Misery Happens (26 page)

Chapter Twenty-Five

The bloody sword slipped from my fingers as the world dissolved. In seconds, all that remained of the snowy landscape was the red sky, only it was no longer sky. It was just there. I had no words for it or anything else. I existed in space that was very obviously not space. This was the void without someone’s magic giving it life, and it was even eerier than the hoard of ghouls Beht had sent to torment me.

“Jess!”

Relief overwhelmed me, causing tears to prick the corners of my eyes. “Lucen!”

Now that everything else had been stripped away, I could see him and Mitch. High as I was on the remains of Beht’s power, my feet bounced over the ground as I raced to his side. I was completely disgusting, but Lucen wrapped me in the best hug of my life, regardless.

“You’re all right.” He repeated it several times while I clung to him. Finally, he released me and wiped blood from my cheeks. “What happened?”

“She’s dead,” I whispered. Talking with an actual mouth suddenly seemed so common, so
lesser
, and I pushed the silly thought away. Damn this lingering power. I was neither a demon nor a god, though I felt like one.

“Who’s dead?” Lucen asked.

My head spun. Oh, right. Lucen wasn’t there. He hadn’t seen what happened. I needed to settle back into myself and get my head on straight, but I fucking hummed with power that I couldn’t shake. “Behty, their queen. She’s the one who did this.” I gestured to the missing illusion as if that would explain everything.

“Um, guys.” Mitch had been on the opposite side of the nothingness—if the nothingness could be said to have sides—and he jogged over. “Don’t mean to cut the reunion short, but we’re not done yet. We’ve got a missing key and
that
to deal with.”

That? I followed the path of Mitch’s arm, and my gaze landed on something that was genuinely unsettling, even in my current state. Demons. Hundreds of them. No, thousands. Beht had said she had thousands. They were flopped on top of one another, sprawled across the dark ground, seemingly sleeping.

Although they were drained of energy, the sheer number of them meant that the power they emanated was intense. Hot and prickly, it pressed against my skin, and I got the sense that being filled with Beht’s magic was the only thing protecting me from them seeping into my head.

Neither Mitch nor Lucen had that advantage. Inexplicably, I was still Lucen’s addict and, as a result, I could pick up traces of his fear traveling through our bond. Mitch, on the other hand, looked simply frightened enough for both of them.

“We’ll just back out the way we came, right?” He gestured behind us.

“Without the key?”

Lucen took my arm and tugged me away. “We’ll never find it without Kassin’s detector. We’ll have to figure out something else.”

“No. It’s here, and I’m not leaving without it. What’s the point?”

“The point, little siren, is we live to try to fight another day.”

I yanked my arm from Lucen’s grip. He wasn’t incorrect, but fighting another day wasn’t enough for me. Too many people had died on this particular day to give up without trying harder. I owed it to Tom and the others who’d sacrificed their lives for us to get this far. Also, I had no desire to ever reenter this place. When I left, I wanted it locked for good, and an idea was occurring to me for how to accomplish that.

In my mind’s eye, I could see glowing threads leaving my body, a whole tapestry of them in various colors. They connected me to the myriad slumbering demons. When I stole power from Beht, I must have inherited her connections to her flock, and it was these connections that explained why I continued to buzz with magic. I was still drawing on someone else’s—many someone else’s—energy.

Beht had used that massive power to redesign the prison. Could I use the same trick to show me the key? Better yet, could I make the prison bring it to me? It was a long shot, but—blame it on the demons’ magic—I’d never been so confident in my life.

I didn’t bother to explain what I was about to do because I wasn’t sure if I could. I just dropped to a crouch and pressed my palms against the ground. Focusing on the magic coursing through me, I gathered what I could in my stomach then pushed it out through my palms. Above me, Lucen asked what I was up to, but I needed all my concentration and couldn’t respond. The threads connecting me with the demons pulled taut as more power rushed into me.

The key. Bring me the key.
Since I had no idea what it looked like, I pictured an old-fashioned one in my head. Something big, tarnished and heavy. The prison wavered around me, and one of the men gasped. I was doing something, whatever it was.

Come on!
The ground swayed and dipped between where I squatted and the demons, creating a bowl. A couple demons stirred, and I swore silently. I must have been channeling enough magic for them to notice.

The brief distraction almost ruined any progress I’d been making. Against my will, everything shifted back to normal. I cursed again and squeezed my eyes shut, shoving away the errant thoughts.
Key. Give me the key.

Reality buckled under me. I opened my eyes in time to see a giant brass key be burped up from the rock. It was in every way the thing I’d imagined—poorly formed and hazy on the details. Yet it radiated a power that could only be described as similar to the power generated by its magical cousins, the Vessels of Making. This had to be it. It was the real thing, its form shaped by my thoughts.

I snatched it, reveling in the heft of its weight against my hand and the tingles it shot up my arm. It was amazing, and yet I hadn’t the faintest idea what to do with it.

Lucen gaped at me and ran his fingers through his hair. “You shaped the prison. How?”

“Long story. I’ll explain later.” Like when we were safe, if such a thing was possible.

“So that’s it?” Mitch regarded the key dubiously.

“That’s it.”

Mitch reached for it, but the curiosity in his eyes was replaced once more by fear as he focused on something over my shoulder. “They’re waking up.”

I spun around, the pride at what I’d done fading as reality set in. Shadows changed among the sprawling masses as limbs and heads shifted position. Several pairs of red and golden eyes blinked. Damn it, I’d known I was waking them. I’d marveled over my accomplishment for too long.

I stuffed the key in my inner jacket pocket and grabbed the men’s hands. “Time to run, I think.”

Fueled by magic, I bounded across the void faster than any speed charm could have propelled me, dragging Lucen and Mitch along. Through the threads connecting me to the demons, I could sense their unrest and rage. Worse, I could sense their movement. They were underpowered but not helpless. Far in the distance, the thin white line of the gate hung in the air like a ghostly apparition. With no cliffs to block it, no cavern of basilisks to navigate, it appeared far closer than I remembered it being, and yet I feared it was still too far to reach.

The air rumbled behind us, and I tried not to think about thousands of pairs of feet stepping closer or wings taking flight. I tried not to think at all because when I did, I slowed. If I worried or wondered how I was drawing on this power, my ability to just use it faltered.

I recalled something Lucen had tried explaining to me when he was teaching me about charm-breaking.
Trust the magic,
he’d said.
Don’t try to second-guess it.

It was as true in this case as it was in choosing the right anti-magic.

So I didn’t run, I flew. My feet scarcely touched the ground, and holding on to Mitch and Lucen was like dragging two balloons behind me. I didn’t know how they kept up, if I was feeding them power or if their feet simply didn’t touch the ground either. But I didn’t dare pause to find out. The noise at our backs grew thunderous. The void shook.

Then all at once the nothing disappeared and we were back in the prison room. A low ceiling replaced the endless sky, and flickering torches provided the light. My pace continued unbroken, the sandy stone floor as meaningless to me as the void’s black nothing. Open cells whizzed past in a blur of gray iron. I could hear Lucen hollering my name and an inhuman cry of rage following. Triumph rose in my blood, and a yell of my own burst from my lips as I jumped through the gate. Instantly, all sound vanished. My insides compressed, and my voice was swallowed with no air to carry it.

I popped out the other side, yelling still. Either Lucen or Mitch fell on top of me, and I let go of their hands. Stumbling across the stones, I couldn’t stop my momentum until I crashed into an object that turned out to be a very large Gryphon. He stepped away, and I fell to the ground.

“I have it! We’re safe, I have it!” I gasped to get the words out, but no one was listening. When I fell silent, it was obvious why. The pounding feet I’d heard in the Pit continued to pound. Scrambling upright, I watched in horror as demons spilled out of the gate. They were slow and sluggish, but they were very much here. And without Behty hogging all the negativity, they’d be juiced in no time too.

Strong hands yanked me out of the way as a lumbering demon crashed into the floor where I’d been standing. Though I buzzed with my stolen power, my thoughts hovered somewhere above my head. Using that power to find the key was one thing. Processing mundane reality was another. I couldn’t focus, and it was Lucen’s turn to lead me to safety. I followed him to a sheltered alcove near the ruins’ doorway and glanced around.

All hell was breaking loose, and it looked like it had been for a while. The ruins were more, well, ruined than they had been before. Walls were down, and the enormous glyph on the floor no longer glowed red but green. A few bodies lay scattered along the sides, and Gryphons, magi and goblins alike were covered in blood. I searched for Gi, anxious about his welfare, but he was nowhere in sight. For that matter, neither was the purple demon. But more Gryphons were here than I remembered there being when I left. Helicopters too. Stealth had clearly been overridden by the need for reinforcements.

Belatedly I looked beyond the helicopters into a sky turning pale pink in the east. Sunrise. My body didn’t feel it, but it sure appeared that we’d been gone for an entire night. No wonder more Gryphons had been called.

“You have the key?” Ingrid’s voice knocked me out of my daze. She darted through an opening in the chaos and knelt among the rubble with us.

I retrieved the key from my pocket, hoping Ingrid had a clue what to do with it.

You are the one,
Beht had said.
But the other like you is necessary.

Before Ingrid could take the key, I closed my fist around it. I could be making up stuff in desperation, but once again, I didn’t think so. My blood still flowed with Beht’s power, and it told me she’d inadvertently given me a hint about what to do. “I need Mitch.”

Ingrid sat back on her heels. “What are you going to do?”

“We’re going to imitate what the furies did to us to open the Pit. Only instead of draining addicts for their power, I’m going to charge this thing by draining the demons themselves.” How Mitch was going to help with that, I wasn’t sure. But Beht had said he was necessary, and I was certain she—and I—was correct.

While Ingrid ran to make that happen, Lucen grabbed my hands. “Do you know what you’re doing? Are you sure? Because, Jess, there’s power inside you—”

“It’s the demons, and I need it to do this.”

“It’s evil. I can feel it through the bond. It’s a cold darkness surrounding your heart.”

I did my best to sense the energy the way Lucen described it, but I couldn’t. It was simply there, stronger than any other pred power I’d fed on, but ultimately the same. “It’s… Don’t worry about it. I just need to use it to charge the key. Then it’ll be gone.”

Lucen started to say something else, but a curse grenade exploded nearby, and we shrank back. A second later, Mitch appeared, escorted by an unfamiliar Gryphon.

I let go of Lucen’s hands and grabbed Mitch’s, placing the key between my right palm and his left. Although I was unsure what he needed to do or how to explain my intentions, it didn’t matter. Pressed between our hands, the key reacted on its own. I gasped, and Mitch swore, and in the time it took for that to happen, a circuit of magic formed among the three of us.

Instinct took over as the threads connecting me to the demons appeared before my eyes. I sucked in a breath, pulling on the collective power contained on their ends. Electricity shot through my body. Though I’d been prepared, the rush was dizzying nonetheless, and Mitch yelled an agonized and ecstatic cry as I forced the power out through me and into him.

His body exploded in light as threads appeared on him too. Now he was breathing in their power, and we were both pouring it into the key. It began to glow, the edges sharpening into focus and the color brightening. Heat seared my palm, but I couldn’t let go, and I clenched my jaw. My vision blurred as hazy black shapes gathered nearby. Gryphons coming to protect us, I realized. The demons were aware of what was going on. They were trying to stop it.

But they’d been weakened by what Mitch and I were doing. We just had to last a little longer. The key felt full but not full enough. I yanked harder on the threads, and a fresh wave of dizziness wracked my head. Then the power hit a wall. My attempt to channel more into the key failed, and the backlash knocked me to the ground.

Mitch collapsed too, and the key dropped between us, glowing a dazzling golden white. He moaned, seeming to have taken the hit harder than I had, perhaps since he’d had less time to adjust. The threads that had once surrounded him vanished.

“Cover me!” I shouted to anyone nearby. Climbing to my feet, I grasped the key and charged toward the gateway, heedless of what I was running into. My threads remained, and I felt their tug on my limbs. They beckoned me toward the gate, toward the majority of the demons who were still inside.

Claws swiped at me, and wings beat down overhead. My ears rang with the sounds of gunshots and so many cries, human and not. I gasped for breath, tasting metal and not knowing whether it was my blood or the magic in the air. With my every step on the glyph, the green glow changed to white and the smoke took on an acrid scent.