At the same moment Cassandra leaned forward and said urgently, “I can help you fight whatever has possessed you.” A courageous offer, I thought, since as soon as she touched me she’d be putting herself at its mercy, too.
“I’m not sick and I’m not possessed,” I said, but my reply was muted by Cole’s exclamation.
“It’s this location, isn’t it? I told you they’ve got all kinds of lethal crap floating in the air over here. Comes from all that nuclear testing and biological warfare and —”
“Enough!” Vayl bellowed. The sudden silence made my ears ring. I thought,
See what happens when you hardly ever raise your voice? You should take a lesson from this, Jaz,
though I knew I wouldn’t. Vayl looked at me. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have any idea what caused this?” He curled the offending hair around his finger, brushing against my face as he did so. His touch, gentle and yet electrifying, made me hold my breath.
“Yes.”
“Would you like to discuss it?”
I sighed. If I could say it had nothing to do with the mission I’d be off the hook. But it did. In fact, it had a whole helluva lot to do with why four good men were currently sitting on the floor feeling like the poster boys for Johnson & Johnson.
I met Vayl’s eyes. They were the indigo blue that signified deep concern. I twirled Cirilai, the ring he’d given me, around the finger of my right hand. I don’t know if it was that simple action or a stronger power from Cirilai itself that calmed me, but as soon as I thought of it, touched it, I relaxed. “I fell asleep while we were in the helicopter,” I said.
“Yes, I know.” Oh, so that had been his shoulder I’d been leaning on the whole time. Comfy. Anyway.
“Raoul came to me in a dream.” You could almost feel the intensity in the room rise. It started with Vayl, who knew Raoul had twice resurrected me. Yeah, as in,
Lazarus, quit acting like such a stiff already.
He’d also, from time to time, offered me advice, usually in a thunderclap sort of voice that made me wish I’d bought earplugs.
The intensity spread to our crew when they realized, just from looking at our faces, who I must be talking about. Cassandra and Bergman had seen Raoul pull his first miracle on me via holographic replay. They’d filled Cole in later on. It wasn’t something any of them were likely to forget.
Dave knew Raoul as well, and his team, keyed in on him as they were, reacted to his startled response with a little dance I like to call the bump and shuffle. It’s a series of significant looks accompanied by shifts in stance and simple footwork that a very tight-knit group uses to let each other know something big is about to go down and everybody should remember their assignments. I didn’t know what they expected me to do. Suddenly transform into a brain-eating siren? Mow them all down with the AK-47 I kept hidden in my undies? Burst into flame?
Vayl, noting the change in pressure, tried to put a spin on the release valve. “Jasmine is a Sensitive,” he explained to the room at large. “Among her Gifts is the ability to travel outside her body. Raoul exists in that realm, and has had occasion to act as her Guide.”
Dave gave his okay-whatever shrug. I got the feeling he and Raoul weren’t quite on speaking terms. I believed the difference in our relationships with him had something to do with the fact that Vayl had twice taken my blood and left some of his power in its place. Those acts had left me with extra abilities Raoul found valuable. Plus, Dave didn’t appreciate outside interference in his missions, no matter who assigned them. If not for the mole, I doubted Vayl and I would be here at all.
“Go ahead, Jasmine,” Vayl said, “tell us what happened when Raoul arrived.”
I cleared my throat. Looked around the room. “Well, he showed up during my bubble bath dream.”
I love that one. It’s always so warm and cozy and I wake up feeling practically boneless. Raoul had stepped into my little white bathroom, his green and black camo and impossibly broad shoulders making it seem more like a Chinese takeout box than a lavatory as he said in his Spanish-flavored accent, “I’m sorry, Jasmine, but there’s no other way to do this. I’ve got to take you to hell.”
Chapter Two
The trip from my rest room to what Granny May’s minister used to refer to as Satan’s Playground so closely resembled the blackouts I’d experienced after losing Matt and my Helsinger crew that I came to with a strong desire to run straight to my sister’s attic, dive into the trunk she stored for me there, and resurrect Buttons, my old teddy bear. But since spineless wimps don’t survive long in my business, I decided to go with Plan B.
I opened my eyes.
And that’s when I started to swear.
“Hell is massive,” I told my audience, who’d gathered around me like a bunch of kids at their library story hour. “Imagine looking through a telescope. Think of all the black space between the stars. It’s like all that got sucked into an observable area that you somehow know is also an endless, infinite tract. But it’s not empty.
“The ground is covered with rocks. Some sharp, some rounded. Most covered with mold, blood, or vomit. Raoul and I stood on a huge boulder just flat enough on top to hold the two of us. In the distance I could see a chain of mountains. Did I mention the rocks? The point is, you have to watch every step. Citizens of hell don’t look up. Not unless they want to drag around a broken ankle or two. Some do.
“As a visitor, I felt free to explore. So I glanced up.”
“Shit, Raoul, the sky’s on fire!” I ducked, nearly pulling my hand from his as I moved. His grip tightened, pressing Cirilai into the adjoining fingers until they throbbed.
“Whatever you do, don’t let go,” he warned me. “Hungry eyes are on us, waiting for us to break the rules.”
“All you told me was that we couldn’t be late and we had to leave when we were done!” I snapped. “If you’re going to risk my life —”
“Soul,” he amended.
“Oh, that’s better.”
Raoul fixed me with a drop-and-give-me-twenty look. Through clenched teeth he said, “We are allowed only a brief amount of time here. If they can separate us, they will. If we use our time trying to find each other, we have wasted the sacrifice it took to come here. Worse, if we’re separated and can’t find each other in time, one or both of us could be stuck here for eternity.”
“Sacrifice?”
“You did agree.”
“When?”
He grimaced at me, reached into the chest pocket of his jacket, and handed me a note, written in my own hand:
You had a meeting with the uppity-ups during your blackout. Someday you might remember, but there’s no time to explain, and this is too important to screw up. In the end you’ll agree this was worth the sacrifice. So shut up and listen to Raoul.
J
“So your hair,” interrupted Bergman, “is that the sacrifice?”
“I doubt it,” said the wounded guy who’d had to be stitched. He’d shed his turban to reveal a shiny bald pate that somehow made him resemble a rhinoceros, whereas any other white man would’ve looked like a cancer patient. I learned later his name was Otto “Boom” Perle, and before he’d become a munitions expert he’d been a wildass teenager who’d burned his eyebrows and half his hair off in a fireworks accident. After hearing that story, bald seemed brilliant. Otto motioned to his wound. “Seems like hell would want something more like this.”
I agreed. In which case the sacrifice had yet to be made.
“So the whole place was just rocks?” asked another hurt guy whose rosy cheeks and light brown beard made him look a lot younger than he was. He introduced himself as Terrence Casey, father of five, grandfather of one, and biggest Giants fan of all time. I shook my head.