She’d just have to find a way to save him, and that was that. Timing her footsteps to Baby’s frenzied barking, she crept down the stairs toward Diana.
Down in the pit. Hell gloried in the strength it gained from each drop of sacrificial blood.
THERE ON THE STAIRS, the rest of Hell pointed out to itself, IT’S THE OTHER KEEPER.
SO?
SO SHOULD WE TELL HER?
Another drop of blood evaporated in the heat. Hell breathed it metaphorically in and laughed. YOU MEAN, SHOULD WE HELP HER? WE DON’T HELP. ANYONE.
Baby had managed to drag the whole mess another three inches toward the basement stairs. Tongue hanging out, collar cutting into the thick muscles of his neck, he kept barking and pulling in the certain belief that he had his enemy on the run.
And then, in the fraction of a second between one bark and the next, a familiar voice told him to be quiet.
The barking stopped. Claire froze.
Sara drew her fingernails along Dean’s side. As blood welled up from four parallel lines, she began a new chant.
Claire recognized the guttural Latin. There wasn’t much time left. Lower lip caught between her teeth, she started moving again.
A sterile dressing wrapped around his head and over his left eye, Austin had the rakish look of a wounded pirate. Breathing heavily, slightly scorched, he lay on his side on a litter made of an old silk scarf carried by twelve mice wearing multicolored frock coats, breeches, and tricorn hats.
This was so far outside Baby’s experience, he sat panting and stared.
Still a safe distance away, the mice stopped and Austin opened his one good eye. “Somebody,” he said without lifting his head, “is going to have to undo that collar.”
Dean didn’t so much regain consciousness as hijack it; consciousness wanted nothing to do with the whole situation.
HOW YA DOIN’ GORGEOUS?
He’d have jerked back at the sound of the voice, but he couldn’t figure out how to operate his body. Which scared him a lot more than Hell. He had a friend, Paul Malan, who’d gone into the boards at the wrong angle and now Paul played ball hockey from a wheelchair.
HE’S IGNORING US!
CAN HE DO THAT?
HEY, BUDDY! IN CASE YOU HAVEN’T NOTICED, THIS IS A LOT WORSE THAN BALL HOCKEY!
Thankful that somewhere along the way he’d lost his glasses, Dean ignored the voices because Claire had asked him to. She’d even said, “please.”
He blinked, hit by a sudden realization. The voice he’d heard yesterday in the hall had been the voice of the pit.
BINGO.
And he’d listened. He’d hesitated.
OH, FOR…SIX SECONDS OUT OF TWENTY SQUEAKY CLEAN YEARS!
He deserved to go to Hell.
YOU’RE KIDDING, RIGHT?
Except he didn’t want to die.
Over, or maybe under, the voices in his head, he could hear the drone of words chanted in a language he didn’t understand. Slowly, working within the invisible bands that held him, he turned until he could see along his left arm. Gazing past his clenched fist, out over the edge of the pentagram, he could see Diana Hansen. She was just a kid, he realized, she’d never have believed that she’d set this whole mess in motion. If by some miracle he got out of this, he was after kicking her right in the butt.
Her back against the wall, barely daring to breathe, Claire crept the last few feet to her sister’s side. Once she took Diana’s hand, she’d control both their power.
Dean’s eyes widened as Claire slid into his field of vision.
Rescue!
Claire saw the word in Dean’s eyes and flinched.
Dean saw her flinch.
Sara chanted louder, spitting out consonants. The pentagram began to glow.
Maybe because he was suspended over a hole to Hell. Maybe because he’d been breathing the fumes of his own evaporating blood. Maybe because he’d spent almost a year next to a metaphysical accident site.
Maybe just because he could read it on Claire’s face.
Dean knew.
She couldn’t save him and the world.
He’d hesitated.
He was being given a chance to make up for that.
Hell could have him, but it couldn’t have the world.
Do it, he told Claire silently.
Claire shook her head. There had to be another way.
The pentagram began to dissolve.
It was almost worth it to know she was willing to risk the world for him.
Do it.
Because she had no other choice, she did.
Claire grabbed Diana’s hand and opened the conduit Quickly retracing the pentagram, she etched her own name into the pattern.
Sara turned.
Dean fell.
Claire hit the other Keeper with everything both she and Diana had.
Suddenly finding herself in a sphere of blinding white light, Sara flung up a bloodstained hand to cover her eyes. Lips too red parted…
…and she laughed.
Designed to prevent any sort of metaphysical power from waking a Keeper bent on cataclysmic evil, the shield Sara had worn for more than fifty years held.
Stepping down to the floor, Sara straightened her jacket and nodded toward Diana. “I thought our friend here too young for this site. Not,” she added after a critical inspection of Claire, “that you’re so much older.” Her smile was frankly patronizing. “You killed him for nothing, you know. Power can’t pass into this shield.”
Claire dragged Diana aside as a bolt of red light blew chunks of rock out of the wall.
Sara’s smile broadened. “How nice for me that it passes out of it just fine.”
Teeth clenched against rising nausea, Claire stepped forward, but before she could speak, Sara raised her hand again.
“Oh, yes, you can enter the shield physically, pummel me if you like, but don’t expect me to stand here and allow…”
Which was when Baby launched himself from the top of the stairs.
Sara had time to scream as she fell back but only just.
Clinging to each other for support, Claire and Diana walked to the edge of the pentagram and cautiously leaned forward.
GOT HER!
OW! BE CAREFUL, SHE KICKS!
Claire felt her power fill the pentagram, holding Hell off from
