30

UNDER A HOLLOW SKY

Dru clutched the scroll tight to her chest as Hellbringer screamed downhill into the darkness. The unrelenting descent made her stomach try to crawl up into her throat. Rough black rock rose high on either side, disappearing beyond the reach of the headlights, reflecting the roar of the engine so hard that its echo drummed into Dru’s bones. But the demon car didn’t slow down. If anything, it sped up as it hurtled down into the depths.

Salem leaned forward from the back seat, gripping Dru’s shoulder with his wiry fingers. “We have a problem!” he shouted over the thudding noise of the exhaust. “Where are the wraiths?”

Dru looked back. The spear of light marking the archway rapidly shrank into the distance. Everything else around them was impenetrable darkness.

“We must have lost them,” Dru said, wondering why she didn’t feel more relieved. “The wraiths must not be willing to follow us down here.”

Salem’s eyeliner-ringed eyes looked haunted. “No. Those are the Harbingers. They’re willing to do anything.”

He was right, Dru realized. Something was terribly wrong.

She peered out through the darkened windows, trying to look in all directions at once. Somewhere from above came a flicker of light, so faint and distant that she wouldn’t have noticed it if she hadn’t been looking for it. It danced like a bolt of lightning, but there was something about the quality of the light itself that she recognized immediately.

It was a magic spell.

All this time, the wraiths had chased them, and never once had any of them cast a spell. Not even here, in the netherworld, when they had been right behind Hellbringer. At first, she had theorized that they couldn’t use their magic here in the netherworld. But that wasn’t true at all, she realized. Instead, they had been holding off until they could spring a trap.

An icy spike of fear drove through her as she realized what that meant. She grabbed Greyson’s arm. “Stop the car! Now!”

Greyson always checked with Dru before he did anything drastic. Usually just a silent glance, waiting for her to nod or shake her head. The level of trust he placed in her was humbling, in a way, and one of the things that she had grown to love about him. It really felt like the two of them operated as an inseparable team. But this time, Greyson didn’t so much as glance her way. There was no time.

Instantly, he slammed on the brakes.

The tires howled in protest, a heart-stopping shriek that clawed at Dru’s eardrums. Hellbringer’s long nose dove down toward the ground, as if the car was bowing. Everything inside, including her, catapulted toward the windshield. Rane grabbed her shoulders. Dru had forgotten her seat belt, and only Rane’s catlike reflexes and unbreakable grip kept her safely pinned in the seat. Greyson, meanwhile, caught Salem as he pitched over the seats between them and nearly face-planted into the dashboard.

The speed demon only grudgingly slowed to a halt, swishing back and forth on screaming tires. The inside of the car filled with the scorched smell of overheated brakes and the throat-coating stench of melted rubber. Thick white tire smoke drifted through the headlight beams.

When at last they came to a full stop, Salem glared up at her from the vicinity of her knees, his hair tangled over his face. “That’s a little bit dramatic, don’t you think?”

Before Dru could answer, a deep rumble shook everything. The terrifying sound of falling rocks tumbling and cracking against one another. By the time Dru realized it what it was, Salem was already trying to shove her out of the car.

“Out, out, out!” he yelled, pushing at her. His skinny arms were remarkably strong.

As he started climbing across her lap, she pushed the door open and got out. The air was dry and unnaturally hot, thick with choking fumes, and it shuddered with the weight of unseen boulders plummeting down from above. Dru gaped up at the flickering outlines of the wraiths high above them, swooping and swarming through the chasm. Flashes of magic—arcs of lightning, streams of multicolored fire, whirlwinds of sparks—blasted loose an avalanche of falling rocks.

The wraiths were using their magic to bring down a rock slide. The ground trembled beneath Dru’s feet with the impact of each falling boulder as it hit the ground ahead of Hellbringer. The demon car—and all of them inside it—would have been crushed if Greyson hadn’t stopped in time.

Salem scrambled out of the car on his hands and knees. Instantly, he was on his feet. His fingers swept spidery patterns through the air as he strode around in front of the car and across the headlight beams. An ethereal haze surrounded his body, noticeably purer than the eerie glow of the wraiths.

Ahead, rolling clouds of rock dust were blown away by the invisible force of his magic, creating hollow tunnels in thin air. At the hazy limits of Hellbringer’s headlights, dark rock boulders the size of wrecked cars crashed against one another and clattered down, threatening to block the only entrance to Tartarus.

But the angle of their descent changed abruptly as Salem swept his hands side to side, buffeting them with magic. They tumbled like asteroids colliding in deep space.

For a heart-stopping instant, Dru’s mind flashed back to the horrible moment when Salem had once stood at the foot of a mountain, facing down an oncoming avalanche. Back then, he had been unable to stop the falling rocks completely, and they had buried him so deeply Dru had been sure he was dead. She couldn’t bear to watch that happen again.

But this time was different. This time, Salem wasn’t standing in the kill zone right beneath the falling rocks, and he wasn’t trying to stop them, exactly. Instead, he swept them left and right as they fell, left and right, piling them up on the sides, leaving a pathway open through the center. He steered one particularly large slab into the middle, forming a crude capstone on top. Suddenly, he had built an archway of his own, and the rest of the rock slide proceeded to pile up atop it harmlessly.

Rane got out of the car and touched the bare steel of the door latch mechanism. Her entire body turned into shining steel, as if she’d been dipped in quicksilver. She pointed past Salem and gave a metallic shout over the thunderous roar of the falling rocks. “D! He made a tunnel!”

“I see it!” Dru pushed her glasses up her nose. “That guy must be really good at Tetris.”

“Dude, you have no idea.”

Above, the wraiths had obviously figured out what Salem was doing. With a chorus of bloodcurdling screeches, they swooped down to attack.

The wraiths intended to trap them here in this chasm, Dru realized, and drain their souls one by one. Worse, Dru had delivered the apocalypse scroll right to them. Practically laid it at their feet. All they had to do was come down here to collect it.

Sinuous green fireballs and jagged bolts flew from the wraiths’ skeletal hands. Salem sidestepped and deflected them with a rippling blast of force, but he was horribly outnumbered.

“I gotta help him!” Rane pointed a metal finger at the cardboard tray sitting on the floor in front of the passenger seat, and the crystals that were scattered on the carpet around it. “Find me those space rocks! I’m going to crush them into powder and go all Armageddon on these jack-wads.”

“Hang on!” Dru bent and searched around the dirty carpet for the small pieces of coesite and stishovite, but everything had been thrown in random directions by the emergency stop. She found the glittering pyramid of quartz and the shiny fragment of pyrite. But she couldn’t find the rocks that she desperately needed. “Son of a Bieber! Where are they?”

Greyson leaned over from the driver’s seat, where he held onto the apocalypse scroll. An unspoken question formed on his face.

She tried to describe what she was looking for. “The space rocks. Two brown, lumpy things, look a little melted. Kind of shaped like an Almond Joy.”

For an agonizing moment, neither of them found anything. Then he reached beneath his seat and came up with a chunk of gray metallic stone. The tiny yellow crystals embedded in it flickered like yellow caution lights in the glow from the dashboard. “How about this?”

Dru was about to say no, but she suddenly had a better idea. “Perfect!” She snatched it from him and turned to hold it out to Rane. “This is pallasite.”

Rane looked confused. “The crystals?”

“No, the crystals in it are olivine.” Dru waved her other hand at Rane’s even more puzzled expression. “That’s not important right now! What’s important is the rock itself.” Dru tapped the stone’s rough outer edge. “Pallasite is basically a chunk of meteorite, high in nickel and iron, and it’s extraterrestrial. The book said the wraiths can only be harmed by a rock that comes from beyond our world. You can transform into this.” In her excitement, Dru practically shoved it in Rane’s face. “Be the rock!”

When Rane finally understood, a predatory grin split her face. She clamped her steel fingers over the pallasite with a metallic clank. A darker, rougher texture swept across her skin as she transformed into meteoric nickel and iron, making her look like she’d been chiseled out of an asteroid.

A shrieking wraith swooped down toward them like a fiery comet with outstretched fingers and a black cavern of a mouth. The air in front of it shimmered as it prepared to unleash a spell.

With long, fast strides that rang like a church bell, Rane charged the wraith and swung a bulging fist made of solid meteoric iron. The wraith was so intent on casting its spell at Dru that it didn’t seem to consider Rane a threat. It raised its skeletal hands high, crackling with magic, just as Rane’s fist connected with its face.

With a sound like a wave crashing on a rocky beach, the screeching wraith broke apart into pinpoints of light and swaths of eerie mist. It scattered in pieces—arms, head, ribcage—and all of them turned toward Rane as if they were part of a whole body. Its fingers clawed with electric blue swirls of magic. They erupted into deadly jets of sizzling gas-blue flame.

But Dru was already holding out the sharp-edged chunk of metallic pallasite in both hands. She charged it with as much energy as she could manage, and immediately found herself on unfamiliar ground. The rock was older than the Earth itself, and the crystals inside it felt like nothing she had ever connected with before. Having originated in deep space, the pallasite gave off the most exotic vibrations she had ever experienced. They felt raw and hostile, yet at the same time incredibly powerful.

The little yellow peridot crystals embedded in the pallasite suddenly flared to life, releasing her energy as stabbing beams of blinding yellow light, all of them aimed in random directions. Several of them shot through the wraith’s jets of blue flame, refracting them like a prism so that they missed Rane completely.

The wraith’s dismembered parts snaked in between the yellow beams. The clawed hands raised to attack again.

But Rane didn’t give the wraith a chance to recover. Now she was a living weapon, forged from head to toe out of the wraith’s only weakness, and she exploited that to full effect. She threw a flurry of punches, jabs, and kicks at the severed portions of the wraith, individually pounding its arms, torso, and head into sparkling particles of mist. They kept swirling around and trying to reform into a whole being once more, but Rane pressed the attack relentlessly.

Salem, though, wasn’t faring as well. His invisible barriers barely held off the attacks of wraiths on three sides, while two more creatures streaked down toward him from above. “Little help here!” he yelled.

As Rane pivoted and charged to his rescue, Dru focused on the pallasite crystal in her hands. It was so alien that it was almost impossible to control, but she aimed its berserk yellow beams the best she could.

They shot out in all directions, stabbing through the darkness, slashing across the shimmering bodies of the wraiths. Geysers of hissing golden sparks burst out where they hit, drawing bone-chilling wails from the wraiths.

Momentarily distracted, their attention shifted to Dru, and a jolt of fear shot through her as all those pairs of burning, ghostly eyes turned her way.

Salem pounced on the momentary opportunity, and immediately swept his invisible force across them, turning their spells against each other before they could use them against Dru. The incompatible spells crossed one another, and shuddering explosions pounded the air overhead.

Meanwhile, Dru wrestled with her pallasite crystal. It behaved unlike any other crystal she had ever used, and the results were frighteningly unstable. The more she charged it up, the more unpredictable it became. Its vibrations grew greater and more dangerous, making the rock tremble in her hands. She tried to tamp it down, but instead it bucked against her, as if desperate to escape her grasp. It nearly knocked her flat on her back.

She didn’t see the wispy wraith hovering above her until it was too late. It was the same wraith Dru had first encountered in the darkness at Salem’s place, and it sent a flurry of shadow tentacles spiraling toward her.

Most of them were struck by the random yellow beams of energy streaming from the wildly kicking meteorite. Those severed tentacles atomized into smoke with a harsh crackle. But one of them made it through and struck the pallasite hard, tearing it from Dru’s grasp.

It soared up into the air, going dark the moment it left her touch. Dru hoped against hope that Salem would catch it with his magic and return it to her, but he was busy fighting for his life, with Rane at his back.

Dru stared in horror as the pallasite crashed to the ground and smashed into a hundred tumbling fragments.

A deliriously optimistic part of her brain insisted that maybe she could salvage it. Maybe there was some small piece of the pallasite she could scoop up and use to continue the fight. But she knew in her heart that the crystal was done for. And so was she, if she stuck around.

Hellbringer pulled up and the passenger door swung open right beside her. “Get in!” Greyson called to her.

“But, but, the crystal—”

His red eyes blazed. His right hand, holding the apocalypse scroll, rested on the gearshift knob. The vibration of the rumbling engine made the silver tines at the ends of the scroll glint in the dashboard lights. He lifted it and pointed at the archway Salem had built for them. “Get in!”

Dru immediately turned and looked for Rane. She was fighting back-to-back against the wraiths, holding her ground, but just barely. She was only a dozen yards away, but the distance between them swarmed with ghostly wraiths and fiery spells. There was no way for Dru to reach her. No way to help her.

Any moment, the wraiths would turn away from Rane and go after the scroll. Dru would lose the only opportunity she had to take it through the archway and down to Tartarus, and end this nightmare forever. But going now would mean leaving Rane and Salem to fight the wraiths alone.

Rane looked over at Dru, and the two of them locked gazes. Dru could see that Rane had reached the same grim conclusion.

“Come on!” Dru yelled, frantically waving for her to come back.

Rane just shook her head. A savage grin lit her face as she punched another wraith to smoky pieces. “Go! We’ll hold them here!”

“No!” Tears burned in Dru’s eyes as she beckoned with both arms. Leaving one of her best friends behind, in so much danger, was simply not an option. Dru refused to accept it. “Come on!”

From the car, Greyson yelled, “Dru! We only have one shot at this!”

Wraiths came at Rane from opposite sides. At the last second, one of them snapped its skull-like head in Greyson’s direction, as if suddenly noticing he held the scroll. Unearthly light rippled across its ghostly body as it turned toward them, preparing to attack.

Rane dodged around the other wraith and caught the skull-headed wraith with a high kick, severing one of its long arms and earning a hateful screech from it.

“Go!” Rane shouted furiously. “Go, go go!”

The longer Dru stood there, the slimmer their chances became. Every cell in her body wanted to stay and help Rane fight, but without the pallasite crystal, there was nothing she could do.

Numb, she sank into the passenger seat.

The door slammed. Hellbringer charged into motion.

Dru turned to look behind them, trying to catch one last glimpse of Rane. But just then Hellbringer shot into the crude rock archway. They squeezed through an opening so tight the side mirror bent in half with a bang, dragging sparks off the rock.

They shot onward through the darkness, descending even farther than Dru thought possible. Far ahead, a hellish red light stirred before them. It prodded Dru’s deepest instinctive fears, those that shied away from the images of searing pain and certain death brought by fire.

They had reached Tartarus.