just entered a sewage pipe. I jumped back and she smiled, revealing at least three rows of graying teeth, all of which looked shark sharp.
'Cassandra!' I yelled, 'center-stage, girl! Reel this monster in!' I risked a look back and wished I hadn't. While Cole guarded the prisoners, Bergman struggled to help Cassandra sit up. She looked ill, like somebody had slipped raw eggs into her morning juice. Vayl fared only slightly better. Aidyn had taken advantage of his momentary distraction to disarm him. Now they were duking it out like old-school boxers, standing toe-to-toe, delivering blows that would've sent most men to their knees.
Only Bozcowski continued as before, a frustrated pirate digging for treasure.
I looked back at the Tor, a wave of despair dulling my vision, making my mouth taste of metal and grave dust. I felt my shoulders slump, watched my sword arm drop.
'This is how it will feel when I eat your soul,' the Tor whispered. 'Everything that was good and glad in you will nourish me, bring me full into this tasty, luscious world of yours where I will eat, and eat, and eat…' She subsided, glassy-eyed, smiling hellishly at the prospect of such a meal.
In that moment she reminded me strongly of a balding, thick-lipped serial killer Vayl and I had recently dispatched. He'd worn that same expression right before we blew his brains all over the wall. I wanted to call it an omen, but it was too late for that. I laughed bitterly.
As soon as my laughter hit the air I felt better, and knew she'd been bewitching me. I'd just been so focused on Cassandra and Vayl I hadn't noticed my magic-meter spiking.
'You laugh,' said the Tor, 'why?'
'Because you won't be able to squeeze enough joy out of my soul to qualify as an anorexic's dinner.' I shoved the sword into her and she screamed, her rotten-egg breath burning my nostrils, making me gag. She staggered backward and I pulled the sword free. As she turned to run I struck again, slicing into her slithering hump, my sword sliding through it easily until it lodged in her spine. She screamed again, but when she turned to look at me over her shoulder she wore an evil grin.
'Gotcha.' In that one word her voice tipped the scale from old hag to nether-being. At the same time her ripped gown fell to her feet. The whole room got a nightmare glimpse of sagging, pustule-covered skin and then all hell broke loose.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Surely if Dante could've seen the rock-lined pit under Club Undead he'd have thought it an accurate depiction of at least one of his many hells. Lit by torches and burning bits of floor, the Tor-al-Degan's current residence stank of flammable gases, blood, vomit and outright evil. It also rang with the voices of her worshipers, who'd agreed it would be a bright idea to summon her fully into our realm—a big, bad carnivore who saw the entire world as her Little Red Riding Hood.
The Deganites, who probably passed as upstanding citizens by day—bankers and insurance agents and definitely lawyers—screamed like a bunch of U2 fans as their goddess began to change. The rest of us just watched, stunned speechless, as a yellowish red substance the consistency of hair gel oozed out of the Tor's wound.
I let go of the sword hilt and backed up, fear and confusion warring with panic and horror to see which could gain control of my mind first.
In defiance of gravity, the ooze rose, growing over the top of the Tor's head. It spread downward as well, until it looked as if she had stepped inside an enormous tank of pink Vaseline.
Everything else had gone from bad to worse. Somehow Aidyn had escaped Vayl long enough to deck Bergman, who lay crumpled on one of the floor's few dry spots like a worn out bloodhound. Aidyn had then grabbed Cassandra, who still looked spaced out, and now held her in front of him like a shield. The Enkyklios lay at their feet, replaying another fight scene featuring some long-dead hero and the Tor. This one had, not a sword, but a two- handed battle axe. Time after time the Tor suffered blows that would've felled a crazed elephant, and yet she kept coming back for more. Kept… healing.
'Give me the key!' Aidyn screamed. 'Give it to me now, before I break this Seer of yours over my knee!'
'I do not have it,' said Vayl. 'One of us must have kicked it into a pool while we were fighting.' He said it casually, a weatherman mentioning the cold front that was about to whip through the region. But his eyes kept darting to the Tor, as did Aidyn's. In the short time I'd looked away from her, she'd changed dramatically. She'd grown to twice her height inside that viscous shell. Her hair had clumped and then formed into tentacles. Spinal plates grew out of her back, the second one sporting an extra protrusion in the shape of a sword hilt. And the transformations happened so fast I could hear the gut-twisting squeal of bones stretching and the wet, ripping sound of skin opening to make way for new appendages, including two vicious looking pincers that emerged from the Tor's bleeding jaws.
She stretched, rising to a height of at least eight feet. Her new muscles rippled beneath skin the color of a bad sunburn. Her eyes had brightened to violet, the same color, in fact, as Liliana's. I had never seen anything so immense, so unearthly, so unbeatable. Tammy Shobeson's voice squealed in my head,
'Time to play,' the Tor growled in her new voice as she shook the gel from her new body (if only Jenny Craig had her recipe). She moved toward me. Even though I knew, deep down, this was the end for me, I stood my ground. For me, there was no other option.
'Move!' she demanded.
'No.'
'What do you hope to gain by standing in my way?'
I thought about it. Even now, in the final moments of my life, smartass me was ready and available for service. 'I'd like a title. Maybe Idiot of the Year. Is that one taken?'
She leaned over me, the putrid tang of her breath making my curls wilt. 'Are you trying to save the lives of your puny friends?'
'What if I was?'
