26

EVIL RIDES WITH YOU

At the sound of its true name, Infernotoris, the black demon car rumbled to life. Dru didn’t take her wide eyes off it as she grabbed Greyson’s hand and stood up on shaky legs. She felt like she couldn’t catch her breath. Even just looking at Hellbringer now gave her the creeps. She knew the car was badly behaved, but she had no idea it was evil enough to act as an accomplice to doomsday.

At that moment, Rane and Salem emerged from the darkness, coming down the country road from the direction of the empty barn, holding hands. Rane’s cheeks were flushed. Salem’s hair was messed up, and his top hat was on slightly crooked.

“Cool. We ready?” Rane’s grin was bright. “Did the spell work? What’d you find out?”

Dru’s gaze tracked from Rane to Salem, who was conspicuously occupied with picking bits of hay off his long jacket. His silk shirt was buttoned crooked. He didn’t meet anyone’s gaze.

“Um.” Dru cleared her throat and adjusted her glasses, unsure what to say.

“We can talk about it on the road.” Greyson guided Dru toward Hell-bringer. “Come on. Let’s go.”

“No!” She dug in her heels. “No. That car is evil, and—”

“That car is part of me.” Greyson came around to stand before her. The stubble along his dark jaw was just a smudge in the moonlight, beneath the burning intensity of his red eyes. “We’re connected. Deeply. Hellbringer is not going to betray you. I know this.”

She wanted to believe him, desperately, but she couldn’t. The sight of that demonic coiling mist in the netherworld was indelibly burned into her brain, threatening her with images of gnashing teeth, leathery wings, and burning hooves. That was Hellbringer’s true form, a shape-changing demonic creature, not this sleek black muscle car.

“All this time I’ve been trying to convince myself that Hellbringer is on our side. That we can trust him.” Her voice trembled. “But everyone has been warning me. Deep inside, Hellbringer really is a demon. He is a force of destruction. He was there at the very beginning. It was Hell-bringer who gave Decimus the apocalypse scroll. I can’t believe I never realized it before. Doomsday has been on its way for two thousand years now, and it’s all Hellbringer’s fault.”

Rane looked shocked. Salem shot her an I-told-you-so look.

“Dru, look at me,” Greyson said.

Instead, Dru backed away, blinking back tears. “I can’t. I can’t do this.”

The feeling of betrayal stabbed her so deeply that she felt like she couldn’t breathe. Despite the broad moonlit fields and crisp night air around her, echoing with the hushing chirps of crickets, she felt like she was in some kind of prison. She felt like the world was trying to grind the life out of her. Crush her beneath a fate she couldn’t avoid. She marched away down the country road, away from the bloodred taillights and the stink of exhaust.

Greyson followed her, reaching for her. “Dru . . .”

“All this time, I’ve been fighting to save Hellbringer. To earn his trust. To bring him out of the darkness and onto our side, to help us save the world. Instead of destroying it. But why?” Her voice cracked. “I should have known all along. That car is a demon. Always has been. Always will be. But that’s not the worst part.”

She kept walking, waiting for Greyson to ask about the worst part. But he just quietly matched her pace. Without a word, he radiated a silent strength that she desperately craved, and yet at the same time she feared to depend on it too much. Because it could be taken away from her in a heartbeat, the same way her trust in Hellbringer had just been destroyed.

She stopped and studied the dark, cracked pavement at her feet.

Greyson stopped in front of her. He said nothing.

“The worst part is,” she said, “I don’t know what I’d do without him.”

Greyson’s leather jacket creaked as he folded his arms. His voice was a quiet rumble in his chest. “Are we talking about the car? Or me?”

She tried to will away the burning tears. He had spoken a scary kind of truth that she did not want to talk about, the kind that cut right down to her soul. But she knew it was coming, and she couldn’t avoid it.

“You don’t know if you can trust me.” He stated it as a flat fact, not an accusation. “Because I’m cursed. I’m part demon. Your friends tell you that I could turn on you. And you wonder if they’re right.”

She wanted to deny it, but she couldn’t. Not exactly. “I think you’re a good person. I know it.”

“But,” he said.

“But sometimes I have to wonder. When I see things like I just saw, Hellbringer handing over the apocalypse scroll to the most evil sorcerer in the world. How can I trust that speed demon ever again? How can you?”

Greyson turned his rugged face to look out across the empty fields. “I know Hellbringer. He’s changed. I’ve sensed it happening.”

She watched him carefully, wondering what exactly was going on behind those burning red eyes.

He turned those eyes toward her again, and the heat inside them made her melt just a little bit. “I’ve changed, too. Because of you.”

She shook her head. “No, I haven’t done—”

“Yes. You have.” He wrapped his strong hands around her arms. “You don’t give yourself enough credit for the difference you make. You don’t realize just how much good you actually do.”

A hard lump formed in her throat.

“Before I met you,” he said, “I felt like the world was an awful place. Full of people who were just out for themselves. But now I know that’s not true.” His words came out slowly, as if he had trouble finding the right thing to say. But as he spoke, she could hear the certainty in his voice. “Hellbringer is a demon. Always has been, always will be, like you said. But even demons can change. For the better. Because of you. I know that for a fact.” He took a deep breath, and his chest swelled. He let it out slowly. “Maybe I deserve to be cursed, to be part demon. Maybe I don’t. But either way, this is how things are. If I have to fight to keep Hellbringer on our side, I will. And if I have to fight to earn your trust, I will.” He leaned closer, and she could feel his warm breath on her cheek. “Every day, you remind me that some things are worth fighting for.”

She kissed him hard then, and held him tight, wanting to drink in everything about him until she lost all sense of time or place. The rest of the world faded away, taking all of her worries and doubts with it. There was only the two of them together, and it felt like it could go on that way forever.

She finally broke away to catch her breath. But she still clung to him, feeling his strength, recognizing the truth down deep inside that whispered they belonged together. Greyson and Hellbringer were a package deal, inseparable. And if she believed in him—which she did, completely—then she could believe in Hellbringer, too.

As Greyson held her, she looked past him to the slitted red taillights of the demon car, and suddenly realized the full implications of what she’d seen in Tartarus. She pulled away from Greyson’s embrace just enough to look up into his serious expression. “Hellbringer knows where the apocalypse scroll came from.”

He nodded as he absorbed her words. She could almost see the gears turning in his head. “So that means . . .”

She headed for the car, leading him by the hand. “Hellbringer knows where we need to go to put the scroll back.”

* * *

Hellbringer’s engine let out a steady purr as the demon car carried them, endlessly fleeing from the wraiths that were somewhere back there in the night. As they drove, Dru turned around in the front passenger seat and told Rane and Salem everything she’d seen through the scrying spell. By the time she was done, Salem stared furiously at nothing, puzzling over her words, his hands steepled before him.

Beside him in the back seat, Rane just looked perplexed. She chewed on her lip. “That doesn’t make any sense. I mean, like they put on fish?”

“What?” Dru’s brain struggled to make the connection, and utterly failed. “I don’t…What?”

“Tartar sauce.” Rane made a face. “I don’t get it.”

“No, no. I said we have to get to Tartarus.”

“All of us?”

“Well, that’s the idea. I don’t think we have any choice.” Rane resolutely shook her head side to side. “No way, dude. Nobody gets to tartar me.”

“No, no. That’s not what—”

“Probably good for your skin though. Oh, my God, I want fish and chips so bad.” Rane made lip-smacking sounds.

Dru’s phone rang. It was Opal. With a sigh, Dru held up one finger, signaling for Rane to just stay silent for one minute. No matter how soon she got the crystals to cure Rane, it couldn’t be soon enough. “Opal. Are you okay? Were you able to get the crystals we need?”

“About time you finally got reception,” Opal’s voice crackled in her ear. “Where are you right now, anyway?”

Dru glanced over at Greyson, whose gaze cut up to the rearview mirror. “About three hours outside of Denver,” he said.

“Ugh,” Opal said. “I’m not driving out that far.”

“This is really important,” Dru said. “I need one more thing. My green vivianite crystal.”

Opal’s put-upon sigh turned wary. “Why? That’s for opening a portal to the netherworld.”

“Exactly. I have a solution to our problem.”

Opal made an unpleasant noise. “Which one? I’ve lost count.”

“About what to do with the apocalypse scroll.”

“Oh, that one.”

Dru idly nudged the scroll with her toe, which was currently sitting on Hellbringer’s black carpeted floor, between her feet. She found it strange that an artifact so powerful, so highly sought after, was so small and old, and rather smelly, too. “All this time, we’ve been thinking that the Harbingers found the scroll. But they weren’t the first. It was actually Decimus. He found the Shining City, and descended all the way down to Tartarus. And with the help of . . .” She glanced nervously around the shadowy interior of the car, and out along the long hood onto the dark road ahead. “With the help of a demon, he got the scroll, and that’s what started this whole doomsday thing, thousands of years ago. But we can undo that! We can put the scroll back where it belongs. All we need to do is get away from these wraiths, get everyone fixed up, and then find a portal to the netherworld.”

“Oh. Is that all? Piece of cake, then.” Opal’s sarcasm practically oozed through the phone.

“Well, I didn’t say it would be easy.”

Opal was silent for a long moment. “So that’s your plan? How exactly are you going to put the scroll back without getting burned to a crisp or having your soul devoured? You do realize that Tartarus is not only full of red-hot lava, it’s also chock full of demons. And you’re a mortal being, which makes you basically demon kibbles. You’re going to, what, knock politely? Wear a disguise? Try to talk an infinite legion of freaky, hungry-ass demons into ignoring a tasty treat like you?”

“Umm . . .” Dru pursed her lips, thinking hard. “The details on the last part of the plan are still a little hazy. But hey, Decimus did it, so—”

“Oh, I see. You and him, you’re all pretty much on the same level. World-class sorcerers, masters of the fate of the universe. You know, I remember the good old days when you weren’t too big for your britches. You’ve been hanging out with Salem all night, haven’t you? Honey, you need to stop taking advice from anyone who never sees the light of day. Probably all that vitamin D deficiency is making him delusional.”

Dru shook her head. “That’s not what’s happening here.”

“Mmm-hmm. Did it ever occur to you to wonder how, exactly, the Harbingers ended up floating around in the dark as dispossessed wraiths?”

“Well, you know, I just sort of figured . . .” Dru’s voice trailed off. She hadn’t actually figured that part out yet. She glanced nervously back at Salem, who was still doing his frowning, finger-steepling thing.

“Honey. Let me tell you something,” Opal said. “The Harbingers did all of this to themselves. Those people may have been super-powerful, but that wasn’t enough for them. Because no matter how much power you have, it’s never enough. To get more, they made deals with demons to do their dirty work. Deee-monnns. You hear me? You can’t try to do what they did. You can’t. It will destroy you. No one comes back normal from that.”

Her words stung, because they were true. “Well. Being normal is overrated, anyway.”

“You know what I mean.”

Dru wanted so badly to tell Opal that she was all wrong. But was she?

Dru knew that she had survived all of this apocalyptic mayhem so far partly because of her half-demon boyfriend and his demon-possessed car. So on the surface, it did seem like she was headed down the same dark path as the Harbingers. Just like them, she had made her own arrangements with demons. But she knew in her heart that her situation was different. She wasn’t power-hungry or corrupt. She was trying to save the world.

Then again, the Harbingers had insisted they were trying to save the world from itself. They had said all of the same things. Dru knew there was a difference between them, but it was hazy and indistinct, and that troubled her. Was this exactly the sort of thinking that had darkened the Harbingers’ souls until they became bodiless undead creatures of the night?

Was she doomed to end up the same way? The thought terrified her. But the hard fact was that right now, she didn’t have any other options, and time was running out. They couldn’t keep fleeing forever.

Dru tried to swallow down the hard lump of fear in her throat, but it stayed stubbornly put. “We have to do this. We will find a way.”

“Even if…?” Opal didn’t finish the thought out loud. From the heartbreak in her voice, Dru knew what she was thinking: Even if she ended up like the Harbingers.

“No matter what,” Dru said, hating how small and fragile her voice sounded, and especially hating that she knew everyone else in the car could hear that. With an effort, she cleared her throat and forced a strength into her voice that she didn’t truly feel. “Like it or not, we have the scroll now. And we have to find a way to end this. At any cost.” She didn’t turn to look at any of the others. She couldn’t bear to meet their gazes. “In the meantime, Rane really, really needs to get herself back in balance.” Drug resisted adding, Before she drives me out of my mind. “We need those crystals from the shop.”

“Honey, I’ve got all that. And something even better.” Pride swelled in her voice. “Did some research of my own, and I found stones that’ll give you a fighting chance against the wraiths. Not moon rocks, but other rocks from outside this world. According to Tristram, anyway, any kind of meteorite will do.”

A ray of hope lit Dru from within. Meteoric rocks were few and far between, and those containing crystals were even rarer. But if she had a crystal, maybe she could energize it enough to fight back against the wraiths. She thought fast, trying to think of meteoric crystals. “Do we have any olivine crystals? Maybe some pallasite?”

“Way ahead of you. I also found you a piece of coesite and a nice big hunk of stishovite, too. Well, I say ‘nice’ because of the size, not the looks. These rocks are ugly as all get-out. But most meteorites are.”

“Opal, you’re a genius.”

“Don’t have to tell me that. I know it. Problem is, we don’t have much. Three rocks, total. Two of them are pretty small. But the big one is a pallasite specimen full of olivine crystals.”

“I’ll take it. Anything is better than nothing. What worries me is that those wraiths are still back there somewhere, still following us. I just don’t know how to meet up with you and get those rocks from you. We can’t turn around and come back, or we’ll lead them straight back to you.”

“Don’t you worry about that. I’ve got someone here who owes me a great big favor,” Opal said cryptically. The phone rustled as she pressed it against the fabric of her shirt. “You ready for this, sweetie?”