the mundane, or from Light to Dark, Orfel provided the perfect sanctuary for a Dark Lord bent on domination…or a demon world wanting to control life itself.

   Standing at the edge of the cavernous room, Lexa absorbed the familiar laughter and cries of delight from the glowing beasts lurching in the hideaway. Bloody bodies covered the floor. Many of the demons continued to feed on human entrails, disregarding her presence. They showed no preference for the Light as they devoured their allies—wraiths, Nocumat and the occasional Djinn as well. Evil and pain saturated the Darkness of the place until Lexa felt so full of bad energy she wanted to vomit.

   Darkness was a source of power, but this…this malignance corrupted everything it touched.  If the stench of death and rot weren’t enough to sour her stomach and soul, the sight of the demon’s bridge did the trick.

   To her right, a writhing, living ladder nearly twelve feet wide rose from the floor several stories, into a glowing greenish-blue ball of energy hanging from the ceiling like a demonic disco ball. Lexa wanted to laugh hysterically at the analogy, but couldn’t see anything that could describe the unnatural sight better. Nearly three times her size, the ball of light flickered as it rotated, illuminating everything not pitch black with a hazardous, sickly green glow.

   Demons feasting on flesh, writhing with ecstasy as they raped the living both sexually and spiritually, lay over one another by the hundreds. Small of stature, most demons were no more than three or four feet in height, their wiry bodies always hungry, always thirsting as if to fill up that emptiness that made them so disagreeable. But it was the sight of so many innocents that made Lexa bleed inside. The Netharat she could handle being tormented.

   To her shock, Lexa saw several Light Bringers and fallen Djinn, Ethim’s men who had fallen in previous battles, now weaved helplessly into the living ladder as the demons feasted on their eternal suffering. And there, towards that bright ball of light, Remir screamed in agony as the demons continued feeding off him, their long, sharp teeth filled with his energy that would bleed for as long as they let his soul survive. Though demons relished an appeasement to their hungers, they craved despair even more. They would allow Remir to hold onto his life long enough to drive him insane with pain.

   Lexa glanced at Sava, wishing all this was just an illusion. She watched in horror as he began chanting in demonic tongues, laughing and sneering in a manner depicting his familiarity with the creatures in this hell.

   He shoved her hard, away from him and onto the ladder as he leapt straight up into the air, shooting into the greenish-blue ball of light with so much force that he nearly caused the living steps to fold in on themselves.

   Hurrying to disentangle herself from the filth under her, Lexa ignored the sucking sounds and slippery, giving tissue under her hands as she fought to regain her feet.

   “We’ve been waiting.” She recognised the demon closest to her and forced herself not to shudder. The creature stared at her as it licked its lips. “Come to fulfil the bargain?”

   “No.” She couldn’t help noticing what the creature was eating, and with a furious wave of her hand, ended the life of a fallen Sarqua Djinn. The demon cried out in anger, having been robbed of its meal, but soon turned to another dying soul pleading for Lexa’s help, a broken wraith. As the demon began sucking on the wraith’s bones, Lexa forced herself not to feel what was under her hands and feet as she climbed higher. None of the demons in the ladder seemed to care about her, and she moved as fast as her limbs would carry her.

   When she reached Remir, however, she couldn’t stop herself from freeing him. Tears streamed down his ethereal face but he made no sound. The golden tint of his form showed her that he wasn’t beyond saving, not yet. Remembrances of how much he’d once helped her urged her to return the favour.

   “I’ll come back to free you once I’ve retrieved what’s mine,” she said in a low voice. “That’s the way to the bridge?”She pointed towards the light where Sava had disappeared.

   Remir nodded and motioned her to follow him.

   “Remir?”      

   This way, he mouthed, his ability to speak apparently gone

   She didn’t want to go with the Darkling who had collaborated with ‘Sin Garu, but knowing what she did of her brother, she could well believe the Djinn had been ensorcelled. The Remir she remembered had been loyal to a fault, in love with her—a woman who had, at the time, no love to give anyone.

   Pity filled her, and she angrily blamed Arim again for allowing her to feel when numbness right now would have been most welcome.  

   Not having anywhere else to go but up, Lexa followed Remir into the ball of light and found herself flying with him through a different kind of between into Mount Malinta.

   Once in the demon world, they stopped on a craggy black rock and looked down into hell.

   “I’m so sorry,” Remir spoke in husky voice. “I was powerless to refuse the Dark Lord. And now I pay the price.”

   Lexa stared at him, wishing she could have predicted his future and thus saved him from his downfall. “I should have protected you.”

   “You couldn’t have.” Remir’s once dark brown eyes were now a shimmery blue-green and full of regret. “I joined ‘Sin Garu thinking he was you. I could never deny you anything.”

   Lexa remembered a time back in Foreia when she’d been trying to mass the Djinn and deal with unruly Storm Lords. She’d seen her own image in a treetop—whom she now knew to be ‘Sin Garu impersonating her. But she hadn’t been sure it was Remir she’d seen with her likeness.  She could only imagine the horrors the poor Djinn had suffered, and all because he’d loved her.

   “I know where they keep your soul, Dark Mistress. Let me help you retrieve it. Here, in this plane, I’ve the strength to aid you as I couldn’t do in life. Allow me this gift.”

   Lexa blinked back angry tears and nodded, not knowing what to say. She followed him, flying in a weightless body no more substantial than air. Here, in the demon plane, energy existed in thought, not physical presence. She could only hope she’d soon escape back through the bridge. The last time she’d left, only hatred for the place and a love for Arim had given her the strength to leave. After the toll her energy had taken, she didn’t think she had the power to do so again under her own steam.

   Perhaps with her soul intact…

   Remir led her to a section of Mount Malinta guarded by three towering demons. These three were red and tall, shaped like men but with horns protruding from various parts of their bodies. The very differences in their size and colour alerted her that they guarded demonic treasures—souls. Crouched behind slabs of sharp rock, she and Remir watched the demons pacing below in the dark crater surrounding the green bars of sickly light.

   “It’s in there, with the other souls they’ve stolen.” The intensity with which Remir stared made her wonder.

   “Do they have a piece of you as well?”

   “Yes. A large piece,” he said with a scowl before smoothing his expression. “I’ll divert them while you hurry in and take back what’s yours. You’ll have to be quick—”

   Sava’s sudden appearance by the demons startled Lexa and Remir into silence. That Sava didn’t look well was a gross understatement. The once pristine Aellei was covered in Dark matter, his hair tangled and matted, his skin blistered and oozing. But his eyes scared Lexa the most. The Sava she knew didn’t exist in that gaze.

   He approached the red demons without glancing up, yet she knew he was aware of her presence.

   “Lord Sava?” Remir whispered, a frown on his face. “What’s he doing here?”

   “Come brothers. It’s been a while, and I want to play.” Sava winked at the demons and flicked a finger at one of them. The creature blew up, energy exploding into a tightly confined field, a blast of filth hanging suspended over the other two demons.

   “What have you done?” one of them cried out.

   “I’m hungry, Feor.” Sava grinned, his teeth alarmingly like ‘Sin Garu’s. He opened his mouth and inhaled the suspended energy in one long drag, as if sucking through a straw.

   Feor snarled and left his post to the other demon. “You’ll pay for that, white one.”

   “Feor,” the other demon started.

   “Come, Vrak. This one needs a reminder about life in the Pit.” Feor tilted his head. “Sava, you’ve changed. Why, are those Monitors inside your eyes?” Feor chortled with glee. “Possessed are you?”

    Sava, possessed? Dammit. Does he expect me to save myself at his expense? He’s as dim-witted as Arim. Lexa fumed as she compared the two males, neither of which came out favourably. She glanced at Remir and realised she was surrounded by people who sacrificed themselves for her. And she didn’t like it one bit.

   “Come on,” she snarled at Remir as soon as Vrak joined Feor out of sight. They quickly floated down the rocky slope and stared at the barred cage. Not sure how to open it, Lexa reached for the nearest bar, only to have Remir grab her hand.

   “It hurts. Let me.”

   Fine. You do it. Then I’ll save your ass too. No more sacrifices for me. Lexa was feeling less and less worthy of so much forfeit. She didn’t like being in anyone’s debt. Especially not when she already felt horrible that she hadn’t been there when Remir needed her most.

   He grunted with pain as he closed his hands around a large bar of green light. His expression one of agony, he pulled with all his strength, allowing her a slim expanse to slip through. She didn’t wait but moved inside the bars. Her lost energy called to her, and she reached out to her soul, smiling when it flew to her. She joined it with a simple touch. Shocks of blue energy flared, and she finally felt like the powerful Dark Lord she’d been bred to be.

   Short on time, she focused on the other reason for her presence in the cage. Closing her eyes, she mentally sought the essence that was Remir. Commanding the essence to come, she opened her eyes to see Remir’s energy balled up in Dark bands. Muttering Dark magic, she pulled the bands with her to the exit, and not without some difficulty.

   “I can’t hold much longer,” Remir rasped.

   She hurried to the entrance and slid outside but couldn’t pull his energy with her. The soul couldn’t leave the confines of the demon prison. Grabbing the fiery door with one hand, she shoved one of Remir’s arms inside the cage only long enough to watch as his soul settled over his spirit. The Djinn lit up from the inside out. He pulled his arm back and she let go just as the door to the cage slammed with a powerful bang. Energy scattered up the slopes around the crater like fingers of green lightning.

   Remir, however, no longer held a golden tint. His eyes returned to their natural brown. Now he was Dark, his aura pulsing with a white, clean light, much like the aura he possessed when he burned in truth.

   “Thank you,” he said softly, his love shining like a beacon. “Now go before they return.”

   She could hear inhuman shrieks mingling with Sava’s cruel laughter.

   “I’m not leaving without Sava.” She made up her mind. “Or you. Come on.” Not giving Remir a chance to argue, she raced through the air, at long last exhilarated by her rightful Dark power. Lexa was completely whole, though she knew she couldn’t possibly be as strong as she felt.

   Once they rounded a large boulder they found Sava. The sight that met them froze them in her tracks. Sava had expanded to five times his normal size, much like Arim had done when he encountered the Church brethren in Tanselm. Unfortunately, Sava also looked five times as demonic as he had. Vrak and Feor were crying out as he smothered them under his massive feet.

   Sava chuckled, his smile wide when he met Lexa’s stare. “Finally. Took you long enough.” He glanced at Remir and frowned. “You can’t leave. Your bargain was met.”

   “It wasn’t his bargain to make.” Lexa wasn’t talking to Sava anymore, but to one of those Monitors, or whatever the hell they were, that possessed her friend.

   “Then whose was it?”

   “’Sin Garu’s. You want him? Come with me.”

   Sava considered her for a moment. He straightened and stared down at the red demons a moment before stomping hard on their heads, crushing their horned skulls and smashing them into oblivion. Blood and brain matter spattered the stone floor.

    Lexa knew she’d had enough gore to last a lifetime. She barely managed to keep herself from throwing up. Even Remir turned away in disgust.

   Sava moved like lightning and had a hold of her arm and Remir’s before she cold blink.

   “Ah, Sava?”

   “Sava’s not here anymore.” The Monitors laughed and held tighter when Lexa struggled in their grip. Sava squeezed her hand and increased in speed, shooting back up towards the bridge through which they’d travelled.

   “I can’t leave,” Remir yelled as the air whipped by them at breath-stealing velocity.

   Sava’s skin writhed as if he underwent an internal battle. “You can if the bargain’s not met.” His voice sounded like Sava’s again, but Lexa couldn’t be sure. Then she didn’t much care as they entered that odd between.

   They landed in Orfel, and it remained as it had before they’d left. The demons were at work in the gloomy green cavern, ingesting and molesting anything that lived.

   “Go to Arim. Remir and I will take care of the bridge and its horrific ladder.” Sava’s booming voice drew the attention of the demons. Remir swore.

   “But Remir—”

   “I’ll be fine,” Remir said and tugged her away. His spirit was strong, but his form wouldn’t last outside of the demon plane. He needed to join the Next, if he could find it. Lexa had no idea how to guide him there. Unless Ravyn and Faustus could help…

   “Go, Lexa. I’ll help Remir.” Sava laughed and crushed several demons in one mighty fist. “Unless you’d rather stay and play with me?” The Monitors returned, echoing his sentiment.  

   Lexa didn’t need to be told twice. “Sava, you join me in Tanselm soon or I’m coming back for you. And if you Monitors do a thing to harm Sava or Remir, you’ll deal with me.”

   Unfortunately, they didn’t take her threat seriously, for Sava erupted into laughter while the demons on the ladder began tumbling, shrieking in fear and anger as Sava destroyed them.

   Much as Lexa wanted to stay to help, worry for Arim consumed her. She hadn’t allowed herself to think of him while down in Mount Malinta, but now she couldn’t stop thinking about him. The Dark willing, he was alive and kicking.

   Something tickled her belly and she rubbed it, frowning. Then fear shook her when her connection to Arim that had always hummed beneath the surface seemed to fade away.