River
I winced as the blade sliced across my flesh, cutting deep. Blood welled in my palm. I closed my fingers before lifting my fist and raising it over the gateway. No blood trickled out, but I could feel its warmth pooling within my hand. Kobal cursed loudly, and his hand shot out toward mine. Before he could touch me, I grabbed his arm and jerked it back.
“No!” I told him.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But let me do it.”
I looked back across the circular opening of Hell to where Angela stood at the edge of the circle. There was no breeze, but her wheat-blonde hair floated about her shoulders as her kelly green eyes held mine. She’d been materializing every night on the steps of the bar since we’d arrived. Today, she’d also appeared to me again while I’d been bathing in the stream.
There had been an urgency in her eyes. One that I hadn’t seen since she’d tried to keep Vargas and me from entering the canagh nest. I felt her urgency as if it were my own. Felt the sands of time slipping rapidly through the hourglass as surely as the blood seeped from my cut, and pooled in my closed hand. What would happen when the sand ran out? I didn’t know, but it wouldn’t be good.
Standing across from me, Angela held her own fisted hand over the hole. No blood flowed from her, but I somehow knew this was what she’d wanted me to do. Had Lucifer used blood to open and close his own gateway before? Had it been his blood, or someone else’s?
I didn’t know the answer to those questions, but I was willing to try anything right now.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the others coming slowly toward us. Kobal seized the wrist of my sliced hand.
My head turned toward him. “Let me do this.”
The thunderous look on his face caused the others to step away from us. Flames leapt to life at his fingertips and danced up to his wrist. Those flames would never burn me, but their presence signaled his loss of control as surely as the amber color flickering within his obsidian eyes.
“You have no idea what could happen by doing this,” he growled.
“And neither do you. We’ve had no idea about anything since I’ve arrived here, but something about this… just let me do it.”
I’d been about to say “feels right,” but I wasn’t so sure about that either. Nothing felt right anymore, but this felt like a step toward something. What that was, I didn’t know, but at least I was doing something different today.
My gaze returned to Angela as she opened her palm over the hole. I did the same. Blood slid freely from the gash I’d created, I barely registered the pain as I watched the blood dripping into the pit. When I lifted my head again, Angela was looking past me toward the doors. She blinked before vanishing.
“Damn it!” I spat.
“What?” Kobal inquired.
“Angela—”
“Is that why you’re doing this? You don’t know what she is.”
“I don’t, but I trust her.”
His fingers tightened their grip on my wrist. If he chose to pull me away, he could, and there was nothing I could do to stop him. He was far stronger than me, and though my ability to wield life had knocked him on his ass before, I would never use it against him again, no matter how tempting it might be sometimes.
“You told me you would try to speak with me, and listen to me, instead of just giving commands,” I reminded him. “I’m asking you to listen to me now.”
His gaze held mine while he waged a battle with himself. His dominant, demon nature, that would die to protect his Chosen, wanted to snatch me up and run. The part of him that had started to understand my more emotional, human side realized I would fight him every step of the way. I’d gotten away from him before, I would do it again if he tried to bend me to his will once more, and he knew it.
“River—”
“We’ve tried everything else. Let me try this before climbing in there,” I said far more calmly than I felt. Please don’t force me to stop or leave. I didn’t think our relationship could take it if he disregarded my feelings again. “Don’t you prefer to have me standing here with you, rather than walking in there?”
The muscles of his arm bulged as his eyes stopped switching between colors and burned the color of molten gold. More fire blazed over his skin; it licked up to circle around his elbows. A burst of clipped words, uttered in his guttural demon language, came from him. I didn’t have to understand demonish to know it had been a spat of curses.
He squeezed my wrist before releasing it and stepping away from me. Running his hand through his hair, he tugged at the ends of it as he turned to pace a few feet away from me. The others moved out of his way when he stalked ten feet before turning and coming back at me. He stopped beside me. His body was coiled to leap into action, but he didn’t try to grab me again.
I had no doubt he’d tear me away from this place at the first sign of trouble. For now though, he would not interfere. Taking a deep breath, I turned my attention back to the hole before me. The blood flowed from my palm, dripping into the pit and splattering onto the narrow trail winding into the unfathomable depths of Hell beneath us.
Closing my eyes, I concentrated on drawing on the life pulsing through the Earth beneath my boots. It wasn’t the vibrant pulse I’d always felt before coming here, but I welcomed it into me as I pulled it forth. I compelled the flow of it into my hand and into the blood slipping from me.
Close, I willed the gateway as I formed the mental image of the Earth shifting and sliding forth to knit together within my mind.
Opening my eyes, awe slid through me as golden-blue sparks danced across my fingertips. They flowed into the blood slipping from me to turn it a pinkish color. Erin, Vargas, and Hawk crowded closer; Bale and Corson remained unmoving. Kobal stood rigidly beside me, his eyes fixed on the pit.
A feeling of rightness stole through me as my blood continued to become paler in color from the growing light encircling my hand and wrist. The light intensified, but the flow of blood eased as the healing powers of the Earth and my increased rate of healing worked to close the cut.
Keeping my hand over the pit, I reached up with my other hand and sliced the blade across my palm again. Kobal spit out another round of curses as sharp inhalations from the others sounded around me. This time I barely winced at the bite of the blade piercing my flesh.
The darkness in the pit below slinked back as my radiant blood dripped down to chase the shadows back. My breath came faster, excitement coursed through me as more of the pit was revealed. I realized it wasn’t a narrow trail along the sides of the walls beneath us, but a winding pathway the size of a road that led deeper and deeper into the bowels below us.
I still couldn’t see the bottom. I wasn’t sure there was a bottom, but whereas I’d only been able to see ten feet into Hell before, now I could see almost a hundred feet down. With every drop of blood, the shadows slipped further away to reveal more of the road.
“Ay dios mio,” Vargas whispered. He lifted his cross necklace and kissed it.
“The road to Hell,” Hawk muttered from beside him.
Kobal stepped closer to me, the energy of his life flowed into my back to coalesce with my powers. I had no idea what took me over, but without realizing I intended to do it, I placed my other palm against his chest. My back arched and my head fell back as the pulse of his life flooded my blood.
Kobal jerked, and his hand encompassed my wrist, but instead of trying to pull me away, he flattened my hand against his chest and held onto me. Love for him swelled within me, causing the light dancing over my fingers to grow. I thought I heard the shadows hiss, but I couldn’t be sure over the crackling of energy flowing out to cover my entire arm before spreading across my chest.
No matter how far the shadows slid away, or how bright the light grew, the hole remained open and the same size. I sliced my palm five more times while keeping a mental picture of the gate closing in my mind, but it made no difference as time stretched onward.
Weakness seeped into my muscles, and the flow of my blood eased, but I refused to move away from the hole. I released Kobal to slice my palm open again, but he grasped my wrist before I could.
“Enough,” he said gently.
“It will work,” I grated through my teeth. “It is doing something.”
“You’re burning yourself out, not to mention the amount of blood you’re losing.”
“I can do this.”
His hand around my wrist slid over my arm and around to cup my face. He clasped hold of my chin before turning my head toward him. Concern and love filled his eyes. “You’re going to make yourself sick. You’ve made progress, but if you keep going, it will all be for nothing. You’re barely standing anymore.”
I wanted to fight him on it, but I couldn’t deny the way my body swayed. This had to work. It would work. I was getting closer to figuring out how to close it, and I would figure out the key eventually, but not if I couldn’t stand anymore.
I closed my hand and pulled it away from the hole. The energy I’d been borrowing from the Earth and Kobal flowed back into its sources. The shadows of Hell rushed forward once more to fill in the space my blood had cleared, obscuring the depths we’d just been able to see.
Kobal jerked me back and jumped in front of me when the shadows leapt from the pit and snapped toward me. A hair-raising snarl tore from him as he bared his fangs at the shadows. This time I was certain the shadows hissed before they swiftly retreated into the hole to slither over the top of each other like a pit of snakes.
“Well, shit,” Hawk muttered, and Vargas kissed his cross again.
“They can’t do anything to you,” Corson said.
“What are they?” Erin inquired.
“Hell shadows,” Corson answered. “Unlike your shadows, they can move of their own free will, but they are unable to touch you.”
I edged away from the hole, determined to stay upright and strong, but my knees gave out on my third step. Kobal swept me up and into his arms before I could hit the ground and firmly braced me against his chest. Draping my arms around his neck, I pressed against him as tremors racked my body.
His breath warmed my ear. “Easy, Mah Kush-la. I have you.”
As Kobal turned to walk away, I caught the concerned looks Corson and Bale exchanged with each other. Erin, Vargas, and Hawk were pale, but hope shimmered in their eyes for the first time in weeks. My gaze slid to the pit. I wanted to feel hopeful too, but I felt like I’d just completed a triathlon.
It will be better tomorrow. I told myself this, but I wasn’t convinced.