'Tween Heaven and Hell (29 page)

Imagine my surprise to see another shapely female form lying
where only moments before I’d been. It appeared that my replacement had been
found fast. Impossibly, even suspiciously fast. I didn’t like it. Not one
little bit.

As Dialle had foreseen, Queen Kaline lay upon the altar, but
unlike myself, she was chained and didn’t seem to be under the influence of
Nerul’s dress code. In fact, it would have been impossible for her to be under
the influence of her clothing since she wasn’t wearing any. Which meant she had
nothing between her unfortunate flesh and the dozens of assorted paws, claws
and appendages that assaulted her. My skin prickled and crawled as I couldn’t
help putting myself in her place.

Then she turned her head and seemed, incredibly to be
looking directly at me. I gave a yelp of surprise and her eyes widened, the
pain in them tearing into me like razor knives. I felt a sudden, consuming need
to run away.

I’d been discovered. If the queen called out I would be
taken and strapped to that god-awful rock again, helpless, defenseless. I
convulsed under a chill of apprehension and tried to laugh at myself. There was
absolutely no way she could have been looking at me. How could she have even
known it was me? And why would she seek me out in the first place?

Unbidden, the sight of her turning to me as I stood in the
shadows above her just days ago, while she was being used and tortured on that
very same altar came to my mind. The disturbing image played across the
reluctant screen of my mind over and over as I tried to dispel it, almost as if
it was being forced on me. I closed my eyes and willed it away.

When I opened them again my gaze was pulled away from her by
a commotion just beyond the altar where she lay. Suddenly, the crowd swirled
away from her and I saw, with a sinking heart, that Nille was being pushed
toward the helpless queen. He fought against the hard, leather hands that grasped
him at wrist and shoulder, but otherwise seemed calm. Too calm.

As my heart rose to pound in my ears, I watched the
despicable hooded creatures around the altar grab at the vulnerable Prince,
twisting and pinching his naked flesh painfully. His golden skin quickly turned
purple under the onslaught, but his expression never wavered. Instead he
fastened his calm gaze on his hooded tormentors and one by one they fell away
from him. It was amazing to watch. He actually seemed to have some kind of
power over the disgusting vermin beneath the stone arches of that bloody
cavern.

Then his gaze fell on me and he smiled. My heart rose into
my ears and I felt dizzy with shock. But his eyes touched me through that crowd
and soothed me, as his touch had done in that room mere hours earlier. I found
myself smiling back. And before I knew what I was doing, I was moving toward
the hated altar with a plan.

My eyes stopped seeing what was going on with Nille and
Kaline. Vaguely I was aware that Nille was being pushed onto the altar and
dimly I heard the chanting that I recognized all too well begin. I didn’t want
to know what was happening on that altar. I didn’t even want to know what I was
gonna do. I just wanted to do it and get the hell out of there.

With the crowd’s attention firmly transfixed on the altar
and its occupants, I was able to push my way through until I was standing just
behind the figures that were closest to the stone.

I placed myself just as close behind one of the uniformed
demon guards as I could get without touching him and closed my eyes. Taking a
deep, cleansing breath to calm myself, I nearly choked on the guard’s musty
stench and had to push bile back down my throat before I could move again. Looking
around one last time to make sure no one was paying me any attention, I reached
for the knife the creature wore in a sheath around its waist and carefully
pulled it free. As it cleared the sheath, the demon’s hand reached for it and
he turned in surprise when the knife found the middle of his back instead,
piercing his black, shriveled heart.

He dropped to his knees and I pulled the knife free, swiping
it across my robe from habit before turning to the next guard and giving him a
new air hole in his back to match his friend’s. I managed to kill a third guard
in pretty much the same way before the crowd around me noticed the growing pile
of demons and a cry broke out.

I ducked as they flew at me, pushing my way through the
crowd on the opposite side of the altar. I dropped the knife and forced myself
to walk and then stop, buried in the now frantic crowd and turn back toward the
altar as if I’d always been there.

For the first time in my life I was happy to blend into a
crowd. Never let it be said of me that I’m inflexible. I can be a sheep if I
need to be to survive. Like the other sheep, I raised my arms and, being
careful to keep my lily-white fists covered by the robe, I shook them in the
air as if I too were outraged at the senseless slaughter of several members of
the demon guard.

I was having so much fun being a sheep that I almost forgot
to continue on with my plan. But the arrival of the parade from hell, which was
just entering the cavern at the far end, made me realize that I didn’t have
much time.

I assumed the covered trufka that was currently being
buffeted and blocked by the roiling crowd carried Nerul. That meant that things
were coming to a head. I moved quickly toward the altar again and, grabbing
another knife from yet another sheath, I quickly dispatched another distracted
guard.

As his body crashed to the ground at my feet, a huge shadow
covered me and I spun to meet the next guard with a knife-bearing fist to the
gut. He grunted and tried to fall on me but I sprang sideways and he landed
instead on the skewered body of his friend.

By now the gig was up. A screaming crowd was moving toward
me, closing me off on all sides except one. The altar was at my back and I
wasted no time leaping onto it. I nearly missed because I’d tried to hit the
edge, rather than land on top of the naked couple on its surface. Nille, who’d
jumped to his feet as the crowd erupted, reached out a hand and grabbed my arm,
steadying me.

“Nicely done, Princess Astra.” His pale, blue eyes found
mine and, for the briefest moment in time I almost forgot that I was surrounded
by hundreds of slavering members of the dark world that wanted to kill me.

He smiled and I smiled back. “Shall we, as you would
probably say, kick some ass?”

I grinned. “Oh yeah.” Almost before I finished speaking, a
heavy body crashed into my legs, knocking me off my feet to sprawl across the
unfortunate Kaline. Nille reached down and grabbed the demon’s robe-enshrouded
neck and spoke some words in a language I didn’t understand. The demon shrieked
once and then simply disintegrated, leaving a flattened robe behind on my legs.

I grinned up at Nille. “Crashin’!” It didn’t occur to me at
the time to ask why, if he’d had the power to vaporize demons with a few words,
he hadn’t done it before.

He laughed and then turned to take care of three more hooded
figures that were trying to clamber up onto the altar.

I pushed myself to my knees and searched the room full of
brown robes and hoods for Emo. He should have found me by now. I felt a hand on
my arm in a soft but firm grip and, fighting the instant impulse to smash my
fist into its owner, my eyes dropped to the hand and then rose again to find
Queen Kaline’s soft, black gaze. Incredibly, lying there completely naked,
fresh red blood drying to a stiff glaze over much of her pale, golden body, she
smiled at me.

I smiled back. What else could I do?

“Thank you Tweener Phelps. You are much more than the
fulfillment of a prophecy to me.” Her soft golden hand fell away from my arm
and I felt an overwhelming need to retrieve it. Instead I channeled my energies
into getting her free from the face of that rock. As I leaned down to examine
the chains that criss-crossed her body, I forced myself not to think too deeply
about what she’d said to me. I had been called many things in my life, but I’d
never been accused of being part of an ancient prophecy. Obviously she had the
wrong girl. But the trust and hope in her eyes were enough to make me want to
be the right girl and I had to do what I could to help her. I wasn’t sure why I
cared what she thought or felt, but somehow I did. Like the prophecy thing, I
was gonna ignore the parts that made me uncomfortable and just go on instinct. Ain’t
rationalization great?

While her hands and legs were free, her body was strapped
tightly to the surface of the altar with thick, dense chains that rode the top
of her hips and cut into the soft surface of her neck. I suddenly realized that
much of the blood she sported was her own. The brutal chains had dug deeply
into the golden column of her neck, probably as the result of her struggling to
free herself and they were glossy with her blood.

Realizing that no knife would cut through those chains, I
made a quick decision. Closing my eyes I trusted Prince Nille and Emo, wherever
the Hades he was, to hold off the attacking demons and lesser devils long
enough for me to use my powers.

Grasping the chain that was around her neck on either side
of her head, I quickly went to that place in my mind where the power awaited
me. It sparked and spilled down my arms and, once again, I sensed Dialle’s presence
in my magic. Together, if it was true that our powers were now merged, Dialle
and I poured our magic into that dense metal chain in an effort to shatter it.

The chain jumped in my hands as an incredible amount of
energy surged into it. Its surface grew red with heat and burned my hands until
I could smell my own flesh, but somehow I didn’t feel any pain. Finally the
links in the chain blew apart with a dark explosion that scattered debris into
the crowd around the rock and pinged off my shoulders, leaving behind hot welts
of pain.

I felt Kaline jerk beneath my hands and opened my eyes. Her
face and chest were wet with new blood and her neck was red and blistered from
the hot metal, but she was smiling as I pulled the last remnants of chain from
her shoulders.

“Sorry.” It was all the apology I had time for, the crowd’s
mood was growing more agitated with the approach of Nerul’s trufka and I knew
that Nille wouldn’t be able to hold them off much longer all by himself.

I spared him a quick glance as I helped Kaline squirm her
hips free from the remaining chain.

He stood above us. From my perspective it was as if he had
grown taller. As I watched, he raised his arms above his head, palms open. His
legs were spread to block us from the surging crowd and his body was surrounded
by a bright halo of light, which wavered and throbbed as he spoke in a voice
that sounded like thunder on a steamy summer night. The crowd had grown
suddenly quiet. For the moment at least, Nille seemed to have stopped
everything and everyone in that room in its tracks.

Power radiated from him and coated the room. A spear of
throbbing, iridescent light suddenly shot away from him in a vertical pillar. It
rose into the thick darkness above our heads and, when it was stopped by the
jagged rock that formed the ceiling of the cavern, it flowed down the cavern’s
walls, bathing the room in a soft, throbbing light. Incredibly, one by one, the
hooded creatures in that thickly populated cavern began bowing to his power. First
their heads drooped in supplication and then they dropped to their knees before
him.

I found myself staring like the rest of the sheep in the
room. My mouth hung open with awe. Surely this was the great unifier that had
been prophesied in the ancient court records I’d been given by the Angel
Council. There was little doubt that he had control of the room. Even Nerul’s
trufka had stopped moving forward. As the creatures around it began to drop to
their knees, the trufka’s bearers looked around with confusion painted across
their faces. I watched their knees buckle and waver with their desire to follow
the rest of the sheep to the ground. But suddenly they gasped and arched their
backs rigidly as if they’d been struck by lightning. Then their faces grew
closed with fear and they forced their bodies straighter, shifting the trufka
into a more stable position on their shoulders and straightening their spines
against Nille’s power. As the hooded figures all around it fell like knickers
in a whorehouse, the trufka remained determinedly upright. It was like a dark
island in a sea of light.

Low at first, then growing louder and more passionate, a
sound started to throb against the rock walls. I realized after a moment that
it was coming from the hooded supplicants on the floor. Their deep, razor-like
chanting soon filled the air, drowning out all sound and with it, the light
that came from Nille grew brighter and more alive.

I shivered under the force of that sound and made myself
look away from Nille. Even if his power was good, I didn’t want to be
completely caught up in it and lose my capacity to think. Just as I turned away
I felt a hand on my arm and looked up to see those glowing, red eyes under the
hood again.

I smiled at Emo. “There you are. I wondered where you’d
gone.”

Emo’s voice came to me in my head.
Astra. I need you to
come with me right now. I’ve seen Dialle and he has an army from his court with
him. I fear for your safety if this thing explodes
.

My gaze flew again to Nille. Emo tugged at my arm with an
urgency that surprised me.
I think it’s obvious that Prince Nille has this
under control. He can take care of himself now that he’s come into his full
power.

Actually I had to agree. Nille certainly seemed to have come
into himself in that putrid cavern. I briefly wondered at the sudden cause of
all the power. If he had been this powerful all along, why had he needed me? And
why had he allowed himself to be taken captive all those weeks? I allowed Emo
to pull me off the altar but I wasn’t happy about it. Something just didn’t feel
right. I was reluctant to leave Nille behind. But then Kaline rose gracefully
from the altar and stood beside him. He dropped one arm and held it out at a
ninety degree angle from his body so that she could place her hand on his. Immediately
as they touched, his power thickened and flared to include her. I was almost
blown away from the altar by the force of it.