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Like the idea that this was starting all over again.
“You’re not taking him,” I told them flatly.
The metallic mountains didn’t move.
“What do you want?” Pritkin snarled, finally understanding that the ones he hadn’t attacked weren’t fighting him.
And, finally, that got a response. A bunch of spears raised, not to attack, but to point. And I suddenly realized that maybe they weren’t there for Pritkin after all.
Because they were pointing at me.
And that . . . didn’t go down well. Not with me so much, since I was still trying to figure out what I’d done to piss off the demon council. But with Pritkin, who had already been looking surprisingly feral, and not at all like the super-controlled man I knew.
Of course, the nudity had something to do with that, with the hard-muscled body bare and reflected a bunch of times in the Allûs’ shiny suits. But it had more to do with the expression in the wild green eyes, which appeared even brighter than usual, and the vicious look on his face. And the way he jumped one of the Allû with a roar.
I’d stood up, in order to see over the floating weapons, but now I sat back down, feeling more than a little nonplussed. And then I lay down abruptly, when a bunch of small bottles came speeding through the air by my nose. It looked like Pritkin had been brewing potions in the bathroom again, judging by the army flying out of the partly open door as if on a mission, said mission being to melt a bunch of demons’ faces off.
Pritkin still had a workout disposing of the rest of them, because they seemed insistent on not leaving without me. He was just as clear on the idea that they would. And he was winning, which was a surprise, because the demon council’s guards weren’t lightweights. Of course, neither was Pritkin, but the numbers were against him, and most of his arsenal was still protecting me.
Not to mention that the guards, once their metallic suits failed, were perfectly capable of attacking in their spirit forms, which had me trying to crawl under the floating arsenal to shift us both out of there and tell the council to go hang itself!
But a gun butt kept bumping my nose, and when I didn’t take the hint, a couple others, along with the hilts of half a dozen floating knives, combined into a wedge to poke me back into place.
I stared at them, nonplussed again, and then angry. I didn’t need the help, damn it! But Pritkin did. A spirit had just leapt out of a bullet-riddled suit and twined itself around his forearm, getting metaphysical fangs in and attempting to drain him. I stood back up on the bed, trying to get a clear view to shift him out—only to see his eyes suddenly flash super bright, almost like they were glowing, and for him to flick the incorporeal mass into the portal like an annoying insect.
Okay, I thought, a little stunned.
That was new.
I stood there for a second, watching what looked like a street brawl between the Hulk and a bunch of Keystone Cops. Only they weren’t. They were ten-foot-tall, burnished bronze, demon-possessed suits of armor that he was obliterating.
And then I started looking for my bathrobe, because I’d learned a few things about demons.
Like the fact that he wasn’t the only stubborn one.
And, sure enough, he’d no sooner tossed the last guard down the portal’s gullet than they were back. Only this time, it wasn’t a dozen, or even two. It was a whole damned army, and Pritkin was yelling at me to shift away and I was now trying to locate his jeans, because I’d found my robe, but he never put anything away properly, damn it!
I finally grabbed a pair right before something grabbed me.
And a moment later, I was standing in hell.
There was asphalt under my feet and a streetlight nearby, so I was pretty sure that this was the realm known as the Shadowland. But, honestly, I couldn’t have guessed otherwise. For the first time ever, it actually looked like the conventional version of hell.
Because it was on fire.
The streetlight was burning, the asphalt was threatening to melt under my feet, and a nearby building was writhing in the middle of a conflagration—literally. It looked tortured and off center, and had strange bulges poking out here and there. Even worse, it couldn’t decide what it wanted to be.
For a second there, just after the portal coughed us up, it was a stately Victorian, the brickwork a little grimy from coal dust, but the front stoop newly painted and pristine. Then I blinked and it was a modern skyscraper,
maybe twenty stories tall, with the flames that were eating up one side reflected in acres’ worth of glass. And a moment after that, it was a beautiful old Spanish mission with a bell that was clang, clang, clanging out a distress call because its tower was going up in flames.
This . . . was not normal, even for hell. Especially this little hell. The Shadowland was the demon realm that the other demon worlds used as a meeting place, market, and neutral zone for resolving disputes that had gotten out of hand. That’s why the demon council met here, where violence was supposed to be outlawed, and why it regularly received a steady stream of visitors from all over.
To accommodate the many different races, each of which had their own idea of what constituted comfortable surroundings, the city had long ago devised a spell that took images out of its visitors’ minds to project over whatever constituted reality around here. They didn’t bother with the area beyond the city, which just looked like a twilit desert, with long blue shadows even at midday—hence the name—and a lot of rocks. But the city itself . . .
Well, it looked like whatever you wanted it to.
Except for tonight, I thought, watching the fiery building change once again. Only this time, it didn’t resemble much of anything, or maybe I should say, it resembled everything. A Chinese upturned roof poked out over a sweet old Southern porch meant for moonlight and magnolias; a rustic log cabin was perched on top of that, with what looked like dung mortar peeking out from between newly stripped logs; and a precarious third story of Georgian red bricks teetered over it all, while beautiful Middle Eastern tile kept breaking out in patches, here and there, like the house had a rash.
