Pryce must have heard me coming. He turned and gestured at me. It looked like he threw something, so I ducked. Mab saw his distraction and lunged. But I couldn’t see whether she hit him, because my headlamp went out.
The darkness, its suddenness and absoluteness, froze me in place. I fumbled for the flashlight on my belt. It would be awkward to fight and hold a flashlight at the same time, but I’d have to manage. I clicked the switch. Nothing happened. I tried again, but no light pierced the cavern’s darkness. Flick, flick. I moved the switch back and forth, then shook the damn thing.
I was hundreds of feet underground, and I had no light.
I pushed down the urge to scream. This was no time to panic. But how was I supposed to fight in this endless, crushing, utter darkness? Pryce was one of the Meibion Avagddu, the Sons of Utter Darkness. He could probably see in here. In fact, he must feel right at home.
Blade hit blade, slid off, hit again. Feet shuffled, grunts sounded. The fight moved deeper into the cavern. It was eerie, hearing hard fighting when I could see nothing. I crept toward the sounds. My sword was still drawn, but I might as well have left it in the car. What use was it if I couldn’t see? I didn’t want to aim for Pryce and hit Mab instead. In the darkness, Pryce cursed. I hoped Mab had gotten a good hit.
Mab had to be fighting in the demon plane. It was the only way she could expand her senses enough to see in the dark. Mab had no demon mark, no bond to a Hellion, so there was no reason for her to hold back. For me, though, it was too risky. I was too close to the place where demons had been born to step into their world.
Then Mab gasped and cried out. Pryce laughed. There was a loud groan—a sound laced with pain. Was it Mab? I couldn’t be sure. Then Pryce laughed again, and nothing else mattered. Mab needed me. I took a deep breath and opened my senses to the demon plane.
In a blaze of agony, my demon mark ignited. I screamed. A flare shot from my arm, lighting the cavern like a torch. Beyond it, a dim gray light—the eternal twilight of Uffern—spread feebly throughout the cavern. Cawing, muted but frantic, called from the slate. Mab and Pryce stood thirty feet ahead. They’d paused their fight. Both stood and stared at me.
Mab looked like an avenging angel, fifty years younger and shining with the same silver radiance that lit up Hellforged’s obsidian blade. Pryce showed his double form. He still looked like the tall, elegant, black-haired human who called himself my cousin, but his demon self hulked behind like a nightmare shadow. Cysgod was bigger and uglier than in the pub; it towered over Mab by a dozen feet. The demon held a sword, longer than I was tall. Fire reeled in and out of its mouth as it breathed. It laughed, and flames shot toward me.
I jumped back, and the flames extinguished on the ground at my feet. But the blaze from my demon mark grew, jetting toward the cavern’s ceiling in a fountain of fire. I batted at it with my left hand, burning myself but unable to smother the flame. The heat blistered my left palm but left the skin around the mark untouched.
I looked to Mab for help. She gaped at me across the gloom, her mouth hanging open in horror.
Pryce bounded behind her. His shadow demon lifted its sword.
“Mab, look out!”
My warning came too late. Cysgod rammed its sword into her back, skewering her. Steel glinted where the tip protruded from her chest, although the demon itself remained a shadow. Pain squeezed my aunt’s features. The creature drew back its arm, lifting Mab off her feet, then whipped the sword forward and flung her across the cavern. She hit the far wall and crumpled onto the floor.
“No!” Iran to her.
Pryce’s laughter echoed through the cavern.
Mab had rolled onto her back. Her chest wound, four inches long, pumped out blood. Her clothes were soaked with it, and it puddled on the floor. I reached out to put pressure on the wound, but my damn demon mark still spit flames, so I used my left hand. Blood welled between my fingers.
“Mab,” I choked out. “You’re going to be all right.”
Behind me, the third gong-strike sounded. As if in answer, frenzied cawing and the flapping of wings burst into the cavern.
Mab’s eyes fluttered open. “The athame, child,” she whispered. I had to lean over to hear her. “Don’t let the Morfran escape.”
“It already has, you old fool.” Pryce sneered from the darkness behind us. “Today sees the death of the Lady of the Cerddorion, as prophesied. Your niece knew it was coming; the book told her. Yet she did nothing to save you. She chose my side.”
A look of revulsion crossed my aunt’s face.
“Liar!” I shouted. I bent over Mab. “Don’t listen to him,” I said. “I’ll get you out of here, get you to a hospital.”
Mab opened her mouth, but instead of words, a thick gout of blood surged out. She shuddered, then lay motionless. Under my hand, the pulsing blood stilled.
“We’ve defeated her.” Pryce was jubilant. “Thanks to you, cousin. If you hadn’t entered Uffern—”
I was on my feet, charging him, before he could finish. I grasped my sword in both hands, lifting it high over my head, ready to split him down the center.
Pryce danced out of the way. Instead of drawing his own sword to fight me, the coward turned and sprinted toward the tunnel. He leapt into it and scrambled up the slope on his hands and knees. Cysgod squeezed into the tunnel after him.
I hurled a knife at his receding figure. The angle was too awkward; the knife struck the tunnel’s ceiling short of its target, fell to the ground, and slid down the slope. I scooped it up as I ran.
Rocks and debris rained down as Pryce made his way up the incline. I didn’t need a lamp because my demon mark still burned with its own fire. As long as I didn’t try to put it out, it didn’t burn me. Ahead, Cysgod snatched up junk from the floor and tore chunks of rock from the walls to throw at me. I dodged them as I climbed, but I still got hit in the face, the shoulders, the chest. I barely felt the blows.
Pryce reached the top of the tunnel and disappeared into the upper cavern. Two seconds later, a yelp of pain echoed.
I emerged from the tunnel and saw Kane sitting on the cavern floor, holding his dagger and looking dazed. Pryce was already almost to the next tunnel.
I paused beside him. “Are you okay?”
“I think I winged him,” Kane said. His eyes widened when he saw my flaming arm, but he didn’t ask. “Something just … swatted me away.”
Cysgod. Kane’s a solid two hundred pounds, but the shadow demon was huge. Kane got to his feet, rubbing his jaw. Across the cavern, Pryce climbed over the pile of slate at the entry to the tunnel that led back to the surface. Kane started after him.
“Mab’s hurt,” I said. “She needs help. She’s in the cavern at the bottom of that steep tunnel. When you get to the bottom, turn left. She’s by the wall.”
I don’t know why I lied. Maybe I couldn’t face the fact that Mab was dead. Maybe I couldn’t bear the thought of her body lying alone in that cold, dark, underground tomb. Maybe I wanted to kill Pryce myself, with no help from anyone. Maybe all of the above. I pushed past Kane and ran after Pryce. I didn’t hear any footsteps behind me, so I knew Kane had gone the other way. Good. He’d watch over Mab’s body until I could get back to her.
I slipped and fell once on the wet slate, but I was up and running again a second after I’d hit the ground. I clambered over the slate pile on my hands and knees, then sped up the incline in a crouching run. I couldn’t see Pryce or Cysgod, and no hunks of slate or rusty pickaxes came flying at my head. I was too far behind. I went faster.
Then, before I knew it, I was outside. There was no proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, just tight walls giving way to open space. If anything, it was darker out here than inside the mine. It should have been twilight still—how long had we been underground? I looked skyward and saw why it had grown midnight-dark. Overhead, thousands of crows flew. More than that—tens of thousands. They circled silently, as if waiting for something.