thing Butch was opposed to nature hikes; he dozed uneasily in my handbag, as usual.
To make matters worse, I was stiff from driving, exhausted, and worried. Not in top fighting form. Maybe it wouldn’t come to that.
“We’re heading the right way?”
Chance closed his eyes, and the air around him crackled as if with heavy static electricity. When he turned his luck to a problem, he received a sense of whether the set course intersected with the desired result. “Yes. It’s not far. Less than a mile.”
He took my hand then, interlacing our fingers, and he led the way, sensing that fear and weariness made it hard for me to act decisive. If we took turns leading, as true partners, that’d make me very happy. I focused on walking, picking my steps with care. When we approached the rendezvous point, I had five spells locked in my head. I’d prefer if we arrived first so I’d have time to lay a circle, but from the smell of sulfur and brimstone, I could tell I wouldn’t be so lucky.
Chance sniffed the air and glanced at me with a raised brow. “Seems like we have company. What do you want to do?”
“Go forward. We have to, for Shannon.”
“Do you have any idea what they want with you, Corine?”
“In Peru I fought a demon. A Knight of Hell, actually. I wounded him pretty bad, stole his true name, and banished him. If I had to guess, I’d say revenge.”
“A Knight of Hell,” he repeated. “Like the ones my mom summoned to witness her pact with the Montoyas.”
“Yep.”
“And you fought one?”
I flashed him a smile. “I didn’t just fight. I won.”
His muscles coiled as if in protest of that revelation, but he let me take the lead. I went up the path the last few steps, and found a single demon waiting. It was unlike any I’d seen before, with an odd, marine-animal look. It had gray, scaly skin, side-set eyes, and a tremendously narrow skull with two rows of teeth. The thing was naked and showed no genitals, but its chest moved, breathing the air. I saw no gill slits. Its hands were elongated like paddles, tipped with wider fingers. I couldn’t imagine what purpose that design served.
The demon offered its hand, evidently knowing that much of our customs, but when it registered my repulsed fascination, it drew back. The face did not change. “You are familiar with our lore, then? I would take nothing uninvited.”
“Where’s Shannon?” I demanded.
On second glance, I saw that the broad pads of its fingertips were curved, almost like little suckers. They appeared perfectly suited for draining…something. Best I’d opted not to touch it.
“I am Greydusk, here as guide only. To survive the descent, you must do precisely as I instruct.”
The…descent? That did not sound healthy. I glanced at Chance, who stepped forward, both fists clenched. “Where’s our friend? I won’t ask again.”
“Sheol,” Greydusk answered. At my blank look, it added, “The other side of the gate, where you must also go, if you would ever see her again.”
The Descent
“You want me to cross over?” Fear clamored in my head.
As if in response, Butch whined. I knew the feeling. I should’ve left him with Tia, but there was no chance he’d behave himself. For good or ill, he was
“What I want is irrelevant,” the creature said. “But if you mean to save the girl, you must follow me.”
I remembered how Jesse said Shannon was so far gone as to be beyond his range entirely. Or dead. If they’d taken her to Sheol, that explained why he couldn’t sense her. That seemed to bear out their claim, but I needed proof it wasn’t a wild-goose chase.
“How do I know you have her…or that she’s still alive?”
The demon offered me a small circular object. “This token will function but once. Are you certain you wish to use it now?”
On closer inspection, I saw it was a mirror. “Yes, show me Shannon.”
He whispered a word in an unfamiliar language I guessed was demontongue and a magickal glow kindled within the glass. It was dark and shadowed; I couldn’t see where she was being held, but that was definitely Shannon. Her breath sounded quick, distressed with fear, and she was curled up, arms about her knees.
“You bastard.”
“I am not responsible for my employer’s actions, Ms. Solomon. Will you come or not?”
“Let’s go,” I said.
Greydusk turned and climbed a few steps, its movements too limber and loose, but when Chance followed me, the demon stopped. “My contract provides only for the Binder.”
That was a name Kel had given me, and then the Knight of Hell I’d defeated in Peru had echoed it. Supposedly, I came from King Solomon’s lineage, which gave me power over demons. I didn’t scoff at that notion as much as I once did. Too much had happened to make me believe.
“It’s not negotiable,” Chance said before I could reply. “You take both of us.”
In the glow from my witchlight, his features were fixed, determined. It would come to violence if I tried to hand him my keys and send him away. And with his luck, there was no telling what might happen. If the demon was more ferocious than it looked, and Chance’s life was in danger, we might trigger an earthquake.
Greydusk considered, weighing factors to which I wasn’t privy. At last, it replied, “The godling may come. I agree to the new terms.”
It was a long, steep climb, with less oxygen as we went up. Eventually Greydusk reached a plateau that ended in a sheer rock wall. Above, the trees grew spindly, thinning with the altitude. Below, everything was lush and green, with a blue thread of a brook running through it—or I imagined it would be, if I could’ve glimpsed the view during the day. At this time of night, it was all darkness, with stars glimmering just enough light to render the mountain spooky, and the glow from my athame only added to the eerie atmosphere.
“This way.” As the demon pressed forward, I saw the gaping maw between two giant stones.
This cave mouth yawned so that my witchlight couldn’t penetrate the shadows within; it had to be two hundred feet wide by one hundred feet high, and I couldn’t tell how deep it was. I’d read that Mexico had some of the deepest caverns in North America, and that many of the systems hadn’t been fully explored yet. For obvious reasons, this chilled my blood.
I asked, “How far is it?”
“Let’s see…how to parse it so you’ll understand.” This made me think demons used something other than the metric system. “Ten kilometers horizontally, and one kilometer down. There we shall find the entrance to Sheol.”
Chance appeared to weigh the information. “And what dangers will we face?”
“Darkness. Terror. The odd hungry beast.” If demons had a sense of humor, and from Maury I rather thought they did, this one was joking with us.
“Are there other portals?” I asked.
“Certainly. Weak places between the planes offer the potential for two-way passage. They also constructed magickal gates at various locales that offer one-way transit. And no, I will not tell you where.”
I didn’t expect it to. “Let’s get moving, then.”
