To my relief, the drain slowed to a trickle, and Myrial hissed in annoyance.
“I’m still leaving,” I grated, fumbling in my jeans pocket for the little cloth bundle I was carrying there. “And I’m also about to make your day into a really bad one. Or, alternately, I’m about to look like a complete idiot.”
I dropped my suitcase, tearing open the piece of twine binding the neck of the cloth pouch. Myrial snarled and lunged for me just as I threw the contents of the little packet straight at her eyes. I ducked clear as she screamed and clawed at her face, the salt crystals I’d pilfered from Dad’s kitchen a few days ago hissing and bubbling against her flesh.
“Guards!” I screamed, hoping that the resulting confusion when they came upon the grisly scene would slow Myrial down further, or perhaps keep her from coming after me altogether.
I gave the shrieking demon a hard shove away from the gate and grabbed my bag again, sending a brief prayer skyward as I ran at the rocky wall like an enraged bull charging a red cape. Please let this work, please let this work, I chanted silently as my body plowed into the sticky resistance of the gate. It was like faceplanting into silly putty.
Almost immediately, I started to panic, picturing myself caught inside the stone like a fly in amber—suffocating before I could reach the other side. Fueled by desperation, I struggled forward until my body was completely encased. My heart hammered, my lungs already aching for air that wasn’t available.
Oh, god—was I still too weak? Was I going to die like this?
But I couldn’t fail. Rans was on the other side of this barrier. I had to get to him. I had to let him know what Nigellus had done to him.
I gritted my teeth until I felt cartilage popping in protest and gathered all of my strength. Channeling everything into the effort, I shoved forward, focusing as much on my magical core as my muscles. Incrementally, I felt my balance shift, my center of mass moving farther from Hell and closer to Earth. My home... and the place containing the one person I suddenly wanted to see more than I wanted anything else in the three realms.
The resistance against the fingers of my leading hand eased, as though I’d poked through to the other side. Putting all of my physical and magical strength into it, I tried to push more of myself into that welcoming blankness. Gradually, my arm emerged, and then my shoulder. My face broke through, into the warm air and utter blackness of the Moaning Cavern on Earth’s side of the barrier. I dragged in air with the desperate gasp of a drowning victim and continued to strain forward until I reached some sort of magical tipping point and collapsed forward, completely free of the gate.
At which point, I very nearly tumbled headfirst down the pile of boulders leading to ground level. Ground level, where a gaping pit leading to another, deeper cavern lurked somewhere nearby. I caught myself, scraping my hand and both knees, even through the denim of my jeans.
My bag was still clutched in my other hand, but sadly it didn’t contain anything remotely helpful in my current situation, kneeling one hundred seventy-five feet below the surface in a pitch-black cave. I’d checked my pathetic little flip phone last night, but even with the power off, the weeks spent in Hell had drained its battery to nothing. Not that the light from the tiny screen would have been all that helpful in navigating, really—but it would have made me feel a lot better.
Knowing I needed to move in case Myrial decided to come after me—melted eyes and all—I started feeling my way down from the ledge. I had no idea how long it would take her to heal, but I suspected it wouldn’t be long. My best chance was that the guards would prevent her from charging through after me when it was clear she was bent on action that would violate the no-interference-on-Earth provision of the treaty. Clearly she didn’t hold much stock in that provision, but as long as the guards did, it might be enough to save me.
Though I was still going to have to save myself from the whole being trapped in a dark cave thing. I reached the floor of the tunnel and took several deep breaths, calling up my memories of the one other time I’d been here.
“There is a pit directly behind you,” Nigellus had warned, illuminating a dark gap in the irregular stone floor with his flashlight app. “Though it’s not very deep. Beyond it lies a rocky incline leading to the main chamber, which contains the staircase to the main entrance. Ahead of us lies a larger seventy-five-foot drop leading to a third chamber, but that area is blocked off at the moment.”
So I needed to feel around—carefully—until I found the pit. Then I would know I was heading in the right direction through the tunnel. If I hit a fence or barrier, it meant I was going the wrong way.
I can do this, I told myself, even though the solid black of my surroundings was already making me feel frightened and disoriented. I already forced my way through the gates of Hell. This is nothing, and Rans is somewhere up there on the surface.
Facing the rock pile, the pit should be on my right. For lack of any better plan, I pivoted carefully in that direction—a precise quarter turn. Then I dropped to my hands and knees again, trying to ignore my bruises and scrapes as I carefully began to feel my way forward, pulling my suitcase with me. With the energy Myrial had sucked out of me, on
