Darkness Unbound

Page 37

I clenched my fist and said, “Do it. But hurry.”
He bowed, ever so slightly. For a heartbeat, I swear there was a glimmer of respect in his eyes. But maybe that was a trick of the firelight gleaming off Tao’s hands. “Do not attempt to use your Aedh gifts to reach into their flesh and rip them apart. It will destroy you.”
Tao glanced from me to Azriel and back again. “What the hell is he talking about?”
“If I take Aedh form, I can seep into flesh and tear it apart,” I said absently. Tao swore, but my gaze stayed on Azriel as I added, “Why not?”
“Because they are not flesh, nor are they energy. They are spirits—essences of evil, if you like. They cannot be pulled apart like flesh beings.”
“Okay, that’s a gruesome skill,” Tao muttered.
Azriel added, “Do what you must to keep alive, Risa Jones. I shall return as quickly as I am able.”
With that, he disappeared.
I briefly closed my eyes and swallowed back the bitter taste of bile.
A taste that got worse when the howling began.
I ran for the door and slammed it shut. The hounds might be demons, but they held flesh when on earth, and as flesh beings, a locked door would delay them—if only for a moment. But every moment we delayed them was a moment for Azriel to track down the dark bitch.
The howling grew closer. I stripped off my shirt, tearing it in half, then wrapping the remnants around my hands. Once my skin was protected, I pulled two of the bigger pieces of silver from the walls. The largest shard was barely two inches long, but it was curved and jagged, and was a better weapon than just hands.
I backed away and joined Tao near the rear wall. The flames still burned across his hands, filling the room with an eerie, yellow-white radiance.
“Do you think fire is actually going to hurt them?” he said, his gaze on the door.
The howling was getting closer, and the smell of death, decay, and ash was beginning to ride the air. Riley had never mentioned the smell, but maybe she’d never come across this type. There was more than just the one kind of hound.
“As Azriel said, the hounds are demons, not true flesh and blood. Their outer skin might burn, but they will probably just form more.”
“Comforting thought,” he muttered.
The scent was becoming thick and cloying, filling my nose and catching low in my throat, making it difficult to breathe.
They were close. So close.
Then the howling stopped. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.
Tao doused the flames on one hand, then repeated my earlier actions, tearing off a shirtsleeve and wrapping it around his bloodied hand before he grabbed a silver shard from the floor. “You know, I’m not feeling too comforted by this little bit of—”
He cut the words off as something hit the door. The wood shuddered and splintered. There was a brief pause, then the door shuddered again. The wood fractured further, and the lock pulled away from the frame, hanging on by little more than two rusting screws. Through the gap I could see two dark, sinewy shapes.
With the third blow, it gave way, and the door crashed back against the wall. Tao released his flames, filling the doorway with fire. The creatures stepped through it, their heads low, their red eyes glowing brightly against the inferno surrounding them. Thick yellow teeth gleamed eerily as the pair of them snarled.
Then they leapt, their bodies aflame. I dove to one side and slashed upward with the shard. The silver sliced through the creature’s burning flesh, melting it like butter. Thick, black blood splattered across my body, stinging like acid where it touched bare flesh. The amulet at my neck burned even brighter.
The creature hit the wall, twisted, and leapt again. I rolled away from it, but its teeth slashed, scoring my thigh. Pain rolled through me, thick and hot. Or maybe that was the blood pulsing down my leg. I didn’t know. I didn’t have the time to find out. I pushed to my feet, saw the thing leap again, and lashed out wildly with the shards. Again they met burning flesh. More black blood sprayed, but the silver wasn’t stopping it. These shards—and the two of us—were never going to be enough to stop the creature.
We had to get out of here if we wanted to survive.
And I could see only one way of achieving that—by doing what Azriel had done when he’d rescued me from the tunnel.
The thought terrified me. God, I hadn’t even known it was possible to extend the Aedh shift to another person until Azriel had done it. How the hell could I ever hope to pull off the same trick and not shred Tao like a cheap bra?
I’d kill him. I’d kill me.
But what other choice did we have? Staying here was a death sentence. At least if I attempted the shift, we had a chance—albeit a very small one.
I ducked another leap, then twisted and ran for Tao, calling to the Aedh within me as I leapt straight at him. I could feel the hound behind me, feel the wash of its fetid breath against my neck. I knew it was going to be close. I hit Tao hard, heard his grunt in surprise as I wrapped myself around him. Saw the gleam of yellowed teeth as the creatures leapt at us …
Power surged through me, around me, a fear-fueled storm that shattered both our forms, tearing us apart swiftly and brutally, until there was nothing left but two streams of tremulous smoke, separated and yet together.
In that state, I fled the cell.
It was hard—harder than I’d ever imagined it could be. Every particle ached, as if carrying Tao was a physical weight even in this ethereal form.
I wouldn’t—couldn’t—go far. But the minute we reformed, those hounds would come after us. They had our scent. Had the taste for our flesh.
We needed to find somewhere safe. Somewhere as far away from Ilianna and Stane as we could get.
I could think of only one place.
I didn’t really believe in heaven or God as such, but if ever there was a sanctuary from hellhounds, then surely a church would be it. After all, holy water and blessed knives could destroy them, so there had to be some form of protection offered by churches themselves.
If I was wrong, we were dead meat. I wasn’t going to be much use fighting-wise after this flight. Tao—who’d been caught so unaware by this move—wouldn’t be, either.
Hell, he probably wouldn’t even be coherent.
Tao’s weight forced me low to the ground as I fled the building. I whisked along the street, feeling the grime of the concrete seeping through my pores, feeling the terror of what we were fleeing pulse through every aching part of me.
The streets were quiet still, but I could hear the howling of the hounds. They were hunting for us. If I could have shivered, I would have.
I rolled on, heading for the small brick building I’d seen on the way down here. It was only a couple of blocks away, but it might as well have been several miles. By the time I whisked underneath the old wooden doors, I was barely holding it together.
I stopped near the pulpit and reached for the Aedh magic once more, carefully piecing together our two separate entities, until flesh was fully formed and we became ourselves once again.
I landed with a splat on the old wooden flooring, and even though I wanted to do nothing more than collapse, I twisted around, ignoring the red-hot needles that jabbed into my brain as I looked for Tao.
He was lying several feet away, his clothes shredded but his flesh whole. And he was breathing.
I hadn’t killed him.
The relief that swept me was so great that for several seconds I could barely even breathe. It had worked. Against all the odds, we were out of the cell, we were alive, and for the moment, we were safe.
But shifting with another person in tow was something I never wanted to attempt again.
I closed my eyes and waited until the shaking and the sweeping bouts of dizzy nausea eased, and I became aware of groaning. Not mine. Tao’s.
“You okay?” I asked, my voice sounding as wretched as I felt.
“What the f**k,” he said, his voice whispery and filled with pain, “did you just do?”
“I saved our asses.”
But for how long? The second we’d regained flesh the howls had intensified, and even now I could feel the ill wind of their approach. If the church didn’t stop them, I didn’t know what would. There would be silver somewhere in this church, but I really doubted we’d have the time to find it.
I forced myself to roll over onto my stomach, then closed my eyes again, breathing deep and trying to ease the quivering. When it finally began to ease, I looked around.
The church was small and sparse, with old wooden benches for seating and little in the way of decoration other than the beautiful, stained-glass windows. The fading sunlight filtered through the glass, filling the barren interior with rainbows and warmth. The place was still, with nothing to break the silence other than our uneven breathing. This church might still be in use, but there was no priest here at the moment. I wondered whether it would make a difference to the hellhounds or not.
I guess we’d find out soon enough.
I gathered my strength and forced myself upright. If death was my fate, then I’d damn well meet it on two feet, not four.
Tao stared up at me from his prone position. His face was ashen, his clothes little more than a mess of barely-held-together threads, and the bits of flesh that were exposed were covered in a cobwebby sheen of fiber.
“Don’t ever do that again,” he said. “Not even to save my life.”
Despite the growing symphony of the hounds’ cries and the ever-growing certainty that we might yet meet our death here, I smiled and held out a hand. He lurched up and clasped it, his fingers so warm compared with mine. Which meant his flames still burned deep inside him and of that, I was glad—if only because it suggested I’d put him back together right.
He climbed slowly to his feet—using me as a stabilizer more than anything else—then looked around. “Do you think the church keeps holy water close by?”
“Most churches do.” I saw the simple basin and pedestal sitting near the entrance. “That’s probably it.”
He followed the line of my finger and nodded, but didn’t walk over, moving behind the plain wooden pulpit instead. “Nothing much in the way of cups behind here.”
I smiled and forced my feet forward. The scent of death and sulfur was once more beginning to stain the air, and my fingers twitched, wanting a weapon they didn’t have.
“I think you’ll find the church is canny enough to lock away its valuables in an area like this.”
“I meant the paper kind of cup, not the sacred chalice type.”
I glanced at him briefly. “What, you thought the priest might have been secretly sucking on a Coke during Sunday service?”
“Well, these days you never know.” Amusement laced his tones as he followed me down the aisle, yet I could feel the tension in him, smell the fear. They were as sharp as my own. “Will the church offer any more protection than the cell?”
“I don’t know.” I hoped so, but I really didn’t know enough about the supernatural to say.
The smell of sulfur suddenly intensified, catching in my throat and making both of us cough. The howls of the creatures swirled around us—a force that sent goose bumps fleeing across my skin and caused the temperature in the old church to suddenly plummet. The wooden doors shook, even though nothing had physically hit them.
I gripped one side of the basin and hoped like hell the water had been properly sanctified. It might be our only chance.
Tao gripped the other side, his expression resolute as we stared at the age-stained doors. The hounds stood on the other side. I could feel the heat of them. Smell their anger.
Again, the doors shook. I licked my lips, but I couldn’t do much about the dryness in my throat or the trembling in my limbs.
Another crash, then the doors were wrenched open, revealing the two hounds. The smell of their blood mingled with their scent of death and hell and evil, swirling around the inside of the church, somehow darkening it.
But the creatures didn’t move.
Neither did Tao or I.
Seconds ticked by. Sweat began trickling down my back and my hands grew clammy inside their wet bandages. The creatures growled low in their throats, the sound rumbling through the building—a sound of such power that dust and bits of masonry began to fall from the ceiling.
“Fuck,” Tao said. “They could bring the whole place down on top of us.”
“But this is still sacred ground. We might be buried, but at least we won’t be torn apart.”
“I’m not convinced it’s a better option,” he said, glancing nervously upward.
One of the hounds stepped forward. His paw hit the threshold and something flared—something bright and wholesome and somehow clean. The creature leapt back as if stung and their low growling intensified, until the air hummed with fury and the whole building shook under its assault.
“Well, at least that proves the theory that churches are sacred ground,” Tao commented. “Now we’ve just got to hope it doesn’t fall down around our ears.”
As he said it, a huge chunk of plaster crashed onto the bench behind us. Dust flew upward in a cloud, briefly smothering the rainbow streams of sunshine and creating an even darker atmosphere.
And yet there was a strength here, too.
I could feel it, feel the heat of it …
Joy leapt through me. It wasn’t the church, it was Azriel.
He appeared behind the hellhounds, Valdis held high above his head, the blade screaming in fury and dripping flame.
The hellhounds twisted around, then, as one, leapt. Azriel stepped to one side, and Valdis swept down, her scream almost ear shattering. She cut one creature in half, but it simply reformed and leapt again. Again the blade flew, separating flesh but not killing. The hounds were fast, not giving him the chance of a kill.