room.
We stayed tight so we wouldn’t stray into each other’s line of fire. Vayl moved directly to his right, covering that corner of the room. I took the center and Raoul, stepping in directly behind me, covered the left corner. I could feel Bergman’s breath, hot against my neck, as he shadowed me, Vayl’s cane tapping nervously against the dingy wooden floor. I didn’t bother tracking Aaron. Some people are just born with a wel -defined sense of self-preservation. He, Jack, and Astral would be fine.
We al spoke at the same time.
“Clear,” Vayl said.
“Clear,” Raoul echoed.
“Don’t move or I’l shoot,” I snapped.
CHAPTER TWENTY- NINE
The creature lounging in the middle of the unmade bed looked, and smeled, like it hadn’t stirred from that spot in days. Covered in black from head to toe, it seemed more like a pile of funeral laundry than a living being. Until it turned its head.
“Holy shit!” I jerked back, immediately pul ing my finger off the trigger because I was afraid I’d twitch again and shoot it accidental y.
Sometime in the creature’s recent past it must’ve stood in the middle of a bonfire. Nothing else could’ve caused the scars I tried not to see as I winced at the massive damage that had made it cease to seem human. I assumed it had survived the burning because of the otherworldly power I felt seeping out of it like pus from an infected wound. And even then I could tel that it had only barely escaped. The skin of its face had a red, puckered texture as if it had been gone over with a cheese grater. Its nose had melted to half its normal size, and its lips had been incinerated, leaving only a line of thin white skin to mark the barrier between face and teeth. No eyebrows or lashes gave evidence of masculinity or femininity. Just misery. That was what oozed from the creature. Wave after wave of pain-laced despair.
It had covered itself with a chador, the black tent-dress we had seen women wear so often during our trip to Iran. Over its head it had draped a black shawl nearly as long as the dress, under which it huddled so successful y that I couldn’t see a hint of any other skin. No jewelry gave us a clue as to who the creature might be, so Vayl decided to go at it with a directness that surprised me.
“You cannot be Mrs. Bemont,” he said. “We have seen pictures of Cole’s mother, and she looks nothing like you.”
The creature’s awful pink tongue darted out and licked a bead of sweat off what now passed for its upper lip. “Is that how you greet an old friend, Vayl?” It nodded toward me. “You’ve been spending too much time with Little Miss Mannerless over there.”
I felt my brows come together. The voice, raspy as it was, stil sounded eerily familiar. Where had I heard it before?
Before I could think of a legit question that would force the creature to speak again, Raoul began to shift from one foot to another as he plucked at the buttons of his shirt like they’d been heated over a stove. When he backed off to where Aaron stood beside the door, holding the handle with the hand that also prevented Jack from leaping to my side while he clutched Astral to his chest with the other, Raoul visibly relaxed. The fact that he’d drawn his sword didn’t hurt his demeanor either.
“What is it?” I asked him.
He nodded toward the bed. “That is an abomination.”
My stomach fel , hard, like it had just slipped on a trail of bacon grease. Raoul had worked around unholy types before. He’d taken me on a field trip to hel , for Pete’s sake! And he’d never reacted like this. I slipped my finger back onto the trigger.
“Whatcha got going on under al that material, Mrs. Bemont?” I asked the creature as I stepped toward it.
“Oh, I’l show you soon enough,” it assured me. “But first, I made a promise to you not so long ago. Do you remember, Jasmine? Standing in the rubble you made when you blew the seal off the entrance to Satan’s canal, watching me steal the Rocenz from right under your nose? I told you then that if you got it back I would meet you at the gates of hel to help you defeat Brude.” The creature motioned with one black-draped arm to the gleaming silver tool at my belt. “You have it back. And I am sitting at one of the gates even as we speak.”
“How can that be?” whispered Bergman. He’d stayed so close to my shoulder that if someone had turned on a bright light he’d have blotted out my shadow.
“I don’t know,” I told him. “It’s not one of your physics problems you can work out with a little thought and a great calculator, Miles. Some things just don’t make sense.”
“And yet…” Raoul cocked his head. He came forward and yanked off the black blanket that covered both the bed and the creature’s lower half, and we al jumped back. It wasn’t sitting on a bed at al . It was dangling. Impaled on a spike that reached down into a fog that writhed with tortured souls.
The creature’s smile turned ghastly as blood wel ed up from its throat and coated its teeth. And that was the easiest sight to handle. Because its spike didn’t stand alone. In the space the bed should’ve taken up, standing as if in a cavern created from another universe, more posts carved to evil points at their tips rose from a surface that smel ed like a slowly burning landfil . Every post was stuck through a body. And every single body twitched or moaned in its turn, assuring us that no creature who rode a roughly hewn spear had been blessed with death.
Final y I found my voice. And the knowledge that had been scratching at my brain for the past few minutes. “Kyphas? Is that you? We thought…” I glanced at Vayl. “We were sure you’d died.” Even without her lips, the demon whose beauty had once raised a desire in me that had made me grateful I liked guys managed a sneer. “Since when have you played pretty with your words, Jasmine?” She compounded the insult by pronouncing my name as only Vayl did,
She said, “Speak it plain, or by al that’s evil I wil break my vow and suffer torments stacked on those I’ve already brought on myself just for the satisfaction of seeing you pout.” I briefly considered shooting her through the head. The only reason I decided against it was that it would only cause her more pain. Instead I said, “Miles and I saw you sucked through that planar door.” Bergman had hugged against my back the moment he realized we were
