She didn’t expect Kris to climb in after her but couldn’t do much about it since she’d reached a spot without enough room to turn her head.
Stretch out left arm, stretch out left leg, anchor both, and shimmy sideways.
And then she ran out of fissure.
Dipping her left shoulder, Diana forced herself close enough to the outside edge to get a look around.
They were in a crack about twenty feet up the wall of a huge circular chamber.
The generic nasty from the throne room was standing just off center.
In the center, in the exact center, was a hole. Not a metaphysical hole, an actual round hole. Like a well.
Before she could follow that new information through to any kind of a logical conclusion, a piece of shadow fell screaming from the ceiling. Shuddering, she had to admit it had reason to scream. Reasons. Reasons that started with the baby doll pajamas, worked through the lopsided braids, and finished at the residue of melted marshmallow, chocolate, and graham cracker crumbs.
No Name Nasty didn’t seem to have much sympathy for it.
“I don’t care how many boxes of cookies you have to sell! You’re pathetic. You were sent to assassinate the Immortal King…”
Diana felt Kris’ gasp by her right ear and managed to wrap a hand around the other girl’s arm. Now was not the time.
“…and you failed!”
There. It failed. Good news.
“YOU HAVE BOTH FAILED.”
Diana stiffened. “Oh, Hell.”
“I thought you weren’t supposed to swear,” Kris muttered.
“I wasn’t.”
TEN
BACKING OUT OF THE FISSURE scraped and bruised a number of interesting new places, but given what she now knew, Diana found the pain a whole lot easier to ignore. There’s was nothing like finding yourself right back at a potential apocalypse to put a bruised boob in perspective.
“FEE, FI, FOE, FEEPER…”
That didn’t sound good. She poked Kris, trying to get her to move a little faster. Kris flashed her a one-finger answer.
“Feeper? What’s a feeper?” The guy from the throne room, now positively identified as a Shadowlord, had become a lot harder to hear.
“IF I COULD FINISH!”
“Sorry.”
“NOT YET, YOU AREN’T. BUT YOU WILL BE.”
With any luck, the punishing of the unnamed Shadowlord would distract…
“AS I WAS SAYING; FEE, FI, FOE, FEEPER, I SMELL THE BLOOD OF A NEARBY KEEPER!”
…or not.
Kris dropped down into the corridor.
“We have a Keeper in chains…” the Shadowlord began.
“NO, YOU DON’T.”
“Yes, we…”
“NO.”
“But…”
“YOU’RE AN IDIOT.”
Diana stumbled as she landed, cracked her knee against the stone floor, and told herself to ignore it. “Come on.” Grabbing Kris’ hand, she dragged the mall elf into a run. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
“Haven’t I been saying that?”
“Yeah, but now I’m saying it.” First, up the slope. Then, when the floor leveled out, she’d follow the signature of her scattered stuff back to the throne room. After that, a fast run through the construction site and into the access corridor. Granted, the last time she’d covered that particular bit of the escape route, she was being dragged by a giant bug, but she was fairly sure she remembered the pattern of water seepage on the ceiling.
As they turned the first corner, Kris leaned in close and said, in an urgent whisper. “Who was that talking?”
“I told you.”
“You said; oh, hell.”
“Close.” A short pause at the second corner to make sure the way was clear. “I said, oh, Hell.”
“And the diff?”
“Capital letter.”
“So that was really…?”
“Yeah.” At the third corner, the floor leveled out. Diana reached out, feeling for possibilities out of place. Not surprisingly, it wasn’t hard to pick up the signature of Keeper-designed weapons over the general hum of evil.
“But Hell’s a place. Places don’t talk.”
“It’s not so much a place as it’s a metaphor.”
“Whatever. Just so’s you know, I don’t believe in Hell.”
“Just so you know, that doesn’t matter.”
“It isn’t real!”
Diana sighed. “Six months ago, you were freezing your ass off, trying to survive on the streets during a Canadian winter. Now, you’re an elf, living in an evolving shopping mall, having been made the Captain of the Guard for an allegorical king. All things considered, I think you should be a little more open-minded about the parameters of reality.”
“All things considered, I think I have the right to be fucking terrified!”
On a list of bad times for a second kiss, a kiss intended to fall between attraction and relationship, standing in a torchlit tunnel, deep in territory controlled by the dark side of a segue that could allow Hell itself into the world, ranked up there near the top—above “during the funeral of one of the participants” but definitely below “in the holding cell at a maximum security prison.”
Figuring that there wasn’t likely to be a right time any time soon, Diana closed her eyes and leaned in. After a moment—a long moment of soft lips and gentle pressure and just a little tongue—she pulled back and murmured, “Still terrified?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh…”
“But if you were trying to distract me, I gotta say it was a better idea than more stupid stories about your cat.”
“Hey, that’s Claire! I don’t tell stupid stories abo…”
The third kiss involved a little more tongue and strong fingers cupped around the nape of her neck. Diana’s left hand buried itself in the warm mass of mahogany dreads and her right spread out to touch as much of a narrow waist as possible.
“I’m not sayin’ this is anything more than a reaction to that whole Hell thing.”
Still close enough that Kris’ voice was a soft warmth against her face, Diana murmured, “I’m not asking it to be more than a reaction to that whole Hell thing.”
“I’m not sayin’ that it isn’t either.”
“Okay.”
“I thought we had to get out of here?”
“We do.”
“You can beat this thing, right?”
“Sure.”
Kris’ eyes widened and
