Ann Aguirre - Devil's Punch

Finally I had to ask, “Is something coming?”

That wouldn’t surprise me. I just had to get ready for it.

“I don’t think so.”

“Is it hard to pass the portal?” Chance asked.

“Yes. It requires power and sacrifice.”

Good to know. I hated the thought of anything like the weight-sensitive doors at most major shopping centers, where the minute you approached, they slid open, linking our world to Sheol. But it made sense that these natural portals required opening. Otherwise, the demons would’ve overrun us ages ago. Wouldn’t they? Some of them might be perfectly happy at home, despite what Maury had said. After all, not everybody loved to travel.

“So the more our enemies try to send something through to strike at us, the weaker they’ll be when we arrive?” I guessed.

Greydusk nodded. “Most will be prudent enough to wait until you cross to send their best assassins. It is a calculated risk, of course. Should you choose to ascend, once you reach Sheol—”

“Ascend?”

“It is not my place to explain your choices, Binder.”

Bullshit. Greydusk was just tired of answering my endless questions. I took the hint and trudged on in silence. The deeper we went into the mountain, the more it felt like a subterranean forest with exotic stone trees. My witchlight kept the dark from becoming oppressive, and I ignored the burn in my thighs. It was a lengthy hike, but not one that required an overnight rest, thankfully.

We didn’t speak more. I traveled down, down, down, until the air puffed from my lips in smoky whorls. That wasn’t normal in the caves I had visited before, yet another sign that these weren’t normal caverns. Witch sight revealed shimmers of magick in various crystals, glowing red and blue and silver. The stones would be good for various spells, I knew instinctively. I resisted the urge to dig them out of the walls.

The path became steeper, nearly vertical in places, and I braced my hands against the wall as I fell. Greydusk caught me with a careless arm, demonstrating unnatural strength; its gangly limb shouldn’t have possessed that kind of tensile power. The demon lifted me down in an easy gesture, and I stepped away before my unease could insult the creature further. It had dealt with us in good faith; I had no cause to distrust it other than its obviously alien nature.

“We must climb from here. There will be no more easy path.”

Greydusk tied the trusty rope around a rock formation and indicated the yawning chasm before us. Straight down then, no more path. The sound of water greeted my ears, distant and filtered through the tunnels.

This time, it wasn’t ledges, just an endless slide. I zipped Butch all the way into my purse and then handed it to Chance. It was hardest thing I’d ever done to step off the wall into darkness and just let myself fall. That meant trusting the rope was long enough to reach the bottom, even though I couldn’t see it. Butch whined as I went down, a canine study in misgiving.

When I landed, the demon said, “Not much farther now.”

Chance followed with my purse looped around his neck, and Greydusk reclaimed the rope. With one long arm, it indicated the last leg of the journey. Then he gave me back my handbag, still containing a nervous dog.

We went toward the water we could no longer see; it was almost as if we had passed under the river, descending to the point that I expected to see molten lava at the next turn. To my surprise, massive boulders blocked our progress. I’d expected the gate to look more…gatelike, but this was just impassable rock with a stream bubbling beneath it.

Greydusk produced a shimmering red jewel from his pack; it was enormous and unlike anything I’d ever seen, more luminous than a maharajah’s ruby. I considered asking what it was, but then he whispered an incantation in demontongue, a language that lent itself to quiet sibilance. He set the gem in a small niche on the rocks, and a glow sprang up, radiating outward from the gem to encompass us. It arced down into the water like a laser, drawing a path in the air with each movement. Down below, the water gained a bloody glow, swirling up to fill the space between the scarlet streaks that split the dark.

“Now!” Greydusk ordered. “Dive now!”

Into that? Seriously?

Before I could think better of it, I took a running leap and flung myself toward the water, expecting to smash on the rocks, but instead, the sparkling curtain of water caught me as if it were something else, and I passed through it like a doorway. The magick screamed through me, sparking my own gift, and it was like being boiled in oil. I landed, gasping, and I was somewhere else.

Not in the caverns.

I peered into my purse to check on Butch. He popped up and shook himself all over, ears flying wildly. As far as I could tell, he seemed fine.

“You okay, boy?”

He yapped in the affirmative.

I laughed. “Wanna do it again?”

Butch cocked his head as if to say, Are you crazy, lady?

Well, yeah. Maybe. Probably .

A sickly sun shone overhead, but the whole world seemed bathed in ash, sullen and gray, a universe done in charcoal and chiaroscuro. A thin trickle of a stream flowed over rocky ground, and on the bank above grew a tree barren of greenery. In its spindly boughs perched a thing that wasn’t a bird, but might have been their evil cousin. It had skin instead of feathers, like a hairless cat, leathern wings, a small red beak, which was full of tiny, sharp teeth, and beady, nosy eyes that tracked my movements as I pushed to my feet. I stepped out of the river, wringing out the bottom of my pants. From a magickal perspective, it made sense water would be used in transitions like this one, given it was symbolically linked to journeys.

Overhead, the evil avian chirred with unsettling interest.

“Shit,” I said.

Before I could worry about bird-thing’s curiosity, Chance tumbled out of a rent in reality, similar to the one I’d seen in Peru when the sorcerer gated the demon knight in to slay me. It happened a third time, permitting Greydusk to join us. Then the magick diffused on a dank breeze, carrying remnants of light as the only brightness in this otherwise wretched vista.

“You all right?” I asked, offering Chance my hand.

“That was…” He shook his head.

“Right?” There was just no adjective to describe that trip.

“What was the deal with the ruby?” I added to Greydusk.

“It was a soulstone,” the demon replied.

Chance raised a brow. “Did it have an actual soul in it?”

Please say no. Please .

Greydusk inclined its head. “I did say that passage between realms required power and sacrifice.”

“So you destroyed somebody’s soul to get us here?” Horror overwhelmed me. Whatever religion you followed, destruction of a soul meant the end of that path. No more rebirths, no afterlife. Just…gone.

Fuck .

The demon offered a cold smile. “No, Binder. You chose this path. I am merely the guide.”

Chance objected, “But you’d have burned the soulstone to get home, wouldn’t you? If she’d declined your offer.”

“Would I?”

Maybe Greydusk would’ve chosen to go sightseeing in the human world for a few hundred years. Damn it. Then I recalled the terms of his employment: If he failed to guide me to Xibalba, as agreed, if I’d refused to come with him, he died. The person captured in that stone wouldn’t have been destroyed. This was another sin that I hadn’t anticipated, but unintentional harm didn’t make it better or more forgivable. I closed my eyes, sick.

“You didn’t realize,” Chance whispered.