Through the Grey, page 29
Redmayne sat up and studied her. “A true veil—not just a light-bend?”
Peacock shrugged. “Sure. I can look like someone else or I can look like nothing at all, but it’d be a waste of energy here.”
“You act like it’s nothing,” he said looking astonished. “Veil’s rare and can’t be duplicated in any sort of artifact.”
Just like an engineer—always thinking about the toys. She rolled her eyes, then glanced around and shifted her weight onto her feet again. “We’d better get moving. It’s a long way to the exit.”
“Something wrong?”
“Nothing specific, but you talk too much and we’ve had too much grace.”
“Expecting the next shoe to drop, yeah?”
Peacock nodded. “Uh-huh.” She picked up a handful of incinerated stone and crumbled it. The dust stuck to her burned skin.
Redmayne winced at the sight as he crawled to his feet. “Whyn’t you wear gloves or something?”
“Can’t feel through gloves. Besides, all damage heals here—that’s how eternal torment works—you grow back together so they can take you apart over and over.”
“Yeah, I noticed.”
Peacock started forward without comment.
After a few steps, Redmayne said, “With your talent, you could lose me any time you like.”
She sighed. “Why would I come down here and drag you out of a pile of flesh-tearing hellhounds just to dump you?”
Redmayne offered a bitter smile. “It’s all about the torture, in’t it? And what’s worse than hope?”
That was almost amusing and she let go of half a smile. “Spawn can’t anchor a talent, so…what?” She drew the mental veil over herself, formless and reflective, and flickered out of view. He gaped and she chuckled from within her illusion. “You think I’m a hell lord in disguise?”
A shadow moved over them with a thunderclap. Peacock let her talent fall away and they both dove for cover as a lord descended. It was three or four meters tall, human in form, but winged and monstrous. The crown of Peacock’s head would have barely come to its sternum if they stood toe-to-toe. The lord’s incomplete black armor didn’t reflect the fiery sky and its crimson drapery flowed in the air like blood in water.
“Fucking hell,” Redmayne cursed.
“Secondus,” Peacock said and drew her baneforged knives. “Could be worse. Run diagonally from its line of attack and stay out of the way.”
She stood tall and faced the lord with both the eerie green blades held low. She wasn’t an assassin, but she’d picked up a few tricks…
“Fugitive souls,” the hell lord rumbled. It wheeled and folded its wings, rushing forward with the momentum of its fall.
Redmayne fled toward a nearby pile of rock.
Peacock ran toward the lord and ducked. She swept the blades out as it passed over her. The knives jerked in her hands and she dug in against the backward drag as blades cut moving flesh.
The hell lord roared and flipped a wingtip, pivoting to keep Peacock in sight as it landed. Ichor sprayed from its wounded, backward knees and it staggered left, foot twisting a little. Got you! Peacock danced aside. The lord swiped at her and she slashed. The creature jerked back an instant too late. A talon as long as her hand clattered to the iron ground and slid toward Redmayne. Not so fucking invincible against these, are you? The lord raised its sliced hand in surprise.
Peacock leaped at its weak side. She planted one foot hard on its injured knee and vaulted upward. She reversed the near blade and shoved it toward the lord’s armpit with a downward swing. The creature twisted and swept its elbow down, knocking Peacock aside.
She rolled across the searing surface as the hell lord screamed, then flipped to her feet and faced it. Her blade stuck out below the mark, sunk only half its length in the lord’s side. Smoking ichor poured from the wound, but the monster was still on its feet.
Peacock’s cheek was blistered from the heat and her remaining blade steamed with gore. She spotted Redmayne scuttling onto the burned earth to snatch up the severed claw. “Leave it, you idiot!” she yelled. Gonna be the hard way, I guess. “Back me!”
The lord turned toward Redmayne and Peacock threw herself forward. The creature whirled around, snapping out a wing with taloned tips that raked across her chest and throat.
The blow spun Peacock into the air, blood fanning from the slash across her neck. She hit the ground and sprawled onto her back in a twisted heap, carmine blood running across the black plain in wide swaths. The wounded hell lord bounded toward her. Redmayne started after it with the dismembered claw clutched in his hands.
Her memory was much more clear now: She had glanced over her shoulder as the roof edge loomed and maybe it was the action or maybe it was the sight of familiar faces that had made her miscalculate the leap…
But Peacock figured it was the bullet that had been shot into her back.
The lord bent unsteadily over Peacock, laughing in spite of its running wounds. It drew back its uninjured hand to strike.
Redmayne leapt onto its back and stabbed it with its own severed claw. The talon didn’t sink in deep, but it did pierce the lord’s armor and a narrow stream of ichor squirted into the air. The lord shrieked and shook out its wings to dislodge Redmayne, sending a gust of hot air booming forth.
Peacock spasmed, her head lolling and wobbling as the wound in her throat began to close. She rolled to her knees and flipped her blade upward, then lunged, shoving it hilt-deep into the hell lord’s gut below the edge of its breastplate. She pushed with both hands until the pommel rang against the metal, then ripped sideways and down with the weight of her own falling body. The blade tore through the hell lord’s hide to the scarlet sash that wrapped the mailed kilt around its hips. The infernal creature collapsed as its guts spilled out onto the smoking field.
Peacock lay trapped under the dead hell lord, gasping and blinking. And the damned thing stank.
Redmayne danced from one burning foot to the other as he shoved the creature aside. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said as she wriggled free.
Her exposed skin was crisply blackened by the time she reached the nearest rocky ridge and her leathers were badly singed. She flopped into the crumbling stone and coughed on pain and dust as her wounds closed and her skin resolved from ash to flesh. Redmayne hunched nearby with the hell lord’s claw in his hand. When she caught her breath, she beckoned him to her.
Redmayne crept close and bent down and Peacock punched him in the face. “You set me up.”
He landed on his back. “No!”
She knelt over him. “Bullshit! You’re an artificer—you knew my drawing the veil would send out a ripple. A hell lord won’t attack another of its own kind without provocation. You really thought I was one of them! You figured that one would fly on by—”
“That’s a bloody-minded assumption you’re making, Sunshine.”
“It was a lousy trick to pull on me…Sunshine,” Peacock spat back. “I ought to leave you here to scream your guts out for the rest of eternity!”
Redmayne scowled. “Fiore wouldn’t like that…”
“Don’t you lecture me on what that scheming bastard would or wouldn’t— Oh…damn it all,” she added, winding down in disgust. “I need to get you out of here or I’ll never get a shot at him.” She rested on her heels.
Redmayne struggled to sit up. “Who? Fiore? He’s betrayed you, hasn’t he? Bloody good at that, he is.”
She peered at him. “He screwed you over, too.”
Redmayne avoided her gaze. “Let’s just say we didn’t part friends.”
She studied him a minute or so longer and then sat down, crushing handfuls of fragile, baked stone and rubbing the dust into her oozing skin.
“Why d’you do that?” Redmayne asked as he watched her intently. He was less eviscerated, but still a bit flayed and gnawed.
“I don’t like to drip. And, crazy as it sounds, it seems to speed up healing. You could use a little, yourself.”
“Should take some out of here with us, then,” he said, but he didn’t follow her example.
“It’s tricky getting native things out of Hell. You’re gonna have to leave that.” She pointed at the claw.
“Hah! You barmy? This, my stealthy friend, is pure artifact gold and worth what it took to get it.” He waved the talon. “I’d rather stay here and dodge hellspawn than leave it behind.”
“Seriously?”
“I’d take my chances,” he replied, his expression grim.
“Why?”
He gave her an odd smile. “You ever seen one of these things in the breathing world?”
“No.”
“Useful, these are—at least if you’re someone like me. Goes through anything, almost indestructible out in the world, and since it’s hellbound, it has a positive yen to return from whence it came; or send other things back in its place.”
“Literally?” she asked. Redmayne nodded. Peacock glanced at the gutted hell lord and shuddered. “Good thing it’s dead.”
“Who says they stay dead?”
“I jammed a foot of baneforged steel into its guts. I’ve never seen anything get up from that.”
“How many lords have you killed?”
“That makes two—but I admit I didn’t stick around the last time.”
Redmayne’s smile was sly.
Peacock scowled at him and growled. “There goes my exit plan.”
“You really had one?”
“Of course. I never go in without having at least two ways out. But neither of my escape routes accounted for bringing anything along besides you and me. Even my blades were gonna stay behind.”
“There’s other doors between the worlds…if we can find one down here.”
“It’ll have to be a wide one, which means the hellborn probably already know about it. I’ll have to check the map,” Peacock said and dug into a pocket hidden under one of her scabbards. She drew out a wisp of gauze that gleamed with tiny points of colored light.
Redmayne gaped at her. “You have the Liminal Map?”
“I have part of the map—I stole it.”
“You’re a fly one.”
“I’m a thief.”
“Where’d you enter?”
“New Straitsville, Ohio. There’s a coal mine that’s been burning there for more than a hundred years. Closest superposition to where I found you. Easy in, but it’s a flesh lock on the way out. Now shut up and let me look—this thing’s hard to see.”
Redmayne put out his hand. “Let me.”
Peacock wasn’t sure she could trust him, but he couldn’t get far without her—and the hell lord’s clothes—so she handed the bit of ethereal fabric over.
“This looks familiar.” He glanced down at his still-ragged body. “That’ll do.” He laid the map against a strip of raw flesh on his chest. The map dissolved and Redmayne sucked his breath through clenched teeth.
“What the—” Peacock started.
“Hang on,” he gasped. “It’s coming…”
The map gleamed into sight—a tattoo of living silver sparked with tiny gems. It was as clear as printing and when Redmayne moved, it adjusted its North by his position.
“Well, fuck me,” Peacock murmured.
“Likes a bit of flesh and blood, this thing.”
She grinned. “How’d you know?”
Redmayne cocked a sarcastic eyebrow. “Artificer. How’d you think?”
“You made this map?”
He scoffed. “Nah. Nobody made it. Compiled over centuries. Happens, though, that I did work on this bit right here,” he said, and poked one glittering portal marker. “Never used it, but should be a good door—unless a lot more has changed than I imagined.”
The broad portal was closer than Peacock had feared and less protected. The Netherworld was riddled with caves here and she crouched with Redmayne in the mouth of one while studying the landscape.
“You sure this is right…?” she asked.
“Course it’s right. The map can’t lie and we’re…” he pushed aside the tunic they’d made from the dead lord’s blood-red draperies and pointed at the bright star that seemed to shine on his chest, “right here. Practically on top of it.”
Redmayne had bound up his feet with more cloth and made a sort of a pack from armor parts; he’d filled it with the lord’s claw and other things he deemed useful. While he’d never pass as a lord on visual inspection, he certainly smelled like hell.
Peacock shook her head. “There’s no sign of a guard aside from a couple of wandering spawn, or that the portal’s in use at all. I can’t even see it.”
“It’s there. Trust me.” He squinted in pain. “This little bugger burns.”
“It’s just…something’s funny. You’re certain?”
Redmayne heaved an exasperated sigh. “Look, mate, I want out of Hell as much as you do. I count m'self bloody lucky it’s you got sent to retrieve me and I’m not gonna ditch you. I used to be on the side of the angels, and Fiore always thought whatever he did was justified if it kept the darkness back, but it’s not. Some things are evil, simple as that. It’s no accident I’m down here—I damned m'self. I did things and knew I’d end right here—”
Peacock raised a hand. “Hush! There, by that steam fissure in the hillside, there’s a gleam,” she whispered. “See where that spawn’s digging?”
“Yeah. That’s the liminal point. It’s a transverse.”
“A what?”
“Passes through Limbo and changes orientation. Nasty trip, but it’ll get us out in one piece and the lower orders of hellborn can’t follow. Must be a bit of odd there.”
“Probably why that spawn’s so interested. Have to get rid of it before it attracts attention.” She checked position of all the spawn in view. “All right. You need to be close, so follow me until I turn, then wait.”
“Wait—” he started.
She ignored him and slipped out into the shadow.
She tucked tight and ran along the wall’s base. She avoided the hellspawn’s sight until she reached its blind spot. Then she turned sharply, keeping directly behind the creature, and dashed across the open space toward it and the crevice. She spotted a few more spawn wandering farther out in the plain where it flattened to hot iron. They might not see her, but they could hear and smell better than any dog. They’d come running if the hellspawn by the portal howled.
Peacock timed her leap and came down on the hellspawn’s back with one blade out, sweeping forward and under its elongated jaw. She sliced through its throat before it could make a sound and fell on top of it.
She breathed a long sigh of relief and glanced back. Redmayne was right where she’d told him to be. She waved him forward and turned her attention to the other spawn. They hadn’t turned toward the rock face. At least not yet.
Redmayne tiptoed a path to her side and crouched. She reached for the portal’s gleam and he snatched her hand away. “No. We’re not done here.”
Peacock growled at him.
He released her hand. “Tried to tell you earlier. Soon’s we’re through that door, things change. You have to cut this map out of me chest first. It’ll want to stay there ever after otherwise, and I’d not like that.”
She was appalled. “You’re kidding.”
“Wish I were. Now, quick—before that lot takes note of us.”
“Have you got anything sharp and stabbity in that pack?” she asked.
“Whyn’t you use your knife?”
“Baneforged. Wounds don’t heal.”
“Right. Bugger.”
Redmayne unslung the pack and rummaged through it until he found a sharp bit of armor scale. He handed it over to Peacock and cast a nervous glance toward the hellspawn. “Just nick the edge and tear it out—that’ll have to do.”
Peacock winced. “That’s gonna hurt.”
“No doubt.”
She’d been able to hear him from a long distance before she’d found him. “We’d better be ready to jump,” she said.
“Put your back to the cleft—that’ll be easiest.”
She turned and the portal leaked a cold wind along her shoulders. Redmayne gripped his pack with both hands, squeezed his eyes shut, and grimaced in anticipation. He was silent as she sliced the edge of the Liminal Map free and caught it in her fingers. She yanked.
Redmayne shrieked, arching in agony.
The hellspawn turned as a body and raced toward them, raising a clatter on the hard ground like a hailstorm. Something roared and Peacock shot a glance toward it—clouds seemed to boil both overhead and across the searing plain. Monstrous faces resolved from the fiery sky and rushed into shape as they fell upon the two fugitives. Lords and hellspawn by the hundreds.
She threw herself back against the portal.
It resisted.
“Shit. Redmayne—”
He lurched forward, the pack falling into her lap as he bowed over her and thrust his hands into the rift. Blood spattered and ran onto her face. Amid the howls of incoming hellborn, she could barely hear him spit out a word that shook the rock face behind her.
They fell though the portal and the screams of Hell’s fury cut short in suffocating silence. Redmayne twisted and caught one hand in the closing portal.
Limbo was a luminous gray nothingness. Two streaks of light—one ruby, one gold—showed in Peacock’s vision as she glanced side to side.
“D’you hear that?” Redmayne asked.
“I don’t hear anything.”
Redmayne flickered as he hunched beside the thin red line. “Bloody hell. Fiore, you bastard,” he whispered. His voice was hoarse and trembling.
“Holy crap, Redmayne,” Peacock muttered. “What are you doing?”
“Bleeding and holding on.”
She reached for the infernal rocks in Redmayne’s pack. “You’re not gonna heal like you do in Hell.”
“Don’t!” He slapped her hand aside. “We’ve only got minutes before we’re back in the lion’s den. Could you put a finger here? Any one will do perfectly fine.”
Peacock flipped him the bird and he shoved her hand into the fiery light. It burned against her flesh and seemed to gnaw on her digit.
