Prince of Demons 3: The Order of the Black Swan (6 page)

Brave thought Lana could have pretended to enjoy the taunt a little less. And the fact that she insisted on calling his home “Demon World” instead of Renagoth Anh was starting to get on his nerves. He gave her a look that he hoped conveyed his annoyance and, without a word, turned back to look for a way into the pits that seemed most ‘hospitable’.

When he was satisfied that he’d found the best entry of a host of awful choices, he turned to Lana and said, “There’s no way of knowing when the next pee-without-bursting-into-flames stop will present itself. So maybe you should
go
now.”

She pressed her lips together and looked for a suitable spot. “Turn around.”

Brave fumed. “Not this again.” His brows came together in a scowl that was not his best look.

“Are you whining? You are! You’re whining! Listen, mister. If you don’t want me to be put in circumstances where I have to
go
in public, then stop ‘gifting’ me adventures!” She put “gifting” in air quotes.

Brave gaped. “That’s what this ‘tude’ is all about?” He put “tude” in air quotes. “You think this is a course I set up to amuse you?” Lana crossed her arms and rolled her eyes. He stepped close so that his face was inches away from hers. “It’s not a game, Lana. This is real as real can be.”

She pretended to yawn. “Then I guess we’d better be going. There are
demons
after us.” She made a cartoon gesture of fright when she said “demons”.

He turned his back to her and yelled in frustration. “Ahhhhh!” Then he picked up a rock by his shoe and threw it as hard as he could.

“Well, now that you’re turned around, stay that way until I say you can look.”

He didn’t look when he felt her feeling around in the duffel. She withdrew one of the rolls of emergency toilet paper, tore off a few sheets and replaced the roll.

Brave stared straight ahead and said nothing else but she saw that his neck disappeared as his shoulders rose in aggravation. Of course he was irritated that she wasn’t buying it wholesale like she had the last time. But what did he expect? Really. Even the least evolved organisms learn from experience.

Lana righted her clothes and stepped out from behind a stand of underbrush that served as a partial screen. She buried the toilet paper by digging a shallow hole in the loose dirt with a rock.

“Okay,” she said cheerfully. “Ready for Sulphur World.”

Brave turned and looked at her through narrowed eyes. “You know it’s not going to smell any better.”

She extended her arms and held them out to her sides. “Proof that I will survive.”

He stared for a few seconds, shook his head and started forward. “Step where I step. No fancy footwork or rebel variance. Just try to be smart.”

“I heard that.”

“Good.”

“No. It’s not good, Brave. What do you mean, “Just try to be smart. For once.”

“I didn’t say ‘for once’.”

“You did. I heard it clearly. Even if you didn’t say it, it was definitely implied.”

“Implied? Will you listen to yourself? How could such a seemingly nice well-balanced girl with such beautiful gray eyes and such irresistible lips turn into such a raging lunatic? With so little provocation.”

“I AM NOT A RAGING LUNATIC!”

Brave’s mouth twitched. He seriously considered trying to contain his laugh, but finally decided that was pointless. So he laughed out loud. In her face. While she glared and fumed and glared some more.

Without further announcement he turned toward the direction of the noxious smell and began walking with a gait that was deliberate, determined, and somewhat less concerned about whether she was following or not.

She was.

As the smell grew stronger, she realized that a little time and distance had caused her to minimalize the horror of it while inflating her ability to withstand the assault to her olfactory sensibilities.

By the time they reached the pits, she was gritting her teeth and internally chanting ‘I will survive’. At the same time she was wisely staying close to Brave as he carefully picked his way through the cluster, looking for patches of solid ground.

Ninety-three minutes of pure agony later, they reached the far side and began moving away from the smell.

By that time Brave had cooled off. So had Lana.

“You want to stop for a break or get away from the smell?”

“What do you think?” she said, but without bite or sarcasm.

He reached over and shoved a stray tendril of hair behind her ear.

“I’m sorry I made you feel unsafe with me, like you can’t trust me,” he said softly.

He paused as if he was waiting for her to say something. When she didn’t, he turned and started walking.

As they plodded on, the bare ground near the sulfur pits turned into a grassy meadow and that gave way to a forest of evergreen trees with bright red trunks and branches. About the time Lana realized that the sulfur smell was subdued, probably lingering only on her clothes and in her hair, she began to feel a rising concern, that time because of ears, not nose. The noise that was growing louder with each step sounded suspiciously like rapids.

She’d opened her mouth to say something about that to Brave, but noticed that the forest seemed to end abruptly, giving way to nothing but blue sky. She knew there was no point in voicing her objection. The thing about Brave’s adventures was that they had been designed as the-only-way-out-is-through propositions.

Within fifteen minutes, they were standing on a cliff edge looking down at river rapids. About twenty yards to their left, which was upstream, there was a dilapidated wood bridge with broken slats, so narrow that only one person would fit at a time. The bridge was on an incline because the cliff on the other side was considerably lower.

The good news was that it was only about forty-five feet across.

Lana turned to Brave. “Nice touch. This time it’s wood instead of rope. Creative.”

“Lana…”

“Save it. You know the worst part? Everything in that duffel,” she pointed as if there was more than one, “is going to get wet. That means that some things like toilet paper and energy bars are going to be useless.”

“You have energy bars?” Brave sounded hopeful. “What are you saving them for? I could use some energy. Let’s eat them while we can.”

He took the duffel off his shoulder and started to look inside.

She grabbed it from him. “Give me that.”

She rummaged until she found a zip lock bag with bars inside. It would keep them from getting accidentally opened and making a crumbly mess inside the duffel, but it wasn’t waterproof and wouldn’t save them from rapids.

“Here.” She handed him the plastic bag.

He turned it over. “There are six.” He grinned like it was a Yule gift exchange. “Which ones do you like? How many do you want?”

Truthfully, after ‘surviving’ the sulphur smell, she was far from ravenous.

“Save me one.”

His smile fell. “One? No.” He shook his head. “You need more than that.” He looked across to the other side of the canyon. “I don’t know when we’ll get to eat again.”

“Yeah. I may be crazy hungry later, but I’m not very hungry now. So…”

“You sure?” He looked and sounded concerned. Lana nodded. “Well at least tell me which flavor you want.”

She looked at the bag. “White chocolate.”

He sat down where he was, pulled the bag open and handed her a bar in an orange-colored wrapper. “Sit. Sit. “

“Not a dog, Brave,” she said, as she was sitting.

He chuckled as he shoved an entire Rocky Mocha bar into his mouth.

Ten minutes later Brave was lying down with bent knees and wrappers all around him, looking at the sky like he was drunk on granola.

“Don’t you think we should be going?”

Brave angled his head so that he could look at Lana where she sat, but made no move to get up.

“That sounds like the responsible thing to do. But there’s a part of me that would like to just undress you and make love to you right here on the grass, with a full stomach, and the sound of rushing water.” He grinned as he noticed the flush and fluster rise to her face. “I’d die a happy human.”

With the grace of a panther Brave suddenly rolled to hands and knees and began crawling toward her like she was prey.

Lana jumped to her feet. “Stop it, Brave. This is no time for hanky panky. I’m not going to be intimate with somebody who smells like sulphur. You know how you were saying you wanted to learn how to please me? Well, start with clean-smelling bodies.”

He stood up dusting off his clothes and shaking his head at her. “So you’re saying that you’d rather jump into that water than get naked with me. I think it’s time for one of your monosyllables. Wow.” Brave gave her a look that said, “I don’t believe you,” and then said, “Okay. Here we go.”

Lana had gone about ten feet across the bridge when it gave way, sending her straight down into the water. She took a deep breath and instinctively aligned her body into a tight perfectly vertical line, but her muscles didn’t tense because she expected pleasantly warm buoyant water that was moving fast enough to be entertaining, but not fast enough to be dangerous.

The shock that went through her system when she hit the cold water was indescribable. It was a few seconds before her brain resumed function and urged her body to propel itself to the surface.

She gave three strong kicks, but the water was rushing fast and carrying her along. When she neared the surface, she couldn’t quite get her head above the churning water. Panic was setting in. She felt a pull just before her face breached the water. Her lungs dragged in air over vocal chords that were making an ugly rasping sound.

Lana grabbed onto Brave as if she could climb him to safely, which pushed his own head under water. Brave fought his way clear and turned Lana away from him so that he could lock her into a lifeguard hold before she drowned them both. That left him holding onto her with one arm and trying to battle the current with the other.

At one point Brave was sure his muscles were going to fail him and give into exhaustion. His first thought was not that he would die. His first thought was that he would not save Lana. And the unacceptability of that thought kept him going beyond expectations of human endurance. He thought about letting go of the duffel, which was filled with water and weighing him down further, but decided it might contain things Lana needed. So he held on.

When their bodies finally came to rest on the rocks in a section of shallows, Brave was in a semi-conscious state, but his arm was firmly locked around Lana. She had to struggle to get free. Once she did, she realized that Brave wasn’t moving. His eyes were open, but glazed as if he was somewhere else.

“Brave.” She shook him. “You’ve made your point. I believe you. Okay? Now come back to me so we can get out of here.”

They were only a few feet from a sandy bank bordered by more of the strange evergreens with red bark. When Brave didn’t respond, she started trying to drag him. His wet clothes made his already heavy body even heavier, but Lana was determined to get him out of the cold water. Her teeth were chattering from being wet and exposed to a breeze, but the exertion helped warm her up.

She found that yelling out loud with each pull seemed to help. She tried it both ways, pulling with a small grunt and pulling with a big yell. Results were definitely better with big yells. She didn’t worry about the sound alerting pursuers as to their whereabouts because her vocalizations just blended into the roar of the nearby rapids.

When Lana got Brave fully out of the water and onto dry sand, she laid him out so that the sun could do its job, warm him up a little, dry his clothes a little. She pulled her own change of clothes out of the duffel, wrung them out and laid them over branches in the hope the breeze would blow them dry – especially the thick hoodie.

Even though she knew he couldn’t hear her, Lana talked to Brave to distract herself from the misery of being cold, wet, and hungry.

“I know you said to eat while I could, but I didn’t take you seriously. Wish I had one of those honey peanut bars you gobbled down. No. Don’t rub it in and tell me how good it was. I don’t want to know.