“Feels like it.” Mikhael cracked his neck, his knuckles, shrugged his shoulders. He’d donned his shirt when he’d chased after Raina, so now he tore off the tattered fabric and let the wings spring forth, stretching them out with an assortment of bone pops that had Derek wincing.
“Done with your Hulk impersonation?”
Mikhael gave him a searing glance. “Underworld. The old chambers. Deep. Close to the Well.”
Derek sobered. “What the hell would be holing up there?”
“I can’t feel it. I can only feel her.”
“You staked yourself to pick up her reaction to a typically mortal injury. So she is your chosen.”
“I never denied it. Just what it should mean to her.”
Considering that, Derek nodded. “Not real stable area through there.”
“No. She should not come.” Mikhael nodded toward Ruby.
“She is coming.” Ruby, proving her hearing was as sharp as ever, came down the steps with a fierce look on her face. “She’s my best friend.”
“No.” Derek stepped forward, his face resolute. “Ruby, you can’t go there. For one thing, we’re going to move fast. Mikhael and I both know the terrain.”
“You’re familiar with it,” Mikhael corrected. “I know it.”
“You really want to compare dicks now?” Derek scoffed.
“No. We need to go. Now.”
Mikhael had felt her, just long enough to sense her whereabouts, but he’d also sensed intense pain. She was fighting a losing battle against terror, and Raina didn’t allow herself to feel fear. Someone was taking her back to those dark places in her memory, the places he had touched, soothed. The rage boiled in him, made the ground beneath his feet quiver. Those on the porch felt it, shrank back.
“You’ve transported me before,” Ruby was insisting. “I just hang on, and we get there.”
Derek’s mouth tightened. “Ruby—”
“There is no time to argue with her. No,” Mikhael snapped. “You are a powerful witch, but you are carrying a child. You will not put it at risk.”
Ruby’s mouth closed like a trap. Though she sent him a scalding look, he could tell he’d ended the argument. It didn’t matter, anyway. She couldn’t override his will and Derek’s together, and though her husband had been willing to handle her more diplomatically, there was no time.
“We need to go.”
He pivoted on his foot, strode away to give them a moment and to prepare for the swift transport. It was best that he and Derek not do the transporting close together, because the energy streams could bump into one another and cause an even rockier trip than it would be otherwise. Going near the Well was like going near Scylla and Charybdis. In fact, the Well was probably the origin of the mythology.
Derek caught Ruby’s waist, brought her to him when she would have shoved him away. “How did he know?” Her angry whisper reached Mikhael’s ears, but he didn’t turn.
“He’s a Dark Guardian. He can sense life and death the same as I can. Be safe, stay here and take care of her people. We’ll bring her back. I promise.”
A fierce kiss, a murmured exchange of words, and then Derek was striding toward Mikhael while Ruby stayed where she was, eyes worried, face pale.
Derek planted his staff. “She’s pissed, but she knew you were right.”
“Anytime you need help handling your woman, telling her what her place is, just let me know.”
“Uh-huh. Step out of the way when you land, because I’m following close. Don’t want to end up with my head shoved up your ass.”
“I wouldn’t want to make your fondest dreams come true.”
Mikhael closed his eyes, found his bearing, and summoned the energy to get there as fast as possible with his body intact. He was going to need everything in working order to tear a demon apart. He wouldn’t let the ache in his heart get in his way, the bone-deep terror that they might be too late.
He never felt fear. He wouldn’t tolerate it now.
20
THE WELL WAS A RIVER. A BOILING RIVER OF LAVA THAT surrounded the Earth’s core like one of Saturn’s rings. There were creatures who dwelled within and on the banks of the Well. Impervious to heat or cold, they were blind, molelike beings who saw without eyes. They felt heat, anything with life energy in it, and hungered to suck that energy out of the soul like the center out of a Tootsie Pop. They were oracles, messengers, as well as repositories of all the knowledge they’d ingested. If anything happened in this part of the Underworld, they knew about it, but getting their wisdom and surviving it was a rare occurrence. While they wouldn’t necessarily mess with a Dark Guardian, it was different when he planned to stride through their ranks like a wheat field.
But Derek had never seen Mikhael so focused, so deadly. He wasn’t waiting for anyone, didn’t care for negotiation or hesitation. When he yanked one of those dark slimy creatures off the riverbank, it came up in his hands with the sound of a suction cup. The Well dwellers could be various forms, but this one looked like a large vole, with a short, thick body, stubby hands and feet, and sharp yellowed teeth beneath its eyeless face.
As Mikhael seized it, forked red light illuminated its skeleton, a power surge to repel the Dark Guardian. Mikhael countered it, such that the magic slammed into a wall he turned into a net over the Well dweller’s form, so the creature’s magic activated inside of it. It shrieked, but it couldn’t get free of it, or Mikhael’s grasp, like a baby with its finger in a socket. Derek brought up his staff, and the blue light that shot from it was like a lighthouse beam, a heated glow that swept around Mikhael and himself. It turned the ground to acid, driving off any who were unwisely thinking they might take advantage of Mikhael’s focus on the single Well dweller.
“Where? Female demon, with a captive. And an incubus.”
A chittering, the language they spoke. The thing’s four nostrils all flared indignantly. Its teeth looked like boar tusks. Mikhael didn’t seem the least concerned about that.
Tossing the creature aside, so that it rolled down the bank and into the eager grasp of the lava, he nodded to Derek. “She’s holed up in the catacombs. She’s taken over a section of them, guarded by about a dozen demons. Muscle, but some magic users.”
“She’s probably blood-connected to them. She’ll know we’re coming.”
“Then we don’t need to kill them quiet. I take the lead. Follow close.”
He didn’t give Derek time to argue, already moving away. As they left the Well behind, they moved into rougher, less predictable terrain. Lava spouts, unstable earth and dark abscesses, dangerous boiling mud pits that were concealed in the shadows of rock projections that looked disturbingly like teeth. Teeth that protruded in macabre shapes and random directions.
It was like being in the mouth of a dragon in need of dental work.
Mikhael’s wings took him over some of the rougher spots, and Derek used short bursts of levitation, but the Well had a mind of its own. When the ground gave way on one of his landings, Derek let out a curse, falling chest deep before he could catch himself. The heat of the lava flow that ran a few feet beneath the crust was a burning lick along his boots, but before it could do more than singe, Mikhael’s strong hand closed on his forearm, his wings beating hard to pull Derek from the greedy opening. The Dark Guardian dropped him back on the ledge, a safer distance from the hole.
“Hell, it burned my boots.” Derek knocked the flame off the dragonskin with his staff, expelling it. He dropped in closer behind Mikhael then. When it came to this kind of work, neither one of them was going to get into the whose-dick-was-bigger bullshit. Mikhael was right; familiar alone didn’t cut it down here. If Derek got knocked out of the game by the damn trip to get there, Mikhael would be facing what was ahead on his own.
The rock formations became more frequent, the teeth consolidating into cliffs that curved over them on both sides, eventually transforming into a closed archway. The ground opened up beneath it, forcing them to walk a narrow ledge of rock against the cliff side. Five hundred feet below, a wide lava flow was visible, the heat felt even at this distance.
A rumble through his soles, through the wall next to him, and Derek anticipated, thrusting up with the staff as Mikhael grasped his forearm. The contact allowed Derek’s domed shield to protect both of them, the rock that fell from the cliffs above bouncing off it and around them like giant hailstones. He’d protected the ledge integrity as well, and now Mikhael’s shielding joined his, the two locking together to stabilize it.
Once the avalanche was done, Derek swept the area above with expanded senses. “Just random. More of the Well’s carnival routine.”
“I agree. Our enemy still lies ahead.” Mikhael jerked his head and they were moving on. Within moments, the catacombs rose up like a malevolent beehive before them. The Dark Guardian didn’t take the upper passages, heading without hesitation into the mouth of a tunnel that would take them farther down.
Though they both knew the female demon would detect their coming as soon as they engaged her perimeter guards, stealth was the order for now. They moved soundlessly, Mikhael’s wings tucking in close to his back and then dissipating so as not to scrape the walls, since the initial passage was narrow. When the tunnels widened out, they became a chain of larger chambers connected by dark hallways. Derek and Mikhael both came to a halt, Mikhael turning to meet Derek’s gaze. The arcane school had been centuries ago, but now, without thought, they fell into the hand, eye and body language signals they’d developed then.