In the Company of Witches

Page 54

“What do you mean?” He took a step toward the porch, gaze narrowing, aware that Derek shifted with him, keeping an eye on him. Fuck him.
Ruby pressed her lips together, expression strained and worried. “Raina doesn’t tap into half of the power potential she has, Mikhael. She doesn’t want to attract unwelcome attention from the Dark or Light Guardians, because she knows what she does here already has her flagged.”
Mikhael bit back a vile oath. “Damn it, Isaac running here brought Raina onto the demon’s radar. She knew she was getting double bonus points if she got them both.”
“You had a tracker on the incubus, right?”
“They’re too far gone. I’ve got nothing on him now.” Goddamn it.
Derek’s steady blue eyes held his. “We have nowhere to start to find her. I can go to my sources, you go to yours, see what we can pick up. Then—”
“I know where to start. Give me a minute. You may need to do that wake-up shit with me again.”
Derek didn’t question, just leaned on his white ash staff and nodded.
Mikhael moved to the broken fountain. Water was still trickling from the spout, spilling into the broken basin and running into the ground. Rebar was sticking out of one of the broken pieces, so he struck the concrete repeatedly with his fist to make it crumble, free the iron bar. It was helpful, cathartic, and he ignored the reaction from the porch as he decimated it in two blows. Then he positioned the rebar over his heart, closed his eyes.
I’m here, baby. Reach out to me.
He shoved it in, aware of several cries, even a somewhat gratifying gasp from Ruby he was sure would chap Derek’s ass. Then he was on one knee. He held on to consciousness with everything he had, casting that lure, casting it wide, in all dimensions…Come on…come on…
He fueled himself with vicious, lethal rage. Someone had taken her, would hurt her. She’d been there before, which meant she would see what was coming at her. She’d fight like a bitch straight from the bowels of Hell, because she didn’t know when to shut up, back down, and they would hurt her even worse. He was going to make them suffer three times over for anything they did to her.
Just before consciousness left him again, he felt it. A single ping in a universe of darkness. His lips stretched in a grim, deadly smile, and then he fell to the ground and was out again.
HE OPENED HIS EYES TO SEE DEREK KNEELING OVER HIM, gripping his shoulder, bracing himself with his staff. The metal inlay against the carved wood flashed in the early-morning sunlight. The Light Guardian removed his touch when he saw he was awake. “You got her?”
“Got her.”
“Then let’s go get her back.” Derek offered his hand and Mikhael clasped it, getting back to his feet. Gods above. Running his hand over the back of his head, he found his hair caked with blood and unmentionables.
“I believe it was your brain matter. Ruby and I knocked the concrete off you. Pretty much ground your spine and a lot of other bones to dust, crushed internal organs. Good thing your dick was under you, even though I assume the puny thing’s probably still intact.”
“Feels like it.” Mikhael cracked his neck, his knuckles, shrugged his shoulders. He’d donned his shirt when he’d chased after Raina, so now he tore off the tattered fabric and let the wings spring forth, stretching them out with an assortment of bone pops that had Derek wincing.
“Done with your Hulk impersonation?”
Mikhael gave him a searing glance. “Underworld. The old chambers. Deep. Close to the Well.”
Derek sobered. “What the hell would be holing up there?”
“I can’t feel it. I can only feel her.”
“You staked yourself to pick up her reaction to a typically mortal injury. So she is your chosen.”
“I never denied it. Just what it should mean to her.”
Considering that, Derek nodded. “Not real stable area through there.”
“No. She should not come.” Mikhael nodded toward Ruby.
“She is coming.” Ruby, proving her hearing was as sharp as ever, came down the steps with a fierce look on her face. “She’s my best friend.”
“No.” Derek stepped forward, his face resolute. “Ruby, you can’t go there. For one thing, we’re going to move fast. Mikhael and I both know the terrain.”
“You’re familiar with it,” Mikhael corrected. “I know it.”
“You really want to compare dicks now?” Derek scoffed.
“No. We need to go. Now.”
Mikhael had felt her, just long enough to sense her whereabouts, but he’d also sensed intense pain. She was fighting a losing battle against terror, and Raina didn’t allow herself to feel fear. Someone was taking her back to those dark places in her memory, the places he had touched, soothed. The rage boiled in him, made the ground beneath his feet quiver. Those on the porch felt it, shrank back.
“You’ve transported me before,” Ruby was insisting. “I just hang on, and we get there.”
Derek’s mouth tightened. “Ruby—”
“There is no time to argue with her. No,” Mikhael snapped. “You are a powerful witch, but you are carrying a child. You will not put it at risk.”
Ruby’s mouth closed like a trap. Though she sent him a scalding look, he could tell he’d ended the argument. It didn’t matter, anyway. She couldn’t override his will and Derek’s together, and though her husband had been willing to handle her more diplomatically, there was no time.
“We need to go.”
He pivoted on his foot, strode away to give them a moment and to prepare for the swift transport. It was best that he and Derek not do the transporting close together, because the energy streams could bump into one another and cause an even rockier trip than it would be otherwise. Going near the Well was like going near Scylla and Charybdis. In fact, the Well was probably the origin of the mythology.
Derek caught Ruby’s waist, brought her to him when she would have shoved him away. “How did he know?” Her angry whisper reached Mikhael’s ears, but he didn’t turn.
“He’s a Dark Guardian. He can sense life and death the same as I can. Be safe, stay here and take care of her people. We’ll bring her back. I promise.”
A fierce kiss, a murmured exchange of words, and then Derek was striding toward Mikhael while Ruby stayed where she was, eyes worried, face pale.
Derek planted his staff. “She’s pissed, but she knew you were right.”
“Anytime you need help handling your woman, telling her what her place is, just let me know.”
“Uh-huh. Step out of the way when you land, because I’m following close. Don’t want to end up with my head shoved up your ass.”
“I wouldn’t want to make your fondest dreams come true.”
Mikhael closed his eyes, found his bearing, and summoned the energy to get there as fast as possible with his body intact. He was going to need everything in working order to tear a demon apart. He wouldn’t let the ache in his heart get in his way, the bone-deep terror that they might be too late.
He never felt fear. He wouldn’t tolerate it now.
20
THE WELL WAS A RIVER. A BOILING RIVER OF LAVA THAT surrounded the Earth’s core like one of Saturn’s rings. There were creatures who dwelled within and on the banks of the Well. Impervious to heat or cold, they were blind, molelike beings who saw without eyes. They felt heat, anything with life energy in it, and hungered to suck that energy out of the soul like the center out of a Tootsie Pop. They were oracles, messengers, as well as repositories of all the knowledge they’d ingested. If anything happened in this part of the Underworld, they knew about it, but getting their wisdom and surviving it was a rare occurrence. While they wouldn’t necessarily mess with a Dark Guardian, it was different when he planned to stride through their ranks like a wheat field.
But Derek had never seen Mikhael so focused, so deadly. He wasn’t waiting for anyone, didn’t care for negotiation or hesitation. When he yanked one of those dark slimy creatures off the riverbank, it came up in his hands with the sound of a suction cup. The Well dwellers could be various forms, but this one looked like a large vole, with a short, thick body, stubby hands and feet, and sharp yellowed teeth beneath its eyeless face.
As Mikhael seized it, forked red light illuminated its skeleton, a power surge to repel the Dark Guardian. Mikhael countered it, such that the magic slammed into a wall he turned into a net over the Well dweller’s form, so the creature’s magic activated inside of it. It shrieked, but it couldn’t get free of it, or Mikhael’s grasp, like a baby with its finger in a socket. Derek brought up his staff, and the blue light that shot from it was like a lighthouse beam, a heated glow that swept around Mikhael and himself. It turned the ground to acid, driving off any who were unwisely thinking they might take advantage of Mikhael’s focus on the single Well dweller.
“Where? Female demon, with a captive. And an incubus.”
A chittering, the language they spoke. The thing’s four nostrils all flared indignantly. Its teeth looked like boar tusks. Mikhael didn’t seem the least concerned about that.
Tossing the creature aside, so that it rolled down the bank and into the eager grasp of the lava, he nodded to Derek. “She’s holed up in the catacombs. She’s taken over a section of them, guarded by about a dozen demons. Muscle, but some magic users.”
“She’s probably blood-connected to them. She’ll know we’re coming.”
“Then we don’t need to kill them quiet. I take the lead. Follow close.”
He didn’t give Derek time to argue, already moving away. As they left the Well behind, they moved into rougher, less predictable terrain. Lava spouts, unstable earth and dark abscesses, dangerous boiling mud pits that were concealed in the shadows of rock projections that looked disturbingly like teeth. Teeth that protruded in macabre shapes and random directions.
It was like being in the mouth of a dragon in need of dental work.