Feeding Frenzy (The Summoner Sisters Book 1) (19 page)

“And if he’s giving us ten hours to cross a courtyard and climb some stairs…”

“There’s gotta be something else between us and the hellmouth,” she finishes for me.

“Dammit!  For the record, this is exactly what I
didn’t
want.”

“I’ll make sure that’s reflected in the minutes,” she responds wryly.  “At least it’s not that goddess whose name rhymes with ‘Clara’, right?”  Lia finds the positive spin again, carefully avoiding Hera’s name on this side of the curtain.  It’s true, at least with Hades we have a thin ray of hope—Hera would not have been that generous.  “Summer, watch out!” Lia cries as she tries to push me out of the way.  I’m too slow, which I learn as a pistol smashes into my right temple.  I think I’m beginning to identify constellations among all the stars I’ve been seeing lately.  I shake my head and see Lia awkwardly loping after Kline and Rodgers with her hands still bound behind her back as the two men make a break for the courtyard.

“Wait!  Don’t go out there!”  In desperation, Lia goes for a bone-jarring slide tackle, managing to trip up the detective.  She then flops over onto him, preventing him from getting up.

“You can’t go out there!  Tell him to stop!” Lia calls as she attempts to keep the detective from standing.  By this point, I’m able to walk in sufficiently straight lines again, so I too shuffle over and aid in Lia’s efforts.  Officer Rodgers, however, is already beyond the door before he stops to look back.  The three of us watch as a little girl curiously peeks out of a door to a round turret just outside of the great hall and shyly walks up to the man.

“Rodgers!  Come
back
!” I yell, but it’s too late.  The child-thing claps her little hands gleefully.  The officer stands still, warily watching her until she playfully grabs his wrist.  Before our very eyes, the meat on his bones begins to shrink, and his skin begins to sag.  Deep lines spread like bleeding ink over his face, and his eyes dim, suddenly covered in a film of cataracts.  The rapidly aging cop falls shakily to his knees in front of the little girl who still clutches him.  Shining light flows from him to her, and then his skin tightens again over protruding bones, finally disintegrating into dust.  We stare on in stunned silence, putting aside our tussle as the man that had been full of life not even a minute ago is now returned to the clay.

Slowly, Lia and the detective stand back up.

“Believe us yet?” Lia asks him soberly.

“I don’t believe any of this,” he replies angrily.  “It’s not possible.”

“Well, if you want to survive this, I recommend trying real hard,” I advise crisply.  “Is my head bleeding?”  I turn to Lia.

“Little bit.”  I clench my jaw to keep from shouting at the man.

“How ‘bout you un-cuff us?” I manage to say with only a little bit of menace.

“So what, you can get me killed, too?  I don’t think so.”

“Detective Kline,” Lia says, stepping lightly on my foot to keep me from butting heads with the arrogant prick either figuratively or literally.  “We understand you must have many questions.  But you don’t know the way out of here.  We do.  We can’t operate without hands, and you can’t effectively watch over yourself and two suspects with just the one gun.  Let us help.  We swear, we’ll come with you when this is over.  Okay?”

He regards Lia for a moment, then moves aggressively towards her, spinning her sharply by her arm.

“What the fuck!  We’re on the same team,” I yell at him.

He glares daggers at me as he undoes Lia’s left cuff.  He holds onto it, unlocks my right hand and attaches the two pairs of handcuffs to each other, so that Lia has the uninhibited use of her left hand, and I have my right, but our other hands are shackled together.

“There.  Now you can take care of each other,” he says.

“Oh, come the fuck
on
,” I sigh in exasperation.  “You’ve
got
to try trusting us.”

“I am.  You have the use of a hand each.  But I don’t need a couple of killers finishing me off or scattering.  You say you know the way out?  Show me.  Then we’ll talk.”

“Don’t waste your breath, or our time,” Lia says to me as I move to continue our argument.

“But—” she checks me with her shoulder, pushing me back a step.

I glare at her for a second, seething in my impotent rage.  This isn’t the first time an authority figure has told me to deal with the impossible while putting me at a handicap, but my ability to tolerate it has deteriorated since then.

Lia’s right though, so I take a deep breath and try to clear my throbbing head.  She reaches for a small piece of gauze that she still has in her Motocross suit and dabs it against the cut on my temple while I unstrap my sling and reconfigure it so that it now straps my elbow tightly to my side, giving Lia a little more range of motion and securing my wound from unnecessary jostling.

“Okay, let’s do an inventory check,” Lia says steadily after this is done.  This is a sad state of affairs.  We’ve got the jewelry we had on, our armor, a blunt, oaken practice knife, and a real knife each.  There are also our spell pouches with prepared spells for hiding, tracking, and distraction, and some miscellaneous keys.  We don’t even bother asking the detective what he has in his pocketses as he clearly isn’t on the same wavelength as us.  We can more or less count on him having the gun he’s so fond of waving in our faces, some gloves, and a flashlight.  This is everything we have to combat all of the power of Hades’ fortress.  Seeds of doubt begin nibbling the edges of my consciousness.

“And now, a situation analysis,” Lia directs, keeping me from falling into hopelessness over our meager arsenal.

I sigh and focus on the new task.  “We’re in Hades’ hall, I’m bleeding, we’re each down a hand,” I say indignantly in Kline’s direction.  “Outside are almost sure to be more Erinyes, we’re sleep deprived, and have a little less than ten hours to find the exit.”

“What are ‘Erinyes’?” Detective Kline finally speaks up.

“The Furies,” Lia tells him evenly.  “Incarnations of human weakness, like ol’ Geras out there who took your beat cop.  Geras—age,” she clarifies for him.

He stares at her as if he’s just now seeing her, and is surprised to find that she has two heads.

“What do you gals do, again?”  He asks.

“Get battered around by cops who then end up begging us to save their sorry asses,” I retort.

“Summer, you’re down a hand.  I
will
gag you, too, if you’re just gonna mope,” my sister whispers to me.

“Hmph.”

“We help people who run into weird things.  Like the kids we saved, and Brittany, although I admit helping her find a home in the underworld is a little bit of a shady way to help someone.  She picked it, though, and key point is, the monsters are back on lockdown.”  Lia sorts through her spell pouch while she talks, grabbing our two hiding charms.

“So…you want me to believe that that boy who died in the house did in fact die of oxytocin from overdosing on some sort of monster poison, and that we’re actually in the house of a mythical god?  Please,” Kline laughs unconvincingly, his shifty eyes focusing over our heads.

“Believe whatever you want,” I tell him, taking my charm.  “Right now, all we want is for you to follow our lead, keep your wits about you, and not die.”

We rig the charms to hang by our crosses around our necks.  Then, we slowly start to move towards the door, Lia and I working on synchronizing our steps so that we don’t pull on each other too much.  As more of the courtyard comes into view, we size it up and start strategizing.  It’s more or less a square, with rounded protrusions every twenty or so feet.  These turrets have doors in them.  Inside the square is a ring of archways atop Ionic columns.  And inside this circle is the Tree of Somnia.  It appears that the straightest line from here to the tower we’re aiming for is through the tree and a little to the right.  We know that Geras is in the door immediately to the left of the hall.

I sign the letter “D” to Lia, asking her to get out a distraction hex.  She does this and looks back to me for the next step.  I give her the signal to throw it and whisper “two to the right,” to her.  She nods understanding.

“Follow us,” she says to the detective.  “Don’t touch anything.”

I count it down, and my sister throws the hex close to the door that contains Geras.  Once again, the small child-seeming
daimon
jumps out.  She looks around, searching for the cause of the noise and picks up our small, yarn-wrapped charm.  We hold our breath.  Neither of us are really sure that magic works in the underworld or on nonhuman beings.  She examines it closely.  If this doesn’t work, we’ll have to fight our way through, which seems suicidal given the elements stacked against us.  However, she turns and goes to sit against the door to the right, still rotating the charm over and over in her hands.

“Go!” I whisper.  We skirt the alcove closest to Geras’ door and are gratified when she doesn’t even spare us a glance.  The door she’s leaning against moves, but can’t be opened because of the enchanted
daimon
in the way.  We rendezvous at a column in the archway a little to the right of our alcove.  Being in the middle of the courtyard pushes my internal alert system all the way up to eleven—I hate being this exposed.  I nervously examine the area around us, trying to pinpoint which direction is most likely for the next attack.  From our current position, we can see entire the palace in its unending enormity.  Windows and doors dot seamless walls that stretch hundreds of feet into the air.  I look back at the tower.  I count at least thirty windows vertically on the palace, and the tower we’re seeking looms at least three times as high as the walls surrounding us.  Ninety floors, give or take.  Probably take, given our super luck so far.

“Okay,” whispers Lia, bringing me back to the ground.  “So far, so good.  Now, just got to get to the door over there, deal with what’s in it, and climb ‘til we die.”

“Seems that way,” I reply ruefully.  “Get out your other distraction hex.  I’d like to know who lives behind door number three.  Ready, detective?”  I look behind me, where Kline had been just a moment before.  I scan the area and see him almost in the branches of the Tree of Somnia.

“Dammit!  Detective!  Get over here!  Don’t touch it!”  He doesn’t respond.  I curse again.

“Lia, don’t look at it.  I’m going to try to get him.  If I don’t turn around as soon as I touch him, pull.  Okay?”

“Got it,” she responds.  In crisis mode, there isn’t time for arguing about
best
plans, which is helpful, as this one tops the list for terrible plans.  I’m walking towards a plant that wants to kill me, in the hopes of saving the guy who I blame, fairly or not, for getting us into this predicament.  I should leave his sorry ass with the demon bush.  But leaving two dead cops in our wake would make life topside about as pleasant as I’m finding this current adventure.  Also, as big a jerk as he is, I’d feel bad if we didn’t at least
try
to get him back home.  Damn my meddlesome conscience.

“Detective!  No touchy!” I whisper as I sidle up to him.  A leaf rustles in a wind that isn’t there, and strokes his cheek.  I grab his arm with my free hand and try to pull him away, but the tree already has him in its sway.  He stands, transfixed by the spell of whatever dream Somnia is playing for him.  That’s its power.  It can make dreams that seem as large as life, and for the low, one time price of your soul, you can sleep among its roots, dying in bliss.

I grab him around his barrel chest and pull for all I’m worth.  He’s probably close to twice my size, but step by step I drag him away.

“Watch it!” Lia warns a second too late.  I trip over a root and even through my armor I can feel the dream snap to life.  In it, my pain is gone, my scars are all healed.  Lia is painting in the bright sunlight that streams through the windows of a little house that I can tell is not mine—I’m just a guest here, away from my own happy little home.  I have a mug of coffee in my hand and I’m sitting in a recliner, a book resting on my knee.  I’m laughing at something that she must have said, judging by her pleased smile.  It’s the happiest I can remember being.  I feel someone else’s presence—her spouse or roommate, perhaps, and I’m overtaken by smells of delicious things baking.  There’s a wood fire burning merrily in the little fireplace across from us, and everything feels serene.  In the far corners of my mind I know it’s not real, but I want it to be so badly.  I would stay here, even though I know the price.

Then Lia manages to break the contact, and I’m pulled back to harsh reality.  I face the detective who looks as bereft as I feel—bitter disappointment lines his pockmarked face, and there’s a physical sensation like having the wind knocked out of you from the loss of the now dead dreams.  Quickly on the tail of this loss comes the pain which renews a hundredfold after the brief reprieve of the mirage.  I want to cry for all of the aches and pains that hurt all the more for the suddenness of their return; even the old hitches and knots feel fresh and overwhelming.  I feel sluggish and hopeless, staring out over the uncaring landscape that exists entirely in shades of grey.  Where I briefly heard laughter, the screams and wordless whispers that characterize this part of the underworld come rushing back to steal my peace.

I can see my sister is mouthing words, but the shock of finding myself back here is immense, and I can’t hear what she’s saying.  Then she slaps me.