Ascension (The Gryphon Series) (7 page)

A
gain, all I could muster was a befuddled, “Huh.”

I turned in a slow circle
as a familiar tingle raced up my spine.
Something demonic this way comes.

A devilish
cackle echoed through the room, followed by a taunting melody stolen from a Meatloaf song, “
On a mild summer night would you offer your throat to the demons with the black roses
?” 

“You have got to b
e kidding me.” I groaned, and then hollered to the room in general, “
No!
We are
not
doing this tonight! You hear me?”

“
They promise to offer you their hunger
…” Whispered words tickled across my neck.

My
balled fist swung in the direction of the voice, but struck nothing but air.

“
I bet you do that to all the demons.” Five voices, I knew well enough to dread, chorused. In practiced synchronization the Dark Army Glee Club
poof
ed corporeal—each in their own unique
ta-da
pose.

C
onversation with this band of goobers never accomplished anything. Plus, I was having a monumentally crappy night. Therefore, I decided to skip ahead to the inevitable violent conclusion.
If I execute my roundhouse kick just right I may be able to make their heads knock together like in the cartoons …

“Red! Now!” Eddie, the closest thing the
se oddballs had to a leader and dead-ringer for Eddie Munster, shouted.

His
lanky, red-headed cohort fumbled with what looked like a bottle of glass cleaner. I winced, but continued en route for my attack as he misted me with the mysterious shimmering blue liquid. Mid-rotation my limbs locked up—one leg and one arm out, with nothing to do but hang there and stew in my extreme annoyance.

The rag tag group of
misfits crept forward, their faces squinched up in masks of sheer terror.

“Are you sure it worked?” o
ne Siamese twin asked his brother.

“
That would be a hard position to maintain if she was faking,” the other twin snorted and pushed his thick glasses further up the bridge of his nose. In human form they were connected at the shoulder, an appearance much preferred to their
other
guise as a huge, two-headed flying lizard.

Boil Face
waved his wrinkly hand in front of me. “Still, she’s the Conduit. If anyone has the reflexes to pull off a decoy move like this, it’s her.”

“How do we test her?” Eddie
tipped his head back and crinkled his nose as he considered me.

“Ooh! I know!”
Red’s face brightened with enthusiasm. Latching on to my ankle with both hands, he dragged me around in a circle. I was a prisoner to this idiot spinning me around and omitting a gleeful, “
Wheeee
!”

Eddie
stepped in the way to block another rotation. “We’re here for a reason and
this
isn’t it.”

The dejected fire-demon pouted,
“I know, but it was fun.”

Spinning to face me,
Eddie instantly grimaced at the hate-filled gaze I’d fixed on him. “You look mad. Are you mad? Blink once for no and twice for yes.”

I blinked about a hundred and fifty times.

“I think that means she’s super mad,” Boil Face guessed.

“
Or, it means she wants to rip our limps off and beat us with them.” 

I blinked twice.

Eddie leaned his bony elbows against my leg and rested his chin on his hands. “You have every right to be mad, but we needed to talk to you and had to find a way to do it so that you would
actually
let us talk. Since the very first thing you did when you saw was turn into punchy-kicky girl, I think even you can agree that our method here was an effective one.”

I blinked once and sincerely wished I could follow it up with a hand gesture.

“No?
Really
?” one twin scoffed.

“Now she’s just being argumentative
,” his brother tagged on with an indignant huff.

“How about this,” Eddie reasoned. “If I free you will you promise to listen?”

I answered with two rapid blinks.

“Listen
without
hurting us?” One of Eddie’s eyebrows drew up toward his wicked widow’s peak. “Because we’d be acting in good faith and letting you go.”

I blinked once, hesitated
long enough to think
really
hard, then blinked a second time.

“Good!”
Eddie grinned and clapped his hands together. “Then we can carry on this conversation like …”

“Oh, look at me
! I’m a pretty,
pretty
girl that likes to dance and twirl my long beautiful hair.”

All eyes flicked toward Red
… and Big Mike. Red had draped Mike’s robe over his head to give the building-sized Guide mock flowing locks.

Eddie cleared his throat.
“Uh … you do realize when I unfreeze her, he’ll be free, too?” 

Red stopped dancing and
snatched the garment off Mike’s head. “I’m sorry. Please don’t kill me.” 

If laser beam eyes were an ability of
Mike’s, Red would’ve been eviscerated.

Eddie turned my way, his face full of apology. “We just want to talk, no violence. If we wanted to hurt you we could
easily have done it while you were frozen. You get that, right?”

Begrudgingly,
I blinked twice.

Eddie spoke a few words I couldn’t make out and my momentum picked right up where it left off. I lurched forward and fell to the ground in a heap of my own limbs.

Quickly untangling myself, I leapt up with my hands still balled into fists.

“You promised!” Eddie squealed
and shielded himself behind his arms.

“I did.”
My hands fell, but only a little. “Talk fast.”

“First things first, your boys are going to be up soon. Can you make sure they don’t pummel us?
Please
?”

“I’ll do my best, but they’re both real independent thinkers.”

A split second later the spell wore off. A snarling, snapping lion and an enraged winged-thug raged forward, destruction blazing in both sets of eyes. Calling forth my telepathy, I held them at bay, but purposely allowed them enough wiggle room to keep our unwanted guests from getting complacent.

“Like I said,
talk fast.”

Gabe morphed back and covered himself with an old garage sale sign
that had been leaning against the wall. “You almost ruined my wedding! I couldn’t care less what you have to say!”

“Your wedding to the girl you just abandoned in the Spirit Plane?”
By his expression it seemed to physically hurt Eddie to point this out, but he took the chance and did it anyway. “Maybe we were doing you a favor?”

I
t took my telepathic hold, both hands on his chest and a fair amount of super strength to stop Gabe from ripping the trembling demonic twerp apart. “
How did you know about that?
” he spat through elongated teeth.

“We were following you!” o
ne twin screamed and huddled with his brother in a cowardly hug.

“Six went in, only four came out
,” his brother finished.

I shoved Gabe behind me
and turned to glare through narrowed eyes. “The Countess is watching us?
Why
?”

“
The Countess isn’t watching you, we were!” Red rambled at top speed. “We wanted to find out if the rumors were true.”

My gaze flicked to Gabe then Big Mike
. I saw my own trepidation reflected on their faces. So much had happened tonight, so many truths revealed. Spilling secrets to these proven traitors wasn’t an option. If they knew something vital we couldn’t let them out of this garage alive.

I
steeled my spine and squared my shoulders, wordlessly signaling playtime had ended. “What rumors?”

“That Barnabus is still alive!” Boil Face
erupted, his loose skin wobbled and shook with jittery zest.

H
is friends nodded along like wide-eyed, eager pups.

“Who told you that?” I
cautiously asked.

“Remember that G
oth chick, Kat? The one that showed up at his wedding and made us blow the place up?”

“Nobody
made
you do anything.” I didn’t have to look back to know Gabe’s attributes were taking on a more feline likeness. I could hear it in his dropped octave rumble.

The
glee clubbers exchanged leery glances before they shoved Eddie forward to finish the story. He scowled over his shoulder at his “friends” before he continued, “She showed up in the Underworld making all sorts of crazy claims. She said you cracked her arm over your knee like a twig.”

“
That’s not crazy.” I shrugged. “Totally true.”

Eddie turned his head and
whispered behind his hand to his friends, “Anger management, anyone?”

“
So, the rest must be true, too!” Red quite literally lit up. A spark, like the ignited wick of a candle, burned in his irises. “She did work for Barnabus! He really
is
alive!”

“We liked Barnabus. He’s so much cooler than the Countess. Sometimes he’d even riff with us.” Boil Face
’s shoulders rose and fell in anxious, spastic shrugs.

“He’d
riff
with you?” Gabe sneered.

I
wet my dry lips and cast a sideways glance at my brother. “Day in and day out we fight. Never once have we ever spontaneously broken out in song. Are
we
doing something wrong?”

“If you ask Keni, yes.”

If one look could imply the message ‘I want to tear your head off with my bare hands and punt it like a football’ it would be Big Mike’s fixated glare on Red. “So, your old boss is back. Why would you risk coming here for that?”

The gangly demon shifted uncomfortabl
y, his zealousness temporarily snuffed out under the weight of Mike’s stare.

Eddie
stepped between them, his dorky façade slipping slightly to tease at his true calculating nature. “The girl said that Barnabus wants the Conduit to fight on his side. The Countess is in a tizzy over it. But if the two big bads go head to head we want on Barnabus’s side. The Countess’s reign needs to end.” His beady gaze shifted my way. “And, if the rumor’s true, that
you’re
leading that fight alongside him, we want in.”

Seven pairs of eyes turned to me
, as if expecting me to lead the charge and storm the gates of hell right then and there. My heart thumped in my chest. This got
way
too intense,
way
too fast. “This is a demonic battle. It has nothing to do with me.”

Big Mike
caught me by the arm and dragged me to the corner of the garage, using more force than was really necessary. Size-wise he towered over me, yet he curled down to my level to whisper in my ear with a harsh urgency. “We don’t have allies right now. The Council shunned us, but the attacks will keep coming. We need help in any form we can get it. Trust isn’t necessary to fight beside someone with a mutual goal.”

I peek
ed around Big Mike’s tatted up arm to the band of demons whispering amongst themselves. Behind them, Gabe shrugged his confusion on the matter.

“I’m the Conduit,” I muttered mostly
as a reminder to myself. “I’m not supposed to lead demons.”

The twins seemed to hear me and separated themselves from the pack to inch closer.
“If the rumors are true …” one began.

“ …
wouldn’t helping us get you what you really want?” his brother finished. I doubted that the looks of woeful pity etched deep into the lines of their faces were authentic, but they sure as heck were convincing.

Gabe’s elongated ears perked.
“What is it you really want?”

I struggled to keep my voice steady. Now wasn’t the time to break down and get all squeaky
, sobby girl, even though I
really
wanted to. “Barnabus promised to bring Caleb back if I help him.”

Gabe’s topaz eyes snapped open wide and he nearly dropped his garage sale sign.
“Cee! That’s huge! You should be turning back flips over this! We get to kill the demonic mistress of the night and you get your boyfriend back!”

“Yeah!” The Glee Clubbers
bounced up and down, feeding off of Gabe’s enthusiasm.

“Sure, we know we can’t trust these guys
,” Gabe rambled, his gusto for the idea gaining momentum. “Worst case scenario they betray us and we kill ‘em. Easy as that. Why are you even hesitating?”