A booted foot pressed hard against the back of her neck.
…good.
She swung out as a hand in her hair dragged her up onto her knees but only succeeded in overbalancing and nearly scalping herself. Blinking away memories of grade school ponytails so tight she looked like Mr. Spock’s kid sister, Diana screamed “RUN!” over the Shadowlord’s ultimatum that Kris surrender.
“What did you listen to him for?” she demanded a moment later as two meat-minds dropped Kris beside her.
The mall elf got shakily to her knees. “Like I was going to leave you here alone?”
How romantic. Well, since you asked, not very. “You could have gone for help!”
“As if. It’s wall to friggin’ wall of meat-minds out there. Couldn’t get past them.”
Okay. Even less romantic.
“So I remembered something I was told, way back,” Kris continued. “If you’re going to lose anyway, surrender before they kick your ass—not after.”
“Arthur?”
“My mom.”
“Smart lady.”
“That time.”
“Are you two finished catching up?” the Shadowlord snarled.
“So, ’rents still together?” Diana asked, shuffling around so that she was facing the other girl.
The mall elf stared at her for a moment, then disbelief disappeared behind a gleeful smile as she caught on. When it seems like there’s no options left, there’s always the option of being a pain in the ass. “Nah, my dad split about six years ago. I’m guessin’ you’ve got the whole happy suburban family thing going down?”
“Oh, yeah. We’re a walking, talking WASP cliché except for that whole Keeper, Cousin, cat thing.”
“Silence!” At some point the Shadowlord had retrieved his club, and he was stroking it as he loomed over them.
“You know if you think that looks threatening…” Diana nodded toward the club. “…you’re so wrong. It’s screaming, ‘hey, girls, look at my big substitute…’”
She’d been a little worried she might provoke him into actually using the club, but, fortunately, he went with the personal touch. The backhand lifted her off her knees and threw her back over the steps of the dais. Moving around to face Kris had placed her at exactly the right angle—no brainer to figure he’d lash out—and she grabbed the wand as she sprawled over it, stuffing it down into the front of her pants.
Diana’d seen the same stunt on a television show once. On a seventeen-inch screen it hadn’t looked as painful as it really was. Bells and whistles were still going off inside her skull as a pair of meat-minds hauled her onto her feet and dragged her back before the Shadowlord.
“Foolish little girl. I should kill you where you stand.”
“Not actually standing here…Ow!” The dangling she could cope with, but the shaking was a bit over the top. “Besides, you can’t kill me or you’d have already done it. And do you know why you can’t kill me?” For the same reason she hadn’t used the wand the moment her fingers closed around it. “Because you’re not the Big Bad.” She was not wasting their one chance on a flunky. “Killing me would release all sorts of energy down here. Energy you can’t control. That’s why you didn’t kill me…us,” she corrected, glancing over at Kris. “…before. That’s why you can’t kill me now.”
“I can’t, but that from where I came, can.”
Diana blinked. Even her eyelashes hurt. “What?”
“I speak of the Pit. The Darkness. The…”
“Yeah. Okay. I get it. You can’t. Hell can. It may have split you off, and given you a personality—of sorts—but it still keeps you under its thumb.”
“That’s not…”
“Hey, denial; not just a river in Egypt. Face it, Hell’s just using you. In fact, there really isn’t a you at all. You don’t have a name, you don’t have an identity; you’re just an itty-bitty part of a greater whole. Hell doesn’t trust you with any real power.” As the last words left her mouth, Diana knew she’d made a mistake. The Shadowlord had been frowning as he listened to her, clearly not liking what she had to say—possibly not liking it enough to challenge Hell and cause a distraction, allowing her to seal the hole and shut down the segue thus saving the world—but at trust, he smiled.
“Of course, Hell doesn’t trust me,” he said calmly. “Hell is me. And I am Hell.”
“A little-bitty part…”
“Enough. Your blatant attempt to drive a wedge between me and my origin might have worked were we in the sort of fairy tale where the good guys always win, but we’re…”
“In the subbasement of an imaginary shopping mall,” Diana finished as dryly as her current position allowed. Oh, great, I’m starting to sound like Claire.
He stepped forward and pressed the end of his club under Diana’s chin, forcing her head back. “What part of ‘enough’ are you having difficulty understanding?”
“Well, duh; the part where I do anything you say.”
“Then perhaps you should consider this…” Had he been breathing, his breath would have caressed her cheek. As it was, she felt a faint frisson of fear spread out from the closest point between them, as though his proximity caused an involuntary physical reaction. “…I can’t kill you, but I can bludgeon you senseless.”
“Right. Enough; adverb. To put an end to an action.” Clearly she’d been paying more attention in English than biology, and she really really wished he’d back away. “As in enough taunting the Shadowlord. I should stop it. I can do that.”
“Good.”
“Is there any particular reason you asked the three-thousand-year-old, reanimated Egyptian mummy that’s been sucking out your life force if there was anything we could get her while we’re at the mall?”
“I was just being polite,” Dean protested as he turned off Sir John A. MacDonald Boulevard and onto Highway 33.
“She’s sucking out your life force,” Austin repeated, enunciating each word with caustic clarity.
“And that’s a reason to be rude, then?”
“Some people might think so.”
“Some people might be after jumping in the harbor; that doesn’t mean I’m going to do it.”
“So, just out of curiosity…” He hooked his claws in the seat as the truck maneuvered around another corner. “…what
