Silverblood Demons (Daughters of Darkness Book 1) (4 page)

By this time Elektra had decided to go and stand in the middle of the cavern, right where the apex of all three openings would meet if we were to draw a line across from them in the center of the perceived triangle. Her curiosity with her immediate surroundings drew our attention, so Kira and I made our way down from the icy parapets we were standing on and over to where she was standing.

Kira’s unique connection to the ice compelled her to begin scraping the ground where we were standing. “There’s something here beneath the ice,” So Elektra and I began scraping too, using the flat side of the small ice picks from our back packs. We soon discovered another triangle right there below our feet, but this seemed to be around fifteen feet in length, and there were three sets of horns conjoined in the center of it too, facing outwards.

“Any ideas?” Kira asked her sister.

“How about we each stand inside the three horns looking outward to see if we can get some kind of perspective.”

Taking our places inside the conjoined horns initially appeared to be without merit, but then slowly, a circular area surrounding the triangle that we were standing on started crumbling away. Then something else started to happen, the ice beneath us began to slowly revolve like a turntable.

While this was happening, voices could be heard echoing around the cavern walls, not quite clear enough for us to make sense of, yet enough that we knew they were the voices of children. As the three of us resembling figurines in an old cuckoo clock continued to turn, we listened attentively, the voices were becoming more distinct and sounded as though they were humming,
why weren’t we afraid?

Boris is anxious and despite being surrounded by ice he was perspiring from his temples, fear was gripping him and it wasn’t letting go. “Do you guys hear that?”

“You have to come and join us, it’s safer here in the middle!”

“No Kylar, it’s time to go, and stop going around in circles! Are you guys out of your minds?”

The childrens voices grew louder still, they sounded like girls, like little girls. Next we could see shadows dancing on the walls and like us they were also going around the cavern in a circle but in the opposite direction. These were the children that were being seen in the early mornings by their parents, “
The Morning Spirits”
and they were making themselves known to us. Slowly the shadows were taking on their own individual forms and faces, but despite the incredible nature of the events playing out before us, we continued revolving as though if we stopped, then they would disappear.

Boris cowered in disbelief and covered his eyes, “Go away! Leave us alone!”

“What do we do now?” Elektra asked.

The words had barely left her mouth as I remembered the pyramid shaped crystal that Kat had given me back at the bookstore, it seemed like that was a lifetime ago. Her words echoed in my mind “
This is your key to enter into Hell”
I pulled the crystal out of my back pack and wondered what to do with it,
how was this the key?

Kira and Elektra looked on as I did the only thing with the crystal pyramid that I could think of. I tossed it into the middle of the circle we were spinning in and instead of falling down, the crystal suspended itself in mid-air about eight feet above the ground. In a flash of laser lights the three recessed triangles shone beams directly at the crystal above our heads and our platform began to slowly descend.

By this time the little girls were completely revealed to us, humming and walking around the cavern as we continued to turn with the spinning crystal in our center. As the laser light beams glittered above us, we were in awe of everything that was transpiring. It was getting scary, but magikal at the same time.

The icy ground directly outside of the circle that we were turning on continued to crumble away. Kira shouted to her husband, “Boris! Hurry, get over here!” She moved in his direction holding out her hand and suddenly slipped. It seemed like déjà vu to her, reminiscent of the night she lost Davina. “Boris! Help!”

The gap between our circle of ice that we were on and the rest of the cavern began to quickly widen and before either I or Elektra could act to help her, Boris grabbed Kira’s hand, pulled her back into the cavern and then attempted to jump toward us because everywhere else was eroding fast.

One quick leap and they were back within safety. Then, in a moment of awful fate, Boris’s foot landed at the very edge, he lost his balance. Pushing Kira into our outstretched arms he looked at her one final time as he fell away into the abyss, his voice fading into the distance could be heard saying, “Ya lyublyu tyebya!”

We had all tumbled into a pile in the middle of our ice circle. Elektra held her sister in her arms consoling her, the ice platform was falling and spinning with us on it and an inner voice said, “
Hold hands,”
So we listened to that voice that connected the three of us, we held hands once again forming our circle of invincibility as we plunged into the unknown, into the pit. With Boris forever gone, there seemed no guarantee that
we would live
to return back home.

Chapter 5

The three of us continued to spin, still holding each others hands, but the ice platform below us was now completely melted as we finally came to the bottom of the abyss. Unsure of how we landed so softly, we were able to slowly step off our descent onto the most beautiful lush green grass imaginable. If this was Hell, then Dante had a
lot
of explaining to do.

While taking in the breathtaking vista before us, we tried to reconcile this with the gravity of what had just occurred, Boris’s death, this wild descent two miles below the coldest place on Earth, and our apparent luck that the three of us were still in one piece. But before any of us could acclimate to this new world, the sound of wild dogs maniacally howling in the distance jarred us out of our imagined Utopian surroundings.

Was it possible that Cerberus the three headed guardian of Hell’s gates really did exist?
There was only one way to find out.

Kira was pointing at the river ahead of us. “I hear the howling coming from that direction.”

“Okay sis,” Elektra said. “Let’s do it, but I think we’ll have to get creative to cross that river.”

Walking in the direction of the howling, we were getting nervous as we passed a line of trees, something was telling me not to go any further but it was too late. Before I could say anything, a funnel of wind had knocked us all over and the funnel began wrapping us up in individual silky cocoons, we were doomed before we could even see the Gates.

Lying there, dazed from being knocked down, I managed to open my eyes and peer through the sticky web,
were we about to be eaten by some gigantic monstrous spider?
“My name is Sceleris, I have been expecting you.”

I heard Kira stirring, “Help!”

“Kira! Use your power to escape!” Electra called out. She had already used her power and had burned most of the web off her body and Kira was now freezing and shattering the web from hers. Seeing her sister finally getting out, Electra ran over to me and started melting the web that covered me. After freeing ourselves, we rushed back behind the trees trying to work out who or what did this to us, but there was nothing, just the trees, the river, and the howling in the distance. Kira was the first to realize that someone had spoken to us while we were still bound by the cocoon. “Did you two hear someone?”

“Yes,” Elektra said. “But who is Scele−?”

“Sceleris!” The voice rang out once again as we all backed up, away from the trees. With everything that had already happened to us, I didn’t think anything could surprise me any further, but once again we were in for a shock. The tree directly in front of us started cracking and collapsing and taking on the shape of . . . “Goddammit! Sin-dy!” I ran over and started spinning her around, it reminded me of the scene from ‘The Sound of Music’ but it wasn’t
the hills that were alive
it was the tree she had alter-witched herself out of.

“You know her?” Elektra asked.

“Yes, I know her! You’re the Alter-Witch?”

“At your service.”

Relieved to see my ex-girlfriend, I introduced her to my new friends. “Sin-dy, this is Elektra, and this is Kira.” The words barely left my lips and Elektra had slapped Sin-dy in the face.

“Why did you have to wrap us up in that creepy web?”

Sin-dy was startled, but pushed Elektra back. “The Linden trees you were behind masked your smell, the minute you stepped past them Cerberus would have picked up your scent, he would have been waiting for you. That’s why I had to act fast, is that okay?”

“My sister’s very protective, please, she doesn’t mean any harm.”

Sin-dy touched her cheek, it was stinging. “Coulda fooled me, I’d hate to see what she’d do if she did mean to−”

“Keep it up,” Elektra said. “You’ll find out what my foot looks like up your a−”

“Wait a minute guys, we’re all on the same team here, let’s start again. Sin-dy, Kira and Elektra are sisters and Kira wants to know why her baby Davina was killed, she wants to know if it was an accident or something more sinister.”

My mind flashed back to the moment we were entering the subterranean shaft, when Elektra had whispered something to her sister. Looking at Elektra I asked, “Am I right, or is there more?”

“My sister wants to know if her daughter, Davina, is one of the Morning Spirits, that’s what I was whispering to her, maybe she’s, still alive?”

“You!” Sin-dy said, pointing at Elektra. “Put the brakes on your ‘tude, Kylar is right, we’re all on the same page here and I don’t want my cover blown, or any of us to end up as dog food.”

“So what’s next?” Elektra impatiently asked.

“I’ll tell you what’s next!” Kira had finally reached the end of her patience, tensions were running high and the
mother
in her had surfaced. “I’m going in there, I’m going to get my daughter Davina, and I’m going to shove this up the ass of who ever took my baby!” With that, Kira fired off a shard of ice into the trunk of one of the Linden trees, it went right through and out the other side.

“Whoa! You guys are fired up, I think we need a plan before we go any further. Kylar do you have those leather rings Kat gave you?”

How does she know about the rings? Never mind, nothing should surprise me anymore
.

“Right here,” I rummaged through my back pack and pulled out the little velvet pouch, handing it to Sin-dy. Turning to Elektra and Kira, I explained how the rings will get us a pass through the gates.

Sin-dy gave a ring to each of us. “Here’s what we’re going to do, and I need you all to do exactly as I say,
any
deviation will mean we’re toast, understood?”

“Lay it on us Sin-dy,” I said. “The only way back, is forward.”

“This is how it’s going to go down. Kira I want you to be up front, can you use your power to suspend yourself a few feet up in the air?”

“No problem.” Both sisters effortlessly raised themselves off the ground using their extraordinary gifts.

“Perfect!” she smiled. “The two of you are going to pick Kylar up and place him between you and while I go over to distract Cerberus, you’re going to approach the gates which will automatically sense your rings and open. Don’t hesitate for even a second, fly straight in, I’ll be right behind you to show you where we’re headed once inside.”

There was a knot in my stomach, after all, this was Hell that we were talking about gate crashing. What lies on the other side is the reality of every nightmare I’ve had since being three years old, combined into one space. All the demons I have seen in the shadows at night and all the demons that make me afraid to fulfill my dreams, they’re
all
going to be there.

“Wait, I thought you said Cerberus would pick up our scent and he’d be ready for us,” I said. “What’s going to stop him doing that now?”

“The rings aren’t leather, they’re from the hide of dead demons, they’re
rawhide
and their unique smell has already combined with the smell of your skin, you’re virtually invisible to Cerberus.”

“If you two are done yacking,” Elektra said. “Maybe we can get this show on the road?”

With that ‘rally’ ringing in our ears we began our trek toward our fate.

The river Styx was now at our feet and we stopped momentarily to take in its darkness. Black as all the sin it has carried across its surface and reeking of its hatred of all that is good. But
nothing
would stall our resolve to repatriate with our children, not even this morbid liquid that separated us from our goal.

“Are you ready Kylar?” Elektra asked.

“Anytime you are.”

“How about you sis?”

Kira nodded and was holding my hand, Elektra was behind me. We began to move several feet above the water in the direction of Hades. As I stared up at the deep silver blue sky, I saw that flying several feet above us was an eagle that Sin-dy had morphed into, next stop . . . Hell.

Within minutes the landscape ahead of us had unfolded and the Adamantine Gates along with Cerberus were within eyesight, time would tell if we’d be the first humans to ever return home after witnessing such monumental evils.

Cerberus had all six eyes and three heads fixed on us and stopped howling, his body was tensed, as though he was ready to pounce and savage us as we got closer. Sin-dy flew ahead and had something in her mouth and talons. She was circling above Cerberus while waiting for us to get closer to the gates and as we did so she dropped what looked like several pieces of meat.

Cerberus immediately lunged at the food, the gates opened and we flew inside closely followed by Sin-dy who moved ahead of us and had now Alter-Witched into a fairytale golden haired goddess form with flowing garments. She continued to lead us past a bucolic scene of old English country homes, streams, and stone walls.
Where is Hell?

Kira, Elektra and I, are far too apprehensive to speak and accept that we just needed to follow Sin-dy as she wound her way deeper into this remarkable world we were now in. Finally, she began descending toward a small thatched cottage and we landed in its back yard.

Looking at us and holding her hand over her mouth to signify to us that she doesn’t want to speak, Sin-dy waved us through the back door of the cottage. Once we were safely inside, we looked out the windows and made certain we hadn’t been followed.

“What the hell,” Kira said. “And where is it?”

“Yeah, are you kidding me, this looks like paradise, where are all the demons and tortured people?” Elektra was looking at Sin-dy in disbelief.

“Okay, I’m going to tell you the real reason why all the Morning Spirits and your daughters,” Sin-dy was looking at me, “have been taken. The stakes are astronomically higher than you know, so get ready because it ain’t pretty.”

We gathered around a roaring fire with demonic stone creatures standing at each side of the mantel and listened as Sin-dy not only moved the goal posts, but changed the entire game.