Destined (Desolation #3) Page 7

  She clasped my hand to her cheek and held it there for a second, her eyes closed. I got the feeling she was saying a little prayer and she tugged on another one of my heartstrings. I didn’t know who she prayed to, whether it was Odin or Heimdall or . . . or even to her Catholic god. I didn’t know, but her faith, her belief in help beyond ourselves, was one of the many things I loved about her.

  Someone knocked on our door. Miri got up off the bed, never taking her eyes from mine. We walked toward one another, me trying really hard to take a mental picture of her, to get her image so ingrained on my brain that I’d never, ever, forget her no matter what might happen. If I were to be separated from her for an eternity I didn’t want to do it with fuzzy memories. I needed her eyes to shine as bright for me every day I remembered them, as they did right this very second.

  We left li’Morl and Horonius waiting in the hall while Miri stepped into my arms. She hugged me and I hugged her—except it was less like hugging and more like trying to make our bodies melt together. She kissed my neck and I kissed her hair. She told me she loved me. I told her I loved her. She kissed me with tears on her lips, and she tasted mine. I held nothing back from her—she had all of me, always. Forever. No matter where I was or what I was doing, I’d be doing it with her on my mind. And wherever I was, I would never rest until I was back with her—even if I had to be a shadow clinging to a corner of her room, I’d return to her.

  I will return to her.

  I walked on wooden legs to the door and opened it in slow motion.

  Miri grabbed my leather jacket—the warmest thing I had. It’s not like I’d expected to go traipsing through the freezing caves of Hell when I packed for our summer in France. She helped me slip it on while Horonius closed the door behind him. He and li’Morl looked away, to give us our space, but Miri and I had already said our goodbyes.

  I squared my shoulders, my hand squeezed tightly around Miri’s. “I’m ready.”

  The sound of my voice had barely faded when a bright, shimmering light cut the air between me and li’Morl. I stepped back, pulling Miri to my side and wrapping my arm around her. I was scared out of my freaking mind.

  Right there in front of me, a hole opened up in the room, like a door being cut with a white laser directly through the air. li’Morl and Horonius stepped forward.

  “Heimdall will take you as close to the river as possible. Horonius will already be there—but will serve you better as a Hound, so he’ll look like the dog you met before.”

  I tried to swallow in my super-dry throat. I nodded.

  “He’ll lead you to the Ferryman—I do not know where he is or how to get there, but you must find him. Do not try to cross the river on your own.”

  I nodded again. Miri squeezed my waist so tight I almost couldn’t breathe. I didn’t want her to let go of me for anything.

  “Once across the river, move as fast as you can. Find Desolation, set her free, then make your way back as quickly as possible. Heimdall will be waiting to open a Door the moment you cross the river. Do you understand?”

  I nodded, and then thought I ought to at least say something. I cleared my throat. “Got it.”

  To my surprise, li’Morl reached out and clasped my forearm like I’d seen Michael do with Longinus a couple times. “I wish Heimdall could take you deeper. However, the bottom of Ygdrasyll does not respond to Heimdall’s powers. But he will be waiting. No matter how long.”

  His eyes bore into mine and I fought the urge to puke. No matter how long? I wanted to believe I’d be back before Miri went to bed tonight, but when li’Morl talked like that I wondered—how long is “no matter how long”, exactly? Like, forever?

  “Understood,” I said, even though I didn’t understand at all.

  li’Morl looked at Horonius and without a glance at me, the dog-dude ran through the doorway of light. li’Morl let go of my arm so I took that as my cue that it was time to go. But I couldn’t resist one last hug with Miri. One last kiss. One last whispered I love you.

  She squeezed me, then stepped back. “I’ll wait for you,” she said. “No matter how long.”

  There it was again. No matter how long.

  Man, I hoped it wouldn’t be forever.

  “I’ll be back,” I said. Tonight. Tomorrow.

  Not long.

  Not forever.

  I stepped through the Door and between one step and the next I’d gone into a freaky weird Alice in Wonderland world.

  I Remember stepping through the archway into Daniel’s garden, looking for the girl he’s set me up with. The girl I’ll wine and dine—with a heavy emphasis on the wine. Or, rather, whiskey. This girl has a thing for the hard stuff.

  I don’t see her right away, so I look around, already feeling a little off my game.

  And then I see her standing there—cute, two years younger than me, an easy mark. Until I see her eyes, see the shy and kind of awkward smile, and I’m struck dumb. I never believed in love at first sight. Never believed it would happen to me. Knew it would never happen to me.

  But here is this girl, looking at me with the most stunning blue eyes I’ve ever seen and something changes inside of me.

  There is such a thing as love at first sight.

  I know because it’s happening to me.

  I have like two seconds to shake my head and breathe, “Whoa,” before another memory slugs me in the gut.

  I Remember Akaros, the black-skinned man that had come to see Desi a couple nights ago. He hit me over the head with something super hard, something that made my head hurt so bad that even when I lost consciousness I felt the pain.

  I’m hanging upside down. Totally naked. But that’s not even the worst part.

  The worst part is I have cuts all over my body and something wet is dripping into my ears. When it drips into my nose and mouth I taste it and I know. It’s blood.

  My blood.

  Beneath me there’s a kiddie pool filling up with it. Each blink of my eyes feels like it takes longer to open back up again. The pool beneath me has enough blood in it I can’t even see the little fish that decorate the bottom. But I do see a big stick lying there.

  Blink.

  Wait. It’s Desi’s staff . . .

  Blink.

  I fall to my knees on a hard gravel beach, the ground so freezing cold it burns my palms. I lurch to my feet, my stomach squeezing hard enough I have to puke. When I’m empty I stand, sort of hunched, and look around, embarrassed. But though there’s thousands of people near me, no one cares. No one’s noticed. The people are pushing, pushing their way up and down the stairs-slash-ramp on the side of this mountain. My stomach twists and bucks again.

  The stairs themselves are moving. Because maybe they had once been stairs, but now they were people.

  People.

  And the others are just . . . walking on them. Climbing on them.

  A shiver works its way from my feet to the top of my head that has nothing to do with the cold. I feel something wet brush against my hand and I jump away and do a little scream thing like Miri does when she sees a spider in the bathroom. It’s only Horonius.

  In his totally bad-ass dog form, he barks at me, but I can barely hear him. It feels like I’m under water. I pop my palm against my ears, trying to get them to work properly, but it doesn’t help.

  Horonius shakes his head and barks again. Like maybe he’s trying to tell me something. He takes my hand in his jaw and gently tugs me forward. Well I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed sometimes, but I’m not stupid. The dog’s telling me to get a move on. He doesn’t have to tell me twice.

  I step after him, and when he starts running, I run too.

  We run alongside a red river that looks it’s filled with—I don’t even want to think about what it’s filled with. This is Hell after all; I figure the worst thing I can imagine is probably exactly what I’ll find.

  As we run, we leave the creepy black mountain with its people-ramp and thousands of people climbing it behind.
The gray-stoned beach becomes less gravelly and filled with more rocks and boulders we have to dodge and climb. Horonius runs like a greyhound. He’s at least twice as big as any of the biggest dogs I’ve seen and how his back and ruff seem to be made of metal spikes. Occasionally he’ll look back at me and bark a muffled bark—to check and see if I’m keeping up, I guess. His red eyes and über-sharp teeth make me glad he’s on my side.

  Ahead, the river disappears into the darkness of a cave. Relief floods me when Horonius slows to a walk, then sits. He doesn’t watch for me to join him though, just focuses on the cave.

  I stand beside him, my hands on my thighs as I try to catch my breath. I’ll admit I haven’t exactly kept up my exercise routine since moving to France. But right about now I’m seriously wishing I hadn’t taken my fitness so casually. I’m only nineteen, but I feel just like an old man after that hard run.

  After a minute I realize Horonius is barking—and not your regular brand of barking, either. He’s barking in code.

  Bark.

  Bark.

  Bark-bark-bark.

  Bark. Bark. Bark-bark-bark.

  And he doesn’t stop.

  I’m grateful right then that I can’t hear very well because his constant barking would have seriously pissed me off. Instead, I can concentrate on catching my breath and psyching myself up for what will come next. I’ve never been much of a scaredy-cat, I mean, I’d thought I’d seen it all, there at Lucifer’s hell-on-earth, aka Daniel’s house. But right now I’m about as freaked out as I can get.

  But what comes next is not at all what I expect.

  I’m expecting an old monk-like guy to show up in one of those creepy rowboats. Maybe with a lantern hanging from a staff. Maybe the Ferryman will have bone fingers and no face like I’d seen in the movies.

  And for a second, as the boat begins to take shape from the shadows, I think that’s what I see. But between one blink and the next, what I see changes.

  A glass boat moves toward me, seemingly on its own. Gold pillows fill the bottom, but that’s not what floors me. What gets me is the girl.

  I love Miri. Man, I love Miri.

  But—

  This girl in the boat, well . . . I’ll admit she’s pretty much every definition I have of the perfect woman. She’s every wet dream I’ve ever had brought to life. She has ivory skin—I know because she’s wearing a pink silky robe that leaves pretty much zero to the imagination. It’s as see-through as her glass boat. She reclines on her pillows, red, red hair arranged around her green-eyed, full-lipped face in perfect waves. In her hand she holds a champagne glass filled with frothy, golden liquid.

  Horonius stops barking. I’m aware of his eyes on me, but I wish he’d go away. Get a life doggy. Let me have a few minutes. I ignore him, and as far as I’m concerned, he disappears.

  Because the boat bumps against the gravel at my feet and the girl is looking at me. Her lips part. She licks them. And I know I lick my own. At that moment all I want, all I care about from my head to my toes, is if she’ll let me kiss her.

  I grab the front of her boat, pulling it up onto the beach. I walk out into the river, reaching a hand to her.

  Horonius starts barking again, but it’s easy to ignore him with my ears plugged up like they are. Distant alarm bells go off in my head. Something about not going into the water. But I don’t care. None of it matters anymore.

  Only this.

  Only the girl in front of me.

  She reaches out, smiling shyly when she has trouble balancing her drink while trying to stand. She laughs and I feel my stomach clench with desire. I want her. I want my hands on her. I want her hands on me. I want to kiss her. To kiss her everywhere.

  “Come on,” she says, giving up trying to stand and lying back on her pillows. “Join me.”

  And all I can think is, Hell, yes.

  If only that damn dog will shut up.

  I make to haul myself into the boat, but the girl says, “Wait.”

  I freeze.

  “I really want you to join me. Do you want to? I’ve been waiting for you for so long.”

  And oh man. I want to join her. It’s the only thing in the world I want.

  “Except, there’s something I really need. Will you do it for me?”

  I swing my leg back out of the boat, standing in the freezing water that isn’t water at all.

  “Anything,” I think I say. I say it in my head, anyway. I can’t hear myself but she seems to.

  “Excellent.” I hear her perfectly. Like her voice is inside my head. And maybe it is. She sounds like all my favorite sounds. Miri sighing, whispering my name. The way Miri laughs when we lie in bed together late at night. The sound of a really great live band. The sound of talking and laughing with Desi and Miri.

  Not the sound of Horonius’ barking.

  Not the rush of warning that swooshes through my mind.

  I focus on the girl. On her voice. Her lips.

  “Where do you need to go?” she asks.

  Where do I need to go? I try to think, try to brush away the cobwebs that seem to be everywhere in my mind.

  “I . . . I think I just need to get across.” That sounds right. “Me and my . . .” I look to the shore and see the dog. My dog, I think. “Yeah. My dog.”

  The girl smiles and reaches for me again. “Come on. I’ll take you. Are you sure that’s all you need?”

  Horonius leaps from the shore into the boat, while I pull myself in. I fall forward, face-planting onto the girl’s chest.

  “Oh my,” she says, laughing. But she doesn’t push me away. She holds my head to her. Strokes my hair. I think I hear the dog growling.

  “Well, we’re across.” The boat bumps against the shore. I look up to discover she’s right. We’re on the other side of the river. Horonius glares at me, his teeth bared.

  “Uh, I . . . we . . . might need a ride back. Can you, um, do that?” Stellar, James. Totally cool. I hate myself for being anything less than perfect because perfect is exactly what this girl deserves. Perfect is what I want to give her.

  She bats at my chest playfully, a deliciously sly smile on her lips. I feel myself leaning forward, my whole being intent on kissing her. I feel like I’ll die if I don’t kiss her.

  “I know, baby. I want to kiss you, too. But you promised to do something for me, remember?”

  I nod my head so hard I think it might fly right off.

  “When you get back. After I return you to the other shore. You’ll help me then. Right?”

  I nod again. Try to answer but find all I can do is lick my lips. I lean forward. “Please,” I whisper.

  This time she shoves me kind of hard. Hard enough I fall against the side of the boat, the glass edge cutting into my arm. I hiss as I pull it back. My leather jacket’s sliced clear through above the back of my elbow. I wipe my finger across the spot. It comes away slick and red with blood. My blood.

  Things start to come into focus. At least enough that when Horonius jumps past me and barks from the shore, I know to follow. I have to go. He’s going to lead me to . . .

  I look at the girl who raises one eyebrow.

  . . . something. Someone.

  Right.

  “Okay, I’ve um, gotta go. But I’ll, um . . ., see you later?” I haul myself awkwardly out of the boat, careful of the razor-sharp edges.

  “Sure, loverboy. I’ll see you later.” She raises her glass to her lips and drains the liquid. Her boat moves away from the shore but I don’t take my eyes off of her until she disappears into the dark cave. And even then I don’t move.

  A sharp pain stings me in the fleshy part of my left hand, between the thumb and fingers. I snatch it up to look at it and, for the second time in less than a couple minutes, I see blood on my fingers. The damn dog bit me. “Son of a bitch, Horonius. What’d you do that for?”

  He barks at me and moves away, looking for all the world like he’s royally pissed. I stare back at the river, the red lava-blood river with th
e big boulders and no Ferryman in sight. Yet somehow we are across.

  “Hey, at least I got us across!” I call after the dog as I break into a run to follow him.

  So far, this is a piece of cake.

  I hear a sound—like stone against stone. Like nails on a chalkboard. At first I ignore it and concentrate on keeping Horonius in sight. The sound scrapes against my nerves again.

  The darkness is so complete that even though I know my eyes are open as wide as they can possibly go, even though I can make out the walls from the floor, the barest outline of my hand before my face, I can’t see anything else.

  I hurry after Horonius, fear that I’ll get forever lost in this place suddenly infusing me with an anxious need to find the dog-dude, rescue Desi and get the hell out of here. A soft, hushing sound from behind has me turning before I give the command to my body, and I find myself face-to-face with a creature I’ve had nightmares about almost every night for a year. Except, it’s not Akaros—he was a lot bigger and a helluva lot scarier than this . . . thing . . . in front of me.

  It’s a paler shade than the shadows around me, a pallid gray that makes it look sickly. Still, it moves and breathes and looks plenty deadly to me. Anything that reminds me of Akaros cannot be a good thing. It’s missing most of its teeth when it opens wide to breathe out air that smells like the city dump, but the claws on the end of its wings are polished knives that could kill.

  The bat-dragon-whatever lunges, aiming for my neck, and I get a sudden image of being vampire-ized by the original Count Dracula, who isn’t nearly as sexy and interesting as all the movies make out.

  I scream, stumbling backward and falling on my butt because I trip over myself. Nice. At least I don’t piss my pants—a distinct possibility given how scared I am.

  The creature hiss-screams, though it sounds as if it’s screaming through a paper towel roll, which makes it somehow less terrifying. It lunges again, its claws grazing my shoulders as it pins my shirt to the stone on either side of me.