“Keep Samiel here,” I said to Jude.
“No problem,” he said. He had wrapped his arms around Samiel’s and was holding the furious angel still.
“I think I’ll just stay here and keep score,” Beezle said.
“You do that,” I said. “Everyone be ready to run.”
J.B. held me close to him as we flew. I was tense in his arms, preparing for the moment when he dropped me. I wasn’t completely convinced that the monster would be able to ignore my presence once I landed on its head, and I wanted to be able to stab it and get out of there as quickly as possible.
“Once you drop me, circle around and wait close to the ceiling,” I said.
“Like I’m going to leave you there alone,” J.B. said. “Don’t be stupid.”
“You don’t have a sword,” I said. “What are you going to do?”
“Make sure you don’t get tossed into a wall when the creature goes berserk after you stab it,” J.B. said. “I agreed to this insane plan, but I am not leaving you alone there, so forget it.”
We were above the monster long before I was ready. It hadn’t seemed to notice us flying directly toward it. As Beezle had noted, all of the creature’s energy was focused on Nathaniel.
The angel hadn’t registered our presence, either. His face was red from the exertion of trying to resist the creature’s spell, but he
J.B. straightened so that it looked like we were standing in the air, and very gently lowered us toward the monster’s head. The creature’s fur was matted and filthy, and it smelled like it had been rolling in meat for the last hundred years.
I have a sensitive stomach, and pregnancy did not help. My first deep breath of the monster made me gag.
“If you puke on me, I’m going to drop you on the monster and leave you there,” J.B. said.
“Your shirt already has blood on it,” I said, breathing shallowly and trying to suppress the urge to vomit. “What’s the difference?”
“Blood is cool and manly. Puke just makes you look like a loser,” J.B. said.
It was astounding that we were this close to the creature’s head and that it wasn’t trying to swat us away. Or wrap us up in silk. Or gobble us in midair. It was really that absorbed with Nathaniel.
My boots touched the monster’s head. J.B. stayed aloft, his hands under my shoulders ready to lift me away if the monster made any indication that it noticed I was there.
It didn’t move.
“Just stay right there,” I whispered to J.B.
“I told you, I’m staying with you,” he said.
“Then don’t put your feet down,” I said. “Just fly close to me so you can scoop me up if anything goes wrong.”
J.B. had placed me on the broadest part of the creature’s diamond-shaped head. Its eyes were set on each side, close to its snout and under a prominent brow ridge like a snake’s. To sink the sword deep enough, I’d have to kneel close on the ridge and stick the sword into the eye with my arms over the edge.
I proceeded carefully across toward the creature’s right eye. J.B.’s wings made a little current of air behind me.
I knelt above the reptile-mammalian thing’s eye and drew my sword. I lowered it until the tip hovered above the slit pupil.
Still the monster did not move.
I plunged the sword into its eye with all the strength I had.
Several things happened at once. The monster howled, thrashing its head, its cries so deep and strong that the cavern rumbled. Rock cracked and fell from the ceiling.
Nathaniel shot toward the exit with Chloe in his arms.
I held on tight to the hilt of the sword as the creature shook its head back and forth. My grip on the handle was the only thing keeping me from getting tossed into a wall as J.B had predicted.
I pushed harder with the sword, trying to do as much damage as I could. Fluid gushed out of the monster’s eye and over my hands.
And then I started to scream. And scream. And scream. The stuff that was pouring from the monster’s eye was burning my skin, burning through it, into the muscle and bone beneath.
J.B. grabbed me, pulled me away. My hands were bound to the sword now, the acid melding my palms to the hilt. I couldn’t let it go even if I wanted to.
The creature bellowed as the blade slid out of its eye, tearing nerves as it went. J.B. was forced to carry me in front of him, the sword still before me like I’d just drawn it from Arthur’s mystical stone.
Nathaniel had deposited Chloe with Samiel and Jude and flown back to help J.B. The angel grabbed my legs and the two of them carried me through the air like I was on a stretcher. I barely registered Nathaniel’s presence or the screeching of the monster. The reptile-mammalian thing was now knocking over piles of bones as it tossed its head and lashed its tail.
The crash of bones was tremendous, like a rock slide, and I had just enough sense left to realize that the bones were just as much of a danger.
“Get everyone out of here,” I said through gritted teeth.
“They are already moving down the passage,” Nathaniel said.
“We will be right behind them.”
Somehow the two of them got us out of the cave without being crushed by rocks, bones, or reptile- mammalian thrashing. The cries of the monster receded as they hurried down the passage to catch up to the others.
My eyes were blurred with pain. The burning was going right down inside me, deeper and deeper, scorching every cell it touched. Nothing had ever hurt so much. I whimpered.
“Gods above and below,” Beezle said, but his voice sounded like it was very far away. “What did you do to yourself now?”
“I have no way of healing her until we get out of this thrice-forsaken cavern,” Nathaniel said.
Chloe said something then, and Jude, but it was watery in my ears. They were conferring, trying to determine the best way to get out.
“Just keep going forward,” I slurred, but none of them seemed to hear me.
And then everything was quiet, and black.
I woke to the feeling of cold rock beneath my cheek. I was curled like a baby on a wide flat stone, and the wind whipped my hair into my face. My sword was gone, and my hands no longer burned. I sat up and looked around.
I was alone, and a vast expanse of white sand stretched in every direction. There was nothing for the eye to see except that unbreaking, unyielding ocean of white.
“What now? Another trick?” I said. “J.B.? Nathaniel?”
“You won’t find them here,” a voice said behind me.
I scrambled to my feet and spun around, wishing to all the gods that ever were or would be that I had my powers at that moment, because Evangeline stood there.
Evangeline, my many-greats-grandmother, the consort of Lucifer, also known as the crazy bitch who’d possessed me and tried to use me as the instrument of her revenge.
“What are you doing here?” I asked warily.
“I should ask you that question,” Evangeline said, and her smile was crafty. Her black hair danced in the wind like contorting snakes. She wore a simple gown of gray, and she looked young and fresh again, the way she had when Lucifer had first fallen in love with her.
“Death agrees with you,” I said, avoiding her leading comment.
I quickly realized that I was not in Titania’s realm anymore. Or maybe my body was, but my mind and spirit had taken a walk. I wasn’t about to give Evangeline the advantage by letting her know that I had no idea how or where I was.
“Yes, it does,” Evangeline said. “You could probably be improved by death.”
