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Daredevils
—
The universe might not have branded Dimitriou a demon, but the slow curving of his mouth made him resemble one. Probably Yasmin shouldn’t have provoked him. She didn’t want to find out how he meant to stop them. She wanted to escape with Joseph and his clever phone and all the proof on it.
Joseph had the same idea, it seemed.
“I’m sure there’s some mutually beneficial agreement we could come to,” he proposed.
Dimitriou laughed. “You two delight me. You really do. You especially.” He wagged his head at Yasmin. “Beauty and brains—not to mention charisma! You make me sorry I have to incite your demise. If you’d been a bit more compliant, or willing to pretend, I’d have enjoyed marrying you. Safiye can be a tad socially standoffish. You, however, would have secured every citizen’s devotion.”
Yasmin gaped at him. What did a woman say to this sort of speech? Not ‘thank you,’ she was certain.
“Ah, well,” Dimitriou sighed. “No point delaying the necessary. Tara, dear? If you’re done with your treat, turn on the generator and wake the others. I’m feeling threatened by these two. My life may be in danger. I suspect I need defense.”
Tara zipped off so quickly Yasmin and Joseph gasped in unison. The cake had done more than heal her. Now she was super-energized.
“Don’t even try,” Dimitriou said to Joseph, who was gathering his resources. “I’ve set wards in this office. You can’t attack me magically.”
Joseph was quicker in a corner than Yasmin. Seizing a carved mahogany guest chair, he ran at Dimitriou. The piece was heavy enough to bash in the other’s head. Sadly, he didn’t get the chance to try.
Tara and her living-dead friends arrived—the full twenty, by Yasmin’s count. The glimpse she had time for told her these bodies contained no souls. Their eyes were flat, their skin an odd greenish white. Older than Tara, they resembled not-quite-as-fresh corpses.
“Protect!” The sole male in the group commanded: the handyman, she presumed. “Protect the master!”
The females swarmed Joseph in a mass. Helpless before their numbers, he went down under them.
Yasmin’s effort to drag them off was futile.
“Stop!” she demanded anyway, putting her will behind it.
Dimitriou laughed delightedly. “Strong, aren’t they? I do remind you they’re immune to any spells but mine.”
Enraged—and stubborn—she yanked the cold arms harder. The zombies were slapping and pinching Joseph . . . maybe from former girly habit? Despite their poor fighting skills, they were having an effect. They hummed excitedly when one of them drew blood.
“You could try assaulting me like he did,” Dimitriou pointed out to her. “I think I’d enjoy that.”
“Don’t,” Joseph warned as he struggled beneath the pile. “You’ll just convince his pets they need to attack you. They respond to any threat to him.”
“Damn it,” she cursed in frustration. This was how Dimitriou squirmed out of responsibility for his kills.
Their laughing host had another offer. “Perhaps you’d like a chance to escape. As luck would have it, there’s a secret door in the paneling. Yes, behind the desk. It opens when you press and turn the third brass flower.”
This had to be another trick, but Yasmin didn’t care. A chance was a chance, and at the moment she’d take it.
She vaulted the desk and wrenched the small flower around. A section of wall made a grinding noise as it swung open. Revealed behind it was a rough stone passage, lit by veins of something that glowed pale blue.
Her best guess was that the veins contained concentrations of wild magic.
“Come on,” she urged, reaching down to grab Joseph’s arm.
Dimitriou must have given his pets a signal. Her tug succeeded in pulling Joseph free. Though he cursed, he scrambled up into the tunnel along with her.
“He’s not letting us go,” he panted as they ran. “The minute he gives the word, that gang will come after us.”
“A chance is a chance. Maybe he wants to make this a game.”
“A rigged game,” he retorted.
She refused to waste her breath arguing. The tunnel was sloping upward and bending left. Fresher air blew down it.
“Crap,” Joseph said. “Now we really are headed toward the cliff.”
She feared he was correct. The tingly spiderweb sensations they’d felt outside were strengthening.
“And here they come,” Joseph said as the noise of their pursuers grew audible. Still running, he twisted around to see. “Dimitriou isn’t with them. Tara is out in front.”
“She’s the strongest. Maybe the others will tire out.”
Joseph grunted. This, she supposed, was better than flat out saying he doubted it. To make matters even more dire, they didn’t have much runway left. Something that looked an awful lot like daylight brightened the too-near distance. Her muscles faltered from their swift pace.
Daylight didn’t mean safety if it came from the In-Between.
“We have to make a stand,” Joseph said. “We can’t let them drive us into the mists. We might as well commit suicide.”
He dug his heels in and caught her wrist.
“Damn it,” she said, letting him yank her to a halt. To her dismay, she was trembling and sweating all over.
“We’ll make them work for it,” he said. “Maybe that will be enough to turn Dimitriou dark.”
If he hadn’t turned dark for killing his other victims, she didn’t see why he would for them. Grinding her teeth together suppressed the words. An idea that was likely pointless occurred to her. Because pointless was all she had, she spoke firmly.
“We’re farther from Dimitriou’s influence now. I’m going to try to wake up their consciences. —They have memories,” she added when Joseph pulled in a breath to speak. “At the least, we can appeal to the people they used to be.”
“Very well,” he said, though he looked as skeptical as she felt. “If you need extra power, I’ve got some stashed.”
She didn’t know what he meant. Her magic was still partly damped by Dimitriou’s wards. Worse, the increasing nearness of In-Betweens confused it too much to rely on. Was Joseph so much more powerful he wasn’t affected? She didn’t have time to ask. Dimitriou’s undead slaves had caught up. If she hadn’t been about to die, she’d have laughed at them bunching up and stumbling when their leader Tara stopped.
“Hey,” Tara pouted. “You’re supposed to keep running.”
“If we keep running, we’ll fall into the In-Betweens.”
“Good,” Tara said. “You can’t hurt our master then.”
“But he’s trying to hurt us. And he’s using you to do it. Once upon a time, you’d have known that was wrong.”
“Pah,” Tara scoffed. “He’s the master. Everything he does is right.”
The gang she led rumbled in agreement.
“He killed you,” Yasmin said, deciding she had nothing to lose by reminding her. “He had the Handy Man strangle you. His hands match the marks on your throat.”
“They don’t,” Tara denied, though she touched the bruises reflexively. “You’re a big fat liar.”
The Handy Man shouldered up beside her.
“I protected him,” he corrected, thick and slow.
“From Tara?” Joseph said scornfully, joining her campaign to win hearts and minds. “Look how tiny she is. Plus she adores him. How could she be a threat? Your master didn’t need to kill her. She was simply an annoyance.”
“Hey!” Tara said. “I’m the favorite.”
“Safiye is his favorite. He’s marrying her. And he’d have been glad to marry Yasmin. You heard him say so yourself.”
Tara shook her head stubbornly. “Nuh-uh, your smoke is on fire!”
“Stop that,” the Handy Man interrupted.
To Yasmin’s surprise, he didn’t mean Joseph. One of the other zombies had taken hold of his meaty hands and was lifting them to her throat.
“They do match,” the female said in a tone of discovery. “I remember him strangling me!”
“Ivy,” Yasmin breathed, recognizing her.
The pallid djinniya turned. Her widened eyes held a spark of—if not life—then intelligence. “People called me that when I was alive.”
“You are alive,” Tara scolded. “The master perfected you.”
Ivy ignored her. She took a step toward Yasmin. “You know the truth, don’t you? I was . . .” She furrowed her brow and frowned. “I wasn’t like this. I didn’t follow mindlessly. I was a good person.”
“You were. Your name was Ivy Ozil. You were a good person and a mother.”
“A mother.”
“You had two children, a boy Acanthus and a girl Columbine. They have black hair and green eyes like you.”
“Acanthus,” Ivy said, testing out the name. “And Columbine is my daughter. She . . . I think she likes chasing butterflies. My husband says we should have—”
She stopped, her dim eyes welling up with tears.
“Your husband’s name is Cedric,” Yasmin said softly. “If you don’t help us, Dimitriou plans to kill him and take your children into his orphanage.”
“You’re telling the truth,” Ivy whispered. “I can hear it in your voice. I was always good at that. I was . . . I knew he lied about stealing those ruby trees!”
Apart from Tara and now Ivy, the other zombies seemed not to have much initiative. They’d barely moved while Ivy spoke, simply walling off the tunnel with a barricade of bodies that didn’t blink or breathe. Yasmin didn’t think they were out of power, more like conserving their energy. Still, Ivy switching sides might be sufficient to turn to the tide.
Yasmin focused her voice to reach only her.
“You’ll stand with us,” she said, praying this was true. “You’ll help us fight for your family’s sake.”
“I want to,” Ivy said. “But there are a lot of them. And Tara is very strong. Dimitriou gives her the cakes now.”
“What if you had one?” Joseph asked softly. He reached into his pocket. To Yasmin’s amazement, his hand came out with one of Dimitriou’s silver disks. Where in the world had he gotten that?
“I magicked this from behind a tile in the dormitory. While Tara was distracted. Do you know how to draw energy from it?”
“Oh, yes,” Ivy said, both hands reaching out longingly. A moment later, she pulled them back. “Even if I eat that, I can’t destroy them all. Maybe not even Tara. The best I can try is to hold them back while you look for a safe way out.”
They had no reason to think a safe way out existed.
“We’ll take it,” Yasmin said. “Goddess bless you.”
Ivy pulled a face to say what she thought about the prospect of a deity helping her.
“You never know,” Joseph said, and passed the cake over.
As soon as she had it, he grabbed Yasmin’s hand and ran.
The zombies woke up then, uttering animal cries of protest and—from the sound of it—flinging themselves at their newly powered-up opponent. Ivy must have eaten her boost quickly. She was keeping the others from pursuit, enough that Joseph and Yasmin soon put the mob behind them.
The downside was that as they ran, the light of the In-Betweens grew brighter. Soon the tunnel mouth was more than a fuzzy glow. Yasmin saw heaving clouds in the opening.
“Can you smoke yet?” Joseph panted. “You could try phasing through the earth.”
“I can’t change any more than you! We’re stuck in our solid bodies. Plus, I wouldn’t dare pass through those wild magic veins. Goddess knows what it would do to me. —Don’t slow down,” she ordered when Joseph instinctively began to. “Maybe we can scale the cliff above the tunnel mouth.”
He cursed but forced himself onward.
Grateful for that, she didn’t scold when he dropped to his knees six feet from the passage end. She closed the final distance, shuddering all over as she gripped a rock and leaned out the opening. The mists swallowed up her head, blinding her. She couldn’t see the nose on her face, much less a safe path upward. Determined not give up, she ran her hand up the outside wall.
Shit, shit, shit, she swore in her head at what she found. Though her shrinking nerves didn’t want to, she moved to explore the other side.
“Damn it,” she bit out, retreating into the tunnel.
Seated on his heels, Joseph looked up at her.
“The stone is smooth as glass,” she admitted. “As if the mists polished it. There’s not a single handhold to grab onto.”
“Okay,” he said, his golden eyes strangely calm. “We take the only choice we have and go down fighting.”
She knew Stefan’s pets would kill them. So did Joseph, it sounded like.
“That’s not our only choice.”
His calm face twisted. “Yasmin . . .”
“We can jump,” she said stubbornly. “Maybe the In-Betweens will kill us, but maybe we’ll last long enough to escape. Things survive in there, Joseph. Even living things, if you count ruby trees and that damned Nessie. I think we can do it. I think we’re strong enough.”
Joseph swallowed. “I’m not sure I can force myself to leap.”
“You’ll be with me,” she pleaded. “We’ll be leaping together.”
His eyes went shiny. He seemed to understand what her words betrayed.
“I can’t leave you behind,” she said, willing to destroy any possible doubt. If she lived to regret it, she’d count herself lucky. “If the chance I make it is one in millions, I don’t want that chance without you.”
He shifted on his heels. “We—” He cleared his throat. “We . . . probably do have better odds of surviving together.”
In spite of everything, she smiled and held out her hand to him.
He grinned back—a bit wryly—and then all hell broke loose.
A grisly object sailed in her direction, coming at her so fast she didn’t have time to jerk away. The object missed her face by inches, close enough to reveal that it was Ivy’s head. Her black hair trailed like a banner, her neck ripped bloodlessly from the rest of her. Her widened eyes and mouth gave her a look of horror.
Half a heartbeat later, the mists made her disappear.
“I ate her cake!” Tara exulted. “Ivy tried to save some for later, but I got the rest of it.”
Tara truly was charged up now. Her eyes were fiery, her hair and her poufy skirt floating out with the power surplus. Though she’d arrived before the others, their growl and clatter were close behind.
“Jump!” Tara screamed. “Jump and be gone like that traitor!”
She chucked another body part toward the gulf: Ivy’s severed arm this time. A hand followed and then a foot, both of which vanished instantly. Tara and her crew must have literally torn Ivy limb from limb.
Joseph was on his feet now, his fingers iron on Yasmin’s wrist.
“Jesus,” he breathed in shock.
“The fish man won’t save you,” Tara taunted. “You’ll die like the master wants.”
“We have to jump,” Yasmin urged. “While we have the chance. If they tear us apart, we’re done.”
“KILL!” came the Handyman’s bearlike voice. “PROTECT THE MASTER!”
The zombies behind him roared like a crowd whose team was winning a polo match. They surged together toward her and Joseph.
Yasmin wouldn’t have thought she’d be thankful for such a thing, but their advance broke Joseph from his paralysis.
“Shit,” he said, spinning with her to face the wall of mists.
They didn’t need more than a single bound to reach the final ledge.
With Joseph pulling her after him, they leaped into nothingness.