“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—”
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.
