Reaver(24)

Terror squeezed her heart in an icy fist. She screamed, the sound ripping from her throat in a raw, hot rush.

“Reaver! Shut her up!” Tavin’s voice penetrated her horror, but something wasn’t right. Even as the clawed hand in her mind morphed back into Reaver’s, fear still clung to her like a dire leech.

The ground shook and a concentrated swell of evil descended on them like a cloud.

“Shit.” Reaver grabbed her hand and dragged her out of the shrub, which he’d iced over again. Outside, in the muggy air above, demonic critters swarmed, their wings clacking like bones striking more bones.

And beyond the inky cloud of flying things, standing on a blackened ridge, was an army.

Satan’s army.





Nine





Tavin was used to being chin-deep in trouble. Hell, he was in trouble more often than he wasn’t.

But as he and Calder stood behind a wall of stone and thorny bushes and scanned the massive army that seemed to stretch for miles on the cliffs above them, he was aware that this was a special kind of trouble.

“Stupid bitch,” Calder hissed. “Her scream brought them right to us.”

Reaver came from out of nowhere and clamped his hand around Calder’s throat. When he spoke, his voice was low but dripping with menace. “Say that again, and I’ll feed you to that army.”

Calder nodded, his already pale skin going even paler.

“I don’t think they see us,” Harvester whispered from behind them. “If they did, they’d be here already.”

Point made, Reaver released Calder and gazed up at the two-story-tall horned goat-man who appeared to be the leader. “I think you’re right. But we can’t get out of here while they’re surrounding the valley.”

Tavin nodded. The army was in their direct path to one of the few small zones where Reaver could flash out of Sheoul. The demon’s goatlike eyes took in the immediate area, but he didn’t focus on any one thing, including where Tavin, Calder, Reaver, and Harvester were concealed between bushes.

“They’re going to search the valley. We have to make a break for it.” He gestured behind them, where massive fissures left deep clawlike marks in the sheer cliff faces. “They’ll never find us in those.”

“And we might never find our way out,” Harvester said. “There are thousands of tunnels that extend for hundreds of thousands of miles beneath the mountains.”

Tavin let his homing senses do a quick sweep of the area, and he got a faint hit to the northwest. “There’s a Boregate inside one. Not too far.”

Reaver frowned. “What’s a Boregate?”

“They’re like Harrowgates,” Harvester said. “Except you can’t control where they go. And some of them can only go back and forth between two places.”

“And they’re all different sizes,” Tavin said. “They’re unpredictable as hell, and a pain in the ass, but I don’t think we have a choice.”

“Damn,” Reaver breathed. He looked over at Harvester, who gave a nearly imperceptible nod. For a few, tense heartbeats, Reaver seemed to consider their predicament, and then he gave Tav the go-ahead with a thumbs-up gesture.

Fucking awesome. Assuming they didn’t get slaughtered by Satan’s forces, Tavin would be out of here in a few hours. Gesturing for everyone to follow, he ducked low and darted between a row of stone pillars. The army rumbled above them, and Tavin’s heart nearly stopped when he looked over his shoulder to see hundreds of demons starting down the hill into the valley.

“Hurry,” Harvester barked, as if Tavin wasn’t already moving as fast as he could without drawing attention to their movement.

A sudden blast of heat came in a massive wave from ahead, scorching his skin and making the snake on his neck wriggle. He scratched at it viciously. The thing bit him. Fucker.

“Which way?” Reaver asked.

Tavin gestured to the crevice glowing red in the distance. They ducked around a stony outcrop, and the heat became a blistering, nonstop wind. As they rounded a bend, the path opened up into a broad expanse of mountainside that dripped with lava.

“There.” Squinting against the hot blasts of air, he pointed to a passage between lava flows. “The gate should be a few miles in.”

The passage turned out to be a maze of tunnels and bridges over muddy rivers and molten streams, and twice they had to leap over collapsed sections of pathway. Finally, as the stench of brimstone and sulphur swallowed them in a cloud of steam, Tavin sensed the Boregate within a few yards.

“We’re here—”

Reaver’s shout cut him off. “Watch out!”