Myhr’s Adventure In Hell

by P. N. Elrod

P.N. “Pat” Elrod has written over fifteen novels, including The Vampire Files, featuring the wisecracking, undead detective, Jack Fleming. She’s collaborating with actor Nigel Bennett (LaCroix of TV’s Forever Knight) on a new series of novels beginning with their highly acclaimed Keeper of the King, and she coedited Time of the Vampires and Dracula in London with Martin H. Greenberg. Elrod is currently working on novels featuring Myhr and Terrin, who are based on two of her real-life friends. Those curious to know what the real Myhr looks like can visit www.users.zetnet.co.uk/suehaley/lair.htm or www.xim.com/.html

CLANK-clank-cltmk

The unmistakable sound of men in armor, marching.

I was happily snoozing on a primo patch of sundrenched, cushiony green grass, more or less keeping a protective eye on Terrin’s magic crystals. The clattering progress of the men up the path jolted me wide awake.

There were a dozen of them, on the large side, armed with swords, bows, and other lethal hardware up to their well-fed teeth. My stomach growled, envious. I shushed it, reminding myself that there were worse things in life than just an acute case of munchies. Like these bruisers on their way up to the cave Tenin and I had taken over since our arrival a few weeks back.

My initial alarm lessened the closer they came. Their pace was geared to match that of the slim woman trudging in their midst. I didn’t know much about local customs, just enough to guess her presence lessened the chance that this was some kind of press gang.

I bawled into the cave at Tenin. “Wake up! Looks like we got a business call.”

After a minute he sauntered out, blinking and grumpy in the glazing light. He snarled against it and slipped on his sunglasses.

“They don’t have those in this world yet,” I reminded him.

He looked down his nose at me in a superior way; since he was shorter, he had to tilt his head back to do it. Terrin could make that work, though. “I’m a wizard,” he intoned as though I hadn’t noticed that by now. “They will expect weird.”

“Just don’t give them too much of a good thing.” Providing a touch of the fantastic to others’ lives was more obviously my specialty with my unique face, so I compensated by trying to blend in. At least I was in close approximation to local costume with a plain white tunic and buff trousers stuffed into boots. Terrin, however, never compromised. He liked loud Hawaiian shirts worn open over an old T, faded jeansthe more holes the betterand purple high-top sneakers. Today was no different, including the fact that he’d slept in everything.

‘°At least button the shirt.”

He snorted. “I’m cool with this. If people can’t handle itthen, bite me.”

“This could be a paying deal, she looks like a lady, and you don’t want to blow it by scaring her. With those goons as escort, she’s got to have gems.”

That was the magic word to use with him. The area had been recently devastated by war, so gems were thin on the ground, delaying our departure. Terrin scowled, but buttoned his outer shirt, covering a T depicting voluptuous cartoon demon lesbians gleefully cavorting with each other in a flaming cartoon hell. It was one of his favorites.

“What about those?” I motioned toward the crystals, glinting as they soaked up sun, earth, and magic-energy.

“Leave ‘em.”

“These guys might think they’re valuable.”

Terrin held his hand out, palm down, fingers splayed. “Okay, no one’ll notice them. Or step on them,” he added, anticipating my next question.

My ears twitched forward, hoping to catch some audible clue about the approaching woman’s finances. Crystals were great for lots of magic, but fine gems were our fastest way out of this dump and back to civilized places.

CivilizationI broadly defined by nowwas any world with real indoor plumbing and decent toilet paper.

Terrin stuffed his hands in his jeans pockets, drifting into the shade of the cave mouth to wait. I crossed my arms, echoing his blase attitude by leaning against a tall rock. It was easy for him to chill out; I think he lived on air when food was short. I wasn’t so lucky about absorbing latent energy from a place. My stomach growled again.

Even at a distance the woman radiated something. Wishful thinking dictated that she be my kind of gal: beautiful, rich

and extremely fond of cats.

She drew close, and two men acting as vanguard parted to either side of her, hands ready on their sword hilts. As they did, I rejoiced that, by her dress and manner, she appeared to be not just merely rich, but honest-to-gawd wealthy. And beautiful. Her soft, pearl-gray eyes against skin and hair the color of cinnamon made for a knockout combination in any world.

Wow.

But if I was enchanted by her, then she (and her men) fairly gaped at me. Doesn’t matter where I am, it always happens. People either get used to it or not. Most of the time they like itespecially people who love cats. After a few startled seconds she recovered her manners and gave me a regal nod of acknowledgment. I straightened. Manners varied from place to place, but you can’t go wrong with a well-executed bow.

“Are you the wizard?” she asked in a voice like honey on a hot day.

I smiledmouth closed because the fangs tended to alarm neosand flared my lip whiskers. “I am Myhr, at your service, lady.”

She couldn’t tear her gaze off me, which I happily accepted as a good sign. “You’re his familiar, then?”

My warm fuzzies turned quickly. “I’m his partner.” I successfully smothered my annoyance.

Terrin fell into one of his shit-eating snickery grins, not quite doubling over. People often made that assumption about meit had to do with my feline features topping a man’s bodyand he took way too much delight from it. Maybe I should have had him cast a glamour so I’d look fully human, but in this isolated stopover it seemed a waste of good magic.

I ignored him, determined to be professional, sweeping a grand hand in his direction. “This is the wizard.” And you’re welcome to him, attitude and all.

‘Terrin the Awe-inspiring,” he said, not taking his hands from his pockets. “Whassup?”

She shifted her stare to him, evidently expecting something more dignified. Terrin’s Hawaiian shirt in all its wrinkled red-and-purple glory must have been no less of a shock to her than my kisser. I was thankful he’d covered up the rutting lesbian demons.

She squared herself and put on a serene but determined expression. “Word of your powers has come to me.” I could have floated to Tahiti on her voice. “I understand you are well-versed in things magical.”

Fortunate for us this was a world where magic was accepted. More than once we’d made hasty skips to avoid lethal unpleasantness.

“Lady, I am the best.” Modesty was never one of Terrin’s virtues. For him it was a sin he religiously avoided.

‘Then I’ve need of your services.”

I shot him a warning glancenot that he’d have paid it any mindbut for once he didn’t go into a Groucho Marx act after getting a good straight line. Maybe her beauty, serious manner, and sheer class had gotten through to him. That, or he’d smelled the money and knew he’d have to behave to get it. She was dressed as a widow, but in this world’s equivalent of silk, rare stuff dyed to be iridescent purple in full sunlight, and enough of it to feed a city for a week. The jewels winking from her walking slippers would have fed it for the rest of the yearor powered us to a dozen different worlds.

Wonder of wonders, Terrin gave a slight, formal bow, hands humbly at his sides. “I’m at your service, Lady Filima.”

I blinked. Her? Lady Filima Darmo herself? Eek. Yikes.

She gave a small smile. “You know me? Then that will save time.”

“How may I serve you, Lady?” he asked in a tone tinged with genuine concern. He didn’t use it often, and it always signaled serious work. My ears flattened in reaction. The guard saw, tightening his grip on his sword. As if little old unarmed me would be dumb enough to do anything violent. I’m a lover, not a fighter.

“It’s confidential,” she said, warningly.

“I’m cool with that,” Terrin countered. He nodded at me. “Myhr’s cool, too.”

The language spell he’d cast on us at our arrival translated this into a properly respectful phrase of reassurance. She let her luscious lips thin for a moment to indicate acceptance. “Very well.”

“Great. Come on, we’ll parlie-vou.” Terrin motioned toward the cave. I bowed Lady Filima ahead of me. She went with Terrin, which made her braver than most of her men, and the one guard especially didn’t like it. He stared at me until I got his message; he wanted me in front of him. I tried to look harmless. He didn’t like that either, but I was none too thrilled having him breathing down my neck fur.

If the outside of our cave was nothing much, then the inside surpassed it. Up here in safe isolation we were back in the Stone Age, with real stones. Until he could come up with a paying job so we could leave, Terrin’s talent for bartering had managed to keep us in minimal supplies as he traded minor spells for solid goods. He got a little food and sundries and turned up this nonleaking rent-free roof. That put us slightly ahead of most locals in the near-ruined city below.

Terrin motioned for Lady Filima to sit on a fat boulder. She gingerly settled in, unaware of the invisible sigils hanging in the air around her and pressed into the dust at her feet. He’d drawn those in weeks ago, making this a place of power for him. While seated within its sphere she wouldn’t be able to lie without getting caught; it’d light up like Times Square on New Year’s.

Terrin hung the sunglasses from his shirt front. His eyes were green today, going well with his red hair. He was making an effort. Usually he preferred green hair and red eyes. “Sowhaf’s your problem?”

She focused on him. “If’s to do with my late husband.”

My ears really flattened now. The guard shifted, glaring at me for having an opinion. Lady Filima noticed but said nothing, probably used to the reaction people had to any mention of her late and most unla-mented spouse.

Terrin frowned. “If it has to do with restoration of life..” He had a strict policy about calling the dead back. He didn’t. There are some things you don’t screw around with, especially concerning whale droppings like Botello Darmo.

“Not back. My husband is dead to this world,” she said. “I want him dealt with in the next.”

“Dealt with in what way?”

“I want you to kill him.” She was absolutely earnest.

“Kill a man who’s already dead?” I chirped, causing everyone to look at me. Well, someone had to ask it.

“Lady Filima is talking about soul-death,” Terrin explained.

“I figured that much, but why? What happens on the Astral Plane doesn’t have anything to do with this one.”

“You twit! Of course it does! Haven’t you learned anything yet?” He was mortally offended with me. That happened a lot.

I’d learned plenty about magic by simply traveling with him, and didn’t like the direction this job was taking. One of the things you don’t screw around with is dead stuff. Or have I mentioned that already?

“Why do you want him soul-dead. Lady?” he asked.

“If if’s a question of money, I’ll pay you well,” she said, which wasn’t really an answer.

“First I want to know more. Lord Botello is gone, and in an ugly way kind of gone, so why not leave him alone? He won’t be back for a long time.”

“That is the point. Master Wizard. No one in this solid realm wants him to be reborn again. Ever.”

“Even if he returns as a dung beetle?”

The translation spell provided a local substitute fauna for her. “No. Not even that much.”

“This is serious shit you’re asking. Taking a soul permanently out of the scheme of the Universe could upset balances, create all kinds of aftershocks.”

“His soul in this Universe has upset so much, I doubt the balance will be restored here for a thousand years or more. He mustn’t be allowed to return.”

Reincarnation was a common thread in nearly all the cultures we’d encountered. You did some time alive, and, depending how you behaved, you did some time dead, then came back to learn more lessons in the new life. The Universe was big on recycling. It had a program set up and running and took a dim view of people screwing around with it, which was what Lady Filima had in mind.

I waited for Terrin to say no. Instead, he asked her why again.

This time she answered. “You’ve seen what’s happened because of my husband’s rule? You know what he did to the people, whaf’s left of them?”

He nodded. It was on a smaller scale because this world lacked the advance technology for global destruction, but Botello Darmo had done a remarkable job given the limits imposed. When the wind was from the south the stench from the miles of mass graves could knock you into next week.

Botello had been this world’s equivalent of Hitler. He was either worshiped or despisedmostly despised since his maniac supporters had lost and had been deservedly executed by the surviving winners. Oddly enough, his widow was seen as another of his victims. Of course, it had helped that she’d been in-strumental in ending the carnage. She’d snuck a sleeping potion into the palace wine one night, allowing a gang of resistance fighters to bypass Botello’s fanatic guards, thus achieving an almost bloodless coup. The bloodletting came the next morning with a long series of public executions. They’d roasted Botello alive, but most thought it was too merciful a death. Seeing only a fraction of what he’d brought about, I’d found myself in agreement with them.

Lady Filima’s act made her into a symbol for the winning side, the light against Botello’s darkness, the yang for his yin. She’d escaped reprisals but certainly must have had enemies because of the presence of guards. On the other hand, they might be keepers as well as protectors.

Terrin shrugged. “Things are tough all around. Why’s it so important to you?”

“Not to methe people. They must know that whaf’s happened here will never happen again. If they understand my husband’s soul will never return, it will make a true end to the horrors he inflicted. With that ending, they will be better able to press forward to a fresh beginning.”

That smacked of a rehearsed speech promoting the new government’s official policy. So far as the magical sphere was concerned, she spoke the truth, but what she wanted was totally crazy.

On the other hand, Terrin needed gems to power his travel spell. The crystals worked, but gems worked better. The larger and more flawless the gem, the farther we could go, and the farther from this world the better. We didn’t belong here and wanted out. I felt sorry for the inhabitants, but wasn’t one of them; the process of reconstruction wasn’t my job. Callous of me, maybe, but you have to be when you travel with Terrin, or you go bug-eyed nuts from the tragedy of it all.

Still, just contemplating something as cracked as assassinating a dead man gave me the heebies.

I waited for him to turn her down. Gems were precious, but not enough for such a risk.

“Okay,” he said. “But it’ll cost you.”

I choked. “Are you nuts?”

“Shuddup, I know what I’m doing.”

I’d heard that one before.

“Heads up, Myhryou’re going to the Astral Plane.”

I groggily roused from my latest nap. “Hah? But I don’t have a ticket.”

“Don’t be a fuzzle. C’mon.”

“Whawait a minute!” I quit my sunny spot of grass and hurried after him, full of outrage. “What are you talking about? Did I hear right? Whafs going on? Answer the last one first.”

“I got the stuff from her ladyness, and we don’t have much time.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

He unshouldered his knapsack and began emptying things onto the boulder with the sigils. “It’s time to make the hit on Botello.”

“Great, fine, wonderful. But did I hear you say I was going? No way, Jose. Magic is your department as you are so fond of reminding me. I’m not trained for visiting other Planes. You’ve told me how dangerous it is.”

“You’ll be safe.”

“That’s not the issue. Why the hell are you even thinking of sending me?”

“No one else on Filima’s staff is suitable. They don’t trust me enough for me to make a link.”

“Woo, I’m so surprised. Then find someone who does.”

He showed his teeth at me, which wasn’t the same as a grin. “I already have.”

“Dammit, Terrin

“

Like it or not, all the traveling we’d done together had established a psychic link between us, though he was the one most aware of it. And, like it or not, I trusted him. So far as magic went, I trusted him. When it came to splitting a red velvet cake equally, that was another matter.

“I’m not the one for the job. You go. You float around the Planes all the time. You’re used to it.”

“Yeah, but when I’m playing tourist, I don’t establish a solid physical presence there. I only do that when I have an anchor on this side to guide me back. There are no wizards here for the job, so you have to be the one to travel while I act as your anchor. If there was any other way, I’d try, but we’re on our own here. We have to brilliantly improvise.”

We, he says. Uh-huh. Sure. “Physical presence?”

“You need a physical body over there so that you can do the work. I’ll channel the energy for it to you along the anchor line.”

“What kind of energy?”

“We don’t have time for Wizardry 101. Just trust me to get it right.”

“Come on, there’re plenty of people more magically inclined than me.”

“Yes, but they wouldn’t have your senses, reflexes, or strength.”

He had a point. Though my body was mostly human, there was enough cat in me to give me a hell of an edge over most. “Flattering, if entirely true, but”

He signed for me to put a lid on, waving his hands in a power pattern at the otherwise invisible sigil-sphere around the stone. The symbols kindled and glowed, feeble at first, then like embers from a fire so anyone would be able to see them. They began to pulse; it was pretty, until I realized their pulsing exactly matched the beating of my heart.

Oh, shit.

He stopped waving, stepped back, and dropped wearily on another rock, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Look,” I said, trying to keep to a reasonable tone, “the crystals outside will be powered up in a few more months. All we have to do is wait it out, then we can split. I don’t mind the delay. Really.”

“Well, I do. I have to get off this world.”

“We’ve waited in worse spots than this.”

“No, we haven’t.”

“You’re saying this is worse than that Ice Age place you bounced us into?”

“Yes.”

“How worse?”

“The magic here is nearly gone, and what’s left is draining out like water from a bathtub.”

This was news to me, and I said as much. He sighed, his shoulders slumping a little. “Look at me, Myhr.”

He passed his hand in front of his face in a shooing-away gesture. The glamour he’d cast on himself that I didn’t know about suddenly melted. “Good grief! What have you been doing?”

“Not me!” he snapped. “This goddamn, magic-sucking world!”

He seemed to be thirty years older, hair turned bone white and so much color leeched from his skin that veins underneath were visible. His weight was down, not from merely eating light like me, but from real starvation. He’d gone gaunt, from cheekbones to hands, which were downright spidery.

“Why do you think I’ve been sleeping all the time?” he asked. “I’ve been trying to conserve. I’m not going to last until the crystals get powered up again. There’s almost no magic left for them to absorb. It could take years.”

We’d been here only a few weeks. At the rate he was deteriorating

well, I’m rotten at numbers, but the outcome was horribly obvious. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“There wasn’t much point. I thought another mage, someone who’d hidden from the fighting and survived, would scent me out, come by, and be my anchor while I plugged the magical leak, but no such luck. I’m stuck with you.”

I was still taking things in, too distracted for insult. “Just how serious is this?”

“Serious as death,” he said, and from the expression on his wasted face I knew he wasn’t exaggerating. I got a nasty, dark cold feeling inside that he was dying, and that it wouldn’t be a matter of weeks, but maybe days.

He boosted off his seat, going inside the sphere to fuss with the placement of the sigils. Despite all the glow around him, he looked sickly. One-good-breeze-and-he-might-float-away kind of sickly.

Damn

and damn again. That wasn’t fair. It sucked canal water.

“Yes,” he said, as though hearing my thoughts. Sometimes he picked them up if they were strong enough. “It does. I can’t do this alone, Myhr. I need your help.”

JeezI knew what it had cost him to say that. “But this killing the guy,” I said, my insides starting to do flip-flops, “I’ve only ever swatted mosquitoes. You can’t expect me to”

“He’s already dead. Don’t worry about it.”

“I’ll do what I can to help, but I’m not a killer.”

“I know. You just leave that part to me.”

“Yeah? How?”

He stopped fussing with the sigils. “Okay, it works like this; I need you to be my eyes, arms, and legs on the other side. If it comes down that you can’t kill him, then I’ll do it.”

IckI didn’t care for that one bit. “Whatyou’re going to run me around like a remote control car?” I graphically told him my opinion on that.

“I’ll only give you directions,” he assured. “But if you can’t do the job, then I’m warning you now I’ll be taking over.”

I growled and grumbled, mostly to ease my nerves. His people skills were dismal, but I could trust his magical abilities. “What’ll it be like on the other side?”

“Bad. I’ll shield you from seeing the worst of it.”

“Worst of what?”

“What do you think? Botello Darmo will be in this world’s version of hell. Just tell yourself if’s a movie with production design straight out of Alien and you should be all right.”

My back fur was up. In a big way. All down my spine like static electricity. “Terrin

“

He gave me one of those looks. No smart-ass grin, no patronizing, snarky frown, but something of the real person he kept well hidden inside. “It’ll be fine. I promise.”

Jeez, but I’m a sucker for sincerity. One of these days I’d have to get therapy before it killed me.

Terrin gave me a silver ring for my right index finger. I’d never seen it before. It was a size too large.

“This come from the Lady?” I asked.

“Belonged to Botello,” he said. He was busy at the cave mouth, adjusting a mirror. “It’ll help me locate him.”

I shivered, not liking to wear a dead man’s things especially that dead man. Next I squinted and put my arm up against a crash of light from the mirror. Terrin angled it so the reflected sun hit me square like a searchlight. I thought it might be easier for me to go outside, but the boulder with the sigils was in here, and I had to sit on it for this to work.

“Now what?” I asked. I was nervous. Didn’t like it. Couldn’t help it.

He told me to put my back to the cave mouth. I felt the mirror-reflected heat, or maybe that was just my skin crawling.

“Close your eyes, breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth.”

Easy enough, but I couldn’t ask questions. Maybe he just wanted me to shut up, so he could concentrate. I breathed while a dim flashing took place beyond my closed eyelids. That would be the sigils. Their pace still matched my heartbeatwhich was speeding up.

Tenin placed something in my left hand. “Hold onto this crystal. If 11 help me focus on you.” Now something went in my right hand. I could tell it was a knife, heavy and doubtless honed razor sharp. I gripped it hard.

“Keep breathing,” he said.

After a minute or three the dim flashing faded. The cave turned strangely cold.

Okay, show me what you see.

My eyes popped open as much from surprise as anything else. His voice was right in my head. “What the hell?”

“Yeah, pretty much he cheerfully agreed.

“You didn’t say you’d be crawling around inside my skull! Get out!”

“Cool it, Myhr, I already know what you do in the shower on Saturday nights, so chill. Your secrets are safe with me.”

“ARRGH!”

Anguished screams cut no ice with him. He waited for me to settle down. Look, we’re stuck like this for the duration. Just do what I say, and it’ll be over that much faster. Okay?

Like I had a choice in the matter. “Where do I go?”

Look around.

I looked around. And listened. And smelled. And ‘t felt.

It was bad. Bad beyond bad.

No cave. Strange, flat landscape. Earth, trees, grass, sky, cloudseverything was cotton candy pink. My sensitive nose was jammed with the smell of burning sugar. The pink ground was sticky. I was being pelted by cobwebs of forming candy. The stuff fell on me like gossamer snow. Pink, of course. Sticky.

On the thick air I heard the thin, fruity voices of thousands of children singing. In hell? That was wrong. Terrin had sent me to the wrong place. I was in kiddie heaven and any second some otherworld Shirley Temple would come tripping up to give me a chorus of “The Good Ship Lollipop.”

The singing children abruptly launched into that particular song.

‘Terrin? You messing with my brain? What’s going on here?”

Your brain’s already messed up. I’m doing what I can to shield you from what’s really here.

“You promised me Alien. I’d rather have that than this!”

No, you wouldn’t. Shut up and walk. Hold your ring hand out.

“Okay, I’m walking. Gawd, it’s like the floor of a dollar movie theater here.”

He snickered. The son of a bitch had put me in circus hell, and he was laughing about it. You’re doing fine. Bear left at thatertree.

‘Tree?” It looked more like a giant gumball. “What is it? What are you seeing?”

Never mind, you don’t want to know. Oh, yeahdo me a favor and don’t eat anything here.

Yeah, sure, like I was planning to scarf down this junk. Not that hungry. “How does that do you a favor?”

So I don’t have to listen to you bellyache about it later.

He seemed to be following a theme here, so I decided not to ask him what was really raining on me.

Terrin gave directions; I slogged forward, going fast. I guessed that this was costing him a lot in terms of effort, and speed would be a good thing. Once I glanced behind when I thought I saw movement. Nothing there unless you counted a faint silver thread winding away into the pink distance. One end was attached to my back somehow. Must have been how he was channeling energy to me. Man, this was weird.

The ring went heavy. Not the blade, which was the size of a Bowie knife and made out of black onyx. It would have an edge like a scalpel. I remarked on the ring’s weight. Terrin made approving sounds.

You’re getting close. Swing it around, go in the direction it drags you.

I did so. “Don’t see anything or anyone.”

Okay. Dammit. 1 was hoping I wouldn’t have to do this to you.

Before I could ask an obvious question I felt a rippling shift through my body. The pink landscape darkened to blood red and the children’s singing changed to laughter like wind chimes, harsh and discordant.

You should see something. Look!

I looked, but even my eyes had their limits. I held the ring hand out, making a slow half circle. Then something grabbed me around the wrist.

Don’t let go of the knife!

I yelped, but held tight, trying to shake whatever it was off. More of the illusionary fabric around me began to fray. A day-glow-orange hand had hold of my arm. The hand was plump and feminine, with long, blue-painted nails. As I stared, more of its owner began to be revealed.

“Yeeps!”

Keep cool, Myhr. She can’t hurt you.

“Does she know that?”

A life-sized, three-dimensional version of his naked cartoon lesbian demon stood next to me, winking lasciviously and licking her way-too-full grinning lips like I was made of chocolate. This was bad. It got worse as dozens more of them popped into being all around me.

“Terrin

“

This just means you’re close. Hang onto the knife. They won’t be able to stop you as long as you’ve got it.

The chimelike laughter changed, altering into a high-pitched screaming, like a steam whistle, but with an animal quality to it. Or human. It came up through the ground, which had gone from sticky to muddy. Blood-red muddy. The burned-sugar smell changed to something like a whiff from those mass graves, but a thousand times worse. In another minute I would really hate it here.

The ring dragged my hand strongly down. Ignoring the prancing, cluttering, naked lesbian demons, I stabbed into the mud with the knife. As the onyx blade bit, the stuff parted like I was Charlton Heston^on a roll. I scrambled back in time to avoid being drawn in as the ground parted, throwing mud around like a sludgy red geyser.

They’d been hiding him under an illusion. The naked lesbian demons. Or whatever they really looked like. Botello Darmo, what there was of him, was naked, too, stretched spread-eagle by four of them. Two others were enthusiastically digging their claws into the flesh of his chest. They slowly peeled strips of that flesh from him, then took turns jamming it into his mouth or greedily eating it themselves. Next, they peeled strips from other body parts. While they did this, his chest stopped bleeding and healed up, allowing them to begin all over again.

His was the hideous screaming. He gagged as they fed him, and between forced swallows he screamed. Maybe if he’d been driven mad by them it might have been easier for him, but in his staring eyes I could tell he was completely aware of everything.

Okay said Terrin, all matter-of-factly. Snuff the bastard.

I started to move down into the pit, but hesitated. I thought of all that Botello had done to his world. Those miles of graves. The thousands he’d killed, executed, and tortured. For my money, he was getting off light. “Couldn’t we leave him like this?” I asked. “Maybe just fix it so he isn’t reincarnated?”

A deal’s a deal. Besides, guess who’s responsible for that magical leak?

“You’re kidding.”

He used up all the mages, sucked them dry to protect himself. Once his soul got sent here, the demons began feeding off that energy. No wonder the stuff’s draining out. He found a way to take it with him!

“UhTerrin. Would I be terribly wrong to guess that if the demons get enough energy they could use it to invade this world’s corporeal Plane?

Could be. I think now Botello set things up so that when he died the rest of his world would go, too. Eventually.

Suddenly I didn’t need Terrin to take over the job. It was no trouble at all for me to leap down into that pit, shove all those nubile naked lesbian demon babes out of the way, and slam the onyx knife square into Botello’s chest. Maybe I was only used to swatting mosquitoes, but there are defining moments in one’s life, and this was one of mine. I wasn’t a killer, but in this case could and did make one hell of an exception.

Literally.

His screaming stopped as the blade went in, and disgusting black goo sprayed all over me. Demons shrieked, I shrieked, the whole damned place shrieked. They started tearing at me, trying to pull out the knife, clawing me with burning hands. I hissed at them and dug in deeper, well and truly gutting him. It was ugly, but there are worst things than killing a dead man in hell. Like letting that dead man reach beyond the grave to destroy what was left of his world.

The demons suddenly broke off. I blinked black goo from my eyes. The creatures drew back, snarling and baffled.

Botello’s body had vanished. My blade was buried deep in the mud. It was as though he’d never even been there. Only the goo remained, and it was starting to smoke, evaporating.

“Where’d he go?” I demanded, confused. None answered. They acted like they wanted to know themselves.

You got him, Myhr.

“Yeah? For sure?”

For sure.

Rippling around me. The demons rippled, too. Skin like slimy tree bark replaced their plump orange-ness, and their faces made the Alien seem like Elmer Fudd. They looked like they would soon be hunting Myhrs.

“Uh

Terrin

“

I know. Shut up so I can reel you in.

Strong tug at my back. I didn’t resist. Slowly at first, I was drawn out of the pit, faster and faster, away from the demons, flying just above the ground. Which was turning black.

I opened my eyes safe in the cave, sitting on the rock. The sigils still hung in the air, but were burned out. A few of the ones on the sandy floor had fused into glass.

Terrin sat cross-legged an arm’s length away from the sphere. In each upturned hand he held a large quartz crystal like the one he’d given me. I had a glimpse of a faint silver triangle between the three of them which faded when his head bowed. All the symbols around me suddenly crumbled, going to ash and floating down to mingle with the sand. Wind rushed into the cave, stirring the dust, and knocking over the mirror he’d set up.

Outside, thunder growled.

He shook himself, coming out of whatever trance he’d achieved, and looked out. The once sunny sky was black, and a second later ripped open. Rain poured.

“Cool,” he said. And I was relieved that his voice was no longer in my skull. “We got a boomerang effect. The magic he took away is returning.”

“In a storm?”

“Sure, why not? Lots of energy there.” He went out to stand in it, arms upraised. He stayed like that for maybe an hour or more, but with no sign of being tired. Quite the opposite. When he finally came in, thoroughly drenched, his white hair was back to red again, his skin color normal, the gauntness filling out. “See? Lots of energy.”

Terrin bargained Lady Filima into paying him with a ruby big enough to transport us farther than we’d ever been able to go before. Who knows, if he got the right vibes running, we might luck out and get back to Earth. We’d been bouncing around lots of worlds trying to find a decent Astral map to guide us home on. If nothing else, the contribution from Filima’s privy purse would bounce us to another, hopefully better, dimensional filling station, where we could scarf a snack and ask directions.

Maybe if d even have indoor plumbing and decent toilet paper.

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