Chapter 27

"I knew Valas would send one of her pet mages." Mariela's voice was scratchy, either from dehydration or disuse. "I figured someone would try to cut me down outside Edis, but I got here before you could poison them against me."

I opened my mouth to tell her I was no one's pet, but Tis indicated the empty chairs around their table. "Have a seat. You must be tired and thirsty."

"But you—" Mariela began.

Aira flicked her finger. A chair skidded back from the table and hit Mariela in the stomach. "Sit." It was not a request.

We sat.

I took the seat directly across from Tis, my backpack on the floor beside me. Lucy sat on my left and Ronan to my right. Daisy stood between Ronan and I, her sharp golden gaze on Mariela. Esme stayed on my shoulder, watching our hosts.

With bad grace, Mariela pulled out a chair and sat. Daisy curled her lip and growled at her.

Tis gestured at the table. "We offer you water, wine, and bread."

All the lore I knew indicated eating or drinking anything in other realms rarely ended well. When I reached for my water bottle, however, Tis said, "We have offered you hospitality, Alice. Our food and drink is quite safe for you." Her tone had a distinct edge. She pushed one of the jugs in my direction.

I poured a cup of water and took a slice of bread. The water was cool and the bread was warm and slightly sweet. "Thank you," I said.

Lucy followed suit and thanked our hosts. Mariela took a cup of water and downed it.

"We welcome Alice, guardian wolf and dragon, and the warrior Lucy," Tis said formally.

Ronan didn't respond to the obvious snub. He brought out his flask and took a long swallow.

I cleared my throat and folded my hands on the table. "We've come to present another point of view on this case."

"There are no other points of view," Mariela countered. "I presented the facts. They know I spoke the truth."

"There are always other points of view." Lucy set her cup down. "You may have presented facts and spoken the truth, but we've got some facts too."

"When she opened a doorway to the Underworld to reach you, Mariela left it open topside and a lot of monsters got out," I said. "They killed hundreds of people—men, women, children. An entire town was wiped out. If we're here to talk about justice, let's not forget to talk about that."

"You lie. I put blood wards on the doorway." Mariela's face flushed. "Nothing could have escaped."

"There were no wards when we got there—not even a trace," I said. "Shades and gravelings got out and killed at will. That blood is on your hands and no one else's."

None of the sisters seemed surprised by the news, or much affected by it. I tried to remember they were very, very old and had seen countless atrocities in their time, but the memory of the carnage was much too raw. I opened my mouth, then closed it. I wasn't here to confront the Furies, I reminded myself. We were here for Mariela and the scroll. Calling them cold-hearted bitches would not help our cause.

"What do you think appropriate justice is for those deaths, Mariela?" I asked instead. "The shades you let out tore the children of Walliston to shreds and played catch with their heads and bones and organs. You're no better than the people you want them to kill."

She swallowed hard and lifted her chin. "If what you're saying is true, then I'll pay for what I've done. That doesn't change why I'm here."

"I'm not saying the people who murdered your brother and his family don't deserve justice, but slaughter isn't justice," I said.

"Traitors like you are the reason these terrorists get away with murder," she argued. "You're more concerned about protecting killers than your own people. You don't know what it feels to lose your entire family to monsters."

I thought of my parents, burned alive by my grandfather for trying to rescue me. "I do, in fact, know what that feels like."

"Then you can't tell me you don't want revenge," she challenged me. "Hypocrite."

"I want the person who killed my family and those who helped him to face justice. I'm not suggesting wiping out everyone remotely associated with him."

She blinked. "Neither am I," she countered, but a half a beat too late.

I turned to the sisters. "She's not just asking for punishment of the Glen Grove bombers; she wants you to kill everyone who's a member of an anti-supe group. Those people are hateful bigots, but they aren't murderers."

"You're not asking for justice; you're asking for murder," Ronan interjected. "For revenge."

"Why else come to the Furies?" Mariela demanded. "They're the mighty goddesses of vengeance. In my world, a world run by humans who'd rather see us dead than have equal protection under the law, there's no justice for us. Even the severest form of punishment available under human law isn't enough to make this right."

"That's true," I told her. "There isn't any punishment that will make this right. You could burn down the whole world and you'd still be hurting. But you don't get to burn down the world. That's not how this works."

"I'll do what I need to do." Mariela took a dagger and a picture from her robe and set them on the table. Dried blood and something else I couldn't identify stained the dagger's wide blade. The photo was of her brother and his family. The same one was in her Court dossier. Hers was worn and discolored from what must have been a long and arduous journey to Edis.

"I call down the curse of the Erinyes on those who murdered my family, those who protected the murderers, and those who share their hatred." She looked at the sisters in turn and waited expectantly.

Tis picked up the blade and studied it. "Blood of a sheep, a kiss of honey, and purest water from a spring," she mused. "You have read the lore. Had you true knowledge of us, however, you would know we are not goddesses of vengeance now, but of justice."

"Then give me justice for my family and those like me, who've suffered at these people's hands our whole lives just because we're different. Make them suffer the way we've suffered."

Ekto moved her fingers. The photo slid across the table and fluttered into her hand. "A lovely child," she mused. "Your niece did not deserve such an end, it's true. It was a monstrous and cowardly crime."

The sisters didn't look at each other, but I sensed they'd made a decision. My stomach knotted.

"Seven people conspired to murder your family," Aira told Mariela. "They may face imprisonment, but only if you return to your world and petition your courts to continue the investigation."

"She has to answer for the murders of the people in Walliston, plus a dozen others," Lucy interjected, her expression hard. "She's not going back to her world. She has to face justice in mine."

Mariela's eyes glowed with blood magic, but she didn't respond to Lucy. Instead, she addressed Tis. "You're supposed to avenge murders of family members. I've traveled across worlds and realms for my dead family, and you refuse to grant me justice?"

Aira's eyes narrowed. "We have told you how you may get justice for your family. If it is justice you want, you must seek it within human law. We sympathize with your losses, but long ago we learned the crimes of man are not ours to adjudicate. We keep the law in this realm. Humans keep it in theirs."

"That's not good enough." Mariela's fists clenched. "I fought my way across a hellscape to reach you."

"And in return, we offer you wisdom and guidance," Tis said. "You would save your own life, and many others, if you were to heed it."

"With all your power, it would be such a small thing for you to do this," Mariela spat. "I don't understand why you refuse."

Aira set her cup on the table. "If you think killing is a small thing , Mariela Diakos, you have proven how little you understand what justice means."

Mariela's mouth compressed into a grim line. For someone who'd just seen her hopes for goddess-level retribution go up in smoke, she was much too calm. Lucy and I exchanged a glance. Her uneasiness mirrored mine.

The now-familiar scent of incense and iron drifted past my nose. "It is well, then, that I am here." A low-pitched, melodious voice came from the direction of the doorway.

Tis and Ronan were on their feet in a blink. Lucy and I weren't far behind.

The full-figured woman who stood between us and the door wore green robes that appeared sheer from some angles but completely opaque in others. Tiny jewels sparkled in the fabric. Her eyes were yellow, with vertically slit pupils. Visible waves of magic appeared in her dark skin and pulsed in the air around her. Her aura was unlike anything I'd ever seen or sensed. She radiated death magic and pure power that called to my dark magic like the gravelings' had.

As she studied each of us in turn, I caught a glimpse of an enormous mouth, scaly green skin, and rows of teeth. I blinked and the vision faded, but I was certain I'd seen some nightmare Underworld version of a crocodile.

I had a very bad feeling about this.

"Welcome, sister," Tis said.

Sister? Was she another fallen angel? If so, this was turning into quite the family reunion. If we'd been outgunned before, we might have just been outflanked too.

"I hoped you would not come," Tis added. "Do you rise at the beck and call of humans now?"

"I am the Devourer," the newcomer said simply. "I was promised a feast of mortal hearts."

Mariela rose, smiling. "Goddess Ammit, I'm honored to provide you with a great feast."

"Oh, crap," Lucy muttered.

A feast of mortal hearts. I recalled the vision I'd seen at Northbourne of corpses in piles with their chests torn open and the sound of some unseen thing chewing on the missing hearts.

The name finally clicked: Ammit, Underworld deity who devoured the hearts of those who didn't follow the principles of justice and truth. Right-hand crocodile-headed goddess to Anubis, according to myth, which explained the glimpse of green scaly skin and the eyes.

"There won't be any feasting on hearts," I said.

With a reptilian hiss, Ammit turned her yellow-eyed gaze on me. Again, I caught a glimpse of that toothy maw.

"You only devour the hearts of those deemed not pure," I added, hoping like crazy the myth was accurate and I remembered it correctly.

Her smile didn't waver. "I am assured their hearts are far from pure."

"And you don't eat living hearts," I pointed out. "Only those of the dead."

"This is true," Ammit acknowledged. " He will serve the dead to me."

Deep beneath out feet, the ground rumbled.

"Mariela, what have you done?" I demanded.

Mariela smiled. "This wasn't my first stop. I didn't come all this way to lose. One way or the other, I'm going back home, and the people who killed my family are going to pay."

The rumbling grew. Aira and Ekto stood. I wondered if they were preparing for battle, or to run.

In a blur, Ronan moved toward Mariela with the same speed he'd used to get Lucy and me out of the path of Ekto's fireballs. Tis intercepted him and blocked his arm from pulling his sword from its sheath. "You will not draw a blade in this Court," she snapped.

Ronan refused to relinquish his grip on the hilt of his sword. "What has she unleashed?"

The rumbling grew in both violence and volume. A crack split the stone floor of the tavern. Something was rising beneath us.

"She has invoked the Son of the Darkness," Tis said.

"Who is the Son of the Darkness?" Lucy demanded.

No one answered her question. "They cannot fight here," Aira told her sisters. "Our city would be destroyed."

"We must send them elsewhere," Ekto urged.

The crack in the floor widened. The entire building—maybe the entire city—shook violently. The bottles and jars on the shelves fell and smashed on the floor.

Ronan's eyes turned silver-blue and sea-scented magic seared my skin. "Tisiphone, you cannot let this go unpunished. You know what she had to do to invoke the Son of the Darkness. She had to sacrifice a child. "

Mariela didn't deny the accusation. Her expression hardened.

Any sympathy I'd had for her situation had long since evaporated, but now I could barely look at her. A child. Dark magic spiraled up my arms. I couldn't stop it; my fury was too great. Daisy growled.

"Crimes committed in the human world are outside our jurisdiction," Tis told Ronan.

"On whose authority?" he thundered.

Her expression didn't change. "You know whose."

" Michael, " he snarled. "That sanctimonious prick."

The stone floor burst open. We stumbled back as the head of an enormous black serpent with golden eyes emerged from the hole, its tongue flicking out to taste the air. Quadruple shit.

Daisy lowered her head, fangs bared. Esme hissed. Ronan and Lucy reached for their swords as I spooled blood magic, house rules be damned.

The snake hissed and started to slide out of the hole it had made in the floor.

The sisters reacted as one, their arms extending as their eyes turned from blue to nearly white. Sea-scented silver-blue magic surged.

Behind me, I sensed a burst of power. Light so bright that I had to shade my eyes with my forearm flooded the tavern. I heard a heavy snap that sounded like a ship's huge sails whipped by a sudden gust of wind. Lucy gasped.

I tried to look behind me, but the light seared my vision. I could just make out a silhouette spanning the entire width of the tavern—a silhouette in the shape of a man with enormous wings.

A wave of sea-scented magic swept across the room, picked me up, and carried me away.

Caught in a riptide made of power and magic, I tumbled head over feet through darkness as deep and vast as an ocean. I couldn't breathe, couldn't stop my careening journey away from the tavern, and couldn't see or hear anything or anyone. If the others had been swept up by the wave of magic, I couldn't tell.

Just when I thought my lungs would burst from lack of air, the wave of magic pulled me from the darkness and deposited me face down on a pile of ash.

Gasping and choking, I managed to roll onto my back and suck in a lungful of hot, sulfurous air. My stomach roiled from whatever form of transportation brought me here—wherever here was. My surroundings were nothing but a dark blur.

I thought I moaned, but I couldn't hear anything over the ringing in my ears. The ground might be shaking, or maybe it was me. Damn it, I could barely muster a coherent thought, much less get up and figure out where the hell I'd ended up. Magical transportation could go fall in a well.

Something warm, soft, and furry pushed itself under my right hand and licked my forearm. Esme. A cold, wet snout prodded my left cheek. I reached up and found Daisy standing over me. I ran my hands over both of them as best I could and didn't find any injuries—just a lot of dirt and grime. I probably didn't look much better.

"First time in a while I've been thrown out of a bar," I said aloud, or tried to say. It might have come out as a mumble. I still couldn't see or hear very well.

Ekto and Aira had suggested we be sent somewhere else to protect Edis from destruction. Had the sisters dumped us all on this ash heap, or just my wolf, my cat-dragon, and me?

The ground shook hard enough to rattle my teeth. This time I knew it wasn't just me.

I had to assume the sisters had made good on their threat to transport the whole lot of us out of Edis to someplace where we could duke it out without leveling the city. That probably meant the serpentine Son of the Darkness was here, along with Ronan, Lucy, Mariela, and possibly Ammit too. This was no time to be sidelined with magic riptide-induced motion sickness, but I couldn't seem to get my appendages to obey my brain's commands.

Something roared and slammed into the ground. A shockwave rolled through the earth under me. Both Daisy and Esme took off in the direction of the roar, leaving me alone, still half-blind and deaf.

I tried to get up and fell. Son of a bitch. I staggered to my feet and this time I stayed upright. My backpack was nowhere to be seen; it must not have made the journey. Most of the items I'd had stashed in the pockets of my pants and robe had fallen out too, except for one of Carly's amulets and a small dagger in a sheath. Blasted Furies.

My dismay gave way to shock and horror as my vision finally cleared and revealed the scene in front of me.

We'd ended up either in the ash-filled wasteland we'd traveled through on the train, or a realm identical to it. The empty horizon stretched as far as I could see in every direction. The distant black shadows to my left might be the mountainous border that separated this realm from another. The terrain was rockier than it had appeared and utterly lifeless. Purple lightning crackled across the sky and thunder rumbled, though I didn't see or sense a storm coming—not a storm like the ones we had topside, anyway.

About a hundred feet away, a giant with a human-shaped head, a dragon-like mouth, a body made of snakes, and massive leathery wings opened his maw and roared again. In front of him stood a familiar shirtless man in Edis-style trousers, his sword pointed at the monster. Daisy stood on his left, snarling. Esme, in her little dragon form, circled the giant far overhead, out of reach of his hands and wings and the vipers that formed his body.

I froze in my tracks—not because of the nightmarish snake creature or the sight of Ronan's half-clad body glowing with silver-blue power, but because of his enormous silver wings. Magnificent and edged with fiery blue magic, they were almost too beautiful to be real.

Knowing he was one of the Fallen and seeing it were two very different things.

I spotted two crumpled forms: Lucy, about ten yards to my right, and Mariela farther away, to my left. Mariela wasn't moving, but Lucy was struggling to get to her feet, coughing and gagging from dust and travel sickness. She'd managed to hang onto her sword during the trip here, but she didn't appear to be able to wield it quite yet. I didn't see Ammit anywhere. Whether that was good or bad, I had no idea, but it was one less thing for us to fight.

The snake giant tried to flatten Ronan with one of its enormous black wings. Ronan slashed it with his sword. The giant bellowed, his torn wing spurting dark blood across the ash.

In a flare of golden magic, Daisy tripled in size. Given the snake-giant's size, I expected her to grow as large as she had when facing the demon lord, Orias, but she didn't. It was definitely possible the different magic of this world affected her abilities.

The damn robe would do nothing but hamper my movement, so I took it off and left it in the dust. I invoked Carly's amulet, stuck it in my pocket, and staggered in Mariela's direction with the small dagger. The snake giant was Ronan and Daisy's to deal with; the murdering blood mage was mine.

You must kill Mariela . Ronan's voice in my head sounded like a hundred voices speaking at once and resonated with what I now knew was silver-blue angelic magic. We can't kill Typhon, but if you kill the one who summoned him, we can bury him again.

I knew the name Typhon, but the details of who he was and what he could do according to legend escaped me at the moment. My brain was still foggy and my ears rang like church bells. I sure as hell hope you know how to bury him, I told Ronan.

Behind me, Typhon roared and attacked Ronan and Daisy. I half-walked, half-ran toward Mariela, spooling magic and cursing under my breath. Thunder boomed again, louder, and more purple lightning split the sky. The air felt heavier. Maybe there was a storm heading this way. Fantastic.

The ground between Mariela and me rumbled, heaved up, and split open. With a startled sound, I backpedaled. More than a dozen creatures poured out of the gaping hole. They ranged in size from that of a bear to much larger than Daisy's current form, and they were all snarling and gnashing enormous teeth.

I'd thought the gravelings and shades we'd encountered topside were the worst nightmares given form, but these things were so much worse. My brain said this was so wrong. I should be home with Sean getting ready to move or working a normal case for a client. My instincts screamed at me to run, though there was nowhere for me to go to escape this horror.

I didn't run away, though. I never had, even when it would have been the smarter, safer choice.

My earth-magic whips spiraled out of my hands, but they were thin and crackly like static electricity—not nearly powerful enough to take on the creatures in front of me. The Underworld had little earth magic for me to draw from, and I didn't have much stored in my own body. My air magic was next to useless in this realm. Blood magic would have little effect on these dead things.

Typhon is the father and tyrant of many monsters , Ronan warned in my head as he traded blows with the snake-giant. He will summon more until we bury him again.

Keep him so busy he won't have time to summon more , I thought back at him.

Hissing, Esme flew past me in dragon form, razor-sharp claws outstretched. As she tore into one of the attacking creatures, I spotted Lucy on her feet, hacking at another creature with her sword. Like me, she'd left her robe on the ground so she could move more freely.

Mariela was still down. If I could get to her while she was disoriented, I could try to talk some sense into her. If that failed, I would have to kill her to save countless lives, regardless of whatever sympathy I still felt for the loss of her family. But there were dozens of monsters between us, and I'd have to get through them to reach her.

Lucy's opponent swiped at her and opened a gash across her back with its claws. She bit back a scream and swung her sword, taking off the creature's head. Its body hit the ground and didn't move. Unlike the gravelings topside, decapitation seemed to kill it outright. Small favors.

Dark magic thrummed under my skin. The Underworld was a full step closer than my world or Lucy's world to the demon realm, the infernal source of the power I'd inherited from Mira? at his death. The faint thread of magic in my mind that was my connection to Malcolm was a reminder that the more dark magic I used, the more deeply it would take hold of me—and very probably the faster it would destroy my body.

Lucy was hacking her way through Typhon's monsters, but more were coming up through the ground and Mariela was trying to get up. I had to figure out a way to plug up that hole, and to do that, I'd have to cut my way through a half-dozen monsters.

When I got back home, I'd never need to use the dark magic again, and I'd do whatever I needed to do to cut it out of myself. For now, to have a prayer of killing these things and getting to Mariela, I figured I didn't have much of a choice but to unleash it.

Something huge hit me from behind. Another hole must have opened behind me. Streaks of fire erupted across my back as the creature raked me with its claws. I screamed and fell to my hands and knees. The monster on my back tore into my flesh with talons, spines, and teeth.

In a rush, my head filled with horrible, bloody memories of blood mages who'd worked for my grandfather stripping skin from my back, and of Mira? in the form of a smoke monster, slashing my back while I was chained in his lair.

Rage and dark magic turned my vision red. My magic erupted with such terrifying force that for a moment I worried my skin would split open. I screamed again, but this time not with pain—with the rush of power coursing through my body.

To my senses, the creatures attacking us felt much like the shades and gravelings we'd encountered topside. I couldn't shred them as fast or as easily as the shades, but I could kill them with magic, and much faster than any other way.

I grabbed at the one on my back with my dark magic and ripped as hard as I could. It burst in a spray of flesh, putrid blood, and splintered bones. Its demise filled me with a new source of power: one that hummed with the potent force of death.

I thought I heard Ronan's voice in my head, his tone angry and worried, but the thrumming of the dark magic drowned out whatever he said.

Covered in the creature's blood, I got to my feet. Bits of flesh fell to the ground around me. My aura blazed like a sun—a siren call to every monster on the ash plain.

With ear-splitting screeches and howls, the rest of the creatures abandoned their attacks on Lucy and Esme and came for me.