Entanglement

Miller refused to move from Charlotte’s side. He had been in his tiger form, crouched beside her body for the last two hours. Dante and Azlynn had been trying to prompt him to come with them; they had to find Leviathan, and McNitt, for that matter, since he had disappeared not long after telling them that Charlotte was dead. But Miller stubbornly refused to go anywhere, and they didn’t feel right about just leaving him, given the situation.

So they had been sitting in the dim little room, surrounded by the bodies of the creepy creatures, and Dante’s nerves were wearing thin.

“Can’t we leave and then come get him later?” Dante whispered to Azlynn. She sighed. “I don’t know if even I would be able to find him again.”

“Can’t you just track the demon blood Charlotte was injected with again?”

“Death automatically severs the link between the injected and the demon whose blood they had. The Qurtem is out of her system now.”

Dante huffed. “I wish I didn’t understand the bond that Were’s form with their mates. Then maybe I wouldn’t feel so guilty about wanting to drag him away. But I hate just sitting here doing nothing. We can’t stay here forever.”

“I know.” Azlynn had been sitting cross-legged on the cold floor, almost completely immobile, since McNitt vanished. Suddenly she frowned and started restlessly tapping her fingers against her legs, looking deeply pensive.

“What’s on your mind?” Dante asked, instantly alert.

“I don’t smell them,” Azlynn murmured, more to herself than to him.

“Smell who?”

“The Reapers.”

“Come again?” He shook his head. Angels and their cryptic riddle-answers.

“Reapers,” she said again. “They come to collect souls and guide them away from their bodies Reapers can go anywhere; they would have no problem reaching this realm. They shepherd souls to the Angel of Death, and she decides their fate.”

“The Angel of Death is a she?”

“Of course,” Azlynn said simply. “But angels can scent Reapers. Even most demons can sense their presence. There’s no trace of them here.”

“Could her soul have been destroyed?” Dante shuddered.

“No,” Azlynn replied. “No, that kind of thing leaves a lingering presence in the general vicinity that even humans can usually feel. That’s seriously black, twisted magic. Not even magic; it’s pure evil.”

“Not to change the subject, but how did you get all that information about what Leviathan is up to?”

“Hmm? Oh. The man in the cell across from mine was a demon’s familiar. I guess Walden had him captured and brought in to run tests; see if there was anything the government could gain by using familiars.” She rolled her eyes. “They’re wasting their time; demon familiars are essentially junkies; like blood-whores or people who become addicted to vampire bites. They’re sometimes made familiars by force, sometimes by choice, but either way they eventually become obsessed and enthralled by their demon masters. Anyway. He still had a strong link to his master, which allowed him to occasionally tap into his master’s thoughts and memories. His master is one of the demons working with Leviathan. That’s how he got all the details. I can’t tell you why he decided to share the information with me.”

Dante rubbed his hands tiredly over his face. This was probably the longest day of his entire life. He was ready to smash something. Or someone. Morrison and McNitt’s faces swam through his mind. He watched Azlynn slip back into her thoughtful mode, and took the opportunity to study her face. She was exquisite; he had never seen anyone like her. He could probably sit and stare at her forever and not get tired of it.

“Reapers should have been here,” she muttered. “Something about this isn’t right.”

Dante snorted. “Nothing about this is right,” he pointed out.

Azlynn stood, crossing the room and kneeling beside Charlotte. Miller growled low in his throat, and Azlynn shot him a warning look. “Knock it off,” she said. “What do you really think I’m going to do to her?”

Miller made a coughing sound, and rested his head back on his paws. Dante watched curiously as Azlynn leaned over Charlotte’s still form, seeming to study something.

“What are you doing?” Dante asked finally, growing tired of waiting. “Why are you staring at her? What is this supposed to do? Are you waiting for her to do a jig? Because if so I think we’ll be here for a while.”

“Dante, shut up.”

“Hey I’m just asking,” he said, shrugging. Miller glared at him, ears flat.

“Sorry,” Dante muttered. “Damn.”

Azlynn continued her scrutiny in silence for several more moments, and he was about to ask her again just what she was doing, when suddenly a smile spread across her face. “Of course!” she exclaimed to herself.

“Of course…what?” Dante asked, perplexed. “Why are you smiling?”

“How absolutely brilliant,” Azlynn went on, not answering.

”What’s brilliant?” Dante asked loudly, throwing his arms in the air in frustration. “Dammit woman, stop talking crazy and explain what’s going on here!”

“Drew, stop your moping and get up,” Azlynn ordered. The tiger jerked his head up in surprise.

“Hey, even I think that’s a little insensitive,” Dante protested. “He did just lose his mate.”

“You’re both such idiots,” Azlynn sighed. She scooped Charlotte’s limp body into her arms. Drew leapt to his feet, growling again.

“Stop that!” Azlynn snapped at him. “Do you want to save her or not? Stop your mewing.”

“Aren’t we a little late to save her?” Dante said.

“Actually we’re just in time. Now both of you get over here, and stay close to me. You do not want to get lost in some other dimension.”

“Azlynn, what’s going on-”

“Questions later,” she cut him off, reaching out one hand to jerk him towards her. “Right now, you two come with me.”

“Where the Hell are we going?”

“Why Dante, I think you just answered your own question.”

“Fu-” The breath was knocked out of him as Azlynn dragged him, Miller, and Charlotte from the room with head-spinning speed.



“You know, people always said I’d end up here,” Dante remarked. Azlynn had teleported their asses straight into Hell. “I just didn’t know it was going to be this soon. I wonder if we‘ll run into anybody I know.”
Azlynn strode purposefully up the ash-covered street, looking strange carrying a dead girl in her arms. She had put on a strong glamour; hiding her wings and facial markings.

“Where in the Hell, and I now mean that quite literally, are we?” Dante asked. Miller tagged along at his heels.

“The third circle,” she replied.

“Like in my book?”

“Your book?”

“Yeah, Dante’s Inferno.” He smirked. Azlynn shook her head. “Dante, really. You’re incorrigible.”

“Thank you.”

“Yes, more or less like the book, although there are actually twelve circles of Hell; not seven.”

“Awesome. So, why are we here?”

“We’re looking for Tedantrios.”

“Wait, the dude who trained Charlotte?” He and Miller both stopped short, gaping at her. “I thought he was dead.”

“Dante, look around. You’re in Hell. The kingdom of damned souls. Where else do you go to find dead people?”

“Ah, good point. So what do we need him for? And are you certain he’s here?”

“Oh, I’m sure,” Azlynn said dryly. “When Charlotte spoke of Ted the trainer I never realized it was Tedantrios. But I can assure you he’s here. He would never have ended up anywhere else.”

“Who was he?”

“A very old, very powerful Dark Mage, and one of the first skin walkers. It’s a long story; but he aided Lucifer’s rise to power as King of the Damned after he Fell. God condemned him; no matter what good he ever did in his long life would be enough to redeem his soul for giving Lucifer back the powers that he had been stripped of when he was Exiled and had his Grace taken from him. There was forever a black taint on him that could never be cleansed. Trust me, we’ll find him here.”

“What do we need him for?” Dante repeated, mind reeling slightly from her story.

“To fix Charlotte.”

“He’s not going to bring her back using Necromancy is he?” Dante asked warily. That kind of black magic made his skin crawl.

“There’s no need to bring her back from anywhere,” Azlynn said. “She’s not dead.”

Again, he and Miller stopped and stared. “What?” Dante finally said.

“She’s not dead.” Azlynn didn’t even slow her pace or turn around. Dante and Miller scurried after her. She suddenly swerved off the ash-clogged street and ducked into a cave entrance that Dante could swear hadn’t been there a moment ago. He and Miller followed slowly. There was no light, and Dante was going to light a fire in his hands until he realized that none of them needed light to see. A dragon’s eyesight was more acute even than a cat or a bird of prey; and Azlynn moved with easy, confident steps.

“Tedantrios!” she called into the shadows. A light was flickering dimly at the end of the tunnel.

“Go away!”

“Is that Clint Eastwood?” Dante muttered; the voice sounded like it belonged to a cranky old man. He almost laughed out loud when they stepped into the room where the light was; a large open chamber. There was, in fact, a surly looking old man slouching in a recliner.

“Only in Hell.” Dante shook his head. “I need to get out of this place.”

“What do you want?” the old man snapped. “How do you know me?”

“As a greedy old fool,” Azlynn quipped. “Recognize her?” She laid Charlotte’s body out on the floor.

“Charlotte Lawson. So she finally got herself killed, eh?”

Miller crouched low to the ground and snarled.

“She’s not dead, and I think you know it as well as I do,” Azlynn said coldly. “She performed the Blood Sleep spell on herself.”

“I’m glad the lesson stuck with her.”

“You have to re-awaken her soul.”

“Why should I?”

“Because I’m telling you to.” Azlynn leaned forward, resting a hand on either arm of his recliner, putting her face close to his and letting her power start to radiate from her glamoured body.

“And who are you to tell me what to do?” Tedantrios demanded. “This is the world of demons, girl, and you-” He broke off as Azlynn shed her glamour completely. He blinked. “Ah, so you’re the one they’ve all been talking about,” he murmured. “Leviathan’s daughter.”

“You’re going to perform the spell to bring her soul out of its sleep,” Azlynn ordered.

“All right, all right.” Tedantrios pushed himself up out of his chair, going to one of his many bookshelves and pulling down a book so old it had probably witness the creation of light. The leather was faded; the parchment inside even more so. Tedantrios pulled a pair of glasses out of his pocket and began flipping through the pages. Dante couldn’t believe he was standing in a hidden cave, in Hell, watching a cranky, half-bald man read a book older than dirt in order to find a magic spell that would bring a dead skin walker back to life. He wished he had a camera.

“So what happened to Miss Lawson?” Tedantrios asked as he continued gingerly rifling through the pages.

“Leviathan forced her into a duel,” Azlynn said darkly. “From what I was able to gather from the fuzzy soul reading was that she made it to the final challenger, but her strength was fading fast. She didn’t have the energy to deflect his spell or kill him, so she used the last of her energy to trick him instead. She pulled her soul out of the chamber around her heart, and fused it into her blood. As you know, that leaves the physical body dead, for all intents and purposes. No heartbeat, no breath, body temperature drops; rigor mortis even typically sets in. But they’re not really dead, because the soul hasn’t left the body. It’s drifting along in their veins, barely conscious. It’s a little known spell, but it was extremely risky of her to try it. She’s lucky Leviathan or one of the others didn’t realize what she had done and severed her soul from her body entirely.”

“So she can’t utter a spell to bring herself back?” Dante asked.

“No,” Azlynn said. “That’s also why it’s risky. The brain shuts down; all thought and memory is stored in the soul, but it can do nothing while it resides in the blood. It essentially goes dormant; especially so since the blood is no longer pumping through the body because the heart is no longer beating. It’s dangerous to perform the spell if you don’t have someone there with you who can reverse it and return the soul to where it belongs. She was either in a great deal of pain and didn’t care anymore; or she was extremely confident that we would find her and be able to reverse it.”

“You certainly know a lot, for someone who doesn’t work blood magic.,” Tedantrios said, eyeing her over the rim of his glasses.

“Blood is sacred to angels too, you know. It’s the power behind life, in conjunction with a soul. I made it a point to learn about rituals and arts used by creatures on Earth before I ever came down from Heaven. It doesn’t matter that I don’t use such magic.”

“Ah, here we are.” Tedantrios went to the little desk beside his recliner and pulled out some weird looking ground up plant and a ceremonial knife. Muttering some language that sounded to Dante like total gibberish, he sprinkled the plant leaves over her. He then sliced into his palm with the knife, drawing a line of crimson.

“Great, he’s emo,” Dante muttered. Miller made a noise in his throat that sounded vaguely like a laugh. The two of them and Azlynn watched in fascination as Tedantrios continued whispering a chant over and over again, letting three drops of his blood land on Charlotte’s forehead, each cheek, and her chest. Dante watched, unblinking, as the black veins beneath her skin slowly faded away, and then abruptly color bloomed in her cheeks again.

“Well, well, what have we here?” Dante whipped around, a ball of fire already glowing in his hand. McNitt.

“Tedantrios, I’m surprised at you.” McNitt watched the old man perform the spell with a detached air. Tedantrios faltered only slightly before continuing with the chant as though McNitt had never spoken. Dante hurled his fire ball, and McNitt made a noise of startled pain. He extinguished the flames easily enough, but now he looked pissed.

“I will enjoy flaying the skin from your bones, Weredragon.”

“Go ahead and try,” Dante spat. Miller lunged, knocking McNitt to the ground and tearing at his throat with his fangs. McNitt cast him off; Miller hit the far wall hard and lay there a moment, stunned.

“Don’t wreck my house!” Tedantrios snapped, finally stopping his incessant chanting.

“Not much of a house,” Dante pointed out.

“Stanton!” Azlynn called. Somehow she had slipped out of the room without anyone noticing, and was now standing in the entryway. The room fell silent and McNitt’s eyes flickered over to where she was standing. He grinned. “So, you decided to embrace your darkness after all,” he gloated.

“You could say that,” she said silkily. Charlotte sucked in a deep breath and her eyes flew open just as Azlynn launched herself at McNitt, shoving a hand glowing with white Angelfire into his chest, filling his entire body with brilliant whiteness. His inhuman scream pierced the air like a dagger.